The Trouble With Twelfth Grave

  “The embers.”

  “The embers?”

  “The ashes.”

  “Ashes from what? Rocket, what does that mean?”

  “It means—”

  Before he could get out another word, Blue slammed a hand over his mouth.

  Disappointed, I started to protest, but she slammed a hand over mine as well, then she took it away and held an index finger over her mouth to shush us.

  They straightened and glanced around as though searching for something. I joined them but saw nothing even though they must have. Their heads swiveled in the same direction, and a microsecond later, they vanished.

  I turned so fast I almost fell, but I saw nothing out of the ordinary. Just in case, I put my hand to the ground and lifted Artemis from the earth. She materialized beneath my palm and did a quick inspection of the area, sniffing and pawing at the debris. Finding nothing amiss, she gave up the search and assaulted me, knocking me to the ground and pinning me there while she licked my face.

  I laughed and looked over at the boy, finally wresting a smile out of him.

  9

  I’m not saying I don’t like you.

  I’m just saying I’d unplug your life support to make a pot of coffee.

  —MEME

  The boy disappeared down the street before I could talk to him. He wasn’t ready for the likes of me. I got that. Some days I felt the same way.

  I called Cookie on the way back to the office.

  She picked up, saying, “Davidson Investigations.”

  “Cook, I called your landline. The one to your apartment.”

  “Oops. Sorry, boss. How’d it go with Rocket?”

  “Blue came to me.”

  She let out a soft gasp. “Blue? The Blue? The same sweet girl you’ve been trying to make contact with for…”

  “Ten,” I offered.

  “For ten years?”

  “The very same. Cookie, he destroyed the asylum.”

  “What? Reyes?”

  “He leveled it.”

  “Oh, my God, Charley. I’m so sorry. I know what that place meant to you.”

  “And to Blue and Rocket. I don’t like to be a negative Nancy, but this day has sucked.”

  “You need tacos.” She knew me so well.

  “I do. But that’ll have to wait. We’re doing this, Cook. We’re going to try to trap him the moment the sun sets.”

  “Why when the sun sets? Are his powers diminished?”

  “Sadly, no. I just figure fewer people will happen to spot us if we wait until dark.”

  “Oh, yeah, that’s a good reason.”

  “I just wanted … you know … if anything should happen—”

  “Don’t you dare.” She paused when her voice hitched. “Don’t you even think about it. Besides, we’re going to be there, Robert and I.”

  “Not this time, Cook.”

  “What? We agreed this morning. We’re part of the plan.”

  “You were a part of it. I don’t think Reyes is in there anymore. You should have seen Blue and Rocket. He left them terrified. I don’t know what he’s capable of now, and I just can’t risk you and Uncle Bob. Not this time.”

  “Charlotte Jean Davidson,” she said, slipping into her mommy voice.

  “I love you so much.”

  “Charley, damn it.”

  “I keep telling people, Damn It is not my last name. It’s not even my middle name.”

  “No, your middle name is Cookie Is Going to Kick My Ass Next Time She Sees Me.”

  “That’s it, I’m legally changing my middle name.”

  Before she could make it even longer, because that one was going to be hard to explain at the registrar’s office as it was, I hung up. No way was I risking my best friend’s life. I’d already put her through so much, and she stuck with me, no questions asked. There was some cussing and name-calling and a little bit of hair-pulling, but no questions. And Cookie’s hair grew back better than ever.

  Rey’azikeen destroyed a precious memorial. The mere thought left me livid. It was time to hunt him down. To be done with this. To find out if Reyes was in there somewhere despite what Rocket said or not. Either way, I had to know.

  I pulled into an empty parking lot on the outskirts of town. The land was part of the Sandia reservation, and the building used to be a casino, but the Sandia Pueblo built another one, bigger and brighter, a couple of years prior. So, lucky for us, this one lay abandoned.

  Garrett was already there. I stepped out of Misery and started toward him just as Osh drove into the parking lot in a flat black Hellcat. My knees weakened at the sight of it.

  Just as we did, Osh left his car lights on to illuminate the playing field. He grinned and stepped out wearing his usual attire minus the top hat.

  “Do you think he’ll come?” Garrett asked. He took the rifle off his open tailgate and loaded it.

  I shrugged, my nerves making me seasick. “What do you think?” I asked Osh as he walked up.

  He’d been busy checking out the horizon as the sun dipped past it. “I have a feeling he’s already here. I think he follows you pretty much everywhere.”

  “I haven’t felt him.”

  “I could be wrong. I just have a hunch, and if that hunch proves correct, he may know about our plans to trap him.”

  Garrett finished loading the rifle. He nodded. “Ready as I’ll ever be.”

  After swallowing hard, I nodded back, and we took our positions.

  We walked to the middle of the massive lot and stood in a triangle about twenty feet apart from each other.

  Osh seemed to sense my distress. If he’d seen what had come out of that glass, he would’ve been more distressed himself. Then again, we were talking about Osh. Osh’ekiel the Daeva. The slave demon from hell, and apparently slaves weren’t treated any better in hell than they had been on Earth.

  “I can take him,” he promised. “At least long enough for Swopes to get a shot.” He looked at Garrett. “Just don’t hit me.”

  “Hold him as still as you can.”

  When we’d settled into silence, I bowed my head and whispered my husband’s name. Normally, I could summon a departed or Reyes or even an angel just by thinking a name, but Rey’azikeen was proving a little trickier in every sense of the word. I didn’t know what to expect. I didn’t know who to expect.

  “Reyes,” I said softly, reaching out with my mind.

  Nothing. Naturally. Because it couldn’t be that easy.

  Then I remembered going through this exact same scenario three days ago when I attempted to pull Reyes out of the god glass. It didn’t work then. No idea why I thought it would work now. Wishful thinking, I supposed.

  I tried again. “Rey’azikeen.” Nothing. Flashbacks of that night started playing in my head. “Rey’aziel,” I said, the name he used in hell.

  But still nothing.

  “What can we do?” Garrett asked.

  “I don’t know. I’m trying my best.”

  “It’s okay, love,” Osh said. “If he doesn’t want to be summoned, he won’t be.”

  “I’ll try again. I’ll … I don’t know … I’ll force him.”

  With teeth locked, I concentrated on the beautiful man I’d married, the father of my child, the keeper of my heart, and said his name again. The name he was most likely going by now. “Rey’azikeen.”

  I felt a pulse in the core of my abdomen. My lids flew open. The wind had picked up and whipped my hair around my head.

  Osh offered me an encouraging smile.

  “Rey’azikeen,” I said again, only louder this time, and I was rewarded with a warmth, a heat that washed in me and over me and through me as though I were nothing but air. He was close. We all knew it. But getting him to appear, to materialize, could be difficult.

  And then I realized something. I looked at my two companions. “He’s teasing us.”

  Osh agreed. “He’s fucking with us.”

  Frustration cut into me. I looked toward
the heavens and shouted, “This is the worst day ever!” Not that it would do any good, but for some reason I felt better.

  “I was afraid this would happen,” Osh said. Then he grinned, his white teeth flashing across his handsome face. He gestured at Garrett with a nod. “You’re up.”

  Garrett slung the rifle over his shoulder and started toward me.

  I took a step back in suspicion. “What? What did you two come up with?”

  Garrett’s gait was confident, purposeful. He didn’t stop until we were barely inches apart, then he wrapped his arms around me, and said, “This,” a microsecond before he planted his mouth on mine.

  Shock immobilized me for what seemed like an hour. Garrett’s mouth was hot against mine. Smooth. Tantalizing.

  Understanding the point, I softened against him. Tilted my head for better access. Opened my mouth.

  It surprised Garrett if the gentle intake of breath between our mouths was any indication, but he got over it quickly. He slid his tongue past my lips and explored to his heart’s content, the kiss leisurely. Languid. Sensual.

  Then again, for his plan to work, he had to make it good.

  The wind whipped around us, pushing and straining to tear us apart. I wrapped one arm around his neck and kept one planted on his rib cage. Mostly in case this did actually work and he needed to get to his gun quickly.

  “There!” Osh shouted above the roar of the now hurricane-strength wind.

  What happened next seemed to play out in slow motion. Osh sprang forward, scrambling to attack Reyes, but his movements were slow as though swimming in molasses. The same with Garrett. He pushed me back before grabbing the gun and pulling the stock to his shoulder, but what would normally have been lightning-quick moves had decelerated to a dreamlike sequence of events.

  I turned just in time to see Reyes, or Rey’azikeen as was most likely the case, appear in the distance. He walked toward me. The winds didn’t affect the billowing darkness that surrounded him. Smoke cascaded off his shoulders and down his body to pool at his feet. It stirred with every step, thin bolts of electricity crackling and curling over him. And underneath it all, his fire. Always that fire. That reminder of his upbringing in hell.

  I realized Reyes had slowed time. Osh could correct for that in a few moments, but Garrett, being human, could not.

  Still, Reyes didn’t stop it altogether. He could have, but he didn’t.

  I watched as he strode closer and closer. Osh dove toward him, and Garrett aimed the rifle at his midsection. He pulled the trigger, and Reyes easily sidestepped both Osh and the dart that was meant to tranquilize him.

  He stopped short in front of me as the other two recovered and prepared for the next attack. Unconcerned, Reyes reached over, grabbed a handful of my hair, and pulled me roughly against him.

  “You dare summon me?” he asked, anger sparking in his dark irises.

  I lifted my chin, just as angry. “You destroyed Rocket’s building.”

  I had to take advantage of his nearness, so I prepared for step two. Reyes hadn’t been tranquilized, but that would have been a precautionary measure only. I’d needed him close. Physically close. This close.

  I raised a hand to his chest and started to say the words that would bind him to this world, but before I got out a single consonant, he dematerialized.

  I stumbled forward and then whirled around, searching for him. I could still feel his blistering heat on my skin, as though, like Icarus, I’d traveled too close to the sun. But I couldn’t see him.

  “Reyes!” I yelled as time bounced back, the wind even stronger.

  Osh and Garrett regained their bearings and joined forces in front of me, expecting Reyes to come at us head-on again. But this being was not Reyes. This being was Rey’azikeen.

  I felt the nuclear-like heat at my back a split second before an arm slid around my throat from behind. Another snaked across my midsection, and then his mouth was at my ear. His voice, smooth like butterscotch, caressed every part of me when he said, “Hold your breath.”

  I drew air into my lungs just as the world fell away.

  10

  God is love,

  but Satan does that thing you like with his tongue.

  —BUMPER STICKER

  Reyes shifted onto the celestial plane and took me with him. The wind, like acid in this realm, stung my skin, but his arms wrapped around me were far more unsettling. Which version of the man I loved held me?

  He tightened his hold, and even though I didn’t think I needed air on this plane, needed to breathe in this realm, I squirmed against him as panic took root. “Let me go, Reyes.”

  His mouth at my ear again, he said, “This is what happens when you summon a god.”

  Despite the anger in his voice, despite the brutality I knew him capable of, part of me relished the embrace. I couldn’t help it. I had loved this man for so very long, centuries if not eons. I leaned into him.

  He pushed me off him but kept a firm grip on my left arm, presumably so I wouldn’t dematerialize and escape. But I had no intention of leaving.

  I did, however, try to jerk my arm free. His grip tightened in response. I refused to react. To give him the satisfaction.

  Instead, I lifted my chin and dared him to do his worst.

  The grin that slid across his painfully handsome face caused a pang of both sympathy and longing in my chest.

  He practically scowled in response, clearly disgusted with me. “You’re still in love with him,” he said, his gaze boring into mine. “You believe that somewhere inside me is your Reyes. Your Rey’aziel.” He pulled me closer. “But what you don’t understand is that I was always lurking.” He clamped his free hand around my other arm. “I am not Reyes.” He pulled me close enough to see the sparkling flecks of green and gold in his coffee-colored eyes. “I am not Rey’aziel.” He walked forward, pushing me until he’d backed me into a wall of some kind. A rock, its sharp edges cutting into my skin. “I am Rey’azikeen.” He tightened the viselike grip he had on my arms. “A god, even stronger now, thanks to you.”

  His dark gaze shimmered from underneath his lashes, cold and unforgiving. At least that’s what he’d have me believe. But I felt a turbulence beneath his cool exterior.

  “Why stronger?” I asked, my mind racing to find a way to get him back to the earthly plane. To bind him to it. To strip him of his powers until we could locate the human part of him.

  “I learned from the best.” His sensual mouth tipped up at one corner. A corner I’d tasted so many times. My mouth salivated to do it again. “Like you, I ate the flesh of my enemies. I devoured the criminal god Mae’eldeesahn and the demon assassin Kuur.”

  I stilled in surprise. That meant the killer, the being that had mutilated and murdered three people back on Earth, could be neither of them.

  But it meant something more. It meant that he’d had to go to battle with a malevolent god. He’d had to not only survive a hell dimension but fight just to stay alive.

  My throat constricted at the thought. I trained my expression to stay neutral. Empathy was not something Reyes appreciated. I imagined Rey’azikeen liked it even less.

  “But you are still the best, are you not?” he asked.

  “The best at what?”

  “At devouring your enemies.”

  I had to keep him talking. Perhaps I could do the same thing to him he’d done to me. If I concentrated, could I shift and take him with me to the earthly plane? “Why did you level Rocket’s building?”

  He brushed a finger along my neckline. “Why do you care?”

  “Because I love him.”

  He looked away, his sculpted jaw clamping down in frustration.

  “I love him, and you scared him and left him homeless for no reason.”

  “I had a reason,” he insisted, his heated gaze back on mine. “And you know it.”

  I was going about this all wrong. Honey attracted, not vinegar. “I know what?” I asked, softening my voice.

&nb
sp; “I know you should never have sent me in there.”

  “I am well aware of that, too. But it was your idea.”

  He frowned. For a split second, he slipped and showed his hand. He didn’t remember. He thought I sent him in there. I sent him to hell.

  “I would never do that to you.”

  “You can’t help it,” he said as though finally understanding me. “You lie even when I know the truth. That was the second time you sent me into a hell dimension and the second time I escaped.” He wrapped his hand around my throat and lifted my chin with his thumb. “Whatever will you do next?”

  I’d forgotten. According to Garrett’s research, I had indeed sent him to hell, but it was in lieu of the one his Brother had created for him. It was a hell from my home world. My home dimension. It was not as harsh as the one Jehovah had wanted to send him into. The one I’d eventually send him into.

  “I didn’t mean for you to have to escape. I tried to get you out.”

  He tightened his grip. “You failed.”

  The resentment he harbored stung. It was as though I was talking to a stranger. A powerful, unpredictable, volatile stranger, and yet one I knew so deeply. Loved so deeply.

  “Is that why you’re angry? You think I tricked you into going into the god glass? Is that why you’re killing people?”

  His brows slid together, completely taken off guard before he recovered again. “Yes,” he said, lying through his perfect teeth.

  His initial reaction spoke volumes. I’d blindsided him.

  Elation soared out of me, a caged bird set free. Reyes didn’t kill anyone. Neither did Mae’eldeesahn or Kuur. Then who? Two of the murders were in broad daylight, a place no demon could go. What else could do such a thing?

  “Where is it?” Reyes asked, growing impatient.

  I blinked back to him. “Where is what? What are you searching for?”

  His gaze dropped to my mouth. Lingered there. “This does not have to go badly for you. Just tell me where it is.”

  “No,” I said, frustrated.

  His laugh held no humor whatsoever. “You can hide it, but know this: I’ll find it eventually.” He pressed into me. “And when I do, I’ll not be kind.”

  “Then I won’t be, either.”