Fifth Grave Past the Light (3 page)

Like me, Reyes could feel emotion. He could feel anger rolling off people. Fear. Doubt. And sympathy. He most certainly felt mine. I realized my mistake when his expression hardened.

He brushed a thumb across his mouth in annoyance. “Surely that’s not pity in your eyes.”

I heard someone call out before I could answer.

“You!” a male voice said.

We looked to our right and saw a uniformed officer motioning Reyes over, Taft standing beside him.

Reyes sighed and I felt his annoyance dwindle. He leaned close again, his mouth at my ear, his breath warm across my cheek. “Use the key, Dutch.”

The thought of using the key, the key he’d given me to his apartment, caused an electrical charge to race up my spine.

He felt that, too. With a soft growl emanating from his throat, he turned and walked over to the officer. But I felt something, too. The heat of Jessica’s glare as jealousy consumed her. Normally I would giggle like an insane schoolgirl in such a situation, but I couldn’t quite manage it. That growl washed over me like cool water, caused another tingling in my abdomen, and I had to remind myself to fill my lungs with air before I turned blue. Blue was not my best color.

When a spot beside Cookie opened up, I hurried to get to her. In all the chaos, she’d somehow been elbowed in the face. I tried to feel bad, but I was still a little shell-shocked. Reyes did that to me. Still, Cookie would be sporting a shiner for days. I’d never hear the end of it.

“Are you okay, Cook?” I asked her as Uncle Bob sat in a chair beside her.

She was shaken and flustered. I put my hand on hers.

“How about I get you some water,” Uncle Bob said to her, “and you two can tell me what happened.”

“Thank you, Bob,” she said, her voice quivering. When he left, she patted her cheeks and neck with a napkin, then asked me, “So, how was your day?”

There she was, the Cook I knew and loved. Taking the good with the bad and turning it into an opportunity to grow and, quite often, make fun of innocent bystanders.

I decided to play along. I dropped my head into my hands. “My day sucked. I failed again.”

“This was not your fault,” she said, rubbing my shoulder absently.

I bounced up. “Oh, no, not this. This was totally your fault. A gun?” I asked, astounded. “No, really. A gun?”

She gaped at me a solid minute before conceding with a long sigh. “It seemed like a good idea at the time.”

“Three Mile Island, Cook.”

“I know. Geez. I can’t believe I didn’t kill anyone.”

If she only knew.

She waved it off, then asked, “So, what did you fail at?”

“I failed my cardiology test,” I said, watching Reyes’s interrogation, his every move pure perfection, his every feature stunning. Like he’d been Photoshopped. I suddenly felt gypped.

“Cardiology test?” Cookie asked. It was fun to watch her, with her face kind of lopsided from the swelling. “You went to see a cardiologist?”

“Yes. And he refuses to do open-heart surgery based on my insistence that something is wrong with it. According to Dr. Quack Head, the tests have all come back normal. I just think he needs a bird’s-eye view, you know? A hands-on kind of thing.”

She pressed her mouth together. “Damn it, Charley, you scared me. And there is nothing wrong with your heart.”

“Yes, there is. It hurts.” I poked myself in the chest several times for dramatic effect. “Having Reyes so near is painful. I think it has apoplexy.”

“Do you even know what that means?”

“No, but it sounds serious. Like Ebola. Or hives.”

“You’re going to wish you had Ebola after I’m done with you.”

“What? What the hell did I do?”

“I don’t know, but all of this has to be your fault.”

“You just said it wasn’t.”

“I was lying.”

“You’re the one who brought a gun to the party.” When she refused to address that little elephant in the room, I took out my phone and dialed an old friend of the family’s.

“Who are you calling?”

“Noni. You’re taking his class. The next one starts tomorrow morning at eight o’clock, and you’re going to be in it.”

“What?” She grabbed for my phone, but I dodged her attempts like Mr. Miyagi dodges the punches of his enemy. “I don’t need a concealed weapons permit.”

“It’s also about gun safety, Cook,” I said, holding up an index finger to put her in pause. “And if you carry a gun in a concealed way, you need a permit. The class is eight hours tomorrow and seven on Sunday.”

She lunged for the phone again. She missed. “That’s my entire weekend. I had plans.”

“A
Vampire Diaries
marathon is not plans.”

She looked at me like I’d lost my mind. “Have you even seen the Salvatore brothers? Holy mother of ginger snaps. And I was going to make a pan of enchiladas for us to eat next week, too.”

Gah! She knew that would hurt. I sighed in defeat. “Then clearly we are both making a huge sacrifice here.”

Noni picked up, saying something grumpy about the time. It was weird. I charged forward, explained the situation to him as Cookie watched Uncle Bob’s every move. Or, well, drank in Uncle Bob’s every move. He was consulting with one of the off-duty officers, and Cookie seemed to find his actions mesmerizing.

That wasn’t disturbing at all.

“Thanks, Noni.”

“I hate you right now,” he said.

“For gravy’s sake, it’s nine thirty. Who’s asleep by nine thirty on a Friday night?” I hung up and said to Cook, “You’re in.”

“Fantastic.” She said it, but I didn’t think she meant it.

“Right? Okay, so he’ll ask you a lot of questions to determine your mental stability. How good are you at lying?”

She scowled at me. “As good as you are at staying out of trouble.”

“Crap. Well, just do the best you can. He’ll also give you a handbook on all the gun laws in New Mexico. And Noni is —” How did I put this without making him sound like a fanatic? “Noni’s enthusiastic. He takes his gun with him into the shower, but he’s a good guy and you’ll learn a lot. More important”— I took her shoulders to get her full attention; then I shook her a little for good measure – “everyone will be a lot safer.”

She nodded, then shook her head, changing her mind mid-shake. “I don’t know, Charley. I don’t think I can shoot a gun in front of other people.”

“What were you planning on doing with it tonight? Seeing if Tidwell was interested in buying one?”

“No, I just thought that showing it would get him to calm down.”

“And how’d that work out?”

“Charley,” she said, her voice sharp with warning.

“Okay, okay. But for future reference, never pull a gun unless you’re willing to use it. Anyway, firing your sidearm is only a small part of the class. By the time you get to that point, you’ll be comfortable enough with everyone to take off your bra. Don’t. Trust me. It never ends well. Before that, he’ll go over specific laws and give you real-life scenarios, self-defense situations to mull over. You know, everyday things.” I scooted closer to her. “Cook, he’s going to ask you if you’re ready to kill someone.”

“What? Like right now?”

“No, he’ll probably give you a scenario and ask if you’d be willing to pull the trigger.”

“Wonderful.” Again, she said it but I questioned her sincerity.

“And then he’ll teach you different techniques. How to enter a room when there’s a terrorist raiding your refrigerator. What to do if someone breaks down your front door with an axe. It’s all about staying alive and defending yourself and your family.” When she only stared off into space, I added, “You’ll do fine, Cook.”

Oh yeah, that special place in hell was looking more and more likely by the minute.

The moment I could feel my knees again, I decided to check on my old friend-ish type person-slash-associate of sorts, Garrett Swopes. He was always good for a laugh. On the way over, I pulled up one of my new, possibly pirated GPS apps my friend Pari told me about. So even though I could find his house with my eyes closed – a feat I was fairly certain I’d done one night during a bout with insomnia – I brought up the app on my phone, picked a voice, and plugged it into the auxiliary outlet. Heavy breathing, as though someone were on life support and breathing through a machine, flooded the car. It might not have been so creepy if it weren’t dark out. I punched in my destination, i.e., Garrett’s address, then hit Route.

“In three hundred feet, turn right,” Darth Vader said.
The
Darth Vader. I felt like we were friends now. Like I could tell him anything.

“Thanks, Mr. Vader. Can I call you Darth?”

He didn’t answer, but that was okay. As the non-favored child of a stepmother, I was used to being ignored. I headed that way.

The breathing sounded again. “In fifty feet, turn right.”

“Okay, well, thanks again.”

We did that the whole way. Him telling me what to do. Me thanking him. I suddenly felt dirty, like he was using me for his own amusement. This relationship seemed very one-sided.

When I was almost there, Darth spoke again. “In two hundred feet, your destination will be on the right. Your journey to the dark side is almost complete.”

Why did I get the feeling he was related to Reyes?

“Your destination is on the right.”

“Yeah, okay, got it. Had it before.”

“Your journey to the —”

I exited the app before he could finish his sentence. It seemed wrong to cut him off prematurely, but I could take only so much heavy breathing before inappropriate thoughts involving whipped cream and a Ping-Pong paddle crept into my mind. And I was going to see Garrett Swopes. While not anywhere near the top of my to-do list, the guy’s abs were to die for.

I hopped out of Misery, my beloved cherry red Jeep Wrangler, and strolled to his front door. He lived in a small bungalow-style house with lots of lush vegetation, which was kind of unusual for Albuquerque. We were more of a lush-free kind of state. Sparse was more our style. I knocked before realizing his truck wasn’t out front like usual.

The door opened anyway and an exhausted-looking bond enforcement agent in dire need of a shave stood before me. Garrett Swopes was a lot like a hot gay friend only he wasn’t gay, which was too bad because then I could tell him how hot he was without him getting the wrong idea. He had smooth mocha-colored skin that made the silvery gray of his eyes even more arresting. And again he had abs to die for as evidenced
not
by his lack of a shirt but his negligence in buttoning said shirt.

I drank in a hearty swig of Garrett-abs before addressing him. “How’s it hanging, Swopes?” I asked, ducking past him.

He rubbed his eyes with a thumb and index finger. “Charles, it’s late.”

“It’s always late when I come over. At least you weren’t in bed this time.”

After a lengthy sigh to let me know just how annoyed he was pretending to be, he closed the door and headed for the kitchen. For some reason, every time I came over, he felt the need to drink. It was weird. “To what do I owe the pleasure?” he asked.

“To my pleasure, duh. I get all kinds of joy annoying the ever-loving crap out of you.”

“I meant, what’s going on? Is the world ending? Is a mass murderer stalking you? Are you trying to stay up for days at a time to avoid alone time with your evil neighbor?”

Damn. He knew Reyes had moved in next door to me. I’d wanted to be the one to tell him, to break it to him gently. My relationship with Reyes was complicated and, at one point, involved me staying up for days to avoid summoning the guy into my dreams. Unfortunately, Garrett had become a victim of my circumstance. He’d helped me through a rough time and I should’ve been the one to tell him about Reyes’s new pad.

“Who told you I had a new neighbor?” I heard him twist the top off a beer, the snap and hiss strangely comforting.

“I’ve been keeping tabs,” he said.

That probably wasn’t good.

“So what’s going on?” he asked again.

“What? I need a reason to come see my oldest and dearest friend?”

When he walked back to the living room and handed me a Corona, he kind of glared at me before sinking into a recliner.

“Okay, well, my old-ish and most annoying friend anyway.” I sat on the sofa opposite him, taking note of the chaos strewn about the room. Just like the last time I’d come to visit, the coffee table was littered with books and notes on the spiritual realm, heaven and hell, demons and angels. “I’ve been worried about you.”

“Why?” he asked after taking a swig.

“I don’t know. You just seem different now. Distant. Like you have PTSD.”

I knew from where I spoke. My TSD got P’d when I was tortured by a monster named Earl. While attempting to execute my rescue, Swopes was shot and died as a result. The doctors were able to resuscitate him, but he’d recently told me that while in the jaws of death, he went to hell. That worried me. What worried me even more was the fact that, while in the fiery pit of eternal damnation, he had a heart to heart with Reyes’s dad, an experience that had to be traumatic on all kinds of levels.

“I’m fine,” he said, as he had the last seventeen times I’d asked. “I’m just working on something.”

I scanned the area. “I can see that. Anything you want to share?”

“No.”

He’d said it with such determination, no way was I going to argue. “Roger that,” I said instead. Wait. Who was I kidding? “But you know you can tell me anything, right?”

He eased his head back, closed his eyes, and stretched out his legs in front of him, his foot sending a stack of notes sprawling across the floor. He didn’t care. “Stop fishing, Charles. It’s not going to happen.”

“Roger that.” I took a sip of beer, then added, “But this stuff looks really interesting. I could help with the research.”

“I’m good,” he said, his voice edged with a hard warning.

“Roger that.” I picked up a page of scribbled notes and tried to decipher his handwriting. “Who is Dr. A. von Holstein? And is he related, by chance, to a race of cows?”

He bolted upright and snatched the page out of my hand. Oh, yeah, that wouldn’t stimulate my curiosity. “I said no, Charles, and I meant it.”

I sat back. “Geez, roger that.”

After placing the paper back in the exact same spot from which I’d freed it, he leveled an exasperated stare on me. “Why do you keep saying ‘roger that’? You don’t get to say ‘roger that’ unless you’ve been in the military.”

I regarded my beer, pausing a long moment for dramatic effect, then said in a quiet voice, “Roger that.”

The sigh of annoyance he released was long and meaningful. I won. My journey to the dark side really was complete. And I owed it all to my bestie Darth. Where would I be without him? Without our friendship? I shuddered to think.

He polished off his beer, leaned forward to steal mine, then sat back to nurse it at a slower pace. “Who sent me there?” he asked, his voice suddenly distant, and I knew exactly what he meant. Who sent him to hell? “Why did I go?”

I folded my legs until they resembled a pretzel and settled back against the sofa cushions. “You saw me right after you died, right?”

He nodded, eyes closed, beer perched on a thigh while he rubbed the bottle absentmindedly with long fingers.

“And then your dad met you on your way to heaven to tell you that you had been brought back to life. That you had to go back.”

His fingers stopped but he didn’t answer.

“But before you went back into your body, you went to hell?”

That was pretty much all I knew about Garrett’s vacay down under. He’d refused to go into detail when he told me and had shut me out every time I’d tried to talk about it since. While I was hungry to know every minute detail of what transpired, he was determined to let me starve.

“You said you were sent for a reason,” I continued. “To understand. To learn more about Reyes. How he was raised. What he had done.”

Without opening his eyes, he said, “And you only made excuses for him.”

He was angry with me, but I’d surprised him at the time by knowing before he told me that Reyes was the son of Satan. By being okay with it, in his eyes.

“Like I said, he wasn’t raised in the most nurturing environment.”

“So you insist. And you take up for him every chance you get. A general from hell. A skilled assassin who rose through the ranks of a demon army, who lived for the taste of his kills, who became the most feared creation in their history.” Then he did open his eyes and pinned me with a lethal stare. “An abomination who was sent to this plane for one reason and one reason only. You.”

This would get us nowhere. I unfolded my legs and instead folded my arms across my chest in a defensive maneuver. “I told you, he was sent for a portal. Any portal. Not me specifically.”

The way I understood it, Satan had sent Reyes to this plane to nab a grim reaper. Reyes was Satan’s way out of hell and he supposedly wanted a way into heaven. With the two of us, he would have a direct door into the very realm he’d been kicked out of. But Garrett was dead set on the idea that Reyes had been sent for me specifically, which was ludicrous. There was no way for Satan to know that out of all the beings like me in the universe, I would be chosen to serve on this plane as the portal. I would be sent here. From what Reyes told me, there was an entire race of us, a fact I had yet to verify or explore. But he said I had a celestial family out there. I found the concept both intriguing and comforting.

“And I told you you’re wrong,” he said.

I would never win this. “Fine. So you sat around a fiery pit and swapped war stories with Reyes’s dad.” I picked lint off my shirt and asked, “What did he tell you?”

“It’s not important.”

I gaped at him. “You’ve got to be kidding me.”

“No, I’m not. What’s important is why I was sent there. I mean, who sent me? Who has that kind of power?”

He had a good point. Solid. Sharp. Pointy.

“One thing I did figure out while I was there is that they are all liars and manipulators. You can’t believe anything they have to say.”

“Is that a comment about Reyes?”

“If the fiery pit fits.” When I got up to leave, he added, “I’m working on something. I promise, Charles, the minute I know more, you’ll know more.”

He groaned and got up from his seat to follow me to the door.

I opened it, then turned back to him. “Swopes, I know you don’t like to talk about it, but you can’t just go to hell and come away unscathed.”

A humorless grin spread across his face. “Sure you can. What would you do if you were sent to hell?”

I stepped out. “Stop, drop, and roll? What I mean is, did anything bad happen? Did they, I don’t know, hurt you?” I leveled a probing stare on him. “Did they torture you?”

His grin morphed into something that resembled pity. “No, Charles. They didn’t torture me.”

He closed the door before I could say anything else. I stood there a solid minute, stunned, unsure of what to do, what to say, how to help. The only thing I knew for certain was that he’d just lied to me.

Not really in the mood to deal with Darth, I decided to try a new voice on the way home. I plugged in my phone, brought up the app, then listened as KITT powered up all systems. I was a huge
Knight Rider
fan growing up, dreaming of a car that could talk to me, one that could warn me of impending doom like terrorists ahead or cops running radar. And when Misery transformed into a supercar with a turbo engine and an array of onboard weapons, I was sold. At last. I could finally nuke people who refused to get out of the left-hand lane. Life was good.

But Garrett had been tortured. In hell, no less. The concept was so foreign, even with everything that I knew, I couldn’t quite wrap my mind around what he could have gone through.

What would they have done to him? I doubted the Chinese water torture came into play. But he was incorporeal at the time. Could the soul be tortured? Then I thought about all the people who supposedly went to hell, who supposedly spent an eternity burning in agony. Was that real? Could the soul burn? Could it be cut? Torn? Brutalized?

My mind reeled with all the potentialities bouncing through it. It was hard to imagine hell as a physical place, a real place, even though Reyes was created there. Grew up there. It was just so foreign. So otherworldly. So creepy.

KITT broke into my thoughts, suggesting we fire a missile before telling me to take the next exit. Alas, I did not bond with KITT as much as I’d hoped. His music kind of sucked and his weapons were useless against the power of ignorance. I’d voted him off the island before I even pulled into my parking space.

“What do you think?” I asked the elderly dead guy in my passenger seat. I’d picked him up somewhere around Lomas and Wyoming. He seemed nice. He was also as naked as the day he was born. Trying not to look at his penis was proving harder than I thought it would be. “Is it breezy in here to you?”

He didn’t answer, so I left him to his thoughts and took the stairs up to my third-floor apartment, where I found a sticky note on my door. I’d been getting them a lot lately. Ever since my number one suspect in an arson case took the apartment I’d coveted for years and moved in down the hall. Two things led me to suspect the son of evil incarnate had taken up flamethrowing. First, he’d smelled like smoke a few nights ago, and I later learned that a condemned apartment building had been torched that very night. Second, the first time I saw Reyes Farrow was in that very apartment building being beaten by the monster who raised him, Earl Walker. After a little more digging, I discovered that at some point in his life, Reyes had lived at every address the arsonist was hitting. The realization caused a ribbon of dread to knot in my stomach, to twist it into a mass of raw nerve endings that pulsed with empathy and regret for what Reyes had gone through.