Holy Socks And Dirtier Demons (16 page)

sense. The blond one the angel referred to was Samuel, not Mary. Lilith had

ventured into hell.

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“What do you want?” I clutched the phone tighter.

“I want what the whore refuses me.”

“And what’s that?”

Satan’s son laughed. “You, twirling on a spit.”

“As great as that sounds, I’m going to pass,” I stalled, trying to

formulate a plan. Nothing came to me. Shit.

“The joke is on Lilith then. She protects a man unworthy of her

love,” Samuel said before hanging up.

Pain-filled cries ricocheted inside my head. Lilith’s cries. I dropped

to my knees, and clawed at my ears to stop the devastating sounds, but they

wouldn’t cease. Blood dripped from my fingers. Images of Lilith flashed

behind my eyelids. Burned, bloodied, beaten, her cat-yellow eyes faded as

the cries took control of my mind.

After a few minutes, the screams turned to mews and my sanity

returned, as did murderous rage.

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Twenty Seven

As soon as Lilith’s terror faded from my head, I grabbed her cell

phone and dialed Hades. “I need your help,” I said when he answered.

“I cannot help you this time, my friend.” He coughed. “Let her

sacrifice stand, and do what needs to be done to find the child.”

“I can’t. She went to hell to protect me. To keep Samuel away from

me, so I can find the kid.” I held the phone closer, my voice cracking. “You

didn’t hear her cries, Hades. No one should suffer like that.”

“Better her than you. Remember that.” Hades hung up. In a rage, I

threw the phone at Mary’s wall. It bounced off, knocking a can of oil based

paint onto the floor, and over my boots. Blood red paint seeped through the

soles.

“Mary, I’m sorry.” I stared at her terrified face feeling more and

more like an asshole.

She sniffed once, but straightened and the haunted look left her eyes.

“It’s okay. Let me grab a towel.” She ran to her kitchen and came back with

a black towel. I stuck my hand out, but she waved me away. On her knees,

she dabbed at the paint staining my boots and the floor. From under her

lashes, Mary glanced at me.

The stroke of Mary’s hand against my boots helped heal the sickness

Lilith’s pain had caused inside my brain. My fear of madness eased and

when she finished, I helped her to her feet. “I will be back, and we will finish

this,” I gestured between us. “I promise.” I sealed my vow with a kiss.

“I’ll hold you to that.” She touched my cheek. “But next time, it’s

just you and me. You will forget all about her.”

“Fair enough.” Kissing Mary one last time, I headed for the door and

the hellish world beyond it.

~ * ~

Outside Mary’s door, I wondered how the hell I could save Lilith.

There were only two ways into Hell, and dying wasn’t high on my ”to do”

list. That left me with option number two: locate Hell’s Gate and bribe my

way in.

I headed down the hall keeping far from the Hobbit’s door in case he

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held a grudge. Sid stood at the top of the stairwell, an ice cream cone melting

in his hand. Drips of white and brown dairy product puddled on the floor at

his feet.

“Hey, Sid.” I waved and tried to slip past.

“We shape ice cream into a cone, but it is the emptiness inside for

which we truly long.” A pallid droplet splashed onto the concrete and Sid

smiled.

“Umm, yeah. Nice chatting with you.”

When I was halfway down the steps, Sid called, “Carry the water,

bathe in the water, and seek the water. The babe is in the water.”

I stopped. Saving Lilith would have to wait. “What babe? Are you

talking about the kid?”

“The answer you seek is neither mine to give nor yours to desire.”

“Fuck this.” I charged back up the stairs, knocked the cone from

Sid’s hand, and slammed his fat ass against the wall. “If you know where the

kid is you better fucking tell me. Now.” I clenched my fist, ready to beat the

doughboy out of him.

He glared down at the broken ice cream cone. “A flower in Brooklyn

blooms with water, roses grow with fertilizer, and enlightenment turns to

dust if not tended in a community garden.”

My fist caught him in the stomach, oozing into his pudgy flesh, and

pin balling off an organ or two. He let out a harsh wheeze before collapsing

in a puddle much like his busted ice cream cone.

Oh shit. Community garden. Water. Brooklyn. The kid was at the

Botanical Gardens in Brooklyn. Yanking Sid to his feet, I apologized with a

wave and ran down the steps.

“You suck,” Sid yelled down the empty stairwell. “I hope you get

your ass kicked.”

Hmmm. That didn’t sound Zen-like at all.

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Twenty Eight

The Brooklyn Botanic Garden wasn’t really all about community as

its name implied, since it cost eight bucks to get in and smelled like the dead.

I had an idea where they held the kid. The Steinhardt Conservatory: Trail of

Evolution. Why? Because that’s where I would keep the Son of God.

Before taking the Q train to the Prospect Park Station, I stopped at

Lilith’s apartment to pick up Tyrfing, and the angel. I found Tyrfing

embedded in a picture of Alex Trebek, which was odd enough. I shook my

head and wrestled the blade, wondering why Lilith had a picture of Trebek in

the first place.

The angel watched me with bored eyes. “I do not like that show. It is

too hard, and no one is in peril, so what is with that name?” He shook his

feathers. “Plus, they never mention me. It’s always Michael this, Gabriel

that. I am sick of—”

“Shut the fuck up and help me,” I yelled, twisting the sword. It

moved a millimeter at the most.

The angel hrumped but did as I asked. He waved his winged arm and

the sword came free. Not prepared, I jerked the hilt at the same time, which

sent me toppling over Lilith’s white couch and face first onto her fat white

cat. Bodhi hissed and jabbed a claw into my right eye.

“Ow!” I jumped up, and ran in a circle around the living room

holding my punctured eye socket. “Evil cat incarnate. I’m going to have you

stuffed.”

“What did I do?” The angel looked offended.

“Not you. That fucking devil cat.” I pointed at one of the two cats

clouding my vision. Shit. I rubbed my eye until only one hairball remained

and gestured to the door. “Let’s go. I know where the kid is being held.”

The angel raised his wings in question. “Why do you want to take the

cat to save the babe?”

I took a deep breath and counted to ten. “Forget it. You stay here. If I

don’t come back, tell God I deserve a fluffier cloud.”

“We don’t sleep on clo—”

I closed the door on his lie.

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~ * ~

At the gate of the Brooklyn Botanic Garden, I passed a ten dollar bill

to a bored attendant, and in return received a map folded into a swan. It must

be loads of fun working at a garden in February.

I dissected the swan and followed the map to the Trail of Evolution. I

sniffed the air. Nothing but the rot of dirt, and dying flowers. No new baby

Jesus smell. No brimstone. I inhaled again, this time catching a whiff of

something familiar and indefinable.

Opening the door to the conservatory, I dragged Tyrfing in my wake

and wiped away a drip of sweat hanging above my lip. A couple of tourist,

wide-eyed at the sight of a deranged guy with a sword, ran out of the exhibit,

slipping in pools of condensation. I smiled, and nodded as they passed. Why

not? Tourism paid the city’s bills.

I stepped into the foliage. A rainforest of exotic hothouse plants hid

my presence. The air felt heavy and much too warm, even for a greenhouse.

Sweaty hot evil. I could almost taste it. It crept through the conservatory,

tainting everything.

A child’s laugh broke the malevolent vibe surrounding me. I smiled

at the sound. The kid. He was here. I waded my way through the fauna,

pausing every few seconds to listen. Nothing. Shit.

Stepping through a ring of trees, I found myself in the middle of a

watery oasis. Water beat against an outcropping of rocks, and a heated spray

soaked my skin.

Water. Damn, I owed Sid an apology.

I ducked behind a bush when the shout of voices ahead reached me.

Unfortunately, the bush was poison sumac. My skin instantly began to itch, a

psychosomatic reaction I’m sure, but a pain in the ass just the same.

I peeked over the bush and saw the kid, all two-feet of him dressed in

a light blue sailor suit. A tiny sailor’s cap sat atop his blond head. Those evil

bastards. What had they done to him?

Nevertheless, the kid was amusing himself by reviving an ice-age

fossil of a shellfish before smiting it, again and again. Alive. Dead. Alive.

Dead. The fish finally stopped returning from the great beyond, and the kid

started to snivel, ready to let loose a wail of biblical proportions.

Good. A scene would be the distraction I needed.

The kid’s bottom lip quivered, and my heart jumped a beat.

Showtime. But before he burst into a full-blown tempter tantrum, a feminine

arm picked him up. Straining to see the kidnapper’s face or at least her

breasts, a sick feeling pooled in my lower intestine. It couldn’t be.

“Mine,” the kid screeched, and did that kid-claw-fingered-pinchy-

thing with his hands.

Shit. He spotted me. Time to move. I jumped from the bush, my

sword poised for battle. Bring it on, I thought seconds before the aroma of

sulfur fumed around me and ten pounds of metal smashed into the back of

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my skull.

I fell to the damp ground. My final thought: Good thing the kid had

practiced raising the dead.

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Twenty Nine

“Jace, hold still.” Lilith’s pale face slowly came into focus. She stood

above me, tears sliding down her cheeks. “You’ll be all right. Just let Angel

do his job.”

“Y B tch,” I mouthed and kicked a leg up to strangle her.

Lilith smacked the angel. “I think you put something in wrong. He’s

trying to strangle me with his foot, and can’t say vowels. Fix him.”

“It isn’t as easy as it looks, you know.” The angel searched the

ground for more smashed gray matter. “Ah, there it is.” He pressed a piece of

my brain in place, and an electrical current shot down my spine.

I blinked a few times. “You bitch.” Whew. This time my arms

reached out to choke the life out of her.

“What is your problem?” Her fist met my jaw. “I save your life and

this is the thanks I get.”

“I actually did the life saving.” The angel glared at Lilith. “You

merely drove us here.”

She tucked her arms across her chest, and tapped her booted foot. “If

I hadn’t gone looking for him, you’d still be buying bath salts on the Home

Shopping Network. And Jace would be
dead
.”

“He
was
dead.” The angel lifted me from the ground. “And I brought

his soul back.”

“Enough.” I stumbled toward Lilith like Frankenstein’s monster.

“How’d you get away from Samuel?” Suspicion curled in my stomach. Was

it her with the kid? Had she killed me? Or had the womanly arm belonged to

another? Samuel’s current succubus?

She shook her head. “It doesn’t matter. What matters is, did you find

J.C.?”

“Yeah.”

“So where is he?” She gazed around the plant-filled room.

“Not here, apparently.” I took a step closer to her. “After my brains

got bashed in, I lost him.”

“Oh, okay.” She gave me a pacifying smile, all pretty white teeth.

“At least we know he’s okay.”

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“Was okay,” I mumbled. Who knew what his kidnappers had done

after my murder. “How’d you find me?”

“I tried the GPS signal on my cell phone first, but I couldn’t pick up

the signal.” She scratched her head.

Oops. I pictured the bits of busted cell phone on Mary’s floor. Faking

a search through my jean pockets, I said, “I must’ve dropped it.”

Her head tilted, but she didn’t call me on it. “When I… got back to

my apartment, he—” she flicked a wrist at the angel, “—told me you’d found

the kid, but not where. So I started looking for you.”

“And?”

“We called God,” the angel sneered. “But Michael answered. Now

he’s going to Lord this over my head for the next eon.”

“I said I’d make it up to you.” Lilith rolled her eyes. “I don’t know

how you put up with him for the last eight months.”

The angel frowned. “And I don’t know why
he
needs you. A

woman’s place is in the kitchen.”

I laughed as Lilith lunged at him, but I pulled her up short before she

could do any damage. “As much as I’d love to see you kick his angelic ass,