A Wolf at the Door

The man-demon stepped back, probably glad to be away from my wife’s anti-demon magic, and I couldn’t help but notice that his footprints began and ended in a two-foot space, like he’d teleported there. Which he probably had. “That’s subtle. It’s broad daylight, Axel, what if someone saw you just blink in like that?”

He looked around, squinting in the morning sun. “They didn’t.”

“But they could have.”

“But they didn’t.”

I deliberately took a deep breath, in through my nose, out through my mouth, concentrating on why I was not going to reach out and punch him in the face. Because I knew I could now. Despite the fact that we shouldn’t have been able to cause harm to each other without a formal contract in place, one little experiment last fall had proven that those restrictions were no longer as firm as they’d once been. That made dealing with Axel a lot more unpredictable. It also meant the temptation to reach out and tag him was harder to resist.

“Here, put a coat on. You look conspicuous.” I reached back in the door long enough to grab my snow-shoveling coat, some ratty denim thing, and tossed it to him. And yes, the puppy was still having a cow in the back of the house.

He eyed it for a moment, then shrugged it on. “If you say so.”

We stood and stared at each other for a minute, while I shifted my weight as the snow trickled into the tops of my sneakers. “Listen, if you have something to say, can you do it sooner rather than later? I like my toes, they’re one of the few parts of me I haven’t broken. I’d hate to see them freeze off.”

He stuffed his hands in his—my—coat pockets, rocking on his heels a bit. “I came to ask a favor.”

“A favor, or the favor?” Because I owed him a favor, you see. A few months ago, I’d been desperate, alone, and to save the lives of my best friends, I’d offered him an unnamed favor. And in the grand tradition of negotiating with demons, if I didn’t pin down just what kind of favor this was, I’d owe him forever.

“The favor. It’s a big one.” He scuffed his boots in the snow, drawing a little design with his toe. “I need you to do something for me.”

I eyed him suspiciously. “You’re going to ask me to do something awful, aren’t you?”

Axel snorted. “No. At least, I don’t think it’s awful.”

“Then you do it.” Ha, had him there.

He shook his head, the sunlight sparkling off all the metal in his face. “No can do. My ice is thin enough as it is, I can’t get involved in this one.”

“Y’know, I’m getting damn sick of fighting your battles for you. At no point did I agree to be your pet champion.”

Axel’s eyes flared red for a heartbeat. “No, but you did ask for my help. So now I’m asking for yours. Tit for tat, Jesse. You know how this works.”

Boy, did I. The fact that I’d come out of this so far without a nasty black demon brand down my arm and my soul in Hell’s pawnshop was a constant amazement to me. My own ice was dangerously thin, to be brutally honest. “Fine. What’s the favor?”

“I need you to go to Los Angeles. There’s a girl there, and she’s in danger. I need you to protect her.”

I admit, I stood there and blinked at him for a few moments. Of all the things I expected him to say, that was…well, pretty far down the list. Maybe in the footnotes, or something. “Is this girl…a special friend of yours?”

He gave me a puzzled look until he realized what I was asking, then made a face. “Ew! No! What do you take me for?”

“You really don’t wanna know.” I frowned a bit, thinking it over. “You realize that it’s the holidays, right? If I take off, Mira’s gonna be pissed.”

The man-demon snorted. I realized that his breath didn’t fog in the air. What the hell did that mean? “Your holiday was yesterday. I waited.”

“And your thoughtfulness touches my heart, really.” With a sigh, I brushed some snow off the patio table so I could lean up against it as we talked. “Are you going to give me any more information, or do I have to bargain it all out of you?”

“I can tell you most of it. The pertinent bits, anyway.”

I guess that was as good as I was going to get. “Okay. Tell me about this girl. What’s so important about her?”

“She’s soulless. I’ll tell you that right off. But this isn’t a champion request. I don’t need you to get her soul back.”

“Good to know. I guess.”

“She sold her soul years ago, and she sold it so that she could be beautiful and famous for her entire life.” Axel shuffled his feet in the snow, making a nice packed-down space that was going to be a bitch to shovel later. “Only, as part of her contract, she also agreed to collect souls herself, to store them until the time of her death.”

“You can do that?” I’d never heard of that before. Didn’t mean it couldn’t happen, just…taking other people down with you? That was kinda dick.

Axel nodded. “It was more common in the old days, but…yeah.” The old days. Which could be anywhere from the 1960s to biblical times. “Currently, she is holding within herself two hundred and seventy-six additional souls, mostly from men she’s seduced.”

I had to whistle lowly at that. That’s a helluva lot of seduction. “Damn, who is this girl?”