“I’m going to tell you this once,” the guy said. “And only once—”
“Eddie wouldn’t have been impressed by this—”
The attack was so fast, so vicious, Jim didn’t have time to ditch his cigarette. As Ad locked on Jim’s throat with both hands, that lit tip went up…and came down right in the collar of his shirt.
But the burn was the least of his problems.
Jacking his hands between them, he split that hold wide-open and snapped a head butt out, catching the other angel right in the soft cartilage of the schnoz. Except, apparently, Adrian didn’t have any feeling there either —he just threw out a curving right-hander that slammed into the side of Jim’s ear like an SUV.
Listing off to the side, he caught himself on a stand of chairs and one-eightied his momentum, pitching himself back at the guy—who happened to have found his fighting stance and was clearly ready to turn this into a UFC free-for-all.
There was a huge part of Jim that also wanted a good, bloody hand-to-hand fight with the guy. But it was hard to pull the soapbox, superior thing about Eddie when he was prepared to go a hundred and fifty rounds with the dumb man-whore down in this corridor.
One gut shot put a stop to the whole thing.
Jim faked out like he was coming in high, and Ad was so pissed off and juiced, the guy fell for it. As he left his navel undefended, Jim went in low and fast—so fast there was no chance to block, and so low that the cock and balls were involved.
Motherfucker was going to sing the high notes like Justin-cocksucking-Timberlake for a while.
Adrian caved in around his groin, his hands formed a protective cup that was about three seconds too late to protect his nads.
Jim shook the now-crushed cig out of his shirt. His skin had been burned on his shoulder, but compared to the ringing in his ears, it was nothing.
Wonder if he had a concussion.
More dementia was
Standing over the bastard, Jim said in a guttural voice, “I know what you did.”
Adrian let one knee go down to the concrete floor. Then the other. “Duh. You frickin’ watched.”
“The prostitute. The runes on her stomach. You burned ’em off her, didn’t you.”
Ad started flapping his lips, but the curses didn’t carry far.
“Let me make myself perfectly clear.” Jim leaned over and put his face right in the guy’s grille. “You ever keep information from me again, and you’re off the team—if Nigel won’t arrange for it, I’ll fucking take care of the job. Do you understand me.”
Not a question.
As Adrian’s eyes lifted, they were like two blowtorches mounted through the back of his skull, but Jim didn’t give a shit. The angel could go volcano if he wanted; they were
When Ad finally spoke, the words were hoarse, the other angel’s lungs still more focused on reoxygenation from the shot to the nuts than allowing him to bitch. “Do you think Devina…did that because it was going to
“Not the point.” Jim shook his head. “You do
“Oh, so I’m an asshat because I was trying to help you—”
“I need to know what she’s doing.”
Ad fell back on his ass and scrubbed his face. “Come on, Jim, she’s trying to fuck your head because you won’t let her fuck your body. That and a physics equation and you can solve the mysteries of the goddamn universe. You know this. So why are the particulars of the message important.”
“If I can’t trust you, I don’t know where I really stand.”
“And if she gets under your skin, we’ve lost both you and Eddie.”
Their competing logic drained the final vestiges of emotion out of the air, leaving a pervasive exhaustion that was clearly communal.
“Goddamn it,” Jim breathed, as he sat next to the guy.
“That about covers things.”
Jim took out his Marlboros. The pack was mangled, a couple of the cigs cracked in half and therefore unusable. But he found at least one that was still intact enough to light.
As he lit up, he glanced over at where the fucking had gone down. The weakness he’d felt in those moments was just one more reason to hate the enemy.
Adrian glanced across. “Eddie would have done the same thing about those runes.”
“No, he wouldn’t have.”
Those eyes turned hard again. “You didn’t know him longer than a matter of weeks. Trust me—he did what was necessary in all circumstances, and anything that has to do with Sissy Barten is your Achilles’ heel.”
“Obstructing information—”
“Can we just drop this—”
“—is as close to a crime as men like you and I have.”
“—and get back to work.”
As tempers simmered again, like their respective pots had been returned to the godforsaken stove, Jim cursed. See, this was the problem with Eddie being gone. No ref to call the shot or the foul and get the pair of them back on track.
No voice of reason.
And Ad kind of had a point. Jim was a little obsessed about Sissy, and Devina was smart enough to know that. But after years of being in the field, the one thing Jim knew to value as much as his own competence was intel—information was always the best weapon and the strongest shield you had against your enemy. If you knew their thinking and their actions, their locations and their movements, you could formulate your strategy.
“There isn’t a lot of solid ground in this game,” Jim said after a while. “I’m fighting on sand, against an opponent who’s got her stilettos on concrete. Shit’s already stacked against us, and if you’re filtering, that’s one more thing I gotta frickin’ worry about.”
Adrian looked over, all dead fucking serious. “I wasn’t trying to fuck you. Honest.”
Jim cursed out an exhale. “I believe you.”
“I won’t do it again.”
“Good.”
In the aftermath, although they didn’t hug it up or some shit, he figured they could give themselves gold stars: This argument had gone so much better than that first one at the side of the road. Back then, Eddie had had to pry them apart. Guess they were making progress.
“One last question.”
Adrian glanced over. “G’head.”
“What did it say?”
As silence stretched out, Jim figured it wasn’t a good sign. Yup…if someone like Ad was actually choosing his words, it was a really bad goddamn sign.
“Do you want to win this?” the other angel demanded. “And I’m not talking about just this round. I’m talking about the whole goddamn war.”
Jim narrowed his eyes. “Yeah. I do.”
Jesus, he realized, that actually was the truth.
“Then don’t ask me to translate. Nothing good’s going to come out of it.”
There was a tense silence while Jim measured his partner: man, Adrian was meeting him right in the eye, without any kind of prevarication, everything in that big body still as if he were praying for the right answer to come back at him.
Shit, the burn to know to the particulars was like the worst kind of indigestion…but it was hard to argue with the other angel’s dead-and-serious.
“Okay,” Jim said roughly. “Fair enough.”
Up in Matthias’s room on the sixth floor, Mels lay lax on the bed, her arms loose, her legs twitching
