CHAPTER 42
“Couldn’t they shut the goddamn cupboards?”
As Adrian stood in Veck’s kitchen, he stared across the empty, all-open everything, watching as the poor bastard closed shit with hard claps.
On some level, it was hard to get jazzed about anything—and that included not just someone else’s drawers, cabinets and closets, but the war in general. The only thing likely to get his attention was if Devina showed up again, but that demon seemed to have gone into hiding.
Never a good thing.
Next to him, Jim was hanging back as well, letting Veck do his thing to put the house back together. When the detective went upstairs, the savior glanced over.
“Devina had better make her fucking move soon or his head’s going to explode.”
Ad grunted in agreement. “But not much we can do about it.”
He and Jim had also backseated it during the interrogation and the lie detector test and the further interro, until Ad had become convinced that they were never getting out of the police station. In the end, however, Veck had been released. All the cops had against him was circumstantial shit, and with the results of the polygraph in, there was not enough to charge him or even put him on a forty-eight-hour detainer.
Good news on some level—better to have the showdown with Devina away from all those uniforms. But the detective was pushed to his limit, and Adrian knew all too well what that was like.
Abruptly unable to stay still, Ad went over to the refrigerator and cracked the thing. Not much inside—no surprise there—but even if there had been a boatload of lo mein, he didn’t have any impulse to actually eat.
Even breathing was just something he did out of habit at this point.
Matter of fact, he’d heard once that there were stages of grief. Was he in depression now? He certainly wasn’t as pissed off as he had been when Eddie had first . . . whatevered. At the moment, all he had was a cage of pain around his lungs and the sense that he was dragging a river barge behind him.
Shaking his head, he deliberately put that shit out of his mind. Introspection was not his friend right now—
Too bad the resolution didn’t stick.
Glancing over at Jim, he said, “Do you think he’s all right left alone?”
“Veck needs the space.”
“Wasn’t talking about him.”
“You mean Eddie?” Jim crossed his arms and cursed. After a moment, he said, “Actually, yeah, I think he’ll be all right. Devina’s not incented to fuck with him because as long as he’s with us, it’s an open wound that won’t heal. She takes the body or compromises it? That’s a short-term thing.”
Ad walked over to the window and looked out. Five o’clock and the light was just starting to drain from the sky.
Man, he was jumpy all of a sudden. “She has to know where he’s being kept.”
“But I marked that door. Anyone gets in there”—the guy pounded his chest with his fist—“I’m going to know.”
Ad paced around a little, feeling like he had ants on the inside of his skin. Eventually, he muttered, “Look, I’m just going to head over there and check on him. I’ll be right back—”
Jim stepped in front of him. “Eddie is okay. And I need you here. Shit is about to go down.”
“Ten minutes.”
“This is exactly what she wants. You need to realize that.”
Adrian didn’t want to throw down with the guy. They already had enough tempers flaring, thanks to Veck going WWE with the attitude—and Ad had enough sense to know that he was unstable himself, capable of flaring up or burning out with the flip of a coin.
But he couldn’t shake the abrupt need to return to the garage.
“Look, I’ll be right back. Promise.” He met the savior’s eyes with his own. “I swear on Eddie’s soul.”
“Goddamn it,” Jim muttered.
“I couldn’t agree more.”
Without waiting for another round of disagreement, Ad spirited himself out of that house. And as soon as he took form on the garage’s front lawn, he knew he’d been right to come: there was another presence inside the apartment with Eddie.
Instantly falling into fight mode, he outed his crystal dagger and—
“What the hell?” he muttered, lowering his weapon.
At that moment, Colin opened the door at the top of the staircase and stepped out onto the landing. “That would be ‘Heaven,’ thank you very much.”
The archangel was not in namby-pamby whites, but the kind of clothes you could fight in: loose pants and a tight shirt. And he was alone, at least as far as Ad could sense it.
“What are you doing here?” Ad asked, even though he knew there was only one explanation.
“Watching TV.”
Adrian went over to the bottom of the stairwell. “Jim doesn’t have cable.”
“So one can imagine how dissatisfied I am.”
“Nigel’s let you guard him?”
“He knows I’m here, yes—”
The wind abruptly changed direction, shifting so it came out of the east—and it brought bad news with it: Riding along the invisible currents, weaving in and out of the gusts, was a subtle groaning sound.
“Fucking. Bitch.” Adrian nailed Colin with his stare. “You stay with Eddie.”
“Thank you for the order,” Colin said dryly. “But that is why I came.”
“Yeah. Sorry.”
There was no time to kiss ass any further: As the wind intensified and the moaning sounds turned into shrieks, Ad didn’t just curse Devina and her warlords—he wanted to kick himself in the head. This was precisely what Jim had said was going to happen: The pair of them apart, him dealing with a bunch of soulless, boneless bastards as Jim undoubtedly handled the actual crossroads.
He’d played right into the demon’s hands.
And he was going to have to stay in her palm.
He sure as shit wasn’t leaving now: Colin was powerful, but there were limits—and they’d already lost Eddie once.
Not going to happen again.
Moving fast, Adrian flashed into the garage. Over in the truck, there was a duffel full of leather riding gear, and he quickly yanked on studded gloves that went all the way up his forearms, and then pulled out the black duster Eddie had used for long trips on the bike.
On his way out, he passed by a pitchfork—and doubled back to grab it. Shit knew he felt like stabbing the crap out of something—and he’d just seen how much fun lawn tools could be.
When he stepped outside again, Colin was nowhere in sight, which was good timing and exactly what he wanted: All around, minions were pulling up out of the shadows, forming into eyeless killers that were just his fucking cup of tea.
Adrian inflated his lungs until his chest stung and then he let out a war cry that shook the tree limbs around the garage, blowing them back so far a few of them even snapped.
And then he went in.
Locking a death grip on the worn wooden handle, he lunged forward, nailing the closest minion right in the gut before angling the tool heavenward—until it jacked right into the rib structure of the torso. With the tines locking in place, it was a case of up-and-over as he slung the bastard into left field like it was a bale of hay. Then it was the small matter of tucking the business end under his arm so that he caught the SOB riding up on his ass in the thighs.
Adrian wheeled around, yanked out the tool, and went over the head, bringing the curved spikes down laterally on the crippled bastard. They penetrated through the face, such as it was, and went into the chest cavity
