Not I need help or Please help me. Just: You need to get me up. It’s not a request. It’s not even a command. It’s a statement with which I am expected to agree.
And agree I do. I let the guy hang onto my neck and gather those long gazelle legs underneath himself, and rise up, up out of the trash, with a surprising amount of grace for a guy who’s been beaten, stabbed, and left for dead.
Or something like that, anyway.
“Eyyyy,” says a voice from the entrance to the alleyway. “You got some fairy friend to help you? You never learn, do you?”
The face-sucking amoeba to our left looks up and separates back into two separate beings. Like animals sensing danger, they make a run for it past the four men milling around the alley entrance.
The men let them go.
The voice floats down the alley again. “Or maybe Tinkerbell was gonna suck your dick, make you feel all better?”
I guess I do look a bit like a sparkly fairy tonight, in my silver pants and top, my bright pink hair in a faux-hawk. If anyone else had said it, I might even thank them for the compliment.
“He can suck my dick when I’m done with you,” the voice continues, coming closer. “Then we’ll teach him a lesson, too.”
“Shit,” Lucifer mutters, and pushes me away. “Run. Go. Fuck off.”
“Mmm…nah.”
Lucifer is looking at me like I’m crazy. I guess I am. But we all die in the end, right? Here seems as good a place as any, right next to Lucifer Morningstar.
Besides, it’s too late to run. The five of them have come down the alley and cut off any opening we might’ve had. “Nice hair, Tinkerbell,” the leader says again with a sneer. “You know, you suck me good enough, maybe we’ll let you live.”
They have knives and chains.
“Let’s dance,” I tell him, spreading my arms in invitation.
“Let’s dance?” Lucifer mutters, but I can’t snark him back because someone’s coming straight at me.
I’m really more of a lover than a fighter. A duck-and-cover type. Or at least, that’s what I find out right now when the first fist gut-punches me and I fold in on myself, wheezing. I roll onto my back clutching my stomach, and look up at Lucifer. There’s a hint of incredulity in those cold eyes, but their frostiness is ripped away from me fast when the rest of the gang closes in.
It takes me a long few minutes to get my breath back and to scramble up to my feet, but by the time I do, two of the four are on the ground. My man is wrestling up close with the third, and he doesn’t notice the fourth one, the leader, raising a gun.
I notice him, though.
I always wondered how real my death drive is. You know? We all have one, according to Freud, but I guess he’s just a quack these days. Anyway, I’ve always wondered about mine. People around me think I’m nuts half the time, the risks I take, the shit I do. I saw Death early, is the thing, and he passed me over in favor of my Mom. Since then I’ve always felt like a kid left behind. I’ve done my best to give Death a chance to swing by and collect me again, but he never has.
Right now, in this alley, I can feel him standing close. A chill goes through me—fear? Or anticipation?
I don’t know. All I know is, some asshole is aiming a gun at my man, and I’m not going to let someone else take my seat in Death’s Cadillac.
Not this time.
I jump just as the gun goes off.
Chapter Three
FINCH
Guns are loud.
That’s something I’m going to take away from tonight, along with my life, apparently, because I’m not dead and I’m as surprised as anyone about that.
I’m still holding the wrist of the guy with the gun as Lucifer takes care of the other dude currently trying to kill him. But the gunman’s lips are pulled back from his teeth like a pissed-off dog, and he looks like he might literally bite me. It makes me quaver just a second, and it’s distracting enough for him to use his other hand to bitch-slap me into kingdom come. I let go and stumble away to the wall, pain making me nauseous, stomach heaving, trying to get rid of everything in it.
Another shot goes off and I flinch, but there’s no new pain. I risk a glance over my shoulder.
Lucifer is the last man standing.
He’s panting almost as hard as I am, staring at the gunman on the ground in front of him. Ex-gunman, I guess, because Lucifer has his gun now. And Ex-gunman is not moving, just lying there in a slowly-expanding pool of something dark.
The other men are still moving, but they sure aren’t threats. Lucifer looks at the gun in his hand and then at the other three guys lying around him, rolling and rocking on the ground in self-pity, moaning and cursing.
I can see the thought go through his eyes.
Kill them? Or leave them?
He glances at me, seems to come to a decision, and wipes the gun down methodically on the bottom of his sweater before putting it back into the hand of the dead guy.
Because I guess that’s what he is, now: dead.
Asshole jumped the line.
Lucifer is looking around again, and my heart lifts as he looks at me. But he turns his head back as sirens sound, coming closer. Those cold eyes flicker as he assesses the situation.
He should leave. Leave me with a dead body and three other still-living-and-pissed-off guys.
But with quick steps he comes to me where I’m still slouching against the wall, huffing for every breath. “You okay?” he asks, leaning up against the wall over me.
“I think I’m having a panic attack or
