“Jude,” I said slowly, my brain refusing to engage past first gear. “That … that
“Yeah, man.” Jude nodded. “It’s who you think it is. My many time great-grandfather, Lucifer.”
I watched the hardening of his tortured features, his expression more eloquent than a scream. I didn’t respond. Words wouldn’t suffice to console a man with Hell in his blood.
Chapter Fourteen
Mike
Late that night or early next morning-depending on how you wanted to look at it-we paid our freight at a hotel in Las Vegas, New Mexico, that had beds with mattresses only marginally softer than limestone. Both of us moved as if on autopilot, the events of the past few hours having drained us so much that the beds could’ve been made of razor blades and rusty nails and we wouldn’t have noticed.
Before Jude could crash for the night, I asked, “What did you mean when you told Leslie that her son was ‘under the influence’ and why did you tell the Voice all those lies?”
He showed me his molars in a jaw-cracking yawn. “Told the Voice lies because I don’t want him knowing exactly what we’re about. Best thing to do is to keep him thinking that I want to gather my own base of power. As for Alexander, I think he’s under the influence of Hell, Mike. Baphemaloch is the name of a parasite, like a demonic tick. Instead of sucking blood, it infects the host with negative emotions. The longer it’s attached to the host, the more control it exerts until the host’s soul withers and dies.”
I could have gone the rest of my life without hearing that. A parasitic … what? Proto-demon? The image of an evil virus slipping into Alexander’s cells and replicating, bursting forth in a black flood to infect more cells with damnation made me shudder.
“Why call the Voice, Jude? Why take that chance?”
He replied through lips numbed by fatigue. “You had to know what you were really up against, man. Not just in your head, but in your gut. We could die trying to destroy the Silver and I wanted to give you the chance to walk away.” He paused. “I thought it might be best for you to let me face the crap festival I bought tickets to alone.”
Fat chance of that happening! I bit back a sour retort, realizing that he wanted me to go, that he was trying to protect me, like a good friend would. Another question reached my lips, but remained unvoiced. Jude had fallen asleep, a forearm draped over his eyes, soft snores bubbling through his lips.
No way I could’ve slept, so it was time to continue my journey into my friend’s past.
Tripping the Silver
“You have got to do better than that!” bellowed Sarge.
At five-eight, a hundred sixty pounds, Sarge didn’t look like much with his short, bone-white flat-top haircut, round face and gray moustache that was so perfectly level I swore that he used a ruler to trim it. In fact, Sarge looked more like an athletic accountant stuffed in camo pants and khaki t-shirt than a wet-work instructor. You got the impression he would rather be petting Chihuahuas than slitting throats and I’m pretty sure a few of his victims thought the same thing before they died.
Julian had confided that Sarge was indeed ex-U.S. military. That and one of the most successful serial killers the world had ever seen, racking up a body count somewhere north of three hundred. A killer so effective that for twenty-five years he had the FBI and Interpol scratching their heads in bafflement, astounded by the preternatural ability he’d displayed at eluding them.
He didn’t elude Julian, though, who was so impressed by the man’s skills that he made an offer the aging murderer couldn’t refuse: teach wet-work skills to the young Family members. In return he would be well paid. Also, he could kill whenever he wanted, as long it was on his own time and didn’t lead back to the Family.
For ten years that arrangement had worked quite well.
From my vantage point on my back, staring up at Sarge’s angry face as he yelled at me, spit gathering at the corners of his mouth like silt at the bottom of a river, I thought that he just might break his promise about permanently harming Family.
“Olivier, you are about as useless as a sack of smashed assholes, you got me, boy?” Sarge yelled. “Now get up off your flabby ass and at least
The aforementioned cousin was not Burke, who routinely kicked my ass up one side and down the other with great frequency and enthusiasm in these little practice bouts. No, this cousin was someone who could actually give Burke a run for the sadistic money-Cousin Annabeth.
While my Family is terribly misogynistic, there are those women who showed such promise in the red side of the business that instead of being used as honey traps or breeders, they were allowed to work as true Dagger Men.
I considered Annabeth as I groaned my way vertical under Sarge’s disappointed gaze. An inch shorter than myself, tall for a woman, her shoulders were strong enough to carry all my troubles with room for a couple of hundred pounds. Her slim hands were calloused to hammer hardness and her muscles slithered under her bronze skin in all their chiseled perfection. Underneath a cap of short black hair, her dark eyes blazed out of a heart-shaped face, smoldering with subtle contempt at my contemptible fighting skills.
“Good throw, Anna,” I croaked, forcing air into tired lungs.
“Stuff it, Olivier,” she answered in a surprisingly smooth and dangerous voice, like velvet over steel.
Sarge’s craggy, hard face came nose to nose with mine. “You kick her butt, boy. If you can’t then you aren’t worth pissing on.” Hate, bitter soul-hate like a cancer, shone out of his eyes. I guessed it was the thing that drove him to kill and kill again. None of those kills would never,
I suppressed the rush of contempt for him that suddenly surged through me, although it must have shown because his face shut down with an almost audible slam and he turned away, trembling slightly.
“Ready, Olivier?” Annabeth’s smooth voice came from behind, carrying a wealth of smugness.
“Stuff it, Annabeth,” I said, spinning, fist flying out to catch her on the chin and dropping her to land sprawling on the practice mat.
Needles of hot water attacked my scalp as I positioned myself beneath the showerhead, shedding sweat and grime in rivulets down my torso and legs.
Two hours of sparring, an hour of weapons-both hand and pistol-followed by meditation to calm the nerves, to keep them on an even keel though the most stressful situations.
Hands harder than flint touched my back, ran up the ridged lines of my shoulder blades and caressed my neck. I turned and met Annabeth’s hot mouth, our tongues dueling with the same fervor we’d demonstrated on the mat. My hands found her butt, lifting her in the air with a grunt and I slid into her, her warm wetness inviting, welcoming.
I fell back to the cold tiles of the shower as we tore at each other in our mutual torrent of lust. Thrusting, clawing, we bit and ripped, our young bodies suffused with enough hormones to allow us to survive the rush. The old, I reckoned foolishly in my naivete, only had memories to console their twilight years.
Afterwards we soaped each other’s backs in the quiet post-coital lassitude. “You sure Sarge and Burke didn’t see you come in?” I asked.
“Burke left for the hotel and Sarge disappeared to wherever that creepy American creeps off to.
“Good. I want to keep you all to myself.”
When she laughed it gave my ears an orgasm. “No way I could bed Burke-he’s too cruel, a vicious bastard. And Sarge doesn’t screw, he kills. That’s how he gets his rocks off.”
All true. Just thinking about Sarge having sex seemed like a violation of all natural laws. With Sarge and
