Shoot to thrill, p.13
Shoot to Thrill, page 13
part #5 of Midnight Rider Series
I gripped the edge of the bar and tried to clear my head. “Thanks, Andi.” I knew I was breathing hard. From the breathy tone she’d had while whispering in my ear, I knew she was too. I quickly glanced around. No one besides Noah seemed to be interested in anything that was going on between Andi and me.
“What did you need from Ruger?” Andi asked, her voice returning to normal. “He doesn’t carry a cell. He prefers the old pagers instead.” She rolled her eyes. “Typical ‘hunter feeling like they’re being tracked’ paranoia. He says it’s harder to track the origin point of a pager. I can page him and then call you when he calls me.” She sighed. “It might not be until tonight. I would just give you the pager number but he only answers pages that he recognizes. He’s still worried that there are some cult members out to get him.”
I nodded. Ruger sounded like Nya and her paranoia with cell phones. I pushed the thought aside, cleared my throat, and shoved Noah back so that he wasn’t hovering an inch from my face. I signaled Mattie Mae and she poured me a beer and then a water for Noah.
“Tags Sinclair told me that Ruger had a brush with some Norse gods,” I said.
Andi nodded. “Mostly with their followers. About six months ago he heard from one of his Scandanavian hunting buddies that there was a cult up there trying to cause Ragnorak, their end of the world-palooza.” I nodded and she continued. “So he went up there and helped shut them down. Took him a while to find all of them. He still talks about going back, just to make sure.”
I nodded. “Did Ruger ever mention a god called Nergal?”
Andi looked at me. “Isn’t that a Mesopotamian god?”
I nodded. She shook her head. “Sorry love, he was strictly Norse on that outing. I’ll definitely call his pager. Maybe he’ll know something.” She pulled out her cell phone and started dialing.
“So what brings you to Pitch’s?” I asked her. Andi was always working a job and she never just hung out at Pitch’s for fun.
“Just finished up clearing out a coven in New Hampshire and I got a call from Wes out in California saying he needed some assistance with a succubus.” She held the phone up to her ear. “I was hoping to meet Ruger back here for a little R&R before heading out there, but I’m going to have to get on the road by tomorrow and it doesn’t look like his ass is going to make it back here before then.” She pulled the phone away from her ear, punched a button, and tossed it back on the bar. “Now the old waiting game until he gets around to calling me back.” She dropped her voice and turned her dark-eyed gaze back on me. “So, why gods?”
“Stacks has us digging around for intel.” I pulled the necklace out of my pocket and set it down on the bar next to her phone. “You haven’t seen this symbol before by any chance, have you?”
Andi studied it for a moment, running a long, delicate finger over its shape. She shook her head. “No, sorry. What is it?”
I shrugged and stuffed it back in my pocket. “That’s what we’re trying to find out. It’s somehow connected to this dumpster fire in Messina we were dealing with a week ago. We thought we’d put it out, but it seems like there might be some fiery garbage we missed.”
Andi nodded in understanding and we both drank our beers in silence.
“I’m Noah, by the way,” Noah grumbled from my other side. I leaned back and motioned from Noah to Andi and then Andi to Noah and they shook hands.
“You’re kind of young to go on these hunts with her,” Andi said to Noah and I could feel the teasing in her voice.
“I picked Noah up in Pennsylvania. He was hitchhiking and Sister Smile’s crew was after me. I didn’t think that leaving him on the side of the road was a good idea.” I said, trying to cut her off before she could make any wisecracks about him also being a little young for me.
Andi opened her mouth to speak and then we heard the unmistakable sound of someone falling down the stairs. We all turned to look and I immediately recognized the red plaid shirt and deer-stalker cap on the floor. The man wearing them stumbled to his feet and I turned back to the bar, smiling into my beer.
“Hiya Slosh,” Mattie Mae said, raising her chair up to place a ginger ale and a bowl of peanuts in front of the empty stool on the other side of Andi.
“Top of the morning to you, Mattie Mae,” Slosh said. “I heard on the radio on the way over here that there’s a wraith over in Dighton and a haunting in Marysville. I didn’t expect there to be any hunters left hanging around here.” Slosh was drunk. Not unusual. Slosh was usually drunk, but it just seemed sadder today. It wasn’t even noon and granted, I was having a beer too, but Slosh had gotten drunk before he made it to the bar. Thankfully, he didn’t drive anymore. He rode a bicycle with a battery-powered radio taped to the handlebars.
“Who’s that?” Noah whispered beside me. “Is he...drunk?” We watched Slosh try three times before Andi gave him a hand and he made it onto the stool next to her.
“That’s Slosh Figgins,” I said. I leaned forward and looked down the bar at Slosh. “How are you doing these days, Slosh?” I asked.
He leaned forward and grinned at me, his eyes out of focus. “I’m here, Bane. Which I guess is something. How much time do you have left on your...timer thingy before you go bye-bye back downstairs?”
I sighed. I guess everyone was known for something. Apparently, I was “Hellbound Girl”. “Little over three months.”
“Hey!” Slosh said, sitting up and pointing a finger at me. “Didn’t I just hear that you were in St. Louis and you iced yourself a big daddy demon?”
That got everyone’s attention. “Big daddy never made it to the party,” I said. “We had some luck with his roadies though.” I didn’t elaborate. Stacks and Tags had set to work on sharing the recipe and information with the hunter population and I was more than happy to let them do the teaching. I didn’t really have time to host a demon stake do-it-yourself day.
“Hey Slosh,” I said, deciding distracting him might be a good way to move forward. “You know anything about offing a god?”
Slosh guffawed and knocked back his ginger ale. “Oh yeah, at night, I turn into a god myself. I’m Slosh the god of Three Stooge Deaths. Then, I just go knock the other gods’ heads together. There’s nothing to it.” He took a handful of peanuts and I met Andi’s gaze.
“Hey, doesn’t hurt to ask,” I muttered. I glanced back over to the poker table to see that several of the seats were now empty. The players that had vacated the table were now standing at the far end of the bar, settling up with Mattie Mae. I slid off my barstool, stuffed the necklace back in my pocket, and crossed to the poker table.
“Hey Civ,” I said to Cival, “you got a moment?”
“Yes,” Cival said in his posh accent. “I have a moment, probably more. Now, do I have a moment to converse with you about something pointless while the table gets colder by the second? No, I do not have any of those moments.”
I pulled out the chair next to him and pulled my wallet from my back pocket. Noah had come over to join us and sat down in the chair next to me. I sighed inwardly wondering if Noah had any idea how to play poker. I reached into my wallet and leaned forward on the table as I felt the painful twist on my insides. It felt like they were being scooped out. I looked down at the cash pocket in my wallet and I saw that two twenties had materialized. I pulled them out and gave them to Cival.
“Twenty for me and twenty for the kid.” He handed us each four chips and started shuffling the cards.
“Civ, I just saw your station wagon at Lil’s in town.”
Civ nodded. “Blasted transmission is going. I had to have young Jovan,” he nodded at the bar, “give me a lift here. The mechanic is towing it to his garage and he swears he’ll be done by this evening and he’ll deliver it here.”
At the sound of his name, Jovan had turned around at the bar. He nudged his buddy and they wandered over to join us at the table, filling the last two chairs. This was working out better than I had expected. Civ would be in a good mood with Jovan at the table since he’d done him a favor and I needed Civ to be in a good mood. I’d found that most hunters, especially the older ones, would talk to you if you caught them in a good mood and if they could make money off of you while playing cards at the same time. Something about playing cards as a form of working will get them talking. While they play poker, they feel like they’re making money to fuel their hunt which most of them are, if they’re any good. Hunting doesn’t pay and not everyone has a First Bank of Hell ATM card like me. Most hunters either have family money, or they run credit card fraud, or they hustle poker and pool to pay for their hunts. A couple of them, like Andi, take hunts that have wealthy clients willing to pay for their services.
“Is that safe?” I asked. “I mean having a regular Crossways mechanic get a look at what’s out here?”
“Oh, the Crossways mechanic is Harry Donahue,” Mattie Mae said, zooming over to our table. “After he lost the one arm to that banshee, he went back to school and became a mechanic. He stopped hunting, but he still comes out here from time to time.” Mattie Mae handed a fresh beer to Civ and took his empty.
“Thank you, dear Matilda,” Civ said to her. She grinned and steered her chair back around the bar.
I turned back to Cival and took a deep breath. “Civ, what do you know about Mesopotamian gods?” I asked, trying to sound casual about jumping in with both feet.
Cival chuckled. “I know a great deal about deities of the Sumerians and Mesopotamians. Why do you ask?”
“You ever heard of one named Nergal?” I asked, picking up the two cards he dealt me and tapping them on the edge of the table.
Cival revealed the flop cards, a two of hearts, a king of spades, and a seven of clubs.
“Nergal, the god of pestilence, destruction, and disease,” Cival said with a nod. “Who bets?”
I threw a chip into the ring and Noah copied me.
“Any idea on how one might go about killing Nergal?” I asked as casually as I could.
Cival laughed. “There is no killing Nergal. Another god might stand a chance.” He glanced at me. “You don’t have a god with an axe to grind hidden up your sleeve, do you?” I shook my head and he returned his attention to the cards in his hand. “I thought not. If you’re thinking of killing him, it can’t be done. Mortals can’t kill gods. He’d have to want you to kill him to actually achieve it. And he’d have to give you the weapon to do it.”
Cival called and flipped the turn and then the river card and he dropped a king and a two on the board giving him two pairs. Jovan, his buddy and I folded and dropped our cards on the table. Noah muttered that he folded too and I saw a king and a seven fall from Noah’s hands. I shook my head. He really didn’t know how to play poker.
“Oh,” Cival said as he saw Noah’s cards. “Seems the young orange fellow has this hand.” Cival obviously hadn’t heard Noah fold. He pushed the chips back at Noah who looked surprised but raked the chips in, just the same.
“So the thought of a human killing a god is just ludicrous, right,” I said as Cival dealt the cards again, this time giving Noah a raised eyebrow as he handed him his second card.
“Not that I am aware of. There is a tome that I read in my youth which I recall mentions the legend of Lugh, the Irish king killing Balor the cyclopean giant.”
I was lost. “And this Balor was a god?”
Cival shook his head. “Not really.”
Great. “Well that’s nice, but I don’t know that it really helps…”
“Balor is always credited as the personification of drought and blight which is similar to the traits attributed to Nergal.”
We were going further down the rabbit hole. “So Civ, besides another god, there’s nothing you know of that would kill a god?”
Civ shrugged and turned the flop cards. “In legend, usually gods fall to their own hubris.”
I thought about that for a moment. “So they usually make a mistake or underestimate their opponent?”
Cival nodded. “Yes, but Bane, gods are the things of legends. There are no gods left these days. When the Crusades massacred their worshippers, the gods fled.”
“What about Ruger…” I began.
Cival shook his head. “Followers, the odd cult here or there. They’re still around, trying to bring back the old ways, but there is no power behind their words. The gods have all gone.”
We played our hands out and this time Cival cleaned out Noah and I. It was just as well. There wasn’t anything else for us to learn here and I was already annoyed that this whole trip felt like an exercise in futility. I had half a mind to put Noah in the corner with a magazine and take Andi up on her offer just so the trip wasn’t a total waste. But there was something besides Ruger being unpleasant about it stopping me. The thought of Gabe kept popping into my head. I’d flat out told him no to us being anything besides hunters and occasional friends, but there was something else there. I knew I wouldn’t be able to keep my attention centered on Andi, as much as I would want to. Like Jo and Joel, our relationship had been casual, but intimate. Andi was poly and I did love her, but just like with Jo and Joel, we had known what was ahead for us and we’d parted friends.
“Look alive there,” Civ growled at me. “Come back down here to earth where the game is.”
“Sorry,” I muttered, anteing up. During the last hand, a thought occurred to me and I dug in my front pocket and pulled out the necklace. I passed it to Cival.
“Have you ever seen this symbol before?” I asked, checking my cards. Cival gasped and I dropped my cards back on the table.
“This is from your contract isn’t it?” Cival asked, holding it backward, the way Marybeth had. “Part of the contract of a soul deal.”
I nodded. I glanced at Jovan who was staring at the symbol as if there was a memory of it trying to fight its way to the surface of his brain.
“Have you seen it lately? On anything?” I asked Cival. Cival shook his head.
“I have,” Jovan said suddenly. He leaned over and took the necklace from Civ, turning it in his hand so the soul stone setting was facing up and the “f” was backward again. He glanced up and gave me a weak smile. “This girl I was dating in Ohio, had a drawing of this symbol on her wall. It was part of a collage thing. I just...remember this one,” he said nodding down at it.
This was much more promising than Cival’s lecture on the pointless task of trying to kill a god.
“Where in Ohio?” I asked.
“Toledo,” Jovan said. “I was on a hunt there when I met her. She...uh, she told me her name was Lorelai.”
There was a pretty good chance that there was more than one Lorelai in Toledo.
“Anything you can give me to narrow down where I might find her?” I asked.
Jovan rubbed the back of his neck with his hand. “I was pretty drunk when we uh…. I don’t remember where her apartment was. But she sings at this jazz club on Broad.”
“Lorelai at a jazz club on Broad,” I repeated.
Jovan nodded. “It’s called the Blue Bird Jazz club or...something like that.”
I usually wouldn’t miss a chance to bust another hunter’s balls, especially about their former conquests. We’re a pretty immature crew. It goes well with the adrenaline from killing or almost being killed on a daily basis. But Jovan had given me more to go on than twenty bucks and four miserable poker hands with Cival. So, I wasn’t going to punch a gift lead in the mouth.
“Thanks, Jovan,” I said. “I owe you.”
I stood from the table and went back to the bar to close out with Mattie Mae. Jovan joined me and put a hand on my shoulder. “If there’s anything else I can do, let me know.”
I nodded. “Appreciate it.”
“Oh,” Jovan said, dropping his voice. “And could you ask her to call me? Lorelai, I mean. When you see her?”
I smiled at him and nodded. Jovan was a good-looking guy. If she hadn’t called him, chances were good that he’d let something slip when he was drunk about being a hunter and scared the shit out of her. Although, if she had the soul contract symbol on her wall, facing either direction, there was a good chance she wasn’t exactly innocent herself.
Mattie Mae moved down the bar towards us but paused and lifted her chair so that she could help a hunter I didn’t know who’d just come into the bar. I looked around the room while we waited for her to get to us and I noticed Slosh’s stool was vacant again. I wondered if he was upstairs puking up whatever he’d drank for breakfast. Mattie Mae got the hunter a drink and continued down the bar to us. I nodded to Slosh’s stool and gave her a questioning look. She rolled her eyes and pointed at the ceiling. Sure enough, a moment later I heard the toilet overhead flush and water surging through the pipes.
I chuckled. “We don’t buy it, we rent it,” I said, pushing my empty beer glass back across the bar to her.
“Job security,” Mattie Mae said.
“What do I owe you?” I asked her, nodding down at the empty glass.
“For the beer? Oh, nothing hun. I haven’t seen you in at least six months and hunters get a free pint twice a year, so we’ll call us square.”
“Well, I definitely need to get a restock of Stitch’s whiskey,” I said, reaching back for my wallet and falling sideways onto a stool while I tried to draw breath as the pain shot through me. Mattie Mae had nodded and turned away from me so she hadn’t seen it, but I could feel Noah’s eyes on me.
She turned her chair back around and set three bottles of Stitch’s on the bar. “That’s twenty apiece,” she said, looking sheepish. “The price of Djinn juice went up. They’re getting rarer in the hunts.” I nodded and pulled the bills out of my wallet. She took the money and winked at Noah. She opened her mouth to say something to him, but she was interrupted by a scream.
Slosh’s scream. Coming from above us. There was the sound of breaking glass and I ran for the stairs climbing them two at a time. Jovan and Andi were right behind me and I could hear Noah calling to me behind them. I kicked the wood panel door open and it made contact with someone’s body. Slosh was laying on the floor, blood pooling under his head.
