Chapter Four
I took the train down to LA and then rented a car. I hated navigating Los Angeles, I hated crawling down the freeways, I hated breathing the exhaust. All while folded into a tiny death trap the size of a clown car.
I’m not a big fan of LA.
But I managed to reach Santa Monica in one piece just as the sun was falling into the Pacific, lighting sky and water with carnival colors. I was momentarily tempted to abandon my mission and walk barefoot on the beach instead, with the breeze ruffling my hair and gulls calling from the pier. Maybe I’d even buy an ice cream cone and eat it while watching the Ferris wheel and roller coaster.
Instead I parked in front of a stucco bungalow with a Spanish tile roof. Two rocking chairs on the front porch flanked a small table; colorful tiles hung on the wall. The ornately carved front door had a decorative metal plate covering the peephole. I rang the doorbell and waited.
The door opened quickly, but just enough for a figure to fill the gap. “Charles Grimes?” I asked.
He scrutinized me instead of answering, and I stared back. He was tall and lanky, with pale skin, straight white hair, and irises that were an odd pale green. He wore khaki trousers and a blue dress shirt and could have been anywhere between thirty and sixty years old.
“What do you want?” he finally asked.
“Townsend gave me your name.”
That bit of news made him pinch his mouth. “Show me your badge.”
“Don’t have one. Not anymore.”
More staring, this time with his nearly invisible eyebrows drawn into a V. “What’s your name?”
“Clayton White.”
“You were the agent in that Redding mess.”
“Yeah.” I tried to unclench my jaw. “That’s not why I’m here.”
After a brief pause, he opened the door more widely and stepped aside. I followed him into a room that, while in excellent condition, looked as if it hadn’t been changed since the house was built in the thirties. The floor, window frames, and ceiling beams shared the same dark wood, while tiles ornamented the stuccoed fireplace. The furniture was substantial and somewhat worn—three overstuffed armchairs, two large bookcases, and an old-fashioned rolltop desk.
While I stood in the center of the room, Grimes gave me another long look before he seemed to reach a decision. “Ten,” he called.
That confused me briefly, but puzzlement was replaced by astonishment and fear when a creature strode into the room. He wore nothing but a pair of briefs, but that wasn’t what made me gasp. Against his back were furled an enormous pair of black wings.
“Demon!” I shouted, reaching for my gun.
Grimes moved as swiftly as Marek and grabbed my arm before I could draw my weapon. “Don’t,” he snarled. “He’s mine.”
Had I been thrown into this situation a few weeks earlier, I might have struggled. But my recent encounter with Marek had taught me that not all monsters were as dangerous as I’d assumed. So I relaxed and let Grimes remove my gun from the holster. He checked to make sure the safety was on before tucking it into the back of his waistband. The entire time, the demon stood impassively nearby, his hands folded in front of him.
“Sorry,” I rasped.
“Tenrael sometimes has that effect on those who don’t expect him. Especially Bureau agents.”
The demon’s name was familiar from my training. “Tenrael. A bringer of nightmares?”
“Not anymore,” said the demon with a slight smile.
“I don’t understand.”
Grimes walked to Tenrael and settled a hand on his shoulder; Tenrael leaned a bit into his touch. “You don’t need to understand,” said Grimes. “You came here on your business, not ours.”
Fair enough.
“All you need to know is that Tenrael is my partner and nobody may harm him.”
I nodded, and some of the tension in Grimes’s body eased.
“Sit down,” he said, waving at a chair.
I did so, wondering if his furniture was custom-made to fit his height. For once I didn’t feel as if I dwarfed my seat and didn’t worry whether it would hold up under my bulk. Grimes took the chair opposite me, and Tenrael knelt gracefully beside him. Without even looking—seemingly well accustomed to such movements—Grimes reached over and stroked one of Tenrael’s glossy wings. It was clear from their postures that these two cared deeply for each other. Instead of being disgusted by the idea of someone loving a demon, I found myself slightly envious of their relationship.
“What really happened in Redding?” asked Grimes, sharp-eyed. “I’ve heard rumors, but not the truth.”
“I don’t….” Don’t want to talk about it. Or think about it. Don’t want to remember. But if I was going to ask a favor and I couldn’t pay them, didn’t I owe them something? I cleared my throat. “I fucked up.”
“You led a raid on a necromancer.”
“Yes.”
“And during the strike, the necromancer murdered five children he was holding captive.”
“Yes.” I pretended I couldn’t hear the ghosts of their screams, but the all-knowing gazes of Grimes and Tenrael stripped my secrets bare.
“Why did you endanger children?”
“I didn’t know they were there.” Since my audience waited expectantly, I continued. “I’d been told that only the necromancer was there. I didn’t take the time to verify.” Too eager to act, too eager to neutralize the enemy.
“So you had bad intelligence and poor judgment, and people died.”
“Children died,” I whispered.
“And you were drummed out of the Bureau.”
“Yes.”
Despite having their steady gazes trained on me, I didn’t feel unfairly judged. Maybe they were weighing my soul, but not with hostile intent and perhaps not without finding some good there as well. I tried not to squirm, not even when I realized that Grimes wasn’t quite human and I had no idea what he might be.
“I thought I was doing the right thing. But I was stupid, and God, I’m so sorry. It haunts me.” I don’t know why I felt compelled to confess here and now. I hadn’t revealed any of my feelings on the matter to anyone else. It felt good to unburden myself.
Still stroking Tenrael’s feathers, Grimes gave a small nod. “Sometimes our courage exceeds our wisdom. When things turn out all right, they call us heroes. When things turn to grief, they call us villains. Either way, we’re just people with some foolish ideas.”
“I didn’t come here for sympathy or absolution,” I said, although in all honesty his words comforted me somewhat.
He laughed. “Good, because I have no power to absolve anyone. Why did you come?”
Simply as that, I told him. As I unspooled the tale, I found myself being more open than I had been with Townsend. I didn’t divulge the precise details of what had transpired with Marek, but I made it clear that our interaction had not been platonic. I’m not sure why I felt drawn to such honesty, but I suspect it was because Grimes—whatever he was—and his demon were so obviously in love.
When I finished, Tenrael spoke. “Do you know why Townsend won’t act?”
“Politics, he says. I don’t know what he means.”
“Could mean anything,” said Grimes with a scowl. “It’s a handy excuse. But the explanation doesn’t matter. If he doesn’t want to do anything, he won’t. Nothing can change that. What I’m more interested in knowing is why you’re pursuing this. It won’t bring back those dead children.”
“I know.”
“It won’t even stop the nightmares. I… I did some things I’m not proud of. A long time ago. And although I like to think I’ve done a lot of good since then, it never balances out. There’s no holy scale to tip.” As he spoke he petted Tenrael’s wing, and Tenrael nodded in agreement.
“You’re the third person to accuse me of seeking penance. I’m not.”
“Then why?”
The answer came to me at once. “Because it’s the right thing to do. Not to benefit me—I’m irrelevant. But those young men, they shouldn’t be murdered. They should be safe.” It wasn’t well articulated, I was aware of that. But it was true.
After exchanging a look with Tenrael, Grimes nodded. “We’ll see what we can do.”
I was going to spend the night in a cheap motel—the rental car being far too small to sleep in—but Grimes unexpectedly offered to host me for the night. Since I was exhausted, I headed into the bookshelf-lined spare bedroom, leaving Grimes and Tenrael talking softly in the living room. The mattress was comfortable and the darkness surrounded me like a warm cloak, yet I had trouble falling asleep. My closed eyes couldn’t stop the images of all my wrong decisions and the people who’d been hurt by them. Not just those children. I’d had a lover once, when I was in college. He was a fellow student, a slightly chubby boy who thought of himself as undesirable, but I’d seen beauty in his quick mind and warm smile. By the time we graduated, he’d begun to speak of the future, of building a life together. But I’d been so certain of my destiny—an agent bound to die young—that I’d abandoned him, breaking his heart in the process. All the years since, I’d refused to speculate on what might have been. Yet tonight, in this little bungalow by the sea, I caught myself wondering.
“No,” I mumbled and turned to face the wall. There was no point in torturing myself. And that long-ago lover? No doubt he’d recovered and found someone kinder, smarter, better. Someone who was happy to daydream about mortgages and gardens and children instead of skulking through nighttime streets in search of monsters.
Monsters. How could I properly identify them, even define them, anymore? Yes, I’d encountered—and often slaughtered—a great many creatures that undoubtedly qualified. Ghouls that stalked graveyards and morgues in search of fresh flesh, relatively speaking. Revenants mindlessly seeking revenge. Shifters that let their animal impulses control them. Demons far more terrifying than the one currently hosting me. All manner of things that went bump in the night. And vampires, of course. Quite a few of them.
But as one of those vampires had recently pointed out, humans were fully capable of monstrous acts, of attacking their own kind—sometimes even their own families—with unmatched ferocity. Or, more often, making stupid decisions that got other people killed.
How to judge a living being? By his species? His actions, past or present? His intentions? I didn’t know. And as I lay there, I realized it was hubris to even try, especially when I couldn’t fairly judge myself.
I imagined I heard the soft shush of flapping wings, and I fell asleep thinking of Marek and the tender way he’d touched me.