The Taken

Chapter Twenty-Four

The cab that’d dropped Grif in front of Bridget’s shop was long gone, and he was forced to walk back the way he came. Not that he minded. He had a number of thoughts to chew on, and the almost-fresh air did him good. Again, it didn’t matter that his personal navigation skills told him no more than which way was up, he just lit a Lucky, tucked his head low against a pushy breeze, and headed to the bright bulge in the middle of the desert night.

As he walked, he reassessed Kit’s chances of survival against what Bridget had told him. He’d already known Schmidt was involved in the events at the Wayfarer, and his attack on Kit marked him as enemy number one. He’d assaulted Grif again at Tony’s, and, in all likelihood, killed Paul Raggio as well. He had partners-all nameless and faceless thus far-though one had taken a bullet at Tony’s, courtesy again of Schmidt.

Which brought him to Schmidt’s other partner, Chambers. The oil greasing the wheels. Question was, how was Grif supposed to clear Kit Craig from all these men’s sights? Was it even possible at this point? Could fate be altered a second time, or was she in so deep that it’d be like throwing a floatie to someone in the middle of the Atlantic?

Bust the lid off the Chambers-Schmidt connection, Grif thought, nodding to himself. Even in Vegas that was a scandal. But because power and muscle lay entirely with them, proof had eluded the light of day for over ten years. Chambers had it, of course, but he certainly wasn’t going to let it be used against him.

“Has to keep those tapes somewhere,” Grif muttered, flicking his cigarette butt into the gutter. It’d take time to find them though, and Grif couldn’t even be certain of the next ten minutes. Free will or not, Sarge could yank him from the Surface at any moment. So how the hell was he going to score enough time to reveal Chambers’s dirty little secret, much less save Kit?

Find out who sent Kit and Nicole that list, he thought, cutting across a vacant commercial lot. That’s what started this whole thing, so maybe it could end there, too. But how to find someone who had less interest than ever in being found? And as Bridget had no idea who was behind that initial list, where the hell was he supposed to start?

Exhaling a hard breath, Grif rounded the corner, felt one painful pulse from where his wings once were, and instinctively threw up his hands in defense.

Anne stood there, stoic and unmoving. “If I were going to strike you, you’d already be down.”

Straightening, Grif jerked at his jacket’s hem. “I knew that.”

What he hadn’t known was that dark skin could look so ashen. Gone was the glorious sheen that made the Pure’s features gleam like polished marble. Her eyes were dull and sunken-they almost looked human-and her structured clothing looked like it was holding her up instead of the reverse.

“You look terrible, Anne. And… blue.” He took a step back as she lifted her chin, but he struggled to see the vengeful Pure who’d knocked him cold before. “Have you taken a real breath since you hit this mudflat?”

Her jaw clenched, the bones underneath appearing brittle, like they would pierce the skin at any moment. “Air is for the weak.”

Grif watched the old disdain flash in her dark gaze, but it had no real heat this time and was banked an instant later. Besides, she might be a mighty, immortal Pure, but he was the expert here on the mud. “Yeah, well you have to breathe.”

“Breathe, eat, move-all these necessities and actions.” She jerked her head, and it swung back unnaturally, like it was on a spring. “I can’t even catch my thoughts anymore. They swirl and swirl and just when they’re about to coalesce into something of use, I’m attacked by a sensation-a scent or texture or sight… sometimes all at once. It’s overwhelming.”

She shook her head again, this time swaying with the movement, then stilled like she just remembered Grif was there. Grif might not be in danger of physical assault, but he wasn’t sure he liked this neutered, unhinged Pure any better. “Come here, Anne. Sit. You need to take a minute.”

Anne allowed herself to be led to the back of the building, where Grif upended a paint bucket. She plopped down with a jerk, and running long fingers over her smooth skull, sighed. “This is why He did it, of course. I never understood it before, but I do now.”

“Did what?” Grif asked, leaning against the wall.

She gazed up at Grif dazedly, like a child. “Made you. Mankind. Why he formed you in His image. It is the perfect vessel to experience life to its full-feelings, emotions, senses… all of it piled atop an everlasting soul. Being human… it’s incredible.”

Grif had never seen it that way, through an angel’s eyes, before. “Yeah. I guess it is.”

Lifting her hands in front of her face, Anne studied the backs of them, then the palms, and back again. “You know, angels were made in a state of grace. It’s not prideful to say that we are perfect-it merely is what it is. We are strong, powerful, fearsome, and good. Even those who followed Lucifer are still instruments of use to God, but… feeling things the way humans do, the way God does, that is not our nature or our right. Those that forgot that, the Third, were ever ruined.”

She looked up at Grif, then surprised him by taking one of his hands in hers. Swallowing hard, he felt her fingertips, curious and caressing, exploring his. It wasn’t like Kit’s caress… or any other person’s. Her alienness was palpable. Electricity, not blood, soared in her veins, and vibrated in her touch. She was a different breed even bound in flesh.

“And so,” she continued, stroking his palm, sliding her electric fingers along his wrist, “as magnificent as those of us in the Host are-as much as that should be enough-we are not His most beloved creation. How ironic that we have more power in a thought than humans have in their entire bodies, and yet we are not equal to even the lowest of you.”

Grif didn’t know what to say. To apologize for that would be an insult to God. To not apologize seemed heartless. Grif might be stubborn and broken, but he was not that. Yet just as he was about to speak, she rose, both of his hands in hers, and stepped so close that he could see the storm clouds roiling in her eyes. Grif swallowed hard.

“I did not give you enough credit,” Anne whispered, drawing even closer. Her foreign heart thrummed as she pressed it to his chest. “Wearing this flesh has taught me what you must endure while traversing the Surface. The Pure feel emotion, yet without donning the material of God’s exact image, nothing sentient can ever know true passion. I see this now. Even pain is impossibly exquisite.”

Grif tried to slide away.

Anne’s fingertips tightened like steel.

“You don’t look well,” he said, swallowing hard. The knobs in his back throbbed.

“Because I am being poisoned by the perfect impurity of the human condition. And yet…” Her storm eyes fluttered, unfocused. “I cannot help wanting more. Did you know that strawberries taste like they’ve been dipped in sunbeams? Did you know that a child’s sweat smells like an old oak’s strong, wet roots?”

Grif shook his head slowly, not daring to say a word.

“It’s your fault.” Her gaze refocused, hard upon him, and her grip tightened to the point of pain. Grif tried to jerk away, but he could have been chained in the electric chair itself, and Anne’s face was suddenly inches from his. Hissing, she leaned so close they were aligned and touching head to foot. “I wouldn’t be here if it weren’t for you.”

Grif fought to keep his voice and heart steady. She would feel it if his body temperature were to spike, if he were to take even an extra shallow breath. She was, very suddenly, sensing everything. “You’ll leave soon,” he told her evenly, “and you’ll never have to touch the Surface again.”

Tears welled-relief or regret, he couldn’t tell-and her already stricken face crumbled. Then her legs gave out, and Grif had to embrace her just to keep her standing. “Why won’t He call me back?” she cried, body sagging, voice breaking. “My mind is cracking. The impurity is profane.”

“I know,” Grif said, stroking her head, wiping the tears from her face.

“And yet…” Steeling herself, Anne pulled away, then licked her lips while she stared at his. “I can’t help…”

And suddenly Grif’s back was against the brick wall, the overwrought angel pressed against him, her lips probing and bruising. Her tongue flicked out like a snake’s, and her nostrils flared to take in his scent. Her eyes rolled, not with pleasure but like a machine cataloguing knowledge, and her tongue clicking rhythmically in his mouth, like she was counting moment after moment. Repulsed, he shuddered and had a horrifying thought. Was that what he’d looked like to Kit?

Grif managed to turn his face away, then pushed at her hands, which seemed everywhere at once. “Stop it! Anne!”

Yet his head hit the brick with a crack that made him wince and Anne seized the opportunity, mouth fastening over his, tongue probing, taking more. “Stop it!”

Using all his strength, he pushed, and Anne rocketed back, body skittering on the jagged asphalt of the alley. She was up again, standing in front of him, in the blink of an eye. “So the bull hasn’t been castrated,” she said. “It was a good try, though. I almost believed it.”

“Believed what?”

“You, trying to fit in on this mudflat. Ignoring your celestial nature. But now you see… you’re still a freak. Like mine, your celestial nature is bound in flesh. It’s like an A-bomb wrapped in rose petals. Feel it, touch it, taste it…”

And again, she was there, mouth fastened on his, arms wrapped around his back, and this time he couldn’t shake her loose. The power to call thunderheads from the sky filled Grif’s mouth, and his veins bulged with ozone. The earth’s lava flowed through her lips, and color streamed in sharp blades behind his eyes. Then Anne grabbed his shoulder blades right where they ached, right where his wings should have been, and raked them until he bled.

Screaming, Grif tried to pull away, but her nails were deep inside his flesh, ripping and probing, searching and…

“What is that?” Grif staggered away, suddenly free. Yet he felt chained, bound, too heavy in his flesh, and he reached for his back, and found…

“Feathers. One each, from my wings.” Anne giggled, too girlish and high, and she gave him a lopsided grin. “You can’t fight your angelic nature now, can you? Now you have to go back. Now you are also Pure.”

She cackled again.

“No.” Grif clawed at his back. The phantom pain that’d been stalking him was gone, but the feathers were burrowing under his skin like centipedes, like snakes. Like a pure angel’s wings.

“But first,” she said, in front of him again, “you are going to kiss me. And then you will move inside me. And then I will know what it really is to be alive.”

She lunged again, but this time Grif used her own power-his power now-to push her away. She stumbled back, chest heaving, and winced like she’d been slapped. Lowering her head, she slumped and muttered to herself, “Sharp and sour. Acidic and cold. No one told me.” Her eyes arrowed up, full of blame. “Now rejection has entered my emotional repertoire, too. And I can never unknow it.”

Grif winced, but still backed away. “I’m sorry.”

“That’s what men always say, isn’t it?” She laughed without humor, and licked the taste of him from her lips.

“I just… I can’t kiss another woman.”

A low chuckle rumbled in her chest, and Grif felt it echo in his shoulder blades. Shoulders bunched, she swiped her arm across her mouth. “Do you know what’s hilarious about this whole debacle? What’s so absurd?”

He shook his head, not daring to say a word.

“You, Griffin Shaw, are under the illusion that you’ve stopped living.” She bared her teeth, the smile gone macabre. “And Katherine Craig is under the illusion that she still is.”

Grif shook his head. No, that wasn’t right. There had to be a way. Kit was still breathing, they both were. Besides… “I wasn’t talking about Katherine Craig.”

“Oh, you meant Evelyn Shaw?” She bit her lip consideringly, accidentally drawing blood, and her eyes rolled again. Then his voice, the desperate nightmare voice, sprung from Anne’s throat. “Evie…”

Anne straightened, dispassionate again, and nodded once. “I see,” she said, in her own voice again. “You desire to know what happened to her, your old love. But do you want it more than anything?”

Grif wiped his mouth, but her taste, the ozone, the Everlast she’d buried inside of him pinballed through his core. “Yes.”

“I can give you that.”

He stilled and looked at her.

She smiled. “If you let Kit die.”

Grif closed his eyes, let his legs give, and slumped on the paint bucket he’d placed there minutes before. Picking up his hat from where it’d been knocked when Anne lunged, Grif settled it on his head, and buried his face in his hands. She learned quick, he thought wryly. He had to give her that.

“You look torn.” She knelt before him, then reached out and gently-but insistently-pulled his hands away. Tilting her head, she peered up into his face. “Does it hurt?”

“Yes,” he said tightly.

She leaned toward him. “Let me taste…”

Grif rocketed to his feet. “Don’t touch me!” he thundered, and there was power in his voice, there was pain. There was Everlast.

Anne heard it, and straightened with surprise. Was that concern furrowing her brow? Did she regret planting power inside of him? Maybe she only now realized that in trying to make him more alien, she’d actually made him stronger.

“Then choose,” she said, lifting her chin high. “Weigh your need to know what happened to your old love versus your need to save the new. Do you want that old knowledge, or do you want Kit?”

“She’s not a new love-”

“I tasted it on your kiss! It’s there, like a hint of Paradise!” she screamed, and the building behind him shook. “Why else would you still be here? Why would I? You love her, Griffin Shaw! You love her without willing it or wanting it, and that is the most exquisite pain of all.”

Do I? he wondered, wincing.

Anne crossed her arms. “Choose. Two loves, but you can only have one. Do you want to know what happened to Evie, where she is? Or do you want to stay here and try to save Katherine Craig?”

If he said his wife’s name, the mystery that’d haunted him through the last half century, and throughout the Everlast, would be solved. Who killed his Evie? Who killed Griffin Shaw?

Thinking of Evie, drawing the memory of the way she’d looked that last night-dazzling in blood-red-he rose unsteadily. I might even be able to find her in the Everlast. He’d apologize, they’d reunite. And they could remain together forever.

Standing, Grif swayed under the weight of the feathers buried beneath his flesh, and gave Anne a baffled half-smile. Tipping his hat, he backed away. “I need to find Kit.”

But when he turned, Anne was there, her face inches from his again, blank with shock. “But the knowledge is here! Right on the tip of my tongue.”

“The past is dead.” Evie was dead. But Kit, and yes, his sudden, unexpected, baffling love for her, was very much alive. Using free will, not power, Grif circumvented Anne, and kept walking.

“You can’t save her.”

But he would try.

“You can’t save her!” The Pure screeched again when he kept walking, her fury fully returned. Grif didn’t need to turn around to know her eyes were roiling. “Everyone around you is in danger! Kit is. Tony, too! You can’t even save yourself, Centurion!”

Grif halted at that. He waited for Anne to come to him, knowing she would, and tilted his head sideways when she did. “What did you say?”

“You’re a Centurion. Your job isn’t to save, but to Take.”

“Not that. You mentioned Tony.” He jerked his head. “That man you saved me from yesterday, Schmidt. How did he know where I was staying?”

Anne said nothing.

“I thought Paul told him.” He’d thought Paul had died because of it. “But it wasn’t him, was it?”

Anne watched him closely, studying his shifting expressions and emotions with bald hunger. But Kit had never told Paul where they were staying after her house had been broken into. As far as Grif knew, only one man alive knew they were at Tony’s. Grif looked at Anne. “Where is he?”

But the Pure had reverted back to her stoic, contained self. It was like her emotions were rubberized. They elongated, but always snapped back into their original form. “Just let her go. Then we may shed this flesh and go, too. No more pain. No more grief or guilt or anguish.”

Grif shoved his hands in his pockets and nodded. “Incubation would wash away all my problems.”

“Yes.”

“No more worry over whodunit. Or anything at all.”

“That’s right.”

“But Anne?” He reached up suddenly, and slid his fingertips along her cheek and behind her neck. Anne, shocked by his touch, didn’t answer or move. “Anne,” he repeated, “if she dies there won’t be any more of this, either.”

And Grif kissed her this time, allowing the thought of Kit to coalesce in the front of his mind. He thought of her insistent smile and chatter and refusal to be cowed by life, and how it made him want to drink her in so that he might feel that hopefulness, too. He brought to mind their night together, how her body was white silk and hot curves and the only exhilaration he’d felt in half a century, and he poured that knowledge into the kiss. He let Anne in on the secret. He gifted her both with a vulnerability she’d never known and the only thing that would protect against it, which was one and the same. He let her feel love.

He let her know what she was missing, and this time he was prepared for the scream. But it wasn’t enough. Covering his ears, he cowered low and squeezed shut his eyes, feeling the cry thunder through his flesh. It pounded at him until he fell to the ground and sent his wingless back to throbbing all over again.

When the street was finally silent, when the aftershocks had faded and the car alarms were silenced, and when Grif was alone and finally able to pick himself up from off the ground, he hobbled down the alleyway and into the street, slamming his hand atop the first taxi he found. He had to get back to Tony’s home. He had to find Kit.

He just hoped it wasn’t too late.

Kit!” Grif bolted through Tony’s home, heart racing after finding the door unlocked, all alarms disengaged. Had he left it that way? Had she? “Kit!”

“She’s not here,” came Tony’s voice from the kitchen.

Relief whooshed from Grif in a gut-emptying sigh, and he strode across the living room where Tony already had a bottle of wine open and waiting. “Oh, Tony. Thank God. I thought…”

“Heyja, Grif.”

“Jesse.” Grif’s heart sunk at the sight of the Centurion… then leaped when he saw the other one. “What are you doing here?”

Leaning against the wall in a black turtleneck, with combat boots poking from beneath a long flowered skirt, Courtney shot him a disinterested look, then returned her attention to the view outside the open glass door without answering. The maimed souls from the nineties had just begun trickling in from incubation, and Courtney was his district’s greenhorn.

“She’s just tagging along,” Jesse offered, shoving hands in pockets that flared almost as wide as the wings on his back. Parachute pants, Grif remembered. Offed in the eighties, the kid had gotten stuck with the rawest deal in fashion history.

“I have some time before my next Take,” Courtney countered coolly, because the only thing she hated more than talking was Jesse talking for her.

Finally, Grif’s gaze landed on the old man crumpled on the kitchen’s linoleum floor, blood pooling around his head from the back half of his skull, which had been caved in with an equally blood-soaked rolling pin. Grif’s shoulders slumped. “God. Tony, I’m sorry.”

Tony, already in the first stage of his plasmatic fade, sidled up to him. “You kidding? I’m relieved. I don’t have to walk around in that broken-down flesh no more. Who knew my arthritis was acting up that much?” He rolled his shoulders, then shrugged. “Guess you just get used to things, huh? They sneak up on you over the years, and pretty soon you forget you ever knew any different.”

Shaking his head as he stared at his destroyed body, he then turned to Grif, bushy brows arrowing up. “Hey, did you know you have wings?”

Grif shrugged. The dead, at least, saw him for who he was.

“I guess you did know,” Tony said, then jerked his head at the back door. “No wonder my dogs liked you.”

Two furry lumps could be seen through the glass door, one piled atop the other, where they’d dropped after being shot in the head. Their ephemeral forms joined Tony, one at each side, and he absently scratched them behind the ears.

“Where’s Kit?” Grif asked, swallowing hard. If she were here-if she were dead-he’d know it. He was her Centurion, after all. Plus, she’d already be at his side, probably yapping about how she knew she’d seen his wings.

“Wasn’t here when I got home,” Tony said, and Grif couldn’t help but heave a relieved sigh. So she’d fled after their fight. He’d check her house. Next to him, Tony scratched his own head. “I called to her, to you, even the dogs, but no one answered. Then, I was bent over the wine fridge, looking for a second merlot, when… when…” He looked over at Jesse. “What happened then?”

“Your head was smashed in like a rotted watermelon.”

Grif lit a stick with shaking fingers. “Jesus, Jesse.”

“That’s all right,” Tony said, putting his right arm directly through Grif’s chest as he tried to pat his back. Tony jerked back, and Grif shivered with the plasmic intrusion, and took in another grounding puff of smoke. “I guess the only real surprise was that it didn’t happen sooner. You can’t live like I did, and make as many enemies as I made, and not expect it to come back ’round.”

Nodding, Grif let that sit for a moment, and they stared together at Tony’s cooling body before Grif said what he was really thinking. “Can’t rat me out to Caleb Chambers and not expect some fallout, either.”

Tony said nothing.

Tilting his head, blowing smoke into the other man’s face. “Why, Tony?”

Frowning, Tony stepped away, then gestured to his body with one hand, the house with the other. “Because I wanted out of this fishbowl for good, Grif! Ever since you and that broad busted in my pad, I’ve felt more alive, and freer, than in years! It made me realize that life was just passing me by! I was as much in prison as old Frankie Alessi!”

Grif snuffed his Lucky out in a crystal ashtray, and shoved his hands into his pockets. “Well, like you said. You get used to things and pretty soon forget you ever knew any different.”

Tony looked angry at that. “Yeah, and you made me remember. I thought I’d been safe all these years, but really? I wasn’t any more alive than you. So, yeah, I went to Chambers. The old family might own me, but he owns them. He owns everyone.”

“And you thought that if you turned me and Kit over to Chambers, he’d call the soldiers off you once and for all.”

“It was stupid. It was wrong,” Tony admitted, before pointing a bony finger at Grif. “But you drank my most expensive bottle of wine!”

“Oh, stop. You ratted me out before that. Besides, technically, I shared the juice with a Pure.”

Tony’s nose scrunched. “A what?”

“You’ll see,” Grif muttered, turning to Jesse. “How’s Sarge?”

Jesse, who’d been listening to the conversation as closely as Courtney had been pretending to ignore it, snapped to, and regarded Grif with a smirk. “How you think, homes? He’s pissed and calling for your head.”

Grif looked at Courtney, who just nodded.

Jesse stepped forward, grabbing Tony beneath one scrawny arm as he began to wobble due to the fade. “You should just come back with us, G-Man. Everyone knows your old lady is floating around the Everlast somewhere. And you got eternity to run into her, right? You’ll find her eventually.”

Grif jerked his head. “I’m not here for Evie anymore.”

Surprised silence filled the room. Even the dead Dobermans looked up at Grif with quizzical expressions.

“What, the other betty?” Courtney scoffed. “She’ll be along soon enough, too.”

“Courtney!” Jesse yelled.

“What?” She spread her hands wide. “So what? It’s Grif!”

“He’s wearing flesh!” Jesse said it like it was a disease.

And Courtney, realizing her mistake, covered her mouth with her palm. “Shit.”

He had free will while wearing flesh. He could change things on the Surface. Grif’s gaze darted from her to Jesse and back again. “Your next Take… is Kit?”

Jesse and Courtney just stared.

“Man, I’m sorry to hear that,” Tony said, with a frown. “I really only meant for them to whack you.”

“Shut up, Tony.”

“Oh come on,” Jesse finally said. “It’s not like it’s any real surprise. You can’t change fate, Grif. She’s destined to die.”

But he’d changed it once before. “Where is she?”

Jesse crossed his arms. “Like we’re going to tell you? And get Anas all up in our asses? No way.”

“Who’s Anas?” Tony asked. “Is she cute? Better tell her to watch out. I’m feeling frisky.”

“What are you doing?” Jesse asked, following Grif as he stalked from the room.

“Don’t you have a soul to deliver to the Everlast?” Ignoring the semitransparent dog trying to nudge him into patting its head, Grif picked up the phone and dialed the number he’d memorized the day before.

“Fine.” The other Centurion gestured to Tony, but he was busy trying to pick up his wineglass. Sighing, Jesse finally crossed the room and grabbed the old man’s arm.

“Hey!” Tony said, trying to pull away, but Jesse just ignored him.

Halting directly in front of Grif, Jesse raised his brows. “Just so you know, Sarge plans on sending you straight to the Tube the moment you step foot in the Everlast.”

“Then I’d better work fast,” Grif said, but cursed as his call went to voice mail. Hanging up, he tried again.

“You coming, Court?” Jesse asked, flanked by two dogs and a dead mobster.

Courtney kicked her heels up on the coffee table, causing Tony to scowl. She ignored him. “Nah, this is the most interesting thing to happen since Paulo tried to start a soccer league in the Milky Way. I’ll be there by morning.”

“Not if I can help it,” Grif told her.

“But you can’t, Grif.”

This time they all turned, and listened, to Tony. He shook his head, the old mobster gleam back in his dark, watery eyes. “Chambers runs this town from end to end. He makes the rules, and takes what he wants. Just like the family did back in our day.”

“Uh-uh,” Jesse said, clamping a hand over Tony’s mouth. “You can’t talk about his old life. Sorry, Grif. Sarge’s orders.”

“Shut up, Jesse,” Grif snapped back.

“Well,” said Tony, “I wish you luck, anyway. That Craig girl is a real peach.” Then he shrugged. “For a nosy, relentless ink-hound, that is. I liked her.”

But Grif loved her. He knew that now. So he gritted his teeth, and dialed Bridget Moore’s number once more.