The Trouble with Twelfth Grave

Rey’azikeen destroyed a precious memorial. The mere thought left me livid. It was time to hunt him down. To be done with this. To find out if Reyes was in there somewhere despite what Rocket said or not. Either way, I had to know.

I pulled into an empty parking lot on the outskirts of town. The land was part of the Sandia reservation, and the building used to be a casino, but the Sandia Pueblo built another one, bigger and brighter, a couple of years prior. So, lucky for us, this one lay abandoned.

Garrett was already there. I stepped out of Misery and started toward him just as Osh drove into the parking lot in a flat black Hellcat. My knees weakened at the sight of it.

Just as we did, Osh left his car lights on to illuminate the playing field. He grinned and stepped out wearing his usual attire minus the top hat.

“Do you think he’ll come?” Garrett asked. He took the rifle off his open tailgate and loaded it.

I shrugged, my nerves making me seasick. “What do you think?” I asked Osh as he walked up.

He’d been busy checking out the horizon as the sun dipped past it. “I have a feeling he’s already here. I think he follows you pretty much everywhere.”

“I haven’t felt him.”

“I could be wrong. I just have a hunch, and if that hunch proves correct, he may know about our plans to trap him.”

Garrett finished loading the rifle. He nodded. “Ready as I’ll ever be.”

After swallowing hard, I nodded back, and we took our positions.

We walked to the middle of the massive lot and stood in a triangle about twenty feet apart from each other.

Osh seemed to sense my distress. If he’d seen what had come out of that glass, he would’ve been more distressed himself. Then again, we were talking about Osh. Osh’ekiel the Daeva. The slave demon from hell, and apparently slaves weren’t treated any better in hell than they had been on Earth.

“I can take him,” he promised. “At least long enough for Swopes to get a shot.” He looked at Garrett. “Just don’t hit me.”

“Hold him as still as you can.”

When we’d settled into silence, I bowed my head and whispered my husband’s name. Normally, I could summon a departed or Reyes or even an angel just by thinking a name, but Rey’azikeen was proving a little trickier in every sense of the word. I didn’t know what to expect. I didn’t know who to expect.

“Reyes,” I said softly, reaching out with my mind.

Nothing. Naturally. Because it couldn’t be that easy.

Then I remembered going through this exact same scenario three days ago when I attempted to pull Reyes out of the god glass. It didn’t work then. No idea why I thought it would work now. Wishful thinking, I supposed.

I tried again. “Rey’azikeen.” Nothing. Flashbacks of that night started playing in my head. “Rey’aziel,” I said, the name he used in hell.

But still nothing.

“What can we do?” Garrett asked.

“I don’t know. I’m trying my best.”

“It’s okay, love,” Osh said. “If he doesn’t want to be summoned, he won’t be.”

“I’ll try again. I’ll … I don’t know … I’ll force him.”

With teeth locked, I concentrated on the beautiful man I’d married, the father of my child, the keeper of my heart, and said his name again. The name he was most likely going by now. “Rey’azikeen.”

I felt a pulse in the core of my abdomen. My lids flew open. The wind had picked up and whipped my hair around my head.

Osh offered me an encouraging smile.

“Rey’azikeen,” I said again, only louder this time, and I was rewarded with a warmth, a heat that washed in me and over me and through me as though I were nothing but air. He was close. We all knew it. But getting him to appear, to materialize, could be difficult.

And then I realized something. I looked at my two companions. “He’s teasing us.”

Osh agreed. “He’s fucking with us.”

Frustration cut into me. I looked toward the heavens and shouted, “This is the worst day ever!” Not that it would do any good, but for some reason I felt better.

“I was afraid this would happen,” Osh said. Then he grinned, his white teeth flashing across his handsome face. He gestured at Garrett with a nod. “You’re up.”

Garrett slung the rifle over his shoulder and started toward me.

I took a step back in suspicion. “What? What did you two come up with?”

Garrett’s gait was confident, purposeful. He didn’t stop until we were barely inches apart, then he wrapped his arms around me, and said, “This,” a microsecond before he planted his mouth on mine.

Shock immobilized me for what seemed like an hour. Garrett’s mouth was hot against mine. Smooth. Tantalizing.

Understanding the point, I softened against him. Tilted my head for better access. Opened my mouth.

It surprised Garrett if the gentle intake of breath between our mouths was any indication, but he got over it quickly. He slid his tongue past my lips and explored to his heart’s content, the kiss leisurely. Languid. Sensual.

Then again, for his plan to work, he had to make it good.

The wind whipped around us, pushing and straining to tear us apart. I wrapped one arm around his neck and kept one planted on his rib cage. Mostly in case this did actually work and he needed to get to his gun quickly.

“There!” Osh shouted above the roar of the now hurricane-strength wind.

What happened next seemed to play out in slow motion. Osh sprang forward, scrambling to attack Reyes, but his movements were slow as though swimming in molasses. The same with Garrett. He pushed me back before grabbing the gun and pulling the stock to his shoulder, but what would normally have been lightning-quick moves had decelerated to a dreamlike sequence of events.

I turned just in time to see Reyes, or Rey’azikeen as was most likely the case, appear in the distance. He walked toward me. The winds didn’t affect the billowing darkness that surrounded him. Smoke cascaded off his shoulders and down his body to pool at his feet. It stirred with every step, thin bolts of electricity crackling and curling over him. And underneath it all, his fire. Always that fire. That reminder of his upbringing in hell.

I realized Reyes had slowed time. Osh could correct for that in a few moments, but Garrett, being human, could not.

Still, Reyes didn’t stop it altogether. He could have, but he didn’t.

I watched as he strode closer and closer. Osh dove toward him, and Garrett aimed the rifle at his midsection. He pulled the trigger, and Reyes easily sidestepped both Osh and the dart that was meant to tranquilize him.

He stopped short in front of me as the other two recovered and prepared for the next attack. Unconcerned, Reyes reached over, grabbed a handful of my hair, and pulled me roughly against him.

“You dare summon me?” he asked, anger sparking in his dark irises.

I lifted my chin, just as angry. “You destroyed Rocket’s building.”

I had to take advantage of his nearness, so I prepared for step two. Reyes hadn’t been tranquilized, but that would have been a precautionary measure only. I’d needed him close. Physically close. This close.

I raised a hand to his chest and started to say the words that would bind him to this world, but before I got out a single consonant, he dematerialized.

I stumbled forward and then whirled around, searching for him. I could still feel his blistering heat on my skin, as though, like Icarus, I’d traveled too close to the sun. But I couldn’t see him.

“Reyes!” I yelled as time bounced back, the wind even stronger.

Osh and Garrett regained their bearings and joined forces in front of me, expecting Reyes to come at us head-on again. But this being was not Reyes. This being was Rey’azikeen.

I felt the nuclear-like heat at my back a split second before an arm slid around my throat from behind. Another snaked across my midsection, and then his mouth was at my ear. His voice, smooth like butterscotch, caressed every part of me when he said, “Hold your breath.”

I drew air into my lungs just as the world fell away.

10

God is love,

but Satan does that thing you like with his tongue.

—BUMPER STICKER

Reyes shifted onto the celestial plane and took me with him. The wind, like acid in this realm, stung my skin, but his arms wrapped around me were far more unsettling. Which version of the man I loved held me?

He tightened his hold, and even though I didn’t think I needed air on this plane, needed to breathe in this realm, I squirmed against him as panic took root. “Let me go, Reyes.”

His mouth at my ear again, he said, “This is what happens when you summon a god.”

Despite the anger in his voice, despite the brutality I knew him capable of, part of me relished the embrace. I couldn’t help it. I had loved this man for so very long, centuries if not eons. I leaned into him.

He pushed me off him but kept a firm grip on my left arm, presumably so I wouldn’t dematerialize and escape. But I had no intention of leaving.

I did, however, try to jerk my arm free. His grip tightened in response. I refused to react. To give him the satisfaction.