House of Ash & Brimstone Read online

  “So you can speak.” Gisele raised her eyebrows but otherwise let the insult rest. They were both battered and covered in blood, but yeah, she was the stupid one. It had been incredibly dumb to agree to anything dealing with the Curators of the Cursed, let alone take a client on the side. If her boss Warrick found out, he’d kill her—assuming he didn’t die of a conniption first. As he was also her foster father, Warrick tended to be protective of her…to say the least. “Eh, don’t worry about me. As I said, I heal quick.”

  It was true. Her cracked ribs had already knitted and her acid-burned shoulder was smooth and shiny with pink, new skin. It was still tender to the touch, but she’d be scar-free in only a few short days.

  The minotaur considered her splotchy, purpled-but-yellowing bruises and stiff stance with discerning, side-slitted eyes. He was figuring her out, or maybe sizing her up. Either way, she didn’t like it.

  “You got a name, big fella?” She toed the tightrope walker at her feet. The woman moaned but didn’t wake. “Anywhere to go home to? What’ll you do now?”

  How had he known she was only a half-demon? She’d have to grill him on it—but later, once they’d safely slipped back to Baltimore, where they could hide in relative anonymity. She doubted the Gateway Transportation Protection Agency would’ve felt the Hellmouth open this far into the sticks, but she didn’t want to risk the Curators regrouping for a secondary assault.

  There were seven Gates of Hell descending from the Earth, but only six were realms that bred demons—Thirst, Hew, Cacophony, Noir, Linger, and Eden. The last and final Gate was Oblivion, the great darkness. No one knew what waited within its Gate, as the only way to enter it was in death. Devils only knew where she’d sent Canaan—not that it mattered. She’d be in trouble either way.

  The cow-headed demon slanted his unnerving, teal-blue eyes to the side and hefted his bulky shoulders in a shrug. “Beast is unsure but understands—must make decision soon.” He shuffled his feet, hooves clacking against the ground. With a mournful bray, he explained, “Herd is gone now. Was scattered by pack hunters many moons ago.”

  Sympathy speared her, nicking her heart. “That can’t be your real name.”

  “Before circus? No. Is now.”

  “You don’t want to change it? Considering…?” She swept a hand around the checkered stage, scored with mud and blood, fire and bodies.

  One of his ears flicked. “Name before Beast died with herd. But Beast did not die in circus. Met Half-blood instead. Fought for better life.”

  She scratched at a patch of dried mud on her chin, unable to meet his gaze. No pressure, right? “Well, my offer for a hot bath and a stiff drink still stands. Thanks to you—” She wobbled the straw-haired, shrunken-headed doll in front of him, holding it up with one hand. “I’ve got this.”

  She hadn’t died tonight. And with the down payment alone, she’d earned enough to gain her independence—to buy out the remaining two years of her ten-year indentured contact to Warrick. With the money that was waiting for her, she’d be able to start a new life.

  Just the thought of it put her in a brighter mood. “Come on,” she told Beast. “I’m parked down the street a couple miles back.”

  “Dangerous,” the minotaur said, but she couldn’t tell if he was talking about the walk, the curio, or the atrocities they’d committed against the Curators of the Cursed that night. Maybe he meant all three.

  Regardless, he followed her when she headed for the deserted country road. They walked in silence. She kept to the gravel shoulder, while the minotaur favored the tall grass in the ditch that ran parallel. This far from the city, stars sparkled like gemstones against a black velvet sky.

  Gisele’s navy, 1998 model Honda waited dark and silent where she’d left it, run into a weedy ditch by an overgrown barbed wire fence. She brushed aside the kudzu and honeysuckle vines that covered the driver’s side door before working the lock.

  “Wait, just a minute,” she told Beast, crawling across the seat in the Accord-turned-sweatbox to dig her red-handled S&W .380 from the glove box.

  It wasn’t that she didn’t trust the minotaur, but she didn’t trust the minotaur. Earlier, she’d left the handgun behind because she hadn’t wanted to risk killing anyone.

  And look how that had turned out.

  “Okay, you can come in.” She popped the passenger side door from the inside.

  Beast yanked it open, metal squelching as the frame bent. She scrambled back, pulse hammering.

  He crouched, wet-black nose snuffling as he examined the cramped interior of the compact sedan. The overwhelming reek of him, gore and sweat and sweet hay, rolled into the car, and Gisele choked. With a chuff, Beast stood away and ripped open the back passenger door. The entire car shook as he lumbered his massive frame inside.

  His horns scraped the ceiling as he tried—and failed—to slump in the seat.

  She switched from watching the minotaur in the rearview mirror to meeting her own gaze. Mud had smeared beneath her scarlet-hued eyes like messy eyeliner. Beast wasn’t the only one who needed a bath something bad.

  Breathing through her mouth, Gisele started the engine. She cranked the AC as she rolled every window down. Then she threw the car into reverse and stomped on the gas. Tires spun, churning up dirt, running a rut.

  Without a word, the minotaur clambered out. He lifted the car’s back end and wheeled it front-first onto the road. Thrown forward, Gisele fumbled the pistol, lost it skidding against the floorboards. Swearing, sweat trickling down her neck, she fished it out and tucked it under one mud-caked thigh.

  In the cup holder, her phone buzzed, screen lighting with a slew of texts. She recognized the number, though she’d never saved it into her contacts. Shade. What did he want, tonight of all nights? No, wait, screw him. She didn’t want to know.

  Ignoring the urge to peek, she swiped left on the convo, deleting it unread.

  “Why did Half-blood steal shrunk-head from Curators?” Beast asked once he’d thudded again into the back seat.

  She waited until she’d steered them a mile down the deserted highway to answer. “I needed the money. Why else?”

  “Half-blood would die for money.”

  “Don’t judge. You haven’t seen my apartment. But that’s not—I mean, it wasn’t—” She tapped the grooved handle of the gun nestled against her leg. “Things escalated. You know?”

  Beast snorted.

  Teeth scraping at her bottom lip, she beaded it with blood, then licked the healing skin. “Warrick didn’t even want me to go to the show for fun. He warned me about the Curators’ reputations, said they’re always on the move ’cause they’re keeping one step ahead of the law. I just figured that’d make it easier to steal from them.” She barked out a harsh little laugh. “Lesson learned. But the payoff…it was too good to turn down. It’s the amount I need to break out on my own.”

  The minotaur canted his head to better watch her in the darkness.

  Silence draped hot and heavy around her shoulders. She hunched forward as she spoke. “No one knows this. But I want to open my own business.”

  The Accord groaned as Beast leaned back, laying his head against the top of his seat. His uncut horn tapped against the rear windshield as the car rattled along the broken-up highway.

  “It’s going to be a paranormal investigation firm. It’s what I do now mostly. I think I’m pretty good at it. But I’ve got this coworker, a recent hire who really gets under my skin. Only Warrick won’t fire him. That’s when I started thinking I could buy out my contract. I mean, maybe the Mardoll wasn’t the best job I could’ve taken. I didn’t know what it could do.” She bit again at the healing spot in the center of her lip. “But I can’t really back out.”

  Beast sighed long and slow, a snore sawing from his chest, and it was then she realized that he’d drifted into a sultry, summer sleep.

  By the time they reached the city, exhaustion had stiffened Gisele’s back muscles. They’d been sitting at a red li
ght on East Madison for three solid minutes when a man in a white Grand Cherokee rolled to a stop beside them. He spotted Beast dozing in the back, mouth open, pink tongue lolling, and hit the door lock. Twice.

  Gisele gave him a cheeky grin, hoping he couldn’t tell the difference between the mud and the blood streaking her pale hair. The light changed, and she gunned it, disappearing beneath an overpass where someone had spray-painted ‘Burn in Hell, demons’ next to a flaming horned skull dripping in neon red.

  Baltimore’s mundane residents might have accepted that demons lived among them. But that didn’t mean they liked it.

  She parked in the monthly lot a few blocks from her apartment, killed the engine, and leaned over the seat to wake Beast. The minotaur snorted, shaking out his mane, and wrapped himself in a tribal patterned blanket from the trunk of Gisele’s car. Its fat red, purple, and blue tassels dangled against his calves as he followed her with loud, plodding steps down the street.

  “This is us,” she said as they neared a five-story white brick building. “Top floor.”

  Inside the apartment, Gisele’s silver tabby, Dinah, darted from behind the couch and twined around her legs, meowing. Gisele stooped to pet her. “Did you miss me, or are you just hungry?” she asked the cat as Beast clomped through the archway into the apartment, head tilted to avoid scraping the doorframe with his longer, uncut horn.

  Dinah was an alley cat that had recently adopted Gisele. Sure, she was the one who’d taken Dinah in, but it was clear to both of them that the cat had chosen her. The stray tabby had turned up one day, rooting through Gisele’s trash on the balcony, and had refused to go away. After a couple of weeks, she’d wiggled through an open window and settled into the apartment. And that had been that.

  When Beast spotted the cat, he bared his teeth and stomped a hoof. Dinah yowled and disappeared in a streak toward the kitchen.

  Rising, Gisele tossed her keys onto a worn ottoman near the couch and headed after the cat. “What died in your hay bale?”

  “Flea breeder,” Beast complained as he shut the apartment door. He shook the blanket from his waist and dropped it to the ground, wiping his muddy hooves on it in the entryway. “Small vermin also gets bath.”

  He shuffled the two feet into the carpeted living room, taking in the worn taupe suede couch, the squat coffee table, and the tube television on a sage green dresser. With a chuff, he set the dinged-up cleaver on the ottoman next to Gisele’s keys. He’d insisted on bringing it.

  She tossed him an unfriendly look. “Leave her be. Dinah doesn’t like baths. And she doesn’t have fleas. I give her a treatment for that.”

  Gisele followed the cat into the kitchen and tipped a dirty dish out of the way, jostling the stack of plates and bowls in the sink as she started the tap. She rinsed out a filmy beer mug and set it upside down to drain.

  “There’s an old hot tub on the roof. I’m thinking we take some bubble bath and scrub down,” she called, grabbing a couple of beers from the fridge to make a tall Black and Tan. “Landlady might get pissed, but I never see anyone using it. You can crash on the couch after that.”

  Finished exploring the threadbare living room, Beast joined her in the kitchen. He downed the beer, heedless of the wet, dirty-looking glass, and set those pale teal-blue eyes on her expectantly. Despite the nap he’d stolen, he looked exhausted—slumped on the barstool, back bowed and elbows resting on the counter. The wood groaned as he moved, and she was impressed the barstool hadn’t buckled under his weight.

  “Beer, bath, sleep.” He nodded his big head. “Beast approves. Will stay with Half-blood. Guard shrunk-head ’til moon is new with blood.”

  “Uh, sure. Just let me grab some towels.” Gisele scuttled down the hallway toward the bathroom, wondering what she’d just agreed to. She wasn’t sure she liked his interest in the Mardoll or the sound of a blood-drenched moon. Then again, maybe the offer was how he planned to earn his keep.

  The bathroom was stark and bare when she flipped the lights on, the sink scuzzy, and the cabinets white with plastic handles. She dug around in one of the cabinets for four towels—one for her and three for Beast—and an industrial-sized bottle of Mr. Bubble that had been there when she moved in. The lid on it was crusted shut. Eight years in this hole-in-the-wall had really taken a toll on her. And yet, it was the best place she’d ever lived.

  In the filmy bathroom mirror specked with toothpaste, Gisele’s skin appeared milky white, in sharp contrast with the clay smears on her neck and arms. Her eyes looked tired, the cardinal red of her irises darkened to a color closer to old blood. She grimaced and leaned close to look deeper into her reflection. Her blond hair was stringy, the ends streaked and weighted with mud, and the crown of horns on top of her head somehow seemed more prominent than usual.

  Man, what had she gotten herself into?

  She brushed the thick fringe of her bangs back and stared as if the answer lay in the middle of her forehead.

  She had in her possession a shrunken head capable of opening a portal to Hell. She’d brought a minotaur home like he was a rescue from the pound. And to top it off, she’d just agreed to keep him until…the next blood moon? That would just be, like, sometime next week, right?

  “The last blood moon was in April,” Gisele complained.

  Sudsy water sloshed and swirled around her bare thighs as she rose up in the freestanding hot tub. She wasn’t the modest type—after loathing herself for years at the Catholic home she was raised in, she’d made it a goal to feel comfortable in her own skin—but as steam evaporated from her naked body into the evening air, she had to remind herself that bathing with Beast wasn’t like bathing with a man. At least he was still wearing his loincloth.

  Using a thick-bristled broom head, she began scrubbing Beast’s hairy back. It was already a muggy July, and she didn’t want to consider when the next blood moon might be. She was more than grateful he’d helped her out—not killing her had seriously worked in her favor—but that didn’t mean she wanted to play besties for the next few months.

  The minotaur didn’t seem concerned about overstaying his welcome. He tossed his wet mane, shaking his wide head from side to side as she scrubbed. He flicked water droplets from his ears.

  Gisele crinkled her nose and held her breath. He smelled like mud and gore and wet dog. Or wet bull, rather. Either way, it wasn’t a pleasant combination.

  “Words, buzzing like flies,” he grated, and she huffed back at him in reply. Fine, whatever. She’d work out the details of their temporary arrangement later. She’d already had her fair share of fighting for the night. This argument could wait for another time.

  The shrunken head with its little straw body floated on the surface of the water, secured to a long leather band about Beast’s neck. He’d insisted the curio not leave their sight, and after several rounds of arguing, she’d been too exhausted to care if he held onto it. The thing seriously creeped her out. She wasn’t about to wear it between her breasts.

  She was still trying not to think about what had happened earlier that night. Accidentally opening a Hellmouth could definitely come back to bite her—legally if the Office of the Paranormal or the Protection Agency found out, lethally if any demons caught wind she possessed the Mardoll. The sooner they got rid of the curio, the better.

  And if the minotaur decided to run off with it before she could make the handoff to her client—Marcel Haywood, a fencer from Hell’s First Gate—she’d just have to track Beast down and make him regret it.

  As Beast hunched forward, Gisele’s sudsy hands worked at the crusted blood on his sharp-tipped horn. It was large, smooth, and deadly, the exact opposite of the little branching crown that protruded from her thick, dirty-blond hair.

  It would be better if she didn’t have to go up against him. She healed better than most, but she was only half demon, after all. Had her years with Warrick taught her nothing? Never approach a perp who can grind you into the ground. Dead bounty hunters don’t bag bail-brea
kers. Call for backup from a safe distance away. And if Warrick can’t make it, turn it over to the police.

  Of course, that wasn’t an option here.

  “You know what, you’re right,” she said, trying a different tactic. “I’ve been doing all the talking. I haven’t given you a chance to tell me anything about yourself. Like how you ended up joining the Curators of the Cursed. What was it like being an attraction? How many cities did you guys tour a year?”

  Beast’s ears flicked down as he frowned, looking cowed for once—no pun intended. It probably wasn’t a smart idea to tease a minotaur, but Gisele and caution were about as opposite as two concepts could get.

  “Half-blood has made good point,” he admitted, voice quieter than usual. “Continue bird chitter, please.”

  She lifted one of his heavy arms from the water and scrubbed the underside.

  “I’m sorry. For whatever they did,” she said and meant it, sobered by the thought of what he’d endured. “It’s not my place to try to make it right, but I’ll contact my client after this and get the rest of the payment.”

  Then she could start her new, better life, and Beast could come if he wanted. If he didn’t get in the way too much.

  “I’ve already gotten enough to buy an office with a living space. It’s a bit of a dump, but miles better than this one, and it’ll be all ours. You can come on the walkthrough tomorrow, if you want to take a look at it.”

  Beast nodded, rumbling his agreement deep in his chest.

  It was decided, then.

  “Half-blood wants building. And maybe with Beast, too.” With his deep, gravelly voice, it sounded like a statement, but Gisele knew it to be a question when he looked at her with cautious, side-slitted eyes. He was asking her whether he fit into such a future.

  The problem was, she wasn’t quite sure.

  After viewing the property listing—an old apothecary on East Lanvale rumored to be haunted—they’d returned to her apartment to drop Beast off for the day. She couldn’t take the minotaur into work with her without an explanation to Warrick and his longtime girlfriend-slash-office-manager, Susanna. And the general public usually didn’t take well to demons who couldn’t pass for more of the human variety walking about in their midst sans escort.