Highway to Hell Read online

  Leona pulls up and flanks me just behind and to my right with Tabby to my left. I can hear the distinct growls of the engines and know Fae is bringing up the rear. If anyone could see us, my bet is we look like a kaleidoscopic cloud of flames and smoke manifesting from somewhere over the rainbow from a dimension far, far away.

  As we crest a hill and round a curve on the highway, another sign flashes by on the side of the road, "Devils' Garden, 30 Miles" but I know we won't be going all the way into the city. I start to downshift and here the subsequent sounds of my gang following my lead as we near our destination. The hum of Sugar’s tires on the pavement reverberates up through the frame of the bike and then through the seat and into me, causing me to press my lips together and hum the tune of liberty and independence along with her. I feel the smile playing on my lips. I can’t help but grin like the kid in the candy store whenever we are given a job. There have never been any time constraints placed on us, just the expectation we will bring the marks in. Maybe I push the limit sometimes, but to date, Auntie J hasn’t written me up for it, whatever that might entail. I can’t imagine a pink slip from Hell is going to look as official as any a corporate office’s might. It’s probably etched in a slab of stone and used to press the offender like the damning judgement of the heretics in charge of the Salem witch trial fiasco. Pushing pink slips and pondering the resulting punishments of Purgatory aside, I downshift a final time and turn off the highway.

  We pull up to a truck stop west of Devil's Garden. There are only five cars in the driveway and no trucks. The cars range from decrepit to high-end, which is unusual for this area out in the middle of nowhere. Three of them, the dilapidated ones, look like they are held together by duct tape, and from this distance, a flash of silver tells me my hunch isn’t far off. The fourth is in pretty decent shape. It’s red and brown like the dust of the desert on either side of the highway.

  A neon orange sign blazes in the window advertising “The Sloshed Sloth, Bar and Grill.” A wooden sign with a poster of a happy, inebriated looking sloth hangs between two posts and sways, creaking in the breeze. I squint and count the bullet holes in the sign. Joy riding one-oh-one, if you can’t hit the sign racing down the highway while inebriated, you’re doing it wrong.

  I park Sugar just as three men stumble out of the bar and trip over themselves trying to get to the luxury sedan, which is the nicest vehicle in the lot. We watch as the man in the white suit screams at the two sides of beefcake to, "Drive! Drive! Drive!"

  Leona starts laughing as red dirt sprays up behind the tires and the men, beaten, retreat with their tails between their legs. Tora sneezes as red dust filters through her sinuses. We’ll have to get her colors soon, as well as a bandana. When Auntie J brought her to me this morning, she only had time to give her a phone that was connected to Hell’s network, so I’ll have to get on getting her the rest of her gear.

  Watching the men scramble like eggs makes me wonder what's inside the bar causing them to make tracks so fast. I dismount, opting to keep my bandana on. Zeke wasn't one of the lunkheads with Mr. Threads so he must be inside. Maybe I can get away with bagging and tagging his sorry ass without him knowing it's me. There’s a whole lot of hurt I am not looking to deal with right now, but I'm stalling because part of me doesn't want to know how he finally bought it. We usually show up after the mark has punched their ticket, but occasionally we have to wait around, playing the part of average biker chick babes until they do croak, then whip them into the other side of this dimension. Leo nudges my shoulder and Tora walks so close behind her, she bumps into her back when she stops.

  "Hey, luv, if you're going to be right up my ass, at least buy me a cold one when we get inside.”

  Tora turns red in the face and I pat my pockets and pull an extra bandana out of my pocket for her to tie around her head.

  "Suit up, girls. I don't want him to know it's me.” Fae and Tabby pull theirs back up, but Leona never took hers off.

  "Incognito, boss?"

  I don't answer her. The heat of the sun bakes into the black leather of my jacket and pants, and I'm not sure if it's because of the rays or if it's the tightness in my throat making me uncomfortable as I approach the bar's wooden steps. Panic attacks have never been my bag, but I haven't seen Zeke in three, maybe four years?

  The steps creak as we climb them, like they’re protesting under the weight of my anxiety as I ascend. The red door to the bar stands open, but I can't see inside. As I approach the door, my pulse pounds and I will myself not to react to whatever I see inside. I can smell the blood. All demons can. In addition to the coppery scent, it's punchy and fresh. I step inside and my girls fan out on either side of me. We stand in the entrance and let our eyes adjust to the darkness as we scan the room.

  I spot the mark right away. It blazes in the dim light of the bar. Tables and chairs are upturned and a broken pool cue rolls across the floor. What agitates me more than the bar fight is the mark is so white and it shouldn't be. The darkness of the person's soul is equivalent to the darkness of the paw print marking him or her. Damien usually swipes them dead center in the chest and it’s always ebony, backlit by some halo of unnatural light, which taints it red, like blood. This one is different. This one is pure. It takes me a minute to realize I'm staring at the mark, rather than recognizing the person it is imprinted on.

  I look up into the face of the man Damien marked. Zeke's twin brother is staring back at me. Oh fuck.

  “Lowell?"

  4

  "Who the Hell are you?" Lowell demands. He's wiping blood from a cut on his forehead with the hem of his gray t-shirt. It drips down onto his jeans as he helps an older man with a bushy gray beard and mustache up from the floor. The man is dressed in leather and a rock and roll t-shirt from times past.

  I move further into the bar, assessing the broken bottles and notice two men cowering behind the pool table with broken off bottlenecks in their hands. One of them is shifty-looking with dirty jeans and a gray and black flannel with a grungy looking t-shirt under it. His face is weathered like his car, I guess duct tape is his go-to because the sticky stuff is holding his boots together. The other guy is greasy. Not just his hair, but his pores ooze oil too. It appears it isn’t for a lack of showering, he’s the cleaner of the two, but it’s like the slick substance oozes out of his soul. He’s also wearing a long-sleeve shirt, which is unusual for the dead-heat of summer. They have the sniffles, but judging by the faint chemical odor mixed with their sweat, the shirts are probably to cover up the track marks.

  Leo shifts a few paces to my left to cover my flank if they attack, but I smell piss and mark them off the list of most pressing concerns. Junkies are slow to react even in between shoot-ups when they are close to sobering up. If they try to pull anything, they’ll be tartar for toast with my girls at my back. I turn back to the splintered bar.

  "Lowell, it's me, Catriona.” I pull the bandana off my face and his pupils dilate as he sucks in a breath. What the Hell is going on? Where is Zeke? I look around the bar, wondering if I'm going to see a pair of legs sticking out from under a table or something, but from what I can see, the Sloshed Sloth is still sans a fresh corpse.

  "Catriona?" He takes a step back like he's seen a ghost because technically, yours truly was buried a couple of years ago.

  "Look, I can't explain it all now. I just need to know where Zeke is.”

  "You're dead.”

  "Only on the inside.”

  "Zeke buried you.”

  "Caskets aren't comfy, Lowell.” I crinkle my nose. My own was hot and stuffy and smelled all kinds of funky from the embalming fluid. At least, I always assumed it was. I figured it was a precursor for the atmosphere downtown, but when I stepped foot into Purgatory and was given a corporeal body again, there was a feeling I've always had a hard time describing. It was neither hot nor cold. It was hungry. Hungry for freedom from the borrowed body. It gave me the shivers and made me wish for the comfy cushions of the casket.


  Lowell grabs for the edge of the bar and sits on a broken stool, which collapses under his ass. Wood chunks clunk around him and he's damn lucky he didn't get goosed with one of his own stools. Tora giggles behind me, but it is quickly silenced. I don’t need to turn around to know it was either Leo giving her the hush up or Fae staring her down for disrespect and order.

  Lowell grunts, then gapes up at me. I can see the shock in his honey eyes and I sigh. I'm going to get nowhere with him so I turn to the old guy instead.

  "Hey, what happened here?"

  The badass baby boomer looks me up and down and then reaches behind the bar and grabs a bottle of Scotch. He unscrews the cap and takes a swig then hands it down to Lowell. Lowell coughs after trying to down half the bottle and the old man slaps him on the back.

  "Easy son. You got cracked on the noggin pretty hard and there's a pretty decent egg swelling up.”

  "She's dead, Marty.” Lowell blinks as he takes another sip from the bottle and then wipes his mouth on the back of his wrist. I hold out my hand for the bottle and he hesitates before passing it over. I take a swig and feel the burn going down my throat. I may be dead, but at least I can still feel something. His face is ghostly white and I hand the bottle back to him. He needs it more than I do, even though I was expecting to find his brother here instead.

  "She looks pretty solid to me with all them curves.” Marty looks between us and raises a bushy white eyebrow. He reminds me of Einstein if my man genius was rocking the denim and leather.

  "Grandpa got game?" Tabby takes a step forward, eyeing him up and down.

  "Cap the libido. We're on a job.” I can’t deal with Tabby’s games today. This is a screw up of epic proportions and I need a minute to think. Neither man looks ready to answer my question about the bar fight so I turn and gaze out the window, which is sporting a red film of desert dust. “What I can't figure is, what's up with the wrong markup?"

  Marty strokes his beard, returning Tabby’s ogle.

  "I know, but I'd still do him.” Tabby pouts like I took away her favorite toy. As an ex-prostitute, I don't even want to know what's in her toy box.

  "Freak.” Faline swats Tabby’s shoulder and she growls in return. Ignoring her, Fae leans into me to whisper, "Let's just grab the mark and get ghost.”

  I search her anxious gray eyes. "He's not the right one and he's not dead yet. We'd have to wait it out anyway.” I need to buy more time. Is this just me buying time for Zeke? In my few years of doing this gig, nothing like this has ever happened. Why has it happened now it’s my ex in the mix?

  "I dunno, Luv. He looks pretty peaked to me.” Leo is staring at him like she's waiting for him to drop dead right there. “Besides, he's Zeke's twin-"

  "We can't just take in whoever we feel like! That's not how it works. And look at his mark!" I point to it and all eyes turn to the center of Lowell's chest. Marty and the two men cowering behind the pool table squint at Lowell, unable to see what we do. They’d all seen it when we walked in, but maybe like me, they haven’t processed the meaning of it yet.

  "I don't get it.” Tora squints at the white paw print too.

  "Damien's mark rips into and imprints on the soul and the print is always black like the soul itself. Lowell's soul isn't spoiled like the others. His is white and pure.”

  There's a collective, "Oh!" and then all eyes turn back to me.

  "What are we going to do?" I can hear the anxiety creeping into Faline's voice as it goes up an octave. Her words come out rushed and I have to strain to understand what she is saying.

  "I need to think.” I turn away from Lowell. The resemblance to his brother is unsettling. I convinced myself on the ride I wouldn't let seeing him affect me so much, but my stomach has been churning since I walked in the door. I walk to the old 1950's jukebox sitting in the corner and look at the selection. It has been updated with mostly classic rock, Hell's Bells is right. I groan and smack the jukebox then dig my phone out of my pocket. I flip the screen on with my thumb and a picture of a cabin set against the bank of a river backlights the screen. I hit the button on the side and then thumb through the recent contacts when the white and green screen appears. I hit send when I reach the right one.

  "Auntie J, call me back. There's been a mix up with the mark.” I end the call, which went straight to voicemail and look back at everyone. They're staring at the floor. Of all of the monumental screw-ups, Damien just had to screw the pooch on this one. I hit the call button on the contact, which is labeled Assface.

  "Kitty Cat!" Damien is far too enthusiastic. I can count on one hand the number of times I've called him, each was worse than the last.

  "You've marked the wrong man.” I try to keep the irritation out of my voice then I get hit with a sneaking suspicion. What if this was intentional? What if he tried to drag this out, to revel in my misery? Would he do that? I know one of his favorite pastimes is to make the vein in my temple throb with annoyance, but can he mess with the cosmos?

  "No, I didn't. I got the details of the job this morning and was told Zeke would be at the Sloshed Sloth. I showed up and did my part, then did a lonely housewife and left.” He sounds sure of himself, but there’s no hint of nefariousness in his voice, like he has been waiting for this call.

  "Still a pig, but not the point. You marked Zeke's twin brother, Lowell. Didn't you bother to look at the print and see his soul is pure?"

  "I didn't really care. I got sidetracked. The housewife was really lonely.”

  Will he ever have a serious conversation with me? I swallow, keeping the growl at bay as I pinch the bridge of my nose. I wish this damn headache would be the death of me. Being undead has its complications.

  “I can't get ahold of Auntie J. You need to come and fix this.”

  "Not how it works and it's also not my problem.” Here’s karma coming back to bite me for adopting the not-my-problem with Fran. Well, bitch, I bite harder. This isn’t right on so many levels.

  "Damien! You can't be serious. His soul is pure. He doesn't belong. You have to fix this!" I hear a low growl over the phone and goose bumps break out over my skin.

  “No, I don't. When are you going to understand? All men are animals in one way or another. I'm sure he's done something shady in his pointless, miserable life. So just bring him down here like a good girl and call it a day.”

  I feel heat race through my veins at his "good girl" comment. I breathe through my nose to calm down before I respond, but then I hesitate, caught on the brink of a decision that could change everything for me.

  “I can't do it, Damien. He doesn't deserve it. It's not right.”

  Again, I wonder if this is projection. Am I about to throw away everything for Zeke’s brother thinking it will fix-what? Fix what? I don’t know. What I do know is sometimes in life, or the afterlife, there is an overwhelming call to action. Maybe we can’t explain why we do something in the unnamed conviction we have, but it doesn’t mean we should stand by and not act just because we can’t explain what makes it right over wrong.

  "Are you serious? This coming from the woman who stood by and did nothing when her boy toy was selling drugs? Now you're going to take the moral high ground?"

  I begin pacing around the bar and glass from broken bottles crunches under my feet. Forget about eggs. Hell, I'm walking Belinda Carlisle's gig on broken glass, ready to fall over into the inferno for eternity if I go against my orders. But he's not wrong. I did stand by and do nothing. I may not have put the drugs in the hands of the buyers myself, but which sin was worse? My redemption won't come cheap and my atonement won't be a cake walk. Irony is a cold-hearted bitch who packs one Hell of a right hook. I can do nothing; turn my back on a man who doesn't deserve the fate he's been thrust into. Or I can go up against Lucifer and his entire domain. I shudder. Lucifer, the one who granted me the reprieve of eternal damnation in the first place. I’m about to throw in the towel and make a break for it, whether I am ready to or not.

  The phone is silent and the
n Damien's low voice grates in my ear. “Are you refusing to collect a mark? My father has given you special circumstances. If you start stepping on his toes, I guarantee you are not going to like the consequences. Daddy has anger management issues.”

  "This isn't a joke, Damien.” I look at Lowell, whose face has morphed from disbelief to confusion and now the slight hints of fear are creeping into the lines at the corners of his wide eyes. It’s like watching one of those creepy baby dolls whose eyes open and shut when you pick it up and lay it down. Fiona used to have when we were kids. If the situation weren’t so serious, I’d find his open-mouthed, ape-face comical. But the situation is dire and I need Damien on board. “We have to fix this!"

  "We can't. It's done. Bring him in, Catriona, or the Hounds will come and get him, and all of the Underworld will be very unhappy with you.”

  I take a deep breath and then hang up the phone. My hands are shaking so bad it makes it difficult to thumb up Auntie J's number again. Where is she? The Wi-Fi was back up when I hit up the girls to ride again. Why isn't she answering me?

  "Auntie J, call me back immediately!" I end the call. What have I done? I've worked so hard for years now trying to right the wrongs I’d done as a human. Now I've just gone and thrown it all away because of what? Sentimentality for a man whose brother was the reason I died in the first place? Because Lowell's face resembles Zeke's so much I can't wrap my head around my heart and shut the emotions down to see reason? I look down at my phone which is vibrating in my hand again. Assface is calling pops up on the screen. I hit the ignore button, sending him to voicemail, the place where every contact goes who doesn’t rate much recognition in the busy day to day life of humans and the damned as well.