A Dirty Job (Grim Reaper #1) (20 page)

Ouch. Fuck!” came the shout from out on the street, a female voice. “Ouch.”

Charlie flipped on the light to see Sophie sitting up in her crib holding her bunny and laughing. The window behind her had been shattered, and the glass was gone. Every piece of furniture except the crib had been overturned and there were basketball-sized holes in the plaster of two walls, the wooden lath behind it splintered as well. All over the floor there were black feathers, and what looked like blood, but even as Charlie watched, the feathers started to evaporate into smoke.

“Goggy, Daddy,” Sophie said. “Goggy.” Then she giggled.

S
ophie slept the rest of the night in Daddy’s bed while Daddy sat up in a chair next to her, watching the locked door, his sword-cane at his side. There was no window in Charlie’s bedroom, so the door was the only way in or out. When Sophie awoke just after dawn, Charlie changed her, bathed her, and dressed her for the day. Then he called Jane to make her breakfast while he cleaned up the glass and plaster in Sophie’s room and went downstairs to find some plywood to nail over the broken window.

He hated that he couldn’t call the police, couldn’t call someone, but if this is what one phone call to another Death Merchant was going to cause, he couldn’t risk it. And what would the police say anyway, about black feathers and blood that dissolved to smoke as you watched?

“Someone threw a brick through Sophie’s window last night,” he told Jane.

“Wow, on the second floor, too. I thought you were crazy when you put security bars all the way up the building, but I guess not so much, now. You should replace the window with that glass with the wire running through it, just to be safe.”

“I will,” Charlie said. Safe? He had no idea what had happened in Sophie’s room, but the fact that she was safe amid all the destruction scared the hell out of him. He’d replace the window, but the kid was sleeping in his room from now until she was thirty and married to a huge guy with ninja skills.

When Charlie returned from the basement with the sheet of plywood and hammer and nails, he found Jane sitting at the breakfast counter, smoking a cigarette.

“Jane, I thought you quit.”

“Yeah, I did. A month ago. Found this one in my purse.”

“Why are you smoking in my house?”

“I went into Sophie’s room to get her bunny for her.”

“Yeah? Where’s Sophie? There might still be some glass on the floor in there, you didn’t—”

“Yeah, she’s in there. And you’re not funny, Asher. Your thing with the pets has gone completely overboard. I’m going to have to do three yoga classes, get a massage, and smoke a joint the size of a thermos bottle to take the adrenaline edge off. They scared me so bad I peed myself a little.”

“What in the hell are you talking about, Jane?”

“Funny,” she said, smirking. “That’s really funny. I’m talking about the goggies, Daddy.”

Charlie shrugged at his sister as if to say,
Could you be any more incoherent or incomprehensible?
—a gesture he had perfected over thirty-two years, then ran to Sophie’s room and threw the door open.

There, on either side of his darling daughter, were the two biggest, blackest dogs he had ever seen. Sophie was sitting, leaning against one, while hitting the other in the head with her stuffed bunny. Charlie took a step toward rescuing Sophie when one of the dogs leapt across the room and knocked Charlie to the floor, pinning him there. The other put itself between Charlie and the baby.

“Sophie, Daddy’s coming to get you, don’t be afraid.” Charlie tried to squirm out from under the dog, but it just lowered its head and growled at him. It didn’t budge. Charlie figured that it could take the better part of one of his legs and some of his torso off in one bite. The thing’s head was bigger than the Bengal tigers’ at the San Francisco zoo.

“Jane, help me. Get this thing off of me.”

The big dog looked up, keeping its paws on Charlie’s shoulders.

Jane swiveled on her bar stool and took a deep drag on her cigarette. “No, I don’t think so, little brother. You’re on your own after springing this on me.”

“I didn’t. I’ve never seen these things before. No one’s ever seen these things before.”

“You know, we dykes have very high dog tolerance, but that doesn’t give you the right to do this. Well, I’ll leave you to it,” Jane said, gathering up her purse and keys from the breakfast bar. “You enjoy your little canine pals. I’m going to go call in freaked out to work.”

“Jane, wait.”

But she was gone. He heard the front door slam.

The big dog didn’t seem to be interested in eating Charlie, just holding him there. Every time he tried to slither out from under it, the thing growled and pushed harder.

“Down. Heel. Off.” Charlie tried commands he’d heard dog trainers shout on TV. “Fetch. Roll over. Get the fuck off me, you beast.” (He ad-libbed that last one.)

The animal barked in Charlie’s left ear, so loud that he lost hearing and there was just a ringing on that side. In his other ear he heard a little-girl giggle from across the room. “Sophie, honey, it’s okay.”

“Goggie, Daddy,” Sophie said. “Goggie.” She stumbled over and looked down at Charlie. The big dog licked her face, nearly knocking her over. (At eighteen months, Sophie moved like a small drunk most of the time.) “Goggie,” Sophie said again. She grabbed the giant hound by its ear and dragged it off Charlie. Or more accurately, it let her lead it by the ear off of him. Charlie leapt to his feet and started to reach for Sophie, but the other hound jumped in front of him and growled. The thing’s head came up to Charlie’s chest, even with its feet flat on the ground.

He figured the hounds must weigh four or five hundred pounds apiece. They were easily twice the size of the biggest dog he’d seen before, a
Newfoundland
that he’d seen swimming in the
Aquatic
Park
down by the Maritime museum. They had the short fur of a Doberman, the broad shoulders and chest of a rottweiler, but the wide square head and upturned ears of a Great Dane. They were so black that they appeared to actually absorb light, and Charlie had only ever seen one type of creature that did that: the ravens from the Underworld. It was clear that wherever these hounds had come from, it wasn’t from around here. But it was also clear that they were not here to hurt Sophie. She wouldn’t even make a good meal for animals this size, and they certainly could have snapped her in two long before now if they’d meant her harm.

The damage in Sophie’s room the night before might have been caused by the hounds, but they had not been the aggressors. Something had come here to hurt her, and they had protected her, even as they were now. Charlie didn’t care why, he was just grateful that they were on his side. Where they’d been when he first rushed into the room after the window broke, he didn’t know, but it appeared that now that they were here, they were not going to go away.

“Okay, I’m not going to hurt her,” Charlie said. The dog relaxed and backed off a few steps. “She’s going to need to go potty,” Charlie said, feeling a little stupid. He just noticed that they were both wearing wide silver collars, which, strangely, disturbed him more than their size. After the stretching it had gotten over the last year and a half, his Beta Male imagination fit easily around two giant hounds showing up in his little girl’s bedroom, but the idea that someone had put collars on them was throwing him.

There was a knock at the front door and Charlie backed out of the room. “Honey, Daddy will be right back.”

C
harlie opened the door and Lily breezed by. “Jane said you have two huge black dogs up here. I need to see.”

“Lily, wait,” Charlie called, but she was across the living room and into Sophie’s room before he could stop her. There was a low growl and she came backing out.

“Oh my fucking God, dude,” she said around a huge grin. “They are so cool. Where did you get them?”

“I didn’t
get
them anywhere. They were just here.”

Charlie joined Lily just outside the door to Sophie’s room. She turned and grabbed his arm. “Are they, like, instruments of your death dealing or something?”

“Lily, I thought we agreed that we wouldn’t talk about that.”

And they had. In fact, Lily had been great about it. Since she’d first found out about him being a Death Merchant, she’d hardly brought it up at all. She’d also gone on to graduate from high school without getting a major criminal record and enroll in the Culinary Institute, the upside of which was that she actually wore her white chef ’s coat, checked pants, and rubber clogs to work, which tended to soften her makeup and hair, which remained severe, dark, and a little scary.

Sophie giggled and rolled over against one of the hounds. They had been licking her and she was covered with hellish dog spit. Her hair was plastered into a dozen unlikely spikes, making her appear a little like a wide-eyed Animé character.

Sophie saw Lily in the doorway and waved. “Goggie, ’Ily. Goggie,” she said.

“Hi, Sophie. Yes, those are nice doggies,” Lily said, then to Charlie: “What are you going to do?”

“I don’t know what to do. They won’t let me near her.”

“That’s good, then. They’re here to protect her.”

Charlie nodded. “I think they are. Something happened last night. You know how the
Great Big Book
talks about the
others
? I think one of them came after her last night, and these guys showed up.”

“I’m impressed. I’d think you’d be more freaked out.”

Charlie didn’t want to tell her that he was worn out from freaking out the day before about his little girl killing an old man with the word
kitty
. Lily already knew too much, and it was obvious now that whatever lay below was dangerous. “I guess I should be, but they aren’t here to hurt her. I need to go check the library in Berkeley, see if there’s anything about them there. I need to get Sophie away from them.”

Lily laughed. “Yeah, that’s going to happen. Look, I have work and school today, but I’ll go do your research for you tomorrow. In the meantime you can try to make friends with them.”

“I don’t want to make friends with them.”

Lily looked at the hounds, one of whom Sophie was pounding on with her little fists as she laughed gleefully, then looked back at Charlie. “Yes, you do.”

“Yeah, I guess I do,” Charlie said. “Have you ever seen a dog that size before?”

“There are no dogs that size.”

“What do you call those, then?”

“Those aren’t dogs, Asher, those are hellhounds.”

“How do you know that?”

“I know that because before I started learning about herbs and reductions and stuff, I spent my free time reading about the dark side, and those guys come up from time to time.”

“If we know that, then what are you going to do research on?”

“I’m going to try to find out what sent them.” She patted his shoulder. “I have to go open the shop. You go make nice with the goggies.”

“What do I feed them?”

“Purina Hellhound Chow.”

“They make that?”

“What do you think?”

“’Kay,” Charlie said.

I
t took a couple of hours, but after Sophie started smelling like diaper surprise, one of the giant dogs nosed her toward Charlie as if to say,
Clean her up and bring her back
. Charlie could feel them watching him as he changed his daughter, grateful that disposable diapers didn’t require pins. If he’d accidentally poked Sophie with a pin, he was sure one of the hellhounds would have bitten his head off. They watched him carefully as he moved her to the breakfast bar, and sat on either side of her high chair as he gave her breakfast.

As an experiment, he made an extra piece of toast and tossed it to one of the hounds. It snapped it out of the air and licked its chops once, eyes now locked on Charlie and the loaf of bread. So Charlie toasted four more slices and the hounds alternately snapped each out of the air so swiftly that Charlie wasn’t sure he didn’t see some sort of vapor from the pressure of their jaws clamping down.

“So, you’re hellish beasts from another dimension, and you like toast. Okay.”

Then, as Charlie started to toast four more slices, he stopped, feeling stupid. “You don’t really care if it’s toasted, do you?” He flipped a slice of bread to the closest of the dogs, who snapped it out of the air. “Okay, that will speed things up.” Charlie fed them the remainder of the loaf of bread. He spread a few slices with a thick coat of peanut butter, which did nothing whatsoever, then a half dozen more he spread with lemon dishwasher gel, which appeared to have no ill effect except that it made them burp neat, aquamarine-colored bubbles.

“Go walk, Daddy,” Sophie said.

“No walk today, sweetie. I think we’ll just stay right here in the apartment and try to figure out our new pals.”

Charlie got Sophie out of her chair, wiped the jelly off her face and out of her hair, then sat down with her on the couch to read to her from the
Chronicle
’s classified ads, which was where he plied a large part of his business, other than the Death stuff. But no sooner had he settled into a rhythm than one of the hellhounds came over, took his arm in its mouth, and dragged him into his bedroom, even as he protested, swore, and smacked it in the head with a brass table lamp. The big dog let him go, then stood staring at Charlie’s date book like it had been sprayed with beef gravy.