Obsidian Butterfly - Laurell K. Hamilton [151]
“Guns are for sissies,” I said.
“Something like that.”
I had the black suit jacket on over the navy blue polo shirt. If I buttoned two buttons, the jacket hid the Firestar in front and still left me plenty of room to reach for it, and the Browning. In fact the slender cell phone swinging in the right side pocket was more noticeable than the guns. “I just love taking a gun to a knife fight.”
Bernardo had thrown a black short-sleeved dress shirt over his white T-shirt. It fanned in back and covered the Beretta 10 mil on his hip. “Me, too,” he said and smiled. It was a fierce smile, and I realized that this may have been the first time in weeks that he was going up against something flesh and blood and killable.
“We’re going in for information, not to do the OK Corral. You do understand that?” I said.
“You’re the boss,” he said, but I didn’t like the way his eyes looked. They were anticipatory, eager.
I’d felt paranoid this morning when I slipped the knife in its spine sheath. Now I moved my head a little back and forth feeling the handle against my neck. It was comforting. I almost always carried the wrist sheaths and their matching knives, but the spine sheath was optional. One minute you’re paranoid and packing too much hardware, the next you’re scared, and underarmed. Life’s like that, or my life’s like that.
“Do you know what los duendos are?” Ramirez asked.
“Bernardo said it meant the dwarves.”
Ramirez nodded. “But around here it’s folklore. They’re small beings that live in caves and steal things. But they’re supposed to be angels that got left suspended between Heaven and Hell during Lucifer’s revolt. So many angels were leaving Heaven that God slammed the gates shut and los duendos got trapped outside of Heaven. They were suspended in limbo.”
“Why didn’t they just go to Hell?” Bernardo asked.
It was a good question. Ramirez shrugged. “The story doesn’t say.”
I glanced at Rigby standing behind Ramirez. He was standing so easy, ready, prepared like a grown-up Boy Scout. He didn’t seem worried about anything. It made me nervous. We were about to go into a bar that was thick with bikers, bad guys. There was a necromancer inside so powerful that it made my skin crawl from blocks away. The rest of us looked confident, but it was a confidence born of having been there and done that and survived. Rigby’s confidence struck me as false, not false confidence, but based on a false assumption. I couldn’t know for sure without asking, but I was betting that Rigby had never really been in any situation where he thought he might not come out the other side. There was a softness to him despite the lean muscles. I’d take a few less muscles and more depth to the eyes any day. I hoped that Ramirez didn’t have to come in with Rigby as his only backup. But I didn’t say it out loud. Everyone loses their cherry sometime, somewhere. If things went wrong, tonight might be Rigby’s night.
“Did you tell us that little story for a reason, Hernando? I mean you don’t really think that Baco or this biker gang are los Duendos?”
He shook his head. “No, I just thought you might want to know. It says something about Baco to name his bar after fallen angels.”
I opened the driver’s side door of the Hummer. Bernardo took the hint and went for the passenger side door. “Not fallen angels, Hernando, just caught in limbo.”
Hernando leaned into the open window of the car. “But they’re not in Heaven anymore, are they?” With that last cryptic comment he stepped back and let me raise the window. He and Rigby watched us drive off. They looked sort of forlorn standing there in the abandoned, broken parking lot. Or maybe it was just me feeling forlorn.
I looked at Bernardo. “Don’t kill anyone, okay?”
He slid back in his seat, snuggling against the leather. He looked more relaxed than I’d seen him in hours. “If they try to