Trick of the Light

by Rob Thurman

  Dead and gone, all of it.

  “We fought, but it was too late.” Griffin had slid a washcloth down both arms, washing away red and black blood. “Too many were already gone. They’d called all of us back home, but there were too many demons for them.” That had to be a lot of demons . . . except for the newer recruits like Thomas, all those that served Eden House had been good fighters. Not Griffin and Zeke good, but damn good nonetheless.

  As for home, the two of them obviously never really considered their house home. It had been Eden House to a certain extent, and here. All in all, they certainly spent more time at my bar than Eden House or their place combined.

  “This is home,” I’d reminded him firmly, and after I’d used it first, I let them use my bath to get cleaned up. They’d fought much longer than I had in the battle and had been banged up more as a consequence. So, giving person that I was—a giving person who was probably never going to reclaim her own softly comfortable bed, I had ended up spending the night on the couch in Leo’s office without a single person in sight to spoon with.

  Sometimes you needed it—the touch, the comfort. Just another living creature who cared for you. Sometimes you got it.

  Sometimes you didn’t.

  I woke up with a crick in my neck and my gun under the pillow I’d brought from downstairs the night before. Leo was still gone. I knew it the second I opened my eyes. His family trouble must’ve been more than he’d expected. Or they’d lured him into an anger management intervention he hadn’t needed for a long time now. Now there was a mental picture. Leo in a circle of relatives all trying to turn him from wolf to lamb. He’d never be a lamb, but he was a good wolf now . . . or far less likely to bite anyway. Although getting his family to believe that wouldn’t be easy. They’d be trying to put the more mellow carnivore in a pink rhinestone collar. Poor Leo.

  I rolled up and off the couch, stretched, and looked down at the rumpled pajamas. Not silk, my standby favorite, but a present from Griffin and Zeke from last Christmas—thin cotton footy pajamas covered with nursery rhyme figures. For the Mother Goose in me, they’d said, as I was always trying to take care of them. I couldn’t deny they were comfortable. I also couldn’t deny that when I walked out into the bar, wild halo of bed hair, cotton jammies and all, I might not have looked my best. Stunning was definitely out the window.

  Not that the angel sitting at the bar seemed to care. He, on the other hand, was immaculate in human form. They always were, the few I’d seen, just like the demons. This one had straight silver hair to his shoulders. The gleam was a stark contrast to his younger face. His eyes were the same pale silver and empty. Cool and disinterested. If he had a single emotion in him, I’d let him have for free that glass of red wine he was drinking.

  “If you’re here looking for a virgin, I can’t help you.” I put the gun under the counter and rooted around in one cabinet for a breakfast bar. It didn’t look like I was going to have time for much else today.

  He ran a smoothing hand down the light gray suit and ignored my humor or blasphemy, depending on your point of view. “Eden House Las Vegas is no more.”

  I opened the wrapper and took a bite of chocolate and granola. It didn’t sit particularly well as the memory of the dead bodies from last night hit me. “You could say that. Thanks for the help, by the way. It really turned the tide.” I took another bite, this one grimly savage. “Bastard. They were your followers and you let them die without lifting a finger to help them. Or a feather.”

  He looked over his shoulder as if he expected his hidden wings were showing before turning back to face me. “They serve Heaven. Heaven does not serve them.”

  “That makes it better. Thanks for that. How about they’re in a better place now. Don’t forget that one.” I discarded the granola bar. I couldn’t stomach it. Demons were bad enough, killers and liars through and through, but most angels were cold. Not all of them, but most of them. Superior egos carved from ice. They had the charisma in human form that the demons did, when they wanted, but the majority of them rarely used it. You could almost understand demons before you could an angel. I glared at him and folded my arms, equally disinterested in him as he pretended to be in me.

  “If they lived lives of purity and servitude, then, yes, they are.” He sipped his ruby-colored wine. “I am Oriphiel.”

  I had a feeling the surfer angel who had bothered to toss the appeal and magnetism our way in the desert had been demoted for his failure to get the fragment of the Light that I’d beaten him to. “Middle management, lower management, I could care less.” I dismissed him, although I knew that the name Oriphiel meant he was an archangel. So it was written. Somewhere. You needed a flowchart to keep it all straight.

  From the looks of this guy, he considered the title of archangel and himself to be pretty hot shit—certainly not one to take orders. He gave them. “Go find Trinity,” I told him. “He belongs to you. I don’t.”

  “Trinity is returning today. We will speak, but the Light is too important to be left to an unsupervised human, even one of Eden House.” He said “human” as if he were saying “pet” and, worse yet, the kind of pet that takes a year to learn how to use the cat door and another year to figure out the flap moves both ways. His pale face was as beautiful as marble and as unmoving. I wished Lenore were there to give him a lesson in pet respect, but I was here to give him the human version.

  “If you think I’m going to put up with your hanging around, you’re wrong. Trinity’s putting me on a leash is more than enough.” I took the glass of wine out of his hand. “And cops drink for free. Stuck-up pigeons don’t.”

  “The Light is for Above. Even one such as you couldn’t think it was better in the hands of the Abyss. Trinity says you know what it does. Can you imagine what will happen to the earth if we fail to obtain it? You will be at their mercy.”

  “From what I could tell last night, we already are. I think it’s your feathered asses you’re worried about. I don’t think you give much of a damn about us, only about spiting Hell.”

  “You have no idea what Heaven is, no idea what we are. You couldn’t understand if you wanted to,” he said serenely.

  So smug, so damn superior. I poured the rest of the wine into the sink, but it was a struggle not to pour it over his silver head instead. “I’ve read the Bible. I think I know a thing or two.” I had read the Bible as well as several other holy books. I was familiar, you could say, with quite a few religions. Mama made sure her children were educated on a wide variety of subjects. When you traveled the world, she said, you needed to know how to stay out of trouble or how to get into it, depending on your mood.

  “You’re like a worm given a molecule of a blade of grass, an electron microscope, and expected to extrapolate what the world looks like . . . its mountains and oceans, lakes and rivers, trees and plains, and all the creatures that inhabit it. The Bible”—he steepled his fingers—“that is your molecule. And you, the worm, you can’t even find the microscope.”

  “Maybe that would’ve come across better with a blare of trumpets or if you’d descended from the sky surrounded by a veil of golden light, but you know what it sounded like just now?” I rested my elbows on the counter, steepled my fingers in the mirror image of his, and rested my chin on them as I faced him. “It sounded like you just screwing yourself, because there is no way in hell, or heaven for that matter, that I’ll ever help you now.”

  He frowned. Finally, a ripple of emotion. “You have no choice.”

  “I refer you to that molecule you were talking about on the subject of free will. So when I tell you to kiss my ass, it’s only because God was kind enough to give humans that choice.” Although truthfully the Bible, theology, and Solomon were all contradictory on the subject, I didn’t feel the need to bring that up. I was free and I knew it. I flattened my hands on the bar and was about to tell him to get the hell out of my bar when Hell decided to tell him itself.

  “You really do let anyone in this place,
darlin’. You need a good exterminator.” A coil of black smoke reared behind the angel to form into Eligos. He draped a black-clad arm over the shoulders covered in gray and leaned heavily, his lips touching the silver hair. “Oriphiel, pal, buddy, friend o’ mine. How’s it hanging?” His other hand dropped into the angel’s lap. “Or is it like the old days when you didn’t invest in that part when you came to Earth? Too afraid of temptation. I have to say, Ori, you were right. The temptation is so consuming, so damn good, you never would’ve made it.” He lifted his hand back up with a sigh of disappointment. “Yep, like the old days. Still not packing. You should give it a try, at least once. You are missing out like you would not believe. Let me tell you. . . .” His lips moved to Oriphiel’s ears. I couldn’t hear what he said to the angel, but I saw the results.

  It was more than a ripple of emotion this time. I saw shock, distaste, and even a trace of fear before Oriphiel was gone, not in a coil of smoke, but a blaze of light bright enough to trigger a headache. Great. I rubbed my forehead. “You could’ve warned me. Sunglasses would’ve been nice.”

  “Show-offs. They don’t get to do much else these days, what with humans fighting in their place. All bark and no bite. No more flaming swords. No more throwing down of the rebels. Warriors of God? Ha! Pussies,” he snorted. “And you know what? I think they stuck it to themselves but good. I think they miss it. Who wouldn’t? We might lie to everyone else, Miss Trixa, but they lie to themselves and that makes them equally as dangerous as us.” He grinned. “Not that I’m dangerous. Never. Just very, very interesting.” He jerked his head toward the pool table. “Let’s play a game.” He tossed his leather jacket over a stool and flashed that cocky, sexy smile I was inexplicably getting used to. Then I pictured the dead bodies from last night and put that smile into perspective. The teeth of a carnivore. Period. Unrepentant and loving every minute of his blood-soaked existence. “But we have to bet. There’s no point in playing a game if there’s nothing to win . . . or lose.”

  “Don’t even bring up my soul.” I followed him, bringing my gun with me. Why did I follow? Because at the moment, spending time with a degenerate killer demon was a breath of fresh air compared to the creature that had just sat at my bar. Oriphiel and Eligos were flip sides of the same coin, only Eli bothered to fake the charm. And charm as manipulation was deceitful, obviously, but it was better than assuming I was a servant to anyone, even Heaven. If an independent creature like me had a pet peeve—or had to pick one among many—that would be it.

  “Trust me, I’d never be that clichéd.” The hazel eyes were more copper and green than brown and green. “How ’bout we play for those PJs, little girl? I have a whole set of fantasies already going about those. And spankings are way too vanilla to make it through the door.” He cracked his knuckles. “Do you have any teddy bears upstairs?”

  “Don’t be sick or I’ll put the pool cue where you won’t like it.”

  “‘Don’t be sick’? I’m fallen. Pure evil. Demonic spawn from the depths of Hell. Why do I have to keep reminding you of that? Do I need a tattoo or maybe a T-shirt? Tacky, but it would show my pecs. And as for the pool cue, you never know. I might more than like it.” He racked the balls, then waved his hand, flaring to life the overhead light. “Ladies first.”

  I placed the Smith on the side of the table and chalked my cue. “We haven’t established what I get if I win.”

  “You’ll really throw the PJs in the pot?” He rocked back on his heels. “I’m impressed. Okay, big spender, that deserves something equally worthy. You win and I’ll tell you who was behind nuking Eden House. That has to be worth a little full-frontal nudity.”

  “How’d you . . . Never mind.” I liked to sleep free and unencumbered under my sleepwear. So sue me. “You know who did it? Solomon didn’t know.”

  “Solomon told you he didn’t know. Don’t tell me you believed him.” He tossed his cue lazily from hand to hand. “I know you’re not that naïve.”

  “I don’t believe anything a demon says, but he sounded less like a liar than usual.” I broke and proceeded to wipe the floor with his demonic ass. He barely got a chance to get on the table, poor baby. It was an honest game on his end, obviously, but only because he knew I wouldn’t live up to my end of the bet if he cheated. Actually, I wouldn’t have lived up to my end if he had won. He’d get a limb before he got my pajamas. In the end, it’d be less catastrophic for me. It wasn’t only demons who could lie.

  “How’d you get so good? I’ve played pool longer than you’ve been alive.” He scowled. For the first time that sexy, crazy, roguishly cheerful smile was replaced with something real. Disappointment with a good dose of spite.

  “Don’t pout. It doesn’t look good on a hell-spawn.” I boosted myself up to sit on the edge of the table. “And I’m good at everything. Physics included.” Good at everything except keeping my little brother alive, and winning a pool game with a demon didn’t quite make up for that, did it? I touched the black teardrop at my throat. No, it hardly did.

  Eli had put away the spite, which I thought was most likely an act anyway. He wanted to tell me about Eden House. That was the reason he’d shown up. He might not have cheated to win, but he’d been prepared to cheat to lose. It simply turned out he didn’t have to. Quite a surprise for him. It was one reason I never hustled pool. It was too easy and rather boring to watch grown men sulk like little boys. It wasn’t worth the money for the win or the irritation as they tried to look down my shirt whenever I made a shot.

  “Pool is more than physics,” Eli went on with outraged passion. I rolled a ball idly across the table, then played with the pool cue a few seconds before laying it beside me to watch the show. For all that Eli was a self-invention of pure ego, he was entertaining, and I didn’t mind the distraction. It was better than thinking of how no matter how many things I succeeded at, it couldn’t make up for my one heart-killing failure. “It’s more than a game. It’s war. It’s sex on green felt if you do it right. That quick is not doing it right.” I tuned out after that. He was amusing and fun and six feet of pure, unadulterated sex, but as much as I wanted to be distracted, it wasn’t happening.

  “You aren’t afraid of me.” Abruptly his face was in mine, so close I felt his breath, saw the minute flecks of copper swimming in his now-ebony eyes, felt the fall of brindled brown hair against my forehead. “You should be,” he said softly. “Oh, little girl, you should be.”

  “Why?” I didn’t pull back. This was my place, my territory, and nobody would make me afraid here. Nobody. “You can’t kill me. You’d lose the Light.”

  “Maybe. Maybe I can’t kill you.” The metallic flecks swirled. “But I could always torture you.” He lifted his upper lip and this smile was neither sexy nor amusing. “I’m good at that. First in my class. Plaques on the wall. And, even better, I really, really enjoy doing it.”

  “And I’d tell you everything I know.” My eyes weren’t as copper as the flecks in his, but I had a feeling what lurked behind them was as dark as the blackness of his.

  “Everything you know and every invention you could possibly scream from what was left of your throat.” His voice wasn’t human anymore.

  “I have to say, this is your worst attempt at seduction yet.” I nipped his full lower lip and then rammed the pool cue through his stomach. I missed the spine . . . on purpose. At that level it wouldn’t have killed him and the effect of two feet of polished and gore-stained wood coming out of his back was showier. I liked showy. It tended to make lessons stick with the one on the receiving end. When he was comparing pool to everything except a game, I’d removed the tip and ferrule from my personal cue to reveal a nice sharp metal point beneath it. This turned a perfectly good pool cue into an even better spear, and if Eli had been too busy showing how sexy and clever he was to notice what I was doing, well . . . at least he was still sexy. Or would be once he cleaned up.

  He stepped back and glowered at the length of wood impaling him. “You just get b
itchier and bitchier all the time, don’t you?” But it was said with reluctant admiration. If Eli was too fast for a bullet to hit, he was certainly fast enough to avoid a pool cue through the abdomen. But when you’re strutting your demonic stuff for a woman, getting turned on with the torture talk, and carrying an ego the size of Hell itself, you do make the occasional mistake. He flicked a finger against the polished wood with a light thunk. “Excessive violence doesn’t go well with the footy pajamas. It’s a behavioral and fashion faux pas all rolled into one.”

  I held on to the cue. As long as I held on to it, he was held to Earth in his physical form, although he could have turned demon if he’d wanted. But he’d still be pinned like a dead bug in an insect collector ’s display case. “And the threatening me with torture, that was entirely kosher?”

  He held his arms wide as his eyes turned from black and copper to penny and forest hazel. “At least I’m dressed for it. You have to give me that.” He was. Black shirt. Black pants. Black jacket thrown to the side.

  “Yeah, you’re the demonic Darth Vader. I’m beyond impressed.” I turned my head to Griffin and Zeke who’d been sitting on the bottom step of the stairs with the door propped wide for quite some time now. The angel might’ve been too high-level for them to sense and I knew Eli was, but they could hear. As soon as the pool game started, they’d come down, both with shotguns and bad morning attitudes. “What do you think, guys? Should we—”

  “Shoot him,” they said simultaneously, interrupting me.

  “You don’t seem to be as charismatic as you think you are, Eli,” I commented. “Isn’t that a shame?” I was still sitting on the pool table, but I was ready to jump to the floor and try to hold him here if he decided to fight. There was more room between us now, about two feet. Even for a demon, a makeshift spear through the guts will have you staggering back a pace or two.