Trick of the Light

by Rob Thurman

  He grimaced. “No.”

  “I didn’t think so.” But I let go of his hand to give him a sympathetic rub of his back. It would take a lot of processing to come to grips with being what you imagined to be the worst evil in existence. They actually weren’t. Only the second most evil, but there was no need to get into that and it probably wouldn’t make him feel much better anyway.

  We païens had our own version of demons, but oh so much worse.

  “So we’re all old. Any of us know how to fly a helicopter?” Zeke said, more to the point than anything Griffin and I had brought up.

  “Never needed one. Wind beneath my wings and all that.” I held out my arms beside me and shook my head. “But that’s over. I won’t have my own again for a while.”

  “Why?” Griffin took his turn and asked, the thick hair a tangle from the wind of Leo’s flight.

  I shrugged a little uncomfortably. “I showed off a little. I didn’t just want Solomon dead. I wanted him afraid, terrified, and I wanted him to suffer. For my brother. I pulled together a lot of forms at once. Too many. My battery has been drained for a while.” I wasn’t sorry I’d done it, but there are consequences for everything. Especially vengeance—big vengeance. I’d known the price. Kimano was worth paying that price.

  “Then you’re stuck in your original form?”

  I laughed as I touched his gold wing. It felt like silk strung between smooth metal. “This isn’t me. It has been one of my favorite forms though. And I’m only stuck in human form for four or five years or so. It’s not that long.” It wasn’t. Although the human vulnerability rather sucked—no healing, no making wounds disappear as I shifted form. All human. I did like this Trixa though. I’d thought carefully about who she’d be. I’d wanted to be all things, not just one. I wanted to be literally all ethnic varieties on the planet. I might appear mostly Asian and African, but I hadn’t stopped there. You named it and it was in me. Caucasian, Arabic, Polynesian, Aborigine . . . everything. It was rather clever: If there is a pheromone component to race and gender, anyone would be naturally inclined to trust me or be attracted to me, because in a small genetic way, they were family. To have your foot already in the door with everyone you met, what more could a trickster want?

  Not that it seemed to work with Leo’s bimbos of the moment. Nothing could penetrate their own Light, their own shield—one of stupidity.

  “You can choose any form you want?” Zeke asked curiously. “Why not one with bigger boob—” Griffin elbowed him hard and we were back to where we’d been weeks ago. Zeke without an internal filter and Griffin saving his ass. It was . . . wonderful. The best.

  “You better go get your guns out of the helicopter,” I ordered, “if you’re going to talk trash like that, and because the two of you are about to take your first flight. The first one you’ll remember anyway.”

  While Zeke cursed inside the copter trying to get the weapons locker open and cursed Leo while he was at it for not waiting to give us a ride, Griffin at my side said quietly, “I’m a demon.”

  “No, you were a demon,” I corrected, cupping his face. “You’ve been human since you first came to Vegas to watch over Zeke for literally all of your human lives. That proves that you, Griffin, are one of the most hon orable and truly good men I know.” He opened his mouth, doubt written all over his face. “And,” I added, “you wanted to know how old I am? More than six thousand years old. Old enough to have known many good men. More bad men, but many good ones too. You rank at the top. I promise you that.”

  “Hard to imagine how that happened,” he said, frowning at the sight of his own wings.

  “You are how it happened. You were given a second chance. With that chance, you chose good, and you chose Zeke. Remember that.” If he didn’t, I’d remind him until it finally took. It might take a lot of work, but I was up for it.

  It turned out Zeke and Griffin were up to it as well. Both took an arm and we flew, the wings of a falcon beating in perfect harmony with the wings of a dragon. At the base of the mountain Zeke was grinning, the grin of a happy five-year-old who’d flown his first kite. “This is going to be fun.” He looked at the Colt Anaconda in one hand and his wings and grinned wider. “Really fun.”

  “No, no. With flight and massive firepower comes responsibility. The last thing we need is a guided missile with feathers. You’ll have to earn your license first.” I ignored his glare as I went on. “Put the wings away. It’s a fifteen-mile walk back to Rachel. We don’t want any roadside conversions on the way. No shrines, not unless they’re to Elvis. It’s the Nevada law.”

  “How?” Zeke touched the feathers over his shoulder with a curious finger and said skeptically, “Seems pretty solid.”

  “Just . . .” I hesitated as I thought of the last time I’d talked to a peri, pulling my sleeves down over my hands. Despite the bright winter sun, it wasn’t warm. “Think them away, I guess.” It seemed like that’s what the peri had said. “Tell them to go. They are yours. They should listen.”

  It took a few minutes, but they were able to get the hang of it. Copper and gold flickered in and out of existence with glints of gold light until finally they disappeared altogether. Zeke reached over his shoulder and slapped his back. There was nothing but the meaty thump of flesh. “Will they come back? Where’d they go?”

  “When you want them to, yes. As for the rest”—I shifted my shoulders in an unknowing shrug—“I’ve no idea. Next time you see a peri, ask him.”

  “A peri?” Griffin bent down and picked up a stray red-gold feather of Zeke’s that had fallen to the ground and stayed when the wings had gone.

  “Yes, a peri. Zeke is a peri now. I think.” I started walking down the dusty road. “Not that I’ve run into one like him before. All other peris have Heaven’s stamp of approval on their green cards. Mythology says peris are half angel, half demon. Remember this, guys,” I said firmly, “mythology is most often wrong. Sometimes it’s close, but in the end never completely right.” I hooked my arms through theirs and pulled them close for warmth. “Some angels who lived on Earth among humans for hundreds or thousands of years, watching, doing whatever it is they did, they tended to want to stay on Earth when it was their time to go home. They’d get a taste of free will and the native life. So they’d ask permission to ‘retire’ . . . to become expatriates of Heaven, if you will. I emphasize they asked permission; they didn’t give Heaven the metaphorical finger like Zeke did.”

  Zeke didn’t look sorry. He actually looked rather pleased with himself. “What’s Griffin?”

  “I don’t know. What the hell, for once we’ll close our eyes and buy into a little mythology. Griffin can be a peri too—the demon half instead of the angel one. He’d be the only one I’d ever heard of.” I pulled them closer, more body heat. “Which makes you as special as you always thought you were, at least from the way you dress. If Eden House doesn’t rebuild in Vegas, you’ll lose the bit paycheck and be shopping at Wal-Mart, Mr. Metrosexual, and then what will you do?”

  Griffin started to stay something indignant but let it go as I leaned against his arm. “God, trickster, demon,” he said. “Trickster trumps a demon, eh?”

  “Mmmm.” I rested my head on his shoulder and yawned.

  “Especially a pissed-off trickster?” he continued.

  “Especially,” I agreed wearily with another heavy yawn and a desire to eat the nearest buffet in its entirety. No sharing. I’d carb loaded at breakfast for all the changing I knew I’d do, all the energy I’d need. Now I was drained, had a fifteen-mile walk ahead of me, and couldn’t decide whether I’d rather sleep for days or eat for hours. Too bad I couldn’t do both at the same time.

  By the time we made it back to Rachel, population less than a hundred, I gave up on the idea of “borrowing” a car and heading back to Vegas. We stopped at the Little A’Le’Inn. With Area 51 being so close, aliens were the only tourist attraction and business that kept this tiny town going. The inn’s restaurant didn’t
have the buffet I’d been wanting to devour from beginning to end. I settled for five burgers, five sides of fries, and three milkshakes. I’d have to start watching it from now on. I couldn’t just melt the fat away anymore or turn it into more hair or height. I sighed and enjoyed my final burger to every last bite.

  “So, your sanctuary—you called it the Hearth?” Griffin fiddled with his tuna on toast. He didn’t seem too enthralled with it. He was more into sushi or the expensive restaurants.

  “The Hearth.” I nodded, and dipped a fry in ketchup. “I was for Haven myself and Sanctuary is far too clichéd, but we had a committee and voted. You never heard so much bitching over a name. And some of the members kept trying to eat the other—” I stopped at the look in Griffin’s eyes. It wasn’t panic. It wasn’t fear. It was the resignation of “Here comes yet one more nightmare in the world.” He didn’t need that, knowing the whole of what lived in the shadows of this world. He was dealing with enough.

  “All different kinds of tricksters, you know?” I changed smoothly. “We don’t always get along.” I finished my fry hastily.

  “So it’s just angels, demons, and what did you call your kind? Païens?”

  “Drink your juice. It’s good for you,” I ordered. “Yes, angels, demons, and the païens.” As we tricksters tended to call all the supernatural creatures that inhabited the world. But Zeke and Griffin didn’t need to peek that far under the covers into the dark. Demons were enough, especially with them coping with their new lives. Humans with wings, telepathy, and empathy . . . the Light had left them all three. Whether they would live as long as the other peris did . . . thousands and thousands of years, I didn’t know. If not . . . a gray-haired Zeke in a rocking chair with a marmalade cat in his lap, shooting at the annoying neighborhood kids with a BB gun might be amusing. I almost choked at the mental picture.

  “Will you be leaving now? Will you be taking off and leaving us like you always said you would?” Zeke demanded, grabbing Griffin’s sandwich when his partner didn’t make any progress on it. He gave me a similar look, as if he wanted to grab on to me the same way and keep me there.

  I always had said it to the boys, warned them, although I hadn’t known exactly what would happen to them when this was over. I’d hoped I could save them. The Light had done more than hope. The Light and my guys had saved themselves.

  I was a traveler. Travel came with the job. Very few of us settled down in one spot long. I’d avenged Kimano. I doubted Hell’s lapdog, Trinity, had told the other Houses about Griffin and Zeke letting me hunt with them. I doubted he’d told any other House anything at all in those last days. I thought they’d be safe. They could stay here with a new Eden House or have my bar or come with me if they wanted. Or . . .

  Or I could stick around awhile. It was only four or five years. I still had my bar, still had my business on the side; I could still even do my trickster work. I didn’t have to change form to do that. It made things much easier if I’d been able to, definitely, but I could do it.

  “Who knows?” I sucked up the last of the strawberry shake. “I might stay around . . . if you stop shooting up my bar. What’s the difference between ten years and fourteen or fifteen? I can see it. Kicking demon ass with you guys for a while longer.” It was hard to take brothers for granted when you’d already lost one. I was born to travel, but I was born into a family too, and then I’d chosen one of my own. I’d gotten used to them. Stay in one place long enough and that’ll happen. Mama would be so disappointed in me, but, you know what? Mama could kiss . . . Get over it, I changed hastily in my mind. What I’d done to Solomon, Mama could do to me and call it a spanking for a dirty mouth. “Maybe I will stick around and hunt demons with you guys. It’s good exercise.”

  Zeke took in the five empty plates. “You’re going to need it if you keep shoveling it down like a starved hippo.”

  I didn’t stab him with my fork, but it was a close call. “I have to crash. Let’s get one of the motel rooms, because I have about five minutes before I go comatose for at least a day.”

  It was a lovely hotel room. I fell face-first on the nearest bed. Actually it could’ve been the grotto at Hef’s mansion for all I knew. I didn’t know if there were pictures of flying saucers on the wall or soap shaped like an alien’s head or a shag carpet that devoured small pets. Nothing registered but sleep and the vaguely distant grumbling of Zeke and Griffin standing beside the other twin bed, all that was available.

  “I’m tired of being the big spoon.”

  “You’re taller than I am. It just works that way.”

  It went on from there I was sure, but I was long gone, so buried under a blanket of sleep that an entire horde of demons couldn’t have woken me up. But what felt like a week later later, the squabbling that put demonic cursing into perspective did.

  “You could’ve slept in the bathtub.”

  “You could have too, partner. Might have earned you some more halo points. You can’t throw omelets at the cook. Hot melted cheese is like napalm. The guy will probably need skin grafts.” Griffin’s hand was on my shoulder shaking lightly.

  “He spit in it.” I imagined Zeke’s eyes narrowing. Telepathy had always given Zeke more reasons to be cranky than he usually had—as if he needed more. “I ‘heard’ it. Because he thought I was rude.”

  “You are rude.”

  “So? He was an ugly son of a bitch who cheats on his wife and I didn’t spit on him.”

  “No. You just scarred him for life with a molten-hot dairy product.”

  All of which made perfect sense and that could only mean I needed more food and a shower. I sat up and saw nothing but black, bronze, and russet tangles. Swearing, I swept back the mop of hair and asked Griffin, “How long has it been?”

  “About twenty hours. And we’ve got to be out in another two. Big alien convention in town. Thirty whole people. They’re booked solid.” He handed me a plate of scrambled eggs, bacon, and toast. “No spitting on this one, I swear.”

  “Good to know.” I took a big bite of greasy diner scrambled eggs, greasier bacon, and loved every second of it.

  “Is Leo coming back?”

  I looked up at Zeke and took pity on his foodless state. Handing him my toast, I answered, “I don’t know. Loki . . . Leo’s not as much of a wanderer as I am. He’s a trickster not by race but by choice, by calling, and he’s been at odds with his family for a long time. Now that it sounds like he made up with them when he went back to catch the dog, he might want to stay with them awhile.”

  “The dog?” Griffin said grimly. “He left us in that clusterfuck to go home and catch a dog?”

  “Well, Fenris is a little more than just a dog.” I took another bite of eggs. “He might not be able to swallow the sun like Norse legend says, but he could wipe out a few hundred—maybe thousand—people if he made it to civilization. And he only likes Leo, so, there you go.” I wiped my hands on the napkins Griffin had brought. “Anyway, I don’t know if Leo will want to go back for some family time or not. It’s up to him. He’s been with me ten years straight now. He might need a break.”

  “He’ll come back,” Zeke said as he ate the toast, looking not the slightest less lethal in his new black T-shirt that read AREA 51—DEADLY FORCE AUTHORIZED, the sentiment emblazoned beneath the words by a small green alien in army camos and aiming an M-16. “He will,” he reiterated with a confidence that couldn’t be shaken. “I know it.”

  Because Leo had to come back. Because the four of us were family, belonged together, and Zeke couldn’t see it any other way.

  “Maybe so, Kit.” I deposited my plate on the bed, kissed the top of his copper hair where he sat on the next bed, and headed for the bathroom. “I need fifteen minutes. Either of you gentlemen up to ‘borrowing’ a car?” I peered around the bathroom door. Two rooms shared one bathroom, but I’d lucked out. Whoever had rented the other room was out alien hunting or practicing his Klingon at the café. “But only from someone who deserves it.”
/>   An hour later we were on the road, listening to static, which was more entertaining than country music, and riding in the saddest Winnebago I’d ever seen. But per Zeke, the owner had been the worst kid-slapping, wife-beating, cheating-on-his-taxes, drunken bastard in Rachel, Nevada. If he thought getting his Winnebago ripped off was just deserts, he had no idea whom he was screwing with. Within a week he’d be in prison—the bad kind where he’d learn what it was like to be a beaten wife himself.

  “So this guy deserved it,” Griffin mused as he drove. “Who else has deserved it lately? You didn’t retire from being a trickster while looking for the Light, did you? That doesn’t seem like you.”

  I slid down in the passenger seat and tried to look sheepish, but I couldn’t. I quirked my lips. “Well, there was the zoo.”

  Zeke leaned forward. “The zoo? Where the wolves ate the perv? Really?”

  I was amused by his excitement. “It wasn’t hard to get him over by the wolf habitat. Very secluded. He did seem pretty surprised that such a little girl could toss him over a fence that high and convince a wolf pack that they were hungrier than they thought they were. I left my signature: the red balloon tied to the bench.”

  “That truck of red paint overturning on the road crew that did nothing for weeks in a row but sit on their asses.” Griffin shook his head. “You didn’t go ahead and tip it all the way over the overpass and crush them?”

  I frowned. “They were lazy, not evil. The punishment matches the crime. I’m fair. Mostly.” I switched off the radio. “Then there was the guitarist. I electrocuted him, but gave the credit to Trinity and Heaven. That had that bastard’s eyes crossing in confusion.” I tapped my finger on the glass of the window. “That the guitar happened to be red was just the perfect touch. If I were a church-going woman”—which by now I thought was apparent was not the case—“I would’ve thought it a sign from the angel factory.” I stopped tapping and pointed up.