by Rob Thurman
Being evil for so very long, could you ever be what you were before that? Would you even want to? The great thing about being evil is you don’t care that you’re evil. As a matter of fact, you probably enjoyed the hell out of it . . . no pun intended.
The downside of being evil is when someone like me shoots your dragon wings to tatters before ramming a gun muzzle in your open, fanged mouth and liquefying your brain. I grabbed another clip from my bag, slammed it home, and started searching for the voices I’d heard earlier. I was about to call for Griffin again, when I heard him. I ran, following the circular hall. Another demon came at me. I hit the floor and rolled as it passed in a rush over me. Swiveling, I shot it in the back of the head, turned, and kept running until I came to what I vaguely remembered as a banquet room for those who lived in the house. Chandeliers and the finest china, it was all crushed to ivory splinters and crystal dust now. That dust glittered along wings and snake heads, giving the demons the air of something else to be put on a Christmas tree—a very dark, gothic Christmas tree.
There were ten demons and Zeke and Griffin were facing them while standing back to back. They’d been here fighting long enough they’d gone through all their ammo and were now down to knives. That didn’t make them any less dangerous. Zeke was a stone-cold demon killer with a combat knife, because he had no fear, not for himself. No fear of pain or being hurt or even death. Zeke’s mind didn’t allow multitasking. When he was fighting, he was fighting. Period. The only other thought he was capable of was to protect his friends. Kill and protect. In the heat of battle, nothing else existed for him. The Japanese Bushido philosophy said the greatest warrior was one who didn’t fear his own death. Zeke went a step further with not even knowing that he could die. Because he lived in the moment, he didn’t have enough focus left over to consider mortality.
He was in that moment now. He was covered with slashes of demonic claws, but he was also covered from the waist down in black demon blood. As I stepped into the room, he had just slashed a demon’s neck so forcefully with the serrated edge of his blade that the spinal column split and the demon became a black rain.
Griffin was deadly himself, quick as a demon, and smart enough to think like them if he had to—to anticipate their moves. Zeke couldn’t multitask at all, but Griffin was the king of it. He rammed his blade through the eye of one demon, while using his other hand to slash an identical blade across the gut of the brown demon hurtling toward him from the side. A mass of entrails spilled free. It wouldn’t kill the creature, but it was enough to have it tumbling back temporarily.
My boys the killers. I couldn’t have been more proud.
But ten demons . . . now eight and a half. And scattered among the green and brown lesser demons were two gray and one the cyanotic purple-blue of a strangled corpse. Higher demons. Thanks to Solomon, we now knew these were the ones to watch out for—not demon-lite. Those wouldn’t be so easy to kill.
“Guys!” I tossed them two Glock .40s out of my messenger bag. Mary Poppins had her endless supply of goodies in her purse. I had an endless supply of goodies too, and they were more useful than tea and freshly baked biscuits. They both dropped one knife apiece and caught the guns. I stepped back out into the hall to give them a clean line of fire and called as I did, “You, grape gecko, want to play?”
The suffocation-colored demon whipped around and undulated itself toward me with a speed that made a viper look as if it were moving through three feet of tar. It hit me. There was no way to avoid it. No way for a human, at least. Here was another one that if he wasn’t in Solomon and Eli’s league, he was damn close. I did manage to dive to the side quickly enough that although it clipped my side, it didn’t hit me head-on. It did flip me over the rail, the iron hitting me in the ribs. I caught myself with one arm hooking around an arabesque. I hung in midair, my shoulder creaking, and I discovered that my Barney-colored new demon friend might have been almost as fast as Solomon and Eli, but it wasn’t as smart. It perched on the rail above me, baring smoky quartz teeth at me in an arrogantly rapacious grin. It was nice of him to savor the moment. It gave me the opportunity to take its head off at the shoulders. The sound suppressor on the MP5 was only good for one clip. These shots rang loud and true. No matter how big the compound was, someone was bound to hear that and call the police. I coughed as the smoke billowed more thickly and wiped at my dripping face to clear my vision of what had once been a demon who’d thought a little too much of himself.
Tossing the gun up and over the rail, I used both hands to follow after it. I snagged one foot in a curl of metal and vaulted over the rail with several feet to spare. A member of Eden House stood there, a shocked look on his pale face. “Yoga,” I explained. “It’s good for more than making your way through the Kama Sutra.”
But it turned out his shock wasn’t for me and my gymnastic ways. As I picked up my gun, he said numbly, “They’re dead. Everyone’s dead.” He had dark blond hair, rumpled from the battle and darkened by the smoke, and a face marked with demon blood and devastation. It made me wish I’d kept my smart mouth shut.
“Not everyone.” I grabbed his arm and pulled him into the room I’d only just left. I’d heard the barrage of shots. When I passed through the door, I saw what I expected—a floor awash in dark fluid, the remains of the brown and green demons. The two gray ones were still very much in the game. That changed when they heard us come in behind them. One of them turned in time to see me pull the trigger. It turned to smoke before the bullets left my weapon. The other demon left on its own, disappearing as well. I didn’t know if it was from fear or the fact that its job was as good as completed. From what I could tell, I was standing with the last of Eden House Las Vegas—Zeke, Griffin, and this poor bastard whose own gun slipped from his hand to fall to the floor.
“Our house has fallen.” He rubbed his eyes against the smoke that continued to thicken. “How could that happen?”
Griffin moved up, turned the man around, and pushed him back out into the hall and toward the stairs. “We have to get out, Thomas. The authorities won’t be a problem, but burning to death will. Let’s go.”
The authorities wouldn’t be a problem. That meant one thing. “Trinity wasn’t here, then,” I stated as I followed them, coughing again. We all were. If we weren’t so close to the front door, there wouldn’t have been enough oxygen to make it. If Trinity wasn’t here, he would definitely clear things with the Vegas authorities. They either worked for him and Eden House or he owned them, one way or the other.
“No,” Griffin said as he continued to guide the dazed Thomas as we clattered down the stairs. “Neither is Goodman. They left for Miami. A meeting of the heads of the Houses.” So they were alive, and an alive Trinity was capable of covering up anything.
“The rats always know when a ship is sinking,” Zeke grunted.
“You think they knew this was coming?” I reached behind me to take Zeke’s wrist and pull him along faster. You’d think the man was meandering down to the kitchen for a snack.
“No. I think the Universe sucks. The dicks are eating steak and drinking wine while their soldiers die.” Zeke saw the warning glance Griffin shot from him to Thomas, but I didn’t think Thomas heard a word as we passed out of the house into clean night air. He was young, so young that he had to be newly recruited. His survival had been nothing more than a fluke or maybe he’d hidden during the battle. If so, I didn’t blame him. He looked like he’d never fought a single demon, much less a horde of them.
Outside we discovered there were a few more left, both demons and survivors like Thomas. The human survivors were only a handful, but they were holding their own for the moment. It was a very small and passing moment, though. They might have been fighting, but they were seconds away from being lunch meat. The three of us moved toward them and the ring of demons that surrounded them as Thomas fell to his knees and vomited. If they rebuilt Eden House here, I didn’t think he’d be a part of it. All the empathic or telepathic talent
in the world doesn’t make you a fighter. Genes, a screwed-up childhood, or training did that, but sometimes none of the three worked. Thomas would never be a warrior and I also suspected Thomas would never sleep through the night again.
But there were more urgent matters right now—to keep what remained of the House alive. The demons spotted us as we moved up behind them. The circle opened as half of them scattered to face us, while the other half moved in on the other six survivors. I aimed the MP5 at the two demons rushing me when Solomon appeared between us.
“Stop!” He was in human form as always, but his voice was anything but. It was the roar of a lion—the largest and most lethal one on the plains.
The demons hesitated, but the next thundering “Go!” left nothing but wisps of murky vapor floating in the air. Solomon turned to me. “I didn’t do this.”
I scrubbed the rest of the demon blood from my face with the sleeve of my shirt. “You think I care? You think whether or not you did makes a difference? Do you think I even believe you?” I checked my clip automatically and avoided grim gray eyes. You could’ve even said they were sympathetic . . . if you were that gullible. I never had been. I couldn’t afford to be. “Because we both know if you had a reason to take out Eden House, you would.”
“You think the Light is my reason.” He stepped closer, close enough to rest a hand on my arm. I heard Zeke growl, but Griffin must’ve held him back. “I’m more subtle in my tactics. Mass slaughter’s not my way. Murder isn’t my way. I’m different than the rest. I have control. I would not do this.”
“What about Eligos?” I demanded as the warm thumb rubbed the tender skin on the underside of my arm.
“He could . . . easily, but,” he added with obvious reluctance, “I don’t know that he did. I’ve heard nothing about a plan to destroy Eden House. All know this is my territory. No one beneath me would attempt anything like this without consulting me first. With my equals, I think I would have heard rumors. Gossip is a minor sin after all. We embrace it. This may have come from above.”
“There are demons above you and Eli besides the big guy?” I pulled from his grip, but not as quickly as I should have. I couldn’t deny the warmth felt good against my skin. “I’m surprised you’d admit it.”
“We have brothers who couldn’t come to Earth without setting the ground to flame beneath each foot-step. Whose gaze would kill anything it fell on.” His lips curled cynically. “Once far above archangels, now princes in Hell.”
“And you’re still waiting on the promotion.” I shoved my gun in my bag. I could hear the distant wail of sirens.
“A half million souls wouldn’t get me there.” The sirens were closer. “I’ll find out what I can.” He was gone as unexpectedly as he came. The sirens were closer. Our vanishing act wasn’t as darkly mystical as Solomon’s had been. Ours was more of the piling into my car, spinning in a circle, and peeling out of the driveway. I took my boys and the rest of the survivors ran to cars of their own. Trinity could deal with the explanation of the dead bodies—if he had to bother to explain at all. Eden House had tentacles in all levels of government, local and federal. For all I knew, they’d invented the concept of government . . . they or Lucifer.
The flames flickered in my rearview mirror, reminding me of all the times we’d burned Solomon’s club to the ground. Things come and things go, but one thing remained constant:
Fire consumed it all.
Chapter 12
They had been mostly dead when Griffin and Zeke had gotten to the House, their brothers and sisters in arms, Griffin told me that night while we’d cleaned our slashes and slices. He’d told me while Zeke had said nothing at all—not since we’d left the ruins of Eden House. They’d lost another home. They’d realized it was gone when Trinity had found out about their bringing outsiders into Eden House business—their “calling” from his point of view. But knowing it and seeing it burn before you, that was different. And knowing it and seeing those you’d fought side by side with for years die nearly to the man, that was so beyond different, and it had hit Zeke hard. A dead baby, dead companions . . . it was a lot to lose in such a short lifetime. Only twenty-five years old, and Zeke had already seen so much death—and considered himself the cause of a part of it. The fall of Eden House was pain all in itself and a painful reminder of what had happened in that bathtub ten years ago.
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.”