Trick Of The Light Part 5

I had known that Leo had a spark of light in him. Maybe I exaggerated when I thought goodness . . . maybe it was more a spark of reason. As for demons, did they have glimmers of good? They were once angels. Did they have the occasional doubt about what they did? And just what was it they did do? Kill, okay. Any sociopath alive could explain why they did that-simply because they wanted to. But bargaining for souls? I was sure plenty of souls ended up "downtown" anyway. Why would they need more?

"What do you do with the souls you bargain for?" I asked, changing the subject to something other than Zeke and Griffin. If I hadn't, I'd have to shoot Solomon, although half the blame was mine, and that wasn't the most delicate way of getting information out of someone. It tended to cut down on their cooperation fairly quickly.

"We eat them." He sat opposite me and set the mug before me. He leaned back in his chair and linked fingers across the dark gray s.h.i.+rt covering his stomach. "Don't look so surprised. We have to get energy from somewhere. Lucifer is but a fallen angel himself. He can't feed us the way the angels are fed by the Glory and the Grace." He almost had a touch of respect as he said the last, still remembering how it had felt. "And some of us require much more energy than those lower demons you kill so easily"-he paused, obviously considering the night before-"usually with ease, at any rate."

"So all demons aren't created equal?" That was interesting-with more power came more need.

"Hardly. The hierarchies that existed above exist below. Those mud- and slime-colored demons that are so prevalent were the lowest of angels. Former messengers. If you'd ripped off their wings, they may as well have been human. Pigeons," he snorted in disdain. "Before the Rebellion came, they might as well have been flying Heaven's Hallmark cards here and there. They have none of our glory."

I guessed in some higher angels' eyes that hanging around with humans was their version of slumming it. But if you were a fallen angel, it became automatic. Ironic. Nope. More like karmic. I drank the tea. If Solomon were going to try to kill me, poisoned honey would not be his weapon of choice.

So Solomon had been a high-and-mighty angel in his day. It figured. He was simply too arrogant to have been anything else. "A soul is just a snack, then." After all that's said and done, it was sad to have that luminous quality ending up as something akin to a Happy Meal. It was a great pity for those who didn't know the value of what lived in them. "At least there's plenty to go around. Billions of humans, but not so many demons. Exactly how many of you guys are there anyway?"

"Not enough, and we can't grow. G.o.d can create, but Lucifer cannot." The gray eyes were grim-the ashes of a crusader 's loss. "There's a war on. A cold war at the moment, but still a war. Surely you knew that. I know a good little girl like you went to Sunday School."

"Actually I had a problem with sh.e.l.lfish being an abomination." The tea was good, hot and sweet. I smiled and tapped a nail on the table. "I do love my oyster shooters. Hard to respect a G.o.d who won't let me have that."

"You're Jewish?" he asked, momentarily distracted.

"No, Solomon, just a smart-a.s.s." I drank more of the tea. It was soothing. I'd had a hard night. I could use a little soothing.

"As if that's news to me," he said with an almost-indulgent smile. "So, what do you know about the Light of Life?"

Ah. Not a routine seduction visit. Hun the pervert had sold me out or else Solomon had followed another rumor. Solomon was here for a reason far from s.e.x and a very good reason it was too. The Light of Life. And why not? Solomon had to be one of Below's top players. Who better to send looking? And as he said, there was a war on. Not an out-and-out war. More of a cold war. No angels storming h.e.l.l, no demons a.s.saulting Heaven. Not yet. The demons simply didn't have the numbers, and if you didn't have that, then you needed some other edge. Such as the Light.

"I know you're nowhere near that to me yet." I tilted my gaze over the mug's edge. "Not the light of my life. Not my reason for being. Not my pookie-bear. But you keep trying, Solomon. Maybe one day you'll get there."

He stood in a motion so smooth and fast he put a cheetah to shame. Slamming both hands down on the table, he demanded darkly, "You've been sniffing around. Don't think I don't see that. Don't for an instant think I don't know. Now, tell me about the Light."

I nodded at his right hand, where my second combat knife had just been embedded through the flesh and bone into the table beneath it. This time it was the other way around-a demon underestimated me. "I know a Snoopy Band-Aid should take care of that." I also knew the hand was quicker than the human eye. And demons were quicker than that, but not in this case. He appeared sincerely surprised. Why, I wasn't sure. If I had one knife in my one boot for his chest, what did he think I had in the other one? Tickets to Spamalot?

Men.

Demons.

I might have miscalculated with the second category last night, but they returned the favor on a daily basis. Although usually not Solomon. Outside of the House of Eden's hunters, I might be the only nondemon he respected. But apparently he didn't respect me quite enough. I thought I'd just changed that and that put me one up on what Solomon thought of Eden House hunters.

Hunters . . . Zeke. Griffin. I put the mug down as Solomon yanked the knife, blood dripping from the serrated edge, from his hand. Pretty. But not pretty enough to make me forget. If Zeke had died, I would've killed Solomon the moment he'd stepped from the shadows. I'd have taken that shotgun and ended whatever this thing was we had between us. I'd tried so hard not to let anything interfere with seeking vengeance for Kimano, but Zeke and Griffin, no matter how much I wanted to deny it, had stepped into a place close to his. To the right, to the left. Not his spot in my heart, but near . . . very near. My brothers, whether I wanted them to be or not-whether they screwed up my plans or not. They had done it and I'd seen it coming, tried to stop it, but in the end . . .

That Zeke was in the same shape made Solomon the luckiest demon alive.

"You really should be Eden House. You're quick. So very quick." He flipped the blade, ignoring the black blood staining his fingers, and offered the handle to me. "For a human."

"I'm a savant. Some are good with music, some math. I'm very, very good with sharp things." I took the knife and gave an internal sigh at the cleaning job lying ahead, bound to clog up the dishwasher. "Some of us might be born hunters, but that doesn't mean it's the path we have to choose. Officially. I like my independence. I don't need any little social clubs like Eden House to back me up." I gave a triple flip of the blade and caught it by the black rubber handle again. "What could they possibly have to offer me except chains?"

His hand had healed in an instant, the same as his chest had. "You're not telling me a thing, are you?"

I waved fingers at him and drank more of my tea. "Don't worry. I'm not telling Eden House anything either. If G.o.d wants the Light, Above will have to come begging to me, just like you did. And they'll get the same thing right now. Nothing."

"G.o.d?" he repeated, appearing genuinely astonished. "You think G.o.d has anything to do with this? With Eden House?"

I frowned. "He doesn't?"

He shook his head. "And you thought you knew it all, didn't you? No. G.o.d has been hands-off since the Rebellion. The angels with free will have taken it upon themselves to form a middle management, if you will. To carry on Heaven's work or what they think Heaven's work might be. G.o.d didn't start Eden House. Man did. And then angels took advantage of it. Why soil their lily-white hands when they can get Man to do it for them? Why fight demons when Eden House will train soldiers to stand in their place?"

"And what does G.o.d think of all this?" I asked.

Shrugging lightly, he replied with a trace of melancholy, "I'm a demon. I don't know G.o.d's word or will anymore."

"And the angels?"

"I don't think they know either. G.o.d is the sun to them now, warm, loving, but silent. Distant." He was silent as well for a moment, remembering or thinking, before he finally mused, the gray of his eyes lightened to an almost silver, "You're fortunate that I find you so . . . unique. Be careful of your back, Trixa. You humans, so fragile."

From most demons . . . I would've said all demons up until then . . . that would've sounded like a threat. This didn't sound like that. This sounded different. Like Solomon was different. But what was that difference? There was a thought that kept turning round and round in my head. A little kid's whirligig, spinning. Always spinning. Black, then red, then silver, and which was real? Which was true?

Black.

Red.

Silver.

"I didn't mean for you to be hurt. I didn't mean for our game to go this far," he said softly, eyes inscrutable. "We're angels, you know. Fallen, but still angels."

Then the door opened behind him and he disappeared into the shadow of it. Sank into the puddle of darkness on the floor. Angels . . .

Who ate souls, but had to if he wanted to survive. An angel who bargained for souls, but always gave fair trade. Gave you what you asked for. Even the Better Business Bureau couldn't fault him there.

Angels or demons or both . . . and I had a headache. But I also had a client and this one couldn't wait.

"Did you find him?" She was thirteen years old and not living on the street, but not precisely living off the street either. Her hair was long, lank brown and hadn't been washed in a few days, and her frame was skinny but not too skinny. She was getting food somewhere. She probably hung out around the shelters. I didn't ask her name because I knew it. Alone. She was alone in the world and when she thought of herself, that's probably the only thing she called herself. Alone. Until a few weeks ago, but the past few days had been a return to that alone.

Kimano, Zeke, Griffin, Solomon, the Light . . . they were all things beyond me at the moment, but not this. I grinned and whistled. There was a skittering of paws and a dog just as brown as its owner came speeding out of the kitchen, half a hot dog still hanging from his mouth. Brown, yes. Lank like the girl, no. He was round like a beach ball.

Wary blue eyes turned clear in an instant and she scooped up the homely hound. It snarfed the last of the meat and licked her face enthusiastically. "Koko." She didn't care about her own name, but the dog . . . the dog had a name. She squeezed her eyes shut for a moment as she hugged him and when they opened again, they were just as wary as in the beginning. "How much?"

"This one's pro bono," I said, grinning back at the dog. Two of a kind we were. We saw life and hot dogs and seized the day. Carpe diem. Carpe canis. Beef canis. Pork canis. Kosher canis. As long as it had mustard and relish, we were good. Right, doggy? The tongue lolled at me in what I was sure was agreement.

The girl's forehead wrinkled at the pro bono and I elaborated, "Free."

"Nothing is free," she said with prompt suspicion.

"Just come by next weekend and clean out the alley and we'll call it even." I finished my tea. "And come by any afternoon and my bar guy Leo will feed Koko. I like dogs." I leaned across the table and tickled Koko's belly.

"What about people?" She lowered her head and the brown hair spilled forward, hiding her face.

"People I can take or leave." I moved to the dog's chin and it kicked its back legs ecstatically. "But Leo is a softy. If he likes you, he might even feed you too."

She snorted. "Find my dog for nothing. Free food. You're a sucker."

I laughed. No one . . . no one, not in my entire life, had called me a sucker. "Leo will like you all right. He'll feed you breakfast, lunch, and dinner if you want. It'll be greasy, but it'll be food." I jerked a thumb. "Go out the back through the kitchen. If you happen to see any food lying around, help yourself."

She hesitated. "Aren't you going to even ask my name?"

"You don't know your name. When you figure out what it is, then you can tell me," I said with a yawn. "And it's not Alone. That's no kind of name for anyone. So think on it."

She vanished almost as quickly as Solomon had, but I doubt he'd taken a loaf of bread and an industrial-sized package of cheese with him. Too bad. He might have found that tastier than eating souls.

The rest of the day I spent napping and popping one more pain pill. They give you weird dreams, those pills. Bright colors, drifting like the wind. I saw Kimano again, but always out of reach. Always moving away. Always leaving me behind. The same as ever they were, only in brighter colors . . . more real, and if I had been just a little faster, I could've touched him. Touched his skin. Turned him to see the laughter in his eyes.

Later that night I flushed the rest of the pills down the toilet. Numb my back and claw my heart; it wasn't a good exchange.

Not at all.

Chapter 6.

The next morning I went hiking-that would be "hiking" with quotes around it and a good amount of subtext. Leo didn't want to go with me-he said the limp, shuffle, drag of my hiking boots was giving him flashbacks. I wasn't sure if those flashbacks were to the last Mummy movie he'd seen or some previous work he'd had at a nursing home as an orderly. Grumbling and b.i.t.c.hing aside, he came along in the end. He also brought snacks and a cooler. At least he was good for something, I told him.

"You'll be begging for that something one day," he challenged, "and I might not give it to you. Ever think of that, 'boss'?"

We swapped glances, both responded "Nah," with a grin, and I started the car. He shrugged and propped his cowboy-booted feet out the window; it was the only way he'd fit in my little racing bug of a car even with the top down. "But there's no denying you've always liked the bad boys. Robin, for example, he couldn't keep it in his pants if an alligator was undoing the zipper."

"Oh, come on. You're exaggerating." He wasn't. "And the donkey thing. That was a complete lie." I was hoping. "Total urban legend." I turned on a country music station. I didn't like country music really, but lately the women singers were stomping the h.e.l.l out of their cheating, lying, no-good men. Blowing up their trucks, setting their houses on fire . . . righteous vengeance. Maybe I should sign up for Eden House. And, lo, we shall smite the sinner with good old country girl ingenuity-all we need are boots and lighter fluid. "And you're one to talk. You dated that one with the b.o.o.b job five years ago." I steadied the wheel with both knees while I held out my hands about two feet in front of me. "They were bigger than the Himalayas. I swear I saw a goat grazing in there, and its shepherd probably suffocated on her perfume." I dated the bad. Leo dated the bimbos.

He snorted. "Wake me up when we get there."

In Vegas there are two places: your destination and then the circles of h.e.l.l called construction you have to pa.s.s through to get there. This time they'd been doing construction under the Spaghetti Bowl, the intersection of I-15 and U.S. 95, for more than a month. Every time I pa.s.sed through it, I used it as an educational experience to watch the pearification of a man's a.s.s and to practice the curse words of every language I knew, which, considering how much I'd traveled in my youth, were more than a few. Some days it was entertaining if I didn't have anyplace better to be. Some days, as I watched an entire line of men sit on a guard-rail and do nothing but swig Gatorade and work on their tans instead of the pavement, it got old.

Today it was old. Very, very old.

Until it wasn't.

I finally wove my way inch by inch through the orange barrels, and had just snailed my way beneath the shadow of the overpa.s.s when the squeal was first heard. Failing brakes, the heart-banging crumple-crunch of metal against asphalt, and in my rearview mirror, the truck tumbling over the side. Its cab's front wheels caught at the last minute and out of the back catapulted hundreds of cans of red paint. They hit the asphalt, popped their tops, and geysered the scarlet fluid high in the air . . . into a sudden gust of wind that pushed the flood of it sideways. Every still-unmoving, gaping-mouthed "worker" out there was coated in it.

Now wasn't that lucky?

I put on my brakes and turned for a better look. "Ha!" said the truck driver who'd scrambled to safety. He was pointing down at the workers on the road beneath the overpa.s.s. "Take that, you lazy-a.s.s motherf.u.c.kers. Next time you hear brakes, I bet you get off that fat a.s.s just like that." He went on ranting as road worker arms were flung out, dripping red, and blank-eyed bodies shambled through a river of red paint. It was pretty as any picture in those fancy art galleries you'd find in the casinos. I tucked the mental picture away for later savoring as I stepped on the gas again, still watching it all in the mirror until it faded from sight.

Blood from the sky. Who knew laziness would trigger the Apocalypse?

Which put me in the mood for some old, cheesy eighties, heavy metal music, and I listened to that all the way up to the caver's hovel. When I stopped the car in a cloud of dust, Leo yawned, lifted his hat, and grunted, "I feel very, very angry and in the need of hair spray and a pentacle-studded leather codpiece. Your doing?"

I ignored him and pointed out the shack. "That's where his body was. I think our best bet is to go into town"-a couple of more shacks and a few mobile homes-"and check out his friends when they come down for supplies." Today was the day everyone stocked up and caught up. I found that out with a little earlier investigation. But there would be one-one who wouldn't show up. That would be the one we'd have to go tracking. Jeb had told Hun; he would've told someone else. Hun couldn't be counted as anyone's best friend and closest and only confidante.

"Too bad your last girlfriend isn't here. The Amazon. She could've piggybacked us into the mountains." I started the car back toward town.

"She wasn't an Amazon. She was a nice girl," he said with a calm that was possibly more annoying than the Amazon had been.

"She was six foot five if she was an inch. She could've taken off that belly ring, put it around my neck, and led me about like one of those little yappy dogs." All right, maybe she'd only been six foot one, but she had been taller than she deserved and her stiletto stripper shoes made her even taller.

"Funny you should say that." His lips curved. "You're not the first."

I narrowed my eyes behind dark sungla.s.ses. "She did not."

"Said you'd be her first s.h.i.+ksa-poo. She could get one for all her friends. They'd be the toast of the temple."

I narrowed my eyes further and a brown finger wagged once. "Nuh uh, little girl." He emphasized "little," the b.a.s.t.a.r.d. "That's not how it works. We don't screen one another's hookups or dates. No retaliation, no matter how low our opinion, remember? Which means you can't fill her car with mating tarantulas . . . again."

"Fine. Fine," I said irritably as we pulled into town. We talked to the dusty locals, who knew all of Jeb the aver 's friends. Turned out Jeb even had a last name: McVann. "One-sixteenth Indian, he was," said one old guy who'd been around long enough for that term to go from politically correct, to incorrect, to back again without any idea things had ever changed. "Get the old sot drunk and he'd go on and on so much, you'd think he'd been the one to stick the arrow in Custer's d.i.c.k at Little Bighorn himself."

He, one Artie Beaver, served me another canned lemonade at his trailer/refreshment stand. "Yeah, he was all about the land and saving your home. I told him if the Indians had saved their home, fifteen-sixteenths of his a.s.s'd be back in Scotland drinking warm beer and wearing a kilt." He shrugged. Artie was a big guy, happy and helpful, but he didn't know much more than that. He knew Jeb was dead and that his friends would be down today to say a few words, restock, and head back up. And for a few dollars he'd point them out for me. I handed over the money willingly. Artie was working hard entertaining me. He deserved to be paid.

"Guess he just wanted roots." He carefully swiped at my rickety plastic table. If he'd wiped too hard, it probably would've collapsed under the attention. It was older than Methuselah and cheaper than a bleached-blond, teenage pop star. "We all want roots, right?"

But sometimes only the ones we pick. Still, that might have been why Jeb found the Light. He believed in saving and protecting. No better person around here to have found it. Leo and I sat and watched as the day dragged on. It was comfortable. I didn't miss the summer heat. I enjoyed it when it was there and I enjoyed the cooler temperatures when it was gone. Mama had taught us that. Appreciate what you can't change, and change what you can't appreciate. She was as tough as the mountains around us and filled to the brim with common sense. I liked to think she'd pa.s.sed that on to me, but she'd also said more than once that I wasn't half as clever as I thought I was. Considering what I thought of myself, that still made me pretty d.a.m.n clever. That att.i.tude had gotten me more than a swat or two when I was younger. I'd learned to temper my self-belief in my quick wits with a dash of caution. It wasn't enough. A swat to my a.s.s was still waiting for me at every family reunion. I yawned, stretched my legs out, and let Leo be my eyes for a while. I didn't nap, but I let the world slide gently out of focus.

"How's your back?" Leo asked.

"Well, I'm off it, unlike your Amazonian ex, so that's something," I retorted, resting a shoulder against the iron pole holding up the canopy.

"This is ridiculous. If you would just . . . ," he started.

"No."

He sighed and pa.s.sed over two Tylenol, a far stretch from what my back really needed, but it would have to do. "Once, my brother lied and told my father, this was after he and I stopped speaking, that I was spending time with you. . . ." He shook his head, the black braid undulating along his back. "I heard that the old b.a.s.t.a.r.d laughed so long and hard that he choked on his venison and pa.s.sed out at the table."

Our families were familiar with one another, to say the least, and we followed the same general ideological path, had the same long lineage. What my family knew of the world, Leo's knew equally as well. We hadn't grown up next door, hardly anything that mundane with the travel blood so strong in me and mine, but we pa.s.sed their way now and again. Leo's family had what Jeb had wanted: roots. Leo could follow his family back as long as I could, an oral history that put the most convoluted and far-reaching of family trees to shame. Back to the mammoths and beyond wouldn't be an exaggeration. A historian would be foaming at the mouth to talk to him. Of all of his family, though, only Leo was a wanderer now. When you're kicked out of house and home, you don't have much choice.

"Did he think I would be a little much for you?" I rested my sungla.s.ses in my hair.

"More than that. He thought you'd be the death of me." He pulled off his hat and waved it at a raven far overhead. "And I'm not so sure he would be wrong."

"Chicken," I teased. "Oh, come on. Where's the harm? Lots of twosomes do just fine. Friends or lovers, and living it up." I toasted him with the can of lemonade.

"Like Butch and Sundance?" he said knowingly. "Thelma and Louise? Romeo and Juliet? Nitroglycerin and a pogo stick?"

"Don't be so dramatic," I tsked as I finished the flat lemon drink. "And I think the wake has started. Let's go see who didn't show up."

About six people were there, including the truck molester. We mixed and mingled. I'd dressed down. Leo looked like he looked. We had "good folk" written all over us. After some talking, we discovered the only friend of Jeb's missing was John Wilbur. I'd wriggled directions to the guy's place out of Artie. Normally, he wouldn't have, but I was playing cute and feisty for all I was worth and Leo was dessert from the looks of him. Charisma, Leo and I had it in spades when we wanted. Demons weren't the only ones who could bring out the flash, and even Artie couldn't stand against it. "You'd make great con men," he'd grumbled as we took off.

Isn't it great when your calling and your work are the same?