Trick of the Light

Chapter 15

I gave up on my red that morning and went with Kimano’s colors, the black of the lava sand beach, the black of his hair, the black of a shark’s eyes. This was his day. A snug, black long-sleeved, thin sweater; black pants; and black climbing boots. When I went downstairs, Griffin and Zeke were dressed much the same, only with more weapons. I shook my head. “Trinity won’t let you take the guns.” Zeke scowled as heavily as a toddler whose security blanket had been cruelly yanked away. “We’ll see,” he said stubbornly.

“He’s your partner,” I pointed out to Griffin. “Prod a few of his brain cells if you can. I’m calling for breakfast. What do you guys want?”

Griffin sat on a stool, lowering his head enough that the long sides of his blond hair fell into his eyes. He looked annoyed and he looked dangerous. Truthfully, he was probably both. Being dangerous was the only way he might survive the day. As for annoyance, I guessed he slept on the floor instead of spooning on the couch. His loss. “I don’t think breakfast is that important right now.”

“Then you think wrong.” I called the diner—I didn’t want to walk even a block with what winged things might be hovering out there. I ordered three breakfasts and when they arrived a half hour later, I ate all three of them. Omelet, hash browns, toast, two fried eggs, three slices of ham, scrambled eggs, bacon, three donuts, and about half a gallon of milk. Lenny clucked disapprovingly and disappeared for a while. Scrounging up his own breakfast.

“What are you doing? Do you have a hidden conjoined twin you’re feeding too?” Griffin watched in disbelief as I ate bite after bite.

“This is the endgame, Griff. I’m going to need my energy. You might want to rethink it yourself.”

But it was too late for that. Trinity was at the door with Goodman, two other men, and Oriphiel, who was back in one piece after whatever Eligos had done to him last night. His human form didn’t have a scratch. It worked that way when you could remake yourself from angel or demon to human and back. If you could reform yourself, you could banish any wounds—provided you’d survived those wounds. There wasn’t much reforming after the death of your scaly body, and I still wasn’t sure angels could die. I’d never tried to kill one . . . not that hard, anyway. “It’s time to go. Would you care to fill us in as to where that would be, as we have a helicopter in a parking lot two blocks down.”

“Leviathan Cave.” No research needed. It had come to me crystal clear as the Bottle House exploded around me. “Leviathan, a devil’s name . . . appropriate, don’t you think? That can’t be a coincidence.” I finished a last swallow of a bottle of orange juice. “Seems to tip the scales more toward your downstairs brothers.”

Trinity seemed less than pleased at the news, but asked blandly, “You are sure?”

“Oh, I’m sure.” I pushed away from the table. “I couldn’t be more sure.”

Leviathan Cave is north of Rachel, Nevada, about three hours from Vegas. A gigantic sinkhole, one entrance, was on the flank of Meeker Peak in the Worthington Mountain Range, and was big enough for a helicopter to set down in. Convenient, as I didn’t have any desire to make a strenuous four-mile climb up the side. As the cave itself wasn’t even one-fourth of a mile long, I didn’t think the Light would be hard to find when we arrived. Hard to hold on to?

We’d see.

I didn’t see any more angels on the walk to the helicopter or Eligos or Solomon, but I knew that at least the latter two would show up even if they didn’t ride along with us. Oriphiel did ride, surprisingly enough. He didn’t disappear into a ray of the morning sun or a flash of bright glory, but I expected he wanted to keep an eye on my friends and me. Try to run one angel down with a car and they become distrustful. Where was the spirit of forgiveness, I ask you? As for cranky Zeke, it was as I said it was. Trinity, Goodman, and the others wouldn’t allow any of their weapons aboard, at least not until they were secured in a locked strongbox. “Traitors have no weapon rights,” Goodman said as he held out his hand for Zeke’s beloved Colt Anaconda. If Zeke hadn’t respected his gun so much, I thought Goodman might have a colonoscopy without the benefit of hospital equipment and anesthesia and instead the use of something that vented muzzle fire. Not too pleasant, but Zeke certainly seemed to think he deserved it.

But with my encouragement, the partners grudgingly turned over their guns and knives. Big trust in me, huge. I’d do everything I could to make sure I came through for them. Trinity and his men kept their weapons and didn’t bother to hide the fact. The helicopter was big . . . not military big, but larger than your average traffic copter. We all fit. Even Lenore, who had returned to ride on my shoulder.

“And that is?” Goodman sniped.

“Moral support.” I climbed into the middle row of seats with Zeke and Griffin. Goodman flew with Trinity beside him. Oriphiel and the other two House members sat in the last row behind us. Sandwiched between the holy and the holier-than-thou. As the helicopter took off, I looked out of the right window in the side door. I thought I saw a flicker of wings. Copper or gray-silver, I couldn’t be sure—it was too quick. I smiled. It didn’t matter which. They would both show. Greed—humans hadn’t cornered the market on that. My demons would be there. And at least one of them was as murderous as they came.

I continued to look at the pink and blue sky as I sang lightly under my breath. My voice wasn’t the best, but that was all right. As long as it was sung, that’s what counted. Lenore crooned lightly on my shoulder. His voice was worse than mine, and that made it even better. Kimano would’ve laughed himself sick that his mele kani kau, his mourning song, was sung by his tone-deaf sister and a croaking raven.

“What are you singing?” Griffin asked. That he could hear me was testament to the luxury and soundproof ing of the helicopter. The president wished he had one so nice.

“A song for my kaikunane.” Kaikunane—my brother. I finished up the Hawaiian good-bye and watched as Vegas passed beneath us. I might have stayed in Las Vegas ten years and considered that the longest any of my family stuck around a place, but Kimano had returned to Hawaii so many times, he may as well have lived there. Mama probably wondered how she’d gone so wrong with the both of us.

“It was . . . nice,” Zeke said, making the effort, as uncomfortable as it was for him. He meant it too. No mocking of my lack of singing talent.

“Thanks, Kit.” I reached over Griffin and patted the denim over Zeke’s knee.

“Would your brother have liked us, you think?” Griffin folded his arms and slanted his gaze at me. “I mean, you treat us like younger brothers,” he snorted, not all that appreciative of the younger part, apparently. “Do you think your brother would’ve liked us?”

An interesting question. “Once he got to know you,” I mused—once he had genuinely, deeply got to know them—“then, yes, he would’ve liked you. He liked almost everyone.”

There was a long moment of silence except for the muted whirring of the rotor blades. Zeke kicked the back of the seat in front of him. “I want my gun,” he growled flatly.

“Make that little brothers, not younger ones,” I said dryly. “And me with no PayDays this time.”

“It’s all right. It’s time for a tutor session. That’ll distract him. Zeke loves tutoring.” Griffin gave a faint, mocking smile.

Zeke just snarled and slouched further down in the seat. “You suck. We could die today and you want to tutor me?”

Griffin smiled blissfully, and with that blond hair and blue eyes, his expression was as blissful as on Michelangelo’s David and then some. He crossed his arms, reciting, “A grandmother with a stroller carrying twin babies and a cocker spaniel puppy are crossing the road. They’re about to be hit by a bus. About two blocks down the street, a low-level demon is eating breakfast at an outdoor café and reading the paper. Do you save Granny, kiddies, and pup, or go kill the demon?”

The scowl on Zeke’s face deepened as he thought, and from the furrowing of his brow, he thought hard. After nearly three minutes, long ones, he asked, “There’s a puppy in the stroller?”

“Yes.” Griffin said in an aside to me, “This is why we have the tutoring.”

“Is it cute?” Zeke asked.

Patiently, his partner answered, “It’s a spaniel puppy. On a scale of one to ten, it’s a ten in cute, and, yes, ten is the highest level of cute you can get.”

“Damn.” He couldn’t slouch any further, although he gave it his best try. “The demon’s two blocks away. Do I have a clear shot?”

“No.”

By the time we arrived at the Worthington Mountain Range, nearly an hour later, Granny, tots, and the world’s cutest puppy had just been flattened by a city bus. But a demon had had his breakfast rudely interrupted with a shotgun slug to the head. “I think you got that one wrong,” I said as the copter hovered above the giant entrance to Leviathan Cave.

“It’s the puppy,” Zeke muttered. “I know I should always go with the puppy, but I like shooting things.” Demons, robbers, whatever the occasion provided. “Why did God make the NRA if shooting isn’t always the right answer? And grandmas shouldn’t push strollers. They’re too damn slow.” He knocked on the glass of his window, an idea obviously having struck him. “What if I shot the bus driver, then . . .”

Griffin and I said together, “No.” If anyone was expecting a commentary on Zeke’s slightly psychopathic decision-making skills from the angel Oriphiel behind us, they didn’t get it. If a demon had been sitting back there though, assuming it wasn’t the hypothetical one having breakfast and reading the paper, I imagine Zeke would’ve gotten a cheerful thumbs-up on the hat trick of granny/puppy/kiddy squashing.

“What now?” asked Goodman from the front.

“Land inside the opening. It should be big enough,” I said.

It was and then some. With a name like Leviathan and the massive size of the sinkhole entrance, you almost could believe it was the open gates of Hell itself. But it wasn’t. It was only a cave and a rather beautiful one at that.

The copter sat down mostly easy, tilted about six inches due to a rock formation that couldn’t be avoided. Outside were deep pink and gray stalagmites and stalactites and a torrent of light from the opening almost twenty feet above. I opened the door once the rotors stopped and stepped out to look up at the circle of sky. I could imagine that’s how being born felt like if a baby could remember that far back. A light, colors you hadn’t dreamed existed, and a brand-new world. If only they could hold on to that moment forever, because there would never be another like it—that moment when everything is new, and evil is just a word you haven’t learned yet.

Griffin passed me, eyes cast upward—blue reflecting blue. As he moved on, I took Zeke’s arm when he started to follow him and whispered softly in his ear. “Choices are hard, Kit. Someone’s always telling you you’re wrong. But there’ll come a time today that you’ll have to make one and almost everyone around you will tell you what to do. What they say might seem like the right thing, maybe the only thing, but some choices, Zeke, you have to make yourself. Don’t listen to what anyone else says—not to them, not even to me. You do what you feel . . . what you know is right.”

“You think I can?” he said dubiously.

“I do.” I meant it. I hoped it.

“Even after the puppy?”

“You will this time. I know you will.” I pinched his ribs hard. “Besides, don’t think I didn’t know you were yanking Griffin’s chain with the babies and puppy thing.”

He smirked. “I was.” The smirk faded and the next words were utterly serious. “I always know about babies. I screw up most of the time. Robbers. Cab drivers. The jackass who cuts in front of me at McDonald’s. But I always know about babies.”

“I know.” I touched the scar on his neck. “Remember, I have faith in you. Griffin has faith in you. Just have faith in yourself.” He gave a hesitant and confused nod, then trailed after his partner. It would have to do and was all I could do.

Lenore shifted on my shoulder and gave what suspiciously sounded like a dubious mumble at my ear. “You’re just a bird, Lenny,” I warned. “Don’t forget it or I’ll put a bow around your neck and let the tourists take pictures with you.” Not that the first was close to being true, but ears were everywhere, and not that there would be any more tourists for me once this was over, but Lenore pretended to take the threat to heart nonetheless and winged away, circling the huge cavern.

“The Light,” came a voice from behind me. I didn’t need the incipient frostbite to know who it was.

“You’re not a patient man, Mr. Trinity.” I turned and, wishing I’d worn a jacket, folded my arms against the cold. To give the man credit, it wasn’t actually him lowering the temperature. The air in the cave was in the low fifties and I was a woman who preferred the warmer climates. I’d been all over, but Kimano and I both had been sun lovers. I’d done my share of traveling up north, sometimes far up north, but insulation was my friend when I went there. Sometimes you’d be hard-pressed to tell the difference between a polar bear and me if I saw a single snowflake.

“You’re still alive. I consider that to be exceedingly patient of me. Now, where is the Light?” He and the three other Eden Housers cradled shotguns. Oriphiel stood apart from them, the big boss waiting for his mocha latte no foam to be delivered to him. He was in human form, the same pale gray suit, the same silver hair and eyes, pale skin. The light from above hit him, turning him into a molten metal statue, peaceful . . . not the crystal warrior who’d gouged holes in the metal of my car last night. I couldn’t see him carrying a flaming sword in the old days. A crystal one that shimmered with the light of the moon—I could see that. Could see it cutting a mountain in half or an army of the wicked. All that power, all that lack of empathy for those he should protect. Maybe the best and brightest didn’t make up the middle management that watched the earth. God could be teaching them a lesson in his silence. The lesson might be compassion, or at the very least, that humans had value. And some did learn. They had to—it was the law of averages.

“Around.” I looked back up at the sky. Kimano hadn’t seen the sky when he had died. He’d been killed in his sleep. The demonic bastard that had murdered him had done it while my brother slept. I didn’t know which was worse: that my brother hadn’t had a chance to defend himself or that he would’ve been awake and died anyway. He’d been good—in spirit and heart, the way the word should be used. Not a fighter unless he absolutely had to. Genuinely too good to be part of our ragtag, scrappy family. When children thought of angels, they thought of someone like Kimano, not the Silver Surfer standing over there.

Strange, how I remembered that, the Silver Surfer, Iron Man, Superman, but Zeke read a lot of comic books—or graphic novels as he called them—when he was fifteen. Always the superheroes. He’d wanted to fly like they did. Don’t we all?

“Then I suggest you look around and find it, before I retire Reese or Hawkins now. I will let you choose which one if you like,” he offered, his finger resting on the trigger. “I’d suggest Hawkins as first choice. An excellent telepath, but an inferior everything else. Our gardener never quite recovered from the punch in the face and the subsequent mauling by an angry rodent. Plastic surgery can only do so much.”

I was with Zeke. Gophers deserved living more than the rich deserved a smooth lawn of Spanish Trails grass. But I moved to play my part. Trixa the Bloodhound. Only this bloodhound was about to gnaw through that Eden House leash and start the action and the auction.

I looked at Zeke and Griffith across the cavern. They were ready. They might not have weapons, but that didn’t make them not dangerous. It only put them at a disadvantage. “Even having all of Heaven on your side can’t keep your House whole or get your panties out of that massive wad. What a shame.” I started away from them. “It’s this way.”

There were several offshoots, crawl spaces, off the main cave, and I passed three of them before stopping at the fourth. It was just big enough to wriggle through, if you were five feet five and average size. Trinity and his boys were paying the price now for their testosterone- and milk-pushing mothers. They weren’t going to make it. Jeb himself, the caver who’d originally found the Light, wouldn’t have either. He must’ve rolled it in as far as it would go. It turned out to be pretty far. And then there it was.

The Light of Life.

That which could protect anything. Keep anything or anyone in the world safe. It sat on the stone and it looked like . . . like nothing I’d ever seen. I’d felt it in my head for days now, but I hadn’t pictured it. It was a crystal, but it was alive. I didn’t need it in my head to tell me that. It was the size of a cantaloupe with too many facets to guess at first glance and each facet was a different color. Gold, green, blue, purple . . . until I touched it, and then it glowed the purest white. It wasn’t a blazing light to hurt the eyes, but a soft radiance. It went through you . . . the soft give of a mother ’s breast against a baby’s cheek. First love. Last love. Lying alone under a blanket of summer stars and knowing at the moment that was enough, that was everything.

“The lesser of evils. Truly?” I smiled and placed my hand on top of it and it was home. To a traveler like me, home was where you stopped moving for more than a day. Almost a dirty word. Something you turned your nose up at, although Vegas had managed to show me that a home could be not so bad . . . for a few years maybe. But the Light gave the word new meaning. You could live in that light, that love, that hope, float there cradled in warmth forever. “You like me,” I murmured, my hand tingling pleasantly, “don’t lie.”

“Iktomi!” The hard shout came from behind me. “Is it there?”

“You can call me Trixa if you want,” I told the Light. “It’s for friends. You and I, we will be the best of friends.” My name was shouted again. I sighed, “For as long as you’re around. Let’s go. You have quite the crowd waiting to meet you.”

“I can’t back out,” I shouted back. “Too many stone projections. But I think the tunnel curves back around into the main cavern. I’ll see you there.” I added under my breath, “Ass.” I ignored the further shouts behind me and scooped up the light and held it against my chest as I awkwardly crawled on, using one arm and two tired knees.

It wasn’t that far, but it took me almost fifteen minutes of inching along, the Light humming against my chest, a subtle vibration I could feel even in the muscle of my beating heart. Its glow was the only light for several minutes before I saw the illumination of an opening ahead. “And here we go,” I murmured. “Are you ready for this, because it’s going to be all sorts of interesting.”

I received the intriguing sensation of a swat inside my brain. My mama would’ve swatted me the same, actually. She would’ve swatted me for taking so long. I wasn’t sure, but I thought the Light thought I was taking unnecessary risks . . . although its thoughts weren’t quite that concrete. They were expressed in concepts more fluid than those in my mind. But if that’s what it was thinking, it was right. Kimano would have his day and I didn’t care about risk. It was mine to take. Griffin and Zeke weren’t quite as at risk as Mr. Trinity thought. Mr. Trinity, while ruthless and a pain in every body part I owned, wasn’t quite as smart as he imagined he was. Maybe those panties of his were cutting off his circulation and not letting enough blood to his brain.

Wasn’t he wondering where the demons were? Did he think he and the other three with shotguns would do the trick . . . against higher demons? No. And he had to know about the higher demons. He was first in Vegas Eden House. He knew about Solomon, if not about Eligos, although Oriphiel could’ve informed him about Eli. In this situation, even a lowly human such as Trinity needed all the information possible. On the other hand, angels liked to play it close to the chest. Oriphiel thought no human was worthy of the Light—not even to hold it, not for a single moment—I knew that. He could actually be right this time.

I crawled out into the main cavern, black pants smeared with dirt, as was the palm of my hand. I happened to come out closer to Griffin and Zeke, which was no accident. They were almost as powerful as demons and angels in their empathy and telepathy, and they knew me. Had known me for years. That put them up on the one angel there. They felt me coming and stood on each side of me as I stood up. Lenore flew down to land on my shoulder.

“That’s it?” Zeke peered at it curiously. “It’s a giant lightbulb. What’s the big deal?” Then the hard jade of his eyes softened. “Oh.” He touched it with a reverent finger. “That’s . . . nice.”

I didn’t think I’d ever heard Zeke say nice unless it related to a gun or an explosion or two, which made this moment nice indeed. Griffin only studied it with that line between his brows, and he didn’t touch it—as if he thought he wasn’t good enough. It was an odd change of places for the two, and I knew Griffin. He was more than good enough. I wiped off my hand on my pants and took his hand to place it on the faceted surface. He started to pull away as if he’d been burned, but then let his hand rest there. And he smiled—one of those rare smiles of an utterly innocent child seeing his first swarm of lightning bugs at twilight.

Delight.

Magic.

Of course, Trinity had to ruin it. He had an incredible knack for ruining nearly everything. “Give me the Light.” He stood across the cavern about twenty feet away, now holding a Desert Eagle, which was pointed, not surprisingly, at us. Behind him with shotguns stood Goodman and the other two. They were grouped a little close and that wasn’t good. Respect for their boss equaled bad tactics.

Especially when your boss turns around and puts two bullets in the head of each of you. Oriphiel, still bathed in the sun streaming through the opening, came to life. I didn’t think I’d often seen an angel surprised, but he was. “What have you done?” he demanded, all glass and silver again—Heaven’s warrior. Human fa çade gone. He hadn’t known what Trinity was about to do, which meant Trinity had a shield as good as mine or it meant . . .

Solomon appeared beside Trinity, as if a clot of shadows from the corners of the cave had joined together to make a demon. “Ready to be a duke in Hell, Trinity?” he asked pleasantly. “You led me to the Light; you gave up Trixa; you’ve more than bought your way.”

It meant he had help.

Trinity’s face showed the first emotion I’d seen beyond disgust, ruthlessness, disdain. It showed pure satisfaction. A prince in Hell. Better than a peon, a nobody soul in Heaven. He wasn’t the first one to think so, but apparently the lesson of the story had escaped him. “Give me the Light,” he repeated, ignoring Oriphiel’s flat, “Damned. You are damned.”

“No.” I shook my head. “You can’t have it, and if you think you’ll be anything more than a side order of fries to some random demon downstairs, you’re the most idiotic man alive.” Speaking of alive, I didn’t think he’d be that way for long.

“Give it to me,” he spat before firing the gun. I would’ve thought that after the “Give it to me,” I would’ve perhaps had the chance to actually give it to him. I wouldn’t have, but he could’ve waited. But that was a man for you—always shooting his wad early.

Dark humor, dirty humor, any kind of humor—it made you feel better when you were lying on your back with a .50-caliber bullet in your stomach. It didn’t hurt though, not yet. My abdomen only felt bruised and cold. Not the stereotypical kicked-by-a-mule feeling—kicked by an elephant was more like it. Griffin and Zeke’s faces hung over mine as they knelt beside me. Griffin’s was twisted, bloodlessly white. He knew. You didn’t survive this—a gut shot this far from a hospital, you simply didn’t make it. Zeke . . . Zeke just didn’t understand. Besides Griffin, Leo, and I were the only ones in his world. No one else existed for him, not really. People didn’t understand him, didn’t know how alien and lost he was. They were strangers and mysteries, and they didn’t want to have anything to do with him. Zeke had the three of us and that’s all he had. He couldn’t have lost Griffin and survived. I know he didn’t want to lose me.

“Trixa?” He said my name in denial, as if it weren’t truly me lying bleeding to death on a stone floor. I was a fake, a prop, and the real Trixa would walk in at any moment. Or it was a trick, a game, but not a funny one. Not damn funny at all. Not to him.

I kept the Light cradled to my chest as a soft light bloomed around the three of us, a protective light, but one that was a little late when it came to stopping Trinity’s Eagle. I used the bloodstained hand I’d covered my stomach with to grab Zeke’s arm. “Get me up. Help me sit.”

On the other side Griffin said thickly, “Trixa . . .”

“It won’t make any difference,” I said to him gently. “You know that. Now sit me up.” He swallowed, but with the help of a silent and utterly white Zeke he eased me up to sitting position. Lenore moved from Griffin’s shoulder to mine, then sat utterly still.

Trinity bared his teeth at me in a contorted grin. “I’ve wanted to do that since the day I met you, Jezebel trash.” I’d almost made it through Trinity’s time on Earth without hearing one of the big three biblical curses for women too. He turned to Solomon. “Go. Take it. It’s yours. And you can give me what is mine.”

“Power?” Solomon said, eyes on me.

“Yes,” Trinity agreed with a hunger to equal any demon’s. “Power. Endless power. To rule over the lesser demons. To rule them for eternity as you promised.”

Solomon gave him a warm smile. “But, Mr. Trinity, I lied.” Then he broke Trinity’s neck in a motion so fast, human eyes could barely see it.

As Trinity’s body crumpled to the ground, the betrayer of his own House, Solomon looked back at me, his smile gone, to extend his hand toward me and say urgently, “Give me the Light, Trixa. I’ll make you whole. I’ll heal you. Don’t die over politics. Over a thing. And please—please don’t die before we know what we could have between us. Give me the Light and be with me. Tell me your price. Tell me the demon you want.”

I shook my head again. It was answer enough.

Solomon dropped his hand and took in all three of us with a gaze that was suddenly far from the desperate concern that had only just flashed there—so very far, answering everything I needed to know. Oriphiel, fifteen feet from the demon, did the same, but without any fading false worry over my bleeding out on the cave floor. As one, Griffin and Zeke stood slowly, one on each side of me. Protecting me.

“Zerachiel,” came the voice of the angel, the voice of the Tower of Babel falling, “know thyself.”

“Glasya-Labolas,” ordered Solomon, so swiftly that it could’ve been an echo of the angel’s command, “come forth.”

They did, the both of them. They became what they served and what they fought and death might’ve been a kinder thing. Zeke, Zerachiel, turned to glass. Copper metal hair, oval eyes of pale green light. There was more light in the curves and jagged edges of his wings. The shimmer of copper and a paler bronze that lit his body from within. Griffin, Glasya-Labolas, was a deeply tarnished gold demon, eyes the milky pale blue of a winter sky, his wings spread back like those of a pterodactyl dipped in bronze. Glass teeth, serpent tongue, and whipping serpentine tail.

My boys.

Zerachiel, the angel of children . . . the irony could break your heart.

Glasya-Labolas, in medieval literature, a demon that looked like a dog with the wings of a griffin. Medieval literature had been wrong, but apparently the name Griffin had been liked by someone in charge . . . either Solomon or Griffin himself.

They had never known, since they’d been formed into the bodies of children, Zeke’s eight years old and Griffin’s ten, and dumped in Vegas, children with false memories of a past they’d never experienced. I’d known though. I was always one to keep an eye on my competition, and I recognized what had been dropped into the town I’d planned on eventually setting up base—the disguises of children over the spies of Heaven and Hell. But I had soon realized they weren’t aware undercover spies. They had no idea what they were, where they came from. They thought they were human. Sleeper agents to the nth degree. I also realized after years passed that they weren’t an angel and demon anymore. They were human, as human as they thought they were—a deeply flawed human in Zeke’s case, but human all the same.

One small nudge with two social workers and Zeke and Griffin had ended up placed in the same home within a week of their arrival. It was easier to keep an eye on them if they were both in one place. Hell and Heaven, so smug. As if demon and angel children could appear in Vegas and I wouldn’t know about it, no matter how human their bodies. Please. I also knew they’d need each other. They were both living among an alien species, for all intents and purposes. Griffin coped much better; he’d dealt with humans for who knows how many thousands of years before being turned human, but Zeke . . . angels were different. Unless they spent an equal amount of time with humans, they couldn’t pull off an imitation to save their wings, much less be the real thing. And from the looks of it, Zeke hadn’t spent much time on Earth before being given this assignment. Free will was beyond him for the most part. Decisions, a mystery. Living on his own, impossible. It could be that’s why Oriphiel had chosen him, for that lack of free will. He thought Zeke wouldn’t question orders when he underwent a transformation that would startle anyone. Oriphiel probably thought he was clever in that respect.

Like I’d thought I was so clever. I knew Zeke would need guidance from the social worker ’s very first report when they were found—a simple matter of doing what I did best, con and trick, to gain access to the office and scanning both their files. I knew he would need a partner, someone to take care of him, and was self-satisfied I’d had the forethought to have them placed together. And the irony of having a demon look after an angel only made it better.

I’d been such an ass, a dangerously ignorant one.

I’d returned to Vegas seven years later and found out Zeke had needed more help than anyone could give him, though Griffin had tried his best. Zeke could blame Heaven, he could blame Hell, but most of all, he could blame me for that dead baby, but he should never blame himself.

Then Eden House had come for him after he and Griffin had been with me for a few years. No coincidence there, either. A raven had led their way to me. Recruitment had always been the eventual plan. Hell’s and Heaven’s. It seemed Heaven didn’t trust their own House. It had turned out with Trinity that they were right. That Eden House had found an empath along with telepathic Zeke seemed only lucky to them. Hell’s luck. My luck, my doing. Trinity would be raging internally that Solomon hadn’t let him in on that part of the plan . . . if he’d still been alive.

“Bring me the Light, Zerachiel,” Oriphiel demanded. “Serve your Heaven. Serve your God. The Light belongs to us. You belong to us.”

I’d told Zeke he’d have a choice to make, one only he could decide. Here it was: the blind obedience he’d known the majority of his existence or . . . something else. The green glow of his gaze, that same rare flash on the sea’s sunset horizon, turned to Griffin—Glasya—and was met with a pale blue that could herald a killing blizzard. The sleek lizard face, the jaw that could rip a human into pieces and no doubt in its time had. Demon. A creature Zeke had fought all his life, Above and on Earth.

“No,” Zeke said firmly and without hesitation as he held out his hand.

“Glasya-Labolas.” From Solomon’s mouth the name was stone. “Bring me the Light. You who have slain thousands and laughed as their blood fell thick as rain, seize who you are. Seize the Light for Hell. Beleth will reward us both.”

Griffin moved, and it was our Griffin, not Glasya-Labolas. It was the Griffin who needed to be needed, needed to protect the innocent, to save whom he could, to take care of Zeke until his dying day. The one who tried so hard to make up, but for what he didn’t know . . . until now. He clasped the arm held out to him, hand to forearm. “No,” he said as solidly as Zeke. “Never.” An angel and a demon joined together. And neither Above nor Below had been able to stop it.

Now we were missing only one thing, one promise to keep. I covered the wound in my stomach again. I held back the blood well. Not a trickle seeped through. “Eligos, it’s your party,” I said to the air, showing no pain or breathlessness. No such satisfaction for Oriphiel or Solomon.

He appeared behind Oriphiel and, with a massive swing, cut off the angel’s head with one stroke of those flaming swords I’d been thinking of earlier. He gave that cocky grin that was almost permanently carved into his face. “Souvenir from the Penthouse. They’re a dime a dozen up there.”

Oriphiel’s body disintegrated into thousands and thousands of crystalline pieces with the sound of glass bells ringing in their own deaths. Eli dropped the sword, flames dying away, on top of the pile of glass and raised his eyebrows at Zeke. “A spy in their own House? Not very trusting, to be so wholesome and holy and chock-full of choirboy goodness.” He looked down at Trinity’s crumpled body. “Although apparently the pigeons had every right to be suspicious. I’m surprised they were that smart.”

I didn’t care about Trinity or Oriphiel right now. I cared about one thing. “You have proof?”

“You guessed, then. Spoilsport.” He held out a hand toward me, and my bracelet jerked free of my wrist and flew across the twenty feet to rest on his palm. “I have your proof.”

“Leo, take the Light.” I pulled it away from my chest and held it up. Lenny/Leo left my shoulder, spread his wings, and grew—twice the size of a pterodactyl. One black foot closed around the Light, while one wing curled around Zeke and Griffin—I couldn’t think of them as Zerachiel or Glasya—and scooped them off to the side while keeping aloft with the thrashing of one wing. The two didn’t struggle. After all of this and a brand-new history dumped into their brains, I’d be surprised if either of them could form a coherent thought.

“Show me,” I told Eli.

“Darlin’, I’d say be prepared to be as astounded and surprised as if you’d seen my equipment at work, insert porn music here, but I have a feeling you knew all along.” Eli opened the tiny locket and balanced the scale on his finger as he muttered a few indecipherable words under his breath. The scale spun slowly, then faster and faster before finally flying through the air to hit Solomon in the throat. For a second, less maybe, I saw him as he was—like he’d refused to let me see him before. He was a dark gray demon dappled with silver and eyes that were bright, shining, wholly empty mirrors—empty and cold—and then he was human again. Human and moving toward me with those human teeth bared.

He could now. Neither he nor Oriphiel had tried before because I had held the Light—the one shield absolutely nothing could breach. They couldn’t take it from me, thanks to Trinity’s activating it by shooting me, but Zeke and Griffin had been touching me, inside its protection. They could have.

They hadn’t.

But Leo held it now and the soft clear light enclosed him and Zeke and Griffin while Solomon moved closer to me. The human form he’d gone back to didn’t extend to the eyes. They were still pools of mercury as silver as a heart-piercing dagger. Appropriate. He’d torn out my heart long ago. He kept coming right up until the moment Eli asked me curiously, “Why aren’t you in shock?” You might also say he topped that curiosity with a healthy dose of suspicion. I had no illusions he was actually concerned for my health, and he didn’t bother to fake it as Solomon had.

At Eli’s words, Solomon stopped.

“As a matter of fact, why aren’t you dead by now?” Eli tilted his head, the blond streaks in his brown hair gleaming in the sun. As he went on to talk about death, he glittered like an angel himself. “You should’ve bled to death, at the least gone comatose or had a seizure or two. I’ve inflicted my share of those deaths. I’m more than familiar with how they go.” He frowned. “We have a deal, remember? No flopping around like an out-of-water fish until I get what you promised me.”

I took my hand away from my stomach and waggled fingers at him. There was no blood on my hand, none on my stomach. I gave him the same answer Solomon had given Trinity. “I lied. That’s what I do, Sunshine. That’s who I am.” I shifted and lifted my eyes to Solomon and said with mock solemnity, “And didn’t I do such a good job? The years of ‘Will she or won’t she’? All that unresolved sexual tension. Pushing you away, but never completely away. The kiss, the reluctant pulling from your touch, savoring your warmth despite my weak little self, letting you sleep with me. Hold me. I was trusting as a lamb, so vulnerable. Wasn’t that sweet? Who would be so good as to fool you, a demon? Only my kind, only me . . . the ultimate liar.”

“Trickster,” Solomon snarled, all pretense at being the most regretful of the Fallen, the demon who was fluffy and warm as the Easter Bunny and never spilled a drop of blood, was gone. Gone every bit as quickly as the snap of Trinity’s neck.

“ ‘To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven,’ ” I quoted. “And above Hell,” I added.

I stood and stretched, felt that lifetime-familiar electricity spread through me; my hair lifting in a most nonangelic halo around my face. “So easily you forget us pagan-kind, forget the païens.” I was pagan all right, as I’d told the boys—so pagan that I was one of those that the pagan humans had worshipped . . . for thousands of years until these Johnny-come-latelies had spread their way far and wide. “You forget that we belong here too, but that doesn’t stop you from casually killing us if given the chance. You thought our season was over.” I pointed. “You, Solomon, are especially fond of killing our kind if you can. I’ve studied you. It’s a hobby for you, isn’t it? Four hundred of us have you destroyed over the past two thousand years,” I growled. Not a female growl, not even a human one. “To you and the angels we are nothing but leftover vermin from a world you refuse to share.” I fixed my eyes on the demon, who didn’t move. Didn’t blink. That was smart of him.

“But this is our world too, and if you won’t leave us in peace, then we will be protected from the likes of you all. An abomination to Heaven, a nuisance to Hell. But with the Light, the shield”—it continued to glow around Leo—“neither of you will touch my kind again. We will have sanctuary if we want it. We’ve been looking for it a long time and now it comes home with us.”

“You?” A wave of boredom passed over Solomon’s human face. His acting hadn’t gotten any better, no matter what Shakespeare had told him. “You plan on leaving with the Light? Little Trixa? And Leo who cleans your bathrooms?”

“Little Trixa.” I smiled. Leo’s wings began to thrash, creating a wind tunnel in the cavern. “Leo.” I knew the pupils of my eyes were dilating as the kill approached. “Not so, Solomon. For you, we are so much more. For you and the shield, my people sent in the big guns. Sent in the heavyweights. The varsity team. The gun-slingers. Leo went by Loki for a while. Loki, the Norse god. You have heard of him, right?” Leo’s mocking cry split the air like a siren. “He almost ended the world once just to liven up a tedious afternoon. He’s mellowed since then. Slightly.”

I stepped toward Solomon. “I, little Trixa, have been called Coyote.” I went to all fours and became a coyote, one the size of a bear. “Kitsune.” My fur turned fox red. “Crow.” Massive black feathered wings sprouted from my shoulders. “Akamataa.” My tail turned to a scaled, thick whip of a lizard. “Amaguq.” The coyote eyes turned to wolf. “Iktomi.” The two yellow wolf eyes multiplied to a spider ’s eight.

My voice wasn’t human anymore and neither was my smile, the teeth changing shape to almost perfect triangles. “But a girl gives so many names out, she begins to forget a few. Too bad you didn’t pay attention in demon school.” I held a clawed paw high. “Gods.” I dropped the paw a little lower. “Tricksters.” I dropped it considerably lower. “Demons.” I couldn’t smile coldly with my changed jaw, but I showed my teeth. “Leo looks down on me for not being a god like him, but I’m happy enough.” I wasn’t a woman any more than Leo was a man—not the human kind. Although the majority of tricksters, like me, are born male or female. I might not be a human woman, but I was a woman through and through. I’d said I was born thirty-one years ago. Another lie. That body had been created just ten years past in Vegas and a good one it was. I liked it a lot. Apparently Solomon had too, much more than the one he was facing now.

“What, Solomon? Am I not sexy now?” I took another step, claws scoring the stone. “Don’t I turn you on anymore?” I bared the teeth of a shark—the Ka-poe-kina-mano trickster. My brother ’s favorite form. He had considered Hawaii his home for a long, long time. It was only right that part of him should be here now. Killing Solomon as Solomon had killed him on that black sand beach while he slept in a human form. He had been young, the trickster version of a teenager, and hadn’t yet learned to shield his mind and aura from the higher demons. Trusting. The only trusting trickster I’d ever known. Easy prey. And Solomon had been the willing predator. His hobby had spilled my brother’s blood. The demon hadn’t chosen him on purpose. He had only crossed his path and did what Solomon did best. Murder. For fun.

It had been pure chance. Entirely catastrophically bad luck . . . for my brother.

Now for Solomon too.

I hoped Solomon wouldn’t make it easy. I hoped he lasted a long time. He was a powerful demon . . . high-level with the speed and skill that went with that.

Which might have mattered in the end if he were up against another demon, but guess what? He wasn’t. Demonic levels were meaningless to me. We were going by a different sort of rank . . . demons, tricksters, gods. And this bastard was outranked. He’d killed my helpless-in-sleep baby brother, but I was no baby.

And I had never been helpless.

My predator grin widened, the backward curving teeth broadening my coyote jaws even further with the crunch of bone. “Don’t you want me? You once said you wanted to be inside me,” I said, my voice thick from my jaw’s changed shape, “and I want you inside me too, Solomon, but I think we have very different ideas of where.”

He started to shimmer, to travel back to Hell, but I was on him first, taking him to the cave floor, physically pinning him to this world as my claws punched through his shoulders. And that’s when he changed to his true form.

Demon. Wings, scales, jagged smoky teeth. Eyes that were poisonous silver whirlpools that threatened to suck you down to Hell.

Scary.

Not.

“And I bet you thought you were the monster of this little fairy tale,” I said through twisted vocal cords. “I’ve searched for you for fifty years. The killer of my brother. The darkest sorrow of my family. Do you remember? A black sand beach in Hawaii? A trickster in human form sleeping on the sand and you slaughtered him before he even had a chance to wake. Eli did say you liked shooting fish in a barrel. Coward.” His teeth snapped at my throat. I met them with my own teeth. “I thought it was you, handsome Solomon. Mysterious Solomon. For at least thirty years I thought it was you as I followed you from place to place, but I needed to know for certain. There were other demons it could’ve been, others who have your same hobby. Those of the same color, although none had your reputation, your sheer numbers of païen killings. I had to be sure.

“I lie, but I lie to make others see the error of their ways.” I removed the claws from one of his shoulders and shredded his right wing. “I trick to make things right. I even kill, if I have to, to balance the scales. But I need proof. Now I have it. Now you will balance Kimano.”

Although it would take a thousand demons to balance the shining heart of my brother. But every journey begins with a single step and killing Solomon was that step. I roared and buried my teeth in his chest. Black blood pumped free and tasted of fire and bile. His two back feet came up beneath me and clawed at my fur-covered underbelly. The claws were sharp and I felt them tear through my skin. It was good, the pain. Good because it let me know Kimano’s justice had come. I dug my teeth deeper into Solomon’s chest and yanked my head sideways, ripping the flesh away in a massive hunk just as a shark would. It flew and landed across the cave with a meaty thump. I saw obsidian bones, but no heart beneath it.

I wasn’t surprised.

He might manufacture one in human form—I had felt it beat against my back last night when Leo as Lenore had stood watch over me—but Solomon had no heart. I’d known that all along. Not even the spiritual equivalent of one. He surged underneath me, throwing me back, but I didn’t let go of him. He wasn’t escaping to Hell. If I had only one tooth left, one claw remaining, I’d hold him here to his death. His teeth buried in my shoulder and he removed my flesh as well. I tucked my wings tight against me and rolled to my side, then up again and lifted into the air, my massive crow wings flapping with a pure surge of muscle. I still had Solomon’s one shoulder hooked firmly on the claws of my Akamataa shape, the dragon. They had passed through his scales and flesh and come out the other side to catch like barbed fishhooks.

He rose in the air with me, fighting me every inch of the way. His wings thrashed as he tried to pull himself away from me. The rended wing had been remaking itself quickly, but with the gaping hole that stretched the width of his chest, the wing had to get in line. Black flesh and ebon and silver scales began to reform over the ribs. “I hated you,” he spat, all that velvety charm gone. All that sweet, sweet care for me now a ghost. “The only thing I thought of you when we touched is how your flesh would taste as I tore you to a pile of gore and scraps. I only wanted the Light from you, bitch. Three years ago I knew you were looking for it. I heard the whispers.”

“Were they only whispers?” I laughed . . . coyote/ wolf howled—it was all the same. “I told every demon I let live for years and years, many more than three. Until it went full circle and one told me. I’d thought more than whispers. I’d thought they’d been shouts for all the rumor spreading I did. I knew it was somewhere in this vast desert. I could wait for you to catch up before I circled in on it. So I could have my cake and eat it too.

“And hated me, my Solomon? Hated me? How you hurt my feelings.”

But it certainly didn’t hurt as much as what came next.

His wings tried but they couldn’t do it. He bit and clawed at me. It wasn’t enough. Fifteen feet in the air, I folded my wings back and let us fall. I twisted to one side as he was impaled on a stalagmite that rose up from the cave floor. It passed through his back and thrust its way through his stomach. Fluid gurgled in his throat and his tail undulated sluggishly, but that wasn’t enough to kill a lower demon. It definitely wasn’t enough to kill Solomon—until I fastened my jaws around his serpentine neck and tore his head from his shoulders with one ripping motion. My four feet on the ground again, I let the head drop before me and stared into eyes that were still aware . . . if only for a moment. “For Kimano, you bastard. For my brother.”

The silver hate didn’t fade until the head as well as the body melted to black sludge. That’s when I lifted my gaze and saw it. I saw Kimano standing in the volcanic sand, hand upright in acknowledgment, his grin as happy and bright as always. It wasn’t true, but I wanted it to be so badly that I did what I’d done for the past fifty years and pretended that I saw him. I pretended hard enough that maybe I almost did. Almost. It didn’t matter. You take what you can get in this life. If almost was all I could have, then almost was what I would take.

I turned my heavy head toward Eli, who stood frozen in place, his normally nonstop sexy mouth slightly agape. I grinned the shark grin that dripped black demon blood. “You still want to hit this or what, Sunshine?” Eli disappeared in an instant, so fast he left a tiny sonic boom in the space where he had stood.

My crow wings fell away and vanished. Eligos hadn’t even complained I’d not lived up to my end of the bargain: handing over the Light, not that I’d ever truly planned to. He was more concerned with making sure that gorgeous ass of his wasn’t grass. My tail disappeared and my jaw began to change and change again. The demons had learned to lie when they fell, but it was a trickster who had told the very first lie. Demons . . . they were nothing more than amateurs. Although Solomon getting to Trinity, that had been unexpected, actually a little clever. I hadn’t looked beyond Griffin for the demon-touched in Eden House. Shame on me. My fur disappeared, my eyes back to two, then from gold to dark amber.

And I was Trixa again. Trixa in black pants and a sweater that had never been hit by a bullet. A Trixa who wavered and fell unceremoniously on her butt. Ah well, things never go quite as you picture them.

I looked at the angel and the demon who were shielded by Leo’s wings, and a light more alluring than the sun that came through the cave entrance. Glowing green eyes and moonstone blue ones looked at me. “You told Heaven and Hell no,” I said, my voice a little hoarse, but mostly Trixa’s normal voice. “Heaven won’t have you now, Zeke, even if you changed your mind. And, Griffin, Hell would have you, but you wouldn’t like it much. They would unmake you and remake you over and over until the last star in the sky winked out.” He would scream for an eternity . . . a literal one.

Their hands still clasped the other ’s arm and if anything, their grip tightened. “Screw Heaven,” Zeke said, oblivious to those words coming from an angel’s crystal carved mouth. “I want to stay. I don’t want to be one of them. I want here. I want Griffin.” The angel-man who loved to kill the demons the most, yet not once would he deny his demonic partner. It didn’t even cross his mind. I would’ve loved Zeke for that, if I didn’t already love him.

And Griffin . . . a high-level demon. Not as high as Solomon or it would’ve been him on the outside and Solomon undercover, but still high-level. Who knew how many he’d killed? How many souls he’d damned? The Light didn’t let him know. I still felt a small tickle of it in my head. I felt how it took Hell from Griffin’s mind and Heaven from Zeke’s, took those memories away forever. Griffin wouldn’t know what he’d done, so he’d be free to be the good man he was now. And Zeke would be able to hold on to the scrap of free will he’d managed to wrangle for his own and keep working on it. Who knew? Someday . . . a long time . . . but someday, he’d learn, he’d get it right. They looked up as the Light, which existed to protect, protected them from themselves. It brightened as it rained down on them. Glass and scales became flesh. They became human again.

Except for the wings.

Zeke’s glass and crystal turned to the very traditional feathered kind—all copper as his hair with only the faintest barring of cream at the bottom. Griffin’s were the same dragon wings of before, only less tarnished . . . a brighter gold. They were beautiful, the both of them, just as they’d always been.

“Leo.” I met brown raven eyes the size of lemons. “Take the Light to the Hearth.” Hearth and home. We would have a home now. A safe harbor. A place no angel or demon could breach, one where they could never kill one of our kind again—where the very first who’d walked this world could be the very last as well. One eye winked and he was gone, the wind from his wings nearly knocking us all from our feet. It would have if I hadn’t already been sitting, courtesy of my wobbly legs. I felt the Light caress my mind, saying good-bye, holding me as I imagined Kimano doing; then it was gone . . . every last mote of it. Off to its new home.

Sanctuary. Finally. No more Kimanos. No more païen dead.

Of course, that’s not to say one had to go there right away. Yes, if all out-and-out war came between the three: angels, demons, and the païens. Or if you needed a rest after a hard hundred years of work tricking those who deserved it. You could go at any time. It didn’t mean you had to stay, hidden from the world if you didn’t want to . . . sheltered from the tricks and the dangers. The surly girls and fat dogs. The desert wind and an old Indian who never forgot you, no matter if you were coyote or human. The bar fights and the pool games. The red balloons left tied to benches. The fields of spring flowers and the tsunamis that drowned islands beneath the sea. You didn’t have to give up the good, the bad, and the miles and miles of everything else that stretched between.

I mean, where would be the fun in that?