Trick of the Light

Chapter 4

The first customer through the door the next day was Griffin. He looked like he’d had a hard two nights. Between the cops, justifying Zeke to Eden House, and a possible exploded iguana, he deserved the look. He sat down at a stool as I patted the top of his head and said, “Morning, sunshine.”

He swatted at my hand and muttered, “Screwdriver.” I looked up at the clock: ten a.m. I shrugged and served it up. At least he was getting his vitamins. He took a drink, then took his first good look at me, and winced.

“Is that a comment on how I look, Griff?” I bent over, folded my arms on the bar, and rested my chin on them to study him expectantly. “I’d think twice before answering, just for your personal safety.”

“No.” He took another drink. “It’s the way you feel. Sad, angry, and a little hormonal. Is your per—” He stopped, very wisely, and took another drink. “Sorry. It’s the empath thing. Normally I don’t get much off you. Sometimes nothing at all. You must’ve had a bad day and I must’ve had a shitty yesterday to even bring all this up.”

Since he was right and apologetic, I let it go. He’d told me about being an empath a long time ago, when Eden House had come looking for him . . . their own telepaths and empaths picking up him and Zeke. If burning demons worked, the House would probably be out there scouring for their own little Stephen King fire starters too.

About being an empath, he’d said back then, it’s mainly boring. He’d pointed at the people in the bar. Cranky, horny, hungry, horny, pissed off, horny, sad, horny. After a while of that, he’d snorted, it got real old real fast. A thankless talent, I thought. There weren’t too many people running around filling the world with joyful vibes. Being an empath would really, well, suck. But it was useful for the job. Demons, they felt nothing like humans. They had one emotion humans didn’t have, at least not to this degree. It was murder, greed, and a longing, all wrapped up in one single ribbon of emotion so intense that it didn’t have a name. He said when he closed his eyes he could see it . . . dark purple with jagged streaks of bile yellow and blood red.

When I asked what Zeke “heard” when he psychi cally touched demons, Griffin said nothing good. It was all Kill, eat souls. Weak. He’s weak. He’ll give his up in a heartbeat. Zeke could only read the very surface of anyone’s thoughts, though. The bigger and badder demons like Solomon . . . the more-controlled demons . . . could and did pass for humans at times. But Zeke was the strongest telepath Eden House had, just as Griffin was the strongest empath. To my knowledge, the only demon they couldn’t pick out was Solomon, although they didn’t have to, because Solomon had been bold enough to tell Eden House he was setting up shop. That was before Zeke and Griffin’s Eden House days. Solomon’s human body was probably in his late thirties. A very sexy late thirties.

Yep, they definitely had to pick those bodies out of a catalogue: Hot Soul Suckers—check out the discount late-nineties models at the back of the book.

“I heard through the grapevine. Something happened.” Griffin finished the screwdriver and exhaled, eyes clearing slightly. “Something about the Light of Life. Remember me telling you about that a few years ago?” He didn’t wait for a comment, which was convenient for me. “No one’s giving out anything specific. Just that there was a body and no sign of the artifact.”

“Of which you still don’t know anything—what it actually is or does,” I said matter-of-factly. Trinity and Jackson hadn’t told them. Then again, neither had I, but that was one case of the less they knew, the better—for everyone. Not that that made my next comment any less manipulative, but sometimes you have to be deceitful to warn those you care about . . . without blowing your own plans. It still felt wrong, a feeling I wasn’t used to. “Some trust your House gives you guys. Makes you wonder how badly they’re going to paddle your asses if they find out I’ve been going on demon hunts with you.” No House telepath could read them now. Zeke had learned to shield his casual thoughts and taught Griff to do the same. It was one of the few occasions when Zeke was his teacher, not his partner.

Zeke chose that moment to come in. “You must be psychic,” he said matter-of-factly as I rolled my eyes, although for him it was a good effort. “Demon hunt tonight. That tip you gave us looks good. Going?” He ordered a Corona while I considered it. I’d heard there was a bar a few miles from mine where people were getting rich, famous, and laid like crazy. That had soul selling all over it, and I’d passed the news along.

Sitting on the stool next to Griffin, Zeke beat his hands in a slow, hypnotic tempo on his legs and frowned when I put the bottle of beer in front of him. “Where’s the lime?”

I looked over at Lenore on his perch. “Bird, lime.” He flashed a beady eye, flew over, plucked one out of the tray, strutted over, and stuffed it in the mouth of Zeke’s bottle.

“There you go.” I smiled cheerfully. “Enjoy.”

He scowled. “I fight demons. Isn’t that enough? I have to take on bird flu too?” But he pushed the lime on down and took his chances. He took a swig, than glanced at Griffin. “You don’t look so good. You got up way too damn early. Could hear you banging around in the kitchen.”

Griffin and Zeke lived together, a necessity with Zeke’s condition. “Some of us had things on our minds,” Griffin muttered, rubbing his eyes with the heels of his hands. “Cops, lawyers, court, the House, Mr. Trinity. So sorry I disturbed you.”

Zeke hunched his shoulders slightly. “Oh yeah. Sorry.” And he was . . . sincerely sorry. Not for what he’d done, but for the trouble it was causing Griffin.

“Hell with it. It’ll pass.” Griffin exhaled and ges tured for another drink, just orange juice this time. “And before we get into the demon hunt issue, Trixa, I’m curious. What would the House do if they found out you went on hunts with us? The first thing would be to probably ask us how you know about demons. I doubt they’d approve of us hanging out with a descendant of the worshippers of pagan gods any more than they’d like hearing about the demon hunts.”

“Am I supposed to register surprise here? Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live and all that. I’m not a witch and this isn’t Salem, but people are still people.” I wiped a counter, plastic and cracking, but clean. “And too bad for them anyway. Me and mine might know things even they don’t about the big bad world. Certainly things pups like you are in the dark about.” I gave them a wink as I finished up with the counter.

“Pups”—Zeke shifted closer—“boys, they just can’t help themselves, no matter how many times you remind them, ‘not so much. I’m not fifteen anymore.’ ” He immediately winced at the thought, big and bright, I shot at him that stopped his last word and thought in their tracks. “Ow. Big sister. Hands off. I hear you. You’re loud.” He rubbed it away. “But there’s only six years . . . ow. Okay. Stop. Someone out there won’t think of me as a little brother. I’ll find them.” Great, a mission. Zeke on a mission. That was not good. I didn’t call him on the prying as I usually would have, not with this subject. And I knew how to keep my surface thoughts casual and basically bullshit. Griffin had needed lessons; some of us are born with natural bullshitting skills.

“An innocent,” I said, warningly. Zeke didn’t hurt those who didn’t deserve it, but once again . . . with that black and white view of the world, up until now that may have been a case of pure luck. He had to be careful. Who among us was honestly completely innocent? Who among us hasn’t deserved a little punishment once or twice? Trouble was, Zeke wasn’t so good at doing “little.” And with an innocent he would be pushing that luck somewhat less.

“Innocent.” That’s what I said and “thought” very casually in case Zeke was eavesdropping. At a much deeper level I sent the absolute dead-on emotion of utter denial to his partner. If “never” could be an emotion, this was it. Only for a man, any man—even one as unique as Zeke—there was no such thing as “never” in this department. Zeke was no virgin. He’d had his share of one-night stands, and those women had been fortunate. Either as innocent as I told him to look for now or not bad enough to set him off. I wasn’t quite sure what Zeke would do if he ever picked up a murderer, caught a stray thought of something ripe with evil, yet purely human.

Zeke turned to look at his silent partner. “What?” Silent to any onlooker, but not to Zeke. “Oh.” His gaze drifted down to his own hands—hands that could kill with or without a weapon. “I get it.” His eyes clouded for a moment, then cleared as the obvious solution came to him. “I won’t read them. I won’t look. Okay?”

“Yeah, partner, that’s okay. That’s good.” Griffin, who’d obviously had the same thoughts I had, sighed and pushed his glass of OJ back toward me for another screwdriver, because both of us knew it was never that easy. “I changed my mind. Load me up.” As I did, he leaned back and stretched, muscles no doubt stiff from digging Zeke out of that deeper and deeper hole he’d gotten himself into. No wonder he didn’t want to think about any future ones lurking out there. “So?” he asked me. “Going?”

“Maybe,” I conceded. “Leo’s out today, so he can cover for me tonight. A little hunt might be some fun.”

“Good. I can break this in.” Zeke, his thoughts of women and one-night stands vanishing instantly in favor of something he loved far more, pulled a revolver the size of an antiaircraft gun out of his jacket and laid it on the bar. “They confiscated my Glock, so I had to get a new gun from the House armory.” The armory where they didn’t keep grenades, and I was guessing that Zeke actually had authorized access to. “Isn’t it something fucking else?” He smiled down at it, grim and satisfied at the thought of all the demon damage that could do. He was like a kid at Christmas . . . a homicidal kid maybe, but . . . “A Colt Anaconda .44 Magnum. The muzzle flare is vented out the muzzle and the sides,” he said, as proudly as if he’d designed the gun himself. It looked like it was as big as my car. I leaned closer and corrected myself. It looked bigger than my car.

I gazed at it, then at his savagely content face, and bit my lip. Patting his arm, I managed to say solemnly, “Oh doll, it couldn’t be that small, I promise you. It just isn’t physically possible.”

Zeke didn’t let my psychoanalysis ruin his love affair with his new gun. He brought it that night, concealed in a holster under his jacket. I was surprised the weight of it didn’t have him leaning to one side, since it was as heavy as the anchor on the Titanic, but it didn’t.

Dressed in all black with his hair pulled back into a ponytail, Zeke looked like what he was . . . dangerous. Damn dangerous. He lounged against the wall opposite the emergency door with arms crossed. Bait or the hunter. Zeke loved being both.

Griff and I were dressed the same as Zeke and both of us were carrying shotguns as we crouched in the dark alcove between two Dumpsters near the mouth of the alley—keeping Zeke in sight. The only light in the place was directly opposite him and was a dim bulb mounted over the door, but demons didn’t need a lot of light to see. They didn’t need a lot of light to kill either. I was guessing that Hell was a dark, dark place.

“Do you ever wonder why they do it?” Griffin murmured. “Sell their souls? Do they really think a few years of all they could want here could be worth going to Hell? How do they let someone talk them into that?”

“People are stupid, shortsighted, and sometimes just desperate for something more.” I had heard there were souls, besides immature ones, that demons wouldn’t take. They wouldn’t take a soul for a selfless act. Wouldn’t or couldn’t. No trading your soul for your dying husband or wife, child or brother. No trading it for the cure to cancer. No doing evil to accomplish good. The road to Hell wasn’t paved with good intentions after all. “Besides, who’s to say Heaven’s any better? No shellfish, no pork, no hot guy-on-guy Westerns. No sex at all. Think about that. No sex and no barbecued shrimp. How could Hell be much worse?”

“Is there really no sex in Heaven?” Zeke said aloud, sounding worried. He was listening in to Griffin’s thoughts again and being about as stealth conscious as a marching band. We both ignored him.

“Put you one-on-one with a demon and I’ll bet you could have him selling his soul to you,” Griffin snorted at my ear, then added,“If demons had souls.”

“Sweet talker.” I jabbed him with my elbow, then tensed as the door opened and a demon walked out, followed by a girl. She was pretty, but not beautiful. Her breasts were small, a B cup, but so were mine. The last thing you needed when running down a demon was a double D smacking you in the face, but that probably wasn’t her opinion. She was twenty pounds heavier than the magazines told you she should be with an ass a tad bigger than an anorexic starlet’s. In other words, she was normal—which was most likely the worst possible thing to be in her eyes.

And then there was the demon. . . . Picture a male model with empty eyes and a smile as bright as a thousand diamonds—or as predatory as the flashing teeth of a personal injury lawyer. Not all lawyers were demons, but let’s say there was a fairly high turnover among the Vegas ones, thanks to Eden House and an endless supply of shotgun slugs.

“Hurry up and run so I can start killing,” Zeke told the girl impatiently. He’d pulled out the Colt and pointed it at our prey.

The girl stood frozen. Even in the low light I could see the beat of her pulse, rapid against the pale skin of her throat . . . the beat of her starving heart. She wanted, so badly, all the wrong damn things. I stood, braced the stock of the shotgun against my shoulder, and said, “Listen to him, girl. Try helping others instead of helping yourself. Take your shallow dreams and run to something better, because there is better. Go!” She didn’t move. “Run!” There was a flutter of green silk, fake, and the glitter of diamonds, also fake, and she was gone . . . running past us, out of the alley, and disappearing around the corner. I hoped she believed me. It was true. There was better. She only had to open her eyes and see it.

The demon’s smile didn’t waver. “Eden House dogs. You . . .”

Zeke shot him between the eyes with three consecutive shots that came so fast, they almost sounded like one. “They always want to talk.” He lowered the gun. “Eat your still-beating heart. Skin you alive. Strangle you with your own intestines. Blah-blah. Boring.”

The head of the human demon had gone misshapen. Hollow point rounds for maximum damage. Zeke liked his toys to do the job first time around. This time he’d nailed the demon before it even had time to change back to its true form. Scales rippled across its slack face, but it poured downward into a black puddle before it could change any further. No brain, no demon.

Easy. It hadn’t been worth taking off my boots and putting on my sneakers. Hell, it wasn’t even worth putting on deodorant in case I had to run and sweat.

But that’s when we found out why the demon hadn’t lost its smile.

I spotted them first . . . on the roof. Five of them and they weren’t bothering with human disguises. Bat wings thrashed and they dived at us, transparent teeth bared. Three of them were black, with ebony scales that sucked in the light. You didn’t see that color often, and it was never a good time when you did. The other two were a sickening, swamp green-brown, more of what I was used to. They weren’t armed with weapons. With their teeth, speed, and claws seven inches long, they were already equipped. And all those teeth, all those talons, they had one target.

“Zeke!” I shouted it and ran, but Griffin was ahead of me. Nothing against Griffin, but I was one fast runner, damn fast. It didn’t matter—he was motivated. Unfortunately, that motivation didn’t stop Zeke from going down. Not that he didn’t take some down with him, because he did—popped two in their heads as they fell from the sky on top of him. It was damn good shooting and from the surprised flare in their red and yellow eyes, unexpected from a human.

Cool, precise, without a hint of nerves. That was Zeke. I doubted he felt his nerves dance with anything other than annoyance when the claws of the third black demon sank into his upper chest and arm, pinning him to the ground and keeping him from reloading.

Griffin stumbled.

Shit. Zeke might not get nerves, but he felt something other than annoyance, all right. He felt pain. And thanks to being an empath, Griffin was feeling it too. Everything his partner felt, he was feeling right along with him. And that was sweet in a bonding, “I feel your pain . . . no, really, I feel your pain” kind of way, but it wasn’t any use to us now. I grabbed the back of his jacket and kept him upright as we ran. I also gave him a shake. “You have to have some control over your empathy,” I snapped. “Use it! You’re no help to him like this.”

Zeke had his good hand wrapped around the neck of the demon and was holding those haunted-house, shattered-window teeth away from his own throat. I couldn’t see the blood on his chest, black was good at hiding that, but I could see a trickle of it run from the corner of his mouth, the red of it on his bared teeth. I didn’t need to hear the accompanying wheeze from Griffin to know the demon’s claws had at least nicked Zeke’s lung.

I stopped running and fired at the black one squatting on top of Zeke. I missed as the head darted forward with uncanny speed—physics-defying speed. Demons were like people. They were all different. Some were fast; some were slow. Some were smart, some not so much, and some beyond idiotic. It was our bad luck to get a smart, fast one; our worse luck that I underestimated him.

But the chest is a bigger target and I was smart and fast myself. I fired the second barrel of the shotgun and hit him dead-on. He was thrown off Zeke into the back of the alley. The talons must not have felt any better coming out than they had going in, because Zeke arched up off the asphalt and this time Griffin did fall. I used one hand and the support of a knee to reload the shotgun, and I used the other hand to slap Griffin’s face hard enough to leave an instant hot, red hand-print. Then I took a handful of his shirt, pulled him to his feet, and pushed him against the alley wall. The push was as hard as the slap and I saw his eyes focus on me. “Griff, you don’t turn it off now and Zeke dies. He dies. Turn it off!”

His mouth tightened and he closed his eyes for a split second. His skin was still pale except for the red blotch, but when he lifted the lids, the pupils of his eyes were now normal. Before they had been black with only the thinnest ring of blue; now the blue was back. Dark with rage but back. So was his control, and we’d need it to get out of this trap we’d so stupidly hopped, skipped, and jumped our way into. I couldn’t remember all the times I’d been underestimated because I was a woman, but I could count the times I’d underestimated demons. This would be number two and there was no way I was letting it turn out the way the first time had. Not again. Zeke wasn’t going to die; Griff wasn’t going to . . . none of us were.

“Off?” I asked as one of the brown demons headed for us, crisp air purling under its wings

“It’s off,” Griffin answered grimly as he turned and fired. The demon fell, one wing shredded. It wasn’t off, the empathy, not really. I could see that in the bone white line of his jaw, but he had it under sufficient control to pull a trigger and that was good enough. I hit the other demon swooping at us, this time in the head. A slow one. Good. I deserved a slow one. I also deserved a bubble bath and hot chocolate laced with butter-scotch schnapps and topped with whipped cream. But I didn’t have that. What I did have was a one-winged green demon and the black one I’d shot off Zeke. Neither of them looked anywhere near as warm and fuzzy as chocolate and schnapps.

Zeke was pushing up to one elbow, ignoring his own gasps for air as he reloaded using a speed-loader. His chest heaved on one side and didn’t move on the other. Pure mission Zeke. Air? Only wimps need air. Just give me something to shoot. It looked like the black demon was going to give him his wish. I was wrong. It passed over its first victim and headed straight for me, wings working furiously. I didn’t have time to reload and I’d never played baseball.

There’s always time to learn.

I tossed the shotgun, caught the painfully warm end of the barrel, and swung.

This time I got his head with a crash that destroyed the shotgun’s stock. Beautifully polished wood splintered and shattered. And all in all, it was about as effective as hitting him with a flyswatter. He did a better job of it with me than I had with him. As I went down, I saw the green demon back up and head for the wounded of the pack. Griffin was right between the two of us, but while Zeke might be almost as ass kicking as he thought he was, with his collapsed lung he was also bleeding and breathing . . . not so good.

“Get Zeke!” I yelled right before the demon fell on me like the MGM Grand and Caesar’s all rolled into one. I was good, I was fast, but the human body is only capable of so much. I felt the breath jolt out of my lungs, the rough asphalt scrape through my jacket and shirt as we slid up the alley floor like the after-math of a motorcycle wreck. Road rash from Hell . . . literally . . . and it hurt. Damn, did it hurt. It might’ve even come close to how the demon felt when the barrel of my Smith punctured its amber eye. There was a scream of a thousand tortured souls, which he’d probably personally recruited, and then, after I emptied six rounds into its skull, there was silence. Blissful silence.

Then I was covered in disgustingly warm black goo and the emergency door slammed open. A bouncer was framed there. He had no neck and from the steroid acne he had, probably balls the size of raisins. “Something going on out here?”

I pushed up on my elbow, the skin of my back a wildfire of pain at the motion. The green demon was gone. Either Griffin or Zeke had nailed it. Zeke was flat on his back while Griffin, who’d stripped off his jacket and wadded it to apply pressure to his partner ’s chest, rapped orders into the cell phone cradled between shoulder and jaw. There was blood on his hands, two shotguns on the alley floor, and a gun in my fist.

“No. Not a thing.” I holstered the Smith slowly and painfully. “We’re good, studly. Thanks for asking.”

“Well . . . okay, then. Keep it down.” Dull, mean brown eyes, already half crossed, crossed further, and he slammed the door behind him, the only man I would actually encourage to trade in his soul. Cerebral cortexes were highly underrated in this town. “Evolution,” I groaned as I sat up all the way. “What a myth.”

“Trixa, you’re hurt.” Griffin had let the phone fall, disconnected, and I knew Eden House’s own personal ambulance was on the way. They had a medical unit at their headquarters and better doctors and equipment than the local hospitals had. They’d take care of Zeke. He’d be all right, be pissing off Griff and shooting demons again in no time. He would be, because life without Zeke—sociopathically efficient, endearingly psychotic Zeke—wasn’t going to happen. It simply wasn’t.

I knelt beside him, my own bloody hands cupping his face. I’d made it there and touched his chest without remembering the motion of it. Much as I’d done with Kimano. “Kit, you got to use your big gun. I can practically smell the testosterone on you.”

I called him Kit, a baby fox, back when he was fifteen for his fox-colored hair. I’d almost forgotten the nickname in the ten years that had passed.

His eyes, that pale green, were hazy but managed to find me. “Kit.” He dragged in several wet breaths. “When . . . do I make . . . full-grown fox?”

“When you know thyself,” I said solemnly.

“What the hell’s that mean?” Each word was slow and said with bloody lips.

“Ask the fortune cookie company. It came with last night’s takeout.” I gave him a smile, the best one I could manage when we were surrounded by shadows and the smell of copper and garbage.

A bloody hand gripped my shoulder and my attention. “You’re hurt,” Griffin repeated.

I already could hear the siren in the distance. Eden House didn’t waste any time and they couldn’t find me here. It wouldn’t be good for Zeke and Griffin and it wouldn’t be much better for me. “Superficial. Skin’s strictly optional, right?” I already had my own cell phone out. “I’ll call Leo. He can take me to the ER.” I stood, refusing to bite my lip, but the “Shitshitshit” I didn’t bother to hold back. I backed up toward the alley mouth as I made the call, watching the guys—my guys. I watched as Zeke closed his eyes, but kept breathing. He kept breathing.

“We walked right into it,” Griffin said with dark disgust. He looked down at Zeke and back at me. “Black demons. High-level demons. What were they doing here? Besides making us look like amateurs. Like complacent assholes. We screwed up.”

“No. We fucked up.” It wasn’t a word I used often, but the situation called for it. “There’s a difference. We won’t do it again.” High-level demons like Solomon. Well, perhaps not like Solomon, no one was quite like him, but higher than the usual demons we dealt with. “Like Solomon.” I couldn’t make myself believe that was a coincidence. I stopped at the corner. “Call me and let me know.” I didn’t need to elaborate. Griffin knew. Then I rounded the corner and walked away, sticking to the shadows to hide the damage to my clothes and back . . . waiting for Leo.

No, I wasn’t going to let Griff and Zeke follow Kimano into death.

Never.