Trick of the Light (20 page)
Read Trick of the Light Online
Authors: Rob Thurman
Didn’t they?
Now Eli . . . Eli definitely lied and he definitely killed. That I knew as surely as anything. Souls would never be enough for him. He was a demon—as much as he looked like a man—who would crave variety, infinite and in any fashion he could get it. Eli existed for every experience he could get, because for him life was the opposite of short. Instead, life was endless. How to fill the millions of hours . . . days . . . years.
Why, sweetheart—I could see that disarming grin—anyway I can.
The night was unusually quiet despite our preparation. No demonic hordes. No wounded friends in pain. No wispy little girls and fat, waddling dogs. It was just half the number of the usual drinkers, sports fans glued to the TV, and the occasional hooker. Not legal inside the city limits, but if they could put up with what they did for the few bucks they needed to survive, I wasn’t going to kick them out. “Nice night,” Leo observed.
And it stayed that way until I was escorting a wobbly patron to his cab. Getting the door open with one hand, I used the other to grab his waistband as he started to go down and tossed him in the back with one heave. “Damn, lady, you got some muscle on you,” the cabbie observed.
“Pilates,” I responded. “I like a good workout.”
“You work out killing my brethren.” Solomon’s dark velvet voice came from behind me.
I turned as the cab drove away, folded one arm under my breasts, and kept the other free in case I needed my gun. “From what I hear, I’m not the only one.” Not that he was wrong. Fighting demons was great for toning. I should’ve bought an infomercial. “You’d just as soon kill one another. You higher demons anyway.” The mud-colored demons, the lowest of the former angels, seemed to follow the orders of the other demons. Like Solomon had said, or the equivalent of, if you were a mail clerk in Heaven, you were a mail clerk in Hell. “Or so Eligos tells me. Don’t tell me you haven’t been completely open with me, Solomon. Where is the trust there?”
“As if you ever gave me an ounce of it to begin with.” His face was blank. I wasn’t sure I’d seen it that way before, a canvas empty of seduction, anger, manipulation, and the darkness. “If you play with Eligos, Trixa, if you give him the smallest pinhole of an opening, you’ll only wish he’d killed you.”
“I don’t know.” The moon was high above us, almost the same orange as the Vegas night sky. “He seemed more honest than you. A killer, I’m sure. But I learned more about demons at a lunch with him than I learned in years of knowing you. And here I thought you were all on the same side, one nether-world united under god—god of darkness anyway. But that’s not so. I’ve been negotiating with you when I could’ve opened the field to all bidders. Why didn’t you tell me that, Solomon?”
“I’m a
demon
,” he growled. I noticed they used that justification quite a bit. “Self-interest is part of the package, believe it or not. I’m not a killer, but I’m not perfect either. Are you?”
demon
,” he growled. I noticed they used that justification quite a bit. “Self-interest is part of the package, believe it or not. I’m not a killer, but I’m not perfect either. Are you?”
I knew that, naturally—it was hard to forget someone was a demon—but it opened him up. That canvas was painted with all sorts of emotion now. It had taken me a while to determine that demons did have real emotions outside murderous rage and homicidal hunger, but they did. They had pride, envy, boredom, fun . . . unfortunately, the fun was a result of the rage and hunger the majority of the time.
“And you don’t know Eligos. The things he’s done. The ambitions he has. He would raze this entire city with blood and fire and a thousand demons to get what he wants,” he warned, stepping closer to me, his hand reaching out to cup my cheek. I let him. Why? A question best answered later when I couldn’t feel the beat of his pulse through his palm. “He would take you apart inch by inch, slice by slice. He would make death seem like the rarest and most wonderful dream you could fathom. He would do anything to get the Light. Anything.”
“And you wouldn’t?” I said softly.
His hand dropped away from my face, but I could still feel the warm imprint of it. A demon’s touch was never cold, or maybe that was just Solomon’s. “There are things I wouldn’t do. I know you don’t believe me, but it’s the truth.” He gave a rueful smile. “A demon can speak it once in a while.” He stepped back, asphalt scraping under his black boots. “Perhaps if you would tell me what you want for the Light, we could gain a little more trust between us. A demon, but which demon? And why?” His eyes sharpened on me. “Did you tell Eligos?”
“I did, but you . . . ” I looked at him with skepticism, distrust, and an emotion I doubted he could guess, even with all the souls he’d taken over the years. He may have devoured them, but that didn’t mean he understood me. “You, I’ve known a lot longer. Distrusted a lot longer. When we find the Light, then I’ll tell you what I want. Who and why. It’ll keep you hungry and sharp, and that in turn will provide a check to Eden House and Eli.”
“You play us all against one another.” His smile was grim. “You would make a good demon, Trixa. Eating you would be a waste of a good soldier.” He moved closer, his breath as warm as his hand. “A waste of an incomparable soul.”
The door to the bar opened and Solomon slipped a card into my hand. “Have dinner with me tonight. In an hour.” He hesitated, then added a word I would’ve guessed he didn’t even know. “Please.” Then he was gone in a minitornado of black smoke. Showy bastard.
Leo stood in the doorway with a shotgun. “Either you’re playing games, and you might die because of it. Or you’re not playing games—and you will die because of it.”
I followed him back inside. “Trust me. I know what I’m doing.” Dinner. That was a new one. After three years, maybe he thought he’d try a different approach than threats or straight seduction. It might be interesting.
“I do trust you.” He flipped the bar towel over his shoulder and put the shotgun back behind the bar. “You’re the only one I trust, but I’ve seen you lose your temper. And what you feel about Kimano is far beyond simply losing your temper. You could lose your mind before this is all over.”
I touched the Pele’s tear that hung around my neck, and thought to myself, Who says I haven’t already? To Leo I said, “I have to go change. I have a date.” Ignoring his exasperated sigh, I disappeared up the stairs and reappeared a half hour later.
Leo was still waiting, propped on a bar stool with arms crossed. “Nice,” he rumbled. “Red dress, tight, lots of perfume. Not like a hooker at all.”
“It’s not perfume. It’s deodorant.” And the dress was not that tight. “You think I should try to charm information out of him with my faded T-shirt, holey jeans, and the sweet smell of perspiration?”
“Your idea of charm is to shoot a demon in the head instead of the dick,” he said dryly. “But I know better than to try to stop you. Go seduce away. Sleep with him if you think you need to, but think about what Kimano would say about that.”
“I am not sleeping with him.” I shot him a poisonous glare. “If I had a bumper sticker, it would read, ‘Demon slayer, not demon layer.’ ”
“Your mouth says no, but your cleavage says yes.”
I looked down automatically, but saw the same as usual. I was a medium B cup. The only way I was going to get “yes” cleavage was with a fifty-dollar bra or the Army Corps of Engineers. “You are such an ass.”
“That’s better than what I used to be.” He flashed a grin and started closing up the bar. He waited until I was at the door before he said, “Be careful.”
I gave him a grin just as bright. “You should’ve given that advice to Solomon.” He simply shook his head in resignation and finished turning out the lights as I opened the front door to pass through. Unlike most Vegas bars, we closed when we felt like it. Usually at one or two. Tonight had been fairly empty, and we’d closed at midnight. That was a little late for a dinner, but in Vegas, time has no meaning. The card Solomon had given me was of a very upscale, difficult-to-get-into restaurant that served until four a.m. And miracle of miracles, it wasn’t on the Strip.
Soon enough I was handing my much-abused car over to a dubious valet. The restaurant was called Green Silk. Green wasn’t my color, but I appreciated the atmosphere. Candles and candles alone lit the dining room. It made each table seem like the only one there. Once I was escorted to Solomon’s table, we were promptly deserted. Usually in a place like this you would have a waiter hovering by your table in case a crumb should fall or you should need a single drop of wine to restore the liquid in your glass to the perfect level. Privacy was a nice change, although when it came down to it, I preferred pizza joints, Greek food, Ethiopian, a hot dog stand . . . anything run by people, real people—not mannequins. Places where you could laugh and not shatter the paper-thin crystal glasses at your table.
Solomon had stood as I was seated, then sat again. “You look. . . .” He smiled and raised his glass, already filled with wine. “I have no words.”
“Funny. Leo had quite a few words.” I tasted my wine. It was the good stuff, as they say, very, very good. There were some advantages to the high life.
“But you came anyway.” Solomon put his glass down. “Have you ever listened to anyone in your life, Trixa?”
“Oh, I listen and then I do what I want, but I do listen. I’m not rude.” I had another sip and savored the cherry and spice flavor of it.
“Homicidal, seemingly suicidal at times, with a smart mouth you never bother to rein in, but not rude. I see.” His eyes were warm in the candlelight. “In all my years, and they have been many, I’ve not met anyone quite like you.”
“No?” Food was placed before me. Solomon had taken the liberty of ordering before I’d arrived—I hated it when dates did that, but this wasn’t a date, I reminded myself. And as it was a small, enormously thick, and extremely tender piece of steak, I let it go. “I still think I’ve met plenty like you. So, tell me, Solomon—make me truly believe you aren’t like all your kin. Tell me. . . .” I thought for a moment. “Tell me about the Fall. The real story, not the made-for-TV version.”
His eyes went from warm to somber. “It’s not as different as you might think.” He looked at his own steak but didn’t cut it. It seemed his appetite was gone. Slowly, he started. “Lucifer was best loved by God, when he was an angel. You’ve heard that, I know. But fathers shouldn’t do that. They shouldn’t love one of their offspring more than the others. And that’s what we thought we were . . . children of God—not tools. But actually we were creations with a purpose, no more a child than a television or a car. Lucifer was the first to tell us it wasn’t right. He told us that if he ruled Heaven, he’d be our father and he would love us as children and love us all the same.”
“And did he mean it?”
He shook his head. “I don’t know. At the time I was sure that he did. God didn’t deny what he said. He said nothing and left it up to us . . . with our precious free will . . . to decide. In the face of that silence, it didn’t cross my mind that Lucifer might lie, that God might be testing us.” Solomon was looking into my eyes, but I didn’t think I was the one he saw. “Lucifer was an angel. Angels do not lie, or didn’t then, and, truthfully, we thought him the best and brightest of us all. If you could have seen him. His face was the sun, his wings the moon, and now”—his lips pressed tightly together and he drained his glass—“you would die. One glimpse of him and you would die. When we fell, we all became the opposite of what we were. He changed most of all. Our would-be father was turned into something so hideous, even we demons can only glance at him from the corner of our eye. The Morning Star fell, and an endlessly hungry Abyss came to life. Destroying him would’ve been much kinder. But perhaps he deserves it for taking us all with him.”
I was quiet for a moment as he abruptly turned and called for more wine. When he had it and was making his way through it with a grim intensity that had a passing waiter wincing at the lack of appreciation for its age and taste, I asked, “You said free will. I’ve always wondered how there could be a revolution in Heaven if angels had no free will. That doesn’t make any sense. How could you rise up without wills of your own? I know angels learn it eventually if they spend enough time among humans, but the Fall was a long time ago.”
He put the glass down and gave a faint smile, pleased to be one up on me for once. “Contrary to popular argument, angels did have free will in the beginning. It was after we were cast down that God stripped free will from the remaining angels. Not much of a reward for loyalty, is it?”
Or perhaps he thought it was like a fast car and a sixteen-year-old new driver. Dangerously beyond their control. Not that it mattered. The angels that interacted with humans on a regular basis regained the will they’d lost. I’d seen it, seen them. It didn’t automatically make them the Precious Moments angels with the oh-so-cute tipped halo. Free will can make you a saint or a bastard. There were no guarantees. “So demons didn’t learn free will on their own. They had it all along?”
He raised his glass. “We did and we kept it. The one single parting gift left to us by God. Which is ironic. Since with our free will many of us wanted to return home.”
“Even if you had had to lose that free will if He let you in?”
“To be in his grace again, it would be worth it. Even without, even as not best loved.” He pushed his untouched plate away.
Give up my free will? There was no grace worth that. He read my face. “You don’t know. You can’t know.” For a second, bleak misery flickered behind the gray as his hand fisted on the table. “Grace and home, I’ll never have either again.”
Other books
Vintage: A Ghost Story by Steve Berman
Chasing Venus by Diana Dempsey
Too Hot to Hold by Stephanie Tyler
War Beneath the Waves by Don Keith
A Dinner Of Herbs by Yelena Kopylova
More Than Fashion by Elizabeth Briggs
Where Did It All Go Right? by Andrew Collins
English Rider by Bonnie Bryant
Signs and Wonders by Alix Ohlin