Trick of the Light

  The smile was back . . . as cocky, and almost as warm. If he was pissed, and I imagined he was, he hid it well. Then again when you claim to have been around millions of years, how mind-numbingly boring that would be. A few thousand years, sure. Maybe even ten, but after that, things were bound to get boring. Eli considered me surprising and I don’t think he was often surprised. “If you shoot me, I can’t tell you who ordered Eden House smote to the ground. ‘Smote.’ I haven’t gotten to use that word since my days upstairs. I kind of miss it. Lots of pomp and circumstance in a word like that.” He tapped his chin as the smile became sly. “Downstairs we just say slaughter or massacre or team-building exercise.”

  “Who, then?” Too bad the pool cue wasn’t barbed along its length; I would’ve twisted it. It wouldn’t have done much good. Demons, especially these high-level demons we were suddenly seeing so much of, had a high tolerance for pain. “Tell me and maybe Zeke and Griffin won’t turn your head into history and the rest of you into a pool of ecological disaster that’ll have the EPA beside themselves.”

  “All right. All right. What a sore winner,” he grumbled. It was all just another show. As I’d thought, he wanted to tell me. He’d come here to tell me. Putting up a fight wasn’t on his agenda . . . for now. “Beleth ordered it. And guess who works under Beleth. Way under. As in ‘He’s my boss, but I just sit and wait for his memos and gaze dreamily at his photo on my desk.’”

  “Solomon.” I’d read books other than holy ones. I had the list of the higher demons memorized to the last duke, assuming humans got it right when they wrote it all down, and that was a big assumption. Beleth was supposedly a king in Hell. There was only one step above a king downstairs. “Beleth wants to take over? Push Lucifer aside?”

  “I told you, darlin’, we all do. But he’s one of the ones with the best shot. And if he obtained the Light, he could start a rebellion. Another rebellion, rather. Arrogance and pride were the downfall for us all. We all want to sit in the big chair someday.” He shrugged. “Solomon is personal assistant material. It’s beyond him, but if he brought the Light to Beleth, swing! One big-ass promotion and a giant step closer to the throne for himself.”

  Solomon had seemed sincere in his denial of knowledge about the fall of Eden House, but Solomon always seemed sincere. He was good at what he did, but a demon that gave up killing? I shouldn’t buy it. Couldn’t, not if I wanted to do what needed to be done. “And whom do you work for, Eli? Who sent you for the Light?”

  “Nobody. I’m a free agent. I sell to the highest bidder.” He grasped the pool cue and within seconds pulled it loose. I let him, dropping it from my hands. “Like you, Trixa. We’re one in the same. Well, I might be slightly more sexy, but basically one in the same. We’re all business when it comes to the Light.” He handed the cue back to me with a small bow. “But all pleasure when it comes to everything else.”

  He held out his hand and a box, wreathed in a wisp of smoke, rested in his palm. The same size as his hand, it was plum-colored with a thin silver bow. Very elegant. “For you. Call me if you decide I’m a lighter touch on the leash than Trinity.”

  “Call you?” Sexier, my ass. I leaned back and crossed pajama-covered ankles. I couldn’t help but take him in and admit to myself, all right, maybe a tad sexier. Just a tiny bit. Vain bastard. But he wasn’t smarter, no matter what he thought. “As in say your name and poof—here you are?”

  “Hardly. I’m not a genie. I’m a demon, and my hearing isn’t in the superhero range. Call my cell.” He whipped out a card and passed it over. “Here’s my number.”

  I didn’t bother to look at it. “I’m guessing 666- 6666.”

  “Oh, right. As if that number weren’t snatched up decades ago.” The sarcasm hung in the air, but he was gone. Even his jacket was gone.

  Damn, what a long morning.

  “You never let us play anymore,” Zeke grumped from his position on the stairs. He’d been well behaved and waited on my signal as to whether to shoot or not. He was getting better and better at grasping the intricacies of mental battles versus physical ones—even if he thought the former were rather pointless.

  “I still need him, Kit. Between Solomon, Trinity, and the angel that showed up this morning, I need a wild card to play if things don’t go my way.” I carefully undid the bow—I did love presents—and pulled off the lid of the box.

  It was a finger.

  Definitely not the kind of present I was looking for. My stomach rolled. Griffin and Zeke had already moved to my side to ask about the angel. They didn’t get the chance.

  “Leo?” Griffin’s voice was hoarse and black with rage. I rested a hand on his shoulder and squeezed.

  “No. Not Leo.” I closed the box and retied the ribbon with a savage twist. I had no idea what I’d do with it. There was no point in turning it into the police. Whoever it belonged to was no doubt dead by now, and if he wasn’t, he was far beyond the reach of any authorities.

  “How do you know?” he asked incredulously. “It could be. It looked . . .”

  It looked like Leo’s. The same color red-brown skin, large . . . there was blood on the white velvet beneath it, indicating it had been taken off a living human being. Poor damn bastard, whoever he was or had been . . . but the finger didn’t belong to Leo.

  “I know. But it’s not, not that it makes it any less horrible.” I put the box on the pool table before standing and going to the bar, where I picked up the phone and dialed the number on the card. I got Eligos’s voice mail. It figured. I always thought that an invention of Hell anyway.

  “Eligos, find my brother’s killer and only then do you get the Light. As for the finger—I’m giving it to you right now.” I disconnected, although throwing the phone across the room instead was very tempting.

  No, he wasn’t half as smart as he thought he was. All he’d done was succeed in pissing me off—and I had a long list of people who could tell him that wasn’t a good thing. Mama said never hold a grudge against a man; hold his balls instead and yank them off. Saved the both of you time. Aggravation time for you . . . recovery time for him. Eli had better watch his back and his sac from now on, because I was through with playing. This girl was going to make him sorry he’d ever stepped one foot outside Hell.

  “How do you know for sure it isn’t Leo’s?” Griffin persisted. “I didn’t see any marks or scars, so how can you know?”

  “I just do.” Back at the table, I retrieved the pool cue, put it back to its less lethal form, and cleaned the black blood from it with angry strokes of a bar rag.

  “Can’t you call him and make sure?”

  Griffin, in his own way, could be as inflexible as his partner. And he’d known Leo as long as he’d known me—gotten his male bonding from the bartender. Leo had been and still probably was his role model. It was understandable Griffin would be worried, but he’d have to trust me on this. “Because there’s no coverage where he is. And before you ask, his family doesn’t have a land line.”

  “What are they? Native American Amish?” Zeke asked, annoyed. Annoyance was one of the few emotions he was genuinely good at. But that wasn’t fair. He was as worried about Leo as his partner; he just had trouble showing it.

  “They like their privacy. Now leave it alone. Leo is fine. And, Griffin, don’t ask me again how I know that finger isn’t his. You’re giving me a headache. I just know, all right? How I know, you don’t need to know. Got it?” I said, patience thinning. I wasn’t proud of it. But everything was coming together now after so long. I needed to concentrate, not squabble.

  “No, I don’t have it,” he snapped back. “And what about the angel you said was here? What angel? What did he want?”

  At least that I could tell him. “Oriphiel,” I sighed. “I know you had to learn enough from the House to know he’s up there, no mild-mannered little Christmas angel. He’s come to hold Trinity’s leash while Trinity thinks he holds mine.”

  At that moment Lenore winged through out of nowher
e, as usual, swooped down toward the pool table, and snatched the bow to the box in his beak. He then flew toward the back office. I’d decided to drive to the desert and bury the finger, but I could see that wasn’t in the cards for me after all, which was for the best. I still wasn’t done with my research on what the seed of Light had flashed through my brain. “I’m taking a shower. Take Lenny and my car”—what was left of it—“and get rid of the finger, would you? My keys are on Leo’s desk.” I softened it further, adding, “Please? Bury it. Treat it with respect.” Although I knew Griffin didn’t need to be told that. “And if any more boxes show up, don’t open them. There’s no point.”

  “But how . . .”

  I went up the stairs, leaving the questions I couldn’t answer and the poignantly pitiful body part behind. The next time I faced an angel, demon, or human ice cube like Trinity, I wanted to be at my best. Having to fight in cotton, Mother Goose pajamas didn’t have me feeling quite at my peak. I could do the same damage, but as a samurai went into battle in his armor, I preferred to go in my clothes. Mark Twain would’ve understood. He’d once said, Clothes make the man. Naked people have little or no influence on society. My interpretation ran along the lines of naked people had limited options on where to hide their weapons. Thin cotton jammies weren’t much better. And weapons? They had a great deal of influence on society.

  Human and demonic.

  Chapter 13

  The day was shot. I’d known that from the beginning. Angels, demons, severed fingers, Griffin irritated with me and with every reason, more boring research to be done, and now this.

  I cupped my cheek where Trinity, swear to my best pair of high-heeled demon-stabbing boots, had just bitch slapped me. “You said you could do this,” he said, reaching into his suit pocket for a handkerchief to wipe off his hand as if I were contaminated. I was surprised he didn’t pull out a bottle of antibacterial wash and scrub up like a surgeon. “And you are not living up to your claims.”

  “You slapped me.” Bemused and stunned, I said it as if the sky had abruptly turned green and promptly fallen on my head,. “You actually slapped me.” Never mind I’d punched one of his men two days ago. That had to be done . . . as a lesson not to imagine they could force me under their control, that they couldn’t push me. I didn’t think they learned it, because this was pushing. I didn’t think I’d ever been slapped in my life. Hit, kicked, thrown against a wall, thrown over a wall, clawed, and stabbed . . . a demon carrying a mundane switchblade . . . I hadn’t seen that coming. All understandable with what I did. But slapped? I was insulted.

  No, I was furious, which might be why I lost my temper. Completely. A luxury I rarely allowed myself.

  “What are you, Iktomi? Thirty? Thirty-one?” He knew exactly how old I was per any documents on file with the city. He would’ve investigated me thoroughly the second he found out I was involved with Griffin and Zeke’s hunts, and more important, connected to the Light. He was only demonstrating how little I mattered by pretending to forget such routine information. “You are a child compared to the long history of Eden House, a child in this war.”

  “And let me guess, ‘Spare the rod, spoil the child.’ ” I pulled my Smith from the holster at the back waistband of my black jeans and pressed the muzzle hard, right between his cold eyes. “What about ‘Spare the bullet’? Ever heard that one, Mr. Trinity?”

  We were up in my room, where I was doing the research I’d planned on. Books and on the Internet. I hadn’t found what I was looking for yet, but I was close. Trinity had one of his two men kick open the door downstairs. I’d heard it and not been particularly surprised. Picking the lock would’ve been more subtle, but Trinity wasn’t in the mood for subtlety now. He was only in the mood for results.

  They’d ascended the stairs as I stood up from the chair at my desk, fully expecting who it was. What I didn’t expect was for him to walk over and, without a word, slap me across the face. It was a slap full of contempt and no anticipation that you’d raise a pinky in self-defense . . . or revenge. How unfortunate for him that he was that lacking in perception. I decided a gun was too good for him and much more than I needed to take both him and attitude down.

  I must have still had my mama’s advice on my mind as I moved the gun, aiming it at the men with him. I then gave him a swift knee to his crotch, swept his legs from beneath him to drop him on his side, and rammed the knuckles of my left balled-up hand onto the floor hard and fast. It was so close to the front of his neck that I brushed his skin and he knew, for a nicely unpalatable fact, I could’ve crushed his larynx if I’d wanted. It was a move I’d picked up in Israel, where the martial arts aren’t meant to be pretty and color coordinated—they’re meant to kill.

  “It’s been a long time since you fought any demons hand to hand, hasn’t it, Mr. Trinity?” I asked as his eyes closed tightly in pain as he struggled not to embarrass himself by cupping his damaged-during-delivery package. “I fought one last night.”

  His two men moved closer, then backed away when I narrowed my eyes and aimed the gun at them. “I’ll bet it’s been thirty years since you actually faced one down,” I added. “I kill demons all the time. I can kill you with a lot less effort, time, and firepower. And don’t think your boss is sending anyone to help you. Heaven let Eden House burn. Why would they save you?” I stood from my half crouch beside him. “Besides, I talked to Oriphiel this morning. It seems he has the same confidence in you that you have in me. I doubt he’ll care if he loses his middleman. How many Eden Houses are there anyway? How many Mr. Trinitys? I sincerely doubt you’re irreplaceable.” I put a booted foot on his leg and rolled him over from his side onto his back. “But I am. I’m the only one the Light speaks to. And you know what? That should have you kissing my feet, if not other parts of me.”

  I walked to the bed, took the book I’d “borrowed” from the library, and said casually, “When you’re done writhing in pain and self-pity, I’ll be downstairs and maybe . . . maybe we’ll talk. If you puke, avoid my rug and have one of your pathetic minions clean it up, and when you start plotting your revenge”—I smiled—“and I know you will, be sure you wait until after you have the Light to carry it out. Otherwise, Mr. Trinity, you’ll be carried out by Eden House pallbearers. As far as I can tell, you’re no better than a demon. If I don’t have a problem with killing them, why would I have one with killing you?”

  I certainly didn’t have a problem beating the crap out of an old guy. I suppose that made me a bad, bad girl. But the fact that he was in his late sixties, early seventies, didn’t make it harder mentally and only easier physically. A bad girl, but a practical one. He might have the Sean Connery look, but Connery never would’ve gone down that easily. Mr. Trinity was a disgrace to his profession. As they say in so many professions, there are no retired demon hunters, only dead ones. Trinity might not have gone soft, but he’d gotten slow.

  But slow or not, he hadn’t forgotten how to use a shotgun.

  He pulled the trigger as he stepped through the door at the bottom of the stairs. The slug from the gun of one of his bootlickers hit the ceiling directly above me, causing plaster dust to drift down onto me. It landed in my coffee as well; black with six sugars, extra sweet like me, but it had gone cold anyway in the twenty minutes I’d sat there thumbing through the book. I looked up, brushed at the black and copper swirls of my shirt, and ran a hand through my hair to see white dust fly. I won’t deny a shiver passed down my spine. I was relatively sure he wouldn’t shoot me off the bat. I was tough, but I had nerve endings like anyone else, and they had minds of their own when it came to the sounds of massive booms near my body. Feeling it and showing it though were two different things. “You know”—I pushed the ruined coffee away—“I’m surprised you had the balls to do that . . . especially considering what I did to them upstairs.”

  “You think I can’t kill you, Ms. Iktomi,” he said lev elly. “But I can hurt you. Cripple you if I like. You will give me the Light, and you will no
t make such unseemly trouble again or I’ll shatter one, perhaps two kneecaps, and watch you crawl to the Light, leaving a trail of blood and screams behind you. Do we have an agreement?”

  I opened my mouth, then closed it as he pulled more ammunition from his suit pocket and reloaded the shotgun. A little slower than he’d once been, but not soft, and still a man to be reckoned with. “I think we might.” I nodded, reluctant, but you can’t play two sides against each other if you don’t have both sides present. Kimano would’ve told me that justice wasn’t worth my life, but it wasn’t justice—it was vengeance, pure and simple. And Kimano wasn’t here to tell me anything.

  “Although some respect on your side would help quite a bit,” I added pointedly.

  “That is unfortunate as I’ve yet to see any reason you deserve it. You’re a mediocre merchant of mediocre alcohol in a less than mediocre establishment. You live and run a business designed to promote nothing but sin. Why two members of my House found you in any way worthy enough to join them in fighting an evil beyond your limited comprehension, I cannot fathom.” He aimed the shotgun again, this time at my chest. “If I do kill you, the House of Eden might not find the Light in my lifetime, but neither will any demon. Think upon that.”

  What a way with a compliment he had. At least he didn’t call me a harlot or Jezebel or Whore of Babylon. It was an unexpected and pleasant surprise. “Don’t think they won’t be pissed about that, Mr. Trinity. I already have two jockeying for it.” From the tightening of his lips, this was apparently news to him. Good. “You’re right. If you kill me, they won’t have the Light—they’ll only have you. Are you that anxious to go meet your big boss? With your ironclad, I’m sure, faith, I bet you can’t wait . . . even if you have to be skinned alive strip by bloody strip and your internal organs eaten while your heart still beats to get there.” I shifted my view back to the book and turned another page. “I admire a man of your conviction.”