by Rob Thurman
Let them be confused. I was everything. No one could pin me down, name me, or put me in a box, and I liked that too, even more than I liked red.
“Iktomi, stop your primping and get out here.”
“Problem, Leo?” I tucked a curl behind my ear. It promptly fought its way to freedom.
There was a problem, I knew; otherwise Leo wouldn’t have stuck his nose—a nice hawklike nose it was too—into the bathroom.
“Your demon is here,” he said gruffly.
“Already?” I fished my lipstick, red with just a hint of copper, from the pocket of my black pants and applied it. It’d barely been twenty minutes. His place still had to be on fire. Couldn’t he stand around and make nice with the firemen? That was not to mention the arson inspector, whom I felt rather bad for. We were giving him some long working days, the poor guy. We’d burned the place down four times now. Maybe I’d send him a fruit basket and a nice card: Sorry for the overtime.
“Okay, okay. I’ll be out in a sec.” As the door shut, I touched the pendant around my neck. It was a teardrop of polished black stone on a gold chain. It cried when I couldn’t. “A long time, little brother. A long time gone. I miss you.” I raised it, kissed it lightly, then let it fall back into place and went back into the main bar. What there was of it.
I was in the bar business, but I wasn’t into the bar business. It was temporary, like most things in my life. There’s always someplace else to go if you have to. Always something else to do. Although, this particular temporary had gone on for ten years now. I think that was an all-time record for me.
It was small, with a few pool tables, a couple of dart-boards, some tables and chairs, old paneled walls, one TV above the bar—definitely not big-screen—and alcohol. That’s all I wanted or needed. I had this place, my apartment above, and I had purpose. What else would I need?
Solomon stood at the bar. I’d always thought it was pretty ballsy of him to choose the name Solomon. There were rumors floating around in ye olden times that King Solomon had imprisoned demons to build his temple. How’d I know that? It wasn’t from Bible school—not that I didn’t know the Bible, several versions in fact, including the books a cranky pope had decided not worthy to be included. But it didn’t matter where I picked up the information; in this business it paid to pick up little scraps of factoids here and there, most in the nonbiblical realm. It kept a roof over my head, selling information just as I sold alcohol. And to keep myself busy while I wasn’t doing the first two, I dabbled in my hobby. I might not officially be in the demon-destroying business, but I dipped in a toe now and again. A toe, a shotgun—whatever it took. I liked to help my boys out.
Zeke and Griffin stood motionless on either side of Solomon. Griffin’s face was blank; Zeke’s was not. It would’ve been better had it been. They did know not to cause trouble in my place if they could help it. They were welcome, always, but fights and cops and ambulances weren’t. Besides, the general public was standing around. You couldn’t kill a demon right here in front of You-know-who and everyone . . . not unless you absolutely had to.
My boys—and they were my boys since I’d given them their first jobs at fifteen and seventeen, sweeping up the place and taking out the trash—knew the rules and stepped back as I walked up. They were twenty-five and twenty-seven now, all grown-up and a demon’s worst nightmare. Me? I’d come to Las Vegas ten years ago when I was twenty-one. Griff and Zeke had wondered back when I’d hired them how I’d been able to afford to buy a bar at that age. I could’ve told them I inherited it from my father or mother or great-uncle Joe, but I told them the truth.
Lying and cheating.
I wasn’t ashamed. Far from it. I deceived only those who deserved it, and you’d be amazed how many did. Then again, if you were smart and kept your eyes open, you might not be so surprised after all. And that held true for everywhere, not just in Sin City. Bad guys were fair game and the one in front of me was rumored to be the worst in town. A bit of an occupational hazard when you’re a demon, being bad. Like a steering wheel on a car, you didn’t have to pay extra for it—it was part of the package.
“Trixa Iktomi,” Solomon said with the warmest of smiles. Solomon, whom I’d made it my business to know, had been in Vegas as long as, if not longer than, I, and knew how to sling the bullshit or to turn on the charm, if you preferred the more elegant term. Whichever you called it, it had the same result—a woman hanging on his every word. “My sweet Trixa. Do I detect the faintest smell of smoke? A new scented shampoo, perhaps?”
I could’ve said something like, “Yes, it’s a new perfume. Everyone’s dying for it.”
Please.
I’m not that woman and I never will be. I wasn’t that trite, and I wasn’t playing his games. Any I played would be my own. “Actually, it’s the smell of an asshole’s burning nightclub,” I remarked pleasantly. “Thanks for noticing.” I didn’t have the cleanest mouth, but I blamed it on Zeke. I was working on it though. Self-improvement was one of my many goals. One day I planned on getting around to a few of them. I motioned to Leo to pour me and the asshole two shots of tequila with beer backs.
Solomon, as I’d made very clear, was an asshole, but a sexy one. Short black hair with a faint widow’s peak, a slightly cleft chin, broad shoulders, good height, and full, Latin lips that got me every time. He was dressed in a simple gray shirt, black slacks, and a black leather jacket.
Demons, in human form, are almost always good-looking—too good-looking really—and why wouldn’t they be? They’re hot, loaded with charisma, deeply fascinated by you and everything you say or do, and are everything nature designed to make you want to jump their bones. It’s how it works. They want your soul. They have to make you want to give them your soul. Looking like a plumber with a gut and a bit of tasteful butt-crack showing isn’t going to get the job done. You have to want them . . . enough to give them anything—and the soul is pretty up there in the anything department.
But if that’s all it was—smart demons getting stupid humans to hand over their souls—I couldn’t care less. If you’re stupid enough to sell it, then that’s your vacation pit of agony and despair to worry about, not mine. But that’s not all there is. That would be too easy. No, demons like to kill too—all demons—no matter what Solomon said about himself. If there’s a serial killer uncaught, or a random massacre with no clues as to why, or someone who just disappears, drops off the face of the earth—chances are there’s a demon behind it. They tortured their victims, mutilated them, and killed them. Why?
As one dying demon had once said to me as black blood gushed out of his grinning mouth, “It beats reruns.”
“Why, Trixa?” Solomon said, interrupting my thoughts. He examined the shot glass for fingerprints, and then looked down at the tequila as if the pedestrian drink were so far beneath him that he could barely see the pale gold glitter. Sighing, he tossed it back and then rolled the beer bottle between his two palms. “You know I don’t kill. I’m not a murderer. I take souls, but only those freely given.” His temper turned immediately and drastically. “So why, Trixa, loving bitch of my life, do you keep burning down my goddamn nightclub?”
There was a dangerous glitter in his eyes, velvet gray, as his dark, thick eyebrows slashed downward in an anger that almost shimmered in the air. The slightly olive skin even whitened over his jaw. It was well-done—I had to give him that.
“Bravo.” I tossed back my own tequila, then clapped politely. “Anger, domination, an almost sexual rage. Give props to the gentleman, please, for one hell of a show.”
The warm smile reappeared, rueful and just the tiniest bit sheepish. “Too much? Too little? Where was I off?”
I touched the red of my long-sleeved silk sweater. “This is what I see when a demon really gets pissed. Red. Blood. Then there might be some pinkish gray of lungs and intestines.” Horrific, but true. “And when things get really interesting, really in-depth, there will be—”
He held up a hand. “Enough.
I get your point. You should’ve met Shakespeare. He said I was a magnificent actor.”
The smile never changed. Sexy, warm, and sheepish. I’m a bad boy and you’ve caught me. But under every bad boy is a good one waiting to be redeemed, right? Wrong. Which was how so many naïve high school girls got pregnant before they could drive. Redemption doesn’t come from without. It comes from within. Leo, my bartender, could give a lecture series on the subject.
As for the situation at hand, Solomon was a bad boy, no matter how attractive or charming. I wasn’t about to forget that for a moment, no matter the smile, the lips, the eyes, or the challenging give-and-take between us. Demons are liars by nature, killers by choice, and forgetting that was a mistake I couldn’t afford to make.
“Pay for the drinks and get the hell out of here, Solomon. Go tell some other girl how you only take souls and what a great guy that makes you. What an honest monster, because, frankly, I’m tired of hearing it. And,” I added with emphasis, “I’m insulted you think I’m that gullible.”
“No. You’re not gullible. You’re cynical, in fact, and that blinds you. You can’t see the truth when it’s right before you. And caveat emptor doesn’t even apply here, you know,” he said softly, his hand once again reaching out for mine. “They pay and I deliver. Whatever they ask for, they get. Without fail. How can you hold me in contempt for being an honest tradesman?”
I shook him off . . . not instantly, but I did shake him off and tried not to count the seconds that it took me to make my hand move beneath his. His touch was warm, the same exact warmth of human flesh. The same give. The same electric touch of life. I looked away from him as I said flatly, “Never even touched the hair of an innocent. Never so much as scratched a child, woman, man. Never cut a driver off on the interstate. Go tell it to someone who doesn’t know demons like I do.”
“What if I could prove it?” he challenged.
“You can’t,” I replied, dismissing him, but I did look back, surprised he’d even pretend that he could. Demons were all about pretense, but Solomon usually knew better than to try that with me.
“Maybe not,” he admitted with a shrug and a slow, serious curve of his lips. “But what if I could? Think about that, Trixa. What if I could?”
“No demon can because all demons are killers.” I pointed at the door. “No exceptions.”
“Maybe, just maybe, you don’t know them at all,” he whispered in my ear. “Or maybe it’s just that you don’t know this one.”
Then he was gone. Paid for the beer and tequila and left. To give him credit, he paid for his and mine. The gentleman demon.
“Why the hell do you screw around with him?” Zeke came up after Solomon disappeared out the front door and hissed at my elbow.
I raised my eyebrows sharply. Griffin grabbed Zeke’s wrist and squeezed lightly. It was his guiding signal. Think. What do we say, this or that? What do we do, this or that? What are the consequences of each choice? Think.
Zeke blinked at me, considered for a second, then said, “Shit . . . I meant, why the hell do you put up with him? Messing with you?”
I smiled and leaned over to kiss his jaw, a whisper of copper stubble against my lips. I wanted to say he’d done well, very well, but he would’ve hated that . . . attention brought to his problem. He was proud, stubborn, and temperamental—add that to the all-or-nothing hardwiring of his brain and he was a handful. More of a hell-raiser than any demon.
“Because Solomon is big or he wouldn’t stick around Vegas.” But they knew that already. The minor demons never stay in one place too long and they definitely don’t own and operate nightclubs . . . those that aren’t burned to the ground. “You know that. Your organization knows that. Everyone who knows demons exist knows that. Solomon has useful information. And you know how I like information.” As I’d said, it kept the roof over my head just as much as the bar did. I sold information. It didn’t have to be demon related, especially since ninety-nine point nine percent of the people out there refused to believe in them, but it didn’t necessarily mean it couldn’t be demon related either. Lucky horse? High-stakes illegal poker game? Jewelry store robbery? Who stole your gorgeous gold Cadillac? You heard a lot of things in a bar and I’d tell any one of them for a price. As long as no one was hurt . . . no one who didn’t have it coming, anyway.
Leo interrupted, disgruntled—no more a fan of demons than the rest of us—and jerked a thumb toward the back exit. “There’s another one in the alley trying to eat a homeless guy. This is one bitch of a night.”
Zeke grinned, and when Zeke grinned that was never a good thing, at least for the person or nonper son that grin was meant for. It was the grin of a hungry wolf in midleap on something tasty and slow—damn happy and utterly without remorse. He headed immediately for the back door. Griffin looked at me. “Yeah, yeah,” I sighed. “I’ll get the shotgun out of your car. Go.” Right now Zeke had his objective in sight: Kill the demon. The homeless guy—let’s hope he was out of the way when Zeke went into action. That was why Griffin was going with him and I was going after the shotgun. Zeke was white, the demon was black, and the homeless guy was that shade of gray Zeke had so much difficulty seeing.
Being saved from a demon didn’t do you much good if you were accidentally between the shotgun and your attacker when rescue came.
God had supposedly given man free will—so it was debated anyway—but without a good deal of practice or an inborn instruction manual, free will . . . well, it could be more a nightmare than a blessing. We all saw it and we all knew it, but Griffin knew it most of all. Their current employers had apparently tried psychotherapy and every medication known to the field, but nothing had improved Zeke’s condition; nothing had worked. Only Griffin worked . . . to a certain degree. “How many damn drugs did his bitch of a mother take while she was pregnant to make him this way?” he’d asked once over a drink after a particular mission had gone sideways because of Zeke and his inability to stop, once in motion, to exercise that will. “How could someone do that? To their own baby?”
How indeed?
But that had been last year that Griffin had spilled his frustration over whiskey—last year, and this was now. And now required a shotgun, so let’s concentrate on that. I had it out of the car and in the alley in seconds. A dirty, disheveled man went tearing past me, so it was safe to say Zeke hadn’t trampled over the top of him to get to the demon—or shot through him. Either that or it was one tough homeless guy, and he was gone so fast, I didn’t have a chance to look for footprints on his back or a hole in the middle of him.
Zeke was still grinning in the gloom of the ill-lit alley. He was never happier than when he had a job to do, a task to perform, a demon to kill. A strand of hair had fallen free from his short braid as he wrestled the demon to keep him on the ground. He had one arm and Griffin had the other, and both had buried knives in the man’s chest.
The man’s chest because the demon looked like a man now. Actually, he looked like Elvis . . . the very best Elvis impersonator in the city, thanks to a demon’s chameleon abilities. If you didn’t know better, you would’ve thought the King himself was spitting foul curses at us. Zeke did know better because, like several other local demon chasers, he was telepathic. He could sense a demon’s surface thoughts if he was close enough. I once asked if he’d ever rummaged around in my thoughts. He’d said no and with Zeke-honesty, admitting that it was only because he hadn’t thought of it. “Good,” I’d said, pointing the knife I was using to cut lemons at the bar. “If you do, I’ll rummage around inside you with this.” Zeke definitely comprehended that consequence. Whether he could only sense surface thoughts or not, my thoughts, no matter how shallow or deep, were my own. I made sure of that.
Griffin, because he was an empath, knew the man was a demon, and this was why Eden House had recruited Zeke and Griffin both. They had the abilities Eden House prized above all, a mirror of the Above and Below.
Angels had telepathy, which was useful for
impressing long-ago shepherds by pushing God’s word directly into their minds, and demons had empathy—very good for feeling out what a human would trade for his soul. A human empath could feel a demon’s emotions, which were similar to a human’s emotions—if he was one helluva bad human—only multiplied ten times over. And a telepath could hear a demon’s recruitment plan forming in its head or its murdering intent—unless you were a high-level angel or demon, in which case it all went out the window. No one could tell what you were up to. It was a peculiar balance the Universe had come up with—if the angels and demons had those powers, then so did the humans.
It gave Eden House and its demon hunters an extra edge. To destroy demons and bring Eden back to Earth . . . as if demons were the only thing keeping that from happening. But men were men. Try telling them anything, especially as the occasional angel reinforced the belief by showing up and giving an order or two. Free labor—not even angels would turn that down.
Now, when it came to me, how did I know a demon in human form? Griffin and Zeke had asked me that when they became aware that what they’d found out regarding the world around them when they were recruited by Eden House wasn’t precisely news to me. Demons were real. They were here. For once, movies and TV hadn’t lied.
I told them the truth. My family had been gypsies and travelers since—since before anyone could remember. We’d seen a lot in our travels and we passed on our stories to relatives when the reunions came around. And then I told them a lie, but a small one. I also told them that my family, my ancestors, had been pagans before a druid had ever danced naked under the moon. I said we’d worshipped the gods of nature when they were the only gods known to man. Honestly, I wasn’t into worship myself. Respect and reverence, yes, but not worship.
