by Rob Thurman
Not puppies. More like that sweet, sweet neighbor who lived next door. Ninety-five if she was a day. Made you cookies or told you stories or whatever sweet old people did . . . sweet old people who died the moment you got attached. Granted I hadn’t had cookie-making neighbors next to the bar, just winos, a porn shop, and a strip club. But I’d seen movies about it, getting attached, and I wasn’t going to do it. I had Leo and everything else . . . everyone else was expendable until I found out who killed Kimano. It had to be that way. Had to.
Lying to yourself, it’s an art.
That’s what I’d thought back then. It hadn’t lasted long, a week maybe—a week of feeding them and watching them twitch and duck their heads every time someone walked into the bar. Watching for cops, social services, or a vague but terrifying authority figure only an on-the-run teen could imagine, the one with the icy clamp of hand on the junction of neck and shoulder just when you might think you were safe. Griffin and Zeke had been a thousand times worse than the most vulnerable and cute damn puppy.
I’d gotten attached. And it hurt. It hurt like hell.
“Bitch alert. Bitch alert,” Lenore cawed as I came through the door at the base of my apartment stairs.
That only deepened the scowl I felt on my face. “The deep fryer works on more than just cheese, you know, bird,” I threatened.
Unimpressed, he cleaned his feathers, then flew to the window, unlocked the catch with his beak, pushed at the glass until it swung sideways, and flew out. There was a shotgun lying on the bar—Leo’s way of telling me he was going to be out for a while and I decided that was it. No more. The bar was closed today. Except for clients—I was expecting two or three. The rest of the time I could spend on the phone, trying to get information from my own contacts. Someone somewhere had to know something more about the Light.
I tried Robin again. There was no answer other than an imaginatively erotic, borderline-pornographic voice mail recording. From there I went down the list, hitting every single one I could think of who might know anything—and not have an agenda of their own. That left out Ishiah in New York. He wasn’t Eden House, but it was possible he’d swing their way more than mine. I couldn’t be sure about him. He was like a lapsed Catholic—you never knew when he might get God again. It wasn’t worth the risk. Above could kiss my ass . . . the Light was mine.
In between calls my clients came knocking. One lady wanted to know where her cheating husband had holed up with their money and his mistress. It was a quick ten thousand. “Don’t kill the mistress,” I said matter-of-factly as I counted the money. “She’s nineteen. Stupid. Doesn’t know better.”
Bitter eyes narrowed behind expensive, tinted sunglasses. “And my husband?”
I smiled coolly. “He most definitely knows better, but you don’t want to go to prison, do you, sugar?” He’d also once had a business partner who liked to fly Piper Cubs as a hobby. One day that partner went up and nobody ever found out where he came down. But her husband, he might not have known where, but he knew why. He was a cheat and a liar and, I strongly suspected, a killer. I trusted myself enough that strongly suspected was good enough for me. Give a lady a fish and she eats for the day; teach a lady to fish and she finds the yacht her cheating spouse is living it up on, puts his ass in jail, and lives on their money for a lifetime. Maybe hires a few dancing pool boys—and good for her.
“The guy next door at the porn shop has a brother who’s a private detective. Good one too. You might want to have him take a look at your husband’s work-related past, especially his deceased partner,” I offered as I stacked the bills. “And, Mrs. D?” I added as she stood. “Happiness is the trifecta of no means, no motive, and an unbreakable alibi.” I was just full of fortune cookie wisdom these past few days. “I doubt your husband has that lucky ticket.”
I dealt with two more clients, fewer fees, and a very small commission from the porn guy—not all clients need just one thing. All in all a good day. Right up until the moment Solomon appeared. He didn’t bother with the door. He solidified into the shadows behind the bar and walked forward to pull down a wineglass from the overhead rack. “White, red, or . . . pink?” He raised an eyebrow.
I was fairly certain you weren’t supposed to mix alcohol with painkillers. Maybe the serrated combat knife I pulled from my boot and tossed at his chest was a bit of an overreaction to his lack of medical knowledge, and the movement did rip at the nerve endings of my back, but I wasn’t sorry either way.
He didn’t bother to dodge, only grunted as the knife slammed into him, and then went on to pour himself a glass of red. He drank half of it before he reached down and pulled free the knife, buried blade deep in his chest. He rested it on the top of the bar, where it dripped ebon. “Maybe tea would be better. A teaspoon of honey might improve your mood.” He smiled that smoky smile. “Sweeten you up, my Trixa.”
I could’ve gotten up and walked over to the shotgun that lay beside the knife on the bar, but it was far and I was tired. I was also curious. Curious, pissed, wary, and working it. Always working it. “Siccing several demons on me is not the way to my heart, believe it or not.”
“I didn’t expect them to do that much damage.” He furrowed his brow, the dark slashes of eyebrows pulled into a V. “I expected more from you. I definitely didn’t expect you to get hurt. You’re better than that. At least you always have been. You’re not losing your touch, surely?”
“Would you lose interest in me then? If I killed a few fewer demons?” I asked.
“If you were a little less lethal, a little less demoni cally destructive in your habits? Perhaps my interest would fade. It’s an interesting question. I’ll have to think on it. Now . . . honey in your tea or not?” he asked pleasantly.
Sighing, I leaned back very carefully and answered, “Four teaspoons of sugar and four of honey. And what about the other demons? Some of them were higher level. Why would they work for you?”
“Living life on the diabetic edge, are we?” he said with humor as he started on the tea. “There is high-level and then there’s me. You should keep that in mind. Now enjoy your diabetes.”
“I will. Life is short. I doubt I need to tell you that, Solomon.” I was amused too; it seemed to confuse him, but he wouldn’t have admitted it. I’d confused Solomon for years now. It could be one of the reasons he hadn’t tried to kill me . . . at least personally. Solomon had been around a long time. Things that confused him, interested him, confounded his devil ass, were bound to be few and far between.
Which was what had kept him focused on me. At least until now, although he could be telling the truth. He could’ve thought we were up to the fight last night, and if we hadn’t been so overly confident, maybe we would have been. I’d not been so sloppy since I could remember. I disgusted myself, but there was a time and a place for self-recrimination, and while facing a demon was not it.
“No, you do not have to tell me about the shortness of life.” Stirring the honey into my cup, he added casually, “I doubt you have to tell your friends Griffin and Zeke so either.”
“Not the way to get on my good side,” I said flatly.
The relationship between Solomon and me was complex . . . if complex grew up and developed a multiple personality.
He’d been in Vegas thirteen years to my ten, from what information I could gather, and had shown up at my place three years ago. I’d known he was a demon the second I saw him. Too handsome, too smooth, too rock star, movie star, too everything. And he couldn’t have been more perfectly designed to appeal to me physically. Dark hair, the shadowed eyes, the warmly wicked smile. Leo from a different time . . . a wilder time. I did have a type and demons were nothing if not good at sizing up someone’s type. But there was a difference between Leo and Solomon. Leo had been a chaos of blackness, rapids over the rocks, with serious, serious father issues. Solomon’s darkness was the opposite—the glass-smooth surface of a river with an undertow that would pull you in and drown you in seconds.
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nbsp; I had known that Leo had a spark of light in him. Maybe I exaggerated when I thought goodness . . . maybe it was more a spark of reason. As for demons, did they have glimmers of good? They were once angels. Did they have the occasional doubt about what they did? And just what was it they did do? Kill, okay. Any sociopath alive could explain why they did that—simply because they wanted to. But bargaining for souls? I was sure plenty of souls ended up “downtown” anyway. Why would they need more?
“What do you do with the souls you bargain for?” I asked, changing the subject to something other than Zeke and Griffin. If I hadn’t, I’d have to shoot Solomon, although half the blame was mine, and that wasn’t the most delicate way of getting information out of someone. It tended to cut down on their cooperation fairly quickly.
“We eat them.” He sat opposite me and set the mug before me. He leaned back in his chair and linked fingers across the dark gray shirt covering his stomach. “Don’t look so surprised. We have to get energy from somewhere. Lucifer is but a fallen angel himself. He can’t feed us the way the angels are fed by the Glory and the Grace.” He almost had a touch of respect as he said the last, still remembering how it had felt. “And some of us require much more energy than those lower demons you kill so easily”—he paused, obviously considering the night before—“usually with ease, at any rate.”
“So all demons aren’t created equal?” That was interesting—with more power came more need.
“Hardly. The hierarchies that existed above exist below. Those mud- and slime-colored demons that are so prevalent were the lowest of angels. Former messengers. If you’d ripped off their wings, they may as well have been human. Pigeons,” he snorted in disdain. “Before the Rebellion came, they might as well have been flying Heaven’s Hallmark cards here and there. They have none of our glory.”
I guessed in some higher angels’ eyes that hanging around with humans was their version of slumming it. But if you were a fallen angel, it became automatic. Ironic. Nope. More like karmic. I drank the tea. If Solomon were going to try to kill me, poisoned honey would not be his weapon of choice.
So Solomon had been a high-and-mighty angel in his day. It figured. He was simply too arrogant to have been anything else. “A soul is just a snack, then.” After all that’s said and done, it was sad to have that luminous quality ending up as something akin to a Happy Meal. It was a great pity for those who didn’t know the value of what lived in them. “At least there’s plenty to go around. Billions of humans, but not so many demons. Exactly how many of you guys are there anyway?”
“Not enough, and we can’t grow. God can create, but Lucifer cannot.” The gray eyes were grim—the ashes of a crusader ’s loss. “There’s a war on. A cold war at the moment, but still a war. Surely you knew that. I know a good little girl like you went to Sunday School.”
“Actually I had a problem with shellfish being an abomination.” The tea was good, hot and sweet. I smiled and tapped a nail on the table. “I do love my oyster shooters. Hard to respect a god who won’t let me have that.”
“You’re Jewish?” he asked, momentarily distracted.
“No, Solomon, just a smart-ass.” I drank more of the tea. It was soothing. I’d had a hard night. I could use a little soothing.
“As if that’s news to me,” he said with an almost-indulgent smile. “So, what do you know about the Light of Life?”
Ah. Not a routine seduction visit. Hun the pervert had sold me out or else Solomon had followed another rumor. Solomon was here for a reason far from sex and a very good reason it was too. The Light of Life. And why not? Solomon had to be one of Below’s top players. Who better to send looking? And as he said, there was a war on. Not an out-and-out war. More of a cold war. No angels storming Hell, no demons assaulting Heaven. Not yet. The demons simply didn’t have the numbers, and if you didn’t have that, then you needed some other edge. Such as the Light.
“I know you’re nowhere near that to me yet.” I tilted my gaze over the mug’s edge. “Not the light of my life. Not my reason for being. Not my pookie-bear. But you keep trying, Solomon. Maybe one day you’ll get there.”
He stood in a motion so smooth and fast he put a cheetah to shame. Slamming both hands down on the table, he demanded darkly, “You’ve been sniffing around. Don’t think I don’t see that. Don’t for an instant think I don’t know. Now, tell me about the Light.”
I nodded at his right hand, where my second combat knife had just been embedded through the flesh and bone into the table beneath it. This time it was the other way around—a demon underestimated me. “I know a Snoopy Band-Aid should take care of that.” I also knew the hand was quicker than the human eye. And demons were quicker than that, but not in this case. He appeared sincerely surprised. Why, I wasn’t sure. If I had one knife in my one boot for his chest, what did he think I had in the other one? Tickets to Spamalot?
Men.
Demons.
I might have miscalculated with the second category last night, but they returned the favor on a daily basis. Although usually not Solomon. Outside of the House of Eden’s hunters, I might be the only nondemon he respected. But apparently he didn’t respect me quite enough. I thought I’d just changed that and that put me one up on what Solomon thought of Eden House hunters.
Hunters . . . Zeke. Griffin. I put the mug down as Solomon yanked the knife, blood dripping from the serrated edge, from his hand. Pretty. But not pretty enough to make me forget. If Zeke had died, I would’ve killed Solomon the moment he’d stepped from the shadows. I’d have taken that shotgun and ended whatever this thing was we had between us. I’d tried so hard not to let anything interfere with seeking vengeance for Kimano, but Zeke and Griffin, no matter how much I wanted to deny it, had stepped into a place close to his. To the right, to the left. Not his spot in my heart, but near . . . very near. My brothers, whether I wanted them to be or not—whether they screwed up my plans or not. They had done it and I’d seen it coming, tried to stop it, but in the end . . .
That Zeke was in the same shape made Solomon the luckiest demon alive.
“You really should be Eden House. You’re quick. So very quick.” He flipped the blade, ignoring the black blood staining his fingers, and offered the handle to me. “For a human.”
“I’m a savant. Some are good with music, some math. I’m very, very good with sharp things.” I took the knife and gave an internal sigh at the cleaning job lying ahead, bound to clog up the dishwasher. “Some of us might be born hunters, but that doesn’t mean it’s the path we have to choose. Officially. I like my independence. I don’t need any little social clubs like Eden House to back me up.” I gave a triple flip of the blade and caught it by the black rubber handle again. “What could they possibly have to offer me except chains?”
His hand had healed in an instant, the same as his chest had. “You’re not telling me a thing, are you?”
I waved fingers at him and drank more of my tea. “Don’t worry. I’m not telling Eden House anything either. If God wants the Light, Above will have to come begging to me, just like you did. And they’ll get the same thing right now. Nothing.”
“God?” he repeated, appearing genuinely astonished. “You think God has anything to do with this? With Eden House?”
I frowned. “He doesn’t?”
He shook his head. “And you thought you knew it all, didn’t you? No. God has been hands-off since the Rebellion. The angels with free will have taken it upon themselves to form a middle management, if you will. To carry on Heaven’s work or what they think Heaven’s work might be. God didn’t start Eden House. Man did. And then angels took advantage of it. Why soil their lily-white hands when they can get Man to do it for them? Why fight demons when Eden House will train soldiers to stand in their place?”
“And what does God think of all this?” I asked.
Shrugging lightly, he replied with a trace of melancholy, “I’m a demon. I don’t know God’s word or will anymore.”
“And th
e angels?”
“I don’t think they know either. God is the sun to them now, warm, loving, but silent. Distant.” He was silent as well for a moment, remembering or thinking, before he finally mused, the gray of his eyes lightened to an almost silver, “You’re fortunate that I find you so . . . unique. Be careful of your back, Trixa. You humans, so fragile.”
From most demons . . . I would’ve said all demons up until then . . . that would’ve sounded like a threat. This didn’t sound like that. This sounded different. Like Solomon was different. But what was that difference? There was a thought that kept turning round and round in my head. A little kid’s whirligig, spinning. Always spinning. Black, then red, then silver, and which was real? Which was true?
Black.
Red.
Silver.
“I didn’t mean for you to be hurt. I didn’t mean for our game to go this far,” he said softly, eyes inscrutable. “We’re angels, you know. Fallen, but still angels.”
Then the door opened behind him and he disappeared into the shadow of it. Sank into the puddle of darkness on the floor. Angels . . .
Who ate souls, but had to if he wanted to survive. An angel who bargained for souls, but always gave fair trade. Gave you what you asked for. Even the Better Business Bureau couldn’t fault him there.
Angels or demons or both . . . and I had a headache. But I also had a client and this one couldn’t wait.
“Did you find him?” She was thirteen years old and not living on the street, but not precisely living off the street either. Her hair was long, lank brown and hadn’t been washed in a few days, and her frame was skinny but not too skinny. She was getting food somewhere. She probably hung out around the shelters. I didn’t ask her name because I knew it. Alone. She was alone in the world and when she thought of herself, that’s probably the only thing she called herself. Alone. Until a few weeks ago, but the past few days had been a return to that alone.
