Trick of the Light

by Rob Thurman

  “I was born pasty. It’s not my fault,” Zeke grumbled from the backseat.

  I reached back with one hand and smoothed his copper hair. “No, sugar, none of this has ever been your fault.”

  He looked confused for a moment, then did what Zeke did best with confusion—he ignored it. “What are you going to do with the Light when you get it?”

  “More to the point, do you think either side will let you keep it or choose whom to give it to?” Griffin murmured, his eyes still shut, obviously still wiped from the night before. Emotionally and physically. The death of so many comrades. That was triply hard on an empath as it was on the rest of us. “It’s going to be a massacre.”

  “Yes, indeed it is.” My grin tightened to something with very little humor. I put my sunglasses on and ramped the speed up to ninety.

  “Sounds fun,” Zeke said seriously. “Can I kill Trinity then?”

  “Kit, when the time comes, you can kill anyone you want,” I promised. Griffin opened his eyes and shot me a questioning glance, but I didn’t answer. When it was time, he’d see—see if he’d still serve Heaven or serve anyone but Zeke and himself. I wasn’t the only one whose life was going to change. He and Zeke were going to have to make a choice, and I had to say I was really curious to know the way they were going to go. Maybe even worried. You try and raise them right, but in the end, they have to make their own way. Make their own decisions. I shook my head.

  Kids.

  Chapter 14

  Rhyolite was a few miles from a tiny town called Beatty. I stopped there at a little gas station. I didn’t need gas, but I was thirsty and a candy bar wouldn’t kill me. Mainly, though, it was to irk the rest of the wagon train behind us. There was a bigger place, the Death Valley Nut and Candy Company on the north end of town, but they were so big, bright, and shiny that I figured they had all the business they needed. I liked giving my business to someone who actually could use it, and this ramshackle place looked like it could use all the help it could get.

  I got out of the car and headed in, smiling at the actual rusty ding of a bell overhead. Didn’t hear that much anymore. I touched a dreamcatcher hanging from the ceiling and gave it a gentle push. Inside, an American Indian teenager slouched over the counter, thumbing slowly through a magazine. He had short black hair, copper skin, and a long-sleeved T-shirt that used to be black but now was faded gray. “What you want?” he said, with such incredible boredom that I was amazed he could keep his heart pumping from the sheer weight of the tedium of it all.

  “Food, water, peace on Earth.” I spread my arms, braced my hands on the counter, and gave him a big smile as a reference point. “And service with a smile maybe?”

  He looked up when he heard my voice . . . female—ding . . . and smiled back. Smirked, rather—a genuine, horny sixteen-year-old smirk. I might have passed the big three-O, but I still had it. I laughed at myself—which is some of the very best laughter there is. “I’ve got more than a smile for—” A dark wrinkled hand smacked the back of his head hard. His grandfather or great-grandfather stepped up beside him.

  “You show respect, Aaron. You show it to every visitor. You never know who might walk through our door.” With iron gray hair streaked with white and tied back into a long ponytail, the man bowed his head. “I apologize for my grandson’s slothful, rude ways. I am Samuel Blackhawk. Welcome.”

  By this time, Griffin and Zeke were wandering the whole two aisles of the store and Trinity and his men stood behind me. I gave Trinity and the others a dismissive look over my shoulder. “I’m hungry. So wait here or wait in the car. Up to you.” Then I turned my attention back to Samuel Blackhawk and held out my hand. He hesitated for a second, then took it with exquisite care.

  “Your eyes—I remember them.” His own dark eyes flickered. “You are beautiful. You are terrifying.”

  “And you’re a wise man with a silver tongue and one who knows how to treat a lady.” I gripped his hand. Because I wasn’t beautiful in the physical sense. My mixture of races made me striking, unusual, and definitely eye-catching. I was happier with that. Why be beautiful like so many when you can be uncommon? When you can stand out like the single exotic glow of a garnet in a field of tacky gold? As for terrifying, there were some demons and others on my shit list that could testify to that too. “Samuel Blackhawk, I would like three bottles of water and six candy bars. What would you like?” I released his hand and held up a finger as he began to demur. “I like you, Samuel, and I want to give you a present. And those men behind me with sour faces and even more sour dispositions are going to pay for it. Now, what would you like?”

  He smiled then, showing one missing tooth at the bottom, and the look he gave Trinity and his crew wasn’t the respectful one he gave me. “A truck. I would like a new truck. Mine only runs when it rains.” Which out here was to say never.

  I turned, pushed up, and sat on the counter. “Well? Someone go buy Mr. Blackhawk a truck. It’s a small town, but I’m sure someone has something for sale.” They didn’t move. Neither did I, other than to examine my nails. I kept them short, but the bronze was still chipping. Considering the week I’d had, I wasn’t surprised. I’d gone with the red first, but, no, the bronze was better, I thought. In fact . . .

  “The Light,” Trinity said tightly.

  I raised my eyes. Who was pulling whose leash now? “When we have the truck.”

  He could have shot me. He wanted to, I knew. But there were Griffin and Zeke and civilians. He wasn’t running the show anymore, not that he would admit it. He turned, back straight, and left the store to confer with his men. Thirty minutes later Samuel had his new truck. It was big, desert worthy, and a dark metallic green. I frowned, but took the keys from Goodman’s stiff fingers and handed them to Samuel.

  “Paint it red,” I said. “Red is my color. Red is good luck. Red will always bring you good luck.”

  He nodded instantly. “I will.”

  The teenager, Aaron, protested, “But that’s a cool-ass green. Why should we—” He received another smack on the back of the head.

  I took the bag of water and sugar and started back toward the door. I gave one last smile over my shoulder. “I liked you, Samuel Blackhawk. I still do.”

  Outside it was full dark and it seemed as if the stars should’ve been dancing as the cool wind blew through. “I thought you said you’d never been to Rhyolite,” Griffin said.

  It was true. I’d mentioned it in the car. “I haven’t, but I’ve traveled around the desert. Just because I didn’t stop at a tourist trap ghost town doesn’t mean I don’t know where the good-looking men are.” I winked back at the door where Samuel stood and waved. Back on the road, we headed west to the ghost town, and Zeke ate all our candy bars.

  “Killing takes a lot of energy. Sugar gives you energy,” he said as he avoided Griffin’s grab at the last bar.

  “So killing and sugar go hand in hand? Is that what you’re saying?” Griffin snorted.

  “That is what I’m saying,” came the answer, without a shred of doubt. Lenny, sitting on the top of the backseat, leaned closer and reached for a nut with his black beak. Zeke, who’d just denied one of the most prolific demon killers other than himself the chocolate bar, hesitated, then let him pick out a peanut and crunch placidly on it.

  “Zeke, swear to God. You’re not afraid of a demon, but you’re afraid of a bird. I have so lost any respect I ever had for you.” Griffin shook his head and swiveled to face the windshield again.

  “No, you haven’t.” Unconcerned, Zeke finished the chocolate.

  “And how do you know that?” Griffin fiddled with the radio before shutting it off

  “If you had, you would’ve shot me and taken the candy bar.”

  The side of Griffin’s mouth curled. “True.”

  “This is all entertaining,” and it was, “but I’m hoping we can go for no killing tonight. I want to find the Light itself before any moves are made. This isn’t the Light, only the last step befor
e we get there. So be good boys. Don’t kill the jackasses.”

  “Which is everyone in this convoy but us?”

  I leaned over and opened the glove compartment to pull out a PayDay I’d been saving for emergencies and tossed it back to Zeke. “Good answer.”

  Griffin glared, a very much out of sorts Griffin indeed. The worst I’d seen him. In his life I’d seen him scared, sad, confident, in pain, angry, amused, happy, but I don’t think I’d ever seen him quite this pissed. We had had some bad, bad days this week, and he’d taken the brunt of it—literally feeling the pain of his partner being wounded, not knowing if he would live on top of it, losing more friends—even if he would’ve lost them anyway when Eden House kicked him out or put a bullet in the back of his skull. It was a lot to deal with. I reopened the compartment and gave him two PayDays and a kiss on the jaw.

  “I’ll always be your family, Griffin. Leo and I, as long as you want us.” I would travel again, but there was no reason Griffin and Zeke couldn’t come with me if they wanted. A newly rebuilt Vegas House wouldn’t want them anymore and that was if they weren’t actively trying to kill them for betraying House secrets. “You and Zeke will never be alone.” Or lost as they’d been those seven years in foster care, when they’d had only each other. “Now, have some sugar, Sugar. We have work to do.”

  I don’t know if the candy bar or the hand that I saw Zeke secretively place on Griffin’s shoulder helped him more. They might be able to block out other human empaths and telepaths as well as the angel and demon variety, but I don’t think since they’d come into their powers they’d ever put that to the test. I thought they were most likely wide open with one another, and that was what helped them survive before they knew what empathy and telepathy were. Before Eden House had come to clue them in, and once they did know, why close the barn door when the horses are jumping the fences and running for freedom? They were whole together in a way they couldn’t be apart. Zeke needed Griffin to keep him human, to meet society’s and the mental health system’s definition anyway, and Griffin needed to be needed. Most of all he needed to save Zeke, but he also needed to save people, to save everyone he could, to save the world in essence. Why?

  It was a good question, and like all good questions had to wait until the end of class. Or the end of it all.

  Whatever emotion Zeke passed on to Griffin through his touch, it worked. The stiff shoulders slowly relaxed as did the bunched muscle of his jaw, and his eyes, hard as stone, returned to the blue warmth I was used to. “Thanks,” I heard him murmur softly. Then I heard him think it as well. Not in my head, but I felt the shimmer of it pass through the air back to Zeke, the gratitude in it so strong that the night air itself reflected it.

  “Wuss.” Zeke grinned. “You’ll make me cry.”

  Although he never had. A baby died and he tried to slit his throat, but he hadn’t cried. I didn’t think Zeke was capable of crying, not yet. Self-mutilation and suicide, yes, but crying was far down the spectrum when one had to learn the full range of human emotions instead of being born with them. Suicide was easy; crying wasn’t. It was a thousand small suicides scattered throughout your life. It made the big one, the only one, more logical—at least to the teenage Zeke, who was mystified by most emotions every moment of the day. He was still mystified, but he was better. Much better. Without Griffin, he would’ve been a sociopath. I knew it. But look at him now. I did just that, glancing at him in the rearview mirror.

  “Ass.” But Griffin passed back one of the PayDays.

  I laughed and shook my head. Both of them scowled at me this time. “What’s so funny?” Zeke demanded as he clutched the candy bar possessively.

  “Just something I saw on the Discovery Channel once.” I turned into Rhyolite. “Are you coming with us, Kit, or are you going to stay in the car and play with your shiny pebble?” I nodded at the PayDay.

  They were both confused now, but I didn’t have time to explain it. I also had no future plans of explaining it. They’d have to stumble their way through this on their own. I wasn’t going to rob them of the thrill, the excitement of their entirely ridiculous and oblivious natures.

  Rhyolite wasn’t much to see at night. There was a caretaker, but Goodman and his magic encyclopedia of fake IDs took care of him. With Eden House though, they may not have been fake. Everyone might be as genuine as my knife in a demon’s gut. We moved past the ruins of a foundation, some kind of miner ’s building, and stopped at the Bottle House. The train station and abandoned Cook Bank were farther down the gravelly dirt road.

  The Bottle House was fenced in, sadly enough, with chain-link topped with barbed wire and the saddest paddock lock I’d seen in my life. A five-year-old could’ve strolled through in less than thirty seconds, although I imagined our guitarist had climbed the fence and vaulted the wire. A five-year-old probably could’ve done that as well, the security was that half-hearted.

  On the front of the gate was a plaque telling us that it had been originally built by a Tom Kelly in 1906. All the bottles, set in concrete, were beer or medicine bottles. Tom Kelly must have spent most of the early 1900s in a happy haze. The house had fallen to ruin once and since been redone—just a tiny L-shaped structure with the walls of bottles of clear green and amber glass. All the round bottoms of the bottles faced outward. It wasn’t particularly attractive or interesting, not to me, but Jeb had liked it for some reason. Griffin popped the fence lock with the universal key—a pair of bolt cutters. The windows were boarded up and I tried the door. It was locked or relocked after the guitarist had broken in, and Goodman had sent away the caretaker with the key.

  I sighed and dug in my pocket. Within seconds I was picking the lock, which was quite a chore considering the difference between locks now and then. I’d have been better off picking it with a fork than my tiny instruments. “Why not just kick it in?” Zeke asked, already losing his patience. No demons, no gunfire—what a waste of time in his opinion.

  “Because, unlike some”—I tossed a narrow-eyed glance at Trinity, who stood to the side—“I respect other people’s property.” There were two things wrong with that statement. Granted, Trinity had one of his Eden Housers kick down my door, but I burned down Solomon’s nightclub anytime I couldn’t find anything good on late-night TV. That was the first thing. The second thing came in a matter of minutes, and it wasn’t my fault. I could do a lot of things, but predicting the future wasn’t one of them.

  Once I was able to get the door open, Griffin, Zeke, Trinity, Goodman, Oriphiel, and I all went inside. It was a tight squeeze for just the six of us and the others were sent back to the cars. As Griffin turned on a small flashlight from his pocket and Zeke pumped a slug into his shotgun, Goodman moved in front of Trinity and raised a shotgun of his own.

  “Stop with the testosterone. I’m trying to concentrate,” I said absently. I could feel it—a sliver of the Light. But where? Before it had been easy. Touch a shark’s brain, touch a drug addict’s melting mind, but this—this was different. The Light wasn’t in anything organic. It was here and everywhere, but I couldn’t pin it down. I knelt down and touched a hand to the wooden floor. No. Here, everywhere, but not there.

  I stood and looked around as Griffin’s flashlight hit one of the thousands of bottles that made up the wall. It shone in the light like diamonds. In the Light. That was it. . . . That was where it was. The last sign. The last stepping-stone to the Light and vengeance. Awed, almost unbelieving after all this time, I stepped forward and placed a hand against the cool glass of the bottles.

  That’s when the house blew up.

  Technically, not true. The house blew outward, every bit of it. Had it simply blown up, I doubt too many would’ve been left, sliced to pieces, to tell the tale. It sounded as if the roof landed in two or three sections several hundred feet away, and the walls . . . those incredible walls of glass . . . how had I not seen how beautiful they were? The glass poured outward into the night like a sideways rainfall. And every fragment of t
hem, every piece, every shard, glowed like a white-hot sun.

  Trinity and Goodman had dived to the floor. The angel had disappeared. Griffin and Zeke flanked me as I stared at my hand that glowed as brightly as the flying glass. None of the three of us had a single cut. The shattered glass hung in the air for nearly a minute, shimmering brilliantly, before finally settling in the sand like the glitter of thousands of falling stars; the glow faded away slowly as it did in my hand. But I could still feel it. Warm, powerful, mine.

  If anyone lurking around had seen that, we’d just created a new Roswell—Elvis-loving aliens welcome. Either that or they’d think something had made it out of Area 51. It was only about one hundred miles northeast—a short hop for escaping aliens.

  Zeke looked around at the debris: the scattered glass, the pieces of roof—all the remains of a miracle of light and destruction. “Huh. Cool.” Then he shrugged, walked back over the now-flattened door, and headed for our car. And probably that PayDay. Mysteries of the universe, yeah, whatever, was his attitude. Job done. Let’s go. There were times I almost envied Zeke’s been-there, done-that, live-in-the-moment attitude. Not the consequences of it, but the escape it could be.

  “Holy shit,” Griffin said, scanning the space where the walls had once been, then up to see sky where a roof once was, and finally back down at the floor still sturdy beneath our feet—and beneath Trinity’s and Goodman’s bellies. “You . . . Damn . . . Holy shit,” he repeated, and managed to slide it by without comment as Goodman, normally our “Thou shall not blaspheme” enthusiast, was still covering his head and praying fer vently under his breath. Although I didn’t think “holy shit” counted as a true blasphemy.

  “Not me,” I denied. “The Light.” If such a minute bit of the Light could do that, what kind of power would the entire thing hold? I knew if I was wondering that, Trinity was as well. Savoring it. Picturing the moment he held it in his hands, although I didn’t think the now-absent Oriphiel was picturing the same thing. Let a mere human touch such a glory? I couldn’t see him allowing it.