Trick of the Light

by Rob Thurman

  “Iktomi!” The hard shout came from behind me. “Is it there?”

  “You can call me Trixa if you want,” I told the Light. “It’s for friends. You and I, we will be the best of friends.” My name was shouted again. I sighed, “For as long as you’re around. Let’s go. You have quite the crowd waiting to meet you.”

  “I can’t back out,” I shouted back. “Too many stone projections. But I think the tunnel curves back around into the main cavern. I’ll see you there.” I added under my breath, “Ass.” I ignored the further shouts behind me and scooped up the light and held it against my chest as I awkwardly crawled on, using one arm and two tired knees.

  It wasn’t that far, but it took me almost fifteen minutes of inching along, the Light humming against my chest, a subtle vibration I could feel even in the muscle of my beating heart. Its glow was the only light for several minutes before I saw the illumination of an opening ahead. “And here we go,” I murmured. “Are you ready for this, because it’s going to be all sorts of interesting.”

  I received the intriguing sensation of a swat inside my brain. My mama would’ve swatted me the same, actually. She would’ve swatted me for taking so long. I wasn’t sure, but I thought the Light thought I was taking unnecessary risks . . . although its thoughts weren’t quite that concrete. They were expressed in concepts more fluid than those in my mind. But if that’s what it was thinking, it was right. Kimano would have his day and I didn’t care about risk. It was mine to take. Griffin and Zeke weren’t quite as at risk as Mr. Trinity thought. Mr. Trinity, while ruthless and a pain in every body part I owned, wasn’t quite as smart as he imagined he was. Maybe those panties of his were cutting off his circulation and not letting enough blood to his brain.

  Wasn’t he wondering where the demons were? Did he think he and the other three with shotguns would do the trick . . . against higher demons? No. And he had to know about the higher demons. He was first in Vegas Eden House. He knew about Solomon, if not about Eligos, although Oriphiel could’ve informed him about Eli. In this situation, even a lowly human such as Trinity needed all the information possible. On the other hand, angels liked to play it close to the chest. Oriphiel thought no human was worthy of the Light—not even to hold it, not for a single moment—I knew that. He could actually be right this time.

  I crawled out into the main cavern, black pants smeared with dirt, as was the palm of my hand. I happened to come out closer to Griffin and Zeke, which was no accident. They were almost as powerful as demons and angels in their empathy and telepathy, and they knew me. Had known me for years. That put them up on the one angel there. They felt me coming and stood on each side of me as I stood up. Lenore flew down to land on my shoulder.

  “That’s it?” Zeke peered at it curiously. “It’s a giant lightbulb. What’s the big deal?” Then the hard jade of his eyes softened. “Oh.” He touched it with a reverent finger. “That’s . . . nice.”

  I didn’t think I’d ever heard Zeke say nice unless it related to a gun or an explosion or two, which made this moment nice indeed. Griffin only studied it with that line between his brows, and he didn’t touch it—as if he thought he wasn’t good enough. It was an odd change of places for the two, and I knew Griffin. He was more than good enough. I wiped off my hand on my pants and took his hand to place it on the faceted surface. He started to pull away as if he’d been burned, but then let his hand rest there. And he smiled—one of those rare smiles of an utterly innocent child seeing his first swarm of lightning bugs at twilight.

  Delight.

  Magic.

  Of course, Trinity had to ruin it. He had an incredible knack for ruining nearly everything. “Give me the Light.” He stood across the cavern about twenty feet away, now holding a Desert Eagle, which was pointed, not surprisingly, at us. Behind him with shotguns stood Goodman and the other two. They were grouped a little close and that wasn’t good. Respect for their boss equaled bad tactics.

  Especially when your boss turns around and puts two bullets in the head of each of you. Oriphiel, still bathed in the sun streaming through the opening, came to life. I didn’t think I’d often seen an angel surprised, but he was. “What have you done?” he demanded, all glass and silver again—Heaven’s warrior. Human fa çade gone. He hadn’t known what Trinity was about to do, which meant Trinity had a shield as good as mine or it meant . . .

  Solomon appeared beside Trinity, as if a clot of shadows from the corners of the cave had joined together to make a demon. “Ready to be a duke in Hell, Trinity?” he asked pleasantly. “You led me to the Light; you gave up Trixa; you’ve more than bought your way.”

  It meant he had help.

  Trinity’s face showed the first emotion I’d seen beyond disgust, ruthlessness, disdain. It showed pure satisfaction. A prince in Hell. Better than a peon, a nobody soul in Heaven. He wasn’t the first one to think so, but apparently the lesson of the story had escaped him. “Give me the Light,” he repeated, ignoring Oriphiel’s flat, “Damned. You are damned.”

  “No.” I shook my head. “You can’t have it, and if you think you’ll be anything more than a side order of fries to some random demon downstairs, you’re the most idiotic man alive.” Speaking of alive, I didn’t think he’d be that way for long.

  “Give it to me,” he spat before firing the gun. I would’ve thought that after the “Give it to me,” I would’ve perhaps had the chance to actually give it to him. I wouldn’t have, but he could’ve waited. But that was a man for you—always shooting his wad early.

  Dark humor, dirty humor, any kind of humor—it made you feel better when you were lying on your back with a .50-caliber bullet in your stomach. It didn’t hurt though, not yet. My abdomen only felt bruised and cold. Not the stereotypical kicked-by-a-mule feeling—kicked by an elephant was more like it. Griffin and Zeke’s faces hung over mine as they knelt beside me. Griffin’s was twisted, bloodlessly white. He knew. You didn’t survive this—a gut shot this far from a hospital, you simply didn’t make it. Zeke . . . Zeke just didn’t understand. Besides Griffin, Leo, and I were the only ones in his world. No one else existed for him, not really. People didn’t understand him, didn’t know how alien and lost he was. They were strangers and mysteries, and they didn’t want to have anything to do with him. Zeke had the three of us and that’s all he had. He couldn’t have lost Griffin and survived. I know he didn’t want to lose me.

  “Trixa?” He said my name in denial, as if it weren’t truly me lying bleeding to death on a stone floor. I was a fake, a prop, and the real Trixa would walk in at any moment. Or it was a trick, a game, but not a funny one. Not damn funny at all. Not to him.

  I kept the Light cradled to my chest as a soft light bloomed around the three of us, a protective light, but one that was a little late when it came to stopping Trinity’s Eagle. I used the bloodstained hand I’d covered my stomach with to grab Zeke’s arm. “Get me up. Help me sit.”

  On the other side Griffin said thickly, “Trixa . . .”

  “It won’t make any difference,” I said to him gently. “You know that. Now sit me up.” He swallowed, but with the help of a silent and utterly white Zeke he eased me up to sitting position. Lenore moved from Griffin’s shoulder to mine, then sat utterly still.

  Trinity bared his teeth at me in a contorted grin. “I’ve wanted to do that since the day I met you, Jezebel trash.” I’d almost made it through Trinity’s time on Earth without hearing one of the big three biblical curses for women too. He turned to Solomon. “Go. Take it. It’s yours. And you can give me what is mine.”

  “Power?” Solomon said, eyes on me.

  “Yes,” Trinity agreed with a hunger to equal any demon’s. “Power. Endless power. To rule over the lesser demons. To rule them for eternity as you promised.”

  Solomon gave him a warm smile. “But, Mr. Trinity, I lied.” Then he broke Trinity’s neck in a motion so fast, human eyes could barely see it.

  As Trinity’s body crumpled to the ground, the betrayer
of his own House, Solomon looked back at me, his smile gone, to extend his hand toward me and say urgently, “Give me the Light, Trixa. I’ll make you whole. I’ll heal you. Don’t die over politics. Over a thing. And please—please don’t die before we know what we could have between us. Give me the Light and be with me. Tell me your price. Tell me the demon you want.”

  I shook my head again. It was answer enough.

  Solomon dropped his hand and took in all three of us with a gaze that was suddenly far from the desperate concern that had only just flashed there—so very far, answering everything I needed to know. Oriphiel, fifteen feet from the demon, did the same, but without any fading false worry over my bleeding out on the cave floor. As one, Griffin and Zeke stood slowly, one on each side of me. Protecting me.

  “Zerachiel,” came the voice of the angel, the voice of the Tower of Babel falling, “know thyself.”

  “Glasya-Labolas,” ordered Solomon, so swiftly that it could’ve been an echo of the angel’s command, “come forth.”

  They did, the both of them. They became what they served and what they fought and death might’ve been a kinder thing. Zeke, Zerachiel, turned to glass. Copper metal hair, oval eyes of pale green light. There was more light in the curves and jagged edges of his wings. The shimmer of copper and a paler bronze that lit his body from within. Griffin, Glasya-Labolas, was a deeply tarnished gold demon, eyes the milky pale blue of a winter sky, his wings spread back like those of a pterodactyl dipped in bronze. Glass teeth, serpent tongue, and whipping serpentine tail.

  My boys.

  Zerachiel, the angel of children . . . the irony could break your heart.

  Glasya-Labolas, in medieval literature, a demon that looked like a dog with the wings of a griffin. Medieval literature had been wrong, but apparently the name Griffin had been liked by someone in charge . . . either Solomon or Griffin himself.

  They had never known, since they’d been formed into the bodies of children, Zeke’s eight years old and Griffin’s ten, and dumped in Vegas, children with false memories of a past they’d never experienced. I’d known though. I was always one to keep an eye on my competition, and I recognized what had been dropped into the town I’d planned on eventually setting up base—the disguises of children over the spies of Heaven and Hell. But I had soon realized they weren’t aware undercover spies. They had no idea what they were, where they came from. They thought they were human. Sleeper agents to the nth degree. I also realized after years passed that they weren’t an angel and demon anymore. They were human, as human as they thought they were—a deeply flawed human in Zeke’s case, but human all the same.

  One small nudge with two social workers and Zeke and Griffin had ended up placed in the same home within a week of their arrival. It was easier to keep an eye on them if they were both in one place. Hell and Heaven, so smug. As if demon and angel children could appear in Vegas and I wouldn’t know about it, no matter how human their bodies. Please. I also knew they’d need each other. They were both living among an alien species, for all intents and purposes. Griffin coped much better; he’d dealt with humans for who knows how many thousands of years before being turned human, but Zeke . . . angels were different. Unless they spent an equal amount of time with humans, they couldn’t pull off an imitation to save their wings, much less be the real thing. And from the looks of it, Zeke hadn’t spent much time on Earth before being given this assignment. Free will was beyond him for the most part. Decisions, a mystery. Living on his own, impossible. It could be that’s why Oriphiel had chosen him, for that lack of free will. He thought Zeke wouldn’t question orders when he underwent a transformation that would startle anyone. Oriphiel probably thought he was clever in that respect.

  Like I’d thought I was so clever. I knew Zeke would need guidance from the social worker ’s very first report when they were found—a simple matter of doing what I did best, con and trick, to gain access to the office and scanning both their files. I knew he would need a partner, someone to take care of him, and was self-satisfied I’d had the forethought to have them placed together. And the irony of having a demon look after an angel only made it better.

  I’d been such an ass, a dangerously ignorant one.

  I’d returned to Vegas seven years later and found out Zeke had needed more help than anyone could give him, though Griffin had tried his best. Zeke could blame Heaven, he could blame Hell, but most of all, he could blame me for that dead baby, but he should never blame himself.

  Then Eden House had come for him after he and Griffin had been with me for a few years. No coincidence there, either. A raven had led their way to me. Recruitment had always been the eventual plan. Hell’s and Heaven’s. It seemed Heaven didn’t trust their own House. It had turned out with Trinity that they were right. That Eden House had found an empath along with telepathic Zeke seemed only lucky to them. Hell’s luck. My luck, my doing. Trinity would be raging internally that Solomon hadn’t let him in on that part of the plan . . . if he’d still been alive.

  “Bring me the Light, Zerachiel,” Oriphiel demanded. “Serve your Heaven. Serve your God. The Light belongs to us. You belong to us.”

  I’d told Zeke he’d have a choice to make, one only he could decide. Here it was: the blind obedience he’d known the majority of his existence or . . . something else. The green glow of his gaze, that same rare flash on the sea’s sunset horizon, turned to Griffin—Glasya—and was met with a pale blue that could herald a killing blizzard. The sleek lizard face, the jaw that could rip a human into pieces and no doubt in its time had. Demon. A creature Zeke had fought all his life, Above and on Earth.

  “No,” Zeke said firmly and without hesitation as he held out his hand.

  “Glasya-Labolas.” From Solomon’s mouth the name was stone. “Bring me the Light. You who have slain thousands and laughed as their blood fell thick as rain, seize who you are. Seize the Light for Hell. Beleth will reward us both.”

  Griffin moved, and it was our Griffin, not Glasya-Labolas. It was the Griffin who needed to be needed, needed to protect the innocent, to save whom he could, to take care of Zeke until his dying day. The one who tried so hard to make up, but for what he didn’t know . . . until now. He clasped the arm held out to him, hand to forearm. “No,” he said as solidly as Zeke. “Never.” An angel and a demon joined together. And neither Above nor Below had been able to stop it.

  Now we were missing only one thing, one promise to keep. I covered the wound in my stomach again. I held back the blood well. Not a trickle seeped through. “Eligos, it’s your party,” I said to the air, showing no pain or breathlessness. No such satisfaction for Oriphiel or Solomon.

  He appeared behind Oriphiel and, with a massive swing, cut off the angel’s head with one stroke of those flaming swords I’d been thinking of earlier. He gave that cocky grin that was almost permanently carved into his face. “Souvenir from the Penthouse. They’re a dime a dozen up there.”

  Oriphiel’s body disintegrated into thousands and thousands of crystalline pieces with the sound of glass bells ringing in their own deaths. Eli dropped the sword, flames dying away, on top of the pile of glass and raised his eyebrows at Zeke. “A spy in their own House? Not very trusting, to be so wholesome and holy and chock-full of choirboy goodness.” He looked down at Trinity’s crumpled body. “Although apparently the pigeons had every right to be suspicious. I’m surprised they were that smart.”

  I didn’t care about Trinity or Oriphiel right now. I cared about one thing. “You have proof?”

  “You guessed, then. Spoilsport.” He held out a hand toward me, and my bracelet jerked free of my wrist and flew across the twenty feet to rest on his palm. “I have your proof.”

  “Leo, take the Light.” I pulled it away from my chest and held it up. Lenny/Leo left my shoulder, spread his wings, and grew—twice the size of a pterodactyl. One black foot closed around the Light, while one wing curled around Zeke and Griffin—I couldn’t think of them as Zerachiel or Glasya—and scooped
them off to the side while keeping aloft with the thrashing of one wing. The two didn’t struggle. After all of this and a brand-new history dumped into their brains, I’d be surprised if either of them could form a coherent thought.

  “Show me,” I told Eli.

  “Darlin’, I’d say be prepared to be as astounded and surprised as if you’d seen my equipment at work, insert porn music here, but I have a feeling you knew all along.” Eli opened the tiny locket and balanced the scale on his finger as he muttered a few indecipherable words under his breath. The scale spun slowly, then faster and faster before finally flying through the air to hit Solomon in the throat. For a second, less maybe, I saw him as he was—like he’d refused to let me see him before. He was a dark gray demon dappled with silver and eyes that were bright, shining, wholly empty mirrors—empty and cold—and then he was human again. Human and moving toward me with those human teeth bared.

  He could now. Neither he nor Oriphiel had tried before because I had held the Light—the one shield absolutely nothing could breach. They couldn’t take it from me, thanks to Trinity’s activating it by shooting me, but Zeke and Griffin had been touching me, inside its protection. They could have.

  They hadn’t.

  But Leo held it now and the soft clear light enclosed him and Zeke and Griffin while Solomon moved closer to me. The human form he’d gone back to didn’t extend to the eyes. They were still pools of mercury as silver as a heart-piercing dagger. Appropriate. He’d torn out my heart long ago. He kept coming right up until the moment Eli asked me curiously, “Why aren’t you in shock?” You might also say he topped that curiosity with a healthy dose of suspicion. I had no illusions he was actually concerned for my health, and he didn’t bother to fake it as Solomon had.

  At Eli’s words, Solomon stopped.

  “As a matter of fact, why aren’t you dead by now?” Eli tilted his head, the blond streaks in his brown hair gleaming in the sun. As he went on to talk about death, he glittered like an angel himself. “You should’ve bled to death, at the least gone comatose or had a seizure or two. I’ve inflicted my share of those deaths. I’m more than familiar with how they go.” He frowned. “We have a deal, remember? No flopping around like an out-of-water fish until I get what you promised me.”