by Rob Thurman
His eyes, that pale green, were hazy but managed to find me. “Kit.” He dragged in several wet breaths. “When . . . do I make . . . full-grown fox?”
“When you know thyself,” I said solemnly.
“What the hell’s that mean?” Each word was slow and said with bloody lips.
“Ask the fortune cookie company. It came with last night’s takeout.” I gave him a smile, the best one I could manage when we were surrounded by shadows and the smell of copper and garbage.
A bloody hand gripped my shoulder and my attention. “You’re hurt,” Griffin repeated.
I already could hear the siren in the distance. Eden House didn’t waste any time and they couldn’t find me here. It wouldn’t be good for Zeke and Griffin and it wouldn’t be much better for me. “Superficial. Skin’s strictly optional, right?” I already had my own cell phone out. “I’ll call Leo. He can take me to the ER.” I stood, refusing to bite my lip, but the “Shitshitshit” I didn’t bother to hold back. I backed up toward the alley mouth as I made the call, watching the guys—my guys. I watched as Zeke closed his eyes, but kept breathing. He kept breathing.
“We walked right into it,” Griffin said with dark disgust. He looked down at Zeke and back at me. “Black demons. High-level demons. What were they doing here? Besides making us look like amateurs. Like complacent assholes. We screwed up.”
“No. We fucked up.” It wasn’t a word I used often, but the situation called for it. “There’s a difference. We won’t do it again.” High-level demons like Solomon. Well, perhaps not like Solomon, no one was quite like him, but higher than the usual demons we dealt with. “Like Solomon.” I couldn’t make myself believe that was a coincidence. I stopped at the corner. “Call me and let me know.” I didn’t need to elaborate. Griffin knew. Then I rounded the corner and walked away, sticking to the shadows to hide the damage to my clothes and back . . . waiting for Leo.
No, I wasn’t going to let Griff and Zeke follow Kimano into death.
Never.
Chapter 5
Hospitals were not fun.
My family and I tended to be completely healthy up until the second we were dead; we went out old as hell and wicked as they came. It was a nice quality; saved on health insurance. So this was my first visit to one of the places, and hopefully it would be the last. I waited four hours to get the dirt and bits of asphalt washed out of the raw stretch that was my back by a nurse who thought “gentle touch” was the slogan for some sort of toilet paper. Leo sat with me the entire time, alternately shaking his head and muttering, “This is what happens,” and eyeing a blond doctor walking by with intriguing shadows in her violet eyes. Secrets. Leo was a sucker for a secret. For that matter so was I, but certainly not now.
“Thanks for the ‘I told you so,’ Grandma. Pain pills. You have the pain pills?” I asked as I slowly slid on the scrub top the nurse had given me to replace my shredded one.
“I have the pain pills.” He shook a paper bag at me, having gone to the hospital pharmacy while they finished salving my back. “And the antibacterial cream. They didn’t have any anti-fuckup pills. Maybe we can check with a Canadian pharmacy online.”
“Ass.” I didn’t put much into the insult. He was right. “And you didn’t even look when I put on the top. I know we’re not going there, but you could at least boost the ego and look.”
His stoic lips twitched. “I looked.”
“Thank you. It’s been a bitch of a night. I lost my strategic skills, almost lost my friends. I’d hate to think I’d lost my sex appeal too.” I caught a glimpse of myself in the mirror over the sink in the curtained-off ER cubicle at Desert Springs Hospital. Smeared mascara, absent lipstick, curls stained and coated with demon residue at the ends. And a back that looked like roadkill, but at least that didn’t show now. I smiled breezily at him. “Pucker up and get some of this.”
He snorted. “Tempting, but as you said, that’s not us, and the fact that you smell like demon isn’t helping. That”—he closed the magazine on his knee—“is not a good smell.”
At that moment, before I could take offense—and I would have—my cell phone rang. It was Griffin. “Zeke?” I said immediately. “Is he all right?”
Griffin’s exhausted voice returned. “He’s on a ventilator, but should be off in a few days. He has a chest tube and has gotten two transfusions so far, but they say he’ll be good as new in a few weeks. He’ll be up and taking candy from babies in no time.”
To be fair, that kid had stolen that candy from some other child first. It wasn’t his candy to begin with. Zeke was merely repossessing stolen goods. That he kept it taught a valuable lesson to the victim about being more careful not to leave your candy lying around.
And Zeke, well, Zeke liked his candy.
“Good,” I said, exhaling. “Good. Now go to sleep yourself. And, Griffin, you know you’re the strongest empath the House has. Work on it or it’ll do you more harm than good.” Empaths were rare among humans and the Houses tended to recruit every one of them they could find, but none was close to Griffin’s level.
“I know. I made things worse tonight. If you hadn’t been there . . . shit.” He didn’t want to think about that possibility and neither did I.
“Go to sleep,” I repeated. “I’m going home now and doing the same.”
“Trixa,” he said quietly, slowly, “will there be scars?”
It took me a second to grasp what he was asking. “Oh. On my back?” I laughed, winced as the pain spiked through the cotton wool of the pain pills the nurse had already given me, then laughed again. “Griff, I don’t care about that. If a guy wouldn’t want me because I had scars, why would I want his superficial son of a bitch ass? Now go to bed, all right? And call me in the morning to give me an update on Zeke.”
“I will.” He hesitated. “You’re sure about the scars?”
“Sweetie, I’m not half as vain as you. Sleep,” I ordered, then disconnected.
“Vain enough to want me to sneak a look,” Leo drawled as he discarded the magazine and stood.
“Well, I’m not vain, but I’m not dead either,” I retorted, sliding off the gurney. The shock that ran from my feet to my back was bearable. Yes, pain pills were my friend.
In the car, Leo sat behind the wheel for a few silent seconds and then turned and kissed my temple. “You have to be more careful,” he said soberly. “You have to be on your game.”
“I know. I do. Those were high-level demons out there—but I was cocky too.” I shook my head. “It’s not like me.”
He snorted and started the car. “It’s exactly like you. It always has been. And you’ve always gotten away with it. I hope this time’s no different.”
Back at my apartment I couldn’t shower without removing the medicine from my back; at least that was what grizzly-paw nurse had told me. I turned the taps until the water barely fizzled out and I washed my front, slowly and carefully. I bent forward and washed my hair, then stepped outside of the curtain wrapped around the claw-foot tub into a warm towel held by Leo. He made sure it draped only over the front of me and I held it to my shoulders. Sitting on the edge of the bed, I closed my eyes as he dried my hair with a smaller towel and combed it out, careful with the tangles, and I had a ton. The price you paid for wildly curly hair. That and humidity is never your friend. But soon it was its usual damp cascade of waves and corkscrew curls that followed a bath or shower.
He touched the pale gold skin beside my almond-shaped eye and then touched one of my curls, a deep black one with a streak of red and a hint of bronze, pulled at it lightly, and watched as the spiral sprang back. “How can you be so many things at once and make it all work?”
I leaned forward and kissed him beside his mouth . . . kissed him for his help and a little more. “Why are you asking silly questions?” I tugged at a long strand of his hair before sliding under the covers nude, lying on my stomach with the sheet and coverlet only up to my waist. I wanted nothing but air touching my back to
night.
I watched as Leo went to my closet for one of my many spare shotguns and sat in a chair a little too puffy for his tastes, I was sure, but the reds and golds of the cloth suited him. “Babysitting?” I asked.
“You know Solomon was behind this.” He looked over the Browning, semi-automatic and self-loading. He nodded approvingly. It was new. An impulse buy from a basement with a lot of unpleasant men, one of whom didn’t appreciate me or my favorite copper-colored boots. He was so damn lucky his blood came out of the fine stitching or I might have gone back to that basement to try out my new purchase.
Just to scare him, of course.
Boots were just boots, not worth a human life. Although, technically, without DNA proof, I wasn’t jumping on that guy being on the human bandwagon just yet.
I didn’t need DNA to know Solomon wasn’t human . . . at least not all of the time.
I doubled the pillow with my arm and rested my head against it. “Probably. No matter how interested he is in me, he might be getting tired of our games and I’m sure the other demons tease him about his human pest problem, pyromaniac cockroaches.” My lips curved. “Poor Solomon. No one will do lunch with him anymore or take his calls. I doubt he even makes his soul quota, what with his obsessing over us all the time.”
But it wasn’t just us or just me. Solomon had another obsession, one I thought we shared. A big powerful demon here these past few years, rumblings at Eden House . . . Solomon had come to Vegas for a reason. Hadn’t we all?
The Light of Life.
We all wanted it, only who had it now? Someone had wasted his time torturing that poor old caver. If the demons or the House had it, we’d know about it. I’d know about it. The heavens themselves would know about it. But no one knew. It was still out there. I still had my chance to get it and make things right.
“If he visits tonight, he can spend his time obsessing over his castration,” Leo said calmly, breaking open the shotgun to make sure it was loaded. Take no chances . . . that was Leo. “Do what you have to do. Be who you have to be with him. Be true to yourself.” His black eyes were darker than Lenore’s feathers. “But not tonight. No taunting, no teasing, and none of the other things I don’t care to think about. Tonight you sleep.”
“If only your father knew,” I said, my eyelids already falling fast. “See what you’ve become inside.”
“I doubt my father will ever know me again or care to.” He turned out the light on my bedside table. “He can’t forget. I was bad . . . evil.” Being around demons will show you the real meaning of the word evil, and how people so rarely see the real thing even when it’s right in front of their faces.
“Not evil.” I let my eyes shut, remembering a younger Leo.
He snorted sharply.
“Not good.” I gave in a little. “But not evil. You had a . . . wildness in you.”
“Evil,” he repeated with a sigh. “Don’t sugarcoat it. I was what I was. I’m different now. But back then, I was evil.”
And, honestly, yes, he had been more than a toe over the Dark Side. More like a California commute over. Hours from the line we all walk. Going, going, gone. But he’d come back, and while he wasn’t now, he had been then—evil. Bad as they came.
“You were.” I reached out blindly and rested a hand on his knee. “Love you anyway.”
“What about the bad old days? What about then?” Patient, undemanding—all with cold steel across his knees. A quiet and serene hunter.
I told him the truth. I had to. It was Leo. I curled my fingers into the warmth under his knee . . . seconds away from sleep.
“Even then,” I whispered.
The next morning, after Leo helped clean and cream up my back again and then left to open the bar, I noticed it. It was the smallest fleck of dark brown in a crease of my knuckle. Could’ve been dirt, but it wasn’t. It was blood. A tiny remnant of Zeke left on me. It had somehow survived two showers, that one stubborn speck. Even his blood was stubborn.
I scrubbed at it thoroughly with a washcloth until it was gone. My skin was red and abraded, but the blood was gone. I shouldn’t have let Zeke and Griffin get to me. I’d known that from day one, the day I’d let two wary teenagers into my bar, handed them cleaning supplies and enough money for breakfast until we got the deep fryers going. I’d known I shouldn’t get attached. They weren’t like puppies you planned to find good homes for. No, I’d known I’d be seeing the wary blond one and his emotionally frozen friend with the lost eyes for a long time. Seeing, yes? But not getting close to.
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 det
ective. 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?”
