Trick of the Light t-1

by Rob Thurman

  Today it was old. Very, very old.

  Until it wasn’t.

  I finally wove my way inch by inch through the orange barrels, and had just snailed my way beneath the shadow of the overpass when the squeal was first heard. Failing brakes, the heart-banging crumple-crunch of metal against asphalt, and in my rearview mirror, the truck tumbling over the side. Its cab’s front wheels caught at the last minute and out of the back catapulted hundreds of cans of red paint. They hit the asphalt, popped their tops, and geysered the scarlet fluid high in the air . . . into a sudden gust of wind that pushed the flood of it sideways. Every still-unmoving, gaping-mouthed “worker” out there was coated in it.

  Now wasn’t that lucky?

  I put on my brakes and turned for a better look. “Ha!” said the truck driver who’d scrambled to safety. He was pointing down at the workers on the road beneath the overpass. “Take that, you lazy-ass motherfuckers. Next time you hear brakes, I bet you get off that fat ass just like that.” He went on ranting as road worker arms were flung out, dripping red, and blank-eyed bodies shambled through a river of red paint. It was pretty as any picture in those fancy art galleries you’d find in the casinos. I tucked the mental picture away for later savoring as I stepped on the gas again, still watching it all in the mirror until it faded from sight.

  Blood from the sky. Who knew laziness would trigger the Apocalypse?

  Which put me in the mood for some old, cheesy eighties, heavy metal music, and I listened to that all the way up to the caver’s hovel. When I stopped the car in a cloud of dust, Leo yawned, lifted his hat, and grunted, “I feel very, very angry and in the need of hair spray and a pentacle-studded leather codpiece. Your doing?”

  I ignored him and pointed out the shack. “That’s where his body was. I think our best bet is to go into town”—a couple of more shacks and a few mobile homes—“and check out his friends when they come down for supplies.” Today was the day everyone stocked up and caught up. I found that out with a little earlier investigation. But there would be one—one who wouldn’t show up. That would be the one we’d have to go tracking. Jeb had told Hun; he would’ve told someone else. Hun couldn’t be counted as anyone’s best friend and closest and only confidante.

  “Too bad your last girlfriend isn’t here. The Amazon. She could’ve piggybacked us into the mountains.” I started the car back toward town.

  “She wasn’t an Amazon. She was a nice girl,” he said with a calm that was possibly more annoying than the Amazon had been.

  “She was six foot five if she was an inch. She could’ve taken off that belly ring, put it around my neck, and led me about like one of those little yappy dogs.” All right, maybe she’d only been six foot one, but she had been taller than she deserved and her stiletto stripper shoes made her even taller.

  “Funny you should say that.” His lips curved. “You’re not the first.”

  I narrowed my eyes behind dark sunglasses. “She did not.”

  “Said you’d be her first shiksa-poo. She could get one for all her friends. They’d be the toast of the temple.”

  I narrowed my eyes further and a brown finger wagged once. “Nuh uh, little girl.” He emphasized “little,” the bastard. “That’s not how it works. We don’t screen one another’s hookups or dates. No retaliation, no matter how low our opinion, remember? Which means you can’t fill her car with mating tarantulas . . . again.”

  “Fine. Fine,” I said irritably as we pulled into town. We talked to the dusty locals, who knew all of Jeb the aver ’s friends. Turned out Jeb even had a last name: McVann. “One-sixteenth Indian, he was,” said one old guy who’d been around long enough for that term to go from politically correct, to incorrect, to back again without any idea things had ever changed. “Get the old sot drunk and he’d go on and on so much, you’d think he’d been the one to stick the arrow in Custer’s dick at Little Bighorn himself.”

  He, one Artie Beaver, served me another canned lemonade at his trailer/refreshment stand. “Yeah, he was all about the land and saving your home. I told him if the Indians had saved their home, fifteen-sixteenths of his ass’d be back in Scotland drinking warm beer and wearing a kilt.” He shrugged. Artie was a big guy, happy and helpful, but he didn’t know much more than that. He knew Jeb was dead and that his friends would be down today to say a few words, restock, and head back up. And for a few dollars he’d point them out for me. I handed over the money willingly. Artie was working hard entertaining me. He deserved to be paid.

  “Guess he just wanted roots.” He carefully swiped at my rickety plastic table. If he’d wiped too hard, it probably would’ve collapsed under the attention. It was older than Methuselah and cheaper than a bleached-blond, teenage pop star. “We all want roots, right?”

  But sometimes only the ones we pick. Still, that might have been why Jeb found the Light. He believed in saving and protecting. No better person around here to have found it. Leo and I sat and watched as the day dragged on. It was comfortable. I didn’t miss the summer heat. I enjoyed it when it was there and I enjoyed the cooler temperatures when it was gone. Mama had taught us that. Appreciate what you can’t change, and change what you can’t appreciate. She was as tough as the mountains around us and filled to the brim with common sense. I liked to think she’d passed that on to me, but she’d also said more than once that I wasn’t half as clever as I thought I was. Considering what I thought of myself, that still made me pretty damn clever. That attitude had gotten me more than a swat or two when I was younger. I’d learned to temper my self-belief in my quick wits with a dash of caution. It wasn’t enough. A swat to my ass was still waiting for me at every family reunion. I yawned, stretched my legs out, and let Leo be my eyes for a while. I didn’t nap, but I let the world slide gently out of focus.

  “How’s your back?” Leo asked.

  “Well, I’m off it, unlike your Amazonian ex, so that’s something,” I retorted, resting a shoulder against the iron pole holding up the canopy.

  “This is ridiculous. If you would just . . . ,” he started.

  “No.”

  He sighed and passed over two Tylenol, a far stretch from what my back really needed, but it would have to do. “Once, my brother lied and told my father, this was after he and I stopped speaking, that I was spending time with you. . . .” He shook his head, the black braid undulating along his back. “I heard that the old bastard laughed so long and hard that he choked on his venison and passed out at the table.”

  Our families were familiar with one another, to say the least, and we followed the same general ideological path, had the same long lineage. What my family knew of the world, Leo’s knew equally as well. We hadn’t grown up next door, hardly anything that mundane with the travel blood so strong in me and mine, but we passed their way now and again. Leo’s family had what Jeb had wanted: roots. Leo could follow his family back as long as I could, an oral history that put the most convoluted and far-reaching of family trees to shame. Back to the mammoths and beyond wouldn’t be an exaggeration. A historian would be foaming at the mouth to talk to him. Of all of his family, though, only Leo was a wanderer now. When you’re kicked out of house and home, you don’t have much choice.

  “Did he think I would be a little much for you?” I rested my sunglasses in my hair.

  “More than that. He thought you’d be the death of me.” He pulled off his hat and waved it at a raven far overhead. “And I’m not so sure he would be wrong.”

  “Chicken,” I teased. “Oh, come on. Where’s the harm? Lots of twosomes do just fine. Friends or lovers, and living it up.” I toasted him with the can of lemonade.

  “Like Butch and Sundance?” he said knowingly. “Thelma and Louise? Romeo and Juliet? Nitroglycerin and a pogo stick?”

  “Don’t be so dramatic,” I tsked as I finished the flat lemon drink. “And I think the wake has started. Let’s go see who didn’t show up.”

  About six people were there, including the truck molester. We mixed and m
ingled. I’d dressed down. Leo looked like he looked. We had “good folk” written all over us. After some talking, we discovered the only friend of Jeb’s missing was John Wilbur. I’d wriggled directions to the guy’s place out of Artie. Normally, he wouldn’t have, but I was playing cute and feisty for all I was worth and Leo was dessert from the looks of him. Charisma, Leo and I had it in spades when we wanted. Demons weren’t the only ones who could bring out the flash, and even Artie couldn’t stand against it. “You’d make great con men,” he’d grumbled as we took off.

  Isn’t it great when your calling and your work are the same?

  It was dark by the time we reached John Wilbur’s short, squat mobile home. There was a bright generator light flooding the place and the sand around it. In that sand someone had literally drawn the line. And it surrounded the trailer in a circle twice as brilliant as the generator light. My sunglasses were in the glove compartment, although I wished I had them back as I shaded my eyes for a better look. Flakes—minute flakes of glass or crystal made up the circle, and the fact they glowed almost as bright as the sun said one thing and one thing only.

  The Light. They came from the Light.

  Leo mirrored my frown. “Someone knows something.”

  There was the faintest of sounds behind us. A whisper of sand. A rustle of cloth against cloth.

  “Our Mr. Wilbur is clever . . . for a human.” The tone was so bored. So very “have been there and had a stained-glass window designed in my image.” So “Why oh why must I suffer the indignity of discoursing with the unfaithful and the sinning?” I turned and considered shooting the angel dead center in his chest. It wouldn’t be the first time I’d shot one. But I knew if I did, he would bleed a ray of luminous white light for a few seconds; then he would be whole again. It would be all for nothing. While the angel I had once shot had deserved it, I wasn’t sure this one did simply for being annoyingly superior and in the right place at the right time—when I wished he weren’t.

  “Look at this. Temptation in the desert, but it’s not the devil this time—only a parakeet with delusions of grandeur.” I kept the gun aimed at him. Truthfully, I wasn’t sure you could kill an angel. Then again, maybe the same would hold for them as held for demons. If you could keep their bodies anchored on Earth and blow out their brains . . . After all, as Solomon had said, he was an angel too—simply a fallen one. Seemed what would work for one, destruction-wise, would work for the other. I’d never had the need to put it to the test. Yet. But if he got between me and the Light, that might change.

  And where did angels and demons go when they “died”? Because it was death, at least for a demon. They didn’t go back down to Hell for a little detention and pop up again later. At least, I’d never seen one that had. Once the brain was gone, it was gone for good. What then? Per their doctrine, there was no place higher to step up to for the angels and no lower for the demons, right?

  Curious.

  So was death really and truly death for them? The nothingness of nonexistence?

  Maybe I’d ask this one. “Hey,” I started, until a familiar elbow impacted my side. Leo. He knew exactly what I was thinking. He usually did.

  “Sorry.” I gave in, not graciously, but I did give in. A great woman had once said, The cure for boredom is curiosity. There is no cure for curiosity. That did describe me down to the molecular level, but, sadly, there was a time and place. This was not it. I nudged my thoughts back to the more important matter at hand: the Light.

  The angel that was here to fetch it was a man in the same way that demons are men. Although, to give credit, demons were women too. Same MO. Female demons were just as drop-dead gorgeous as the males, sweating unbelievable sex appeal, the eye of a hurricane of pheromones—the whole nine yards. Demons were equal-opportunity salespeople. We’ll take your soul, male, female; bring whatever you have and we’ll be whatever you want. But now that I thought about it, the few angels I’d seen had always been male. It made me a little sorry that I hadn’t shot this one after all. Sexist pigeon.

  Instead, I asked, “What do you want here?” I knew very well what he wanted. “Never mind,” I dismissed him. “Whatever it is, you’re not getting it. Take a hike, or a flight, and don’t look back. Turning into a pillar of salt would be the least of your concerns.”

  I hadn’t seen his wings, but now I noticed a shimmer of dark purple-blue light hit a curve, almost as if the wings were there but made of glass. Solemn, promising eyes of the same twilight color peered through his white-blond bangs. “Trixa. Leo. We’ve been waiting for you.” Then he smiled and I was in that twilight . . . a glorious spring one, warm and silken. Surrounded by it. Caressed.

  I looked over to see a faint sweat over the cords of Leo’s neck. “Really?” I said, surprised. “You go that way now and again? I had no idea.”

  “No, I don’t. And you do have an attention span. Use it,” he gritted, flushing lightly before turning his head to the right. “Well, shit,” he said in disgust.

  Solomon, our Solomon, stepped out of the darkness there. I knew he was up to his neck in this—might’ve even killed Jeb himself. It hadn’t looked like a demon kill—had lacked a certain level of violence and definitely didn’t smell like demon—but it wasn’t beyond him to fake it to look otherwise. I had no idea who had done Jeb in, Eden House or a demon. Either way, Solomon was in the game; that I’d known for some time. “Whatever this molting chicken has to tell you isn’t worth hearing,” he said, giving a dismissive nod at the angel.

  “That’s probably true. It’s probably true about you too.” I met his gray eyes as I took a step toward the curve of light in the sand.

  “If that’s what you imagine it to be, do you think it will be that easy?” he asked with a shadow of amused arrogance underlying the question.

  “You never know. Not until you ask nicely.” I did ask—in my mind. I asked quite courteously if I might enter. I heard nothing, saw no mystical signs, but took a chance anyway and stepped over. I felt nothing more than a warm tingle that shimmered from my head to my toes—not to say that wasn’t enjoyable and it definitely beat disintegration or slamming into an invisible wall, which the angel promptly did. “Look at that, Solomon,” I said, giving the angel a sassy and unrepentant smile as he hauled his holy ass back to his feet. “See where a little politeness will get you? A nice invitation—that’s what.” I tossed my gun to Leo. It was allowed through the same as I had been. “Stay out here and play duck shoot?”

  “Be happy to,” he said with a cold smile, and pointed the barrel at Solomon’s head.

  I rapped politely at the metal door and bent my head to climb in. John Wilbur was a tiny man sitting on an equally tiny orange and brown couch, his small hands clasped as he rocked back and forth. The desert had withered him to a raisin of a man. Small, dark, and wrinkled.

  “I’m Buddhist, you know. Picked it up a few years ago,” he said immediately, his voice four times bigger than he was. “They ain’t right. I have my own ways. They ought to be leaving me alone. The two of them. Trying to talk me into coming out. Talking and talking and lying and giving me the smooth.” The skin around his small eyes spiderwebbed as he gave me a snaggle toothed grin. “Tossed one of my Buddhas through the window at the one. Surfer boy.” That would be our bleached-blond angel. “He had a dent in his head for a good minute.” That was good to know. Things could leave our bubble of protection, but nothing could enter, not without permission. Although I didn’t think it was Wilbur ’s permission I had received, I thought that was via the tiny bit of the Light left here, and it was only a tiny bit. From what I’d heard of the Light, this display was a firecracker compared to the atomic bomb. Heaven, Hell, and Earth weren’t moving against one another for the ability to protect a trailer.

  I looked down at Wilbur, holding a cheerfully green ceramic Buddha in his hand. The place was littered with them. Fat, laughing Buddhas. Skinny, solemn Buddhas. One was even in a hula skirt. I liked that about Buddha. Throughout history he had n
ever minded a laugh at his own expense. He had never minded any good-natured laughter at all. We should all be that happy.

  “Good for you.” I smiled. “Toss me one and let’s see if I can get the dark guy in the high-roller suit.”

  I missed Solomon with the green Buddha, but only because he turned to dark mist and sank into the ground. “Cheater,” I said under my breath as he immediately rose again.

  “You don’t throw like no girl.” Mr. Wilbur tried for another grin, but it wobbled. “I’m not getting out of this, am I?” He shook his head. “The bastard should’ve warned me first, but ain’t no way I’d take it then, right? Even with his talk of a better world. Making things right. Crazy old bastard. Couldn’t understand a damn word he said half the time.” He sighed and wiped at an eye. “Twitches now and again,” he mumbled. Straightening, he squared his small shoulders and said, “Jeb said after he had time to hide that damn thing away, it’d be no problem. No reason for anyone to come looking for him and it would be safe. The Light would be safe. Well, it might’ve been gone, but he wasn’t. Neither am I.”

  I didn’t know how whoever found Jeb had done it. Whether it was through Wilder Hun, probably, or some other way. But I suspected they had found Wilbur precisely the same way Leo and I had. Demons and angels had been lurking out of sight at Jeb’s wake, avoiding the warm lemonade, but getting the same information we had. And wings made better time than my car. Popping in and out of existence wherever you pleased was a quick commute too.

  “Who came looking for Jeb?” I interrupted. “Who killed him?”

  He shrugged listlessly and shook his head. “I dunno. Doesn’t matter now anyway, ’cause here we are. I don’t have it. Jeb showed it to me, shiny gewgaw that it was, but he didn’t give it to me. Not really. They won’t believe me though, those out there.”

  “No.” I met his eyes squarely. Wilbur wasn’t completely correct about the Light. A minute amount of it had stayed here, but at least Jeb hadn’t given him up. It wouldn’t have been much comfort, so I kept the thought to myself. I also thought that whoever had killed Jeb could’ve had a telepath with him and it wouldn’t have mattered. A little Light here, a little Light also in Jeb. I imagined it had left enough of itself in him to hide any information he had on its location. Pretty smart for a rock. Less smart on me as I still didn’t know who’d killed Jeb.