by Rob Thurman
That was a mistake I could live with.
I cultivated that warm vengeful glow in the pit of my stomach. It kept me on target and blunted the undeniable edge of Eligos’s charisma. It didn’t take long to find the nearest Chinese restaurant with edible cuisine. I’d been there once before and it was an excellent one. That was important. All I needed was a demon mutilating the chef because the dim sum wasn’t up to his standards. We were shown to a booth by a gorgeous Asian woman who tripped twice, unable to take her eyes from Eligos—there was no conceivable way I was going to call him Eli.
“Tell me, Eli”—damn it—“what’s your story, then?” I asked as he stretched his arms along the back of the booth. “Solomon says he can pay my price if I find the Light. Can you?”
The hazel eyes were suddenly empty of that uncanny magnetism, empty of the seemingly ever-present humor and sexuality, empty of any emotion at all. They may as well have been the eyes of a dead man or the empty shine of skillfully painted glass. “I can give you anything Solomon can. Anything and more.”
“Promises. Promises.” I drank the lemon-flavored water.
“I know you’re not too fond of him making Vegas his home. Give me the Light and I’ll give you whatever you want, plus remove Solomon from your backyard . . . permanently.” He ordered without looking at the menu. I took my time, to get to him—letting a demon push you was the first step down a slippery slope with a bottom you did not want to see or experience.
Finally, I made my selection, then leaned back in casual imitation of his pose. “Solomon’s a pretty powerful demon, from what I’ve seen. Are you saying you play in his league?”
His eyes filled up again, like an empty glass, but it wasn’t with the wild and exciting emotions of before. It was as he said . . . evil, remember? Dark and savage and utterly confident. “Let’s just say he only wishes he could play in mine.”
I didn’t know if Solomon would agree with that, but Eligos exuded enough self-assurance that although I knew a demon couldn’t open his mouth without telling a lie, I almost believed it myself. “Let me see you,” I said abruptly. “The real you.”
The eyebrows rose. “Aren’t we the kinky one? I really am going to like you.” There was a flicker, so fast no one else in the restaurant saw it. There were copper scales, eyes like copper-flecked tar. . . . They sucked down the dinosaurs; they’d sucked down souls as well, claws the same dense black, a forked and mottled tongue seen through the waver of clouded glass teeth. The wings of a pterodactyl. Demons weren’t pretty, but they weren’t ugly either. Like a mixture of Komodo dragon body combined with a raptor that brought death from the skies and the calculating, cold, endlessly patient eyes of a python. Nature: deadly, terrifying, but not ugly.
The flash passed and he was Eli again, white teeth replacing glass daggers. “Which is sexier? Ever want to take a walk on that wild side, babe? Because I can accommodate you there.”
“Thanks, but I don’t think they make birth control for what you’re packing.” Although I knew demons, as well as angels, were asexual, they could choose any sexual human form—at least the demons could female-wise. I still didn’t know if angels couldn’t put on a female costume or were just gender biased. But I did know both angels and demons were sterile, contradicting both the Bible and Hollywood. It didn’t matter. I still liked to put it to them once in a while.
“Rosemary’s Baby.” He snorted. “The Omen. Two movies and we never live it down.” He adjusted the blinds and blocked the sun. It seemed more appropriate to talk about these things in the dark. “What do you want, Trixa? For the Light, what do you want?”
I pulled out the scale. I kept it with me always, tucked away in a tiny gold locket on my bracelet. “This came from the one who killed my brother. I want him.”
I laid the scale on the table between us and he touched it with one careful finger, soaking in its essence . . . its signature. He raised an eyebrow. “You want him dead?”
Something curled my lips, but it was the farthest thing from a smile there was. “I want him. Don’t worry about killing him. That pleasure is all mine.”
“Hmm.” He leaned back and I returned the pewter scale to its place. “There are many demons that color. Hundreds, maybe even a thousand.”
“Does that mean you can’t do it?” I challenged.
“Sweetheart, there is nothing I can’t do.” He shared that smile with the waitress who’d arrived with our food. “I excel at all things. I achieve all things. In other words, I’m one amazing son of a bitch . . . so to speak. Not literally of course.” The smile sharpened as the waitress backed away, legs trembling and eyes both fascinated and fearful. Trapped. And if he wanted her, she would be trapped. She didn’t have it in her to step away if he had but crooked a finger.
“Besides, I have his essence now. His scent. I’ll find him. I’ll deliver him, and I’ll destroy Solomon if you want, just as the cherry on top.” He dug into the food, took a few bites, then made a seesaw motion of his hand. It looked like I hadn’t picked the restaurant well enough after all. “Good, but could be better. I think I’ll make a deal with the cook on my way out. You keep looking for the Light; I’ll scour the earth to locate your brother ’s fiendish killer.” He put his hand on his chest and gave me his perfect profile. “Do I look noble when I say things like that? I feel noble. Straight out of a John Wayne Western or Errol Flynn flick. Before your time though. Pity.” He called the waitress over and drawled, “Sweetheart, we’re not going to pay for this. Is that all right with you?”
She swallowed, eyes glassy with a good girl’s version of lust, and nodded. “I will pay myself, sir.”
“Thanks. You’re a doll.” He gave her the grin, the up-and-down look, until I thought her skin would actually burst into flame, and then he shooed her off. “I’ll check in later,” he said to me, suddenly all business. “Tracking killers. Damning souls. I might have to forgo running over puppies. This is going to be an entertaining day.”
“I was wondering,” I asked before he got up, sincerely hoping he was kidding about the puppies. “How many years do people get to enjoy what you demons give them for their souls?”
“Interesting question.” He rested his chin in his hand and the smile returned. . . . It was more blinding than the sunlight the blinds had blocked. “Most demons give you five years, some fifteen, some twenty. Arbitrary, really, depending on whom you’re dealing with and how hungry they are. Now me, I give my clients the entire span of their natural lives.”
Clients. He was something, this one. “Really?” I said skeptically. “Because you’re so generous?”
“No, darlin’.” The hazel eyes hosted swirls of black. “I do it because that gives them hope. They think, if I live my life and do good things, share my wealth and good fortune, give to the church, God will forgive me . . . take me in when I go. And eventually they even forget for months, sometimes years at a time. What an imagination I had when I was younger. How stupid of me to think something so crazy.” The smile had gone from sun to jagged, smoky crystal. “And then, when they’re ninety, and it’s all just a memory, I show up and drag them down. Sometimes I eat them right away and sometimes I let them suffer years and years in the fire, but the look on their face when I first show up . . .” Scales rippled across the back of his hands; then he was all human again, sexy, happy smile back in place. “It’s so much damn fun, it should be illegal.”
“Instead of immoral?” I said, quelling a ripple of disgust.
“You say tomato, I say tomahto.” He clapped his hands together once. “And I’ll have the best Chinese food in the world right here anytime I want. See you later.” He got up and headed straight for the kitchen. I didn’t try to stop him as I would’ve if he’d been on his way to simply kill the cook. I could save the man’s life, but I couldn’t make his decisions for him.
Free will. God giveth and the devil laughs all the way to the bank.
Chapter 9
I broke the news about the new dem
on to Leo that night when we were readying the bar for the night owls—they tended to be messier than the daytime crowd. His eyes narrowed as though it was somehow my fault, but he only grunted, “Harems went out of style a while ago.”
I started emptying the dishwasher and hanging glasses above the bar. “Please,” I said scornfully, “I’m hardly some leather-wearing monster killer with a cadre of hot men and demons waiting on my every sexual whim.” I paused, a glass held in midair. Leo started to speak and I held up a finger on my free hand. “Wait a minute. I’m still contemplating why I’m not that and wondering how to change it.”
He snapped a bar towel against my ass. “Spare me. Your tawdry fantasies are not something I want to think about.”
“Tawdry?” I hung the glass and admitted it. “Okay, tawdry, but I’ll make you head harem boy. First in my heart and loins.”
“Harem man,” he corrected, “and no thanks. I don’t look good in pantaloons.”
“Oh, the harem goes naked at all times . . . unless buttless chaps are involved.” I gave him a wink and finished with the glasses. “All the better to serve my depraved needs.”
“You’re depraved, all right; I’m just not sure it’s sexually,” he grunted as the door opened to admit the first alcoholic of the evening. “And you’re wearing leather right now.”
I looked down at the rich color of the brown pants I was wearing. “It’s faux. That doesn’t count. They don’t let you in the club of Monster Layers of America unless you wear the real cow. It’s in the bylaws. You also have to like male-on-male porn. That’s even above owning your own whip.” I poured a whiskey for the customer. “Too bad I only qualify for one out of three.”
Leo held his hand up. “Don’t tell me. Please. I’ll beg if you really push it, but please don’t tell me. There’s a reason straight men call it a devil’s threesome and it has nothing to do with demons.”
It was teasing between us. Long honed from an even longer history. The temptation was always there, but Leo and I both knew it couldn’t last, and the fact that we might outdo nuclear explosions before we separated still wouldn’t be worth losing what we had now. We might not be together sexually, but we were together in so many other ways—in all other ways. We were friends and family and lately warriors shoulder to shoulder. That was much better than a harem.
As for the Monster Layers of America . . .
Besides, stare into the abyss and it stares back into you. Follow that to its natural conclusion when it came to sleeping with demons. And that’s what Solomon and Eli were, no matter their charm and appeal. One of their kind had killed Kimano . . . as so many of them killed others, over and over. Solomon seemed to think the fact that he limited himself to just taking souls made him a saint. To hear him talk, it was no worse than a person eating a hot dog. At least Solomon’s meal had agreed to it—the pig hadn’t. And I was far from being a vegetarian; I’d yet to come up with a good answer to that one. That people were better and more deserving of life than animals wasn’t it. I’d never met a dog I didn’t like. I’d met plenty of people I couldn’t say the same about.
Solomon said he didn’t kill, but . . . demons lie. All demons.
Didn’t they?
Now Eli . . . Eli definitely lied and he definitely killed. That I knew as surely as anything. Souls would never be enough for him. He was a demon—as much as he looked like a man—who would crave variety, infinite and in any fashion he could get it. Eli existed for every experience he could get, because for him life was the opposite of short. Instead, life was endless. How to fill the millions of hours . . . days . . . years.
Why, sweetheart—I could see that disarming grin—anyway I can.
The night was unusually quiet despite our preparation. No demonic hordes. No wounded friends in pain. No wispy little girls and fat, waddling dogs. It was just half the number of the usual drinkers, sports fans glued to the TV, and the occasional hooker. Not legal inside the city limits, but if they could put up with what they did for the few bucks they needed to survive, I wasn’t going to kick them out. “Nice night,” Leo observed.
And it stayed that way until I was escorting a wobbly patron to his cab. Getting the door open with one hand, I used the other to grab his waistband as he started to go down and tossed him in the back with one heave. “Damn, lady, you got some muscle on you,” the cabbie observed.
“Pilates,” I responded. “I like a good workout.”
“You work out killing my brethren.” Solomon’s dark velvet voice came from behind me.
I turned as the cab drove away, folded one arm under my breasts, and kept the other free in case I needed my gun. “From what I hear, I’m not the only one.” Not that he was wrong. Fighting demons was great for toning. I should’ve bought an infomercial. “You’d just as soon kill one another. You higher demons anyway.” The mud-colored demons, the lowest of the former angels, seemed to follow the orders of the other demons. Like Solomon had said, or the equivalent of, if you were a mail clerk in Heaven, you were a mail clerk in Hell. “Or so Eligos tells me. Don’t tell me you haven’t been completely open with me, Solomon. Where is the trust there?”
“As if you ever gave me an ounce of it to begin with.” His face was blank. I wasn’t sure I’d seen it that way before, a canvas empty of seduction, anger, manipulation, and the darkness. “If you play with Eligos, Trixa, if you give him the smallest pinhole of an opening, you’ll only wish he’d killed you.”
“I don’t know.” The moon was high above us, almost the same orange as the Vegas night sky. “He seemed more honest than you. A killer, I’m sure. But I learned more about demons at a lunch with him than I learned in years of knowing you. And here I thought you were all on the same side, one nether-world united under god—god of darkness anyway. But that’s not so. I’ve been negotiating with you when I could’ve opened the field to all bidders. Why didn’t you tell me that, Solomon?”
“I’m a demon,” he growled. I noticed they used that justification quite a bit. “Self-interest is part of the package, believe it or not. I’m not a killer, but I’m not perfect either. Are you?”
I knew that, naturally—it was hard to forget someone was a demon—but it opened him up. That canvas was painted with all sorts of emotion now. It had taken me a while to determine that demons did have real emotions outside murderous rage and homicidal hunger, but they did. They had pride, envy, boredom, fun . . . unfortunately, the fun was a result of the rage and hunger the majority of the time.
“And you don’t know Eligos. The things he’s done. The ambitions he has. He would raze this entire city with blood and fire and a thousand demons to get what he wants,” he warned, stepping closer to me, his hand reaching out to cup my cheek. I let him. Why? A question best answered later when I couldn’t feel the beat of his pulse through his palm. “He would take you apart inch by inch, slice by slice. He would make death seem like the rarest and most wonderful dream you could fathom. He would do anything to get the Light. Anything.”
“And you wouldn’t?” I said softly.
His hand dropped away from my face, but I could still feel the warm imprint of it. A demon’s touch was never cold, or maybe that was just Solomon’s. “There are things I wouldn’t do. I know you don’t believe me, but it’s the truth.” He gave a rueful smile. “A demon can speak it once in a while.” He stepped back, asphalt scraping under his black boots. “Perhaps if you would tell me what you want for the Light, we could gain a little more trust between us. A demon, but which demon? And why?” His eyes sharpened on me. “Did you tell Eligos?”
“I did, but you . . . ” I looked at him with skepticism, distrust, and an emotion I doubted he could guess, even with all the souls he’d taken over the years. He may have devoured them, but that didn’t mean he understood me. “You, I’ve known a lot longer. Distrusted a lot longer. When we find the Light, then I’ll tell you what I want. Who and why. It’ll keep you hungry and sharp, and that in turn will provide a check to Eden House and Eli
.”
“You play us all against one another.” His smile was grim. “You would make a good demon, Trixa. Eating you would be a waste of a good soldier.” He moved closer, his breath as warm as his hand. “A waste of an incomparable soul.”
The door to the bar opened and Solomon slipped a card into my hand. “Have dinner with me tonight. In an hour.” He hesitated, then added a word I would’ve guessed he didn’t even know. “Please.” Then he was gone in a minitornado of black smoke. Showy bastard.
Leo stood in the doorway with a shotgun. “Either you’re playing games, and you might die because of it. Or you’re not playing games—and you will die because of it.”
I followed him back inside. “Trust me. I know what I’m doing.” Dinner. That was a new one. After three years, maybe he thought he’d try a different approach than threats or straight seduction. It might be interesting.
“I do trust you.” He flipped the bar towel over his shoulder and put the shotgun back behind the bar. “You’re the only one I trust, but I’ve seen you lose your temper. And what you feel about Kimano is far beyond simply losing your temper. You could lose your mind before this is all over.”
I touched the Pele’s tear that hung around my neck, and thought to myself, Who says I haven’t already? To Leo I said, “I have to go change. I have a date.” Ignoring his exasperated sigh, I disappeared up the stairs and reappeared a half hour later.
Leo was still waiting, propped on a bar stool with arms crossed. “Nice,” he rumbled. “Red dress, tight, lots of perfume. Not like a hooker at all.”
“It’s not perfume. It’s deodorant.” And the dress was not that tight. “You think I should try to charm information out of him with my faded T-shirt, holey jeans, and the sweet smell of perspiration?”
“Your idea of charm is to shoot a demon in the head instead of the dick,” he said dryly. “But I know better than to try to stop you. Go seduce away. Sleep with him if you think you need to, but think about what Kimano would say about that.”
