by Rob Thurman
“The Light is for Above. Even one such as you couldn’t think it was better in the hands of the Abyss. Trinity says you know what it does. Can you imagine what will happen to the earth if we fail to obtain it? You will be at their mercy.”
“From what I could tell last night, we already are. I think it’s your feathered asses you’re worried about. I don’t think you give much of a damn about us, only about spiting Hell.”
“You have no idea what Heaven is, no idea what we are. You couldn’t understand if you wanted to,” he said serenely.
So smug, so damn superior. I poured the rest of the wine into the sink, but it was a struggle not to pour it over his silver head instead. “I’ve read the Bible. I think I know a thing or two.” I had read the Bible as well as several other holy books. I was familiar, you could say, with quite a few religions. Mama made sure her children were educated on a wide variety of subjects. When you traveled the world, she said, you needed to know how to stay out of trouble or how to get into it, depending on your mood.
“You’re like a worm given a molecule of a blade of grass, an electron microscope, and expected to extrapolate what the world looks like . . . its mountains and oceans, lakes and rivers, trees and plains, and all the creatures that inhabit it. The Bible”—he steepled his fingers—“that is your molecule. And you, the worm, you can’t even find the microscope.”
“Maybe that would’ve come across better with a blare of trumpets or if you’d descended from the sky surrounded by a veil of golden light, but you know what it sounded like just now?” I rested my elbows on the counter, steepled my fingers in the mirror image of his, and rested my chin on them as I faced him. “It sounded like you just screwing yourself, because there is no way in hell, or heaven for that matter, that I’ll ever help you now.”
He frowned. Finally, a ripple of emotion. “You have no choice.”
“I refer you to that molecule you were talking about on the subject of free will. So when I tell you to kiss my ass, it’s only because God was kind enough to give humans that choice.” Although truthfully the Bible, theology, and Solomon were all contradictory on the subject, I didn’t feel the need to bring that up. I was free and I knew it. I flattened my hands on the bar and was about to tell him to get the hell out of my bar when Hell decided to tell him itself.
“You really do let anyone in this place, darlin’. You need a good exterminator.” A coil of black smoke reared behind the angel to form into Eligos. He draped a black-clad arm over the shoulders covered in gray and leaned heavily, his lips touching the silver hair. “Oriphiel, pal, buddy, friend o’ mine. How’s it hanging?” His other hand dropped into the angel’s lap. “Or is it like the old days when you didn’t invest in that part when you came to Earth? Too afraid of temptation. I have to say, Ori, you were right. The temptation is so consuming, so damn good, you never would’ve made it.” He lifted his hand back up with a sigh of disappointment. “Yep, like the old days. Still not packing. You should give it a try, at least once. You are missing out like you would not believe. Let me tell you. . . .” His lips moved to Oriphiel’s ears. I couldn’t hear what he said to the angel, but I saw the results.
It was more than a ripple of emotion this time. I saw shock, distaste, and even a trace of fear before Oriphiel was gone, not in a coil of smoke, but a blaze of light bright enough to trigger a headache. Great. I rubbed my forehead. “You could’ve warned me. Sunglasses would’ve been nice.”
“Show-offs. They don’t get to do much else these days, what with humans fighting in their place. All bark and no bite. No more flaming swords. No more throwing down of the rebels. Warriors of God? Ha! Pussies,” he snorted. “And you know what? I think they stuck it to themselves but good. I think they miss it. Who wouldn’t? We might lie to everyone else, Miss Trixa, but they lie to themselves and that makes them equally as dangerous as us.” He grinned. “Not that I’m dangerous. Never. Just very, very interesting.” He jerked his head toward the pool table. “Let’s play a game.” He tossed his leather jacket over a stool and flashed that cocky, sexy smile I was inexplicably getting used to. Then I pictured the dead bodies from last night and put that smile into perspective. The teeth of a carnivore. Period. Unrepentant and loving every minute of his blood-soaked existence. “But we have to bet. There’s no point in playing a game if there’s nothing to win . . . or lose.”
“Don’t even bring up my soul.” I followed him, bringing my gun with me. Why did I follow? Because at the moment, spending time with a degenerate killer demon was a breath of fresh air compared to the creature that had just sat at my bar. Oriphiel and Eligos were flip sides of the same coin, only Eli bothered to fake the charm. And charm as manipulation was deceitful, obviously, but it was better than assuming I was a servant to anyone, even Heaven. If an independent creature like me had a pet peeve—or had to pick one among many—that would be it.
“Trust me, I’d never be that clichéd.” The hazel eyes were more copper and green than brown and green. “How ’bout we play for those PJs, little girl? I have a whole set of fantasies already going about those. And spankings are way too vanilla to make it through the door.” He cracked his knuckles. “Do you have any teddy bears upstairs?”
“Don’t be sick or I’ll put the pool cue where you won’t like it.”
“‘Don’t be sick’? I’m fallen. Pure evil. Demonic spawn from the depths of Hell. Why do I have to keep reminding you of that? Do I need a tattoo or maybe a T-shirt? Tacky, but it would show my pecs. And as for the pool cue, you never know. I might more than like it.” He racked the balls, then waved his hand, flaring to life the overhead light. “Ladies first.”
I placed the Smith on the side of the table and chalked my cue. “We haven’t established what I get if I win.”
“You’ll really throw the PJs in the pot?” He rocked back on his heels. “I’m impressed. Okay, big spender, that deserves something equally worthy. You win and I’ll tell you who was behind nuking Eden House. That has to be worth a little full-frontal nudity.”
“How’d you . . . Never mind.” I liked to sleep free and unencumbered under my sleepwear. So sue me. “You know who did it? Solomon didn’t know.”
“Solomon told you he didn’t know. Don’t tell me you believed him.” He tossed his cue lazily from hand to hand. “I know you’re not that naïve.”
“I don’t believe anything a demon says, but he sounded less like a liar than usual.” I broke and proceeded to wipe the floor with his demonic ass. He barely got a chance to get on the table, poor baby. It was an honest game on his end, obviously, but only because he knew I wouldn’t live up to my end of the bet if he cheated. Actually, I wouldn’t have lived up to my end if he had won. He’d get a limb before he got my pajamas. In the end, it’d be less catastrophic for me. It wasn’t only demons who could lie.
“How’d you get so good? I’ve played pool longer than you’ve been alive.” He scowled. For the first time that sexy, crazy, roguishly cheerful smile was replaced with something real. Disappointment with a good dose of spite.
“Don’t pout. It doesn’t look good on a hell-spawn.” I boosted myself up to sit on the edge of the table. “And I’m good at everything. Physics included.” Good at everything except keeping my little brother alive, and winning a pool game with a demon didn’t quite make up for that, did it? I touched the black teardrop at my throat. No, it hardly did.
Eli had put away the spite, which I thought was most likely an act anyway. He wanted to tell me about Eden House. That was the reason he’d shown up. He might not have cheated to win, but he’d been prepared to cheat to lose. It simply turned out he didn’t have to. Quite a surprise for him. It was one reason I never hustled pool. It was too easy and rather boring to watch grown men sulk like little boys. It wasn’t worth the money for the win or the irritation as they tried to look down my shirt whenever I made a shot.
“Pool is more than physics,” Eli went on with outraged passion. I rolled a ball idly across the table, th
en played with the pool cue a few seconds before laying it beside me to watch the show. For all that Eli was a self-invention of pure ego, he was entertaining, and I didn’t mind the distraction. It was better than thinking of how no matter how many things I succeeded at, it couldn’t make up for my one heart-killing failure. “It’s more than a game. It’s war. It’s sex on green felt if you do it right. That quick is not doing it right.” I tuned out after that. He was amusing and fun and six feet of pure, unadulterated sex, but as much as I wanted to be distracted, it wasn’t happening.
“You aren’t afraid of me.” Abruptly his face was in mine, so close I felt his breath, saw the minute flecks of copper swimming in his now-ebony eyes, felt the fall of brindled brown hair against my forehead. “You should be,” he said softly. “Oh, little girl, you should be.”
“Why?” I didn’t pull back. This was my place, my territory, and nobody would make me afraid here. Nobody. “You can’t kill me. You’d lose the Light.”
“Maybe. Maybe I can’t kill you.” The metallic flecks swirled. “But I could always torture you.” He lifted his upper lip and this smile was neither sexy nor amusing. “I’m good at that. First in my class. Plaques on the wall. And, even better, I really, really enjoy doing it.”
“And I’d tell you everything I know.” My eyes weren’t as copper as the flecks in his, but I had a feeling what lurked behind them was as dark as the blackness of his.
“Everything you know and every invention you could possibly scream from what was left of your throat.” His voice wasn’t human anymore.
“I have to say, this is your worst attempt at seduction yet.” I nipped his full lower lip and then rammed the pool cue through his stomach. I missed the spine . . . on purpose. At that level it wouldn’t have killed him and the effect of two feet of polished and gore-stained wood coming out of his back was showier. I liked showy. It tended to make lessons stick with the one on the receiving end. When he was comparing pool to everything except a game, I’d removed the tip and ferrule from my personal cue to reveal a nice sharp metal point beneath it. This turned a perfectly good pool cue into an even better spear, and if Eli had been too busy showing how sexy and clever he was to notice what I was doing, well . . . at least he was still sexy. Or would be once he cleaned up.
He stepped back and glowered at the length of wood impaling him. “You just get bitchier and bitchier all the time, don’t you?” But it was said with reluctant admiration. If Eli was too fast for a bullet to hit, he was certainly fast enough to avoid a pool cue through the abdomen. But when you’re strutting your demonic stuff for a woman, getting turned on with the torture talk, and carrying an ego the size of Hell itself, you do make the occasional mistake. He flicked a finger against the polished wood with a light thunk. “Excessive violence doesn’t go well with the footy pajamas. It’s a behavioral and fashion faux pas all rolled into one.”
I held on to the cue. As long as I held on to it, he was held to Earth in his physical form, although he could have turned demon if he’d wanted. But he’d still be pinned like a dead bug in an insect collector ’s display case. “And the threatening me with torture, that was entirely kosher?”
He held his arms wide as his eyes turned from black and copper to penny and forest hazel. “At least I’m dressed for it. You have to give me that.” He was. Black shirt. Black pants. Black jacket thrown to the side.
“Yeah, you’re the demonic Darth Vader. I’m beyond impressed.” I turned my head to Griffin and Zeke who’d been sitting on the bottom step of the stairs with the door propped wide for quite some time now. The angel might’ve been too high-level for them to sense and I knew Eli was, but they could hear. As soon as the pool game started, they’d come down, both with shotguns and bad morning attitudes. “What do you think, guys? Should we—”
“Shoot him,” they said simultaneously, interrupting me.
“You don’t seem to be as charismatic as you think you are, Eli,” I commented. “Isn’t that a shame?” I was still sitting on the pool table, but I was ready to jump to the floor and try to hold him here if he decided to fight. There was more room between us now, about two feet. Even for a demon, a makeshift spear through the guts will have you staggering back a pace or two.
The smile was back . . . as cocky, and almost as warm. If he was pissed, and I imagined he was, he hid it well. Then again when you claim to have been around millions of years, how mind-numbingly boring that would be. A few thousand years, sure. Maybe even ten, but after that, things were bound to get boring. Eli considered me surprising and I don’t think he was often surprised. “If you shoot me, I can’t tell you who ordered Eden House smote to the ground. ‘Smote.’ I haven’t gotten to use that word since my days upstairs. I kind of miss it. Lots of pomp and circumstance in a word like that.” He tapped his chin as the smile became sly. “Downstairs we just say slaughter or massacre or team-building exercise.”
“Who, then?” Too bad the pool cue wasn’t barbed along its length; I would’ve twisted it. It wouldn’t have done much good. Demons, especially these high-level demons we were suddenly seeing so much of, had a high tolerance for pain. “Tell me and maybe Zeke and Griffin won’t turn your head into history and the rest of you into a pool of ecological disaster that’ll have the EPA beside themselves.”
“All right. All right. What a sore winner,” he grumbled. It was all just another show. As I’d thought, he wanted to tell me. He’d come here to tell me. Putting up a fight wasn’t on his agenda . . . for now. “Beleth ordered it. And guess who works under Beleth. Way under. As in ‘He’s my boss, but I just sit and wait for his memos and gaze dreamily at his photo on my desk.’”
“Solomon.” I’d read books other than holy ones. I had the list of the higher demons memorized to the last duke, assuming humans got it right when they wrote it all down, and that was a big assumption. Beleth was supposedly a king in Hell. There was only one step above a king downstairs. “Beleth wants to take over? Push Lucifer aside?”
“I told you, darlin’, we all do. But he’s one of the ones with the best shot. And if he obtained the Light, he could start a rebellion. Another rebellion, rather. Arrogance and pride were the downfall for us all. We all want to sit in the big chair someday.” He shrugged. “Solomon is personal assistant material. It’s beyond him, but if he brought the Light to Beleth, swing! One big-ass promotion and a giant step closer to the throne for himself.”
Solomon had seemed sincere in his denial of knowledge about the fall of Eden House, but Solomon always seemed sincere. He was good at what he did, but a demon that gave up killing? I shouldn’t buy it. Couldn’t, not if I wanted to do what needed to be done. “And whom do you work for, Eli? Who sent you for the Light?”
“Nobody. I’m a free agent. I sell to the highest bidder.” He grasped the pool cue and within seconds pulled it loose. I let him, dropping it from my hands. “Like you, Trixa. We’re one in the same. Well, I might be slightly more sexy, but basically one in the same. We’re all business when it comes to the Light.” He handed the cue back to me with a small bow. “But all pleasure when it comes to everything else.”
He held out his hand and a box, wreathed in a wisp of smoke, rested in his palm. The same size as his hand, it was plum-colored with a thin silver bow. Very elegant. “For you. Call me if you decide I’m a lighter touch on the leash than Trinity.”
“Call you?” Sexier, my ass. I leaned back and crossed pajama-covered ankles. I couldn’t help but take him in and admit to myself, all right, maybe a tad sexier. Just a tiny bit. Vain bastard. But he wasn’t smarter, no matter what he thought. “As in say your name and poof—here you are?”
“Hardly. I’m not a genie. I’m a demon, and my hearing isn’t in the superhero range. Call my cell.” He whipped out a card and passed it over. “Here’s my number.”
I didn’t bother to look at it. “I’m guessing 666- 6666.”
“Oh, right. As if that number weren’t snatched up decades ago.” The sarcasm hung in
the air, but he was gone. Even his jacket was gone.
Damn, what a long morning.
“You never let us play anymore,” Zeke grumped from his position on the stairs. He’d been well behaved and waited on my signal as to whether to shoot or not. He was getting better and better at grasping the intricacies of mental battles versus physical ones—even if he thought the former were rather pointless.
“I still need him, Kit. Between Solomon, Trinity, and the angel that showed up this morning, I need a wild card to play if things don’t go my way.” I carefully undid the bow—I did love presents—and pulled off the lid of the box.
It was a finger.
Definitely not the kind of present I was looking for. My stomach rolled. Griffin and Zeke had already moved to my side to ask about the angel. They didn’t get the chance.
“Leo?” Griffin’s voice was hoarse and black with rage. I rested a hand on his shoulder and squeezed.
“No. Not Leo.” I closed the box and retied the ribbon with a savage twist. I had no idea what I’d do with it. There was no point in turning it into the police. Whoever it belonged to was no doubt dead by now, and if he wasn’t, he was far beyond the reach of any authorities.
“How do you know?” he asked incredulously. “It could be. It looked . . .”
It looked like Leo’s. The same color red-brown skin, large . . . there was blood on the white velvet beneath it, indicating it had been taken off a living human being. Poor damn bastard, whoever he was or had been . . . but the finger didn’t belong to Leo.
“I know. But it’s not, not that it makes it any less horrible.” I put the box on the pool table before standing and going to the bar, where I picked up the phone and dialed the number on the card. I got Eligos’s voice mail. It figured. I always thought that an invention of Hell anyway.
“Eligos, find my brother’s killer and only then do you get the Light. As for the finger—I’m giving it to you right now.” I disconnected, although throwing the phone across the room instead was very tempting.
