Trick of the Light t-1

by Rob Thurman

  “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.”

  I took my hand away from my stomach and waggled fingers at him. There was no blood on my hand, none on my stomach. I gave him the same answer Solomon had given Trinity. “I lied. That’s what I do, Sunshine. That’s who I am.” I shifted and lifted my eyes to Solomon and said with mock solemnity, “And didn’t I do such a good job? The years of ‘Will she or won’t she’? All that unresolved sexual tension. Pushing you away, but never completely away. The kiss, the reluctant pulling from your touch, savoring your warmth despite my weak little self, letting you sleep with me. Hold me. I was trusting as a lamb, so vulnerable. Wasn’t that sweet? Who would be so good as to fool you, a demon? Only my kind, only me . . . the ultimate liar.”

  “Trickster,” Solomon snarled, all pretense at being the most regretful of the Fallen, the demon who was fluffy and warm as the Easter Bunny and never spilled a drop of blood, was gone. Gone every bit as quickly as the snap of Trinity’s neck.

  “ ‘To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven,’ ” I quoted. “And above Hell,” I added.

  I stood and stretched, felt that lifetime-familiar electricity spread through me; my hair lifting in a most nonangelic halo around my face. “So easily you forget us pagan-kind, forget the païens.” I was pagan all right, as I’d told the boys—so pagan that I was one of those that the pagan humans had worshipped . . . for thousands of years until these Johnny-come-latelies had spread their way far and wide. “You forget that we belong here too, but that doesn’t stop you from casually killing us if given the chance. You thought our season was over.” I pointed. “You, Solomon, are especially fond of killing our kind if you can. I’ve studied you. It’s a hobby for you, isn’t it? Four hundred of us have you destroyed over the past two thousand years,” I growled. Not a female growl, not even a human one. “To you and the angels we are nothing but leftover vermin from a world you refuse to share.” I fixed my eyes on the demon, who didn’t move. Didn’t blink. That was smart of him.

  “But this is our world too, and if you won’t leave us in peace, then we will be protected from the likes of you all. An abomination to Heaven, a nuisance to Hell. But with the Light, the shield”—it continued to glow around Leo—“neither of you will touch my kind again. We will have sanctuary if we want it. We’ve been looking for it a long time and now it comes home with us.”

  “You?” A wave of boredom passed over Solomon’s human face. His acting hadn’t gotten any better, no matter what Shakespeare had told him. “You plan on leaving with the Light? Little Trixa? And Leo who cleans your bathrooms?”

  “Little Trixa.” I smiled. Leo’s wings began to thrash, creating a wind tunnel in the cavern. “Leo.” I knew the pupils of my eyes were dilating as the kill approached. “Not so, Solomon. For you, we are so much more. For you and the shield, my people sent in the big guns. Sent in the heavyweights. The varsity team. The gun-slingers. Leo went by Loki for a while. Loki, the Norse god. You have heard of him, right?” Leo’s mocking cry split the air like a siren. “He almost ended the world once just to liven up a tedious afternoon. He’s mellowed since then. Slightly.”

  I stepped toward Solomon. “I, little Trixa, have been called Coyote.” I went to all fours and became a coyote, one the size of a bear. “Kitsune.” My fur turned fox red. “Crow.” Massive black feathered wings sprouted from my shoulders. “Akamataa.” My tail turned to a scaled, thick whip of a lizard. “Amaguq.” The coyote eyes turned to wolf. “Iktomi.” The two yellow wolf eyes multiplied to a spider ’s eight.

  My voice wasn’t human anymore and neither was my smile, the teeth changing shape to almost perfect triangles. “But a girl gives so many names out, she begins to forget a few. Too bad you didn’t pay attention in demon school.” I held a clawed paw high. “Gods.” I dropped the paw a little lower. “Tricksters.” I dropped it considerably lower. “Demons.” I couldn’t smile coldly with my changed jaw, but I showed my teeth. “Leo looks down on me for not being a god like him, but I’m happy enough.” I wasn’t a woman any more than Leo was a man—not the human kind. Although the majority of tricksters, like me, are born male or female. I might
not be a human woman, but I was a woman through and through. I’d said I was born thirty-one years ago. Another lie. That body had been created just ten years past in Vegas and a good one it was. I liked it a lot. Apparently Solomon had too, much more than the one he was facing now.

  “What, Solomon? Am I not sexy now?” I took another step, claws scoring the stone. “Don’t I turn you on anymore?” I bared the teeth of a shark—the Ka-poe-kina-mano trickster. My brother ’s favorite form. He had considered Hawaii his home for a long, long time. It was only right that part of him should be here now. Killing Solomon as Solomon had killed him on that black sand beach while he slept in a human form. He had been young, the trickster version of a teenager, and hadn’t yet learned to shield his mind and aura from the higher demons. Trusting. The only trusting trickster I’d ever known. Easy prey. And Solomon had been the willing predator. His hobby had spilled my brother’s blood. The demon hadn’t chosen him on purpose. He had only crossed his path and did what Solomon did best. Murder. For fun.

  It had been pure chance. Entirely catastrophically bad luck . . . for my brother.

  Now for Solomon too.

  I hoped Solomon wouldn’t make it easy. I hoped he lasted a long time. He was a powerful demon . . . high-level with the speed and skill that went with that.