Rob Thurman - Trick of the Light

“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 to ma to, I say to mah to.” 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.

I broke the news about the new demon 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.