Rob Thurman - Trick of the Light

“The rats always know when a ship is sinking,” Zeke grunted.

“You think they knew this was coming?” I reached behind me to take Zeke’s wrist and pull him along faster. You’d think the man was meandering down to the kitchen for a snack.

“No. I think the Universe sucks. The dicks are eating steak and drinking wine while their soldiers die.” Zeke saw the warning glance Griffin shot from him to Thomas, but I didn’t think Thomas heard a word as we passed out of the house into clean night air. He was young, so young that he had to be newly recruited. His survival had been nothing more than a fluke or maybe he’d hidden during the battle. If so, I didn’t blame him. He looked like he’d never fought a single demon, much less a horde of them.

Outside we discovered there were a few more left, both demons and survivors like Thomas. The human survivors were only a handful, but they were holding their own for the moment. It was a very small and passing moment, though. They might have been fighting, but they were seconds away from being lunch meat. The three of us moved toward them and the ring of demons that surrounded them as Thomas fell to his knees and vomited. If they rebuilt Eden House here, I didn’t think he’d be a part of it. All the empathic or telepathic talent in the world doesn’t make you a fighter. Genes, a screwed-up childhood, or training did that, but sometimes none of the three worked. Thomas would never be a warrior and I also suspected Thomas would never sleep through the night again.

But there were more urgent matters right now—to keep what remained of the House alive. The demons spotted us as we moved up behind them. The circle opened as half of them scattered to face us, while the other half moved in on the other six survivors. I aimed the MP5 at the two demons rushing me when Solomon appeared between us.

“Stop!” He was in human form as always, but his voice was anything but. It was the roar of a lion—the largest and most lethal one on the plains.

The demons hesitated, but the next thundering “Go!” left nothing but wisps of murky vapor floating in the air. Solomon turned to me. “I didn’t do this.”

I scrubbed the rest of the demon blood from my face with the sleeve of my shirt. “You think I care? You think whether or not you did makes a difference? Do you think I even believe you?” I checked my clip automatically and avoided grim gray eyes. You could’ve even said they were sympathetic . . . if you were that gullible. I never had been. I couldn’t afford to be. “Because we both know if you had a reason to take out Eden House, you would.”

“You think the Light is my reason.” He stepped closer, close enough to rest a hand on my arm. I heard Zeke growl, but Griffin must’ve held him back. “I’m more subtle in my tactics. Mass slaughter’s not my way. Murder isn’t my way. I’m different than the rest. I have control. I would not do this.”

“What about Eligos?” I demanded as the warm thumb rubbed the tender skin on the underside of my arm.

“He could . . . easily, but,” he added with obvious reluctance, “I don’t know that he did. I’ve heard nothing about a plan to destroy Eden House. All know this is my territory. No one beneath me would attempt anything like this without consulting me first. With my equals, I think I would have heard rumors. Gossip is a minor sin after all. We embrace it. This may have come from above.”

“There are demons above you and Eli besides the big guy?” I pulled from his grip, but not as quickly as I should have. I couldn’t deny the warmth felt good against my skin. “I’m surprised you’d admit it.”

“We have brothers who couldn’t come to Earth without setting the ground to flame beneath each foot-step. Whose gaze would kill anything it fell on.” His lips curled cynically. “Once far above archangels, now princes in Hell.”

“And you’re still waiting on the promotion.” I shoved my gun in my bag. I could hear the distant wail of sirens.

“A half million souls wouldn’t get me there.” The sirens were closer. “I’ll find out what I can.” He was gone as unexpectedly as he came. The sirens were closer. Our vanishing act wasn’t as darkly mystical as Solomon’s had been. Ours was more of the piling into my car, spinning in a circle, and peeling out of the driveway. I took my boys and the rest of the survivors ran to cars of their own. Trinity could deal with the explanation of the dead bodies—if he had to bother to explain at all. Eden House had tentacles in all levels of government, local and federal. For all I knew, they’d invented the concept of government . . . they or Lucifer.

The flames flickered in my rearview mirror, reminding me of all the times we’d burned Solomon’s club to the ground. Things come and things go, but one thing remained constant:

Fire consumed it all.

They had been mostly dead when Griffin and Zeke had gotten to the House, their brothers and sisters in arms, Griffin told me that night while we’d cleaned our slashes and slices. He’d told me while Zeke had said nothing at all—not since we’d left the ruins of Eden House. They’d lost another home. They’d realized it was gone when Trinity had found out about their bringing outsiders into Eden House business—their “calling” from his point of view. But knowing it and seeing it burn before you, that was different. And knowing it and seeing those you’d fought side by side with for years die nearly to the man, that was so beyond different, and it had hit Zeke hard. A dead baby, dead companions . . . it was a lot to lose in such a short lifetime. Only twenty-five years old, and Zeke had already seen so much death—and considered himself the cause of a part of it. The fall of Eden House was pain all in itself and a painful reminder of what had happened in that bathtub ten years ago.

Dead and gone, all of it.

“We fought, but it was too late.” Griffin had slid a washcloth down both arms, washing away red and black blood. “Too many were already gone. They’d called all of us back home, but there were too many demons for them.” That had to be a lot of demons . . . except for the newer recruits like Thomas, all those that served Eden House had been good fighters. Not Griffin and Zeke good, but damn good nonetheless.

As for home, the two of them obviously never really considered their house home. It had been Eden House to a certain extent, and here. All in all, they certainly spent more time at my bar than Eden House or their place combined.

“This is home,” I’d reminded him firmly, and after I’d used it first, I let them use my bath to get cleaned up. They’d fought much longer than I had in the battle and had been banged up more as a consequence. So, giving person that I was—a giving person who was probably never going to reclaim her own softly comfortable bed, I had ended up spending the night on the couch in Leo’s office without a single person in sight to spoon with.

Sometimes you needed it—the touch, the comfort. Just another living creature who cared for you. Sometimes you got it.

Sometimes you didn’t.

I woke up with a crick in my neck and my gun under the pillow I’d brought from downstairs the night before. Leo was still gone. I knew it the second I opened my eyes. His family trouble must’ve been more than he’d expected. Or they’d lured him into an anger management intervention he hadn’t needed for a long time now. Now there was a mental picture. Leo in a circle of relatives all trying to turn him from wolf to lamb. He’d never be a lamb, but he was a good wolf now . . . or far less likely to bite anyway. Although getting his family to believe that wouldn’t be easy. They’d be trying to put the more mellow carnivore in a pink rhinestone collar. Poor Leo.