Rob Thurman - Trick of the Light

But with my encouragement, the partners grudgingly turned over their guns and knives. Big trust in me, huge. I’d do everything I could to make sure I came through for them. Trinity and his men kept their weapons and didn’t bother to hide the fact. The helicopter was big . . . not military big, but larger than your average traffic copter. We all fit. Even Lenore, who had returned to ride on my shoulder.

“And that is?” Goodman sniped.

“Moral support.” I climbed into the middle row of seats with Zeke and Griffin. Goodman flew with Trinity beside him. Oriphiel and the other two House members sat in the last row behind us. Sandwiched between the holy and the holier-than-thou. As the helicopter took off, I looked out of the right window in the side door. I thought I saw a flicker of wings. Copper or gray-silver, I couldn’t be sure—it was too quick. I smiled. It didn’t matter which. They would both show. Greed—humans hadn’t cornered the market on that. My demons would be there. And at least one of them was as murderous as they came.

I continued to look at the pink and blue sky as I sang lightly under my breath. My voice wasn’t the best, but that was all right. As long as it was sung, that’s what counted. Lenore crooned lightly on my shoulder. His voice was worse than mine, and that made it even better. Kimano would’ve laughed himself sick that his mele kani kau , his mourning song, was sung by his tone-deaf sister and a croaking raven.

“What are you singing?” Griffin asked. That he could hear me was testament to the luxury and soundproof ing of the helicopter. The president wished he had one so nice.

“A song for my kaikunane .” Kaikunane —my brother. I finished up the Hawaiian good-bye and watched as Vegas passed beneath us. I might have stayed in Las Vegas ten years and considered that the longest any of my family stuck around a place, but Kimano had returned to Hawaii so many times, he may as well have lived there. Mama probably wondered how she’d gone so wrong with the both of us.

“It was . . . nice,” Zeke said, making the effort, as uncomfortable as it was for him. He meant it too. No mocking of my lack of singing talent.

“Thanks, Kit.” I reached over Griffin and patted the denim over Zeke’s knee.

“Would your brother have liked us, you think?” Griffin folded his arms and slanted his gaze at me. “I mean, you treat us like younger brothers,” he snorted, not all that appreciative of the younger part, apparently. “Do you think your brother would’ve liked us?”

An interesting question. “Once he got to know you,” I mused—once he had genuinely, deeply got to know them—“then, yes, he would’ve liked you. He liked almost everyone.”

There was a long moment of silence except for the muted whirring of the rotor blades. Zeke kicked the back of the seat in front of him. “I want my gun,” he growled flatly.

“Make that little brothers, not younger ones,” I said dryly. “And me with no PayDays this time.”

“It’s all right. It’s time for a tutor session. That’ll distract him. Zeke loves tutoring.” Griffin gave a faint, mocking smile.

Zeke just snarled and slouched further down in the seat. “You suck. We could die today and you want to tutor me?”

Griffin smiled blissfully, and with that blond hair and blue eyes, his expression was as blissful as on Michelangelo’s David and then some. He crossed his arms, reciting, “A grandmother with a stroller carrying twin babies and a cocker spaniel puppy are crossing the road. They’re about to be hit by a bus. About two blocks down the street, a low-level demon is eating breakfast at an outdoor café and reading the paper. Do you save Granny, kiddies, and pup, or go kill the demon?”

The scowl on Zeke’s face deepened as he thought, and from the furrowing of his brow, he thought hard. After nearly three minutes, long ones, he asked, “There’s a puppy in the stroller?”

“Yes.” Griffin said in an aside to me, “This is why we have the tutoring.”

“Is it cute?” Zeke asked.

Patiently, his partner answered, “It’s a spaniel puppy. On a scale of one to ten, it’s a ten in cute, and, yes, ten is the highest level of cute you can get.”

“Damn.” He couldn’t slouch any further, although he gave it his best try. “The demon’s two blocks away. Do I have a clear shot?”

“No.”

By the time we arrived at the Worthington Mountain Range, nearly an hour later, Granny, tots, and the world’s cutest puppy had just been flattened by a city bus. But a demon had had his breakfast rudely interrupted with a shotgun slug to the head. “I think you got that one wrong,” I said as the copter hovered above the giant entrance to Leviathan Cave.

“It’s the puppy,” Zeke muttered. “I know I should always go with the puppy, but I like shooting things.” Demons, robbers, whatever the occasion provided. “Why did God make the NRA if shooting isn’t always the right answer? And grandmas shouldn’t push strollers. They’re too damn slow.” He knocked on the glass of his window, an idea obviously having struck him. “What if I shot the bus driver, then . . .”

Griffin and I said together, “No . ” If anyone was expecting a commentary on Zeke’s slightly psychopathic decision-making skills from the angel Oriphiel behind us, they didn’t get it. If a demon had been sitting back there though, assuming it wasn’t the hypothetical one having breakfast and reading the paper, I imagine Zeke would’ve gotten a cheerful thumbs-up on the hat trick of granny/puppy/kiddy squashing.

“What now?” asked Goodman from the front.

“Land inside the opening. It should be big enough,” I said.

It was and then some. With a name like Leviathan and the massive size of the sinkhole entrance, you almost could believe it was the open gates of Hell itself. But it wasn’t. It was only a cave and a rather beautiful one at that.

The copter sat down mostly easy, tilted about six inches due to a rock formation that couldn’t be avoided. Outside were deep pink and gray stalagmites and stalactites and a torrent of light from the opening almost twenty feet above. I opened the door once the rotors stopped and stepped out to look up at the circle of sky. I could imagine that’s how being born felt like if a baby could remember that far back. A light, colors you hadn’t dreamed existed, and a brand-new world. If only they could hold on to that moment forever, because there would never be another like it—that moment when everything is new, and evil is just a word you haven’t learned yet.

Griffin passed me, eyes cast upward—blue reflecting blue. As he moved on, I took Zeke’s arm when he started to follow him and whispered softly in his ear. “Choices are hard, Kit. Someone’s always telling you you’re wrong. But there’ll come a time today that you’ll have to make one and almost everyone around you will tell you what to do. What they say might seem like the right thing, maybe the only thing, but some choices, Zeke, you have to make yourself. Don’t listen to what anyone else says—not to them, not even to me. You do what you feel . . . what you know is right.”

“You think I can?” he said dubiously.

“I do.” I meant it. I hoped it.

“Even after the puppy?”

“You will this time. I know you will.” I pinched his ribs hard. “Besides, don’t think I didn’t know you were yanking Griffin’s chain with the babies and puppy thing.”

He smirked. “I was.” The smirk faded and the next words were utterly serious. “I always know about babies. I screw up most of the time. Robbers. Cab drivers. The jackass who cuts in front of me at McDonald’s. But I always know about babies.”