Rob Thurman - Trick of the Light

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.

Which might have mattered in the end if he were up against another demon, but guess what? He wasn’t. Demonic levels were meaningless to me. We were going by a different sort of rank . . . demons, tricksters, gods. And this bastard was outranked. He’d killed my helpless-in-sleep baby brother, but I was no baby.

And I had never been helpless.

My predator grin widened, the backward curving teeth broadening my coyote jaws even further with the crunch of bone. “Don’t you want me? You once said you wanted to be inside me,” I said, my voice thick from my jaw’s changed shape, “and I want you inside me too, Solomon, but I think we have very different ideas of where.”