He shifted against me restlessly. “He made it to the point he could function almost normally, except for that black and white outlook he has. Because of that, how it affected his decision making, how he couldn’t see past the immediate, he still needed supervision and they didn’t give it to him. I knew he needed it. All the other kids who were old enough knew it—the only ones who didn’t bother to pay fucking attention were the adults.”
He went quiet. I waited for nearly ten minutes before I bent and rested my chin on top of his head. “The baby?”
One more minute of silence and he said without emotion, “Angie told him to give the baby a bath. ‘Zeke, get off your ass and give that filthy baby a bath,’ is probably what she said while she sat on her worthless own fat ass watching her soaps. I was still at school, some after-hours thing, so Zeke . . . he gave the baby a bath.” He exhaled heavily. “Until two kids got into a fight in the kitchen.”
Violence: Zeke’s number-one draw. The flashing red alarm. Protect the innocent; punish the guilty. My mind painted the image easily enough. Off he ran, fifteen-year-old special Zeke, to break up the fight. To keep the smaller kid from being hurt, to show the bigger one exactly what it was like to be beaten on. By the time that was over, by the time that developmentally different, single-minded brain of his remembered . . .
I could see a blue-gray little boy floating facedown in the cooling bath water when Zeke ran back. Blubbery Angie heaving her way off the couch to berate him for making more noise breaking up the fight than the fight itself. Following him to yell at him for being so damn loud and drowning out her stories.
Then the screams, the accusations, the shouted, poisonous blame.
Zeke realizing it was his fault . . . no, not realizing, because it wasn’t his fault. But Zeke being blamed for it, being told it was his fault, and going to punish himself. A hand for a hand, an eye for an eye: That’s the only justice Zeke had in him.
“I got home just in time,” Griffin went on. “Not for David, but for Zeke. I stopped him. I took him and ran. Whom would the social workers believe? Not that it mattered anyway. That had been his last chance. He’d gone through too many homes, too many foster parents who didn’t give a damn about watching a kid, really watching him. If this last one didn’t work out, they were going to institutionalize him. Stamp him ‘not able to function in the outside world.’ ”
“But you saved him.” I watched Zeke’s chest rise and fall a little more raggedly than made me happy, but at least it still moved. “Did he ever forgive himself?”
“No.” He gave a half laugh without an ounce of humor. “It’s why he likes fighting demons so much. He says he plans on spending eternity doing it when he dies. Why not get the practice now?”
“Zeke. Kit.” I straightened and moved to him, touching a finger to my lips and then to his cheek, the cold plastic of the oxygen mask brushing my skin. “You’re not going to Hell. I promise you that.” I hoped at some level he heard me. I hoped he believed me. “And you’re not going to die either. Do you hear me?”
The door opened and Leo walked in with a tray of food. Eden House might try to dispose of us later, but at least for now they were going to feed us, which was a good thing, because I was starving. I have a high metabolism and when I lost weight, the first thing to go was my ass. I liked my ass; I wanted to keep it. It was great for sitting on and even better at making men do incredibly stupid things. By the time they realized my brain was far bigger, metaphorically speaking, it was usually too late for them. It was cheap and cheating, just a little, but when you’re in the information business, you use every asset you have to get the info you want, brain and body. Naturally, they only got to look, not touch, but men . . .
I snorted and took a plate from the tray and said to Leo, “Pigs. You’re all pigs.” Griffin raised his eyebrows and opened his mouth, but Leo shook his head. “Don’t bother,” he advised. “It’ll only make your head hurt.” He handed the tray to Griffin, took his own plate, and found a chair on the other side of Zeke’s bed. I joined him. “I have two guards that followed me from the kitchen here. They’re stationed outside the door with your guard, Trixa.” Black eyes sparked with humor as he took a bite of his sandwich.
“Three whole guards.” I dug into my own sandwich. When I finished half of it, I went on, “We’re doomed now.”
They’d asked for our guns and Leo’s Viking-looking sword before we boarded one of the copters and, at that moment, with machine guns being held casually ready for any returning demons or maybe two stubborn barkeeps, turning over our weapons was about the only choice we had. So we did. But only three guards? Insulting and a little less than smart.
“Not everyone is impressed by a bar owner and a jack-of-all-trades,” Leo reminded me.
True. Jackson Goodman, their second in command, knew Griffin and Zeke hung around my place, but he didn’t know we hunted demons on occasion with them. He definitely didn’t know what we were capable of. I would have preferred to keep it that way, but it didn’t look like that would be an option. Of course, they no doubt cared less about that now than about the Light of Life. Goodman was probably looking for a saw to cut off the top of my head so he could take a peek at my brain. See what the Light told me for himself. Eden House might not torture me as Jeb the Caver had been tortured, but then again, they might. I still didn’t know. And even if they were nice enough not to torture me, they weren’t going to let me go either, and that was the surest bet you’d find in Vegas. Not without getting something from me first.
Griffin seemed to know what I was thinking, which wouldn’t be hard, as I frowned my way through the second sandwich. “I’ll do my best to get you out of this,” he said. “I promise you that.”
In most cases it’s the thought that counts, but this time . . . I shook my head. “You don’t have a chance. They think I know where the Light is. They’re not going to let me go anywhere.”
“The Light of Life, Ms. Iktomi,” sounded the voice from the door, which had opened silently, so silently I hadn’t heard it, “belongs with us, or rather with him for whom we toil.”
And the owner of that voice would have to be Mr. Trinity, who now stood in the doorway. That wasn’t his real name. Zeke or Griffin had said that the head of any Eden House anywhere in the world was called Mr. Trinity. It was a title, an honor, a badge signifying whom he served. I wondered if they all had the same presence too, because this guy would make a demon scurry home to his mommy—or daddy as the case may be. He was six feet tall and broad shouldered with thick white hair and a startling slash of thick dark brows. His eyes matched them, the same color as Leo’s. He had to be in his early sixties, but his face was strong and unlined. If they made a movie of my life, he’d be played by Sean Connery and he would either seduce me or kick my ass, or both. And, let’s be honest, if it were a movie and Sean Connery, I’d let him. Either way, he’d get what he wanted—the Light—and I’d be nothing but a credit at the end.