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.
“Pilates,” I responded. “I like a good workout.”
“You work out killing my brethren.” Solomon’s dark velvet voice came from behind me.
I turned as the cab drove away, folded one arm under my breasts, and kept the other free in case I needed my gun. “From what I hear, I’m not the only one.” Not that he was wrong. Fighting demons was great for toning. I should’ve bought an infomercial. “You’d just as soon kill one another. You higher demons anyway.” The mud-colored demons, the lowest of the former angels, seemed to follow the orders of the other demons. Like Solomon had said, or the equivalent of, if you were a mail clerk in Heaven, you were a mail clerk in Hell. “Or so Eligos tells me. Don’t tell me you haven’t been completely open with me, Solomon. Where is the trust there?”
“As if you ever gave me an ounce of it to begin with.” His face was blank. I wasn’t sure I’d seen it that way before, a canvas empty of seduction, anger, manipulation, and the darkness. “If you play with Eligos, Trixa, if you give him the smallest pinhole of an opening, you’ll only wish he’d killed you.”
“I don’t know.” The moon was high above us, almost the same orange as the Vegas night sky. “He seemed more honest than you. A killer, I’m sure. But I learned more about demons at a lunch with him than I learned in years of knowing you. And here I thought you were all on the same side, one nether-world united under god—god of darkness anyway. But that’s not so. I’ve been negotiating with you when I could’ve opened the field to all bidders. Why didn’t you tell me that, Solomon?”
“I’m a demon,” he growled. I noticed they used that justification quite a bit. “Self-interest is part of the package, believe it or not. I’m not a killer, but I’m not perfect either. Are you?”
I knew that, naturally—it was hard to forget someone was a demon—but it opened him up. That canvas was painted with all sorts of emotion now. It had taken me a while to determine that demons did have real emotions outside murderous rage and homicidal hunger, but they did. They had pride, envy, boredom, fun . . . unfortunately, the fun was a result of the rage and hunger the majority of the time.
“And you don’t know Eligos. The things he’s done. The ambitions he has. He would raze this entire city with blood and fire and a thousand demons to get what he wants,” he warned, stepping closer to me, his hand reaching out to cup my cheek. I let him. Why? A question best answered later when I couldn’t feel the beat of his pulse through his palm. “He would take you apart inch by inch, slice by slice. He would make death seem like the rarest and most wonderful dream you could fathom. He would do anything to get the Light. Anything.”
“And you wouldn’t?” I said softly.
His hand dropped away from my face, but I could still feel the warm imprint of it. A demon’s touch was never cold, or maybe that was just Solomon’s. “There are things I wouldn’t do. I know you don’t believe me, but it’s the truth.” He gave a rueful smile. “A demon can speak it once in a while.” He stepped back, asphalt scraping under his black boots. “Perhaps if you would tell me what you want for the Light, we could gain a little more trust between us. A demon, but which demon? And why?” His eyes sharpened on me. “Did you tell Eligos?”
“I did, but you . . . ” I looked at him with skepticism, distrust, and an emotion I doubted he could guess, even with all the souls he’d taken over the years. He may have devoured them, but that didn’t mean he understood me. “You, I’ve known a lot longer. Distrusted a lot longer. When we find the Light, then I’ll tell you what I want. Who and why. It’ll keep you hungry and sharp, and that in turn will provide a check to Eden House and Eli.”
“You play us all against one another.” His smile was grim. “You would make a good demon, Trixa. Eating you would be a waste of a good soldier.” He moved closer, his breath as warm as his hand. “A waste of an incomparable soul.”
The door to the bar opened and Solomon slipped a card into my hand. “Have dinner with me tonight. In an hour.” He hesitated, then added a word I would’ve guessed he didn’t even know. “Please.” Then he was gone in a minitornado of black smoke. Showy bastard.
Leo stood in the doorway with a shotgun. “Either you’re playing games, and you might die because of it. Or you’re not playing games—and you will die because of it.”
I followed him back inside. “Trust me. I know what I’m doing.” Dinner. That was a new one. After three years, maybe he thought he’d try a different approach than threats or straight seduction. It might be interesting.
“I do trust you.” He flipped the bar towel over his shoulder and put the shotgun back behind the bar. “You’re the only one I trust, but I’ve seen you lose your temper. And what you feel about Kimano is far beyond simply losing your temper. You could lose your mind before this is all over.”
I touched the Pele’s tear that hung around my neck, and thought to myself, Who says I haven’t already? To Leo I said, “I have to go change. I have a date.” Ignoring his exasperated sigh, I disappeared up the stairs and reappeared a half hour later.