Free Trick of the Light by Rob Thurman Page A

you. It just isn’t physically possible.”
    Zeke didn’t let my psychoanalysis ruin his love affair with his new gun. He brought it that night, concealed in a holster under his jacket. I was surprised the weight of it didn’t have him leaning to one side, since it was as heavy as the anchor on the Titanic , but it didn’t.
    Dressed in all black with his hair pulled back into a ponytail, Zeke looked like what he was . . . dangerous. Damn dangerous. He lounged against the wall opposite the emergency door with arms crossed. Bait or the hunter. Zeke loved being both.
    Griff and I were dressed the same as Zeke and both of us were carrying shotguns as we crouched in the dark alcove between two Dumpsters near the mouth of the alley—keeping Zeke in sight. The only light in the place was directly opposite him and was a dim bulb mounted over the door, but demons didn’t need a lot of light to see. They didn’t need a lot of light to kill either. I was guessing that Hell was a dark, dark place.
    “Do you ever wonder why they do it?” Griffin murmured. “Sell their souls? Do they really think a few years of all they could want here could be worth going to Hell? How do they let someone talk them into that?”
    “People are stupid, shortsighted, and sometimes just desperate for something more.” I had heard there were souls, besides immature ones, that demons wouldn’t take. They wouldn’t take a soul for a selfless act. Wouldn’t or couldn’t. No trading your soul for your dying husband or wife, child or brother. No trading it for the cure to cancer. No doing evil to accomplish good. The road to Hell wasn’t paved with good intentions after all. “Besides, who’s to say Heaven’s any better? No shellfish, no pork, no hot guy-on-guy Westerns. No sex at all. Think about that. No sex and no barbecued shrimp. How could Hell be much worse?”
    “Is there really no sex in Heaven?” Zeke said aloud, sounding worried. He was listening in to Griffin’s thoughts again and being about as stealth conscious as a marching band. We both ignored him.
    “Put you one-on-one with a demon and I’ll bet you could have him selling his soul to you,” Griffin snorted at my ear, then added,“If demons had souls.”
    “Sweet talker.” I jabbed him with my elbow, then tensed as the door opened and a demon walked out, followed by a girl. She was pretty, but not beautiful. Her breasts were small, a B cup, but so were mine. The last thing you needed when running down a demon was a double D smacking you in the face, but that probably wasn’t her opinion. She was twenty pounds heavier than the magazines told you she should be with an ass a tad bigger than an anorexic starlet’s. In other words, she was normal—which was most likely the worst possible thing to be in her eyes.
    And then there was the demon. . . . Picture a male model with empty eyes and a smile as bright as a thousand diamonds—or as predatory as the flashing teeth of a personal injury lawyer. Not all lawyers were demons, but let’s say there was a fairly high turnover among the Vegas ones, thanks to Eden House and an endless supply of shotgun slugs.
    “Hurry up and run so I can start killing,” Zeke told the girl impatiently. He’d pulled out the Colt and pointed it at our prey.
    The girl stood frozen. Even in the low light I could see the beat of her pulse, rapid against the pale skin of her throat . . . the beat of her starving heart. She wanted, so badly, all the wrong damn things. I stood, braced the stock of the shotgun against my shoulder, and said, “Listen to him, girl. Try helping others instead of helping yourself. Take your shallow dreams and run to something better, because there is better. Go!” She didn’t move. “Run!” There was a flutter of green silk, fake, and the glitter of diamonds, also fake, and she was gone . . . running past us, out of the alley, and disappearing around the corner. I hoped she believed me. It was true. There was better.