“Around.” I looked back up at the sky. Kimano hadn’t seen the sky when he had died. He’d been killed in his sleep. The demonic bastard that had murdered him had done it while my brother slept. I didn’t know which was worse: that my brother hadn’t had a chance to defend himself or that he would’ve been awake and died anyway. He’d been good—in spirit and heart, the way the word should be used. Not a fighter unless he absolutely had to. Genuinely too good to be part of our ragtag, scrappy family. When children thought of angels, they thought of someone like Kimano, not the Silver Surfer standing over there.

Strange, how I remembered that, the Silver Surfer, Iron Man, Superman, but Zeke read a lot of comic books—or graphic novels as he called them—when he was fifteen. Always the superheroes. He’d wanted to fly like they did. Don’t we all?

“Then I suggest you look around and find it, before I retire Reese or Hawkins now. I will let you choose which one if you like,” he offered, his finger resting on the trigger. “I’d suggest Hawkins as first choice. An excellent telepath, but an inferior everything else. Our gardener never quite recovered from the punch in the face and the subsequent mauling by an angry rodent. Plastic surgery can only do so much.”

I was with Zeke. Gophers deserved living more than the rich deserved a smooth lawn of Spanish Trails grass. But I moved to play my part. Trixa the Bloodhound. Only this bloodhound was about to gnaw through that Eden House leash and start the action and the auction.

I looked at Zeke and Griffith across the cavern. They were ready. They might not have weapons, but that didn’t make them not dangerous. It only put them at a disadvantage. “Even having all of Heaven on your side can’t keep your House whole or get your panties out of that massive wad. What a shame.” I started away from them. “It’s this way.”

There were several offshoots, crawl spaces, off the main cave, and I passed three of them before stopping at the fourth. It was just big enough to wriggle through, if you were five feet five and average size. Trinity and his boys were paying the price now for their testosterone- and milk-pushing mothers. They weren’t going to make it. Jeb himself, the caver who’d originally found the Light, wouldn’t have either. He must’ve rolled it in as far as it would go. It turned out to be pretty far. And then there it was.

The Light of Life.

That which could protect anything. Keep anything or anyone in the world safe. It sat on the stone and it looked like . . . like nothing I’d ever seen. I’d felt it in my head for days now, but I hadn’t pictured it. It was a crystal, but it was alive. I didn’t need it in my head to tell me that. It was the size of a cantaloupe with too many facets to guess at first glance and each facet was a different color. Gold, green, blue, purple . . . until I touched it, and then it glowed the purest white. It wasn’t a blazing light to hurt the eyes, but a soft radiance. It went through you . . . the soft give of a mother ’s breast against a baby’s cheek. First love. Last love. Lying alone under a blanket of summer stars and knowing at the moment that was enough, that was everything.

“The lesser of evils. Truly?” I smiled and placed my hand on top of it and it was home. To a traveler like me, home was where you stopped moving for more than a day. Almost a dirty word. Something you turned your nose up at, although Vegas had managed to show me that a home could be not so bad . . . for a few years maybe. But the Light gave the word new meaning. You could live in that light, that love, that hope, float there cradled in warmth forever. “You like me,” I murmured, my hand tingling pleasantly, “don’t lie.”

“Iktomi!” The hard shout came from behind me. “Is it there?”

“You can call me Trixa if you want,” I told the Light. “It’s for friends. You and I, we will be the best of friends.” My name was shouted again. I sighed, “For as long as you’re around. Let’s go. You have quite the crowd waiting to meet you.”

“I can’t back out,” I shouted back. “Too many stone projections. But I think the tunnel curves back around into the main cavern. I’ll see you there.” I added under my breath, “Ass.” I ignored the further shouts behind me and scooped up the light and held it against my chest as I awkwardly crawled on, using one arm and two tired knees.

It wasn’t that far, but it took me almost fifteen minutes of inching along, the Light humming against my chest, a subtle vibration I could feel even in the muscle of my beating heart. Its glow was the only light for several minutes before I saw the illumination of an opening ahead. “And here we go,” I murmured. “Are you ready for this, because it’s going to be all sorts of interesting.”

I received the intriguing sensation of a swat inside my brain. My mama would’ve swatted me the same, actually. She would’ve swatted me for taking so long. I wasn’t sure, but I thought the Light thought I was taking unnecessary risks . . . although its thoughts weren’t quite that concrete. They were expressed in concepts more fluid than those in my mind. But if that’s what it was thinking, it was right. Kimano would have his day and I didn’t care about risk. It was mine to take. Griffin and Zeke weren’t quite as at risk as Mr. Trinity thought. Mr. Trinity, while ruthless and a pain in every body part I owned, wasn’t quite as smart as he imagined he was. Maybe those panties of his were cutting off his circulation and not letting enough blood to his brain.

Wasn’t he wondering where the demons were? Did he think he and the other three with shotguns would do the trick . . . against higher demons? No. And he had to know about the higher demons. He was first in Vegas Eden House. He knew about Solomon, if not about Eligos, although Oriphiel could’ve informed him about Eli. In this situation, even a lowly human such as Trinity needed all the information possible. On the other hand, angels liked to play it close to the chest. Oriphiel thought no human was worthy of the Light—not even to hold it, not for a single moment—I knew that. He could actually be right this time.

I crawled out into the main cavern, black pants smeared with dirt, as was the palm of my hand. I happened to come out closer to Griffin and Zeke, which was no accident. They were almost as powerful as demons and angels in their empathy and telepathy, and they knew me. Had known me for years. That put them up on the one angel there. They felt me coming and stood on each side of me as I stood up. Lenore flew down to land on my shoulder.

“That’s it?” Zeke peered at it curiously. “It’s a giant lightbulb. What’s the big deal?” Then the hard jade of his eyes softened. “Oh.” He touched it with a reverent finger. “That’s . . . nice.”

I didn’t think I’d ever heard Zeke say nice unless it related to a gun or an explosion or two, which made this moment nice indeed. Griffin only studied it with that line between his brows, and he didn’t touch it—as if he thought he wasn’t good enough. It was an odd change of places for the two, and I knew Griffin. He was more than good enough. I wiped off my hand on my pants and took his hand to place it on the faceted surface. He started to pull away as if he’d been burned, but then let his hand rest there. And he smiled—one of those rare smiles of an utterly innocent child seeing his first swarm of lightning bugs at twilight.

Delight.

Magic.

Of course, Trinity had to ruin it. He had an incredible knack for ruining nearly everything. “Give me the Light.” He stood across the cavern about twenty feet away, now holding a Desert Eagle, which was pointed, not surprisingly, at us. Behind him with shotguns stood Goodman and the other two. They were grouped a little close and that wasn’t good. Respect for their boss equaled bad tactics.

Especially when your boss turns around and puts two bullets in the head of each of you. Oriphiel, still bathed in the sun streaming through the opening, came to life. I didn’t think I’d often seen an angel surprised, but he was. “What have you done?” he demanded, all glass and silver again—Heaven’s warrior. Human fa çade gone. He hadn’t known what Trinity was about to do, which meant Trinity had a shield as good as mine or it meant . . .