Trick of the Light by Rob Thurman

asphalt and this time Griffin did fall. I used one hand and the support of a knee to reload the shotgun, and I used the other hand to slap Griffin’s face hard enough to leave an instant hot, red hand-print. Then I took a handful of his shirt, pulled him to his feet, and pushed him against the alley wall. The push was as hard as the slap and I saw his eyes focus on me. “Griff, you don’t turn it off now and Zeke dies. He dies . Turn it off!”
    His mouth tightened and he closed his eyes for a split second. His skin was still pale except for the red blotch, but when he lifted the lids, the pupils of his eyes were now normal. Before they had been black with only the thinnest ring of blue; now the blue was back. Dark with rage but back. So was his control, and we’d need it to get out of this trap we’d so stupidly hopped, skipped, and jumped our way into. I couldn’t remember all the times I’d been underestimated because I was a woman, but I could count the times I’d underestimated demons. This would be number two and there was no way I was letting it turn out the way the first time had. Not again. Zeke wasn’t going to die; Griff wasn’t going to . . . none of us were.
    “Off?” I asked as one of the brown demons headed for us, crisp air purling under its wings
    “It’s off,” Griffin answered grimly as he turned and fired. The demon fell, one wing shredded. It wasn’t off, the empathy, not really. I could see that in the bone white line of his jaw, but he had it under sufficient control to pull a trigger and that was good enough. I hit the other demon swooping at us, this time in the head. A slow one. Good. I deserved a slow one. I also deserved a bubble bath and hot chocolate laced with butter-scotch schnapps and topped with whipped cream. But I didn’t have that. What I did have was a one-winged green demon and the black one I’d shot off Zeke. Neither of them looked anywhere near as warm and fuzzy as chocolate and schnapps.
    Zeke was pushing up to one elbow, ignoring his own gasps for air as he reloaded using a speed-loader. His chest heaved on one side and didn’t move on the other. Pure mission Zeke. Air? Only wimps need air. Just give me something to shoot. It looked like the black demon was going to give him his wish. I was wrong. It passed over its first victim and headed straight for me, wings working furiously. I didn’t have time to reload and I’d never played baseball.
    There’s always time to learn.
    I tossed the shotgun, caught the painfully warm end of the barrel, and swung.
    This time I got his head with a crash that destroyed the shotgun’s stock. Beautifully polished wood splintered and shattered. And all in all, it was about as effective as hitting him with a flyswatter. He did a better job of it with me than I had with him. As I went down, I saw the green demon back up and head for the wounded of the pack. Griffin was right between the two of us, but while Zeke might be almost as ass kicking as he thought he was, with his collapsed lung he was also bleeding and breathing . . . not so good.
    “Get Zeke!” I yelled right before the demon fell on me like the MGM Grand and Caesar’s all rolled into one. I was good, I was fast, but the human body is only capable of so much. I felt the breath jolt out of my lungs, the rough asphalt scrape through my jacket and shirt as we slid up the alley floor like the after-math of a motorcycle wreck. Road rash from Hell . . . literally . . . and it hurt. Damn, did it hurt. It might’ve even come close to how the demon felt when the barrel of my Smith punctured its amber eye. There was a scream of a thousand tortured souls, which he’d probably personally recruited, and then, after I emptied six rounds into its skull, there was silence. Blissful silence.
    Then I was covered in disgustingly warm black goo and the emergency door slammed open. A bouncer was framed there. He had no neck and from the steroid acne he had, probably balls the size of