Downfall

by Rob Thurman

  “Mine.”

  Twisted paws with sheathing and unsheathing claws were spread wide to indicate Niko and me. To a Bakeneko humans were the meal of choice. Dogs weren’t as tasty or it would’ve eaten them along with the kids. It slaughtered the Dobermans to have us for itself. Isn’t it nice to feel wanted?

  It would’ve been five feet tall . . . until it ate the dogs. Then it swelled to the size of a seven-foot-tall linebacker, beginning to stand on its hind legs as Niko had said it might. I’d have thought it awkward, but they weren’t straight as a human’s or crooked like a cat’s. They were multijointed almost like an insect’s. That it wasn’t all the way up, continuing to rise from a crouch, had me guessing that once it did stand, it would be almost two feet taller. Nine feet tall and holy shit. It had fur—if something that had the wet-slime sheen of grave moss growing unpleasantly sleek on the buried decomposition beneath it could be considered fur. There were stripes the hue of ashes and the deep rust-black color of blood caked and dried on the floor of the abandoned slaughterhouse we’d passed driving into town. Its face was feline, close anyway, until it opened its mouth. I was waiting for the big boa constrictor/Alien unhinging scene, but that didn’t happen.

  It spoke.

  “Where’s my baby?” it crooned. It had the fangs of a cat, but each tooth was a fang, each the same length, and there were more than it needed . . . three or four times more.

  “Mommy wants her baby.” Every word was soaked with longing, sadness, and tears. “Baby needs to come to Mommy.”

  We’d wondered how it lured out the kids. Now we knew because I knew that voice; Niko knew it. It had its claws, mental ones, in our brains winding out a voice we’d never forget, a voice we’d heard on the first days of our lives. It was unreal. It could’ve been her. It was her, identical to the smoky, blue velvet, and whiskey melody. It was our mother as if she were right there.

  It was too bad Sophia hadn’t loved us a single moment in time. Too bad she was a bitch and a half. Too bad for you, Bakeneko.

  It could’ve cried its fake river over the “heartbreak of its missing child,” but if I’d been a kid and heard that voice saying those things, I’d have crawled out the window all right, but not toward it. I’d have gone to the other end of the house, out the window, and run like hell. I’d have known it was something monstrous or it was Sophia about to engage in a human kind of monstrosity. I’d take the first any time.

  “Now we know.” Niko was swinging his katana lightly back and forth. “How it tempted the children.” They were the ones whose parents loved them.

  Wasn’t that a bitch that your mother’s being one could’ve saved your life?

  Confused at our immunity, it called a few more times as we started moving toward it, but not in a friendly “looking for my mommy” manner. It yowled, a screech that had both of us staggering for a moment that gave it time to try something else. If we wouldn’t come to Mommy, Mommy would barbecue our asses.

  Here’s the second thing someone should know when hunting Bakeneko: They are assholes. The fireball throwing part is important, undeniable, and you should keep your eye out for the unhinging of the jaw in preparation to swallowing you, because I’ve looked down into that maw and it is not pleasant. That doesn’t change the fact that I would like it to go on the record for monster killers who will come in our footsteps, Bakeneko equals asshole and that’s the ball you shouldn’t take your eye off if you plan to survive.

  “It ate five Dobermans and my jacket is on fire.”

  I felt this needed pointing out, as it was also much larger than it had been before it ate the Dobermans and I liked my jacket. I’d bought it off a street vendor, but it was cool, had survived an entire year with me, which was unheard-of, and I might be emotionally invested in it . . . mildly. Okay, I loved that goddamn jacket, I wouldn’t find another one that fit half as well while covering up my guns, and I was freaking furious about its demise.

  Stomping on the scorched sleeve beneath my boot, I finished putting the flames out. Damn it. The whole thing was toast, nothing of it left. I still felt bad for the dogs too, but it wasn’t like I could resurrect them any more than I could my jacket. Not to mention my jacket had not pissed on my leg before trying to rip it off with bone-crushing jaws. The dog had probably thought about it as it tried to chew its way through flesh and bone.

  “To be fair—” Niko dodged a ghostly blue fireball and kept moving through the rusting rubble of the junkyard. “I told you they could walk on their hind legs, although I didn’t know they could leap with such agility or I would’ve mentioned it.”

  “Leap?” I snarled as I tried unsuccessfully to aim both my Desert Eagle and my SIG at the blurry stripes of the gray of corpse flesh and the rusty brown of dried blood that streamed through the night air and our only break, the full moon. There weren’t any trees to block what light that we did have. That was something. “It’s not leaping, Nik. Frogs leap. It’s levitating. Hell, it’s fucking flying. There is nothing froglike in the way it moves. If there was, I’d have shot it already and PETA wouldn’t be holding a candlelight vigil later for five fucking Dobermans. The furry children, Nik, think about them.” I might have snapped, but this wasn’t how I’d planned on this job going.

  “I think it’s a positive sign in your personal development how you’ve made it about the children and not about yourself . . . or your jacket that only coincidentally said ‘Die, asshole. Die’ on the back in font only a comic book editor could love.” He kept moving, climbing over crumbled piles of brick overgrown with thick masses of vine I was hoping like crazy was poison ivy, poison oak, poison anything that would make Niko sorry he’d engineered the assassination of my jacket. And he had; I knew he had.

  “That was luck. I only cared about how well it concealed my holsters.” I regretted it as soon as I said it. It was a lie huge enough that the retaliation could only be the very same jacket with a rainbow and a glittering pony painted on the back. Niko would find it—he had his evil, sadistic ways. It would be less painful to admit to it now. “Fine. It was antisocial and hateful and that’s why I liked it. You kill everything I love. Bite me.” I fired both guns. I was close to ambidextrous, enough that if it moved at a normal speed I could nail it, but the Bakeneko knew nothing about normal. I hit it with the Eagle and that was accomplishment enough for me.

  It tumbled through the air and hit in a pile of weeds and rotted wood and what looked like a washer or dryer or something domestic I didn’t give a shit about. Its eyes focused on me, predatory and narrow, but not like a cat’s. They were the eyes of a snake, the slit pupil narrower, more cold and moonlight flashing from the clear scales that protected them, before it disappeared into the high grass about twenty-five feet away with the limbs of a years-dead weeping willow drooping to veil it with brown, dried-out strands.

  “Hide-and-seek. I’m not playing that game.” I gated, disappearing before Niko could grab my arm, and grabbed it he would have. Once the Bakeneko was up and flying around again, we were screwed. We had to get it when it was down and for at least a few seconds not mobile. But that wasn’t Nik’s priority, not when I’d regained my gating ability just today. Gating when you were on top of your game was a rush you couldn’t imagine until it hit you. Gating when you weren’t on top of your game could melt your brain or it could wrap you in psychotic madness or it could kill you. You never knew. That killing you was often the best outcome told you how much you did not want to fuck with gates if you weren’t MVP material.

  That meant I had to make the hard call and I did.

  I reappeared straddling the Bakeneko. I could taste the blood, feel it winding slowly from my nose, painting my lips, and running down the back of my throat. No big deal. I’d done this before. Too many swallows of copper and salt to count. This was nostalgia and nothing but. Both of my guns were pressed to the Bakeneko, one muzzle to its head, feline with pointed ears, slit-pupiled eyes, and
a grotesquely gaping jaw that continued to unhinge until I could see how it could swallow a full-grown man. It belonged in the Amazon, not here. The second muzzle was against its chest, covered with stripes of fur. Could be ash and blood. Could be something else. It could be color-coordinated as fuck. I didn’t know and it didn’t matter. It had eaten five Dobermans in less than three minutes. That’s all I had to know. I needed to pull the triggers; that was all.

  I did pull them. I didn’t bother to think about it. By now, that reflex was more automatic than breathing. I pulled the triggers, but I didn’t know if it did the job. I did hear the two shots. I didn’t realize at first those two shots weren’t mine. First a line of fire had traced across my back and almost simultaneously grazed my temple before I dropped to the ground and rolled onto my back, not that I wanted or planned to. I rested beside the Bakeneko. It was either already dead or smart and pretending to be. One or the other, I didn’t know, as it remained motionless—and was still a dick.

  My head hurt . . . God, it hurt . . . my back and head were as on fire as my jacket had been. I didn’t know why or who or what . . . Then I heard a man scream, followed by another voice, a woman this time, crying out, and finally several wolves howl in triumph. I stared at the moon and the sky and the few stars that stood out against a canvas of the deepest midnight velvet.

  Nice. I didn’t see stars often, not in the city.

  Upstate. This was practically the wilderness. I shouldn’t be surprised to hear the howl of a wolf or maybe a coyote.

  Wrong . . . not a wolf, and a coyote was out of the question.

  It was a Wolf. New York didn’t have wolves, but they did have Wolves. They had the Kin. They had the werewolf Mafia and from the wet, grinding sounds of it, one of them was eating the man who’d shot me. I’d been shot. There was no mistaking that pain for any other. The burn of it was unmistakable.

  “Cal.” Niko was on top of me, a warm hand pressed to the side of my head. Why? Oh . . . the blood. He was trying to stop the blood. “Can you gate us home? Cal? Do you hear me? Can you get us home?”

  A man and a woman, had to be Vigil, both with guns and night scopes to have hit me twice even in the light of the brilliant moon and Wolves with Vigil on their menu. That didn’t make sense. All of them wanted us dead. I couldn’t leave Nik to that. “Home,” I slurred, raising a hand to grip Nik’s shoulder and hang on tight. Home. The strain was worse this time. Noticeable the fourth time, not too great the fifth time, bad the sixth and final time. By now I was long used to the side effects of the game being on top of you instead of the other way around and none of it stopped me from taking us home. The Vigil. Wolves, and Nik. They couldn’t have him or hurt him, and if he tried to protect me he could get hurt. He could die.

  Fuck that.

  I’d gate and the hell with the consequences. I had to. I couldn’t let it be our fault. Not this time. Not again.

  Cullen said so.

  Cullen knew.

  Cullen, whose brother was the fastest runner in the tribe.

  Cullen, who was stubborn and wild and now that he knew, he wasn’t going to forget. Whoever thought he could make him do that was wrong. Robin was wrong. Five winters, but five winters was enough to learn how to protect your family.

  The purple lightning of the gate crashed around Niko and me. It would take us home. Take us someplace safe. Cullen approved of safe and told me to hurry up. Slow and safe weren’t often the same and didn’t I know anything?

  Bossy little shit.

  * * *

  “I am telling you, Goodfellow, it was the Kin. Several of them from the sounds of it. Delilah’s own took out a member of the Vigil to save Cal.”

  That would be Niko. I didn’t understand what he was saying, not completely. I didn’t think I understood what he was implying either. I was too dizzy and sick to my stomach to make sense of it. That didn’t mean I didn’t understand something else. I understood that he was the one person I knew who could try on optimism for a fit while buying a ticket for the Hindenburg or the Titanic and make it work. My brother, take a bow. I didn’t know how he managed it, but he did.

  “Perhaps,” he continued, “she has changed her psychopathic mind about Cal and for whatever twisted reason wants to keep him alive.”

  My brother, the . . . wait. What? “Psychopathic? Twisted”? That was entirely uncalled for. I’d been aware when I hooked up with her that she wasn’t entirely sane, but who is? I wasn’t entirely sane and aware right now, but no one was waving accusations in my direction, were they? She was nuts, but she’d always been nuts. Nothing to announce as new or in any way to blame on me.

  “I am an enormous fan of rash assumptions.” That was Robin. I recognized the sarcasm. “But let’s keep this in the realm of possibility.” And the brutal truth, I recognized that too.

  “He’s right,” I murmured, pleased that the words sounded close to . . . well, words. I was proud. “Delilah . . . dead.” I tried again. “Delilah wants . . . me . . . dead.” I opened my eyes to see the ceiling of Niko’s room, no scorching on his pristine beams like the soot-stained ones in my room. A pair of wide gray eyes and slitted green ones were both staring at me. The latter made me wonder what Robin was up to. “What?” I grumbled at him, and his suspicious gaze. “She hates me. If she’s saving me, she has reasons. And not sexy reasons.”

  I did miss the sexy reasons. The murder and psychosis, I didn’t miss as much when I knew any moment they could be aimed at me. If I did progress to full Auphe, inside and out, Delilah would like me more—give our fiends with benefits further consideration. Psychos . . . how fair was it that they had more fun?

  “I can’t believe she ever had sexy reasons regarding you, anytime, anywhere.” Robin accepted a piece of blood-soaked gauze from Niko’s hand and disposed of it out of sight. “Let’s go with she was insane before and she’s insane now and never will we know her reasons, as they’re reasons of which reason knows nothing.”

  “That was a quote, Cal.” Niko was pressing something, I was guessing more gauze, against my temple. “A highly mutilated, highly inappropriate quote, but a quote nonetheless.” He knew I hated quotes unless they involved profanity, sarcasm, and maybe cannibalism. I hated them doubly when my head hurt as much as it did. Where was I anyway? Oh. The usual postfuckup location. I was on his bed, where I most often ended up when wounded, as it was cleaner than mine. Better for wound care or any minor surgeries. Joy. I swallowed, tasted the faint aftertaste of blood, and decided I was alive enough not to worry about minor issues . . . such as anything anyone said while I was conscious. Except for one thing. . . .

  “If I’m going to die, no quotes.” I ran my tongue over the crust of dried blood on my teeth and felt the impossibly high thread count of Niko’s sheets under the bare skin of my back, my shirt gone. “And if I’m going to live, no quotes. Where’s my shirt?”

  “The same place as your jacket.” Niko’s hand increased the pressure against my head. “A better world. Let them pass on in peace. You, however, were shot . . . twice by the Vigil. They’re mostly superficial wounds, but you need to be more careful in the future.”

  That wasn’t right. I knew the cat-thing had been flying around worse than a high-hopping toad on speed. Being distracted by that and not picking up on a human assassin was not at all my fault. When it came down to it, I was certain that research was Niko’s area and not knowing that a fireball-throwing, attack-dog-eating Asian cat creature could all but fly was his department. “No.” I swiped a hand at the one he had resting against my temple. I missed, but that didn’t mean I didn’t try. “You said . . . fireballs. You didn’t say it could fly. You . . .”

  That’s when I felt it.

  That was the thing about gates. If you couldn’t build them, make them, create that wound in the world, you couldn’t feel them either. With the epinephrine, I wasn’t cured, but I was treatable. I’d been treated today
. I’d traveled several times today. I could feel it when others traveled my way.

  “Grimm.”

  I sat up, the hell with the blood and having been shot but not enough to kill me. None of that counted now. “Grimm.” I looked around wildly as if I could see the whole city from the bed I was trapped in. “A gate. Grimm is in the city.”

  Worse. I felt it. He was close . . . so damn close.

  “Grimm is here.”

  8

  Goodfellow

  I’d shown up at Niko and Cal’s place fifteen minutes after Niko called me. The speed laws I’d had to break and the driver I’d had to bribe with a vacation to Barbados not counted in that trip. Cal was shot, Cal was down, Niko needed me, and I went. Money is nice, but when you’re alone, it’s a luxury that eases your way yet bars you from knowing if anyone wants you for you alone. Do they want your company or do they want the luxuries your company brings with it? Most pucks don’t care. I had times when I didn’t care. Like me for me or like me for what I can give you, what was the difference? I very probably didn’t like you either, and while you were focused on my wealth, I was focused on your genitalia. But there was Niko, Cal, and Ishiah, and there I knew the distinction. There money meant nothing, blood was everything, and when they hurt, you hurt. I hadn’t been born knowing that. Did I wish I’d not ever learned it?

  Sometimes.

  “He was shot.” Niko’s hands had already ripped Cal’s shirt off, and then I ran into his bedroom. He was cleaning and taping down a dressing on a long but shallow furrow on his brother’s pale-skinned back. “It had to be the Vigil.”

  This was why I loathed subcontractors. They were inevitably less than efficient.