by Rob Thurman
“Yeah, thanks anyway,” I refused. “I like being less fortunate.” Although lately that wasn’t precisely true. “Gives me something to bitch about.”
“As if you need an excuse,” he snorted.
“Wait,” I said as he started to move off. “Niko and I came across some bodies in the park. Five. Hanging in the trees like goddamn ornaments.” And wasn’t that creepy as fucking hell? “Would a Black Annis do something like that?”
Niko and I had discussed it. If they were willing to catch their own food, why bother with kidnapping the lamia? We couldn’t investigate for more than a few moments—the inner edge of Central Park wasn’t the safest place to be pawing over bodies for clues. “Two men, three women.” One had been more a girl…sixteen maybe…with long hair that had dripped blood in a gentle rain to the grass. “All were…shit…chewed on, I guess you’d say. Ripped and torn.”
He considered it. “A Black Annis? It’s conceivable. They’re not much for delayed gratification, so taking a bite or two while waiting on you and Niko would be something they would do. Hanging them in a tree?” He seesawed a hand back and forth. “They’re more for caves, but in a pinch?” He shrugged. “They are adaptable.” Pausing, he added soberly, “Five people? Unpleasant.” Setting the bottle back in front of me, he advised, “Just this once. Bacchus was a doctor in his own right.” He then waved a hand and was gone.
Less than a moment later, Ishiah returned and watched Robin disappear out the door. He looked exasperated. Scratch that. Not exasperated—highly, profoundly annoyed. And intent, very intent. It was a peculiar combination. “Oh, hey. I get it.” I grinned, pouring a small amount of Robin’s gift into a glass. I wasn’t a drinker, to say the least, but he was right. One wouldn’t hurt; it could only help. “You have a thing for him.”
He turned his gaze to me. It was still annoyed. “Insolent bastard.”
“True enough, but it doesn’t change the fact.” I tossed the bar towel over my shoulder. “You were watching his ass, don’t lie.” I had no idea if Goodfellow had a good ass or not. That wasn’t the way my boat floated, but Robin had told me and everyone in the free and not-so-free world that he did. Could be Ishiah had an opinion on the subject. “By the way, is it a good…”
He turned and walked away before I had a chance to finish. In reality, I kind of doubted that’s what it was all about. If it were, Robin would’ve been walking out of here with feathers in his hair, down his pants, and a smug grin on his face.
I shrugged. Not my business. At least, as long as Robin wasn’t in trouble. And he usually wasn’t. He’d gotten very, very good at avoiding that since before the human race was born. I wasn’t sure how old he was exactly, but I was guessing that he had probably served up one of mankind’s wriggling water-going ancestors on a nice wheat-berry bread at some point or another.
At four I closed up the bar. Swept up the feathers, fur, and scales, locked the door, and headed home. The apartment was relatively close to the Ninth Circle on St. Mark’s Place, but every time I had to think I might not make it…I had every night for the past four months, but I always had my doubts. Spine tense, shoulders set, I searched every dark nook and every roof for the Auphe. I never saw my relatives during that period, but it was only a matter of time.
They’d kidnapped me and kept me prisoner for two years when I was fourteen. They’d done the same again last year only with a little more of a twist. They’d had me possessed and planned to use me to remake the world in their image. When we’d returned the favor by destroying the remains of nearly their entire race, they had been a little put-out. We’d thought they were all dead, destroyed by a collapsing warehouse, but we’d been wrong. And when you were wrong about the Auphe, you might as well cut your own throat and get it over with. It would be a helluva lot less painful.
The Auphe had torture down to a fine art. They’d roamed the earth with the dinosaurs—before the dinosaurs. It had given them a long time to perfect their technique. And the Auphe had technique out the ass. I still didn’t remember what they had done to me in the two years they’d had me. I doubted I ever would…not without ending up in a place where people shambled in paper slippers and considered lunch to be a cupful of happy pills.
Unfortunately the Auphe were determined to make me pay for betraying my own kind. Months ago when I’d had the one thing in my hand that would bring George back to us, one had snatched it away and told me in excruciating detail just how I would pay. They’d make the others pay too, Niko and Robin, who had helped in their destruction. They’d also take anyone I cared for, simply because I did care for them. My friends, my family, they would all go first, long before I did.
Like I said, the Auphe had torture down to a science. And that they were taking their time about it only made things worse. The only thing that kept me moderately sane was the fact that Niko, Promise, and Robin could take care of themselves, and I avoided George whenever I could. The Auphe would never know she existed if I had anything to say about it.
Of course, all that sanity rested on the fact that I was living in denial about how amazingly good at killing the Auphe were. God knew that they’d almost killed Nik and me on more than one occasion. We were good. They were better.
Trudging up the stairs to the apartment, smelling of secondhand beer and worse, I unlocked the door, opened it, and dropped my jacket on the nearest surface…the floor.
“You may as well pick it up. We have someplace to be.”
“Christ. It’s four thirty,” I groaned as I took in Niko waiting with arms folded. His face was amused but serious nonetheless. His hair was pulled back into a bare inch and a half of ponytail. Once it had been a braid that trailed down his back, but I knew he didn’t begrudge its sacrifice. It had been for me, and he hadn’t expected to survive long enough to walk around with the Kojak look.
“Yes, it is four thirty and the longer we stand here the later it will get, but I’m sure the basic mechanics of time are understood even by you.”
“You’re in rare form tonight,” I sniped. “Rare shitty form.”
“Yes, keeping us in rent payments, how inconsiderate of me.” He tilted his head and frowned slightly.
“How’s the shoulder?”
I’d moved only with the slightest amount of stiffness, but he’d still noticed. I rotated it and did my best not to wince at the pull of torn flesh. “Bearable.”
“I told you serving drinks would aggravate it. You should’ve told Ishiah that you were injured and couldn’t work.” He stared pointedly at the jacket, and I picked it up with an annoyed groan.
“I was afraid he’d turn me into a pillar of salt. Besides, he’s pretty iffy about me working there, period. Apparently when I’m grouchy, I exude Auphe.” I snorted. “And I’m guessing they don’t make a roll-on for that.”
We were already out in the hall and moving as I yawned heavily. “It’s only because the clientele already know thanks to the loose-lipped werewolves.” Niko focused on the bandage, visually checking for blood as I pulled on my jacket. Satisfied that it was unstained, he continued. “If it weren’t for them, no one would know.”
Niko tried hard, he did, to make me believe I really wasn’t that different. And even though it wasn’t true, I was grateful as hell for the effort. “The peri would know,” I said absently as I zipped the jacket. “They know, shit, everything as far as I can tell. At least everything that has to do with who or what passes through their bar. Although Goodfellow seems to have them bamboozled.”
“Bamboozled?” Niko’s eyebrows went up.
“I’m trying to expand my vocabulary.” I grinned.
“Just for you. Now, where the hell are we going?”
“The Metropolitan Museum. Promise is meeting us there. She’s on the board of directors through one of her late husbands. There’s been a difficulty of some sort. The curator is a good friend of hers, the supernatural kind, and doesn’t want to call the police in on this one. She says it’s more up our alley.”
>
“Kicking ass and taking names?” I yawned again, ready to let the images of crazy old women and dead bodies fade with sleep.
“We so rarely ask their names that I’m not sure the last counts.”
A half hour and a ride on the number 6 train later, we were at the Met and I was hammering on the huge double doors. No one came. “Don’t get a lot of pizza deliveries here, do they?” I grumbled, before pounding again.
“How about I call Promise to come let us in? It’s an audacious plan, I realize, but don’t dismiss it out of hand,” Niko said dryly. He had his cell phone in his hand when Promise and another woman opened the door. The woman, the curator, was a foot taller than Promise…at the very least. She was also taller than Niko and me. Her hair was the color of bronze and pulled back into a tight French braid. Her eyes were a fierce ice blue, her breasts an entity unto themselves, and I could practically see the horned helmet and breastplate she should be wearing instead of a gray suit.
“Valkyrie?” I murmured to Nik.
“Missing her crow feathers,” he answered in the same low tone, “but yes. Very good. You are learning, no matter how reluctantly.”
Along with Niko, I took a few steps closer and looked up at her. I was going to offer my hand to shake, but decided I needed it for fighting and other…ah…nocturnal activities and hers looked as if it were capable of ripping off my arm to use as a back scratcher. Niko was braver and held his hand out and said gravely, “A friend of Promise is a friend of ours.”
The large hand shook Niko’s firmly. “Sangrida Odinsdóttir.”
“Niko Leandros. My brother, Cal.” To this day, he refused to call me Caliban. The meaning behind the name given to me by our ever-adoring mother had never escaped me. Even before I could read See Spot Run, much less Shakespeare, she’d been all too eager to tell me a monster deserved a monster name.
Mom did find ways to get her kicks. I was slowly getting used to the others, who knew the meaning of my name but not the intent, using it…just as I was still getting used to there being others. For years it had only been Niko and me on the run. Now there were friends and lovers and goddamn if that didn’t still warp my reality on occasion.
Promise was one of those. Niko and her—hell, they’d been made for each other, the few hundred years’ age difference aside. Despite the deep chocolate and pale blond stripes of hair pulled back into an Amazonian braid that reached the small of her back and eyes the color of spring violets, she was a quiet beauty. The exotic coloring didn’t make her flashy, and it didn’t touch her inner stillness, her innate tranquility. Of course under that tranquility she could be deadly. She and my brother were two of a kind that way. Now she curved her lips gently in a smile meant only for him. “Thank you for coming, Niko. Cal. I realize it’s already been a long night for you both.” She laid her fingers on Niko’s arm for a fleeting moment, and then stepped back into the museum.
Sangrida moved with her as we followed. The inside of the museum was pretty much as I remembered it from the last time Niko had dragged me there for arts and crafts, art education, history stuff. Whatever. I liked the Natural History Museum better, myself. Dinosaurs. Who doesn’t love dinosaurs? I remembered seeing an exhibit with a re-creation of a T. rex towering tall. Robin had once said the Auphe used to hunt them in packs…not so much for the meat as for the fun.
Yeah…the fun.
“So, Promise, what’s up?” I asked, my voice echoing against the marble.
Sangrida answered instead. “There has been an incident with one of the exhibits.”
“It couldn’t have been stolen,” Niko commented. “Promise would know that is not our area of expertise.”
“No, it was not stolen.” She walked with long, muscular strides. “Not exactly.” There was a faint glottal flavor to her words, but barely noticeable.
“Best for you to see.”
We entered the Arms and Armor section and walked past an exhibit of suits of plate armor. One of the galleries was labeled with a red and black exhibition sign that read FAMOUS SERIAL KILLERS THROUGHOUT HISTORY AND LEGEND.
“Entertaining,” Niko said wryly. “It puts impressionism to shame.”
Sangrida sighed in annoyance. “It’s a traveling exhibit of horrors. The board of directors, curse them, are responsible. Not you of course, Promise,” she added gruffly. “Just the vultures and hyenas on the board. They are of the opinion that sensationalism keeps attendance high. The first exhibit to your right will be, of course, Jack the Ripper.”
Promise gave a hint of a satisfied smile at the mention of the name, and I thought how Jack had disappeared, never to be heard from again. Not many serial killers stop, unless they’re caught or someone does the stopping for them. In a time when vampires still relied on blood, it could be that Promise had taken from those who in turn took from others. As I stopped to take a look through the glass at old letters, photos, and period blades that could’ve been similar to the ones used, Promise took my arm and gently urged me on. “He liked attention then. Let us deny it to him now.” Considering what I’d seen of the photos, I wasn’t sorry to move on. I’d seen similar in living color just hours ago.
A few exhibits down, Sangrida stopped. The glass of this display case was blackened…scorched by what looked like a small explosion. Glass shards were lying everywhere.
“The case burst from within,” Niko pointed out, obviously intrigued. “There is no glass within the exhibit itself, only on the floor.”
Also on the floor was a stone box, the lid broken into pieces and scattered far and wide. I toed a piece with my black sneaker. Historical or not, I damn sure couldn’t do any more harm to it. “What was in that?”
“Ashes. Fragments of bone.” Sangrida shook her head, high forehead knit with worry. “Sawney.”
“Sawney?” I repeated curiously, only to be instantly overridden by Niko.
“Sawney Beane? The Scottish mass murderer?” He sat on his heels to get a better look at the box. “The cannibal? I knew the women and the children of the clan were supposedly burned, but the men were executed differently.”
“No one is quite sure what really happened. No one who wasn’t there.” I made a mental note to ask Goodfellow. If he wasn’t there, he probably knew someone who was. Sangrida went on, “Of course, mankind doesn’t know if Sawney was fact or fiction, but we know better. And although he ate close to a thousand people, he wasn’t strictly a cannibal, as he wasn’t human.” She looked at the shattered box and corrected himself. “Isn’t human.”
Five words fought to be first out of my mouth. A thousand people and isn’t human. I went with the one most pertinent to the immediate situation.
“Isn’t?” I repeated. “He came back from ashes and bone? No goddamn way.”
Sangrida didn’t blink at that language. I guess if you hang around warriors for a few centuries, you get used to it. I had no doubt she could curse me under the table…probably while bench-pressing me with one hand and swilling ale with the other. “I’m not sure. I’ve never heard of such a thing in regards to him, but it is a chance I don’t wish to take.”
The explosion from within, the missing remains—I could see her point. “Was there anything else in the exhibit?”
She frowned. “His scythe. Or what was claimed to be. It was a handheld one, his weapon of choice. It is missing as well.”
And that was the definition of didn’t bode fucking well, now, wasn’t it?
3
There was no way to search the entire museum including the rooms below where the unused collections were stored, not in the two hours before the staff would start arriving. We searched the first floor, found a metal exit door that was crumpled and askew and that said it all. At least the Cliff’s Notes version. Either someone had taken Sawney’s bits and pieces out of there or Sawney had taken himself.
With that good news under our belts, we left so Sangrida would trigger the alarm that would bring the police. The security, her special security, had turne
d off the alarm system the instant it went off, benefiting from the five-minute lag built into the system that most of the board of directors definitely didn’t know about. There were a lot of old things in the place and not all of them were known to be completely “inactive,” so to speak. There was checking to be done before the authorities showed up. With that now accomplished, Sangrida was ready to play the distressed curator. Well, with Sangrida’s backbone, the mildly concerned curator.
When Niko and I finally got back to our apartment on St. Mark’s Place, I was wishing I had that iron rod running bolted to her spine because I was teetering on the edge of exhaustion. Something to hold me up would’ve been nice. I yawned heavily. “You think what we saw in the park could be Sawney?”
Niko was stripping off his weapons onto the kitchen table. “I think we don’t know enough to make suppositions. There are many creatures that could do what we saw. Perhaps even one not so powerful as to be responsible for the deaths of over a thousand people.” He dropped his last blade onto the surface. “But to reintegrate from ash and bone, that would take enormous energy, enormous sustenance. And he wouldn’t have had time to take the bodies with him, not when he was on the run.”
“In other words, who the hell knows?”
“In other words,” he confirmed with a quirk of his lips.
“It’d be nice if there was only one mass murderer to worry about. Hope springing eternal and all that shit. I’m grabbing a shower, then bed. I’m tired of smelling like a leaky keg.”
“Convenient. I’m tired of smelling a leaky keg.” He headed for his own bedroom, adding casually,
“The bathroom is taken care of.”
He never forgot, but he usually told me anyway, and it was always said as if it were perfectly natural to secure the bathroom like an enemy encampment. As if I didn’t have one helluva weird phobia—even if it were a slowly resolving one.
When I went in, the bathroom mirror was covered with a towel just as he’d assured me. I knew Darkling was gone. He wasn’t coming through any mirror ever again, but the fact that I could have a mirror in the apartment, even a covered one, was an accomplishment. The Auphe had stolen my body and tried to steal my mind. Darkling had possessed me and gobbled up my soul. Temporarily, thanks to some help from Niko and Robin, but it wasn’t an experience you forgot. Or got over, not completely.
