by Rob Thurman
As I waited for room service, I went to the bathroom and stood, Caliban's pride and joy in hand, watching with interest as urine splashed into the gleaming white bowl of the toilet. Humans, they were really the most amazingly primitive pieces of work. They had a brain that elevated them almost to reasoning organisms, but still had the plumbing of the most basic of animals.
"What are you doing, worthless creature?"
I gave a surprised yelp and whirled. Luckily the shock to my system froze the stream of urine and I managed to avoid decorating the bathroom in sunshine yellow. It also did something else curious. The pride and joy became the embarrassment and shame. Like a turtle it withdrew promptly, leaving me with a lot less in hand than I'd started with. "Hey," I protested automatically. "Where did it go?"
"Be grateful I don't relieve you of it altogether." Long nails split the shower curtain with lightning speed and an Auphe stepped through, throat working to spit out the human words. "It would make your stay here less pleasing, yes?"
Upper management—the bastards were never happy unless they were busting your balls… literally, in this case. "I'm just doing the job, boss." I zipped up with alacrity. Best not to let temptation hang out there. "Everything's going according to our plan."
The head cocked and molten eyes narrowed on me in murderous contemplation. "It is the Auphe plan, never the Darkling plan. You are to do as you're told. This"—he waved and arm and hissed—"this is not as you were told."
"This" would be the hotel room, Boggle, and all the rest, I was guessing. I hadn't expected the Auphe to keep that close an eye on me. They never had during the other jobs I'd pulled for them. I should've realized that this one would be different. This was the big enchilada and they were going to try to micromanage the hell out of me. Gating into my bathroom and giving me shit was actually the very least of what they might do if they thought I wasn't taking my work seriously.
"You are making ripples." He abandoned the human tongue and reverted to Auphe, which I understood. It sounded like cockroaches had crawled into your ear canal and started mating, but I understood it. "Ripples become waves. Waves attract attention we cannot afford." He leaned close enough that I could see my reflection in the metallic sheen of his teeth. I looked pretty damn good. "Waves drown those who make them."
"All right, all right. I can lie low if I have to. But there are some things that need doing. Caliban's brother, Goodfellow—they're going to make trouble," I pointed out with annoyance. "You have to see that."
"Not if they cannot find us or you. And if you keep your rapacious ego in rein, they will not." The pointed jaw worked with the effort to keep from burying those shiny teeth in my throat. "You will do as you've been told or the next thing you animate will be your own bloody bile."
The Auphe did not usually waste their time on threats. They simply killed and went on. A threat really wasn't part of their belief system. Promises, however, were. But it was a different story now… a different situation. Whatever I did, whomever I wasted—and even if I danced in the streets buck naked—the Auphe couldn't harm me. Without me they had no plan. Without me they had no options. So I took this all with a grain of salt, smothered a yawn, and solemnly promised to be a good boy from then on. With a satisfied growl, he pulled another gate from thin air and disappeared back to the Batcave or wherever; I didn't much care.
Trying to instruct me as if I were a child. Trying to tell me how to do my job as if I hadn't been doing it since time had blinked its first sleepy eye. Trying to rein me in. I felt a muscle in my jaw bunch. Forget that I wanted to kill Nik and Goodfellow just on general principles. Never mind that seeing their blood pour free would give me a chubby of enormous proportions. That wasn't the point. I was a professional, and I knew that if those two weren't taken care of, they would ruin things. Nik's relentless determination combined with Goodfellow's sneaky ways could very well throw a wrench in the works. The Auphe might not see that, but I did. And I would do what was needed to take care of the matter. If the bosses didn't like it, they could suck my dick. If it ever reappeared, that is.
Room service finally came nearly twenty minutes later. After I cleaned the plate, I went over to the climate control with a jaw-cracking yawn and comfortably full stomach. I cranked up the heat as high as it would go. I wasn't cold-blooded anymore, but I still had a lingering appreciation for warmth. Whether it was basking in the sun or a sweltering four-star hotel room, it was all good. I blinked torpid eyes and settled bonelessly on the bed. Sinfully decadent heating, it was another amenity to soon bite the dust. A spark of genuine mourning pierced my chest. All this luxury doomed to nothingness before I barely had a chance to enjoy it. It was enough to make you cry. Or take a nap. I picked the second option. There was time enough later to wreak havoc and foment chaos. All the time in the world.
Pun intended.
Chapter Sixteen
Dogfights—if you wanted one and looked hard enough, you'd find one eventually. If you were lucky, you'd lose only your money. If you were unlucky enough to stumble onto the wrong one, you could lose a whole lot more than that. Some fights had a very selective clientele. Those were the ones where the dogs usually bet on themselves. It made for interesting odds.
I had a word with the bitch at the door. She hovered halfway between wolf and woman, frozen into a mutated shape, not one or the other. A fiercely thick uni-brow shadowed amber yellow eyes. Her jaw, while of human shape, was longer than usual with an underbite to make an orthodontist cringe. Her brown shaggy hair was pulled high into a bushy ponytail. It was the same color as the hair that showed in abundance from the neck and armholes of her sleeveless T-shirt. She had that European look nailed.
It was a myth that werewolves are made. They're not. They're born. But not all are born equal. Among a certain stratum of werewolf society, inbreeding was the norm. They felt it brought them closer to pure wolf with less of the contaminating human element. That was their theory, anyway. A normal Were could switch from human to animal at will, completely human to completely animal. For these that wasn't enough. Total wolf at all times was the only acceptable goal. This lovely lady was the less-than-ideal result. I chatted her up a bit and she could smell the difference in me right away. Good noses on the wolves, even better than those of the Auphe. Her eyes practically crossed at her first whiff of me. Not Auphe, not human, not Darkling. None of those things, yet somehow all three. It must have been an interesting scent. She snuffled my hair with splayed nostrils repeatedly as we talked, and rumbled happily deep in her throat. As long as she didn't start humping my leg. I'd caught the distinct jump of fleas in her hair out of the corner of my eye. You knew you were in trouble when you had to dump the condoms and go for a flea collar instead.
I slipped her a fifty and she slipped me two names. Passing her, I went down the stairs to a dark basement filled with people, some furry and some not. The air was thick with the coppery tang of blood and the smell of wet dog. There was a circular cage roughly constructed of chain link fence in the center of the room. Inside it two wolves were going at it. More lupine than the female at the door, they were given away only by a missing tail on one and a pair of purely human blue eyes on the other. Fur and blood flew as fast as the buzz saw snarls, and I watched the fight for a moment. I was appreciative of the unleashed savagery and not a little envious of the clean slash that ripped one throat to a red ruin. Wishing I'd dropped a dime on baby blue eyes, I headed through the crowd for the far corner. Two figures hunched around a small table, sharing a bottle of cheap wine. The male could've passed for human if it hadn't been for a mouthful of jagged ivory teeth and an overabundance of facial hair. The female had a smooth face, round light brown eyes, and slightly pointed ears tufted with thick pale blond hair.
Stopping beside them, I smiled and said lightly, "Fido, Bowser, hear you're looking for a job."
The woman's blond ears twitched with annoyance. Ramming a thumb against his broad chest, the male growled. "It's Wolfgang and Fang." His broad nose
sniffed the air with suspicion as he regarded me with either squinting myopia or intense stupidity. The two looks were remarkably similar. "Who the hell are you?"
"Oh yeah, that's less of a cliche," I snorted. "I'm the guy who has enough cash to keep you in chew toys for a long time. That good enough for you, Spot?"
Wolfgang, apparently not a fan of straight talk, cocked his head and narrowed his eyes to icy slits as the growl that slid up his throat from his chest vibrated the table itself. Blunt nails scored the wood as knuckles flexed with an obscenely painful popping sound.
"Okay, you're a canine of few words. I respect that. Look, I'm not here to bust your balls." I'd leave that to the vet of his choosing. Pulling up a chair, I dropped into it. Removing my dark glasses, I met belligerent eyes with serene silver ones. "But, buddy, you do not want to get into a pissing contest with me, I promise you that." I put a hand in a pocket to remove a thick wad of cash. Dumping it on the tabletop, I continued, my eyes still fixed on his. "You look like a good doggy. And a good doggy would take the money, shut his trap, and listen."
The growl transmuted into a bass roar, then faded to silence as slender fingers fanned the green in Wolfgang's face like a winning hand of poker. As with most couples, Fang had her grip firmly on the finances of the relationship. With a grumbling sigh and after pulling his head back turtle fashion between arching shoulder blades, Wolfgang snarled, "Okay, okay. So talk already. What do you want us to do?"
"What comes naturally. Snack." Hands behind my head, I tilted back in the chair and raised my eyebrows. "After all, isn't that what big bad wolves do? Eat up grandmas and little girls?"
It wasn't that I knew for a fact that Georgie Porgie was going to be trouble. In some ways she was in this deeper than perhaps even she was aware. That was the trouble with psychics—you never really could know for sure. Georgina might not go to Niko, but it was a dead certainty he would go to her. Grasping at any and every straw to locate me, Nik would get around to George sooner or later, if he hadn't already. She had certainly stonewalled him earlier when he went to talk to her about the soda shop incident, and she'd definitely known then more than she was saying. There was no telling what she'd do now. Maybe she'd continue to keep it zipped up, and maybe she wouldn't. Maybe she actually knew something, and maybe she didn't. Either way I couldn't take the chance. Besides, an adorably wise little red-haired psychic? Please. She was simply too cute to live. I was doing the world a favor.
I was just that kind of guy.
Sometimes you have to stop and smell the roses. I still needed to check in again with the Auphe and see how things were progressing before they got antsy and paid me another visit—or, worse yet, started spying on me again. I'd kept a careful eye open this time and hadn't seen any sign of them. Hopefully, it would stay that way. As for the roses, I had managed to divvy up some of my work. Things were getting accomplished on schedule and I didn't see any reason I couldn't enjoy myself for a bit. In this city there were a thousand and one entertaining things to do and amazingly enough not all of them were violence related. It was time I played tourist and took advantage of the place while it was still around.
I watched the fights for a while, hit on Fang much to Wolfie's displeasure, and had a few drinks. When I surfaced on the streets again, evening was a dusky tint in the sky, and the twilight chill was cool fingers sliding along my skin into my hair. I inhaled the cold air with a scowl and a strong desire for my warm hotel bed with its scorching hot electric blanket. Deciding not to let the weather spoil my good time, I headed down the block listening for one of my favorite things, music. It was a given I was a fan. Had to be with my banshee sisters. Male banshees sang too, just for different reasons. No lurking on a castle turret bemoaning the approaching death of its lord or lady, not for us. No, thanks. Bringing death was one thing. Just sitting around and waiting for it, that was another. I mean, shit, how passive-aggressive can you be?
Yeah, I liked music. All music. It all had something to offer in one respect or another. It was the one thing in which humans had no equal. They might not have their own innate magic, but when it came to music, they made magic. Rock was the best, but I wasn't choosy. Over the years I'd managed to find something to appreciate in all the genres. If it had a beat, if it got my blood pumping, and if I could kill to it, it met all my requirements. It was while on the hunt for all three that I ran into something that distracted me. It was something that I'd thought about earlier but had forgotten until I saw it staring me in the face.
The Painted Lady was a tattoo parlor, wonderfully grungy and chock-full of bad, bad boys. Not as bad as me, of course, but then again, who was? There were more muscles, chains, and leather than you could shake a dick at. At least that was what Goodfellow would think. That soured my good mood almost instantly. I still wasn't at all thrilled about the puck's change of behavior. I thought I'd had him figured. The fact that I was wrong didn't sit well with me at all. And it wasn't just ego, although I had to admit that was a big part of it. No, the real problem was Goodfellow throwing one big anomalous monkey wrench in what I'd thought to be a perfectly running plan. If I couldn't depend on him to perform according to his reputation, what else couldn't I depend on? More specifically, who couldn't I depend on?
Or was that "whom"?
Either way, the answer was the Auphe. They were a lot like me, that was true. And that was also the problem. Know thyself… It was a good philosophy. It often kept thyself from biting the big one. I did want to be on the winning side, but just how long the Auphe would want me there might be a different matter altogether. There's no honor among thieves or monsters. But if I did have faith in anything, it was in my ability to come out on top. Still, life could abruptly get more interesting as things went along, no doubt about it.
Shrugging it off, I concentrated on the matter at hand. Picking out my tattoo. There was plenty to choose from, all artful in their own right. Snakes, skulls, skulls vomiting snakes—which was meant to be an ironic twist, I suppose—and hundreds of other macabre gems. I was as torn as a kid in a candy store, but in the end I chose one of the classics. It was a word. Just one word surrounded by a candy red heart, the letters as black as what passed for my soul.
MOM.
"You should honor your mother, Cal," I murmured to myself as the needle stitched its happy way along my flesh. "If it weren't for her, we wouldn't be here. Neither of us." The design was about an inch and a half high on my bicep, cheerfully stark against my pale skin. It was worth every sting of the needle, every smear of blood on the rough textured gauze. It was enough to make me wish that for a moment we weren't one simply so I could see the look on his face. I touched a finger to a pinpoint of blood and then tasted it. My blood now, but the taste was deliciously strange and new.
The tattoo artist gave a minute shake of his head as he finished up the last letter, but remained silent. In this place he'd probably seen more bizarre behavior by far than some self-sampling. From around me as I reclined in the chair, a few rough looks were shot my way. It didn't go any further than that, though. Too bad. Menacing expressions didn't provide much in the way of entertainment, not enough to bring me up out of the chair. I was feeling nicely lazy, a lion content to let the gazelle pass by.
When the masterpiece was complete, I admired it in a mirror that hung crookedly on the wall. It certainly wasn't a mirror I would've been caught dead in, fly-specked and murky, but it cast an adequate enough reflection. I traced the letters ruminatively on my skin and then the surface of the glass. I couldn't help the sly self-satisfied grin that split my face. It may have contained something more than satisfaction if you went by the sideways twitch the guy gave as I paid him. The sheep tended to startle so easily.
When I hit the streets it wasn't with a new purpose, but with a reaffirmed definition, you might say. Next stop would be Auphe central. See what was up on the Grendel side of things. They most likely wouldn't be ready for a few more days yet, but best to touch base. It didn't pay to make the clients
any crankier than they already were. And since I'd already pissed them off, not to mention shooting one of them, it was definitely time for my best behavior. Such as it was.
As I headed for the subway to catch the R train, I considered the Auphe. They'd really thought they had it all planned out and in most ways they'd done a bang-up job. There'd been the breeding program, of which Caliban had been the only viable result. You had to give them points for that. I would never have thought it was feasible—if they could even find a human who'd cooperate. Not that cooperation was strictly necessary, but in this day and age of technological beginnings and endings, cooperation was often more fruitful. So after a few decades or so of trying they had their hybrid Auphe-human. But although his mother had been the very spirit of helpfulness, the son was not. The Auphe had every expectation they'd be able to "convince" him to go along with their grand plan. You couldn't blame them. That was one bet I'd have guessed to be surefire myself.
However; they had been wrong about Caliban. He'd made a break from his indoctrination in Tumulus and they'd seen nothing but his heels since. And without Caliban the only thing grand would be the size of their failure. Big and stinking didn't even begin to touch it.
But while it would've been nice had the stubborn Cal cooperated, it had never been strictly necessary. It simply would've made things easier, especially in keeping track of him while he physically matured and his talent matured along with him. Yeah, it would have made things easier, but that didn't matter now that there wasn't a Cal, not anymore. Possession is nine-tenths of the law. You didn't need to be a lawyer to see that. Once again, thanks to me, the Auphe were in business. All they had to do was iron out the other minor details and they were home free. As the real estate vultures said, it was all about location, location, location.
The Auphe had Cal, they had me, but they also needed a massive influx of energy. This wasn't just any gate they wanted to open. A couple of double-A batteries wasn't going to cut it. They needed a major power source. Crossed ley lines might do it. An abandoned place of worship would be even better. They tended to store up a huge amount of energy over time if the faith was genuine. I was interested to see what the bosses had come up with.
