Roadkill

by Rob Thurman

Although from the heat of the unblinking glower searing the side of my face, someone wished we didn’t. I’d gone back to poking around on the laptop after Suyolak disappeared. We didn’t all sit around and discuss the meaning of it. What’s to say? He knew we were coming—we already knew that. He wanted to kill us—still no news. He wasn’t impressed by Rafferty. He was an egomaniacal genocidal killer; impressed or not, he wouldn’t show it. Egomaniacal genocidal killers rarely did. If they did, they’d be sensible, modest genocidal killers, and those were fucking hard to come by.

  So, no discussion needed. Niko drove on, leaving Illinois behind us as the Lincoln dipped south toward Omaha, Nebraska. Googled five dead there—same as what had hit me: viral pneumonia. I’d thought it before; I’d think it again, but, goddamnit, if he was doing all this now, what the hell would he do if he got out of that coffin? They were futile, poisonous thoughts and I gave up on them before they drove me nuts. Besides, I had a distraction to help me out there.

  I had to make an effort not to raise a hand and feel the side of my face to make sure it wasn’t melting from the acid gaze. Finally, I couldn’t take it anymore. I turned to face the yellow eyes, radioactive twin suns of absolutely nuclear pissiness aimed at me—which was unusual for Catcher. He was the happiest damn Wolf I’d ever run across. Lassie had nothing on him. He was happy, cheerful, probably a Boy Scout as a kid—well, considering what he was, a Cub Scout. But with the current situation, I could understand the change in mood. “Look, I’m sorry, okay? If he were my cousin, I’d be mad as hell that anyone got him involved in this mess too.” Rafferty was asleep again. He’d driven all night, healed me, and destroyed millions of hyperdeadly mutated germs floating in the parking lot and office. A helluva thing to see—that crimson explosion—but also a helluva drain on your resources, Wolf stamina or not.

  But past all that, I could see he wasn’t the same as he’d been when I’d last seen him, years ago. There were lines that weren’t just weariness—permanent lines, years of disappointment. The last thing Rafferty and Catcher needed was us fucking up their already-fucked-up lives. That we didn’t have a choice didn’t make it any better. “I’m sorry,” I repeated, “but this son of a bitch Suyolak can take down the whole goddamn world. Frankly, I don’t give a shit about most of the world because it damn sure doesn’t seem to give a shit about me, but there are a few people in it whom I do care about. Even if we hadn’t called you, even if Rafferty hadn’t answered Nik—hadn’t felt that evil mojo tickle—once Suyolak got loose, eventually it would’ve become your problem too. A few hundred thousand dead people would have Rafferty after Suyolak sooner or later. He’s single-minded, but sometimes you have to do what you have to do.”

  The dark brown lip that was peeled back to show Catcher’s dinnerware didn’t move at first, but after a few seconds it slowly lowered, but the eyes were no friendlier. They did look away, though, as he searched for his pencil on the floorboards. When he located it, he reached over with it to the laptop, switched to the window that held the Word document already up, and beneath the HUNT NO MORE, he typed, PAYMENT.

  He had a point. We were getting fifty thousand for this. It wasn’t fair to expect them to put their lives on the line for nothing. Robin never took our money. . . . He had more than we’d ever see in our lifetimes, but Rafferty and Catcher weren’t Kin or immortal con men. They worked for a living or had. I’d seen the tired, old ranch house they’d lived in. They could use the money, especially to keep their search for a cure going. “Yeah, that’s reasonable. How about half? Twenty-five thousand? Assuming you want a penny that Abelia-Roo has touched with her poisonous hands. Probably dusted it with arsenic powder, the bitch.”

  The Wolf gave a shrug so subtle it didn’t move his cousin, again slouched against him, as if to say money was money, which was true enough. All money was touched by blood sometime or another—the way of the world. Clicking the caps lock off—assured I was paying proper attention—he typed again. Half and more. I want real payment. Not Alpo money, not a down payment on a timeshare, bucko. Real payment.

  And I’d thought Suyolak was bizarre. Now here I was negotiating with a Wolf who typed at least twice as fast as I did and without having to use spell-check. If Lassie had had a laptop, Timmy could’ve cut his down-the-well time in half. “Okay,” I said dubiously, “what do you want?”

  Taptaptaptaptap. When he was finished, the screen may as well have been a bloody strip of his soul plastered in light and pixels. I gave it the respect it deserved and read it in silence this time. It was what he wanted. Take care of him. I looked up and saw true emotion, raw and desperate, in eyes that hadn’t been human in a long time. I looked back at the computer. A strip of soul was better than the rest of the ragged wounded one revealed only inches away. I read on. When I’m gone, take care of him. Make him your family. Make him your cousin, your brother. He gave you back to Niko. He gave your brother his family back. You do the same for Rafferty. Without family, there is no life. Give him life.

  Big order. Tall order. But he was right. Without Rafferty, I wouldn’t be sitting here. He’d saved me twice now. Without him, Niko would be without a brother and I’d have died at least two damn unpleasant deaths. We owed him and even if we didn’t, I knew what it was like to contemplate life without the only family you had. No one deserved that existence, definitely not the man who’d saved me and was now ready to try to save the world.

  “All right,” I said, grim at the memories and the ever-shitty nature of what- ifs. “Hey, why not? Adoption’s the big thing in Hollywood right now. At least he’s already potty trained.” Up front, Robin started to open his mouth. Niko’s hand firmly cut off the interruption. He would’ve guessed what I’d promised. Robin would’ve guessed too if his mouth weren’t always a half second faster than his brain.

  Catcher dipped his head, accepting my promise. I’d sounded like a smart-ass when I said it—I couldn’t help it. Smart-ass was my native tongue, but I meant it and he knew it. The yellow eyes were on mine again, holding me to the assurance. He managed to hide his soul this time.

  I added, “But he’ll find a cure. Rafferty’s the most stubborn bastard I’ve met, aside from Niko.” The furry head nodded again, the eyes rolling in “Ain’t that the truth” acknowledgment before they blinked and the muzzle wrinkled. That’s when the wolf typed a PS:

  BTW, could you get some cologne or Febreze or something? Sorry, Cal, but you’re killing me here. He gave me a sheepish, sideways grin, then added, Take it out of the twenty-five thousand. Fair’s fair.

  “My smell? You’re bitching about how I smell?” I slammed the laptop shut. “Oh, you son of a bitch. Do I complain about the fur? Another fifty miles and I’ll be hacking up hairballs. Did I bitch when you ate half the Twinkies?” Actually I had, but they were my Twinkies. “And let’s talk about Delilah, not my girlfriend, but we are doing it, but do I ask you to make it harder for her to hit on you? Hell, no.” More like there was no point in asking. Delilah would do what Delilah would do, but damn it, I was pissed. And I’d never been one not to share my feelings, especially that one.

  “I never would’ve thought I’d rather discuss a pestilence-spreading living corpse than listen any longer to this conversation,” Robin groaned from the passenger seat before reaching into his linen blazer—he was all dressed up for the road trip—and pulling out a slim roll of cloth. He untied it and with one quick flip, unrolled it down the back of the front bench seat like a professional assassin from a James Bond movie. It held about ten glass vials. “Choose your poison. From Bulgaria, Aqua at the top; Bijan and several others far too good for you in the middle; and the neutralizer that blocks one from any and every nose, including werewolves’, at the bottom. I sell that to Delilah by the gallon to keep her place Auphe-free and you a secret from the Kin. Up until recently, at least.”

  “Forget it,” I snapped. “Einstein here can soak me up. I hope I get Auphe killer funk all over him. I hope . . .”

  Niko bent his arm over the
seat, took the last vial, and squirted me liberally, not once looking away from the road. Catcher grinned at me, tongue lolling, as a bead of the liquid rolled down the line of my nose, poised at the tip, then dropped off. Chuffing in amusement, the wolf fished around in the seat, finally raising his hindquarters to pull out one of my old T-shirts from beneath, and offered it to me with his muzzle.

  At the volunteering of my shirt covered with his ass fur, I gave him a snarl every bit the equal of his earlier one. “Yeah, I’m wiping my face with that.”

  He grinned and tossed it into the wind. It was up over our heads and then gone. Just because I didn’t want it then didn’t mean I didn’t want it at all. I could’ve washed it. “That’s coming out of your twenty-five thousand too,” I gritted. “That was worth at least three”—eyes slitted, I amended—“okay, two cans of Alpo, you mutt.” He didn’t seem to much care about my loss as he lifted his nose into that same wind and enjoyed the ride, all the while ignoring me. He was back to Catcher. Business taken care of and living in the moment, and that moment was flying in the wind—heaven for any canine-related creature.

  By the time we reached Omaha, I’d given in to the boredom, the ultimate forgive-and-forget incentive, and was back on the laptop, playing hangman with Catcher. Not a very exciting game, especially when he won every time. It was beginning to be a trend—losing in Go Fish to a chupacabra and hangman to a Wolf. What the hell was a Paphiopedilum bellatulum anyway? An endangered orchid, Niko informed me. “What is wrong with you?” I asked the Wolf. “That’s what you learned in college? What about bonging beers? Banging sorority chicks? Road trips?” I caught myself. “Right. That’s what we’re on now. I can see why you skipped them.”

  “Spring breaks.” Rafferty yawned, straightening from his nap. “The spring breaks were good, except this ass stole most of the girls.” Catcher was grinning again, which I took to be a smug agreement.

  “Speaking of women,” Niko began, turning enough to flash a stern look at me. “Cal?”

  He was right. Catcher and Rafferty were in this. They needed to know all of the dangers, not just about Suyolak. I put the computer back in their bag and rested my hands on my knees. “Delilah,” I said matter-of-factly, “she’s going to try to kill me. I think. Hell, I don’t know. She might. She might not. But the Kin know about her and me. I have that from a reliable source—as reliable as a knife and an axe can make it anyway. She’ll have to do something.”

  “What concerns me is not knowing what exactly that might be,” my brother added as he took the first exit in search of food. “With the Kin, options are limited. We assume she was offered the choice of execution by her Alpha or by her pack and her Alpha. I don’t underestimate her by any means in that regard. It would probably take them both. Her second option, the one I imagine she chose, would be killing Cal. They know he was involved in killing the Alpha Cerberus, and, amoral criminals that they are, they don’t consider him worthy of life even outside of that.” That was Niko’s polite way of saying they considered me an unnatural freak and ridding New York of me would make it an all-around better place to eat, sleep, and lift a leg.

  “Our good friend Caliban was of the opinion that it would be fine entertainment to let her come along so that we might play a game of ‘Does Cal get screwed tonight or does Cal get screwed tonight?’ ” Goodfellow drawled. “The second ‘screwed’ being, of course, Delilah eating his liver with ‘some fava beans and a nice Chianti. ’ I’ve never been a fan of fava beans myself; a little too spicy. I like a calm stomach when killing or having sex or doing both simultaneously. The last,” he said pointedly to me, “is my bet on how Delilah will make her run at you. I recognize my own. She is a creature of very particular appetites.”

  “You’re usually too lazy to kill unless you can’t avoid it,” I said. It was a way to escape the conversation for a few seconds, but it was also true. Robin had once done something similar to what he’d said to save a girl I’d known—and loved. He’d killed a succubus, and considering succubi were predators who killed with sex, I imagined he’d done it in the midst of the act. But I hadn’t asked, and he hadn’t told. He had done it for me and for the girl. There hadn’t been much more to say.

  The puck was an unbelievable fighter with thousands of years, maybe hundreds of thousands, to sharpen his skills, but he didn’t much seek out battles anymore. He was satisfied with the good life unless, like now, we could use his help. Thanks to Niko and me, we’d brought him out of retirement, and while he was our friend—and as lonely as he’d been, had been desperate to be our friend, I still wasn’t sure we’d done him any favors.

  “I’ve mellowed over the years,” Robin retorted. “And there were none that didn’t deserve what I gave them. At least from my point of view at the time.” His carelessly jaded smile reminded me of another puck who once had almost killed us all. It made me damn glad Robin was a friend—had fought so hard to make Niko and me accept him as one. And mellow was good. It didn’t make me like his cat any better, though.

  “Anyway”—I rolled up an empty Twinkie wrapper and tossed it at him—“long story not short enough, Delilah will probably try to kill me, but I wanted to give her a choice.” That didn’t make me soft. It made me a guy who’d been given a lot of chances in my life when I’d done bad things. . . . They could be blamed on a creature that had taken me over, blamed on genes that should never have existed, much less have been combined with human ones. It didn’t matter who or what was behind the things I’d done. What did matter was I’d been given chances to prove I was better than that. I’d be one damn big hypocrite if I denied Delilah the same.

  “Very noble. Very giving and understanding. Very much reeking of bullshit.” Robin couldn’t read minds, but he didn’t have to. This was his field of expertise. “It’s the sex, Hugh Hefner. Intercourse, coitus, carnal knowledge . . . especially the way Wolves do it, but one thing it is not is philanthropy.”

  “As if I could even touch the level of horndog you’ve reached in your life,” I snorted. “I’m surprised you have a dick left at all. That it’s not whittled down to a toothpick.”

  “If this is the way it’s going to be the whole way, I’m going to get another car.” Rafferty rubbed his eyes and yawned. “This is why you meditate, Niko? To keep from ripping them to small-enough pieces that even I couldn’t put them back together? Not that I would bother to try without one helluva fee.”

  “Let’s say it helps. Partially. At times. I’m looking into additional philosophies.” Niko parked at the first restaurant we spotted. A truck stop. “We should eat on the road. Except for the pneumonia in Omaha, there hasn’t been any more news of outbreaks. Suyolak could be pulling far ahead of us or have left the Lincoln altogether.”

  “No. He’s still ahead of us and no farther away. He’s sucking energy from the driver, trying to get stronger, to break the seals entirely. That’s why we’re catching up to them despite their head start.” Rafferty didn’t make any move to get out of the car. “I’ve got the bastard’s trail now. I feel him. Hell, I can taste him . . . like that sweet-sour stench of roadkill on the back of my tongue. There isn’t a place on this earth that he could shake me. Not one goddamn place.”

  “You’re positive?” Niko pulled off his sunglasses and slid them into a jacket that hid many other things, most far more lethal than eyeware.

  “He’s my kind. Twisted and sick as an asylum full of sociopaths, but still my kind.” He brought out his own sunglasses and he slouched back. “Bring us four of the specials. We’ll wait for the Rom caravan and Delilah.” Catcher’s ears perked up as they did every time he heard the name. Speaking of horndogs, the fact she might try to kill me didn’t make much difference to him apparently. I let it go. The fact that he couldn’t even go into the restaurant was one more reminder in years of them that he was different now. Let him lust. Delilah was worth lusting over, and in the end, whether she tried to kill me or not, she was his kind.

  Wolves were for Wolves and, temp
orary encounters with me aside, that wasn’t going to change.

  “Four specials,” I agreed. “Still coming out of your share, Chewbacca.” He yipped an obvious “Like I haven’t heard that one before,” then focused on the entrance to the parking lot, waiting for Delilah.

  Rafferty stayed in the car with him with the excuse of waiting for the Rom, but we knew better; all of us, even Catcher—especially Catcher, who hadn’t had a bad spell yet, but it was only a matter of time. Robin was bitching as usual about the quality of food coming our way. “I’ve been craving Mayan food. If we were near any place civilized, like New York, we could perhaps have that.” He then looked around, carefully noting any lack of what would pass for civility in his book. “But unless we rip the still-beating heart from our enemy and braise it over the engine block of Niko’s car, I’m thinking not.”

  Niko was pinching the bridge of his nose. I fished a small bottle of Tylenol out of my jacket pocket and slid it into his. He was stubborn about taking medication . . . body, temple, and all that . . . but we’d had one hell of a ride so far. There was always room for exceptions.

  The place wasn’t that crowded. The gas station had a few truckers, along with postcards, shiny Mylar balloons, and fried or jerked meat, depending on how you liked it. But it was in the restaurant part where we found out how Robin liked his. We sat at the counter to give our orders when he moaned, “Temptation, thy name is truck-stop hash slinger.”

  It was a rusalka. I’d seen one only once before, but rusalki did give succubi a run for their money in the sexy department. Sunshine-bright hair with one pale streak of willow green that matched the eyes—pupilless eyes, not that any humans noticed. They might notice being shorted fifteen cents on their change or goggle her amazing breasts—and they were damn amazing—but a Russian water creature in Omaha . . . land of no water . . . that escaped them.

  “Zdrastvutay, solnyshko moyo,” Robin said, green eyes meeting green as his smile began and widened to the size of the Big Bad Wolf, only without Granny’s best nightgown.