by TA Moore
“Yeah, well, I don’t spill my life story to strangers who’ve knocked me out and dragged me to a cave,” Cash said. “Yana and I, we aren’t on good terms.”
“To put it mildly. She hasn’t seen her daughter in, what, five years now?”
“She’s still Ellie’s mom. She’s Arkady’s sister. I don’t want anything bad to happen to her. I mean, I still think someone’s led you up the graveyard path, but if you were right about her boyfriend… I won’t let something happen to her just so you can catch your monster red-handed.”
“Pawed,” Harry corrected him absently. “Red-pawed. They don’t have hands, not like we do. It’s one of the ways to tell that mankind was put here to have dominion.”
That was so bizarrely wrong that Cash nearly argued with him. He thought better of it before he blurted out something he shouldn’t know, like the fact this monster had enough manual dexterity to give someone the finger.
Okay, some of them didn’t have hands. They still got by fine.
“Whatever,” Cash said. “I’m not going to tell my daughter her mom’s been eaten—or kidnapped, or whatever—but it’s okay because Harry proved his pet theory about monsters was true.”
Harry gave him a genuinely injured look. “I would never,” he said earnestly. “No monster is worth spending a single human soul, not even a soul as… dissolute… as Ilyana Abascal.”
Rude, but not untrue. Yana lived like someone who didn’t give a damn. Mostly because that’s what she was.
“Not that it matters,” Cash said. “Because you’re crazy.”
He wasn’t, of course. Wrong about the details, but not crazy. Harry smiled briefly as he took a drink of his coffee.
“You know I’m not,” he said. “I’ve been doing this for years, Cash. Hunted down curses, exposed corrupted priests, and even went to Europe to track down one of the last vampires. And every time I could sense the… undercurrent that it wasn’t over, we’d just hit a dead end. We might have won, but we’d missed something. If my contact is telling the truth—and I think he is—we’ll know what. Who.”
That was the sort of talk that would get you killed. The Prodigium preferred discouraged investigators, but in a pinch, dead ones would do. It was messier than they’d like—old-school rather than new-guard—but it worked.
“And if he isn’t?” Cash asked. “I saw the fiancé carry Yana’s bags into the house. He looked normal enough.”
Harry finished his coffee. “I hope you’re right,” he said as he gently set the cup down on the table. “This would be the biggest story of my career, and I still hope you’re right. I just don’t believe you are. What do you want, Cash?”
Cash sat back and looked away. He ran his eyes over the handful of monsters and humans mostly peacefully coexisting as the need for coffee overrode anything else. The stocky, fish-faced blond throwing a fit as she demanded the lanky bloodybones behind the counter let her speak to the manager… she might not make it all the way home after her stay.
But nobody cared about Karens. They were free calories.
“I want in,” he said. “You need a cameraman, and I need to make sure that you don’t put anyone at risk.”
Harry looked amused. “I can shoot my own footage.”
“I didn’t realize you’d made the guest list,” Cash said. “Or been asked to do the honors when it came to photography.”
A flicker of suspicion crossed Harry’s face. It tasted like garlic dust against Cash’s lips, barely there. It was creepier than Kohary’s emptiness somehow. At least the Left Hand of the Prodigium was supposed to be disturbing and uncomfortable. Harry narrowed his eyes.
“That’s… convenient,” he said.
Cash snorted. “Sure. It’s great. I get to run around all day trying to get my ex to smile at me and her drunk grandmother to stay where she’s put. For the ‘exposure.’”
He’d dealt with enough people who thought he should turn up for free—because they were friends, for a cut of the profits when their documentary made a splash, or someone had forgotten to budget to reshoot scenes—that the annoyance in his voice sounded real. Harry had too, obviously, as his expression softened into amused sympathy.
“Well, you’re getting a free meal out of it,” he joked dryly. The humor lasted long enough for Cash to roll his eyes in agreement, and then Harry turned serious again. “If I’m wrong—”
“Yana gets some very oddly shot scenes for her wedding video,” Cash said. “Maybe she won’t ask me to take her pregnancy-announcement photos.”
“And if I’m right, it could be dangerous.”
Cash shrugged. “I was supposed to be in Louisiana this weekend, tracking a loup garou around the oil refineries on the Mississippi,” he said. “Last year I filmed the Damned by Blood splatter-rite doc up in Alaska. Just because I’m not chasing after a gig on 12:28 doesn’t mean I don’t know what I’m doing. If you keep me in the loop, if you assure me you won’t take any risks with Yana’s life, I’ll get the footage you want.”
“And get paid?” Harry asked, raising his eyebrow.
“It’s my job,” Cash said. “And I don’t need to keep you sweet to impress my boyfriend. Or my kid. Just the going rate. Or I warn Arkady now.”
Harry grimaced. He tapped his fingers on the Formica table as he considered his options. There weren’t many, not with that final condition.
“Okay,” he said. “Deal. You’re on the payroll. I need to go into the city tomorrow. My source said there’s some sort of secret meeting going on in a warehouse. Abigail is going with me. So you get to keep an eye on the fiancé, make sure nothing spooks him. If it looks like something is going to happen—anyone is going to be hurt or corrupted—call the police. I meant it, no story—not even this one—is worth someone’s life.”
He pushed his chair back from the table, metal legs loud on the tiles, and left without a word. Cash watched him go and tried to work out if he was being played.
Harry’s source had broken the Prodigium’s Cardinal Rule with malice aforethought. He’d thrown some of the monster-world’s movers and shakers—the Worm, the Black Witch—under the wheels of the papal-documentary train. Yet he hadn’t told him Yana was the monster too, not even hinted at it.
Tomorrow was the start of the wedding festivities. The Hunt would start at midnight. Anyone who knew the Worm’s private movements would know that. They’d also know that Yana, as the ranking monster in the couple, would lead the chase.
So why send Harry on a wild goose chase into Roanoke? He might find a few goblins, monsters with so much human in them they didn’t have a breed or a name, or a werewolf itchy in his skin during the crescent moon. The real monsters—the ones with meat in their teeth and bones that rattled—would be here. Or tucked away, sulking over mimosas so they could imply they were here after the fact.
The answer seemed obvious, of course. Despite Arkady’s protests, one of the Abascals was behind this. No one else would care—or dare—to try and protect the family.
Or at least, that was the interpretation the Prodigium would jump to. Before they did, Cash needed to find a better one. He might not be an Abascal—by name or blood—but the only people in the world he cared about were.
Shit.
He took Harry’s cup with him when he left.
Chapter Twelve
CASH PAUSED in the doorway of his room, the stolen cup held loosely in one hand and his foot braced against the heavy door to hold it open. The clothes were laid out on his bed in a creepy approximation of movement, tucked and folded so it looked as if their original owner had turned to dust midstep.
Appropriate.
Cash had worn it before. The last time, the first time, had been to Arkady’s wedding. He hadn’t expected anything, except for Arkady to take one look at him at the entrance to the Chapel and throw Madeline and the alliance over. Cash hadn’t planned much past that point, which turned out to be a good thing. Arkady had looked at him once, then ignored him for the rest of the fe
ast.
It had felt like he’d crumbled away, only it had been word by word, not merciful and all at once.
The clothes were in the garbage when he left.
“I was pretty once,” bag of bones wheezed from overhead. The unexpected interruption made Cash twitch. He stepped to the side and looked up. An ear on a string of sinew dangled through the plaster. It twitched and tried to be a mouth, the lobe curled like a tongue, as bag of bones talked. “Or ugly? Some or the other. Hard to tell from what he left me. He took all my bits to make his suit. He could have left me some….”
The ear twitched and crumpled as the ghost complained. Cash ignored it as he yanked the wardrobe open and stashed the cup inside his bag, under a couple of old T-shirts. It could wait.
“Monsters aren’t big on leftovers,” he told the ghost.
It made a thin bagpipe drone of sound and reeled the ear back up into the crawlspace. For something that knew it was dead most of the time, the reminder of how it happened always upset it. Most ghosts didn’t remember. They were angry, but they didn’t remember why. Once they did, they kind of lost their… colère de vivre. Not much point to anything when you were just the nail clipping of a dead thing.
Cash grabbed the clothes from the bed, leather and silk twisted around his fingers, and stalked over to give the adjourning door a perfunctory rap of his knuckles. He didn’t wait for an answer before he shoved it open… or tried to. Cash jarred his arm as his weight rattled the black wood but didn’t shift it.
It was locked.
The door hadn’t been locked in years. Cash couldn’t do it, and Arkady, after the first few snarky comments about light-fingered charity cases, hadn’t wanted to.
Until now.
The heavy, sour tug of rejection and frustration sank through him. His monster smacked its lips over the tang of it and its stomach rumbled. He’d need to feed soon.
First, though, he wasn’t going to have this.
“Jackass.”
He kicked the door. The impact probably jarred his foot more than the solid slab of wood. From the other side, the silence was pointed. Arkady was in there, a mouthful of old grudges between his teeth and his cock in his hand.
Fine. Cash bundled the clothes under his arm and stalked back to the door. He yanked it open and nearly walked into the sad-sack drooping bag of bones. The ghost hung limply from the jamb, a clammy chill sticking to it like sweat, and extended a handful of tiny dead eyes to blink at him.
“If you aren’t going to use the bed—” It wheezed. “—it’s cold up there, and if he finds me. Oh, if he finds me.”
“Fine,” Cash said as he side-stepped the fluttery lung. A human could have just stepped through it, even if it saw some shadow of the real thing, but not always best if you were a monster. Sometimes the ghosts could get… stuck places you didn’t want them. Under arms, between your ribs, and one satyr Cash knew had sworn up and down he had a haunted testicle. Just the one. “Make yourself at home.”
The ghost curled sullenly in on itself. “It is my home,” it sulked, before it splatted to the ground and dragged itself over the floor. The collection of rodent ghost eyes it had put together slipped from its fingers and dissolved.
Cash slammed the door, took two steps down the hall, and shoved open the main doors to Arkady’s rooms. The indulged son of monster aristocracy, with an army of well-paid cleaners on staff to pick up after him, he never remembered to lock his door. Arkady was sprawled out on the bed, barefoot and half undressed, with his eyes closed and a snifter of brandy balanced on his chest.
“Congratulations,” Cash snarked. “I had to walk and open two doors instead of one to get in here. My lesson is learned.”
“Maybe I just like you sweaty,” Arkady said without opening his eyes.
“It’s a couple of yards,” Cash said. “I’m not sweating.”
“Not yet.”
Cash swallowed the hot honey-scratch of interest that dried his mouth. He crossed the room and tossed the bundle of clothes at Arkady, who swore and jerked upright as the brandy spilled over him.
“I’m not wearing that,” Cash said. “Why the hell do you even still have it? I chucked it in the trash.”
Arkady scowled as he peeled wet silk off his chest and tossed it aside. He dragged his hand down his chest to wipe away the amber glaze of brandy.
“You threw a lot of things away that year. I thought you might still value some of them.” His lip curled in a sneer as he flicked drops of liquor from his fingers. “If nothing else, Yana certainly seemed to appreciate the way you looked in—”
“Oh, shut up,” Cash said.
It actually shut Arkady up for a moment. Cash had always gotten away with more than anyone else, his smart mouth tolerated because Arkady liked his pretty face, but even he usually stuck to sarcasm and snide asides. No one spoke to Abascals like he just had.
Arkady stared at him, all sticky skin and “what the fuck” expression. He’d just pulled himself together enough to scowl when Cash started to strip. He pulled the shirt over his head, collar tight as it scraped over his ears, and dropped it to the ground. It felt oddly… vulnerable. The skin between his shoulder blades itched and tightened with self-consciousness.
A decade wasn’t long for a monster in their prime, but it was a long time since Arkady had seen him naked. Cash had been lean and angry back then, all taut muscle and carelessness. Now he was a single dad who ate leftovers from the spirits’ table at work more often than not.
Under his bones the monster squirmed in irritation that he’d got to that line first.
“What are you doing?” Arkady asked. The frown lingered on his face as he watched Cash kick off his boots.
Denim slid low around Cash’s hips as he unbuttoned his jeans. He paused there and cocked his head to the side.
“If you don’t know, then it’s been too long for one of us, anyhow,” he said dryly. “How long ago was the divorce?”
Arkady snorted and licked brandy from the palm of his hand. He swung his legs over the edge of the mattress and reached out to hook his fingers in Cash’s waistband, his knuckles damp and cold against Cash’s stomach as he pulled him a step closer to the bed. “I thought we were going to have a fight.”
“Yeah, well, we both know how it ends,” Cash said. He quirked the corner of his mouth up. “I win. So I figured we could skip it. Unless you’d rather…?”
“No,” Arkady said. Another tug put Cash between Arkady’s lean, leather-clad thighs, and Cash’s stomach tightened eagerly. “You’re the guest. It’s only polite to make sure you get what you want.”
Cash leaned down and ghosted a kiss over Arkady’s mouth, the sticky apricot-and-smoke sweetness of his breath a temptation to linger. The hooks of the deal shifted in Cash’s gut. The tug of it pulled at his balls and thickened his cock.
“So I’m calling the shots?” he said. “The big, bad Abascal has to do what I say?”
The chance that—this time—he was going to push it too far caught in Cash’s throat like gravel. It also prickled the nape of his neck and dried his mouth with anticipation. It was, for him, kind of a win-win situation.
Arkady narrowed his eyes, a bright rim of gold around his pupils, but he didn’t disagree. That made Cash cocky. He licked his lips and tried to decide what to do next. The possibilities were overwhelming.
“I could fuck you,” he voiced the thought aloud.
Once he’d said it, the idea had its appeal. The thought of Arkady sprawled out under him, all that muscle and monster tight around his cock, made his breath catch in his throat. It wouldn’t be the first time, but… not that often. Rank had its privileges, and monsters did care about rank.
Arkady leaned back, arms braced against the mattress, and smirked.
“You could try,” he said neutrally.
His chest was still sticky with brandy, and a trail ran down his chest and splattered droplets over the tight leather that covered his crotch. The thick outline of his cock was
visible against the scraped-thin fabric, and the shadows of something scaled and sickly gold moved under his skin. The smell on the air was still smoke and honey, but the hint of meat was under it. It was smashed hives and pillaged farms, the smoky taste of the tongue that had spat a curse at an Abascal. It was a predator’s stink, like the lion house at the zoo.
Cash couldn’t move. He’d always thought that one day he’d get used to how beautiful Arkady was when his monster showed itself, but he never had. It used to annoy him. He was pretty, but no one had ever lost the ability to speak while looking at him. Now he just enjoyed the cold frisson of lust and terror that curdled his guts and made his skin itch with the need to be touched.
It had been a long time since he’d been this aware that the man in his bed could hurt him. He’d missed the thrill of that.
Cash crawled onto the bed, straddled Arkady’s hips, and dug his knees into the mattress on either side. Hunger had sunk down into his bones, sharp and hot in his marrow.
“You said I could do what I want,” he pointed out, mouth against Arkady’s sharp jawline. “So….”
He pushed Arkady down on the bed… or tried to. The mattress shifted under them, but Arkady didn’t move.
“So,” Arkady said, the edges of his voice roughened from brandy and his mood. “You misheard me.”
He rolled them both over and pinned Cash down to the mattress, both of his hands held above his head. Cash cursed him and squirmed in a halfhearted attempt to get away, but not too hard. Arkady’s knee nudged between Cash’s thighs and his cock pressed against his stomach. He dipped his head to chew wet, bruised kisses along the unmarked side of Cash’s throat from his collarbone to his jaw.
“I did?” Cash asked, his voice tight as sharp teeth worried his skin and a tongue soothed the sting.
There were probably a lot of really smart, unpleasant things he could say, and he’d regret the missed opportunity later. He could feel the hard, hot pressure of Arkady’s cock against his thigh and taste him on the back of his throat. It wasn’t like he was going to think about anything else.
