by Rob Thurman
Luckily, with last night’s payment we could actually afford the time off. No teaching, no bartending, none of our jobs. We were in the best financial situation of our lives. Assuming, of course, that we could hold on to those lives.
Delilah was at the bar when we arrived. Since she worked at another bar, a strip club, as a bouncer during the day and did her work for the Kin at night, I assumed she was waiting for Cal and not simply hanging out for the feathery ambience. She sat at the bar, very much the fox in the henhouse. Confident, clever, and more than a little carnivorous. She was dressed in brown leather pants, a discarded matching jacket, and a long-sleeve amber-colored sweater that stopped a few inches above her navel. No matter the temperature, Delilah was a wolf and she was proud. She had survived and she would show you the proof—scars white and jagged across her stomach. They were bright against skin that was only a few shades lighter than her sweater. She wore them as boldly as she did the wolf eyes and Celtic swirl design she had tattooed choker style around her neck. Those scars were the reason Cal could be with her. She couldn’t have children. Cal was adamant . . . there would be no more Auphe-human hybrids. Not if he could help it. It was smart of my brother, smart, mature, self-sacrificing, and up there with genuinely phobic status.
Georgina . . . she could have children, and had been willing to let the future unfold however it would. Cal was not as trusting of the universe, and I didn’t blame him for it.
Delilah’s hair was almost as pale as her brother’s. His was albino white; hers was silver blond, long enough to fall to the middle of her back when pulled up, as it was now, in a tail at the crown of her head. She looked fully human, if exotic, like the high breeds did, but she wasn’t. High breeds were considered original werewolf stock. Purely human at one moment and completely wolf at the next. But some wolves didn’t want that. They sought what they felt was the more desirable form—a wolf at all times. Pure and wild, untouched by civilization and “monkey” genes. So they bred for what high breeds considered faults and mutations; some even inbred as well to further the cause. And it was an ongoing cause, since as of now they only had some wolves who at best were half-and-half. Human with wolf teeth, fur in odd places, lupine eyes and claws. Sometimes they were beautiful and sometimes hideous. Sometimes they could pass on the street without effort and sometimes they couldn’t.
They were still a minority in the werewolf community, Kin and non-Kin, and considered by their brothers in fur to be a little less worthy. And because of that prejudice, Delilah could never be an Alpha in the Kin. Females could be Alphas, unlike in genuine wolf packs. The Kin were practical: they realized the females could be deadlier than the males. Male or female, if you killed on all takers, then you were Alpha, but a non-high breed Alpha was out of the question. Then again, Delilah might change that custom. She had a presence that let you know she was no ordinary wolf, no ordinary Kin, no ordinary killer.
And quite definitely no ordinary woman.
“I’m not sure if I’m impressed or afraid she’ll eat you as a midday snack,” I murmured as the door closed behind us.
Almond eyes of pale copper that showed the Asian blood in her were already on us. I probably didn’t smell much different than your average human, but the wolves could smell the Auphe in Cal from the metaphorical mile away. They hated it, except for Delilah. She hadn’t minded when we had once hired her to heal Cal with the benefits of wolf saliva, and she obviously didn’t mind now. It was that presence again. Delilah had a quality about her—she was completely fearless. Unfortunately, a little fear was often what kept you alive.
“Promise could go off the wagon anytime,” he snorted as he moved off. “Then it’s just you, her, and a giant twisty straw.”
The vast majority of vampires had been off blood for sixty years now, thanks to a few hematology advances on their part, but he had a point. One way or the other, we were all food for something else. Every creature on the planet.
As he sat next to her, Delilah tapped a disapproving finger on his knee. “Playing with Auphe. Not smart. Come with me.” She tilted her head, lips curving. “Play better games.”
And that was the only sign Delilah wasn’t a high breed. Her vocal cords were somewhere between human and wolf. Her brother had it as well, although his was much worse. Delilah sounded as if she had a strong accent, was just learning the language. It was as exotic as the rest of her, something the patrons of her bar would’ve enjoyed thoroughly . . . if it hadn’t been a gay male strip club. And I doubted when she tossed the drunks and troublemakers out onto the concrete that she wasted many words on them.
I went over to the far end of the bar, giving Cal some privacy to tell Delilah that the sex games were over temporarily. He’d only met her just over a week ago. She wouldn’t be an Auphe target yet. Fearless or not, it was best she stayed that way.
Ishiah came up as I sat. “I heard what happened last night. Going on a trip?”
“No. We’ve learned the hard way that there is nowhere we can go that the Auphe can’t follow.” I didn’t ask how he knew. Peris were the grapevine of the supernatural world, but that quickly? He could only have gotten it from Goodfellow. I suppose that tipped the Ishiah scales more toward friend than enemy . . . at least for today. I accepted a bottle of water he offered and rolled the blue glass between my palms. “But Cal won’t be back here until this is taken care of.”
“Business will boom.” Beneath the gruffness, I heard a reluctant sympathy. “He blames himself. He snaps and snarls as much as I do, but I’ve been around a long time. I see.”
My face didn’t move, but whatever he saw behind it was the end of the conversation. Without further word, he put a glass before me on the bar and left.
Cal blamed himself . . . as if I didn’t know.
The Auphe had given Cal every reason to blame himself. It was part of their game. It wasn’t enough to kill us or him. There had to be suffering, agony . . . torment. Months ago, before Cal had killed the Auphe in Florida, they had told my brother they would save him for last as we were torn to pieces before him. They wanted him to blame himself for every one of our deaths. They would be happy to know he already did. Cal had already lived that moment hundreds of times in his head, I knew. Would live it hundreds more before this was all over. And no matter what I said or did, that wouldn’t change.
My grip tightened on the bottle and I put it down with exquisite care before I shattered it. I couldn’t change it, but I could make sure he only lived the nightmare of it, not the reality.
The first step would be to stay together as much as possible. Robin would take some persuading, but I was rather in the mood for some persuasion. I’d missed my workout this morning. Dragging him kicking and screaming from his den of debauchery could be a substitute.
I stood as Delilah gave Cal something to remember her by. As she turned her back on him, I waited for him to walk over before I commented on the bright red handprint on his cheek. “Things went well, then.”
He gave me an irritable glance and rubbed his face gingerly. “Funny, it doesn’t feel like it did.”
Delilah slapped her hand on the bar, snapping, “Pigeon! Whiskey. Now.”
Amusing though it might be, I didn’t have time to see the fun and games that were going to start with Ishiah. Herding Cal toward the door, I said, “She could’ve broken your neck with one blow if she’d wanted. That’s the tap a mother gives her cub.”
“Being smacked by a she wolf,” he muttered, “it gives new meaning to ‘bitch slap.’ ”
“Don’t complain.” I opened the door and shoved him out just as I saw Ishiah pull his sword from beneath the bar. “You could’ve stopped her.”
“Maybe.” He scowled, then let it go. “Relationships. I never claimed I was good at them.”
“When you actually have one,” I advised, “we’ll return to the subject.”
Coincidentally, as we arrived at Robin’s, he was in the process of not having relationships as well. Standing on black-a
nd-white marble in tastefully subdued lighting, I wondered not for the first time how Goodfellow had managed to weasel his way past the co-op board of this place. They couldn’t have any idea what went on behind that door. I’d only seen glimpses, and as much as I appreciated education, that was one no one needed.
After several minutes of Cal’s pounding, we were finally let in by a shirtless Robin. His pants were still on, though, and that was something. Not much, but something.
Tapping a bare foot impatiently on the floor, he asked, “What? What do you want? It’s never-ending with you two. I would think a giant eel attack would have you taking at least one day off.”
“We’re . . . oh, hell. What are you doing now?” Cal asked as we both caught sight of the rumpled clothes on the living room floor—a Salvation Army uniform, a sweatshirt that read ABSTINENCE MAKES THE HEART GROW FONDER, and, if I wasn’t mistaken, a Shriner’s fez.
That was the type of day it was going to be, then. I pinched the bridge of my nose at the oncoming headache.
Robin folded his arms and raised his eyebrows as if it were obvious. “I’m trying to change my ways. I’m helping the poor, the deluded, and the medically needy. Who could find fault in that?” he said with a self-satisfied smirk.
Trying to change. More like trying very hard not to change. His brush with death as a result of similar behavior had him trying to prove to the world that he was fine the way that he was—and trying even harder to prove it to himself.
“You . . .” Cal started, then gave up immediately. I didn’t blame him. This was Robin as he was and as he would no doubt always be. Which was fine. I liked him . . . well, I was used to him the way he was. Semantics.
“Just don’t tell us the cat is involved as well,” I said. “There’s a line to be drawn, and necrophiliac bestiality would be it.”
“The cat.” He gritted his teeth. “Do you have an idea what my life is like now? No, you do not, and why? Let me tell you. Yesterday she got out and . . .”
“She?” Cal interrupted before inhaling. I could smell the cat in the apartment as well, and my sense of smell had nothing on his. The mummifying spices of cinnamon and ginger floated on the air, winding about us. “Hey, that’s nice,” Cal grinned. “You can’t beat a walking undead deodorizer for that domestic touch, can you, Nik?”
“She?” I prompted, returning to the subject at hand and giving his ribs the reprovingly sharp point of my elbow. The sooner Robin vented, the sooner we could get on with it.
“Yes, she,” Goodfellow snarled, “and a complete and utterly psycho bitch she is. Like many of my past liaisons, as a matter of fact. Yesterday she somehow opened the locks, got out the door, and ran into Mrs. Federstein’s Great Dane. The woman”—he made a seesawing gesture as if he wasn’t quite sure she qualified for the gender—“wholly unattractive and not especially bright, lets the dog roam up and down the hall for exercise. The poor, wretched creature is a hundred years old, completely deaf, mostly blind, and no brighter than his owner. Up and down the hall he weaves, bouncing off the walls, probably praying for death from whatever god dogs worship.” He sighed and ran an agitated hand into his wavy hair and clenched it there. “Well, he got his wish. I come home from the dealership last evening to find a ‘present’ on my pillow—one very big, very dead dog. Do you have any idea how hard it is to get a Great Dane into the incinerator? Do you?”
“Aw, she loves you.” Cal’s grin stretched a little wider. It was a rare one for him, neither dark nor sarcastic. For one brief second he wasn’t thinking of the Auphe, and that made Robin’s rant more than worth listening to.
“What are you naming her?” I asked, as genuinely curious as I was genuinely amazed that he had kept her after all.
“Salome. She was a bitch too,” he replied, disgruntled. “All she could talk about was John the Baptist. Bring me his head on a platter. I want his head on a platter. Now, where’s that platter? Blah, blah. I was willing to serve up my dick on a platter, still attached, of course, but was that good enough for her? Nooo.”
“Robin, we’re starting without you.”
I could say if it was a female or male voice coming from the bedroom, but what was the point? Robin lived a restriction-free life in that area. All areas, actually. It was too bad for him that was about to come to an abrupt, if hopefully temporary, end.
He turned and walked away, waving us off with a “Thanks for visiting. Drop by anytime. My best to the family. Pick a platitude and leave with it.”
“I don’t think so.” I tapped his shoulder with the blade of my katana, stopping him in his tracks. “Pack. You’re coming with us. We’re all staying at Promise’s until the Auphe situation is resolved.”
He looked in the direction of the bedroom and then back at me. “I most certainly am not.”
I gave a smile sharp as my sword. “Yes, you most certainly are.”
Twenty minutes later Goodfellow, still not at peak performance after his drunken three days, was in a cab on his way to Promise’s penthouse apartment. His playmates had left fifteen minutes prior to that. Apparently, a sword fight in the living room wasn’t the aphrodisiac one might imagine.
“You enjoyed that way too much,” Cal observed as he watched the cab pull into traffic.
“Did I?” Salome, the Great Dane-loving feline, was staying behind. She didn’t need to eat, drink, or eliminate. She would be fine on her own. All in all, other than the killing of domesticated animals twenty times her size, she was the perfect pet. Robin would be selling them via infomercial within the month. Goodfellow’s Mummy Cats—Gummy Cats no doubt.
“You’re getting cranky in your old age, Cyrano,” he snorted at the satisfaction in my voice.
“Children need boundaries.” I had enjoyed it; there was no denying it. And if he hadn’t been up all night doing things Caligula had only dreamed of, he would’ve been able to hold his own. As it was, workoutwise . . .
I shifted a speculative gaze to Cal, and he groaned. “Nik, damn. My back hurts. I’m still tired from last night. Come on.”
It was several hours and dark before we made it home to do packing of our own. We stayed away from the park this time and used a dojo where I’d once taught. One student had offered to spar with Cal during one of our breaks. Cal, sweaty and tired, had given him the highly pissed-off reply of, “Niko can keep me from killing him. You can’t. Go away.” Not precisely tactful, but true. His form was virtually nonexistent, the results undeniably deadly. He wasn’t as good as I was—there was only so much inherent laziness one could overcome, but he was good.
Good enough that he noticed it the same moment I did. We’d finished sparring and went home to pick up clothes and gear to take to Promise’s penthouse. Reaching our apartment door, we entered, and it came that quickly before I had a chance to turn the light on. The sensation of something slicing through the air—headed in our direction. I gave Cal one hard push to the side and dove to the floor. It passed over my head and hit the wall with a distinctive chopping sound. A sword. Not Auphe, then. An Auphe didn’t need a sword.
“Vampire,” Cal said, his voice coming from near the floor by the couch. “I smell you, Seamus. You ambushing piece of shit.”
Seamus, whose jealousy phase had passed a century ago. I’d trusted Promise’s normally excellent judgment. I should’ve trusted Cal’s; I should’ve trusted my own. I heard the sound of metal ripped free of plaster, and then I could see him as he moved back. Silhouetted against the city lights streaming through the cracked window blinds, the bulk of him paused for a moment, then slid with a fluid speed to the right.
“I never knew I wanted her back, all these years. But then I saw her again. Smelled her. Touched her. And I do want her back. She should be with me,” he spat. “She belongs with me. Her mate. Her true mate.”
I’d moved to my feet, silent and smooth. I caught the next swing of his blade on my own before I spoke. “Her choice, not yours.”
Vampires could see better than humans in the dar
k, but my eyes had adjusted now. I could see him, albeit in shades of dark gray and black. “Then I shall narrow her options,” he said coldly.
There were no further words, only the sound of blade against blade. Cal would have his Glock in hand, but Seamus and I were moving too fast for him to get a shot lined up. The vampire was quick and he was good—the type of good that was learned from time on a battlefield. Years. But I’d been in battles myself, faced creatures I doubt even Seamus had ever seen. Yes, vampires were quick and lethal.
But so was I.
I twisted and swung the katana. Inches from having his head severed, Seamus jerked to one side and sliced toward me again. From the shadowy length and breadth of it, he was carrying a broadsword. He swung it like it was one. Two-handed and with the weight of a mountain behind it. In the dim light, I could see his eyes were all black—the eyes of a vampire in the midst of strong emotion. Fury, I was guessing. I used it. His next strike, full of rage, took him slightly off balance. Barely detectable, but I caught it. I slammed a boot in his gut. He staggered, but less than he should have. His breed was stronger than humans, and Seamus, big and broad, was no exception. I slid around his next blow, but it was close. The point of the sword cut through my skin, tracing a superficial slice. He gave an incoherent growl at the miss and with one furious kick sent the couch flying up on end to then promptly topple over. I heard Cal curse as he leapt out of the way. Then I heard him say one more thing.
“Lights.”
Vampires could see well in the dark, yes, but humans saw well in the light. As our lights flared on, Seamus closed his eyes against it for a fraction of a second. That was about half as long as I needed. He swiveled, but not before I carved off a slice of flesh over his ribs. He didn’t let that slow him. He kept coming . . . right into Cal’s crosshairs. Three bullets hit his upper back before he shifted direction and made it to the door, split it in half with his weight, and was gone. Cal, by the light switch, instantly vaulted over the shattered wood to follow him.
