by Rob Thurman
“It won’t happen again,” I said grimly.
“See that it doesn’t. I won’t enjoy knocking you out, but I will.” I took it for what it was: reassurance. Niko was my lifeline. If I started to fall, he’d drag me back.
“No one I’d rather have beat my ass into unconsciousness,” I said wryly.
“Not that this macho brotherly love fest isn’t bringing a tear to the eye,” Robin drawled, “but I think we need to talk about moving. Oshossi knows where we are now. If we don’t go, every night is going to be Sundown Social at the Zoo. Pet the predator. Kiss the carnivore. All things I could do without.”
It was a good point. Niko, Robin, and Promise discussed it; Cherish watched my every move with wary eyes; and I, ignoring her as I ignored most of the others who gave me that look, ended up playing Go Fish with Xolo. Which, in a strange way, was what I needed. I didn’t want to think about Oshossi and his overgrown kitties. I didn’t want to think about the Auphe. I didn’t want to think about me.
The chupa had crept out of the back bedroom while the others talked, silently watched them with those large eyes for a while, and then moved over to me. I was on the couch, arms folded and doing my damnedest to keep my mind a blank. No matter what Niko would’ve said with dry sarcasm, it wasn’t that easy. Xolo sat on the floor opposite me and placed a pack of cards on the artistic metal curve of table between us. The shaved dog face regarded me gravely. I scowled back. It was habit. I didn’t have anything against Cherish’s pet. He tended to stay out of the way, gave up the remote when I wanted it, and didn’t eat my leftover pizza in the fridge. As roommates went, he wasn’t so bad. Weird, but not as bad as Robin, who’d gotten so desperate it wouldn’t have surprised me to see him humping a table leg.
“What?” I asked. “What do you want?”
Just as gravely, he dealt the cards. Seven to me, seven to him. Hell, why not? I played Go Fish with him. He held up his fingers when he asked for my cards. Any threes? Up would go three fingers. It didn’t work so great for jacks, queens, and kings, so we discarded them. Those eyes would blink, moonlike, the fingers would flash, and the cards would go down. The bastard couldn’t talk, couldn’t fight, could barely dress himself, and he beat me seven games to three.
I turned the cards around to look at the backs. “Are these marked? Are you cheating?” Or was I less bright than a mentally challenged chimp?
“I hate to interrupt your vastly important task”—Niko’s hand pulled the cards from mine and slapped them on the table—“but we’ve narrowed our options.”
“Yeah? Rafferty’s place?” Rafferty was a healer we’d used before. He’d disappeared months ago, but as it was most likely a voluntary disappearance, there wasn’t much we could do about it. He wouldn’t want us sticking our noses in his business, and he had a lot of business to take care of. His cousin was sick, a kind of sick Rafferty couldn’t heal. We’d checked his house after a month of not being able to contact him. . . . We had business too, and it frequently called for a healer afterward. From the looks of the overgrown yard, the house had been locked up and temporarily abandoned. Both Rafferty and his cousin were gone. Rafferty wasn’t one to give up. If he couldn’t cure his cousin, he’d find someone who could.
“Figured,” I added.
“Or Ishiah’s,” Nik said. “From what you’ve said, he can handle himself well.”
“Ishiah’s?” I leaned back against the couch. “You’re shitting me, right? One day, and he’d kill us before Oshossi or the Auphe could.”
Robin immediately backed me up—so immediately, in fact, that I wondered who he was actually trying to keep safe—us or Ishiah. “All of us shoehorned into that overgrown canary’s place? That’s an exercise in natural selection waiting to happen. Survival of the fittest. And that walking feather duster is fit.” His left eye twitched. “Very fit.” This had to be the longest Robin hadn’t gotten laid in, damn, at least in the span of human existence—at least once we’d stopped braiding each other’s back hair and thinking of lice as a tasty treat. “Desperate” didn’t begin to cover the shape he was in.
I was so locking my door tonight.
Rafferty’s place. On the one hand, Rafferty did have the nature preserve behind his house, a good location for supernatural wildlife that wanted to eat you. On the other, it might take Oshossi a while to find us there. I said so, and Niko agreed. As for the Auphe, of course they had to be watching us, but following us on the open road in daylight? Doubtful. We’d lost them time and time again when we’d lived on the run. They always eventually found us, but that we lost them to begin with proved they weren’t infallible.
“Once we get the report from Mickey, we will definitely have to be more proactive about tracking down Oshossi. Robin and Mickey are doing what they can, but we need to get this resolved more quickly,” Niko said. Now that we’d committed ourselves, which I still didn’t think was the best idea, he was right. But helping Cherish fight off a few cadejos and snakes was different than actively going after the one who sicced them on her. He was probably going to be a little harder to take care of than the wildlife.
“Tracking him down and killing him in a truly inspired fashion,” Promise added. Cherish flashed her a smile that was laced with surprise at the fiercely maternal note. If nothing else, this whole thing appeared to have her seeing the error of her criminally wild and wicked ways and bringing her and Promise closer. Good for them. Not too good for the rest of us trying to avoid maiming, mutilation, and, worse yet, pet-dander allergies, but good for them.
“What is up with Oshossi and that goddamn temper of his? And what did you steal from him,” I asked Cherish, “that pissed the living hell out of him?” If I were going to get killed, it’d be nice to know it wasn’t over a lamp or a first-edition Mark frigging Twain.
Cherish frowned, but turned a dining room chair around to face the rest of us and stretched languidly on it. Yep, Robin in a female body. I still couldn’t figure why they hadn’t gotten together at least for a night. She might be the vampire version of eighteen, but apparently had her hormones more in control than Goodfellow did.
“Oshossi,” she considered. “Oshossi is powerful. Every forest in South America belongs to him and he engages in constant guerilla warfare to prevent their destruction.” She tapped fingers on the knee of one long black-clad leg. “But don’t think that makes him some sort of hero. He will kill anyone—anyone who threatens his agenda, crosses his path in the forests, or simply annoys him. He is not a creature of patience or forgiveness.”
“And you, not doing your research, took him for an easy mark.” Robin shook his head. “Even the lowliest of my junior salesmen would know better than that.”
She glared at him. “Regardless, I robbed him, and that lack of forgiveness is firmly aimed in my direction. Our direction,” she amended, glancing at Promise.
“What did you steal?” Niko asked as he simultaneously gestured to me, tapping his meditation beads. As much as I wanted to, I didn’t blow it off. I’d seen where a lack of control had gotten me. I fingered the beads around my own wrist and got to work. I still kept part of my focus on the conversation, which had to not help the meditation. But hearing Cherish’s story was important. I had at least two brain cells. I could split them up.
“Is that so important?” she countered, tilting her head, the black hair falling behind her shoulders, and her violet eyes challenging.
“Yes,” he replied, unyielding. “I think it is.”
“Fine,” she replied, lashes half covering her eyes with what looked like regret or even shame. “It was a necklace. Gold, diamonds, and chunks of turquoise as big as a baby’s fist. I endangered all our lives for one piece of jewelry that was in no way worth the price we’re paying now.”
“Did it do anything?” I interrupted, remembering the power-draining crown another puck had blackmailed us into getting for him.
“Do anything?” she said with confusion. “It sparkled and it looked quite amazing on me.
What else would it possibly do?”
“So you hocked it?” Robin asked. “Once it wasn’t quite so amazing?”
“As I said, I bore of pretty things quickly and move on to the next. I’m thinking of changing my ways. It seems a good survival move.” She sighed and touched the ruby choker at her throat. I wondered if it were stolen too.
“Yes, then you can marry men with a foot and four toes in the grave. That’s certainly more respectable,” Robin offered with a smirk.
Promise tapped her crossbow against her leg and said in a voice as sweet as honeysuckle, “I believe, Goodfellow, that I have a painting you should see.”
I saw where this was going, and it was going to be long, drawn-out, and something I’d heard a hundred times before. I went back to concentrating solely on the meditation, bead by bead. Boring but calming, as much as I hated to admit it. When I finished, those moon eyes were still on me. “Jesus,” I groaned to the chupa. “Okay. Deal another hand.”
I played Go Fish for another two hours. I lost again.
Lately, it was a familiar feeling.
10
Niko
Rafferty’s house was over the Verrazano Bridge on Staten Island. It looked the same as it had the last time we’d visited. A tired and deserted ranch house with a fence in the back large enough to hold the biggest of dogs . . . or wolves. Behind that was the nature preserve, thousands of bare trees. Robin, as always, proved adept at gaining illegal entry. I doubt he even broke stride on the simple lock. There was a click of metal against metal, a turn of his wrist, and we were inside. There the utilities were still turned on, a sign that Rafferty thought his trip would be short, or he didn’t have any idea how long he’d be gone. If he’d thought the first, he was wrong. We hadn’t been able to contact him in months. Normally I wouldn’t have invaded his privacy, but desperate times . . . desperate measures. His place suited our needs perfectly.
There was only one problem. It wasn’t on par with the Auphe, Oshossi, or, say, a two-headed werewolf, but it was a problem nonetheless, and one my brother was more than capable of handling. I handed him the toilet plunger as he walked out of the kitchen.
“There’s nothing left in . . .” He stopped to stare glumly at the plunger. “Jesus.”
“I doubt that. If you were he, you could simply wave a hand, unstop it, and simultaneously turn the water to wine. Sadly, we’ll have to settle for your plumbing skills.”
“Why me?” he demanded.
“Why not you? Or do you plan on holding it until we find Oshossi and destroy the Auphe? If so, best to avoid colas.”
“This is revenge, isn’t it?” He took the wooden handle with resignation.
“In a word,” I replied without hesitation, “yes. Plus Buddha-loving bad-asses like me have better things to do.”
He looked with trepidation down the hall toward the bathroom door. “Revenge for that. Revenge for last night with the gate. Do I even want to go in there?”
I curved my lips. It wasn’t reassuring. It wasn’t meant to be. He groaned, turned, and trudged down the hall. For the moment, I was alone. Everyone else was outside unpacking the two cars, and I took the opportunity to move to Rafferty’s surgery. It was simply a large bedroom with three neatly made beds, shelves of medical supplies, and the kind of cheap tile that makes it easy to mop up blood. God knew it had seen its share of it. This was the place where Cal had nearly died, then did die, and was brought back. There were no ghosts in our world, I knew that, but if there had been, they would’ve been here.
There was the sound of a footstep. I turned with my sword drawn before my mind had time to catch up with my body. Robin appeared in the doorway, eyes immediately going to the katana. I sheathed it, but didn’t apologize. There was no reason to. He’d lived through the nightmare that had happened in this room the same as I had. He knew.
“I suggest we give this room to Cherish and her pet,” Goodfellow advised as he walked in and circled to take it in with pensive eyes. “Promise and you can have one bedroom, and I the other.”
“And Cal?” Who hadn’t gone near the room since we’d walked through the front door. Among the three of us, he’d had the better sense.
Robin raised his voice to carry. “The couch. He is the youngest, and his ass is so frequently glued there anyway.” His lips quirked as an outraged “I heard that, you bastard” came echoing down the hall.
He gave a light squeeze to my shoulder. “Let us go from here. This isn’t a good place for any of the three of us.” Once in the hall, he promptly closed the door to the room. Out of sight, out of mind. Hopefully. “I’ve called all of my normal homes away from home, the hotels to the fabulous. No one who matches Oshossi has checked in. From the look of him, I doubt he’s staying at a flea trap. I’ll try the private residences for rent next. I know several real estate agents, most as amoral as I am. Almost.” He grinned. “I’ll give them a call. Now”—he clapped hands together—“where do we obtain food in this desolate wasteland? I couldn’t see a single five-star restaurant from the porch.”
“We might want to consider a store,” I pointed out.
“Store? Food doesn’t come from a store. It comes from restaurants or a personal cook, and I doubt any of you are up to my chef standards. The last time we were here, we ate microwave food. Microwave. You may as well circle that monstrous machine with the River Styx and call it the life-sucking Hades that it is.”
“And what did you do before there were restaurants?” I asked, torn between patience and drawing my sword again.
“I had nubile maidens to feed me grapes, and muscular men with honey-covered . . .”
I went to see if Cal needed any help in the bathroom.
That evening, we sat in Rafferty’s comfortable but definitely suburban living room, finishing off Chinese takeout. Robin, horrified and bemused by the bright orange sauce with the consistency of Jell-O that dripped from his chicken, was shocked into an uncustomary silence. Cal sat on the floor with his egg rolls, letting the rest of us have the couch and chairs. Xolo . . . Xolo had a talent for disappearing into the background. I sharpened my attention and caught a glimpse of his sweatshirt and hairless head through the doorway in the kitchen. He was looking raptly out of the window.
“Cherish, does he see anything?” I asked.
She turned her head, then shook it. “No, he’s a simple perrito; pat his head, play with him, and he is easily entertained. He just likes to look.”
“You did bring goat’s blood, right? He’s not going to start gnawing on our legs or anything, is he?” Cal said.
I saw the effort she made not to give him the look that so many others did, as if he were a bomb seconds away from exploding into metal, violence, and death. Unfortunately, Cal saw the effort it took as well. He didn’t say a word, only stared back at her without expression. “No,” she said. “No more than you would. And I brought what he requires.”
“No more than I would, huh? You have a lot of faith there suddenly.” He pushed the white carton aside and lay on his back, hands behind his head, to stare at a spackled ceiling instead of stars.
“I behaved badly before. I apologize.” She exhaled, “So many apologies. I’m turning respectable, Madre.” She smiled at Promise. “Who would ever have thought?” Then she added, “But I was startled. I had never seen an Auphe before.”
“You haven’t seen an Auphe yet,” I said flatly.
Eyes identical to her mother’s started to darken, but Promise stopped her with an upraised palm. “Don’t. Niko is telling you something important. You have not seen an Auphe, and if you assume they will in any way look like or act like Caliban, then when you do see one, you will freeze and you will die.”
“Chances are you’ll die anyway,” Robin offered morosely as he let the possibly radioactive chicken fall back into its container. “We all will. Death by Auphe or MSG; both are too hideous to contemplate.” He waved an arm at the brown faux-leather couch and the carpet, worn to the nap. “Much like
this furniture. This house. This Cordon Bleu-free land of minivans, tricycles, and polyester. This isn’t Hades. It’s worse than Hades. No. No more.” Abruptly, he pushed up to his feet. “I am going home. Now. Where are my keys?”
I’d seen this coming since we’d crossed the midway point on the Verrazano. I pulled the glittering silver metal from my pocket and twirled the key ring once around my finger. “Sit.”
“As if I need those to start a car,” he sneered.
“True. And I could slice the tires with my katana, or remove the steering wheel, but then you could call a cab. I’m aware.” I tossed the keys to him. “This is only for the night. Tomorrow Cal and I have to meet Mickey and see what he’s learned. Come and go as you please then. I know we can’t stay together as one, not and accomplish anything, not anymore. But let’s have one last night where we all have a chance at a good sleep. Watch split five ways is better than two or three, or you up all night at your orgy of choice.”
“Then this is our safe house.” He made the keys disappear, reappear in the other hand, then vanish altogether. “Not my prison.”
“Yes. This is a good place for Cherish to hide temporarily, but it’s not a permanent answer. Everyone has Cal’s cell number. As with the ccoa attack, we’ll come if you call.” “We” because he would not be opening any gates unless I was there. He would not be going anywhere unless I was with him. The Auphe weren’t taking him from me, not again, and not for a reason so horrifying I could barely think it. I looked down at him. “Can you do that? Open another gate?”
He propped up on his elbows and shrugged. “Hey, it’s only sanity.” Behind the dark humor I saw his recognition of my trust in his control—that he ruled the Auphe blood, it did not rule him.
“It’s not so bad, kid.” Robin told him, suddenly cheerful at the thought of freedom. “Think about it. Without the gates and travelling you’d just be another cranky asshole with a gun.”
“Don’t go home until this is over, if you can help it. Stay elsewhere, but avoid your usual haunts. And try to never be alone even during the day,” I went on dryly to Goodfellow. “But I don’t think that will be a problem for you.”
