by Rob Thurman
“Boris, buddy. The Ninth Circle is starting Two for Tuesday shots. You should stop by. Bring a date or a spore or whatever you’ve got going on in your social life.” I nudged Nik, who went ahead and dipped into his coat pockets for two shot glasses and a large glass tumbler for Boris. A vyodanoi’s tolerance for vodka was unbelievable.
Boris raised up to settle on what would be knees if he had bones. A vyodanoi looked like nothing more than a giant six- to seven-foot leech in humanoid form, a very blurry, caricature of a humanoid form. It had arms, but no hands or fingers. They tended to be brownish-gray with a sloping mudslide of a head, a sucker for a mouth, and a coloration sketched on its face in black lines to mimic a human’s nose, eyes, and brow. For a second in the dark or the shadows you might mistake them for human-only for a second, but with vyodanoi a second was all it took.
“Sobaka.” The sound of Boris’s voice wasn’t easy on the ears. It was a peculiar whistle, the sound of a drowned man whistling a dirge from underwater.
I opened the first, let’s be honest, vat of vodka as Niko murmured, “Sobaka? Russian for dog?”
“It’s short for beshenaya sobaka. Mad dog.” Goodfellow had also filled me in on that as he liked delivering bad news as well as random cultural facts. “It’s my nickname from that time Hob hired a ton of them.” And I hadn’t played so nice with them then. “Of all the things I’ve been called I can live with that one.”
Boris wrapped rubbery flesh around his glass and tossed the entire thing back in one swallow. “You’ve come to talk. So be not rude.” That was Niko and my cue to toss our own shot back. I didn’t drink much and Niko didn’t drink at all. It wasn’t a good idea when your mom had been an alcoholic or in our business when you had to stay sharp always. It didn’t make a difference how much I drank though or if I’d had a liver the size of Kansas: what we were drinking would still have tasted like a shot of turpentine. I should’ve sprung for the good stuff, if for Niko and my sake. The hell with Boris and his lack of taste buds.
“We want to know about Jack,” I said, filling up our glasses again. The faster my tongue went numb, the better. “He’s in town skinning people like the good old days in Jolly Old England. God Save the Queen and all that good crap. What do you know about that?”
“Jack mayashnik. Jack the Butcher. I know of him. Little, but I know of him.” The water sloshed around him. It smelled like cold metal. Boris smelled cold, period. The water washed away the blood he lived on and only left the cold.
He drank again and waited until we did the same. “I should’ve let you come alone. I’ll have to do a juice cleansing for a month to repair this damage,” Nik said.
“It might loosen you up,” I needled. “Turn you into Goodfellow or anyone who doesn’t think trimming bonsai trees is a wild and crazy Friday night.”
“If I did loosen up, I might start swatting the back of your head and not stop until your skull and what little contents it contains is crushed to a fine paste.” He turned his attention to Boris. We did need to wrap this up before morning light and the people that came with it. Vyodanoi were shy in the daylight. They’d eat a human-snack of choice-but they were shy outside the river even with coats and hats to help them blend in. “Boris, where is Jack in the city? How can we find him?”
“How can you find a single drop of rain in a storm?” Boris didn’t have shoulders to shrug with, but the tilting back and forth of his glass had the same effect.
“Hey, if I wanted a bad fortune cookie cliche, I’d take my vodka to a Chinese restaurant. Niko has more than glasses tucked away in his coat. He has a gallon jug full of salt. Happy fucking birthday to you, Boris. So talk sense or we take you out like a garden slug.” You serve the wrong drink to the wrong customer at work, in this case a margarita with salt, and you find out new and interesting ways to kill certain species. That unfortunate vyodanoi had ended up a river of ooze down the unisex/species bathroom drain at the Ninth Circle. I had no problem doing the same to Boris if I thought he was holding shit back.
Niko tried a less homicidal approach. “We know you like to talk, Boris. So simply talk. That’s all we want.”
“No one knows where Jack hides.” He drank and waited until we followed suit. “The revenants in the sewers have not seen him. The Kin in their warehouses have not seen him. Boggle in her forest has not seen him. Vampires with their love of high places and fancy penthouses have not seen him. We vyodanoi in the rivers have not seen him. We see the bodies he leaves but we do not see him. Jack is paien but he refutes his own kind. Never have I heard of him associating with any of us.”
“Great. Even paien serial killers have to be the stereotypical loner. He’s probably a white male between his late twenties and early thirties too with a dislike of government authority,” I groused. All three of us drank this time. “Do you at least know what type of paien he is? Goodfellow, you know Goodfellow. He’s the puck who stole your wallet two weeks ago. He said Jack fits the description of a storm spirit.”
“But all well-known and strong storm spirits are accounted for elsewhere,” Niko said. “And Jack would have to be strong from what we’ve seen.”
“And experienced,” I added glumly.
Boris waited until more vodka had been poured and consumed. I’d lost count how many shots we were on. . five. . six maybe. . all in less than twenty or so minutes. I was starting to feel like Boris was a good guy. He might not know shit and he ate people, but were any of us perfect? I shouldn’t have threatened to salt him. That was rude. Funny, too, the way the other one had melted like the witch in The Wizard of Oz, which I’ve never seen and did not have a horrific fear of flying monkeys until I was ten no matter what Nik said.
Now. . what were we talking about again?
I was either leaning heavily against Nik or he was leaning heavily against me. I didn’t drink a lot, but I did drink some. With Niko’s body-temple philosophy his tolerance would be zero. I was surprised he wasn’t facedown in the mud. Mind over matter. Mind over alcohol. Figured.
“The river has been turbulent. They do that when storm spirits are around. It is possible, but I cannot say for certain.” Boris’s whistle was getting sluggish, and as he bathed in vodka I knew it wasn’t from overdoing in the drinking department. “The morning is here. Time for me to sleep at the river bottom. Wrapped in the mud. Peaceful. Would you like to see?” The line drawing of a human face was inches from mine, the large sucker mouthing hungrily at the air. It was so abrupt and fast that with half my blood replaced by vodka it was practically a 3-D special effect out of a slasher movie-aimed to surprise and terrify.
Which was what Boris was shooting for: terrifying. I fell over backward to get space between me and that round mass of pulsing blood-hungry flesh. Leeches. . I wasn’t terrified as Boris had hoped, but I was disgusted to the power of ten. “Why do all our informants try to kill us? Is it my breath? I was liking you, too, Boris. I really was. You’re a good customer. Great tipper. Still a homicidal fiend though,” I slurred. “Salt the son of a bitch, Nik.”
Whatever his tolerance, he made with the salt like Paula Deen in her prediabetic days. Seconds later I was wearing what was left of Boris with no convenient bathroom drain for this vyodanoi to slime his way down this time.
“Come on,” I groaned. “Zombie funk and now this?” I lifted both arms and Boris in the form of a half-gelatinous, half-liquid form cascaded off me onto the ground. “Seriously, Nik, if it’s my breath, that’s something I’d want to know.” I closed my eyes and the world began spinning in a way I’d been unfortunately familiar with a time or two in the past. “I’d puke but I already am puke. Salty puke.”
“It’s not your breath.” Nik stood, unsteady but only if you knew to look for it. He reached down and pulled me up. “You use that idiotic kid’s toothpaste. Your breath smells like mint-chocolate. . and onion chili-cheese dogs with mustard. . and Mountain Dew. All right, it might be your breath. But more likely it’s that we have tended to kill their friends or
relatives-and perhaps neighbors, pets, babysitters in the past.”
“They hold grudges. . like bitchy little girls.” I swayed but managed to stay upright.
“They hold grudges like murderous creatures who would eat us on the best of days.” Niko raised a hand as if he was going to try to wipe away some of the goo that covered me, but then pulled his hand back. “You are a lost cause.” Then he slid behind me, put a boot in my ass, and shoved me headfirst into the river.
Sputtering, I climbed back out of the water. “I don’t like you drunk. You do hurtful things you can’t take back. PSA from me to you.” I was clean of slime, but not necessarily smelling much better. The East River wasn’t a mountain spring, although the mob-the human mob-had stopped dumping bodies there years ago.
“I would’ve done that sober,” Nik said placidly.
“True. You suck.” I shook water off in the tried-and-true dog method and managed to splatter him in the process.
“So you have told me many times. Many, many, many. . enough that I am considering buying duct tape for your mouth. . times.”
“You would be the one person, Nik, who doesn’t change at all when drunk.” I snorted and flung off more water. “I was hoping you’d loosen up and do some crazy shit. Crazy for you anyway-like try to trim Ishiah’s wings into those creepy topiary shapes from The Shining if he was around. Or whip up some soy pina coladas-but, you know, manly pina coladas, then sit on me and force me to watch a Kung Fu marathon. But, nope. You’re the same.”
“And you excel at pointing out the obvious. Let’s go. We learned nothing we didn’t already know, that he might be a storm spirit, but no one knows for certain. I’m annoyed. Plus I imagine I’m going to have a hangover. I’d rather have it in my bed than facedown on the grass.”
That I agreed with. It wouldn’t do to leave the vodka bottles for whoever wanted to risk the vyodanoi slime for them. The homeless wouldn’t be a problem. Some overly curious biologist who’d never seen slime of that particular consistency and color before so let’s get that puppy under a microscope would be. I picked up a bottle in each hand and we turned to start slogging home through the park. The sky was now the color of snow melting into a sewer drain. It didn’t bode well for blue skies and a sunny day. That was good. Sunny days were hell on a hangover.
Minutes later Niko took my arm. “Stop.”
I knew that tone even in this state. I dropped the vodka and had a hand inside my jacket and resting on the butt of my Desert Eagle almost before the bottles hit the ground. There was a time I wouldn’t have carried something in both hands; I always kept a hand free. When I was a little more human, a little less Auphe, and a lot less arrogant.
Maybe a little less drunk too.
My eyes narrowed. Not against the sun, which was practically nonexistent, but against two pieces of knowledge. The first being the uneasy fact I was going to have to come clean with Nik about what had happened at the Ninth Circle. The second being that I might have fucked up. It wasn’t guaranteed, but it was enough to cut through the haze of alcohol blurring my vision with a spike of adrenaline. What were the odds of a paien obsessed with punishing the wicked and a bunch of humans talking about prayer and Heaven with knives in their hands and death in their hearts?
I’d sent eight of them out of this world three nights ago, if only temporarily, and now here were ten more to replace them. That made me question that “temporarily” issue with the others. They were the same as the others. Once-white hoodies, the smell of homelessness but not the smell of drugs or alcohol, fairly young, and each one with a knife that glittered as brightly as the judgment in their eyes.
They stood between us and the edge of the park and how did they know that’s where we’d be? A storm spirit that could appear and disappear at will would be good at following its targets, high enough not to be seen or smelled. Shit. I had fucked up. No way around it. But why would Jack have a human posse at his heels when a human was only another wicked scrap of flesh to be squirreled away and drooled over later? If there was logic in that, I wasn’t seeing it.
One of the men, this one with dirty brown dreads, stepped closer. “Have you prayed? Have you prayed to Heaven to be lifted up?” He was staring at Niko, who had set his feet and looked much steadier than he had moments ago-definitely mind over matter. The man’s question as earnest as it could be when framed by psychotic eyes and a knife.
Luckily there was no one in this part of the park this early-barely dawn. “What about me?” I drawled. “Isn’t Heaven concerned about me?”. . anymore.
That brought the attention of ten pair of eyes to me. The leader of this Eat, Pray, Kill club answered. “Heaven cannot hear your prayers, Godless creature. You are a blot on the earth.”
Apparently once Jack had found out about the Auphe in me he had spread the good word. Heaven didn’t want me, loathed my very existence, and I’d thought it had sucked to be picked last at dodgeball.
They were connected all right. Yep, I’d fucked up. Fucked up bad.
Now they were moving toward us. It seemed they’d happily stab Niko and sing a hymn or two as his soul was lifted up unto Heaven, but they’d also just as happily kill me and where my soul went, they didn’t give a crap. As I wasn’t sure I had a soul or that souls existed at all, I didn’t much give a crap myself, but I would like to stay alive-screw the philosophical debate.
I pulled the Eagle and aimed it at the one in front. My hand wasn’t as steady as I’d like, but at least I didn’t have double vision. “Okay, Nik, time for a little guidance. They’re killers, but they could be insane so technically it might not be their fault. This is one of those gray areas where someone with a better handle on morality should call the shots. My decision might be extreme.” I’d already proven that once before. “Do we kill them or not?”
I personally thought that if they were crazy, it wasn’t a kind of crazy you could fix. It was a kind of crazy they had chosen. They’d picked up knives instead of pamphlets. If they had chosen Jack on top of the rest of it, hell, there was no pill for that. Also, I didn’t like being stabbed. It was one of my least favorite injuries. Avoiding that would be good.
“No killing.” Niko had his sword out. “Even impaired, you’re more than good enough to take them down without necessarily killing all of them.”
It wasn’t what I wanted to hear, but it was what I expected. Unless one of them got very lucky there was still more than enough distance to do as Nik wanted. The same hadn’t necessarily been true at the Ninth Circle, but, then again, whose fault had that been?
“You will not touch us. We are sanctified, soon to be apprentices. You took once, but you will not be allowed to take again,” said the one still striding toward us.
Yeah. . that sounded good. But he was wrong. The crazies usually are. I liked that dependable quality in them.
I started firing. I was a good shot. I practiced daily and had since I was sixteen. That made a thigh shot easy enough and hopefully shatter the bone. They might walk after that, but they wouldn’t ever run again, with or without a knife. If I hadn’t been trading shots of vodka with Boris, I would’ve done that. But it was too risky now. If a single shot went astray, went past one of them, someone two blocks away could die while talking on their cell phone. Not good. I aimed for the good old center mass as they taught you first day on the gun range. The first three fell before the others realized what was happening and dissolved into a small charging mob. They had guts, crazy or not, and if Niko had thought they were more of a threat their guts would’ve been on the grass. As it was, he had ample time to flank them and hamstring four of them. That left one turning on him and two still coming at me. I shot them both in the stomach. Depending on the speed of the ambulances and the skill of the surgeons, some of them could survive. I’d made the effort. It was the best I could do.
Niko had grabbed the hair of one he’d put down either about to ask what cult he belonged to or to give him tips on how to better grip his knife while attackin
g, but the scream of approaching sirens put an end to that. I grabbed one of the bottles of vodka and tossed it to him and carried the last myself as we ran. I’d never been fingerprinted. Nothing would show up, but neither did I want my fingerprints on file as unknown assailant in a homeless Hibachi practice gone horribly wrong.
We were halfway home when Niko finally said what I wasn’t jumping to volunteer. “I don’t think that was any sort of coincidence, do you?”
I thought about opening the vodka, thought long and hard never mind my head was already aching, before admitting, “I think it’s the second noncoincidence to happen to me this week.”
12
Niko
Twelve Years Ago
Coincidence, I wasn’t a big believer. . philosophically or practically.
The books I’d started reading on men and women throughout history and their thoughts on the universe, the ones I was drawn to the most told me coincidence was my mind glimpsing a truth I didn’t understand.
There were more coincidences around Junior than I cared for.
But a serial killer next door-it would be ridiculous overkill on the universe’s part with all the rest we had in our lives. How could someone believe that? What I meant, of course, was how could I believe that?
I decided what I found in the library at the end of the day would make up my mind for me. If I found something about a missing prostitute, unlikely, Cal and I would leave. If I found nothing, I’d tell Cal he was wrong, to stay out of Junior’s backyard, and we’d get on with our lives-as weird and strange as those lives were.
The decision should’ve made me feel better, but the back of my neck itched as I continued with the test on my desk. Miss Holcomb, the psychology teacher, hovered over my shoulder watching for a few minutes although I always scored As and never needed help. Some teachers took their jobs very seriously and sometimes. . I sighed and finished up.
With each period and through lunch the itch grew worse until finally it was sixth period and time for study hall and the library. I liked school. I always had. I liked any and all subjects. I liked reading ahead as the classes were too slow. That didn’t change when I skipped a grade. But while I liked schools I was obsessed with libraries. I could spend an entire day in a real library. I’d not been to a school with what I considered a genuine library yet, but some towns we lived in were college towns and college libraries were amazing enough that I thought living in one would be better than any place else I could imagine. Cal thought I was crazy. He, naturally, wanted to live in the volcano lair of a supervillain. He considered superheroes too mopey and whiny with highly substandard costumes. He was so heated on the subject that when I pictured myself in college in a few years and Cal living with me, the mental image was always in a volcano with black capes everywhere and thousands of bookshelves, before the image morphed into your average student apartment.
