by Rob Thurman
Both of the heads had zeroed in on me now, and I made a mental note to kick myself later on for not wondering how Cerberus had gotten his name. The three-headed dog guarding the gates of hell . . . this Cerberus had only the two heads, but, hey, who was I to bitch? Humans produced conjoined twins on occasion and so did the animal kingdom, but I’d never heard of the wolf community producing any. As I’d thought to myself earlier, weakness was not tolerated in lycanthropic society, and as a rule a wolf like Cerberus should’ve been promptly killed at birth with one swipe of its mother’s jaws. How these two had survived was a mystery, a damn unnerving one. There had to be a name for that type of conjoining. Niko would know it . . . if he were here. One heavily built body, two sleek heads with identical vulpine faces, short black hair slicked back into an impenetrable pelt over well-shaped skulls—that was the human form of Cerberus. I wasn’t looking forward to seeing the wolfen version. Unlike Snowball, Cerberus was of the old breeding; he could choose to be either wolf or human.
The twins wore a suit in charcoal gray, expensive even to my untrained eye, and, beneath that, an ebony-colored shirt with two mandarin-style collars. It must have been a bitch to accommodate the unnaturally broad shoulders and bifurcated spinal column, but the unknown tailor had risen to the challenge. Thick but immaculately manicured nails tapped the desktop in a vaguely familiar rhythm. Then it hit me. Peter and the Wolf. Jesus, this guy was something else. “Bad breeding indeed.” Identical broad noses flared to gather my scent. “A foul, disgusting joining.”
The one to the right had spoken first and then the one on the left. I realized I was going to have to either designate them as Cerberus One and Cerberus Two in my head or simply go with the flow and think of them as one creature, as Cerberus seemed to think of himself.
“Foul and disgusting,” I drawled, slouching down farther and crossing my ankles. “That’s me. But I’m also loyal, if the money’s right. I can take care of myself, not to mention pretty much anything else that crosses my path.” The grin I flashed this time wasn’t bitter, but it was still dark . . . dark and gleeful. And then I gave him the cherry on top. “And I’m mean.”
In wolf terms that meant one thing. I played with my food. It was a trait with which any of the Kin would find favor—because, after all, killing is business. But torture? That’s art.
“Ah, is that so?” The nails stopped tapping, fingers stilled. The eyes took in the stitches that showed on my wrist, peeking from beneath the sleeve of my jacket. “Boaz.”
“A bad poker player,” I snorted. “And a worse loser.” He was bound to have heard of the Boaz incident and not just from Flay. I only hoped the fight had been wild enough to make the details less than clear. Promise, as she wasn’t here to kick my ass, I could pass off as a lover or an employer. Niko, however . . .
“He plays less now that he rots in a Jersey pet cemetery.” There were identical cold grins, and then a less-than-casual “I hear there was a human there who did damage as well. Blond, with a sword.” The head on the right was still with me. The one on the left had let his grin disappear and his eyelids fall to a brooding half-mast, but still kept his gaze fixed on me. Fixed on me hard.
“Yeah.” I gave a light sneer. “I figured he was a bouncer.” Cerberus had only to check to know that wasn’t true, but even if he did, I hadn’t said Niko was the bouncer . . . only that I thought he was. Facing my prospective new employer, I’d take uninformed and not particularly bright over the label of liar any day. “A puck will hire anything. But to give credit where it’s due, he was tough.” My sneer deepened. “For a human.”
“For a sheep,” came the correction. The massive body shifted, only slightly, but it still displaced the air like an avalanche. There was an innate sense of power about Cerberus, more natural than supernatural. A force of nature—tornado, hurricane, earthquake—it could be more destructive than any monster. I could see Flay’s motivation to betray him. With this holding your leash, how could you fail to be chronically pissed? No doubt Cerberus didn’t react to failure well. Hell, a bad hair day probably resulted in bodies far and wide. Flay wasn’t the quickest, wasn’t the smartest. He had to screw up on occasion. And he was bound to pay the price. Maybe it wasn’t money he wanted for his betrayal—maybe it was simply revenge. But whatever Flay’s reasoning, he had gotten me an audience with Cerberus. Now it was my job to make it work.
“For a sheep,” I agreed lazily.
“You’re half-sheep as well.” A knuckle, thick and large, rapped the satin surface of his desk once. Immediately the succubus abandoned her couch and nail file to slink over. And a very definite slink it was. It wasn’t all sexual (although certainly that was a big portion of it). It was partly the snake genes. Succubi couldn’t walk without a wiggle even if they wanted to. She moved behind Cerberus and began a slow massage, paying equal attention to both necks. Not stopping there, she used a forked black tongue to caress the curve of each ear. Considering my own genetic makeup, I didn’t have a lot of room to talk, but that didn’t stop an inner “gah” and shudder.
I tried to ignore the Wild Kingdom mating bleeps and blunders before my eyes and tilted my head slightly. “Yeah, Mom. What a woman. There wasn’t a dick that wasn’t her friend, demonic or not.” Of course that wasn’t precisely true. Sophia had done it for the money, but now was not the time to be splitting hairs.
“Human or Auphe. Hard to determine which is more objectionable.” Both heads exhaled and then said together with distaste, “Human.”
To them it was probably true. Auphe had been feared and loathed, but they were still reluctantly respected. Humans, though . . . what was there to respect about them? From a Kin point of view, absolutely nothing. “And what happened to your slut of a sheep mother—”
“Who fornicated above her station?”
I smiled. It was a happy smile. Pure, honest, and satisfied.
“I ate her.”
Of course, I hadn’t actually eaten Sophia, but I couldn’t help thinking she would’ve fit in here better than I did. Flay was introducing me to creatures with no conscience and a leg-humping rampant sexuality, and that was Sophia all over. The process of introduction wasn’t exactly painless, but I wasn’t sure who was more put out by it: my new co-workers or me.
Needless to say, I wasn’t enjoying it. But I had to pretend that I was. The story went that Flay had known someone who had known someone who was the cousin of someone who’d been at the bar when the poker game went down. Or the equivalent of it. And that’s how he’d come to make my unparalleled acquaintance. It was weak, but it made more sense than that he had tracked down the presumed Boaz slayer on his own initiative. Anyone who’d met Snowball would know that was damn unlikely. So, for now, Flay and I were buds, pals . . . probably borrowed each other’s flea collar on a regular basis. Until I could kill him, that’s the way it would have to be.
Cerberus had his office in a converted warehouse on Watts Street. I didn’t know why he needed all that space, but at least it wasn’t quite as clichéd as setting up shop in a bar or strip club. While his office was an oasis of all that was rich and decadent, the rest of the place was typical. Concrete floor, high unfinished ceiling, the smell of sawdust and mold, puddles of suspicious fluids . . . I glared at Flay and shook my foot. Droplets flew through the air and I gave an annoyed hiss at the ammonia stench. “You walk upright, most of the time, and you fur balls aren’t even house-trained? Jesus.”
Flay bared his teeth at me. It could’ve been a grin, could’ve been a threat; it was hard to say. It was also hard to care either way. “Fenrik. Jaffer. Lijah. Mishka.”
It seemed that Snowball, brain cell diminished or not, was as good at ignoring me as vice versa. He coughed up the names as if I hadn’t just shaken stale piss on his leg. The four wolves they belonged to stared at me as if I’d fallen from the sky. White-eyed, lips stretched to nothing, and claws shredding the cardboard cards they held . . . they had me amending the thought. They stared at me as though I’d
fallen from the sky to rape their women, turn their children into beer cozies, and try to sell them life insurance.
I grinned with faithless and malevolent cheer, then sketched a casual wave. “Hey, fellas, I’m the new guy. Bet you didn’t smell that coming.”
In the silence, a string of saliva dripped from one foreshortened muzzle to pool on the crate that doubled as a makeshift table.
“What? No fruit basket?” I leaned down and picked up a card, bending it back and forth between my fingers. “Poker again. You pups really have a thing for the game, don’t you?”
“Auphe.” It was the one that Flay had designated as Lijah that spoke. Jaffer, of the unhappily wet muzzle, simply continued to stare and drool.
“Really? Where?” I looked over my shoulder. Turning back, I rocked on my heels and folded my arms. “Oh, you mean me? Hardly. Half-Auphe at best. Maybe a hint in my profile.” I tilted my head to give them the full effect. “Or in my sparkling personality.”
“Definitely the humor of an Auphe,” grunted Fenrik, a short but impressively squat wolf. “Funny as an infected anal gland.” He took a handful of Jaffer’s shaggy hair and shook the head without mercy. Clumps of fur flew. “You’re a wolf, you neutered bastard. Act like one.”
Jaffer cowered under the treatment and hastily wiped his mouth with a hairy arm. Fire engine red, the pelt sprang up in tufts from his arms and beneath the collar of his Yankees sweatshirt. The hair on his head he kept cut to about an inch in length, but it stood straight up. It looked like a brush fire was racing across his skull. His eyes were round and yellow and his face a furred expanse of muzzle and wet nose. Jaffer didn’t go out much, I was guessing. For all intents and purposes he was an upright wolf with a buzz cut. There was no way he could pass. Not at night, not among the drunkest of humans. I felt an unwilling tug of sympathy for him. The rest of us monsters in the room could. I could fool any human. And Flay, Fenrik, Lijah, and Mishka, while not completely normal, could walk the streets with no more than a few curious glances. Actually Fenrik appeared nearly as human as I did except for his eyes. Almost white, the silver blue was the same color as a husky’s eyes. His hair nearly matched. Despite that, he wasn’t old, late thirties maybe. When he looked at me, I thought I saw a glitter of interest behind the repugnance. He might not love the Auphe, but he was curious to see one close-up . . . even the bastardized shadow of one. Fenrik would bear watching. He was smarter than the others.
Mishka had to be related to Jaffer. His hair was a lesser red, more of a dull copper, and his muzzle was really just a pronounced overbite, the nose human. His eyes were a green-and-gold hazel. Lijah was more greyhound than wolf. Whipcord lean, he had a sleek fall of brindled hair. Black flecked with gold and brown, it fell loose past his shoulders. It did a good job of concealing a pair of pointed ears and a jawline far too narrow for any distant relative of a primate.
All in all, a motley crew, and except for Jaffer, they all had an air of ruthless competence. They possessed a tautness, an invisible twitch under the skin that spoke of readiness and an aggressiveness stronger than a starving shark’s. Some wolves loved the chase. Loved the taste of blood on the run. These guys definitely fell in the kill-to-run, run-to-kill category. Whatever the Kin might think of Cerberus, he wasn’t a fool when it came to his boys. Even Flay. Snowball might be a betrayer and unlikely to follow in Einstein’s foot-steps, but he was tough. Resilient.
At the continuing silence, I moved over to shove Jaffer out of his chair. Fenrik was the obvious Alpha of this little group and Jaffer just as obviously low wolf on the totem pole. I wasn’t about to take his place. The red wolf showed his teeth, oddly enough utterly human, but ducked and scuttled his way to one side. “Since I’m not much on butt sniffing as an introduction, why don’t we play a hand?” I scooped up the cards and gave them a casual shuffle. “I guarantee you’ll get next month’s dip-and-groom money off of me. I suck.”
Fenrik’s pale eyes dilated and he changed. One second a man, the next a wolf. There was only a blur before my eyes, so quick that if I’d blinked, I would’ve missed it. Boaz had been fast, a trait of the old breeding, but this guy . . . he was quicker. I felt like applauding, so what the hell. I did. Three short claps. “Goddamn,” I said. “I didn’t even have to buy a ticket for the magic show. Is there popcorn? Can I buy a T-shirt when it’s over?”
Two massive paws rested on the crate and black lips peeled back silently. It was shaping up to be Boaz all over again, except this time I was without Promise at my back or Niko busting down the door. And those were not good things to be without, trust me. Reaching under my jacket, I pulled out my shiny new gun. Flay had given it back to me after Cerberus had agreed to take me under his motherly wing. A thing of beauty, it was, and only slightly smaller than an anti-aircraft gun. I’d learned my lesson with Boaz and his boys, and I wanted stopping power this time. With stainless steel, a black rubber grip, and a futuristic barrel over ten inches long, the .50 Magnum was most often being used in big-game hunting. If these guys didn’t count as big game, then I didn’t know what did. It weighed more than your average five-year-old kid and I plunked it down with force on the crate between Fenrik and me. “You’re making me cranky, Lassie,” I said amiably. “Timmy might put up with your shit, but I won’t.”
The silent snarl turned into a buzz-saw rumble that ripped the air to shreds. Apparently Lassie wasn’t particularly appreciative of my shit either. Then an unlikely peacemaker stepped in. Red eyes annoyed, Flay moved up to the crate, took a handful of silver fur and another of my jacket collar, and then shook us both—much as Fenrik had shaken Jaffer. “Work for Cerberus.” He gave us another shake. “All work for Cerberus.” Letting go, he took my gun and shoved it back against my chest and then pushed Fenrik’s furry ass back down on his chair. “Stupid. Cerberus eat both. Stupid.” He folded his arms and shook his head with disgust. “Shitheads.”
I stood corrected. There was an Alpha, but it wasn’t Fenrik after all. It was Flay. Flay of the sloping forehead, garbled speech, and self-proclaimed low IQ. I didn’t know what the hell I thought about that. I re-holstered my gun and reconsidered the situation at hand. “What the hell. Getting eaten on my first day isn’t really a sound career plan anyway. Truce, Lassie?”
A naked Fenrik materialized out of the mass of wolf and stared at me with narrowed eyes. He might be interested in me, but it didn’t mean he liked me. Who knew? Maybe that interest was more oriented on how a half Auphe would taste as opposed to simply seeing one in living color. As for his not liking me, that I was used to. If the situation were reversed, I probably wouldn’t like me either.
“Truce.” Fenrik ground out the reluctant word and started to dress. “I don’t question the judgment of Cerberus. Not even in this.”
“That’s big of you.” Smart as well. Cerberus didn’t strike me as the kind to tolerate dissent in his ranks. At the ruby gleam aimed my way, I sighed and shifted my shoulders. “How about lunch on the new guy? Pizza. Steak. You guys name it. I’m buying.”
I’d been working since I was sixteen, when we’d first gone on the run. Mostly in hole-in-the-wall bars, places that didn’t care if you disappeared one day. Places that paid you under the table and didn’t give a shit if you had ID or not. If I’d learned one thing there, it was that the way to coworker harmony was through food. And alcohol. Lots and lots of alcohol. I might not drink much of it, but I could fork over the money for it. “And I’ll buy the first pitcher,” I added. “Anyone got a bag to put over Jaffer’s head?”
Steak it was—naturally. About four cows’ worth. Below Fourteenth Street, the restaurant was medium-sized, dark as a cave, and fairly cheap. Of course, fairly cheap multiplied by five wolves was sure to empty the deepest wallet. There were porterhouse steaks all around, potatoes smothered in butter, sour cream, and cheese, and a pitcher of beer per wolf. Just breathing the air around us would harden your arteries, an exercise in secondhand cholesterol at its best. I chewed my own steak, rare—it wouldn’t
do to look like a predator puny enough to like his meat well-done. Who would buy that? The mouthful, harsh with the tang of blood, stuck in the back of my throat as I caught a glimpse of red in the gloom. A slim figure and copper hair, but the skin was creamy pale and the hair a short, straight cap. Not George. The pretty waitress saw me watching her and smiled a bit hesitantly. Considering the friends I was keeping, I didn’t blame her.
I ducked my head, breaking the contact, and grimly continued with my meal. I was Auphe. The Auphe were ravenous in their appetites . . . all of their appetites. If I hoped to stay under Cerberus long enough to find what I was looking for, I would have to keep up with the boys. And right now the boys were making their way through slabs of meat with the speed and finesse of tree shredders. I stabbed another barely browned chunk with my fork, chewed, and chased it down with a swallow of beer. That was the one thing I held back on. As much as I needed to blend in, I couldn’t afford to get drunk. I doubted I’d get loose of lip and jump up on the table to do a happy jig while singing the joys of being a spy. But it would slow my reflexes, not to mention any pretension at wits I might have. So I stuffed myself with steak and occasionally took a small sip of the beer.
It should’ve been noticed. Would’ve been, in fact, if Flay hadn’t been helping himself to my glass on the sly. His tolerance was fine. The table was good-sized, but there were six of us with enough food for five buffets. It made for an impossible jumble of dishware. Since Flay was sitting beside me he could drain my glass without suspicion. And he did so, frequently. I slanted a sideways glance at him. No one had much faith in his intellectual skills . . . Caleb, Cerberus, even Flay himself, but I wondered. Did he maximize the minimal amount he had to work with? Or was it low self-esteem because of his wolf-scorned albinism?
