“They eat muggers and sometimes joggers who stray from the common paths. Don’t feel too bad for them,” my companion suggested.
I ignored my brother. Goodfellow and the vampire had dropped us off in the limo at the park’s south entrance, and now I saw why. While they were sipping champagne and headed to an after-hours party, I was again smacking the claws of the boglet above me. “No. Bad boy. Bad. Behave or you’ll get a time-out.” They ate muggers and joggers. I didn’t have a problem with that. Muggers were rotten people and joggers who came this far out in the name of exercise had to be insane. Getting eaten was the best thing for them. It had to save a fortune in psych meds. As for the all-monsters-are-evil twitch, I told myself that it didn’t apply to baby monsters, and it grumbled but shut up. I was a softy for kids. Who knew?
“Boggle.” Leandros had walked forward, his sword in hand. “Ammut has come to the city. Do you know of Ammut?”
“No. No Ammut. I care not for strangers or the city. I care for home only,” she said, holding up one particularly large pearl before a large harvest moon eye, “and for my trinkets.” There was a rough, chain saw buzz in the air. She was purring … if boggles purred.
“Then you haven’t been attacked by Nepenthe spiders in the past two weeks.”
I turned my head to watch the exchange and felt a tongue lick the top of my head. “I am not kidding,” I warned the boglet, without taking my eyes from Leandros and Boggle. “Don’t make me shoot off the end of your tail. The other kids will make fun of you.”
“Spiders,” she said, the purr disappearing. “Disgusting pests. Boring vermin.” Letting the pearl fall back to lie with the others, she rammed her hand down into the mud up to her elbow joint. Pulling back, she yanked free a black articulated leg more than three feet long. I recognized it, from the beach and from a motel bathroom. It was the leg of a Nepenthe spider. “Many came, all died, but they are not good for eating. They smell unclean.” She threw the leg over her hulking shoulder. “They scuttled, full of poison. We did what you do with such things.”
“You squashed them,” I said.
Her grin, twice the size and voraciousness of her offspring, gleamed. “It was good hunting practice for my children. They could not eat them, but they could kill them. Yes, we squashed them and will do the same to any more that come here.”
“And Ammut?” Leandros asked.
“I do not know Ammut.” It was the same as she’d said before, which made her finished with our conversation. As she played with her pearls, the other boglets moved closer to us. They were up for another practice hunt if we didn’t move it.
“Where is it?” asked the boglet above me, its rumble a lighter reflection of its mother’s. “The Auphe in you, it is all but gone. You taste weak.” Again with the weak. Did I need to start pumping iron?
Leandros’s hand was on my arm. “We are done here. Let’s go before they try to store our limbs in the mud with that of the spiders.”
I let myself be moved along. “What did it say? Where did my ‘off’ go? My ‘off-fey?’ What—” My mouth shut abruptly, my teeth snapping together and barely missing the tip of my tongue, as Leandros gave me a particularly brisk yank that had me running to keep up. It was a good idea since the boglets had decided they might be in the mood after all whether we moved our asses or not. I put the gun away and drew one of my knives. Little monsters. Little seven-foot-tall monsters. Underage monsters then. It didn’t matter how big they were, only that killing them would be the equivalent of doing in a ‘tween, which would be wrong, no matter how annoying they were—baby monsters and ‘tweens.
One boglet raced up beside me as we hit another clearing. They could walk upright or go on all fours, and their speed setting was on all fours. I’d watched some TV last night while trying to readjust or remember home. Nothing good had been on—there was no porn channel—but I had caught some animal special. It would’ve been difficult to not catch as Leandros had tripped me when I’d tried to walk away—the several times that I’d tried to walk away. He had a move for everything. That meant that against my will, and I had a feeling it wasn’t the first thing he’d made me do against my will, I’d watched a show about Komodo dragons.
A Komodo could run a man to the ground in seconds. Seconds. These guys must’ve used that special as an exercise tape.
I saw the tooth-crammed grin, the light of the eyes, and the claws of one large hand slashing out to gut me. I dropped flat instantly. That boglet tried to stop, dirt and dead grass flying as he dug in, and the one behind me ran over the top of me and kept going. He was a dog chasing a ball that his master had only pretended to throw. He was the slow one in his class, but he seemed happy. Let him run to China and back if it kept him that way.
The one who’d made a try for me did manage to stop, flip head for tail, and lunge back at me where I lay on my stomach. I was up in a fraction of a second and his stopping skills improved as the surface of his luminous eye came to rest against the point of my knife. I could feel the slight give under the tip. A sixteenth of an inch and it would puncture, and that wouldn’t make his mama proud of his hunting skills at all.
“Weak?” I leaned in until my own grin made a clinking sound as it touched his. Teeth to teeth. Hunter to hunter. “I taste weak?” I heard hisses and growls from behind me. I reminded myself—baby monsters, emphasis on baby. No matter what my hand wanted to do, it was going to listen to me. “Kids. You’re so cute. I don’t have to want to kill you. To kill you I only have to be better than you.” The fetid breath mixed with mine, but his eyes were gleaming now, from pained moisture. “Junior, I’m better than you. Go home to Mommy.”
He thumped his tail against the ground. I was concentrating on his eyes and the intent smoldering there, but I heard the sound. It was a signal. The rapacious snapping and rumbling from behind went silent. “You are not weak. We will go.” He gave a cautiously sinuous step back away from my blade and I let him. The scaly lids blinked to take away the pain. As tough as they were, if I’d scratched his cornea I’d have been surprised. I’d been careful, but I’d been ready. If I’d had to jam the blade through his eye into his brain, I would have, but teenagers do stupid shit all the time. Giving him the chance to think it out and make the smart choice was the right thing to do. When he was a full-grown monster, then I’d hold him accountable for his decision-making skills and take him out without a second thought. Until that happened, I’d make like a social worker.
Slithering past me, he and his brothers and sisters ran, disappearing into the trees. I turned my attention to Leandros, who had a boglet on the ground, one foot on the grass, one on the muddy throat, and his sword embedded a few inches into flesh over where I guessed a boggle might carry its heart. “Jesus, Leandros, you’re not going to kill it, are you? It probably has a date for monster homecoming later. Cut it some slack.”
“I hadn’t planned on killing it as that would annoy Mama Boggle. She’s fond of her children. I was merely keeping it from killing me while I kept an eye on you.” He stepped back, removing his foot and his sword. The boglet gave a growl before following the rest of its litter, exhibiting a definitely dejected slink to his lope. “Killing a boglet would bring Boggle and the rest of them on us. That we might not be able to handle. Boggle on her own is more deadly than all her children combined.”
“Good point,” I granted. “She looked badass, but I didn’t know she was that badass.”
“I told you on the way over… . Never mind. Why do I try?” He turned his eyes up to the sky, searching for the answer or peace. I looked up too. I didn’t see either one. “Amnesia or not,” he started again, sheathing his sword, “your attention span hasn’t changed. If you didn’t kill your boglet because of the mother, then why didn’t you?”
I started walking beside him when he began moving. “It was a kid. Killing a kid, even a monster kid, you shouldn’t do that.” Because death was forever and blackbirds fell from the sky. If you had an opportunity to spare one, if on
ly for a little while, you should.
“That’s true, although you normally would’ve taunted the boglet more. You do enjoy a good insult.”
“I insulted,” I protested, my breath a frozen fog as a mix of fallen leaves and dead grass crunched under my feet. “I didn’t spend all night doing it, but I’m freezing my ass off out here. And what did that thing mean when it was talking about my being weak? About off? My being off or not having off. Something. What was he talking about?”
“Face it, little brother,” he answered, walking faster, despite not having complained about the cold once. “Even to boggles, your humor has always been a little off.”
We didn’t go home after Central Park and, when I asked where we were going, Leandros answered to do something worse than play hide-and-seek with mud-loving homicidal alligators.
“What could be worse? Saddling them up and riding them like broncos in some bizarre supernatural rodeo? I’m sure Goodfellow has a few assless chaps he could lend us.”
“Smart-ass.” Leandros snorted as we reached the edge of the park and he hailed a taxi. “That certainly didn’t disappear with your memory.”
“Worse things than being a smart-ass,” I grumbled.
“Far worse,” he agreed. “So be prepared, because we’re going to see one of those far worse things.”
“Which is?” I asked.
“Our annoyed clients.”
The building was close to Central Park but on the opposite side, making me glad for the taxi. I’d run enough today. The limo was long gone. Promise and Goodfellow had better things to do. Lucky them. I’d asked Leandros if he wasn’t worried about Promise becoming an Ammut snack—Goodfellow had someone else to bunk with; I wasn’t sure Moses would approve, but not my business. Regarding Promise, Leandros had said she was staying with several vampires; there was safety in numbers. Normally she would’ve stayed with us or vice versa, but he was afraid I’d have a glitch of die-monster-die and try to stab her with a kitchen knife if she reached past me for a breakfast bagel.
Inside, we made the grade past the doorman, just barely, considering all the mud we were streaked with, and not exactly fragrant mud either. We stank. The security desk had our names and had us sign in. Leandros signed Sun Tzu. I didn’t ask. I was learning to bob and weave those lectures. I signed Captain Hook. Unlike me, he did ask.
I’d turned toward the elevators and got a lecture anyway. You should never take an elevator. Elevators were death traps—metal boxes that turned into untelevised caged death matches when something slithered in there with you and tried to tear you apart. And if you survived, you still had to walk out wearing monster guts from head to toe. It was not a good look from security’s point of view. Leandros all but smacked my hand as if I were a two-year-old reaching for a hot stove when I aimed a finger for the UP button.
On the stairs Leandros asked, “Why Captain Hook? It’s not one of your usual fake names. Did you forget?”
Nope, I did remember those from my fake IDs in South Carolina. Nightmare on Elm Street, Friday the Thirteenth, and Halloween. Movie villains R us or R me. I started climbing. “No, I remember those. I was thinking about Nevah’s Landing. You said you told me the story Peter Pan there when I was a kid, right? I was kind of picturing my memories chasing me like that albino crocodile with the ticking clock chased Hook.” I remembered it as well as the blackbird, if not more. Creepy damn thing.
“Albino?”
We passed the third floor. “Yeah, the one that ate Hook’s hand. Albino. Big white crocodile with red eyes. It would sneak up and whisper in your ear. Spooky as hell. That’s a damn scary story to be telling a kid by the way, Leandros. But it is like that. My memories are whispering with that blackbird memory,” my inner self with its rampant monster prejudice was whispering more, “but I just can’t make them out. And what floor did you say this meeting is on?”
“Sixteenth,” he answered, but there was a distracted tone in his voice. Maybe the albino croc had scared him as a kid too and he’d forgotten it. Although I doubt anyone or anything had scared Niko Leandros, no matter what his age.
Christ. I would rather take the death trap. Sixteen floors. Forget death trap. I’d rather take a real crocodile gnawing off my leg. “If we haven’t found anything yet on …” Crap, what was it again? “Ammut,” I said triumphantly. “If we haven’t found anything on that life-force-sucking, spider-loving Egyptian bitch to report, why are we here?”
“To tell why we have nothing to show, hope they don’t attempt to kill us for the delay, and to find out how many more of her victims have gone missing or been found dead.”
“Dead. Kill. Say them like bad words,” someone scoffed.
The voice was striking, as was the Wolf’s surprising plunge out of nowhere to the fourth-floor landing, hitting the tile barely a foot from me. She was all that made a Wolf, predatory in her speed, there was no doubt, but she was all female too, that being almost more dangerous than the Wolf in her. She crouched on all fours, silver blond hair like a bridal veil over her face. Through the winter strands I could see tilted amber eyes the same color as the skin that showed between the white leather shirt and black jeans. Her arms were bare. Her throat and her lower abdomen were the same except for a tattooed choker around the first and wicked slashes of scar tissue across the last. She smiled, teeth bright against her darker skin, as she tossed her hair back to show her face. I wanted to say she was beautiful. She was beautiful, but it wasn’t a human kind of beauty. Hers was the beauty of a mountain so high, so fierce, so deadly, it would suck the oxygen from your lungs and take your life in a heartbeat for the crime of wanting to see that beauty up close.
Remaining on all fours, she said, “Where have you been, pretty boy? You leave, who is here to play games?” Beauty like hers took; it never gave. And if it pretended that it did, it was only to soften you up to make your fall that much harder.
The same kind of hard fall that Wolf I’d shot in the head had taken. “Delilah.” I didn’t remember her face or her body or her unique lupine smell, but Niko and Goodfellow had said the Alpha of the Lupa pack liked to play games. And as my ex, she especially liked to play them with me.
Also, the first night we’d been in the city, while I slept, Leandros had made index cards. Memory joggers. Who was who. Who could be trusted and who could not. The guy was brilliant in everything he did. The way he fought the boggle, when he sparred, all the books he had—each one weighing twenty pounds minimum—the precise way he made his tea, the equally precise way he disarmed me when I thought I was a hotshot back in South Carolina. Not even a week and some of those days were cloudy, but I saw what I saw: Niko was an expert in everything he did, mental or physical. He was the kind of man the world saw only every few centuries. Born to rule and gifted by nature beyond all others.
But nature does hate perfection. The guy couldn’t draw his ass out of a wet paper bag. I’d thumbed through my stack of cards on the subway to the Ninth Circle. The first had been a stick figure with circles for breasts, long blond hair indicated by two swoopy lines, a fluffy dog tail, and a fang-filled smile. Delilah (bad) was written in machine-perfect calligraphy at the top of the card. There’d been stick men with angel wings, Ishiah (good) Samyel (good), a stick woman with vampire fangs, Promise (good), a round thing with Mickey Mouse ears and a skinny tail marked Mickey (debatable). Then there’d been one stick figure with curly hair and three legs. I didn’t need the Robin Goodfellow (Run for your life) to ball it up and throw it at Leandros, which I had.
“I thought the Lupa pack wasn’t committing to this fight,” Niko said at my shoulder.
She stood and shrugged as more Lupa rained down around her. “I can change my mind—did change my mind. Spiders took four of my pack. What the Kin is learning, what the vampires know, I want this bitch to feel. We Lupa are untouchable. To kill Lupa is to take your last breath.” The Wolves around her smiled in a lightning-swift shadow of hers. They smelled her arousal. I smelled it. “Except for you,
pretty boy.” The muzzle of my Desert Eagle was pressed against her forehead as her fingers ran along my jaw. My brain might stay out to lunch forever, but my body always knew what it was doing.
“Any present I give to you, you are free. Do as you wish. Play, kill, eat.” She laughed, the gun not existing in her reality at all. She slapped me in the face, playfully to another Wolf maybe, but it was a damn hard smack to a human. She laughed again. “Stop with the silly puck cologne. Who do you hide from in this city? Yourself?”
I didn’t have a chance to wonder why she’d think I was into cologne, much less Goodfellow’s cologne when she was under my gun, feinting, and leaping over me, a diver into water far below. That it wasn’t water, only more stairs, didn’t matter. She landed on her feet and kept running. Her pack moved around us. I felt the swipe of claws and pulled a combat knife with my other hand to slap back hands and paws and several elongated jaws with fangs ready for one tiny opening. Play to them, following their Alpha’s lead. Except for Delilah, they all were obviously All Wolf—stuck in between. Wolf eyes, human face. Wolf face, human eyes and hands. Some used hooded jackets to hide and some needed nothing; they simply were exotic-looking women. But if you knew …
“Delilah is Alpha, but the whole pack is that All Wolf cult?” I asked, rubbing my burning jaw as I watched them all disappear down the stairs in the blink of an eye, wolves on a rabbit. Run, run, run.
“Her vocal cords.” He answered the question I hadn’t asked. “That’s not an accent. Delilah’s All Wolf is hidden inside her, but she’s All Wolf, and more than that, she’s Kin; make no mistake.” He tapped my arm and pointed. “Kin.”
There were bloody fingerprints, footprints, and paw prints on the stairs. Kin were killers, I’d been told—every last one of them. I touched my jaw where Delilah’s fingers had been. There was a smudge of blood there too. “You think Delilah is now our only client?”