Hardest fifty bucks I’d ever made.
2
It wasn’t really just fifty, of course. But after rent, groceries, and Niko’s new hobby, fifty bucks was probably close to what was left. Our first official job was a success and not for one second did it feel that way. It was easier when the only asses we worried about were our own. When you’re on the run for three years, half a step ahead of certain death or worse, you don’t have much time or emotion to spare for anyone else. How much of a bastard did it make me to wish it were still the same? I didn’t miss the running, God, no, but the other . . . shit, what could you do?
Take a bath. That’s what. Take a goddamn bath.
Put her in the water.
Clenching my teeth, I discarded the fifth washcloth, stained beyond repair, and picked up the next one from the edge of the tub. A shower hadn’t touched the bodach blood and now I was sitting in a tepid mix of water, soap, and three gallon jugs of orange juice. It was working . . . slowly. The crap was coming off, more or less, and I counted myself lucky it was taking only a few strips of skin with it. I was scrubbing at one arm with more interest in getting the fetid goop off than keeping my pasty hide in one piece when the bathroom door was opened. Inquisitive green eyes peered around the frame, took in the apparent lack of weapons, and narrowed slyly. “You’ve the look of a pinto pony,” came the amused drawl. “A half-drowned, not particularly well-bred pinto pony.”
A perfect ending to a perfect shit of a day. “Boundaries, Loman,” I said indifferently. “Personal space. Look into the concept, why don’t you?”
Assured that I was armed only with terry cloth, the eyes were soon followed by the rest of the irritating package. Curly brown hair, lithely muscular frame, and a smile so wickedly knowing the Vatican would label it a carnal sin. Robin Goodfellow, the Pan, the Puck, the everything else rumored to be lurking in the forest seducing virgins, conning innocent travelers, and hitting every orgy Rome had ever spawned. We’d met him the previous fall just before the entire Auphe nightmare came to a head. Niko and I had been looking for a car for our getaway and who should be running the lot but salesman extraordinaire Rob Fellows? A better salesman than Willy Loman by far, but the nickname annoyed him so thoroughly that I wouldn’t have dreamed of giving it up. Within less than a second of meeting him, or smelling him rather, I’d had him pegged for nonhuman. It took slightly longer to get the whole story out of him. In the end he’d helped us . . . very probably saved us. He was a friend, the best. He was also annoying and vain, never said one word when twenty would do, lied with ease, and could drink Bacchus under the table. And had done so, to hear him tell it.
He was also lonely.
And I don’t mean the kind of lonely you read about in great books or see in overwrought award-winning movies. It wasn’t the type of loneliness a human could comprehend. Hundreds of thousands of years he’d lived, if not more, and would continue to live. His kind was mostly gone; there weren’t more than a handful of pucks left to play Goodfellow these days, and most other monsters shunned him. Robin liked humans . . . for companionship, not a bedtime snack. Doing business with a human might be a necessity at times, but socializing with one? That was just perverse. There was the occasional vampire, as Niko knew from not-quite-intimate experience, who felt the same as Robin did. And there were a few other exceptions that proved the rule, but mostly humans just weren’t that popular, and neither were human-lovers. But where vampires might live a thousand years, Robin was pretty much forever . . . excepting a violent end. Everyone he loved died. Everyone he cared for, everyone he hung out with to have a mug of mead or a glass of wine, everyone he knew, even in passing . . . they all died. I felt for the guy. God, did I.
It didn’t mean I wanted him watching me take a bath.
“Ridiculous human psychological theories.” He waved a dismissive hand and took a seat on the edge of the sink, leaning back against the wall. There was no mirror, not there or in the rest of the apartment. Let’s just say I didn’t much care for mirrors. Not after last year. “Freud, who wore ladies’ underwear by the way, didn’t have a clue. It was rather sad really, the way he strutted around with that cigar five times bigger than his—”
“Seriously, Loman, I’m not in a good mood right now. What the hell are you doing here?” My arm was raw and slightly weeping, but clean, and I moved on to my chest.
“Not in a good mood now?” he echoed incredulously. “You’re never in a good mood. If I waited for that momentous occasion to show, you’d never see my suave self.”
“And the downside to that is what exactly?”
“Sour as Nero’s piss as always.” Sighing, he tossed me a plastic bottle filled with milky yellow-green fluid. “Niko called me. Here. This should take off the bodach blood and leave enough of your skin intact that you can walk the streets without scaring children. The orange juice was a good idea, but this will work better.”
Shaking the bottle dubiously, I asked reluctantly, “Do I even want to know what this shit is?”
The grin was wide, bright, and utterly evil. “Didn’t I just tell you? Nero’s piss.” The door closed behind him before I could lob the bottle at his head.
Whatever it was, and with Goodfellow there really was no telling, it worked. I had a few spots that were painful and red, but as he’d said . . . I was mostly intact. And some days that is the best you can hope for. Dressed in sweats, I made my way to the kitchen to see Niko sitting at the table with my gun spread before him in pieces. Snorting, I moved to the cabinet that did duty as overflow first aid storage. The fact that the medicine cabinet in the bathroom wasn’t big enough for all our supplies told a story, one not suitable for bedtime. “How will I ever learn if you keep that up?”
He picked up a brush and began to clean the Glock’s barrel. “Over the years I’ve learned exactly how long it takes to train you.” The smell of cleaner was sharp in the air, but not quite as sharp as the glance he threw me. “My peace of mind doesn’t have two more years in it.”
Two years added to the two that I’d already been carrying a gun—it was a harsh estimate. Unfortunately, it was also probably true. Sitting down at the table opposite him, I rubbed an antibiotic cream on the only truly bad spot, the long raw abrasion on my arm. “Goodfellow gone?”
“Yes.” He watched as I applied the salve, and satisfied with the result, he went on. “Apparently he squeezed us in between an early date and a late-night dinner cruise. Do you want more details? I have them. Quite a few of them.”
His vexed tone had the corners of my mouth twitching. Niko liked Robin, and in fact had been friends with him before I had. Being infested with a creature that took control of my mind, body, and scraps that lay between, I’d been too busy with the wreaking havoc and attempted murder to do a whole lot of bonding in the beginning. Still, liking Goodfellow and being able to bear up under the soap opera that was his social life were two different animals altogether. He loved to share every gory detail and he didn’t like to spend his nights alone. And considering the fact he was pansexual, as he repeated on more than one occasion with an elbow to the ribs and a gleefully self-amused chuckle, he pretty much didn’t have to. It all made for a helluva lot of stories to spin.
“No, thanks,” I declined with a faint grin as I pulled the sleeve of my sweatshirt back down to cover my arm. “I’m still reeling over the triplet story.”
“Aren’t we all?” Within seconds he reassembled my gun with a speed that was straight out of an army training film. Niko might not have a lot of respect for weapons with moving parts, but he was as adept with them as he was with his blades. “He mentioned that you seemed more . . . relaxed.”
Careful consideration had gone into that last word, more than enough to let me know it wasn’t the one Robin had used. “Less catastrophically paranoid” or something similar had more of a Goodfellow flavor to it. Sprawling back in my chair, I linked my hands across my stomach and admitted ruefully, “It was in the water with me.” It was the kn
ife I was referring to. It was a mess of bodach blood, the same as me, and if I couldn’t get it clean, it would have to be tossed. It was a nice rational reason and only partly a lie. I didn’t go anywhere unarmed anymore. Not to eat my morning cereal, not even to take a leak. I’d been careful before, with the Auphe as ever-present pursuers, but now . . . after their happy little subcontractor had taken me over lock, stock, and every single molecule, I made being constantly prepared my religion. And I embraced it as wholeheartedly as any Southern-fried Bible thumper ever whelped.
Darkling, a nightmare for hire and the last of his kind, had moved into me . . . had become me—combining us into one malevolent whole. What I would never have done for the Auphe, he did. We did. This had been no movie possession. There was no lurking in the back of my mind, no wringing my hands over the big bad things Darkling was doing. There was no me to lurk. What he had done, I had done. What he had enjoyed, I had enjoyed. Who he had killed . . . you get the picture. We were one. And if you survive something like that, you’re lucky that the least crazy label they slap on you is “catastrophically paranoid.”
“Did it come clean?” was Niko’s only comment, and I was grateful for the restraint. I knew the malevolent little shit was gone. After all, I’d sliced and diced him myself, but knowing and knowing aren’t always the same. I, along with my howling subconscious, would eventually figure it out, but it was going to take a little time.
“Yeah, the crap comes off metal a damn sight easier than skin.” My eyelids fell to half-mast as I watched him clean away the supplies from the table. I was tired. It had been a long night, a long, god-awful bitch of a night. “Weren’t you supposed to see Promise tonight?” Promise, an ex-client of Niko’s old agency, was Niko’s lady of the moment. Hell, she was his only true lady past, present, and probably future . . . even if neither of them knew it yet. Considering she was a partner in our new agency as well as a vampire, things would be a bit on the delicate side, but I had faith. When you saw them together, both with the same inner stillness and unwavering purpose to them, you knew. They were made for each other and no one else. And if they wanted to call the late dinners they’d been having “financial planning for the agency,” who was I to pop their bubble of clueless denial? They would figure it out, sooner or later.
“Not tonight.” He laid the gun before me with a sardonic bow and mocking eyes the same gray as mine. “I’m so exhausted from doing your work I think I’ll stay in.”
As acting went, it was one of Niko’s better efforts, but as I couldn’t fool him, neither could he fool me. I didn’t try to push him on his way, however. That would be the equivalent of my head against his brick wall. After what I’d seen tonight, my brother wasn’t going to leave me to spend the night alone. Honestly, although I’d never admit it aloud, I was grateful. “Yeah, yeah. Working your fingers to the bone.” I stood and yawned. “I’ll fix you a waffle in the morning. That’ll make us even.” Picking up the gun, I headed back to the bedroom. The bed was soft, the blankets were warm, and the apartment was cool. All good sensations. But when I closed my eyes all I felt was metal and blood. All I heard was twisted rhymes and the laughter of a killer. And all I smelled was death and a little girl’s shampoo.
I was up before the sun. As events went, that was pretty spectacular. To mark the occasion I decided to actually keep my word to Niko and make him breakfast. Twenty minutes later I was stirring pancake batter with my nose stuck to the directions on the back of the box. I could slay monsters with the best of them, but cooking usually managed to turn the tables on me in culinary smackdowns that left the kitchen unusable for days. This time I was holding my own . . . barely. I was sliding the last of the pancakes, the un-charred ones, onto a plate when the intercom buzzed. Six a.m., that meant it couldn’t be Goodfellow . . . unless he hadn’t gone to bed yet. He was as lazy a bastard as I was. Curious, I pressed the button. “Yeah?”
Minutes later Promise was gracing a kitchen chair. The contrast between her and the cheap plastic made my eyes want to cross that early in the morning. Promise had recently changed her look. Her mink brown hair was now exotically tiger striped and rich brown alternated with equally wide chunks of palest blond, worn in a braid that reminded me oddly of Amazons. Her formerly tasteful but sedate clothing had been replaced by a black tank top, matching leather pants, and high-heeled boots. Still tasteful, but damn sure not sedate. The ivory skin and twilight purple eyes were the same, as was the wide curve of her unpainted mouth.
“Your Majesty.” I put a plate before her. Catching a whiff of pineapple and coconut, I raised my eyebrows. “Sunblock?”
She tapped a pink-and-white-polished nail on the hooded cape that rested in her lap and gave a dismissive flutter of fingers, indicating it didn’t always do the job. “I freckle so terribly,” she said gravely. Another popular misconception about vampires . . . they didn’t burst into flame in direct sunlight. They would, however, end up with the equivalent of third-degree burns that took quite some time to heal. It wasn’t pretty or pleasant, and it was definitely a step or two beyond freckling.
I grinned. I liked Promise. I liked her for herself, but I would’ve liked her for Niko’s sake if nothing else. He’d given up any chance at a normal life to keep me safe. Now that the Auphe were history, ugly, hateful history, I wanted him to have a chance at what he’d missed while we’d been on the run. “Wouldn’t want that,” I agreed solemnly before ladling two scoops of half-melted chocolate and butterscotch chips on top of her pancakes. “Syrup?”
She regarded the brown and yellow swirl and then me with a gentle uplifting of her lips. “I bow to your expertise, master chef.” And well she should. All those fancy restaurants she ate at had nothing on me on the rare occasion I managed to pull off pancakes. As I gave her a generous dollop of syrup, she asked, “Shouldn’t you wake Niko? I know he wouldn’t want to miss your excellent efforts.”
“He’s awake.” I dumped some liquid chips on top of my own pancakes, then licked the spoon.
“Really?” She cut the smallest possible bite and lifted it on her fork.
“Yeah.” I took a real bite and chewed with enthusiasm. It wasn’t often I had full-on breakfast food. Along with the martial arts, Niko had picked up the whole body-is-a-temple philosophy. He lived, breathed, and worshipped at its dry, tasteless altar. Soy milk, egg white omelets, organic fruit, no thanks. I’d take my dry Sugar Crunch any day of the week. “He either heard me fixing breakfast or the buzzer. One of the two. The man has the ears of a b—er . . . cat.” Hastily, I shoved another bite in my mouth before my size eleven gave me an embarrassing case of athlete’s tonsils. After swallowing I finished, “He’s just doing his usual morning routine, sitting there staring at the wall like a lobotomy victim.”
“It’s called meditation, Cal,” Niko said from behind me. “It helps me survive the daily trials and tribulations of a lazy, smart-mouthed younger brother.”
“He’s cleaning up his language for you, Promise.” I pushed another plate in front of Niko and loaded him up. “If that’s not love, I don’t know what is.” Ignoring the needle-sharp glare aimed at me, I added, “Breakfast as pledged. Now, eat up.”
He didn’t want to. Sugar, oil, butter—he probably would’ve made the sign of the cross if not for the company we were keeping this morning. Still, he recognized the pile of syrup and chocolate for what it was . . . my thanks for his sticking around last night. Sighing, he bowed to the inevitable and dug in, his bite every bit as small as Promise’s had been. The whole world seemed to be on the same diet. Well, the hell with them, it just meant more for me. Stacking the last of the pancakes on my plate, I moved over to the living room couch and turned on the TV. It wasn’t precisely privacy, but it was the best I could do for Niko and Promise. Our new apartment was actually smaller than our last, but it was a helluva lot nicer with decadent luxuries like heat and hot water. Our last place, sandwiched firmly between a dump and a slum, had been all but destroyed when the Auphe had come for me that
last time. Not only had we bitten the deposit on that one; we were probably on a warrant list somewhere. It didn’t matter. We hadn’t used genuine ID since we’d hit the city. We still didn’t. A quirk of Niko’s there. The Auphe might be deader than the dodo, but there was no telling when it might prove to our advantage to be invisible to the eye of the authorities.
There was the low murmur of voices as I polished off my pancakes and then Promise raised her voice to include me. “I may have a new client for us.”
“Oh joy,” I said flatly, dropping my fork with a clatter on the empty plate. At least she’d waited until I had finished before she ruined my appetite. I noticed that she didn’t ask how the work for last night’s client had gone. Niko must have filled her in on the phone when he’d canceled their plans. “What is it this time? Hansel and Gretel go missing? You find Red’s basket by Grandma’s partially chewed leg?”
Promise didn’t take offense at my irritable snap. She knew well enough where it originated. “No, this is actually somewhat more subtle, some undercover work actually—with werewolves. It may not even come to violence this time, Caliban. At least, I hope not.”
Wolves . . . they didn’t usually eat kids. Not on a regular basis anyway. I reached for the remote and turned the television down. “I’m all ears,” I said, calmer. “And Niko’s all nose. In other words, we’re a captive audience.”
I wasn’t sure, but I thought I saw the faintest of pink flushes along Promise’s cheekbones as she slid an amused amethyst glance toward Niko. Apparently, she liked his nose just fine. Five dead husbands and she blushed at the sight of my brother. It was enough to make you believe in all that crap they splattered in greeting cards.
“Undercover?” Niko frowned, missing the bigger picture at his side altogether. Or maybe he hadn’t, I thought, rather amused myself as he tilted his head expectantly toward Promise. “Among wolves? How exactly are we to accomplish that?”