Table of Contents
Title Page
Copyright Page
Dedication
Acknowledgements
Epigraph
Chapter 1 - Cal
Chapter 2 - Cal
Chapter 3 - Cal
Chapter 4 - Catcher
Chapter 5 - Cal
Chapter 6 - Cal
Chapter 7 - Cal
Chapter 8 - Catcher
Chapter 9 - Cal
Chapter 10 - Cal
Chapter 11 - Catcher
Chapter 12 - Cal
Chapter 13 - Cal
Chapter 14 - Catcher
Chapter 15 - Cal
Epilogue
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Praise for the Novels of Rob Thurman
Trick of the Light
“Rob Thurman’s new series has all the great elements I’ve come to expect from this writer: an engaging protagonist, fast-paced adventure, a touch of sensuality, and a surprise twist that’ll make you blink.”
—New York Times bestselling author Charlaine Harris
“Trick of the Light is a beautiful wild ride, a story with tremendous heart. A must-read.”
—New York Times bestselling author Marjorie M. Liu
“The Trickster series is another strong offering from the author of the Cal Leandros books. Thurman is adept at creating fresh characters, and snarky heroine Trixa’s first-person exploits in Vegas have distinct details that leave a lasting impression. Fans and new readers will be clamoring for more.”
—Romantic Times
Deathwish
“Suspenseful. . . . Readers are assured of copious amounts of gut-wrenching action and creepy thrills.”
—Romantic Times
“The action is fast-paced and exciting, and the plot twists are delicious.”
—Errant Dreams Reviews
“A solid addition to a suitably dark and gritty urban fantasy series.”
—Monsters and Critics
“Readers will feel the story line is moving at the speed of light as the Leandros brothers move from one escapade to another adventure without a respite. . . . They make a great team as they battle against overwhelming odds, leaving the audience to root for them to succeed and wait for their next misadventures.”
—Alternative Worlds
Madhouse
“Thurman continues to deliver strong tales of dark urban fantasy. . . . Fans of street-level urban fantasy will enjoy this new novel greatly.”
—SFRevu
“I think if you love the Winchester boys of Supernatural, there’s a good chance you will love the Leandros brothers of Thurman’s books. . . . One of Madhouse’s strengths is Cal’s narrative voice, which is never anything less than sardonic. Another strength is the dialogue, which is just as sharp and, depending on your sense of humor, hysterical.”
—Dear Author . . .
“A fast-paced and exciting novel . . . fans of urban fantasy will love this series.”
—Affaire de Coeur
“If you enjoyed the first two wisecracking urban adventures, you won’t be disappointed with this one; it has just enough action, angst, sarcasm, mystery, mayhem, and murder to keep you turning the pages to the very end.”
—BookSpot Central
Moonshine
“[Cal and Niko] are back and better than ever . . . a fast-paced story full of action.”
—SFRevu
“A strong second volume . . . Cal continues to be a wonderful narrator, and his perspective on the world is one of the highlights of this book. . . . The plotting is tight and fast-paced, and the world-building is top-notch.”
—Romantic Times
Nightlife
“A roaring roller coaster of a read . . . [it’ll] take your breath away. Supernatural highs and lows, and a hell of a lean over at the corners. Sharp and sardonic, mischievous and mysterious. . . . The truth is Out There, and it’s not very pretty.”
—Simon R. Green
“A strong first novel.”
—SFRevu
“Cal’s a sarcastic, sardonic narrator who pulls the reader into his world, both the good and the bad. Tightly plotted and fast-paced . . . full of twists and turns.”
—Romantic Times
“A subtly warped world compellingly built by Thurman. . . . This book has an absolutely marvelous voice in Cal’s first-person narrative. The combination of Chandleresque detective dialogue and a lyrically noir style of description are stunningly original.”
—The Green Man Review
“A damn fine book, and excellent first effort.”
—Rambles
“Gripping, fast-paced fantasy.”
—Fresh Fiction
“Engaging . . . the characters are well drawn and memorable.”
—Italics
ALSO BY ROB THURMAN
The Cal Leandros Novels
Nightlife
Moonshine
Madhouse
Deathwish
The Trickster Novels
Trick of the Light
Anthologies
“Milk and Cookies”
in Wolfsbane and Mistletoe
Roadkill
Rob Thurman
ROC
Published by New American Library, a division of
Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 375 Hudson Street,
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First published by Roc, an imprint of New American Library,
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First printing, March 2010
eISBN : 978-1-101-18561-2
Copyright © Robyn Thurman, 2010
All rights reserved
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To my fans, amazin
g one and all.
And to Cal, Niko, Robin, and the gang. It’s about damn
time you had a vacation. Road trip!
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
To my mom, who suggested I give my old dream of writing a go. If I become a victim of artistic Darwinism, I blame her. Also to Lisa Powell, DVM, for her invaluable assistance in canine diseases versus lycanthrope diseases and for her wonderful treatment of my own pack all these years; to Shannon—best friend, designated driver for SDCC, and undesignated photographer of a night that would live in infamy . . . if I could remember it; to my patient editor, Anne Sowards; to the infallible Cam Dufty, whom I miss still; to Brian McKay (ninja of the dark craft of copywriting); to Agent Jeff Thurman of the FBI for the usual weapons advice; to the incomparable art and design team of Chris McGrath (an art god) and Ray Lundgren; Lucienne Diver, who astounds me in the best possible way at every turn; great and lasting friends Michael and Sara; and to Mara—keep those books coming. And last but never least, to Tasha—you made my life a living hell, and it was worth every minute of it. I will miss you always.
“The wolf also shall dwell with the lamb, and the leopard shall lie down with the kid; and the calf and the young lion and the fatted calf together; and a little child shall lead them.”
—Isaiah 11:6
“Bullshit.”
—The Wolf
1
Cal
I’d died six months ago.
Sounds dramatic, doesn’t it? I’d died.
Only I hadn’t, not really.
I’d lain spread-eagle in our apartment in a pool of blood that no amount of rug cleaner would get out. My eyes were dull and blank as they stared at the ceiling. My gun was still in my hand, but it hadn’t done me much good, despite the dead monsters around me. I liked to think I’d taken a few with me.
I hadn’t seen it, of course, any of it, but it was what I imagined . . . with a little help of the rug that Niko, my brother, had ripped to shreds with his knife and thrown outside into the hall. And I’d seen my share of dead people, so it helped with the details. Yeah, I pictured it in great if not necessarily accurate detail even though I hadn’t actually seen it.
But Niko had.
Six months later and my brother still wouldn’t tell me if I was on the money with my description. I think telling me would’ve made the memory of the hypnosis- induced illusion worse, sharper. I knew it had seemed completely real to him then, and even now, half a year later, I caught him once in a while looking at me as if he couldn’t believe I was genuinely there, truly alive.
Too bad having little brothers with half monster genes didn’t come with mental health coverage. Pretty goddamn unfair to Niko, all things considered. And with the life we’d lived, those “all things” would make horror movies look like kiddie cartoons. Demon-driven deductibles—they were a bitch.
But since I hadn’t died in reality and Niko was faced every morning with half-dried toothpaste in the sink, wet towel on the floor, dirty dishes on the kitchen counters, and a trail of clothes from my bedroom to the bathroom, I think the memory faded bit by bit. And that must’ve been one helluva relief, because he didn’t bitch about my über- slobbiness. He simply washed out the sink, hung up the towel, did the dishes, and tossed my clothes back in my room and closed the door. So a relief for him, but kind of a worry for me, because that wasn’t Nik—not in any shape or form.
Niko had raised me from birth. And he’d been on my ass since birth as well. Okay, a bit of an exaggeration, but close enough. Pick up your clothes, do your home-work, stop drawing cheat notes on your arm, eat your vegetables, quit trying to make out the porn through the scrambled gray zigzag lines. I was in my twenties now, so it was a little different. Run your five miles in the morning. Spar two hours in the afternoon. Study up on how to kill F through H in the Mythological Creature Compendium . Quit trying to make out the porn through the scrambled gray zigzag lines.
Well, some things never changed. And porn channels were expensive.
Niko had come a long way in those six months, although through all of them he would wake up in the middle of the night and stand in the doorway to my bedroom, making sure it wasn’t a dream; making sure I was alive. Not that I’d caught him doing it. I didn’t have to. I knew.
The illusion was my brother seeing me dead. The reality was that my brother would’ve torn the world apart if that illusion had been true.
So I wasn’t surprised he stood there night after night. He’d raised me, been with me my entire life. I knew him all right; knew where I would’ve stood if the reverse had been true. And then one morning I woke up and knew that night he hadn’t been in my doorway watching me sleep. How? The same way. I just knew.
And when I walked out into the hall, yawning and stretching to face his frown, that clinched it. “One:”—Niko held up a finger—“Pick up your clothes. I am not your maid. How do I know this? A maid cannot kill you with a tube sock. I can. Two:”—he raised yet another finger—“toothpaste, towel, dishes.”
“All that under ‘two’?” I muttered, bending to pick up a T-shirt off the floor.
“If I do them separately, we’ll be here all day. Some of us have better things to do,” he responded. “Three: I’ve disconnected the cable. You’ll eventually get eye-strain, and fighting creatures of the night while wearing Coke-bottle lenses tends to cut down on your aim and agility.”
“Not to mention my waves of sheer sexuality.” I grinned as I hid my socks probably less casually than I thought under the T-shirt. The sock threat was a familiar one, but it didn’t mean I wouldn’t end up strangled with one someday.
“Four: Stop making me borderline nauseated with what you imagine to be witty repartee.” He stood, dark blond hair pulled back tightly into a braid that hung several inches past his shoulders; it wasn’t the waist-length one that he’d once had, but it was slowly getting there. His olive-skinned arms were folded across a gray T-shirt—not a normal T-shirt of course, but one woven from the wool of the finest assassin-trained sheep, I was sure. Not that Nik was a wolf in sheep’s clothing. He was a saber-toothed tiger in sheep’s clothing; a T-rex without that whole if-I-don’t-move-it-can’t-see-me thing. I was half of a creature so malignantly murderous that the entire supernatural world had feared it; yet my brother, who was fully human, could kick my ass ten times out of ten.
All hail Sparta.
“So, no number five?” I asked as I retrieved a pair of wadded-up jeans from the floor.
His eyes, gray, the same color as mine—our whiskey-adoring mother had at least given us that in common—narrowed. “Number five: You’ve been an absolute pain in the ass for the past six months.” The gray lightened and he gave that fleeting quirk of lips that passed for a Niko smile. “Thank you.”
In the past, I would’ve thought to myself that he would’ve been better off actually mourning me those six months; better off if the illusion had been real, if I had died. But not now. My brutally homicidal relatives were extinct—hopefully—after a lifetime of my running from them. They were gone. No more running. No more fear they would kill everyone I cared for. No more possibility that they would take me from this world again to another and do things to me that would make death seem as bright and happy a prospect as a pony at your sixth birthday party.
The past was gone. Now I had pretty much everything I’d been sure I’d never get. I had two jobs: one working at a bar and one kicking supernatural ass for fun and profit. I had friends. Me. Crowned Mr. Antisocial for at least three- fourths of my life. I was even getting semiregular sex. Life was as unshitty as it had ever been.
No, not unshitty. In fact, it was good. Life was good, believe it or not. I was a changed man—man-monster hybrid. Whatever. Definitely changed. No longer morose and sullen. Not angry and cynical. No more Prozac Poster Child. That wasn’t me anymore. I no longer thought the universe was out to get me. It was all good.
That had been this morning.
“Motherfucker.” I kicked the reven
ant in the ribs. Yeah, it was dead. I kicked it again. And yeah, it was the equivalent of beating a dead horse. I didn’t care, because it made me feel better. I couldn’t have been more goddamn wrong—the universe was out to get me, same as always. I was late to my bar job, I was having to kick supernatural ass without getting paid, and I’d probably get heartworms from my werewolf friend with benefits, Delilah.
Speaking of wolves, I kept my Glock pointed at the Wolf on the left and the Desert Eagle at the one in front of me. I couldn’t believe I was getting attacked in Central Park . . . even if it was night. That was boggle territory. Okay, revenants were stupid. They might look like humans on the decomposing side, nature’s camouflage, and they were about as bright as fifth grade bullies, although as hard to kill as your average cockroach. They were tenacious little suckers. But they were smart enough to steer clear of the boggles. Revenants were a few rungs—hell, half the ladder—down the food chain when compared to boggles.
“Who came up with this bright idea?” I snarled. “Too ghoul for school down there?” I kicked the body again. Not that revenants, or ghouls for that matter, had ever been human despite what mythology said, but it was a good line and I used it. “Or one of you mutts, because I think the Kin would know better about me and my brother by now.” As for boggles, a mutt couldn’t take one, but he could outrun one.