“We have lost a thing.” She lifted a hand and waved it as if it were nothing. “An iron box. Six feet long. Wide, like so. . . .” She held her hands apart, a little more than three feet.
“Funny, that’s about the size of a coffin,” I said. I took the glass of wine Samyel handed me and instead of passing it to her, I drank it myself—mainly to stick it to her, but also to see just how serious this “business” was. I was hoping she’d curse me and head for the door. But she didn’t, and that meant this was serious all right. Serious, dangerous as hell no doubt, and our client would be Abelia-Roo. The first two I was used to . . . but the last. no way. “Nik, did you remember coffin retrieval on our resume? Because I don’t.”
“No, but rubbing warm, scented oil all over your favorite puck is. I wrote it in myself.” Robin, our self-proclaimed favorite puck, draped an arm over Niko’s shoulders and his other one over Abelia-Roo’s narrow ones. I’d seen him come in the front, wavy brown hair windblown, green eyes bright with anticipation, and I didn’t think it was at seeing us. He was looking for Ishiah. He did that daily now . . . more than daily. It was a wonder either one had the strength to stand upright.
Scary thoughts. Scary, scary thoughts.
“Who’s your . . . ah . . . elderly friend . . . oh gamiseme tora.” The puck pulled his arm away so quickly, it was a wonder he didn’t yank it completely out of its socket. “The skila from the Sarzo piece of skata clan. Is this a nightmare? Zeus’s wandering prick, let it be a nightmare.” Goodfellow, as a puck, trickster, and used car salesman, had been put in charge of the previous bargaining with Abelia- Roo down in Florida. He claimed he was mentally scarred for life. I’d been there. I believed him.
“She wants us to find an iron coffin they seem to have ‘misplaced,’ ” Niko said dryly. “Perhaps they left it at a rest stop.”
“An iron coffin ... an iron coffin? No. Suyolak? You’ve lost Suyolak? You have lost the Plague of the World?” Robin hissed. “You did not. You couldn’t have. You have one responsibility: to guard the evil you spawned, and you’ve let him escape?”
I looked curiously at Niko. He might not speak Rom, but if there was a monster, Rom or otherwise, he knew about it. He began speaking as casually as if he were telling a story about a well-known relative. The facts were at his fingertips and he did love to share those facts. “Suyolak, as legend goes, was a gypsy born almost a thousand years ago, one with a special gift. He had the knowledge of the cure for any illness, but he was chained to a rock. It was said should he break free, he would destroy the entire world. The Sarzo Clan wasn’t mentioned.”
“So he’s a healer. Why would a healer destroy the world? Why lock him up?” Admittedly, however, the coffin was more practical than a big rock; you never knew where the next condos would be going up.
Robin’s mouth curled with disgust. “The reason he has the knowledge of every cure is that he has the knowledge of every disease. Had, in his day, caused every disease. He’s an antihealer. You do recall something called the Black Death, do you not? Fleas may have spread it, but he was ground zero for the outbreak.”
Abelia-Roo’s black eyes didn’t blink as the truth came out. “It is so. He was a walking plague. Wherever he would go, people would sicken and die. He himself will not die; that cure he saves for himself. Age itself he tosses away.”
“And I’ll bet that was useful,” I said with scorn. “Send him to a town, make a couple of people sick, then come and cure them . . . for a price. I’m thinking like a Sarzo now, hey, Nik? Maybe I’m not Vayash after all.”
They still didn’t blink—like black marbles, those eyes. “It is said Suyolak grew to prefer killing over money or loyalty to the clan. He cured no longer. So, while he slept, exhausted by several of the prettiest girls of that day and drunk beyond oblivion, he was locked away beyond iron and zinc that his powers could not pass through. We carried him with us through the years, from country to country. He was our burden. All clans have one . . . a duty . . . a watch to carry out.”
I wondered if that made me the Vayash’s burden. Not that I was sure putting me in an iron box would do them any good. Healing was based on psychic talents, which were blocked by iron. Niko would be proud I remembered that. I didn’t have any idea if my traveling was based in the psychic realm, but I did know trying to put me in any kind of box was only going to end in my seeing how many Rom I could stuff in there . . . like clowns in a clown car—only with no way out.
“He is ours,” she went on, tucking the defensive bags away back under her shawl, “and now after all these years, hundreds, more, of bearing our burden without complaint, someone has taken him. Men with guns. Sarzo died to protect our duty. And if those who have taken him turn him loose . . . then Sara-la-Kali help us.” Her eyes pinned us. “Now, you, who owe us for the help we gave you in the past, must return him to us.”
Goodfellow protested immediately, his mobile face outraged, “We paid for that help and about ten times more than it was worth. I can’t hold my head up among the other tricksters for that.” Then, as inquisitive as he was angry, he asked, “How do you know he’s not dead? He could be bones in there. You haven’t opened it up to take a peek, have you?”
“And be struck blind, deaf, and dumb instantly, foolish puck? Or have my heart explode in my chest? No.” For the first time she seemed unsettled. “We heard him now and again. Through the iron, we would hear his screams of fury. His sly whispers of rewards for his release. His singing. The old songs . . . the ones for death. Dirges for any so suicidal as to try to look on his face.”
Her dried face shriveled further, cheeks hollowing. “Whoever took him, for whatever reason, it won’t matter. Once they set him free, birds will plummet from the sky. Fish will turn belly up. Every creature whose path he crosses will fall to a crumpled corpse.
“He will devour the world.”
2
Cal
“Why is it always the world?” I tossed at the wall one of the Nerf ninja stars I’d given Niko as a joke and watched it bounce. “Why is it never just half a block? Or Jersey? You know, something we could live without?” It was after work and almost four a.m., but I had a feeling I wasn’t going to see my bed any time soon unless I gave in.
I wasn’t giving in.
“Because life is a lesson to be learned, not recess for lazy-minded little boys.” Niko snatched the star from midair and tossed it himself. This time the foam imitation of a weapon actually embedded itself in the moss green wall. Don’t ask me how. I don’t know. Niko not only defied belief, but physics too. “Have you heard back from Delilah regarding the park attack?”
“No. Either she’s busy on a job or sniffing around”—I grinned—“so to speak. To see what’s up.”
“And you’re sure they were Kin Wolves?” he persisted.
“Definitely. They brought a revenant.” Only werewolves in the Kin would be hanging around with a revenant. They used them as pure dumb muscle—usually for things the Kin found too boring or disgusting to do themselves and because they considered them completely expendable. I had to agree with them there.
“Since Delilah’s a wash for now,” I went on, “what about this job . . . this job we are so not going to take, right?” I crossed my arms across my chest from where I was reclined on our apartment couch. The apartment was a nice loft in SoHo thanks to a big payday we hadn’t expected . . . much nicer than anything we’d ever had. Up until then, we’d lived in anything from rat holes to trailers to not-quite-converted warehouses. But the sofa was the same one from our first days in New York almost three years ago. It was battle battered, repaired several times over, and perfectly hollowed out to the weight of my back and slothful ass. It took a long time to get furniture to fit the pickiest parts of my body.
“Plague of the World. A walking, talking, most likely extremely annoyed grim reaper out to destroy anything in his path. He also apparently lives forever. And you feel we should let this one pass?”
“You forgot he likes
to sing,” I grumbled. “Maybe he’ll hit American Idol and that asshole Brit will humiliate him to death.” I didn’t watch reality TV. I was victimized by it. They turned it on in the bar. It was so hideous, you couldn’t ignore it and if I shot the TV, it’d come out of my pay—like everything else.
Niko looked at me with as much disappointment as if I’d admitted to eating puppies for a late- night snack. “You watch—”
“No,” I said, cutting him off. “I don’t. And I don’t work for Abelia-Roo either. She’s a liar. She almost got you killed. And she’s hornier than Robin, which scares the living shit out of me. Let her find someone else.”
He considered it for a moment, slipped the sneaker off one of my feet dangling over the sofa’s arm, and then beaned me in the forehead with it. “That, in case you were curious,” he said, “was social responsibility knocking at your door.”
“Ow!” I glared at him and rubbed my forehead. “Since when? We always looked out for ourselves and nobody else.” Except for Promise and Robin who had managed to slide in when we weren’t looking.
“Since the Auphe are gone and we’re free. With freedom comes responsibility.” He drummed his fingers on the shoe still on my other foot.
“Well, in this case, responsibility can go fu—” The second shoe hit me in exactly the same spot. “Will you quit it, damn it!”
“That was civic duty,” he said patiently. This time his fingers were tapping on the TV remote on the end table. “Would you care to discuss further the philosophy of living in a civilized society?”
“Jesus, no thanks.” I sat up hurriedly. “You know, when I was a kid and didn’t want to do something, you made me s’mores and talked to me about it. You didn’t hit me with a shoe.”
Making s’mores then had meant Nik begging a Hershey’s bar off a neighbor in a neighborhood where no kid should live, much less walk alone, melting it for two seconds in our rickety microwave, and squashing it between two saltine crackers. In reality they’d probably sucked. To a five-year-old who’d never had the real thing, it was bliss. “You didn’t throw shoes at me,” I repeated with a grumble.
“You were five and good.” He quirked his lips, but his eyes said it wasn’t with humor—nostalgia either. Only regret. I knew what he was thinking: too good to be five years old. Too quiet. Too careful. You had to be around Sophia or you’d be sorry. Well, the days of quiet and careful were long gone, but it turned out the s’mores had stuck around. “Fine. I’ll make you s’mores and we’ll discuss this like rational adults.”
He was really going to make s’mores? This I had to see. It had been years . . . since I was thirteen maybe, and he’d been going away to college, after skipping a year of high school—no surprise. “And if I still don’t want to do it?” I demanded.
“We’ll see.” He passed me on the way to the kitchen area, the TV remote still in his hand. Bargain, but have backup. It was a good rule to live by.
Ten minutes later I regarded the gluten-free crackers, soy chocolate, and a blob of tofu masquerading as marshmallow. “Just like the good old days,” I said glumly, straddling the kitchen chair. “Not.” Of course the good old days had also included fish sticks dipped in yogurt for tartar sauce.
Food had been a big part of our childhood. Getting it for one thing; it wasn’t that easy. Nik had been born smarter than anyone had a right to be, honorable through and through although he thought—wrongly—taking care of me had something to do with that, but he’d also been born proud. Genetics are funny things, because he hadn’t gotten any of that from Sophia . . . except the smarts. She’d been plenty damn smart when ripping off a mark, but damn stingy about sharing the money. I’d been in the third grade before I figured out Niko had had to go to the principal and tell him we needed free lunches. When I’d gone to first grade, they gave me free food, and I thought that’s the way it was for everybody.
If it hadn’t been for me, Niko would’ve gone without. Like I said, proud. He probably had gone without for his first four years of school or brought whatever could be scrounged in our mostly empty kitchen. Sophia wasn’t much on grocery shopping, but everyone at the liquor store knew her by name. Some memories you didn’t need a scrapbook for; a burning knot in the pit of your stomach got the job done.
She taught us one thing, though: When you didn’t take food for granted, it could figure in all sorts of occasions—convincing, consoling, even celebrating. I’d grown up, technically anyway, but I hadn’t forgotten what it felt like to know the only reason I wasn’t hungry was because of my brother. And I hadn’t forgotten to appreciate food.
But sometimes it was hard as hell to appreciate Niko’s adult food. It didn’t change the fact I picked up the s’more that would make even a hard-core vegan head for the nearest McDonald’s and took a bite. It was every bit as god-awful as I knew it’d be. “Great.” I chewed with the best imitation of enthusiasm I could whip up as I crunched cardboard, soy chocolate like muddy asphalt, and fake marshmallow that . . . Hell, I couldn’t even think of anything to compare it to.
The taste might not have been anything like when I was a kid, but Niko was the same, keeping tradition alive. When the only ones you had were the ones you made up, they mattered. They mattered a helluva lot.
“Okay, convince me.” I sighed. The first time I’d needed Niko’s special brand of convincing was when I was five and I wanted my own bed. All grown up and wanting my own bed—same tiny bedroom, but different bed—because I hadn’t known then . . . hadn’t known there were monsters in the night. But Niko had known; he had seen it two years before and kept it a secret. Being in the same room wasn’t enough for him after that. You never forget your first kiss, and you never forget your first leering package of death grinning at you through a kitchen window.
So, we had our version of s’mores back then and he’d said the one thing I couldn’t say no to . . . not even as a little kid. “I’d be lonely,” he’d told me, nine and solemn. “One more year, Cal. Okay? Just one more. When you’re six and I’m ten and we’re all grown up.”
Five-year-old Cal never would deny his big brother anything. A twenty-one-year-old Cal wouldn’t either, but I didn’t have to make it as easy these days. This Cal would never be anything like that long-ago one. It was too bad; that had been a much better Cal. Ignorance was bliss and sometimes made for a much better person. But ignorance hadn’t been an option for me for long. The few years I’d been lucky enough to be that way had been all due to Nik.
Once there had been an innocent, quiet, and good kid. Now there was me. I wasn’t innocent; I wasn’t good. I was quiet, but that was usually as I stood behind you a split second before I slit your throat. But that didn’t mean I didn’t remember. I did, and I remembered who’d kept me innocent as long as he could.
“Never mind with the convincing,” I said around another mouthful. I might not have been the same, but Nik was. And I still couldn’t tell him no. “I’ll do it.”
The absence of my usual stubbornness took my typically unflappable brother off guard for a split second. “That simple?”
I shrugged. “Next year, when ‘we’re all grown up,’ I won’t help save the world. How about that?”
“I think ‘all grown up’ won’t hit you until your mid-eighties, but, yes, it’s a deal.” He handed me another s’more and, God help me, I took it.
“One thing, though,” I said. “This time I get to negotiate with Abelia-Roo.”
He paused in cleaning up, wiping the counter with typical Niko antiseptic zeal. “Robin certainly won’t fight you for it, but why are you so eager to be cheated and molested to the point of post-traumatic stress disorder?”
Because Niko could have died because of her. Because I don’t forget things like that . . . not ever. Because I wanted a little payback and I wasn’t talking about the money.
For those she’d cheated in the past.
For those she’d cheat in the future.
For what she’d allowed to happen to my brother
.
For good old-fashioned revenge.
I grinned with the same dark cheer Abelia-Roo had shown in the bar when bleeding the vampire half dead and added the last, equally valid, reason out loud.
“For fun.”
Niko called Abelia-Roo to let her know we’d take the job and would be upstate that evening to talk terms. By the time Niko disconnected, her voice had gotten shrill enough I could hear it across the room. “In a hurry, huh?” I yawned.
“The entire devouring of the world, destruction of all living things, it seems to disturb her,” he said dryly. “But obviously not you.”
Destroy the world? I’d once nearly unmade the world. Not my fault . . . mostly . . . but it had rearranged my priorities some. Destruction of the world versus nap: Nap won. Since I couldn’t get a full night’s sleep thanks to the Kin and Abelia, a nap would have to do. Besides, as there was no way we’d catch whoever stole the gypsy grim reaper in a matter of hours, it didn’t make much difference. I checked my watch. Five a.m. Groaning, I headed for the bedroom, losing a sock along the way, fell onto my bed, and instantly into dark, utterly empty sleep.
I woke up, who knew how many hours later, to that same lost sock stuffed halfway in my mouth. I spat it out and counted myself lucky it wasn’t another of Nik’s s’mores. I’d take the taste of a dirty sock over that any day. With cotton fuzz on my tongue, I flailed around for the alarm clock. It was eleven a.m. I’d had about six hours’ sleep. Just about half of what I usually went for, but what could you do?
I rolled out of bed and gazed blearily at the piles of clothes on my floor, trying to remember which were clean, which were dirty, and which, just like Johnny Cash, walked the line. I took a sniff, made the determination, and grabbed a pair of jeans and a black T-shirt. I probably wouldn’t hit up any wolves for info about last night’s attack. . . . They might not all know about me and Delilah yet. It might have been just those two. But if the others did know, then that could get back to the Kin, which would be bad news for Delilah. Plus, all werewolves weren’t Kin. Some were just living their lives: lawyers, waitresses, accountants, healers. . . .