by Rob Thurman
Ishiah didn’t seem too reassured from his reply regarding the subject, but in the end, the puck convinced him, more to keep the peri out of harm’s way than for our sake, I thought, and we were out of the ditch and headed back to the car and McDonald’s. After all the excitement, I was hungry again. I was thinking strawberry sundae.
Goodfellow tried to wipe the dirt from his clothes and hair, glaring at me when he reached back to touch the wet patch on his shirt. Whatever the male version of a diva, he was it. I saved his life and he turned up his nose at a little spit. He kept walking back to the Wal-Mart after Cal tentatively slapped his shoulder, and Rafferty and I stopped at the McDonald’s, claiming our same spot on the curb. Cal then headed back to Delilah, who was languidly leaning against the car, and started up their argument again while Niko kept the puck company. With Suyolak pulling even more tricks out of a bottomless hat, the buddy system did seem the way to go. Keep your buddy from drowning or falling asleep midstep. It was the same thing in this situation.
Fifteen minutes later Goodfellow was back, and I was wearing a now-empty plastic sundae container over my nose. I pawed it off and licked away my ice-cream mustache as Goodfellow stopped directly in front of us.
“I guessed you didn’t want to leave your cousin long enough to shop yourself, Doctor. I couldn’t bring myself to dig you a nice pair of discarded jeans out of the Dumpsters, but I estimated your size.” The smile he gave my cousin was more wolfish than any we real Wolves had in us. “I’m very good at estimating sizes, although I’m more than willing to confirm it by hand.”
Five bags were dumped on the curb beside me. I raised my eyes to see Salome, who’d hopped out of the car to follow the puck into the store. She must’ve thought she’d been lying down on the job earlier and wasn’t about to let that happen again. Curled around Goodfellow’s neck, she returned my gaze with an interest that made me feel much like that McNugget I’d eaten earlier. As a werewolf, I wasn’t used to feeling that way. A two- hundred-pound machine of pure muscle evolved to kill, facing off against a hairless, seven-pound Mr. Bigglesworth stand-in. I put my head in one of the bags and pretended to investigate the contents. If that made me a chickenshit, so be it. A furry lover of peace; that was me.
“That monogamy lasted, what, a whole day? But then again a dick has no morals, yeah?” Rafferty said as I sniffed denim and cotton.
“Clever. By dick I can choose whether you mean me or the splendor that precedes me like Excalibur. Bravo.” He clapped in appreciation. If hands could be facetious, these were.
I rolled my eyes back to see that unwavering Pan smile turn more conceited. I almost lost my breakfast into the plastic bag, but decided it would be a waste of good fries and kept searching through the bags with vague curiosity.
“Oh, help me.” Rafferty dropped his head into his hands.
“And I haven’t made up my mind yet about monogamy.” Although from hearing him talk to Ishiah on the phone, I was beginning to doubt that. “If I had decided against it, I’d do you. I don’t like you, despite your helping me with the concussion, you being the exceptional ass and all, but I’d do you. You’re doable in a shaggy, natural man-wolf of the wild way.” He folded his arms. “And if I had decided on monogamy, it wouldn’t mean that I couldn’t still look or fantasize or talk the talk. I simply couldn’t walk the walk. Unfortunately for my decision-making process, I do truly love walking the walk. Besides, considering our current situation, I don’t believe making choices about monogamy should be my primary concern. Staying alive long enough to ponder it at a later date while surrounded by naked flesh in a succession of strip clubs is slightly more important.” The last words were so faint, even my wolf ears barely heard them. “Or naked flesh and feathers.”
For someone who feared monogamy, he sure did like to talk about it, I snorted to myself. When a creature is forever like a puck, could monogamy be forever, though? I came to an instant conclusion. When one is forever, nothing can be forever. But something doesn’t have to be forever to be good, and I knew that Goodfellow did have it good now, whether he’d completely come to realize it or not. I could smell it on him. I could see it around him like a halo . . . like an aura of I’m-getting-laid-and-you’re-not. But not just laid; more than that—something extraordinary.
Right now I’d have settled for the just-laid part.
Lucky puck.
As I considered biting him just for the getting- laid part alone, his foot nudged one of the bags he’d dropped toward me in particular. When I found what he’d bought for me, I forgave him . . . just a little. I felt my tail wave back and forth in pleasant surprise and I dragged out the two calendars. One was swimsuit models, and one was Wolves in the Wild. “For you, for having some vague part in perhaps saving my life. Or so the others have told me. Despite soiling one of my best shirts with . . . never mind.” Goodfellow cleared his throat. Pucks were so very good at fake emotions that real ones were something of an effort for them. It made the gesture all the more meaningful. “I tried to find one with the most female wolves on it,” he added, “but a few shots were uncooperative in determining that, so you may have to lust after a male wolf too. The diversity will be good for you.”
I held up my paw again as I had to the irate mother almost a half hour ago. This time there was no humiliation to it. I was reaching across a communication void to say, “You’re welcome” and Goodfellow accepted it in exactly that spirit. He gripped my paw and said sympathetically, “I can’t say I know personally what it’s like to be in a consummately . . . ah . . . awkward situation. But even if I don’t know, I’ve seen Cal’s preoccupation with not passing on the Auphe genes. I also have an excellent imagination. I hope these help somewhat.”
Pucks. They were rapacious in all they did—sex, money, trickery—but Goodfellow wasn’t such a bad guy. I’d go as far as saying he was the king of good guys, for a puck. I was glad I saved his life; I just wished I’d left more saliva on his shirt. I picked up the calendars with my teeth and slapped them against Rafferty’s chest. Open. Open. I didn’t need my laptop to get that point across. He grumbled and ripped the clear plastic off them and I stuck a wet nose to each page to flip it for a look. Wow. I looked back and forth between firm asses and plumed tails and couldn’t have been happier.
I stayed that way until we were all back in the car, Cal smelling more Auphe than usual, but I had booty and a great sense of denial, so I ignored it. Happy, happy. But unfortunately what I couldn’t ignore was when Niko, now in the passenger seat while Robin drove, asked my cousin, “You are sure we’re still on Suyolak’s trail? Obviously he left another trap for us here that Robin fell into, but he’s clever. I don’t want to be doubtful, but . . .” He let the silence finish the sentence for him. He did doubt. A careful, meticulous man, if he had doubt, he was going to want it resolved. “You can still sense Suyolak?”
Rafferty wasn’t offended. He wasn’t anything except a mass of fury and determination at the mention of the antihealer’s name—so overwhelmingly so that I couldn’t believe even nose-blind humans couldn’t smell it. “I have him,” he said flatly. “He’s ahead of us. Far ahead, but I’m not losing him and I’m not falling for any more mirrors of the bastard. As for the traps, they’re small, harder to detect. Especially when all it does is make you sleep-walk. That does trip the healer radar. It’s quiet, like a grenade, until it goes off, but I’ll do what I can to sniff them out.” He’d been looking out the window at nothing . . . again . . . but now he shifted his attention back to everyone in the car. “You don’t get it. Do you think I took this job to save the world? I don’t give a crap about the world right now. Catcher does.” He locked a hand in the ruff at my neck. “He pushed me to take it, and I did . . . but for him. If I can take the life from Suyolak the way he’s slowly sucking it from his driver, I can make Catcher as he was. His healing power and mine combined, I’ll have enough to do it then. I’ll be able to fix my cousin. So don’t worry about my losing his trail. It won’t fucking h
appen. Period.”
Suddenly all the enjoyment of my calendar lust disappeared. He was right. They didn’t get it. I hadn’t gotten it either. I’d thought he’d done it for the right reason. He was a healer. Saving the world was what he did, one person at a time. I thought taking out Suyolak would put him closer to a balance again and help him see that curing me couldn’t be the end all and be all of his existence. He was a healer and that meant he belonged to everyone who needed him; not only to me. True, I’d come to regret the decision once I saw what Suyolak was capable of and wished we’d never come to be part of this. Family protecting family and the hell with the world; that’s what I thought.
That was also Rafferty’s point of view exactly. Hypocrite, me.
But it still wasn’t right—stealing life force, no matter if it was tainted—not for a healer. I was turning my cousin into something that years ago he would’ve killed in a heartbeat. But there wasn’t anything I could do about it. Nothing. I took the current calendar, swimsuit issue, grabbed it in my jaws, and tossed it aside in frustration. Cal caught it. “Whoa! Not enough tits for you? Need six more per model?”
He was in a better mood now, somewhat better; it was a subtle sniff of a difference, but I was Wolf enough to catch it. He and Delilah had come to a wary sort of trust, or so it seemed. I wasn’t poking my nose into it. After all, I had calendars to occupy me, not the real thing like some half-Auphe bastards.
Not fair. No, that wasn’t fair. Putting that on him, when I was really upset with myself. I pulled in a breath and released it, letting some of the anger go. It wasn’t Cal’s fault.
Although, I noticed, despite the mood change, he seemed twitchy too, which distracted me from my own problems. Tapping fingers on his knee. Unloading and reloading his gun. Playing with his knives. Changing positions often. Fingering the bracelet around his wrist. Except it wasn’t a bracelet. They were mala beads for Buddhist meditation. I’d dated a Buddhist girl in college, not Wolf, but I hadn’t planned on marrying her, and I wasn’t prejudiced like most of my kind. I’d dated a lot of human girls. They were sweet and if they were jealous, they didn’t threaten to castrate you with their teeth. You couldn’t say the same about the she-Wolves you brought home to meet Mom and Dad.
This girl had been nice, with coppery hair, cheerful blue eyes, and penny-bright freckles across the top of her pale breasts. And clothes on or off, she always wore her mala beads. I knew Niko wore two or three of the bracelets as well, but unlike his brother, Cal definitely didn’t come across as the Zen kind. But he was going through the motions, fingers moving from one bead to the next while his lips framed soundless words—his mantra, because I sure couldn’t see him praying. He wasn’t the praying type. Niko was watching him and, unlike his brother, he wasn’t happy, eyes dark over his hawkish nose. I could sample it in his scent as well. He was watching Cal . . . closely . . . and when Cal caught that look, he settled down, dropping his hands into his lap and the calendar onto the floor. “It’s okay, Cyrano,” he said with an assurance I wasn’t buying. What exactly was okay? Or not okay? I didn’t think this was about what had happened to Robin. It smelled darker. Much darker.
I was about to get on the laptop and ask Rafferty what was up. If it was what we’d suspected, smelled—that Cal was more Auphe now than he had been last time we’d seen him. But that was pointless. What else could it be? I didn’t need Rafferty to verify what both our noses had told us. But life decided we got a nice close shot of it anyway.
Something else showed us in brilliant, unforgettable detail that Cal might be less human than my werewolf cousin and I.
The Ördögs.
12
Cal
We hadn’t been back on the Lincoln for even thirty measly miles when we saw it. A black truck. The black truck. I didn’t need the ring of my cell phone from Abelia-Roo still following us in the pink RV of the queen of con artists to tell me that. I could smell the graveyard must creeping in despite the air-conditioning. So could Catcher. And Rafferty? I imagined he could smell and sense Suyolak. Half a mile behind him . . . it . . . and where were my explosive rounds when I needed them?
It wasn’t a semi, but it was big enough to haul a coffin or two and more than several minions . . . ex-minions. Minions usually always ended up as ex, deceased, or late and not necessarily great. These guys had gotten their pink slip with a nice side order of cholera, and while that didn’t taste as bad as hominy or the dreaded brussels sprout, it still couldn’t have gone down too well. Read a fucking comic, for God’s sake. Watch a superhero movie and you’d know that when your boss is powerful enough and motivated enough to destroy the world, you’d have to wonder: what good are you to him in the long run? Pensions are going to be scarce.
“It’s him,” Rafferty and I said, not exactly in harmony, but it was as close as echoes came.
“Pull up beside him,” Niko ordered.
Robin gave him one of those incredulous glances that he was so good at. “On the Lincoln? Are you going to jump across and cling to the metal door like a ninja refrigerator magnet? Or is Cal going to shoot the driver? Neither of which, I’m sure, will draw any attention of the cars around us.” He shook his head. “Blonds. They do try, but . . .” He tapped a finger against his temple.
Niko leaned closer to Robin, something the puck would’ve normally liked, and bit off one arctic word at a time. “Pull . . . up . . . beside . . . him.” My brother wasn’t happy about Suyolak and was worried about me—not that he should’ve been, and he was not in the mood for making things more difficult than they had to be. If shooting the truck driver on the Lincoln was our best opportunity, he’d take it.
“Fine, fine. Hold your no doubt pristinely organic urine.” Robin moved into the fast lane and the car up next to the truck. The windows were tinted in the cab, not as black as the paint job, but enough that I couldn’t make out who was driving or inside of the cab, especially as I was on the far side of a wolf and healer. While I would’ve liked to have seen the inside so I could’ve made a little hop in there, I didn’t need to see the driver. It was a man, a stupid and desperate man, and it didn’t matter what he looked like or what his name was or even why he was doing this. It only mattered we took him out before he let loose something that could potentially eradicate life on the planet and, worse yet, do it just for shits and giggles.
“I smell something else,” Rafferty said as he studied the truck through his window.
“Me too,” I responded. It was sharp and musky, mixed with old and new blood. It was the scent of an animal, only much stronger, and not one I’d ever come across. “But I don’t have a damn clue what it is.”
Catcher was growling softly, but that was his only comment, which meant he didn’t know either. “All right then. Suyolak’s picked up some new friends. He, like me, is a popular guy,” Goodfellow said as he kept pace with the truck as it began to speed up. “Are we going to ride along until he invites us to a playdate with him and his entire tea party? Or are we going to do something productive?”
“All my plans are productive,” Nik said, holding a hand over the seat. “Cal, your SIG Sauer.”
That was the backup I’d been wearing when the other car had gotten torched. Niko was in the passenger seat. He had the better shot. “Why not the Desert Eagle?” I asked as I passed over the pistol—a 9mm SIG Sauer 226 X-Five tactical model—double action. I hadn’t quite gotten a hard-on reading the description in the gun catalogue, but it’d been close. It was a great gun—accurate and good for those who shoot to kill, not just shoot to play.
“Because I didn’t feel the need to spend a good chunk of my teen years measuring my penis. I prefer accuracy over size.” He accepted the grip of the gun. “Although I do have both.”
“Brag, brag, brag. Just shoot the son of a bitch.” But he hadn’t waited for my encouragement. He’d already aimed through the glass, not taking the time to roll down the window. But Suyolak’s driver, the Seattle professor—I’d seen the license plate for
verification—must’ve yanked the wheel and the truck was off on an exit that was too damn convenient to be true, so much so that not only the world had to be against us, but the universe as well.
Goodfellow veered across the lane, cutting off Abelia’s RV, which spun in a quick one-eighty and ended up off the road. I saw a shaking fist out one window, so I wasn’t too worried. Then again it could’ve rolled over and tossed her through the air like a hundred- year-old Frisbee and I wouldn’t have been wasting an iota of concern. We made the exit and that was the important thing.
The town was something- ville, something-burg. I didn’t catch the full name and that was fine. All these little towns were beginning to blur together into one big four-way stop-ville—like when we were kids. From town to town, school to school, liquor store to liquor store, and eventually jail to jail. Bribing a bum old enough to post bond on your mother was always a fun time. The stars, the clean air when we weren’t driving through clouds of pollen, the green, the quiet . . . It was missed, but as for the rest, I appreciated New York with new eyes. There were no Sophia memories there. There were Auphe memories, but also ones of victory over the Auphe. It was home and I was more than ready to kick this guy’s ass and get back there.