by Rob Thurman
“Normally. I’m surprised you knew. It means so much to me that you take an interest in my work,” he said dryly, dumping his towel in the workout hamper.
“As often as you’ve kept me from being one of those boring dead guys, I feel I should give a little back.” I tossed down another handful of sugar. That was the great thing about the life span in our career: you rarely lived long enough to develop diabetes from poor nutrition. “So? What’s up then?”
“We have a business appointment, which naturally you’ve forgotten as your brain has all the retention qualities of a sieve. We’ve twenty minutes before we have to leave. I get the first shower since you’re still grazing your way through endless vistas of sugarcane.”
“You used to say I was smart.” Sieve, my ass, and what was wrong with Captain Crunch? It was the perfect food.
“You are smart when you can be bothered. You, little brother, can rarely be bothered,” he said with a Death Valley dryness to his voice.
He had me there. As the bathroom door closed behind him, I slid down, my feet hitting the floor, and moved to check the calendar, the note taped to my door, and then down at the neat marker writing across the box of cereal in my hand. Yeah, Nik tried to keep me updated on these things, but I was hopeless.
I finished up the half-full box of cereal and thought about it. There was Grimm, a jack-in-the-box you never knew when was going to pop up and spill your guts on the floor. There was this new serial killer who dropped bodies like kids dropped water balloons. Now a job too?
I checked the calendar and the notation again. Eh, what the hell? This wasn’t like me telling Ishiah to forget a freebie-of-the-week on Jack the Rippers. This was only the Kin. Granted, they could lick their own junk and run the supernatural crime in NYC at the same time, but they were still the Kin. The day we couldn’t handle the werewolf mafia with one hand while jacking off with the other was the day it was time to hang it up and get out the walker. Our multitasking beat theirs every time.
Twenty minutes and thirty seconds later—Niko loved his schedules; he’d have made a great fascist—we were moving down the sidewalk. He was looking for a cab. I was looking for something more important and I spotted mine first. The blessed hot dog cart. If Leonardo da Vinci had painted it, light would’ve spilled from the heavens to radiate around it in an ethereal luminous glow . . . and the guy hawking the dogs would’ve looked a little like a woman under his beard, but art was art.
That is to say, I didn’t give a crap about it. I just wanted my dog.
“More onions,” I told the man as he spooned them on top of the mustard and relish. “Seriously, dump them on there.” The guy huffed in annoyance but loaded it up with triple onions and handed it over.
As we walked on, I took a bite. New York may be low on ambience, but it knew how to do a dog right. As I took an enthusiastic second bite, Niko asked, “Why? I don’t have anything approaching your sense of smell and even I am offended.”
I loved onions enough that my enhanced scenting abilities had accustomed themselves to the smell over the years. They didn’t bother me at all now. “First, I like onions. Second, it pisses off Wolves. Third, I like pissing off Wolves.”
Almost as much as killing them.
I tightened the choke chain on my inner darkness, gave it a mental smack, and a “naughty bastard” with my usual resignation—maybe even fond resignation. It was the same reaction you’d show your pet great white when he brought back half of a surfer instead of the beach ball you’d thrown into the water. He was a bad boy, true, but he was also only doing as he was created to do. How could you hold that against him?
Just keep your grip tight on that leash and make sure it didn’t happen for real.
I took a third bite of the hot dog and it was as amazing as the first two. “Tastes good and pisses off Wolves. There is no downside.”
And I proved that when we arrived at the office of the Beta Ivar. Alphas were too high up to muddy their paws with Niko, a human sheep, or me, a sheep deep-fried in Auphe Hell with his own bogeyman squatting in his brain. That meant poor Ivar, icy blue eyes watering copiously from my onion breath, had to deal with hiring us. When it came to Wolves, I was used to the lack of respect and the occasional yellow squirt of fear from the ones who’d actually seen an Auphe before they were erased from the earth. Except for my pale skin, I didn’t look anything but human—slate eyes, black hair—but I smelled like Auphe to those who had the noses sharp enough to tell.
Even under the onions, to a Wolf it would come through as easily as a scalpel slicing flesh. Fortunately for Ivar, he, like many Wolves, had never come across a true full-bred Auphe. He’d only heard the legends and he only knew my smell was wrong. I saw it in his face twisting in disgust. Wrong. Didn’t belong in this world . . . didn’t belong in any world. It was a battlefield scent—a legion of marching grim reapers shoved into one body, and Ivar didn’t care for it, didn’t care for any of this at all.
But you had to be smart to be Beta in your pack, especially if your pack was Kin, and that had him concentrating on other things—things that were annoying. Things that he could react to while he ignored the rest and did as his Alpha ordered.
He growled, “A sheep who grazes in an onion field is not a very smart sheep.”
Ivar sat behind a battered desk in the office of what I liked to think of as a CAW—conveniently abandoned warehouse. Movies were full of them. Reality was as well . . . except they weren’t genuinely abandoned; they only appeared to be. The Kin bought up the ones on the edge of being condemned and used them for various purposes. Members of the pack not high up enough to have their own place slept in them. Drugs and prostitutes from other cities sometimes were unloaded there. A location to hire non-Kin sheep that weren’t good enough to see where Ivar or his Alpha actually lived—another good use. And sometimes the Kin used them to store food. Fresh food. The kind that was still capable of screaming.
You never knew though. Some packs ate people and some would consider that on par with stealing creamed carrots from a baby’s spoon. Too easy. A humiliation to a predator. Until we saw differently, we’d assume Ivar’s pack were predators with the ballsy taste to hunt only those that challenged them. If we didn’t, we’d have to do extensive background checks on every single job we took—checks that would take longer and cost more than the job itself. The strong survived, sure, but it was the practical that let you put the food on the table, that kept you upright and mobile.
Ever see a starving man kick a monster’s ass? Me neither.
“I doubt Niko said I was smart when he agreed to a meet.” I slouched in a chair as battered as the desk, the morning light a hazy glow through the dirty window. “I’ll bet he did say we could take care of your business if you didn’t screw around with us. Satisfaction guaranteed or your next of kin gets your money back.”
Nik didn’t bring up the fact I’d started the back and forth, irritating Ivar with the hot dog. He didn’t like to waste time on petty insults. He wanted the facts, the money, and to get to work. He didn’t see the entertainment value in baiting the clients. Later, when he unsheathed his sword, he’d find amusement enough. Not that he’d admit that. Not even on the inside, and, on the outside, he was always setting the example. One day he was going to realize it was a lifetime too late for that. He could make a katana dance and defy gravity like no man on earth, but there wasn’t a damn thing he could do about genetics, mine or his. When he realized that, then I hoped he’d realize something else. . . .
If you were a born warrior and your career was basically combat, you might as well enjoy it. He’d be happier for it.
Hell, I knew I was.
Where I slouched, Niko didn’t sit at all. He stood perfectly upright, back straight, alert and ready—a general facing his troops . . . or one criminally minded Wolf who might or might not want to give us some money. He suggested, clearly short of patience, “May we move this along past the interview stage so that we can find out the exact nature
of the job?”
That’s when Ivar did screw around with us. But this kind of screwing around was expected. It was the annoying part of dealing professionally with Wolves. It was the pack way. You had to prove you were tough enough to deserve their business. And “interview” was defined as Ivar and three other Wolves doing their level best to rip us apart.
Beginning as a fairly average-sized man with average brown hair and average blue, if watering, eyes, Ivar flowed over the desk to end up as the next best thing to a grizzly bear. Muscles bulged under the thick spiky coat of fur as blue eyes rounded and shaded to the yellow of a scorching desert sun. The gaping jaws were large enough to crush my skull while puncturing the bone with fangs nearly seven inches long. Ivar wasn’t a big man, but he was one damn big Wolf. The rags left from his shirt were snagged on his claws as he landed on me . . . almost. I lunged out of the chair a split second before it shattered into splinters.
One roll and I was up, Eagle in hand, and burying a round in Ivar’s chest as he spun in the wreckage of the chair to face me. Then I flung myself flat and put a second round in the stomach of the black Wolf that sailed over me. A flash of gray and silver, Niko and his katana whirled with a spray of blood whipping in the wake as two large red Wolves howled in near unison. Their blood was darker and more scarlet than their fur, hitting the floor in heavy splatters. Following that Niko swiveled again and using one hand to grip fur combined with a little applied physics and the smaller of the Wolves was tossed through the window. The explosion of glass rang like funeral bells as I heard it hit the pavement below followed by a loud thump and an even louder yowl of pain.
Back on my feet in a crouch, I faced the black Wolf who’d flipped head over tail from the shot to his stomach but was ready for more. I threw myself to one side and then the other. He mirrored my movements, which landed his neck right into the jaws of Ivar, who’d been leaping in our direction. With his head in profile, I planted the muzzle of the automatic between the Beta’s eye and the pointed tuft of ear. There was the thud of a metal blade cutting into flesh and Nik’s voice drifting over my shoulder. “Is the interview done? If not, you’ll want to forget the mops and call for a fire hose to handle the extra blood.”
Ivar, who’d managed to stop short of tearing out the throat of the black Wolf, eased his jaws away from it and my gun. In a shimmer of fur and a ripple of flesh, he was that average man again. But this time he was naked with a bullet wound to the right of his chest. I hadn’t aimed for the heart. This was, after all, just the testing ground, not the war. “The interview is done,” Ivar agreed with a begrudging lift of his upper lip. We passed, but we weren’t Wolf and we weren’t Kin. He had to respect our skill, but he didn’t have to like it or us.
The faint breathlessness to his voice, the result of a bullet-nicked lung—a very familiar sound—would fade quickly. Probably before we left. Wolves healed fast. He waved off the other Wolves, still in lupine form and snarling with displeasure, and they limped from the office. Ivar sat back down behind his desk, unbothered by his nudity—Wolves have no sense of modesty. Why would they? They were Wolves first, people a very distant second. “One hundred thousand for the job.” His nails extended to the thick blunt ones of the Wolf and he tapped them on the desk. “We have someone whose ambition has become . . . irritating . . . to the Kin. We respect the way of the pack, the order of domination and submission. Alphas rising, falling—same as it has been since the beginning of time. But this one, she cheats. She denies the honor of the Wolf. That cannot be tolerated.”
She. That answered any question we might have had on what the job was. There was only one “she” that the Kin would subcontract out on. Delilah. Delilah definitely did cheat and considered honor something puppies cowered behind. Not to mention stupid. Last I’d known my ex-fiend with benefits had taken over half the Kin with her all female pack. The Kin allowed females membership in the Kin, but it didn’t allow female Alphas.
Delilah didn’t give a rat’s ass what the Kin allowed. She wanted to be head of the Kin and given enough time, she would be. Ivar and his three Wolves . . . she’d have eaten them alive literally—howling, screaming, and all—as a lesson to others who dared get in her way.
Niko had put his katana away. “We do not get involved in politics. Assassination is a slippery slope that tends to rebound with endless blood feuds and vengeance-vows. We prefer to keep our killing clean.”
That was Niko’s line and I stood with him on it. Although I had to admit it was a tempting offer. I wanted Delilah dead anyway. We hadn’t had friendship. We hadn’t had love. But we’d had companionship, acceptance, and unbelievably wild sex. The never knowing if she’d try to hang the head of a half Auphe on her wall as a trophy had been a price I’d been willing to pay for that. Acceptance for a half Auphe was a rare thing, even more rare among sexual partners. Bottom line: I didn’t trust Delilah, but she had liked me as I was. I didn’t get that often.
Then she tried to kill another Wolf friend of mine, her first ploy to rise in the Kin. I didn’t have many friends. I could count them on one hand and have that all-important middle finger left over to put to good use. Trying to kill me was one thing—my eyes were open when it came to Delilah’s sociopathic ways. But trying to kill my friend; I wasn’t letting that go. I had one rule. She knew it, and she’d broken it without regret. Killing her was on my list; being paid for it would’ve just been a bonus.
But this was between Delilah and me alone. The Kin wasn’t invited to that party.
“Don’t worry,” I told Ivar. “She is dead. It’s only a matter of when my vacation time comes due.”
Ivar didn’t like it. I didn’t blame him. However, he did have something to add before we left. “We’ve heard about the body from last night—the skinned one.” His upper lip wrinkled in distaste. If a Kin Wolf found a piece of violence to be excessive, that was something indeed. “Don’t come to the Kin with questions about it. We want no part of it.”
“What? You afraid?” I was more incredulous than anything else. Ivar was a Kin Beta. Admitting he was afraid, or insinuating the rest of the Kin were, would have ended up with him dead a long time ago. The Kin took their reputation seriously.
“We want no part of this trouble,” he repeated flatly. “No Kin will speak of it. Don’t bother asking. Don’t bother us with anything right now or we’ll decide we want you as dead as Delilah.”
I didn’t like having the Kin put me in my place, but if the word was out to keep quiet, they’d die before they broke with the edict of the Alphas. Whatever this thing was flinging bodies around, it had to be one truly evil, badass son of a bitch to have the Kin lying low.
It was annoying. As was having to go through an “interview” for nothing. Okay, the second wasn’t true. I had liked the fighting. What was life without your daily dose of exercise? And this exercise was more enjoyable than Niko’s preferred ten-mile run. It put me in a good mood for the rest of the day.
The night was a different story.
* * *
I’d brushed my teeth, for the third time. That onion breath was persistent as hell. The towel covered the bathroom mirror as always. I could manage quick glances when I needed to. That was enough for me. It was a phobia I’d come by honestly. I didn’t waste time trying to overcome it or being embarrassed by it any longer. Life was too short.
One last rinse and spit of toothpaste and I was in my bedroom. I changed into sweatpants and flopped on my back on the bare mattress of my bed. I’d been forced two weeks ago to wash my sheets and blanket at knifepoint, Niko’s knife, but I’d forgotten them at the Laundromat. I had a short attention span if carnage wasn’t involved. I’d wandered off to find some. By the time I remembered what I’d been doing, the sheets were long gone. I’d have to end up buying new ones. Whenever I got around to it. Or I’d wait for my birthday. Nik was a practical gift giver.
It was late, hours past midnight. Not that it mattered. Early, late—I could sleep anytime, anywhere. A lifeti
me on the run taught you that—among other less legal skills. Ten seconds after I hit the mattress I was gone.
A medium-length pornographic dream following that, I was catapulted to consciousness by the shattering of glass, something slicing into my stomach, the sharp spiking stench of ozone in the air, and fingers or something like fingers fisted painfully tight in my hair. And a voice, one that bubbled and flowed thick as tar, words from lungs dead and drowned. “Black hair. Like the dark within you. I covet it. I covet the skin that binds it within you.”
Our skin-loving serial killer hadn’t waited long at all after dumping that body on us. Serial killers are bad, but impatient ones—they’re the worst.
“I’ve waited for you and your skin,” the voice spilled on. “I shall take your darkness, wicked creature. I shall save you.”
Lying in the warmth of my own spilled blood, I gathered his understanding of “save” was a hop, skip, and a fucking minefield away from my definition. Unless he meant save a chunk of my flesh like a nowhere mint condition stamp—a trophy of his raving psychosis. It was a good guess. Those who mixed their raving and their potpourri bag of psychotic issues loved trophies.
I may have misheard though. Save was only my best guess as to what the jackass said. I had to catch the words between the sounds of the breaking glass. The window was gone, but impossibly the sound went on and on all around me—an endlessly flowing, then crashing, waterfall of fracturing crystal. Amidst that were the gunshots of the Glock I kept under my pillow. The gun had a silencer, but they’re not as quiet as they make out on TV. The shots did get louder as I neared the end of the clip. Nothing happened other than my running out of ammunition. He didn’t move except to keep cutting me and slamming my head up and down by my hair. With my left hand, I pulled the combat knife from under my mattress and took a swing. Other than a shimmer running through blackness, I would’ve sworn he didn’t move, but the knife didn’t connect. He was quick, too damn quick for me and that was quicker than most.