by Rob Thurman
“Speaking of pickled, cut down a gallon or so on your cologne. Delilah said she smelled it all over me after we were at the bar.” That must’ve been before yesterday, because I remembered it fairly clearly. “Not the impression I want to be giving hot lady werewolves.” For Niko and my head, which was beginning to throb from all the smacks, I added, “The nonpsychotic, non-Mafia, nonkiller ones I might meet in the future, I mean.” I hadn’t smelled his cologne on me, but I hadn’t tried to either. I damn sure wasn’t going to try and smell him now or whatever or whoever else was on him. That thought didn’t quite end up in my thumb being the next thing chopped next to the brisket, but it was close.
I was never going to be able to work at that bar again.
“My cologne, that’s asking quite a lot of me to give up,” the puck said with such polished smoothness and without pause that it meant he was lying.
It also meant he wasn’t trying to do a good job of it. Pucks were professional tricksters, born and bred, both Niko and Goodfellow had said. Why he would bother to lie about cologne, I didn’t know or care. I wasn’t puzzling through his personal life like Sherlock goddamn Holmes. Monsters trying to kill us—now that was worth puzzling over.
Niko filled Robin in as I ate my sandwich with wasabi mayonnaise. He told it all: my relapse into fuzzy memory land. The puck exhaled at that, almost as if he expected it, but he didn’t say anything. He only listened to the rest of it. Our dead clients and Ammut trying to carry me upstream to spawn like a salmon, he already knew about. That just left the attack of the spiders, which didn’t really need telling. That seemed to be an endless loop playing in my life. And then Niko laid out my logic of Ammut being an uptown girl, living the high life, probably in a penthouse.
Perched … Hadn’t someone said she liked to perch? Who had said that? The mummy. I lost my appetite but kept eating automatically. That damn mummy … Wahanket … He was what had happened yesterday. He was what I hadn’t wanted to remember. It came into sharper focus—the small spider that had attacked me, Niko boxing it up to send to Goodfellow, the trip to the museum, then slices in the darkness: suffocation, fire, an axe, and a feeling—a feeling of taking my own hand and meeting myself face-to-face. Of finally knowing who I was.
Heeeere’s Cal.
Then the relapse. A very conveniently timed relapse combined with a photograph and one basset hound- sized spider led to only one conclusion. It turned out I was Sherlock Holmes after all. But I’d known hours ago when I’d seen the picture for the second time that I had a choice to make. Now I knew how to go about making it.
I’d had one relapse, but if I were a betting man, and, hey, maybe I’d find out I was, I’d lay money down that I wasn’t going to have another.
“You?” My thoughts and sandwich both were interrupted. “You figured that out about Ammut? You came up with that? Do you even know how to use a map?” Goodfellow asked with a helping of disbelief as large as the helping of green mayonnaise dripping off my sandwich onto the granite kitchen island.
“Okay. Enough already. What was I before? Someone with the brainpower of a poodle?” I took another bite as I glared at the two of them.
“I wouldn’t want to insult the poodle, but …” The puck held up his hands. “Jesting. Kidding. All in fun, I swear. No, you’re smart enough with or without your memory. Your priorities are simply different.” His eyes followed another dollop of mayonnaise to fall. “Not with regard to cleanliness or appetite—those remain the same—but … never mind. Fine. Ammut is camouflaged as a socialite or a cougar or one of the wealthy women who gobble boy toys instead of life forces. Between Promise and me, I’m sure one of us has come across her. And was fortunate enough not to be eaten by her.”
“Monogamy,” Niko said, regarding the bald cat batting at his braid with the caution one would use when trying to give a piranha a surprise proctology exam, “may have saved your life.”
“And the rest of the world’s sanity.” I finished the sandwich and headed back into the fridge for a second raid, not that I’d regained my appetite, but my body was overriding my brain. That was when I heard the sound of movement in one of the back bedrooms. “Shit, gotta go. Arrange something. Society thing maybe. Mix with the rich and the life force-sucking bitch. Kill her then. Good plan. Call us. Later.” I was in the living room, grabbing Niko’s arm and dragging him out of the condo with the door firmly slammed behind us, by me, before five seconds passed. I didn’t feel the slightest bit guilty for throwing out Niko’s idea about the society crap without giving him any credit, which was the reason we’d come over to Goodfellow’s condo. Add that to the map inspiration and I’d come off a genius.
“You are the biggest coward when it comes to Goodfellow’s personal life. I’m almost ashamed to claim you as family.”
He was so full of himself, with that tiny flake of mummy cat skin on his black shirt. “You want we should go back in there and have some kind of clothing-optional round-robin Egyptian villain discussion with an underwear-free puck and my boss, the guy with wings and a flaming sword? By the way, we don’t know where that flaming sword has been.”
“I hate to agree with Robin, but you need therapy. You do. Staying a virgin until you were twenty has obviously done profound damage to your psyche.”
“Twenty?” I moaned. Twenty years old?
“Or maybe it was twenty-one,” he mused.
You didn’t tell people that, whether it was true or not. Bastard. I didn’t speak to him again until we hit the bar. By then it was eleven at night, but it could’ve been eleven in the morning. It didn’t matter. Sin is open twenty-four hours a day. That was why I liked New York … or so I thought. It was a good reason. This bar was considerably different from the peri one. First this was a Kin bar—all Wolves, all the time. There was a fur ball at every table.
By the way, ever had eight breasts bounced in your face at once? I can’t recommend it enough. I headed straight for the stage. “Don’t they hate us?” I said distractedly, digging for money in my pocket. “Especially after what’s-his-name, their liaison with us, was supposedly killed by the Lupa since Delilah is going to hog Ammut’s glory?”
“Vukasin. This is his bar. They may hate us, but they honor their word,” he said, following me. “And their deal with us. For now.”
Vukasin, the dead Wolf. Yeah, the neon vuk me in the window should’ve been a clue, but I’d gone with the breasts. Clues, at that moment, I didn’t care about. Who said I didn’t have great priorities?
“We may hate the Lupa,” the stripper said as she crawled to the edge of the stage and sniffed my hair, “but we honor them now as our pack; Delilah as our Alpha.” Wolf hearing was damn good, as she’d demonstrated, but the breasts? Better. The octuplet breasts continued to shake in my face and I was having trouble deciding which set to slide the money between. This bar was much darker than the Ninth Circle, which was dim, but there were enough strobing red lights here to shine in the silver white reflection of wolf eyes and to emphasize those all-important breasts. The patrons didn’t bother to give Niko or me a sideways look, except for a sneer for being human … a sheep … even if a sheep in the know about the supernatural world. They didn’t look, but they did sniff. They caught the scent of metal, guns, and knives, then shrugged and continued to ignore us. Sheep, but armed sheep, smart sheep that their Alphas told them to leave alone until Ammut was taken care of, and wouldn’t it be easier to have a beer and watch the she-Wolves dance?
I totally agreed. “Row one, two, three, four, or the G-string—can you give me a hint?” I asked the stripper as I waved the bills in my hand.
Niko jerked me down to sit in a chair by the dance stage. “We’re looking for Vukasin’s Beta or his mate. Is one of them here?”
This Wolf had a full mane of wolf hair, wolf eyes, ears, everything Wolf except the human-sized breasts, ass, and arms and legs that allowed her to swing around the pole upside down. I’d seen that when we’d walked in the door and put it in a mental photo
album to revisit in the future. It was weird, it was bizarre, but I wasn’t going to judge free porn—furry or not. Now she changed completely to human … except for feral yellow eyes. I missed the other six breasts.
She crouched on all fours, stopped sniffing me, and tossed back the wild mane of reddish brown hair that fell down to her hips. All the better to see you with. She was certainly no Wolf in a grandma suit. If she had a grandma suit, she’d left it at home. I searched my pocket for another bill. “Vukasin had no mate, but I was with him. I’m Nashika.” She ran a finger along my jaw and then tasted it as if I were cake batter she’d scooped out of a bowl. “I’m one of the few left of my pack. After Delilah killed Vukasin, she moved on to his pack. I was allowed to join the Lupa as I’m she-Wolf, not he-Wolf and not high breed. It is the same reason Vukasin would not make me his mate. I am All Wolf. My disgrace is my salvation.” She passed a hand in front of her eyes to demonstrate that. “The high breeds were not so lucky as to be invited.” The noninvitation sounded more like not-surviving. Delilah might not have actually been the one to take down Vukasin, but she’d taken down nearly all his pack. She probably owned the bar now too.
“Then you do not especially love Delilah? Or would not be averse to confirming what her nature has her planning regarding Ammut and us?” With a fan of bills appearing in his hand, Niko sat beside me … in the way I’d noticed he always sat, deceptively relaxed but prepared to leap up at any second. I’d noticed a lot about him and what he did since South Carolina, minus a few gaps from yesterday. He trained … nonstop. He practiced every spare minute of the day for the job. But what was the real job? I’d seen that already. Keeping little brother safe and sound from the monsters, although I hadn’t had any problem taking care of myself so far … except with regard to Ammut.
I’d asked during my “rescue” why they couldn’t leave me working at the diner, destitute but monster free. He hadn’t answered.
The Halloween picture was the answer … and soon enough I’d know the question that made sense of that answer. Why I did this. Why my brother, overprotective to the point of putting me in a bubble, let me live a life that had nothing but short life span written all over it.
And why in a picture revealed by a bright flash, I was the only one who stood in shadows.
Or more important, why I wasn’t concentrating more on the naked breasts in front of me. They were only two now, but they were still spectacular and better things to concentrate on—easier. I kept half my attention on them and half on Niko, who was still talking to the Wolf stripper, the nudity bouncing off him as if he had a force field—or a jealous vamp girlfriend.
“No. I have no love for my new Alpha, but I have respect. I am Kin. I am Wolf. I will not betray her. Betraying her would be betraying myself.” She snatched the bills from his hand and then those wrapped around my fingers so quickly I almost lost my index finger to a paper cut. “Telling you the Lupa is waiting for you to find the life drainer so my new Alpha can kill you and claim the credit would not be the Kin way, would it?” She leaned forward, then cocked her head sideways, studying me with eyes curious and wary before kissing me. It was quick and short, but with the definite taste of copper and tongue. She pulled back. “Only a sheep. Clever or not, only a sheep. What did our Alpha Delilah see in you?” Then she was up and prowling from the stage to be replaced by another stripper.
I rolled the taste of blood around in my mouth and didn’t find it as bad as I thought. “A trip to a Wolf nudie bar all to find out that this Delilah, my ex who had bad taste in sheep, was going to kill us and steal our thunder?”
Niko was already pushing me toward and out the door. “No. That was a given. This was to let her know we know. As much as Nashika might miss Vukasin, her pretense at wanting revenge by giving us information is just that. Pretense. She is Kin and all Kin are loyal to their Alpha … unless they can take their Alpha. This little red Wolf wouldn’t have a chance against Delilah on her very best day. She’ll tell,” he explained. “I want Delilah to have second thoughts and perhaps third ones as well. It is one less thing we could do without, her nipping or ripping quite literally at our heels while we take on Ammut. Delilah is confident, but we’ve defeated her once before. She knows we won’t go down as easily as our clients did.”
“And you couldn’t have e-mailed her to let her know we see her coming,” I griped, “and saved me about fifty bucks? You said I needed sex therapy. There was plenty of therapy there, if anyone was feeling like giving a pityhump for a poor sheep, and did I get to touch any of it except for what was the shortest kiss, I hope, of my life? No, I didn’t.” I automatically bent my head to escape most of the swat.
Poodle brain, my ass. I’d learned that habit of Niko’s early on.
I still was tasting blood from the Wolf’s kiss when we made it home. The tang didn’t mix that badly with the wasabi mayonnaise, but it was still blood and we found more of the same waiting for us. The window hadn’t been fixed yet… . It was so high that getting anyone out there to do it was going to be a pain in the ass. I saw learning glass replacement and where to find tall-ass ladders in NYC in my future.
The blood would’ve been carried through that break in the glass … and rested in the eight hearts that had once contained them. I’d smelled it a block away—as little as it was, which was why Nik unlocked the door and then went through ahead of me with his sword drawn and an elbow in my gut to keep me back. Never mind he was limping and I was at my prime, from below the neck anyway. I thought about shooting him in that forcibly pointed elbow, but shooting him to try to protect him from himself might be seen as extreme. Or it might not.
Only one way to find out.
I put aside the fantasies of ninja elbow destruction for the moment and followed him in, closing the door quietly behind us. The blood smell was stronger, but it wasn’t rank. There wasn’t much blood. There doesn’t tend to be in hearts that are ripped out of chests. The blood tends to stay with the body. And then carrying them over in a bag left behind—from Nordstrom, classy—let more leak out, until you’re left with a few tablespoons of blood and the smell of raw meat. That was what was left of eight people—the smell of raw meat. It hadn’t been spiders, and they hadn’t come through the glass. She—and it had been a she, I could all but taste the perfume—had picked the lock and distributed the hearts around the place. One was even on the kitchen bar in a rectangular Japanese-style glass vase I didn’t know we had.
Not that I knew much. Not now … not yet.
Soon.
I stared at the heart swimming in the water of the vase. It was small; a child’s heart. It was February; one of the first things I’d found out when orienting myself in Nevah’s Landing. It was February, but was it a particular holiday? One that featured, among other things, hearts?
Fucking soon, all right. I’d have those memories soon, so I’d know what to do about things like this. Where to put these feelings, because I didn’t want to have them. If you lived this life, you had to have a mental box for moments like this, to shut them away. And you needed thick chains to wrap around the box and sink it to the bottom of the ocean. I needed to find that goddamn box.
“Is it Valentine’s Day?” I asked. It wasn’t my voice and it wasn’t the old Cal’s voice either, because Leandros gave me an assessing glance—one of those looks that said, “Hang in there, little brother, while I break out the straitjacket.”
I ignored it and him. I woke up on a beach with four giant goddamn spiders that I killed. Me. I’d done that. It had been me and monsters and nothing else. No big brothers to keep reality from me, and I’d survived anyway. In fact, I’d excelled for a man with half a brain. I hadn’t lost my shit then; I wasn’t losing it now. “Hearts and flowers. So where are the flowers?” And where was the Eater of Hearts? Where was Ammut?
On the pale gray counter were letters drawn in what little blood there had been left. For a murderer, she had nice handwriting. Neat. Legible. Written in death, same as in the shed wh
ere the dead counsel had lain, but you can’t have it all. She’d written four words: Give them to me. Again, the same as in the shed where she’d written it on the wall. At least it wasn’t in hieroglyphics. Niko would’ve had to break out a book or, hell, the guy already knew how to read them.
“Give them to me.” Niko had already searched the place. I hadn’t bothered. After the revenant-in-the-bathroom test, I made sure I could tell if it was only us or someone else still around. Except for the flowerchoking perfume and death she’d left behind, she was long gone. He read the words over my shoulder. “Give them … Give her what?” he questioned. “She’s already taken and is still taking what she wants. What do we have to give her? Why does she keep repeating this?”
In the Park.
Give them to me.
The trees, the grass, spiders all around.
Give them to me. You know. Only you would now with the true ones past and gone. Where they are? How selfish you are, half-breed. Keeping them all to yourself.
The spiders coming closer, more than four. Twenty at least.
Give them to me.
Maybe it had been Valentine’s Day then. It would explain the echo in my head, though not the truly crappy grade school poetry.
Roses are red, violets are blue.
The sound of two guns firing followed by …
I’m not giving you a goddamn thing, bitch, so fuck you.
It was so nice when a brand-new voice made room for itself in your head. I had me, two more preamnesia mes with radically different opinions on things, and now this Ammut bitch. The joy and the general party atmosphere of it all were too damn good to be true.
I shot the vase. I didn’t hit the heart. I didn’t want to. I just wanted the creepy fucking post-Valentine’s weirdness gone. The death of a child gone. The letters … the words … gone. The water didn’t wash them away. They were too dried for that, but it made mopping them up with a wad of paper towels easier.