Shadowed Souls

by Jim Butcher

  Kaylee had frozen when Nia said car accidents. Nia did not make statements like that without a reason. But Kaylee wouldn’t put it past Nia to use the phrase to motivate Kaylee, without any evidence at all.

  So, Kaylee asked, “Dex? Was he—?”

  “Do you have money?” Nia asked.

  Kaylee’s cheeks heated. “No.”

  “Did you offer to invest in a love potion? Were you even contacted to do so?”

  The heat grew worse. “No.”

  “Then, no, Kaylee.” The words seemed unnecessarily harsh. But Nia’s gaze wasn’t harsh. It was soft with empathy, even though her statements made it clear that she had used the phrase car accidents as a ham-handed attempt at manipulation.

  “I only take care of the magical,” Kaylee said, just because she was feeling ornery.

  “Then I’ll assign someone else,” Nia said. “I thought maybe you wanted this one.”

  She headed for the door.

  Principles, ethics. They belonged to Dex’s world.

  And Dex was dead.

  “I want it,” Kaylee said. “I want it even more than you know.”

  It wasn’t quite shooting fish in a barrel. Shooting fish in a barrel wouldn’t be quite as messy.

  Kaylee could’ve just appeared in their brownstone, but she decided to do it the old-fashioned way. She walked up the stairs to the top of the stoop, knocked on the gigantic wood door, and waited until a man in a silk suit opened it.

  “Yes?” he said politely.

  “You’re the sales team for the love potion Armand sells?”

  “Yes,” the man said, just as politely.

  “I have a business proposition for you.”

  He looked at her, in her regular clothes—sleeveless T-shirt revealing her biceps, muscular legs straining at her jeans—and said, “Um—”

  “Great,” she said, and pushed past him. One hand, heart, hard push, and he was sliding down the wall.

  The push was a little too hard, because bits of him remained on the wall as he slid down. Fresh blood is black. Heart blood is blackish red and viscous.

  It’d be hell to clean up, but that wouldn’t be her job.

  “Stanley?” someone yelled from the main room. Woman’s voice.

  Kaylee walked into that room, saw six people, beautifully garbed, and two with actual weapons in holsters under their arms.

  Kaylee smiled. “He’s behind me,” she said.

  “And you are?” the woman asked, her shoulder-length brown hair swinging perfectly as she stood up.

  “Totally pissed off,” Kaylee said.

  Three more pushes mostly to the people in front of her. They slammed backward against the wall, leaving an even goopier trail than Stanley had. The two with the weapons—one man, one woman—unsnapped their holsters, pulled out the guns, and didn’t even get to the safeties before Kaylee knocked them back.

  That left three people standing near the table where they’d all been looking over some plans. Three—two men, one woman. The men were sobbing, begging. She was watching Kaylee.

  Kaylee shut the men up, left the woman.

  She held Kaylee’s gaze. The brains behind the operation, then.

  “So,” Kaylee said casually. “Close to any of them?”

  “What do you mean?” she asked.

  “Feeling their loss yet? Because I know a great potion that’ll help you feel a hell of a lot better.”

  Then her lower lip trembled. She knew what Kaylee meant.

  “Your idea?” Kaylee asked.

  “Hell, no,” she said a little too quickly. “Why would anyone do that? It’s so heartless.”

  “It’s not heartless,” Kaylee said. “You just need to be a person without much of a soul. The killing doesn’t impact you then.”

  “Like you,” she said.

  “Two peas in a pod, you and me,” Kaylee said, and killed her. Maybe a little too slowly. Maybe enjoyed it a little too much.

  Kaylee didn’t have to try to hang on to the bits of herself any longer. There was no Dex anymore, nothing really to strive for.

  She was good at what she did.

  And she never touched a goddamn thing.

  She disappeared out of the room, ended up in her dingy shower. Peeled off the clothes, dumped them into the bucket of bleach she’d left for just that purpose, and then tossed them, dripping, into a garbage bag.

  She showered, poured the bleach down the drain when she was done, and felt absolutely no better.

  But Kaylee felt like herself again.

  No lingering effects from the damn potion, no desire for a better life.

  And the anger, mitigated the right way, for the right reason.

  It would build up again. Nia knew that. Hell, Kaylee knew that.

  She preferred it that way.

  She didn’t want to meet anyone, not again. No potion, no nothing, would make her ever step into those forevers again.

  She couldn’t bear another hospital room, another goddamn broken promise.

  He said: Forever.

  She should’ve said: Fuck you.

  But she hadn’t. She never had.

  And she knew she would regret that little decision from now on.

  Until forever.

  Amen.

  IMPOSSIBLE MONSTERS

  A Caliban Story from the World of the Cal Leandros Novels

  by Rob Thurman

  “Fantasy, abandoned by reason, produces impossible monsters.”

  —FRANCISCO DE GOYA (1746–1828)

  Firstborn

  (Present Day)

  I changed my mind.

  It wasn’t something I did often. It wasn’t something I did even rarely. Don’t get me wrong. It’s not thanks to the fact that most of my decisions—fine, all right, any of my decisions—are well thought out. Sure, I could tell you they are, but it would be a lie—not that I had a problem lying. I didn’t have a problem with the truth, the hurtful kind, either. Sometimes you should lie. White lies. I know that. I do.

  It’s on the list.

  I have two lists, if you’re counting. One was given to me the moment I learned to read my first word. It was of things I should or shouldn’t do, and, sadly, limited my entertainment value considerably. The second list I’d made myself. Its purpose was completely different, and its entertainment was opposite in that it was prime. There were no dos or don’ts on it, only names. It was also the one that might have me changing my mind, as unlikely a scenario as that has ever been.

  As for the reason why I didn’t change my mind often, it simply wasn’t that much involved in, hell, my life as a rule or, in this case, my decision-making process. Or the lack of it. I didn’t think about what I said or what I did for more than a fraction of a moment, if I thought at all. Why bother? Whatever I ended up saying, whatever I ended up doing, it came from the same place. It wasn’t from my conscience. I didn’t have one—or, more accurately, I did, but it wasn’t the norm. Society wouldn’t recognize it, but a lion would. In my gut, my instinct—that’s where my decisions were born.

  As a system, sometimes it worked out and sometimes it failed. Other times it failed spectacularly. Either way, right or wrong, I didn’t second-guess myself. What was done couldn’t be undone. If everything turned into a train wreck despite my giving it my best shot, well, shit happens. Why would I waste time on guilt when I could waste it on something like the newest porn mag?

  With that outlook, there was no need to worry about changing my mind.

  My phone buzzed for the second time.

  Until now.

  This time, I was second-guessing. With good reason. This was on me. This was my fault, because I wasn’t actually second-guessing. That’s what I’d done twelve years ago, by not acting on what my gut and instinct had been telling me. I hadn
’t had proof, but neither had I doubts. But I did have the first do-or-don’t list. The Commandments, but considerably more than ten. I’d followed them more strictly at that age, whether I had misgivings or not.

  Those misgivings were how the second list, my list, had been born. I’d written down a name, one to keep an eye on, instead of doing what I should have done. What needed to be done. Thinking a watch list was a good-enough substitute. It wasn’t. That after-the-fact, second-run list only emphasized the simple truth. . . .

  I’d fucked up.

  The phone’s alert went off for a third time, twice as loud, with the buzz-saw whine of a pissed-off rattlesnake, to remind me of how unforgivably I’d done just that.

  I switched off the prompt without thought as I rested an elbow on the stained, spiderweb-cracked surface of the bar. The first alert was what had started this whole train of thought. It was my yearly prompt to myself to check my list. And I had. I dove in expecting to speed down it in minutes, same as every year, but this year that hadn’t happened. Fifteen minutes had passed and I couldn’t get past number one. I kept on, Googling hell-for-leather, before I’d found the end of the string and began yanking, unraveling an unholy knotted mess. Due diligence was what my brother called it. He cared about things like innocence and guilt, when, let’s face it:

  We’re all guilty of something.

  “I said, I want my fucking whiskey, you half-breed freak. Piece of shit mother—”

  Rude.

  Without raising my gaze from my phone or moving off my elbow, I used my free hand to shoot the Wolf twice in the throat before he could finish spraying me with spit and aggression. I had my Eagle back in its holster before the Were realized he’d been shot.

  I packed a Five-seven under one arm and a Desert Eagle under the other in a double holster. It wasn’t my fault that some, mostly Wolves, didn’t take that as a red flag. It was in plain view, as all I wore while working besides the holster was a bar apron, jeans, and a T-shirt. Today’s was black (be real: they’re all black) with an invisible, impossibly wide Cheshire cat grin that showed nothing but a curving double row of far too many pointed white teeth and the slogan in dark red that read, YOU HAVE TO TAKE THE BAD WITH THE GOOD. And then below the grin: I, MOTHERFUCKER, AM THE BAD. You’d think that’d be a second red flag, but maybe this Wolf had been too lazy to read it.

  This particular one, mirrored pretty well in a puddle of water I’d yet to wipe off the bar top, had wolfed out enough from the anger or the pain or both to be in half-and-half form. He had the muzzle, the fangs, the claws, the dirty cream and brown fur, and the snapping jaws, but he was standing upright like a human, with long human fingers, his eyes, filled with fury or not, a common human hazel. He swayed to one side and listed back to the other before combining a cough, a howl, and a strangled choking into a gushing spray of blood on the bar top. Then . . . then he finally dropped.

  Figured. Rude, and couldn’t take a little maiming with grace. Had to leave a mess to piss me off further. But, mess or not, I didn’t change my mind over shooting him.

  See how that philosophy normally worked out so well for me?

  I also had no regrets and the best of reasons for that.

  I’m a monster.

  And, make no mistake . . .

  I like it.

  My kind, the Auphe, had been the First.

  Enough to make it an official title. The first murderers to walk the earth. The first to kill for shits and giggles, not survival. The first of the perverse.

  The first to be shunned by other monsters. The bogeymen to the bogeymen. And one of whom had been Daddy fucking Dearest. I came by my club membership honestly.

  The Wolf was gurgling out of sight, half drowning on his own blood from the sound of it. Tougher than cockroaches, but they hate the throat shots. He would live, though. The dead don’t generate much revenue for the bar, as said, and they damn sure don’t tip.

  Ishiah, my boss and the owner of the bar, was abruptly beside me out of nowhere. I felt a cool gust of air against the top of my head as I stayed bent over my phone. Peri, ex-angels, or whatever they wanted to call themselves, ran cold for some reason, and I refused to believe it was from floating around in the clouds and playing harps before they retired. The boss did have the smiting look to him, though—tall, blond, a heavily scarred jaw, and eyes the color of an uncertain sky, clouds a heavy threat ready to roll in and turn the world into a non-OSHA-approved water park. WHERE it’s THE END and EVERY END is the DEEP END! For all but Noah and his SS Minnow, at least.

  “Do you have any idea how high the rent on this place is? Do you? So, why?” You would think it would be impossible to hear an eye twitching in spastic frustration. You’d be wrong. “Why did you shoot the Wolf, Caliban?”

  Yeah, Caliban. Mom had a helluva sense of humor, a fuzzy knowledge of Shakespeare, and a vicious glee when it came to naming her half-human, half-monster kid. She wasn’t a witch, like in the play, but she had been a bitch, and that was close enough in my book to be the fucking cherry on top of that heartwarming family story.

  “I’m on break,” I replied absently. “And he didn’t respect that.”

  Ah, there. The knotted Internet ball untangled and the information spooled free. Names, locations, dates. Addresses. I smirked triumphantly at the come-and-go of red sparking in the small screen. Done. Time to go.

  Straightening, I stripped off my blood-speckled apron. Blowback was a bitch. Tossing it aside, I grabbed my jacket from under the bar and shrugged into it, covering up the holster, as outside the door was human territory. While no one in here cared if I carried two guns or twenty, those outside might. This was a bar for those in the know about Big Bad Wolves, the not-quite-Fallen, and a hundred other different species straight out of your average fairy tale or mythology book. You’d never find a human here, same as you’d almost never find a human anywhere who knew about any of the rest of us. “I’m taking a long weekend, boss. Take it out of my vacation time.”

  I jumped up and slid over the bar top, avoiding the blood. This was my last pair of unstained jeans. “Long weekend? Vacation time?” His clenched hand pounded on the bar and, unlike me, he didn’t miss the blood. Fist painted crimson, he aimed it in my direction. “It’s not the weekend, and you do not have any vacation time. In fact, you owe me close to five months’ sick and vacation time.”

  “Protecting the innocent can’t be scheduled. You, in particular, should know that.” I waved a hand over my head in a casual farewell salute. “Remember that one time, at monster camp,” I mocked with all the fake cheer I could gather up to push in his face, “when I saved the world, saved your life, saved everyone you ever knew or will know?” I let the cheer dissipate. “And I didn’t even need a goddamn flute. You’re welcome. Employee of the fucking century. Still waiting on the plaque. See you Monday.”

  “Monday? I told you already, you lazy ass. It’s not the weeken—”

  The door at the front of the bar closed, cutting off the rest of his rant. I had no time for anything but the name on my list. Checking annually or not, I suspected with this one certain name I’d been sloppy. I think I’d known all along how badly I’d screwed up, and denial makes for piss-poor research. This year I’d gotten an immediate, if vague, hit that even subconscious self-defense couldn’t overlook and that made me examine the hit and everything else closer than I had the previous twelve years. It had me digging down farther, and down I did go. When I was done, I’d dug several virtual holes, all six feet deep and all filled.

  All but one, and I had a name ready to slap on the marker.

  I’d recognized predators when I’d been thirteen—make no fucking mistake—but I had the first list, the one my brother gave me. It was to keep the lion in me—he refused to call me a monster—safe from an inability to understand human motivations and human rules. I knew what they were, their rules; I wasn’t an idiot. I just didn’
t know why they were. Sometimes I still didn’t, but I had known that’s precisely why the list had been made for me.

  It was also why I’d let it guide me that one time, in the sweat stink of a school gym, instead of going with my gut. Since then I’d learned better. I didn’t always need the human definition of “proof.” I seldom did, in fact. I knew when someone lived where I did. All of the predators—the lions, the carelessly eager, the cold-blooded, the rabid—we spent our lives in the tall, tall grass. Twelve years ago, I’d recognized a wild distortion of my own reflection in the unblinking black-glass stare of a human snake, yet I let it go.

  I’d fucked up but good back then. How about I didn’t fuck up again?

  So . . . I did it.

  My once in a blue moon.

  I changed my mind.

  First Day

  (Twelve Years Ago)

  “Do you have your list?”

  He asked me every day, but he asked twice on first days. We had enough first days that twice was closer to being the rule, not the exception.

  I rolled my eyes. I was thirteen. I could still do that if I wanted. Pulling the laminated rectangle out of my jean pocket, I held it up in front of his face. “Abra-fucking-cadabra. Is this your card, sir?”

  “Language, Cal.” He lightly swatted the back of my head.

  “I know it is. Want to hear some more?” I smirked, annoying, sarcastic shit that I was. I’d barely been a teenager for four months now, but I knew the obligations that went with it. That, added to the duties of all little brothers to drive their older ones bat-shit crazy, was going to make Niko’s life hell from now on.

  Who was I kidding? His life had been hell since the day he’d been born. It had gotten worse when I’d been born, for so many reasons. He’d raised me because, if I’d been smaller at birth, Sophia probably would’ve flushed me, goldfish style, down the toilet. He raised me starting when he was four and someone should’ve been raising him instead. From my very first diaper, he was my whole family and my only family. He was all I had. Which was good by me. He was all I wanted or needed.