Moonshine (14 page)

"How is Flay living up to his felonious end?" he asked, his austere features tightened with minute distaste. A traitor and a kidnapper's accomplice—neither would appeal to my brother's code of conduct, and Flay was both.

"Believe it or not, pretty well." I frowned, then straightened to shrug off my jacket and holster. A gun that size was good for one thing and one thing only, and carrying it under your armpit wasn't that one thing. Massaging the chafed area through my shirt, I continued. "Either he's smarter than we thought or he's hell on wheels in the instinct department."

"It could be both. Either way, don't be tempted to turn your back on him."

"Grandma, please," I snorted. "Who are you talking to here?"

"You've been under too long already. You're speaking like a thug." He reconsidered dryly, "Then again, you've always spoken like a thug. That's one thing we can't lay at Caleb's door." Standing, he held out his hand. The throwing blade had reappeared to lie flat across his palm. "It's balanced for you."

I took it and hefted it. Nik's were normally feather-light, but this one was significantly heavier. Myself, I'd never owned one. I had my talents, but knife throwing wasn't one of them. "How do you know?" I said skeptically. "I don't use the toothpicks."

"It's weighted for a beginner—a rank amateur. I believe that would cover you." With a resigned exhalation, he patiently manipulated my hand into the correct position. "Not that it matters. This one isn't designed to do much damage. All you have to do is hit something…
anything
with the tip. It's silver-painted glass. Under that is a bit of electronic elegance that will let us know you need help." Satisfied with my grip, he let go. "That you're in trouble."

"Ye of little faith," I said absently, tucking the altered blade away. He was right, though. There was little chance that I would find the crown, steal it, and make it out without running into some sort of trouble. We both knew it, and Niko had to know it from a powerless distance. "Thanks, Cyrano. Worse comes to worst, I'll break it over my own head."

"It would be gratifying to see you use it for something," he retorted, leaving no doubts to what he was referring.

"Yeah, yeah." Pushing the chair away, I headed to the bed and flopped onto my stomach. I was still chronically short on sleep. There were dreams. Dreams of red hair soaked with redder blood. I was tired. So goddamn tired. I pillowed my head on my arms, closed my eyes, and delivered the bad news, "There's a job tonight. Eight. No idea what."

"Not unexpected." His tone said "not unexpected, but certainly unwanted." There was the light squeeze of fingers on my shoulder. "I'll be there." Niko already had the address of the warehouse from Flay. He would be able to follow us on whatever little job Cerberus had in mind. George wouldn't thank me if I hurt someone innocent while trying to save her. And she would know. Hell,
I
would know. I rolled over and grimaced at the sight of a cockroach trundling happily across the wall.

"Why didn't she see it coming?" I asked abruptly.

The change in subject didn't throw him. Knowing Niko… or better yet, knowing Niko
knowing
me, I realized he had to have been aware the question was lurking in my mind somewhere. There was a moment of silence as he considered the question. "Difficult to say," he said thoughtfully. "I would say that perhaps Georgina can't 'see' herself. At the center of her own psychic nexus, there could be a natural blind spot that surrounds her. But…"

"But what?" I prompted, when he paused.

There was the warmth of affection underlying the next words. "But knowing Georgina, she most likely simply didn't look."

Hadn't looked. And the thing was, I knew that was exactly what had happened. I'd known it all along, but I didn't want to admit it to myself. If I admitted it, then I also had to admit that it could've been avoided. It meant that if George had managed to overcome that whole "what's meant to be is meant to be" crap, even for just a minute, she might be safe now. If she had for once recognized like the rest of us that life was brutally short and mercilessly chaotic, she might have used a little goddamn common sense. She might be safe.

Blaming George for her own kidnapping—how much of a bastard did that make me? Maybe I deserved those dreams. From the exhaustion creeping in, I wasn't going to be able to avoid them much longer anyway. I rolled back over, subject closed. "Nap time. See you tonight, Nik."

"Doubtful." The mock disdain was a shade less convincing than usual. "I'm the wind, invisible. Untouchable. Unknowable." Then he made a subject change of his own. "How's your arm?"

"Fine," I murmured, voice and thoughts equally thick. "What arm?"

"That's what I thought."

He might have said something further, but I was out.

I woke up to the near-simultaneous sounds of a quietly closing door and the less subdued beeping of the alarm clock. Spitting out a mouthful of bedspread, I silenced the squealing box on the bedside table with a slap. I rolled out of bed and trudged to the door to check the hall, but Niko was already gone. As he'd said… the wind. He'd stayed to watch over me while I slept, and I vaguely remembered the occasional touch to my shoulder that had brought me out of nightmares into blissfully empty sleep. He'd also left a present for me on the table beside the clock. Hydrogen peroxide, antibiotic ointment, and a happily informative note telling me to clean my gangrenous arm before he was forced to chop it off. Brotherly love, the original sweet-and-sour dish.

I did as I was told. Contrary I might be, but truthfully the wounds were reddened and puffy. And the last thing I needed was for an infection to slow me down while I was in the midst of the dog pound. First I showered and took care of my arm, and then I made my way back to the warehouse for my first day on the job. I couldn't say that I was exactly showered with camaraderie when I stepped through the doors, but a beery burp and perfunctory growl instead of sincere ones let me know I was one of the gang. A handful of murderous lupines, and I had their acceptance. I didn't want it, but I needed it. I needed it badly.

What I didn't need, however, was the foul and stinking breath ruffling the hair at my nape, but it was there all the same.

"Do ya mind?" I snapped. "I'm half-human, and I need the oxygen, okay? Your funky stench isn't quite satisfying the lungs." It was a revenant. If you could say one thing about Cerberus, it was that he was down and dirty committed to the equal-opportunity concept. A revenant… Jesus. Forget their pleasing and well-rounded personalities for the moment; their stink alone could clear a city block. Eat the dead, smell like the dead; it was a logic that couldn't be escaped. Not that they were above a warm meal once in a while. Dead was just a preference.

There was a hiss like an angrily deflating balloon, but the heat retreated from the back of my neck. I felt the iron stiffness of my spine relax slightly. The situation was tense enough; it didn't need poisonous gas emanating from this shithead's filthy pores to make it worse. Cerberus had personally given us our marching orders for the night. It had been in the office again, but this time he was alone… except for his meal. The succubus was nowhere to be seen, which was too bad. Whether she would know any deep, dark secrets such as where Cerberus kept his jewelry box was questionable. The head honchos didn't strike me as the types to spill the post-coital beans, but who knew? One thing I did know was that Goodfellow would be better qualified to find out. At the end of that exchange, if anyone were sucked dry of their life force, I'd bet my first Kin paycheck that it wouldn't be Robin. A dirty job, he'd say, is the very best kind.

My
dirty job, a much less enjoyable one, was watching Cerberus eat. Wolves liked to eat, big surprise, almost as much as they liked mating and killing. They gave a new twist to the old adage: If you can't eat it or screw it, you may as well kill it. Fine as far as it went, but wolves were of a mind to do at least two at once… if not all three. The whole species wasn't psychotically bloodthirsty, not entirely. But as I watched a liver ripped from a gaping wound and shredded under bloodstained fangs, I found that truth hard to hold on to.

Cerberus hadn't completely changed to wolf form, which was too bad. That might not have been as disturbing. The hands had thickened and gnarled, sprouting claws and a fine downy coat of black hair. Teeth had elongated to fangs as thick as my thumb and half again as long. The two skulls had flattened into wicked wedges with overgrown jaws, low foreheads, and moist flaring nostrils. Otherwise, the mostly hairless faces and ferociously intelligent eyes still looked human. The body itself was nude and faintly sheened with the same misting of black hair found on the hands. The nudity was a combination of a wolf's natural lack of shame and a convenient way to avoid ruining the expensive suit folded off to one side. Cerberus wasn't what you'd consider a tidy eater. As the body crouched over its dinner, blood splattered onto its broad chest. Still, if it weren't for the hands and faces, it would be possible to take them for men… hairy men, but just men. Yeah, let's revisit disturbing. Disturbing just wasn't doing the job in the description department. It was a night-and-day contrast to my morning meeting with the wolves. Cerberus had been all business then… coldly powerful and deadly, yes, but restrained. Now… now the savagery was so matter-of-fact, so casual, that you knew ripping apart a still-warm body was nothing more than supper, mundane as a tuna fish sandwich was to me.

"I have business for you," the head on the right spoke, the words dropping like stones from bloodstained lips.

That wasn't news. It was why we'd been called into the principal's office, to get the details. But when the one on the left gave us those details, I wished I'd stayed in the hostel and played count-the-cockroach. I'd known it might be bad. Hell, I was the last one to wallow in delusions of optimism, but I hadn't realized how grisly it could be. Would be. Swallowing the bile that burned bonfire hot in my throat, I exited the office with my partners in crime. Behind me the sounds of feeding resumed. There was one poor son of a bitch who should never have signed his donor card.

And that's how I ended up outside a homeless shelter picking out people to die.

I was also wondering fairly frantically what Niko was going to do about it. A hard, painful grip on my injured arm ended my wondering for the moment. "Choose. Lazy," Flay hissed in my ear. "Lazy…
work
." If he was overheard, and with the wolf ears around us he would be, it would look as if Flay was only giving a slacker a boot in the ass. A slacker was better than a spy any day of the week. I jerked my arm out of his grip and did as ordered. I chose. Randomly. I couldn't look at the people and I didn't… only pointed at them and then the bus. The others, on the other hand, were selecting by size, wanting the plumpest of prize pigs. We'd brought a bus for the livestock; it was dingy white, beat-up, and old, but scrupulously clean. The story was that we were a charitable medical organization busing a lucky group of the homeless to a new free clinic in Brooklyn where they would be given a physical. The ones that were sick would be promptly treated, also at no charge, and all provided with a nutritious box dinner. Yeah, it was a load of crap, but it would work. It
was
working.

Where this busload of people would end up, I wasn't precisely sure. It was in Brooklyn, Snowball had said, but it sure as hell wasn't at a clinic. Being sold for food was probably what lay in their future. To whom? Anyone. Everyone. Offhand, I couldn't think of too many monsters that
didn't
eat humans. Cerberus had driven that home earlier. Usually monsters caught their own, but you had to hand it to the Kin and my new boss. Sometimes you liked a full-on, dress-for-it dinner and sometimes you liked to pop something in the microwave, quick and easy. And now, for a price, they had your quick and easy right here. Don't feel like leaving the house to bag supper? Why should you? You've got a homeless Popsicle neatly folded in your freezer.

Despite myself, I did a quick scan of the general area, looking over the street and ugly, run-down buildings. Nothing. Niko had been right; I didn't see him. Although I knew he was there and knew it without a doubt, I still wished I could see him, calm and confident. Planwise, I was coming up empty. I couldn't make a move without giving myself away, and if I gave up myself, I gave up George.

Feeling eyes on me, I turned to see the milky orbs of the revenant staring at me from behind dark glasses. He was lucky it was twilight. With perpetually moist, salamander flesh, multiple joints, and the teeth of a demonic ferret, he'd have a harder time passing than Jaffer did. Some quarters said revenants were people returned from the dead. Nah. From a distance, a
long
distance, they did have the appearance of a corpse in the first stages of decomposition… a corpse with the speed and appetite of a trapdoor spider. But that aside, revenants had never been human.

I ignored him. Easy enough to do since he was downwind. It was less easy to watch as shambling men and women with ragged clothes and thousand-yard stares climbed onto the bus to be transported to their deaths. And fucking clever guy that I was, I couldn't think of a damn thing to do about it. Hands in pockets, acid burning the back of my throat, I counted twenty condemned souls filing past. Some had gray strands straggling from knit caps; others had black or brown hair. A few mumbled to themselves, several talked quietly with one another, and some remained stoically silent. One or two met my eyes with streetwise suspicion and wretched gratitude. The hot breath of the revenant was back on my neck, and his fingers felt like bare bone when they gripped my arm above the elbow as I nodded at the last of them, an old lady with one filmy-cataract-covered eye. She grinned with toothless cheer at me and went through the folding doors as I gave her a hand up.

Being torn to pieces would've been less painful.

"Aren't you a good little boy? A good little human." The revenant had a hard time twisting his thick tongue around the words, giving them a glottal grunt. The same slab of meat slathered the skin below my pony-tail. "A tasty human."

It was worth the painful bite I received when I ripped half his tongue out. The wolves only snickered as the revenant drooled and spit blood onto the asphalt, his eyes lurid with pain. I was expected to be loyal to Cerberus. I was not expected to roll over and offer my throat to some stinking lump of wet flesh wrapped in a concealing raincoat and baseball hat. Being seen as weak would get me killed only slightly slower than if I yelled at those people on the bus to run for their lives. "Here's your souvenir, bucko." I slapped the tongue against his chest. "Maybe you should've tasted my Auphe half instead of my human one." With that, I took my place on the bus and settled into the front seat as Fenrik slid behind the wheel. Wiping brownish black blood on my jeans, I then spread my hands and shrugged as pale blue eyes gave me a disapproving glare. I knew Fenrik couldn't have cared less about the revenant. I could've popped off the head and used it for a bowling ball and the wolf wouldn't have blinked. What he did care about was the homeless catching a glimpse of the moment and panicking. Of course, thanks to my infallible lack of luck, none of them had.

As my newly detongued pal climbed on after me, I opened my jacket to flash him a peek of my shiny new gun and raised an eyebrow. He bared rodent incisors at me, but kept trudging toward the back with bowed shoulders. He'd gotten off lightly and he knew it. The tongue would eventually regenerate; revenants could regrow almost any body part given the opportunity. He'd be running his mouth again in no time, and if that wasn't proof there was no justice in this world, I didn't know what was. I closed my jacket as the doors shut and the bus lurched into gear. As I stared blindly out of the fogged window, my mind raced in tight circles. I could all but feel the bruises as it bounced off the inner confines of my thick skull. Thick and useless. Come on, Nik, I thought grimly. If you're going to get these people out of this, there's no time like the present. And if you can't, I'll have to try, because George would never want this, could never be a part of it. And possible lack of soul aside, I couldn't be a part of it either. The fact that I'd probably die futilely without saving a one of them was just my misfortune, because I'd have to
try
.

The gears shifted again, diesel fumes belched into the air, and we rumbled our way down to hell, hitching a ride on the back of my good intentions. The buildings crawled by and I closed my eyes to them, leaning my forehead against the cool glass. I won't let it come to that, I promised George… and myself. This can't happen. It just can't.

And then suddenly, the tortured scream of metal came as the bus shuddered and yawed sideways like a drunken elephant. My head smacked against the window frame, giving me an instant headache, but I ignored it and jumped to my feet. Hanging on to the back of the seat, I managed to stay up as the floor rocked beneath me. There were cries of shock and surprise around me, and one worse-for-wear set of dentures went flying through the air to clip Fenrik behind one ear. He snarled but kept fighting with the large steering wheel, attempting to keep the white whale from tipping over. He was successful, just barely, until we careened to a jolting halt up against the curb.

For a moment it seemed like we would stay upright; then we went over. All the windows on the downside of the bus shattered at the impact, spraying glass upward. It was tempered and the one piece that grazed my jaw barely scratched the skin. There was no way to keep my feet as the bus tumbled over, but my natural grace, such as it was, kept me from falling face-first. Ass first was a different story. I looped an arm around the metal pole by the door and swung around, landing on my back as the bus hit and teetered on its side before stabilizing there. I blinked, feeling the grit of pulverized glass through my jacket. Inhaling an experimental breath, I took inventory and discovered I was in one piece, more or less. Turning my head carefully, I looked through the cracked windshield and saw what had caused the wreck.

We'd been rammed… by a garbage truck. The front of it was barely in view, but the shape was unmistakable. The engines of the hulking green metal monster growled, although the driver's seat was empty. Abandoned, a hit-and-run, but I did see something. It was gone so fast I might have imagined it, if I hadn't known better. A flicker of dark blond hair disappearing fast through clogged traffic and around a corner, was all the clue I needed. Within minutes there would be the telltale sounds of sirens, police and ambulance, and getting these people back to Cerberus would be a hopeless cause. Just like Niko had planned, and one helluva plan it was, considering he'd come up with it on the spur of the moment. Sitting up gingerly, I reached over and shook Fenrik's shoulder. He hadn't been wearing his seat belt—naughty, naughty—and was crumpled and bleeding against the door beside me. "Fen, on your paws. It's time to cut our losses."