Roadkill (29 page)

“I was about to ask my traveling companions the same thing. Still in the store, I was assuming.” Niko looked over his shoulder back at the building. “Although considering the type of store it is, I would’ve thought he would have been in and out in five minutes.”

“He just called me and he doesn’t sound . . . himself. He sounds drunk and confused. You need to find him.
Now
.” All right, a righteous and pure peri, but a pissed-off one. And worried too.

“Now,” Niko confirmed, flipping the cell shut with a brisk snap that showed how concerned he was. “It has to be Suyolak. Robin certainly wouldn’t drink any alcohol he could purchase from liter bottles in that store. Rafferty, Catcher, can you find him?”

I was already on my feet, nose in the air. Thousands upon thousands of scents, but a puck was easy to pick out, a piece of bright green yarn in a mass of bland tan ones. Rafferty was most likely feeling for him with his healing talent as well as following with his own nose, but four legs were faster than two, and I streaked through the parking lot with my cousin and Niko behind me. I had Goodfellow’s scent off the bat. There were many scents actually: several kinds of cologne; silk; shampoo that cost more than the car we’d been riding in. He did like the finer things in life.

A few people shouted as I ran past them, but I was so quick that most were left gaping, mouths opening and closing like brain-damaged goldfish. I didn’t care. I was running, I was tracking, and while I was apprehensive about Goodfellow, I was also doing what wolves did best . . . besides kill. I couldn’t help but enjoy the adrenaline.

To run is to live and I was
living
.

I left the parking lot, ran through grass, passed Goodfellow’s dropped phone, and vaulted a massive drainage ditch as if it were a puddle. He’d walked around it. I passed over it as if I had wings, and I caught him. I caught the puck a split second before he stepped into the first lane of four lanes of busy, extremely fast- moving traffic that ran in front of the shopping center. I snagged the back of his expensive if now-dusty and sweat-stained shirt and yanked him backward hard. He hit the grass and rolled several times back down into the graveled ditch. If it had been a cartoon, you would’ve heard the splat. In the real world it was more of a combination of a thunk and thud.

Whoops.

I jumped down beside him as he lay spread-eagle on the dried, cracked mud. His eyes were half open, but he wasn’t seeing me. He was talking, but it was all Greek to me . . . literally. And I took Russian and Japanese in college, so I didn’t have a clue. I licked a broad tongue across his face, figuring that would disgust him so much he would have to come around. He didn’t.

Rafferty, Niko, and Cal came sliding down beside us, the latter wasn’t going to let us go tearing off without following us. “What’s wrong with him?” Cal demanded.

“He looks like he was sleepwalking. With Suyolak, that’s certainly an option,” Niko said.

“And into traffic to be run down—what a damn fun party trick that would be to him. The bastard,” Cal muttered. “What’s he saying?”

“You don’t want to know,” his brother answered dryly but disquieted as well. Worried. “Rafferty?”

Rafferty was kneeling beside Goodfellow, his hand resting on the puck’s head with the brown curls springing between his fingers. “Huh. Never thought I’d actually get to diagnose the good old ‘dead in a ditch’ in my lifetime.”

Cal snapped, “Rafferty, he’s our friend, all right? So don’t fuck around. Fix him.” Fix him, because Cal didn’t seem to have too many friends and he didn’t want to lose those he did have. Being half Auphe wasn’t going to make for the most popular kid on the playground. Poor guy. Although even if he hadn’t been half Auphe, I still wasn’t sure he’d win any congeniality contests. Like my cousin, he had a temper.

Snorting, unimpressed by his cranky counterpart, Rafferty took a more serious tone, “He’s asleep, like Niko said, and thanks to Catcher’s quick and heroic action, he also has a concussion.”

I laid back my ears and growled. Rafferty used his free hand to shake my ruff. “Kidding, Cuz. A concussion is better than his ending up as roadkill.” He closed his eyes. “Niko, Cal, go scare off the rubberneckers up there and I’ll work on the concussion and then wake him up.”

It didn’t take long. The pale face regained a healthy color, the blood seeping out on the gravel beneath Goodfellow’s head stopped flowing, and after five or so minutes, the puck’s eyes cleared and he blinked dazedly for a second before his gaze sharpened. “Where am I and what is that I feel on the back of my shirt?”

That would be a little bit of good honest Wolf saliva, but I looked away and pretended an interest in a lethargic frog hopping down the ditch away from us. Just as I liked kids, I liked frogs too. A biologist couldn’t not like frogs. They were fascinating. They came in all colors; some were poisonous; some could switch sexes. Amazing.

By the time it had hopped out of sight, Goodfellow was sitting up and talking to the peri on his phone either Niko or Cal had retrieved for him. “I’m fine, Ish. Lassie helped me out somewhat. What happened? Ahhh . . . some sleepwalking. Not anything to worry about. Didn’t I say Lassie saved me? So how much danger could I have been in really? Other than falling down a well or getting trapped in the ‘old mine’?” I bared my teeth and Goodfellow bared his back at me. Not only did he speak Greek, but he spoke Wolf fairly fluently as well. “No. You don’t need to come. Our doggy healer can handle it, he’s quite sure. Oh, and anything I might have said while asleep that was of a sexual nature I promise to back up when I get home. No, back up was not a euphemism. I don’t use euphemisms. If I meant that, then that’s what I would’ve said. I
am
sitting in a filthy ditch at the moment, but if you want to discuss details right now, we can.” Apparently Ishiah, thank Fenris and all that runs with fur, didn’t. He was far more interested in the issue of Goodfellow’s safety.

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 happen. Period.”