Deathwish

5

“He’s good.”

That’s what Niko said in the aftermath of the fight while mopping the small amount of blood from his chest with a washcloth. “He’s good.” Like he’d say, “It’s hot today,” or “Darn, I’m out of tofu.”

He’d tagged Nik during a sword fight. He was more than good. And those three shots I’d put in him weren’t going to slow him down. Vampires healed fast and had an incredible tolerance for pain. All of that made Seamus a problem. Because, hey, the Auphe weren’t enough. Let’s add another goddamned monster gunning for my brother.

The couch had already been tossed over. What was one more kick? I slammed my foot against it. It didn’t make me feel any better, but it didn’t make me feel any worse either. “I told you I didn’t trust him,” I said grimly, as he pulled a new shirt on. “Being followed, my ass. He planned that.”

“No, that was real. Or whoever shot that spear would’ve killed me then. But there’s no denying Seamus used being followed as an opportunity to get closer to Promise.” The meeting she’d had yesterday with him that she hadn’t told Niko about. “And if he killed us both . . .” Niko’s eyes glittered with an anger he normally would’ve kept hidden. Niko didn’t have many buttons, but Seamus was pushing the ones he had—Promise and me. “Who’s to say it couldn’t be blamed on those following him?”

“And how hard could killing us be? Two humans.” I wasn’t really human, though, and Niko was by no means your average one, but Seamus hadn’t known that. He knew now . . . at least when it came to Nik. No matter how long the bastard had been around, Niko was his match—even in an ambush.

So what would he try next time? How much further would he go to get what he wanted?

Far.

“We don’t have time for this. Not now,” Niko said firmly, the anger already squelched under his customary control. “We’ll deal with it later.”

He was right. We didn’t have time for it, but Seamus had plenty of time. All the time in the world. The son of a bitch. “Promise isn’t going to be too happy.” I wasn’t too happy about it myself. Then again, I hadn’t had a secret meeting with the Scottish bastard. Maybe Promise wouldn’t be happy in an entirely different way. Niko said he trusted her, and that should’ve been good enough for me. And for him, I was trying damn hard to make it be. I hefted the duffel bag I’d stuffed with clothes, weapons, and ammunition, my grip tight enough to whiten my knuckles.

“Naivete in you, little brother. I’m surprised.” He lifted his own bag and stepped over the wreckage of our door. The landlord was not going to be pleased, but for a hundred bucks we could get him to nail it shut with plywood before the place was emptied out.

I guess I was naive, because it looked like Niko had been right about her after all. When we made it to her place and told our story, Promise wasn’t unhappy. She was pissed.

“He is dead. Dead.”

Eyes ebony, whiteless, and frozen with rage, Promise was saying all the right things, in my book. Seamus dead. Yep. Totally on board with that. As icy as Niko himself, I hadn’t seen her like this often. It made me wonder what she’d been like back in the blood-drinking days. She might be an omnivore now, but she’d been a carnivore once. Niko said she didn’t talk much about her past, and there was probably good reason for that. To see her sweeping out of the darkness at you—you’d think angel, you’d think demon. And you’d be right on both counts.

“Dead,” she repeated. This time I saw her fangs and I saw them lengthen before my eyes. I’d seen her climb walls, seen her snap necks, but that was a new one for me.

Nik didn’t seem surprised, but when you have a kid brother who’s half monster, not much can shake you. “We’ll take care of it,” he said, catching her wrist lightly as she paced past him. Her hair loose and a mass of motion around her, she was like a wind—the gale-force kind that takes down everything in its path. “After the Auphe, we will deal with Seamus. Together.”

“If Seamus is cooperative enough to not attack you again before then,” Robin added.

“Not helping,” I muttered as I continued to unpack my guns onto Promise’s dining room table—even if I was thinking the same thing.

He drained his wineglass and raised his eyebrows. “Who said I was trying to?” He sighed, green eyes somber. “Helpful or not, it’s the truth. But, really, what’s the difference? We’re already watching for the Auphe. We’ll watch for him as well. When you’re neck-deep in it, what’s one more dollop of manure?”

Maybe the death of Niko, that’s what. Seamus was determined. Then again, I thought as I stared down at my guns, he wasn’t the only one.

Robin’s hand moved past mine into the long bag and pulled out a sword. “Something for every occasion. Except clothes. I hope you don’t expect to wear mine. Your skin would probably melt at the touch of true fashion.”

“I have clothes, jackass.” I pushed his hand away, and looked back at Promise and Niko.

“I brought this on us.” She stood still now, and I could see glints of purple behind the black clouding her eyes. “If I hadn’t suggested we take his case. If I hadn’t let him fool me for an entire century that he had changed his ways.” Her face was stone. “I’ll have his heart, scarlet and still in my hand, and none of you will interfere. He is mine.”

“The challenge was to me,” Niko countered. “We will finish him face-to-face.” Face-to-face. Face-to-goddamn-face, because although he had drilled in me over and over that there was no honor in battle, only survival, Nik did have honor. Maybe the only person in the world who did.

“The challenge may be to you,” Promise argued back, “but the insult is to me, that my affection could be transferred so easily.”

I didn’t know if Niko would’ve gone further with it, or asked about that meeting she hadn’t mentioned yet. Considering Promise’s mood, it probably wouldn’t have done any good. But it didn’t come to that. One phone call ended the topic.

That same one phone call had us sitting at a diner across the street from a church in Brooklyn. There George’s father was having a memorial service on the first anniversary of his death. He’d been sick a long time, George had said, before he died. He’d kicked the drugs, but he hadn’t been able to survive the deadly present a few dirty needles had left behind. We hadn’t been able to go to the funeral, as we were recuperating from some serious wounds at the time, but we could pay our respects now—for George—from a safe distance away. If the Auphe were watching, we were having lunch. Nothing more. I doubted they understood the concept of mourning death anyway. It was a ceremony that escaped or bored them, and they most likely ignored it entirely. Why bury what you can eat? Why mourn a long-gone snack?

As for George, I thought she’d know we were there. She might refuse to look far into the future, but the little things were just there to her. We’d arrived too late to watch her go into the church. I hadn’t seen her dark red cap of hair or deep gold skin. She wouldn’t have worn black. That wasn’t her. Whatever she believed about death—I’d never asked—she wouldn’t honor her father by looking different than she always was. He wouldn’t have wanted that.

Hell, I’d never met the man. How did I know what he would’ve wanted?

I clicked the salt and pepper shakers against each other and looked away from the church. If she’d been there, why would I want to see her anyway? Seeing was just the next best thing to not having. They both sucked, but it was my choice. I would live with it.

“I’m not eating here.” Robin looked at the laminated menu with unadulterated horror. “They think grease is a marinade and that a Band-Aid in your food is à la carte.”

“We’re not here to eat. So just order something and sneer at it like you normally do,” I ordered.

Promise, in one of her hooded cloaks, was sitting across from me and farthest from the window. Niko sat next to her, eyes moving from the people in the place to the street outside. He was always on watch. He’d taught me, and I was good enough. But there was good enough and there was Nik.

He tensed minutely and that was something I was good at picking up on. I turned back toward the window, blinked, then narrowed my eyes. “Holy shit.” When a dead guy shows up at a memorial service and he’s not the one being eulogized, you take notice.

“Samuel,” Niko said. “Unexpected.”

“Unexpected” was the word for it. Samuel had once worked for the Auphe, keeping close to me while in a band that played at the hole-in-the-wall bar I’d worked at—keeping an eye on me from feet away. Even the Auphe couldn’t do that. But then he had changed his mind, had died to save us from them. He’d worked for them in the beginning for the promise of saving his brother. I couldn’t say I might not have done the same. And I hope I would’ve died to make up for the mistake like I thought he had when I found out how horrific a mistake it was. But now he was standing in front of the church. Alive. It was his brother that they were holding the service for, and I wondered why George had never felt the need to bring up the fact her uncle was still alive. I knew the answer to that the instant I asked it. She thought it was his decision to tell us.

And that’s what he was there to do.

He looked away from the church over to the diner. He saw us immediately through the glass. He saw us, because he’d been looking for us. One of the little things George was willing to share—that we would be there. Where’d she draw the line? Between what was little and what was big? How did she know? How did she know she couldn’t look at our future, hers and mine, but she could look at this? And why did both of us have to be so damn stubborn?

Either way, it was over. No point in thinking about it now . . . or ever again.

I watched as Samuel crossed the street toward us. He was a tall black guy with a close-shaven goatee, big and tough . . . now moving with a limp. He hadn’t had that before. His head was shaved too, new as well. It showed a half-moon scar behind his ear, clear as day—the same kind that Niko had described on the guy following Seamus. Samuel hadn’t seen me since the days before Niko and Robin had managed to get the Auphe-hired hitchhiker out of my head. So when he hesitated after coming through the door before moving over to us, I understood it. Darkling had been every bit the son of a bitch the Auphe were, and when it had squatted inside me, I hadn’t been the safest person—safest thing—to be around.

I took off my sunglasses to show my eyes were gray, not possessed silver, and he nodded and pulled up a chair. “Sorry. Georgie told me they got that thing out of you, but . . .” He shook his head at the memories. “Seeing is believing.”

“You’ve got that right.” I planted the muzzle of the Glock, hidden under the red plastic tablecloth, in his abdomen. “You know, I felt pretty forgiving when you died to save our lives. I’m feeling a little less than that now that you’re still walking around.”

He rested his hands carefully on the table. “I can see that. I think I’d probably feel the same way.”

I half expected Niko to reel me in. For him to say that Samuel hadn’t known what the Auphe were capable of. That we barely had ourselves. But Niko had spent a week looking for me then, not knowing where I was . . . if I was still even alive. An entire week of that. I’d been possessed, but in my mind Nik had had the worst end of it by far. Now he sat, his eyes impenetrable. “Samuel,” he said, voice empty. “I thought you died with honor. I see I was wrong about one. Now I have to wonder at the other.”

Promise, who had never known Samuel, remained silent. Robin, who had, drawled, “Order him the tuna casserole. That will kill him faster than any bullet.”

“In this place? I’d say you’re right.” Other than speaking, Samuel didn’t move. He was mostly as I remembered him: calm, easygoing. A trustworthy sort of guy, if you were into that sort of thing. I hadn’t been then, and he damn sure hadn’t earned it now.

“What are you doing here?” I asked flatly. “I get what you’re doing over there.” I jerked my head at the church. “But what are you doing here?”

“Because I do owe you, and I know it.” He added seriously, “Then there’s the Auphe. They’re back and that’s trouble for more than just you. It’s trouble for the Vigil too. You do know about us, right? Our psychics were able to pick up that you were poking around. Investigating. Something about a mummy. They weren’t able to get a clearer picture.”

“Psychics.” Niko gave a quick glance back toward the church.

“No, not like Georgie. If only,” Samuel said ruefully. “Ours are much weaker. They have no future sight, but they can pinpoint when something has happened as it happens. They know when we need to get moving.”

“To do what?” I demanded. The Vigil did exist. Wahanket hadn’t lied. He was a killer, but he wasn’t a liar. Good to know. Gotta have your priorities straight.

“Clean up. We don’t always get there in time, but mostly we do. And if it’s a mess someone else, like the Kin, will clean up, we let it alone. Those mutts are damn good about cleaning up after themselves. I have to give them that.” It made sense. The Kin didn’t want attention any more than their human Mafia counterparts did.

Samuel tapped his fingers on the table, but kept the rest of his hands still—respecting the gun. “Basically, we’re supernatural janitors.” He gave a self-deprecating smile. “At least that’s what I consider us. The Vigil found me when they were cleaning up that Auphe mess we were all caught up in. The collapsed warehouse was explained as a gas-main explosion. That’s why I’m alive today. The Vigil.”

“Yeah, we read about the so-called gas-main explosion. So you escaped? It didn’t look that way from our point of view,” I challenged.

“I didn’t escape, not entirely.” He moved his hand, very carefully, to knock on his leg just below his knee. There was a hollow sound. “My leg was crushed. They did their best to save it, but I lost it below the knee.” He flashed a slow grin. “But half is better than nothing, not to mention the fact that I’m alive and that’s damn amazing in my book. A miracle, one I know I didn’t deserve.” He placed his hand back on the table. “I knew about the Auphe, so it was recruit me or commit me. The Vigil’s been around a long time and they have their philosophy. I don’t totally agree with it, but I’ll take it over a mental institute any day.”

“And what is this no doubt fascinating philosophy?” Robin dropped the offending menu and pushed it away.

“We protect the human world from the knowledge of the supernatural one. People couldn’t handle it. If they found out, there’d be war, and no matter who won, the results wouldn’t be pretty.” He focused in on Niko. “You wouldn’t want the entire world knowing about your brother, would you? I doubt he’d last long. It might take the military, but they’d get him sooner or later.”

“So you just clean up?” I said skeptically, basking in the whole right to exist. Whoopee for me. “Wipe up after some monster’s snack. You don’t interfere?”

“We make exceptions, but they’re rare. Only when a nonhuman is so overt, so out there in what he’s doing, that he’ll give away the secrecy we’ve kept so long. There might not be as many nonhumans as humans, not that we know for sure, but there’s no guarantee humans would be on the winning side. Keeping the secret is everything, you understand? Everything. If we have to kill a werewolf or boggle who can’t bother to hold their buffets in private, we will.”

“Watching us for thousands of years. The pucks must have given you quite the show.” Promise clasped her gloved hands on the table.

“I’ll bet we did.” Robin curled his lips smugly, not ashamed at all. “We should’ve charged admission.”

“So, what of the Auphe?” Promise continued, ignoring Goodfellow. “They grow more bold all the time. What are you doing about that?” she demanded.

“Not a damn thing,” Samuel admitted. “By the time our psychics know where they are, they’re already gone. We’re hoping you can succeed where we’ve failed. The Auphe were mad—don’t think I don’t remember—but they’re worse now. They have to go before it’s too late and the world wakes up and sees them. There’s only so many fake escaped-mental-patient stories you can put out. But if we can’t find them, we can’t stop them. . . . Making the assumption we’re even capable of stopping them.” He exhaled with the confession. “They’re the Auphe.”

And that said it all.

I pulled my gun back slowly and slid it back under my jacket. “Nik?”

“It’s an interesting story.” Niko didn’t look particularly interested. “What I don’t know is why you’re bothering to tell it to us, and why now.”

“It took me this long to get up and mobile again. To be trained. And like I said, I owe you.” With the threat of being shot gone for the moment, he slipped a hand in his pocket. Placing a card with a phone number on the table, he said, “Call me if you need me. Any time. I have a lot of making up for what I did to you guys. Not to mention the entire Vigil owes you for taking care of Sawney Beane. He was the damn definition of overt and psychotic as the cherry on top. He had to be taken down, and I don’t think we could’ve done it.”

And that’s how all the bodies had gotten cleaned up a week ago when we were fighting the supernatural mass murderer, why none of his victims’ pieces had turned up in the park, the college, or were discovered by subway workers. The Vigil had tidied up but good. Niko had been right. Our mystery janitors and the Vigil were one and the same.

He rapped a fist on the table and gave me an amused smile. “I tried to talk them into recruiting you and Niko, you know, but they say you’re our biggest annoyance. You cause us quite a bit of work.” Pushing halfway up with one hand on the back of his chair, he asked curiously, “Am I leaving?”

It was a good question. Niko considered him for several seconds, then gave impassive permission. “You’re leaving.”

“You’ll call if you need my help?”

“You’re leaving,” Nik repeated, his voice cooling even further.

Samuel nodded in acceptance. “If you change your mind.” He pulled a few bills out of his wallet and let them fall by Niko’s plate. It was only when he was at the door that he called back over his shoulder, “Sorry about the coat. Hope that covers it.” The door shut behind him and he headed back toward the church.

Niko’s coat? What . . . ? Oh, hell. The speargun. The Vigil guy with the scar. Samuel had just confirmed they were behind that . . . were watching Seamus. Why? Did they think he was going to be overt? Noticed? Whatever. I only hoped they killed the bastard. It would be one less thing on our plate to worry about. Less worry, I could use more of that. I didn’t need the distraction, not with what I was trying to do.

What I was still trying to do hours later.

You didn’t notice the tinting at night on the windows. Promise’s guest room, one of four, looked over Central Park—it was a blot of darkness surrounded by thousands of lights. Fairy lights, if you lived in some fantasy world. I’d never seen that world, not even in my dreams.

Not that all my dreams were bad; they weren’t. I had nightmares, more now that the Auphe were back, but I had good dreams too. I usually didn’t remember them, but I’d wake up with the sensation of warmth on my face, of floating. No details, but I’d take it. Then there were the XXX-variety dreams. Now, they were all about the details. Testosterone, gotta love it.

But dreams would have to wait. I had things to do. Things to think.

Think like an Auphe.

I told Nik that I would. Told myself that I could. Whether I wanted to or not.

Auphe blood—was that the same as an Auphe brain? An Auphe soul? Stupid question—they didn’t have souls. No damn way. But the blood . . .

Last week to fight a killer, I’d opened a gate and traveled through it. It was one of a handful I’d opened and one of the few times I’d felt it. Slippery, cold, savage. Carnivorous and content with that. Very content. It had only lasted a few seconds, but that was long enough for me to decide traveling wasn’t a good idea. Opening a door in reality could open a door in me. It let the Auphe part of me out. Let it take a peek around. It had disappeared with the gate, and hadn’t shown up again. If I guarded myself, it might never. Yet here I was, inviting it in. Sit down, have a beer. Let’s talk.

How ’bout those Yankees?

I sat on the bed and stared out the window, watching as the lights slowly began to swim. And I thought. Ugly, bile-black, murder-red thoughts. They crept in and I let them. I liked to think they weren’t mine . . . that they were the result of two years of being held by the Auphe. Two years of a prisoner’s intimacy with his captors, knowing what roamed in their twisted brains. I didn’t remember that lost time, but it was there. I wanted to think that’s where the thoughts came from. I wanted to deny they were mine. Deny they were me. Then I said, Fuck it, and just thought them.

For a long, long time.

“Cal, stop it.”

I heard the words, but I didn’t understand them. They were just sounds. They came and went, but they didn’t mean anything.

“Stop it. Now.” A hand fastened tightly on my forearm and gave it a hard shake, bringing me back to myself. Words were words again. “What are you doing?”

My hand, it was haloed in gray light. A gate . . . very small, contained. I blinked and let the light bleed into nothingness. I raised eyes from my now-normal hand to Niko. “Thinking.”

Bad things. Such bad, bad things.

He didn’t let go of my arm. “Don’t. I know you said you would, but we’ll get out of this without that. It’s not worth it.”

To save Nik and my friends? It was worth it. It could eat my soul if I had one, and I thought it just might. It could turn me inside out; I didn’t give a damn. If it saved my brother, it was worth it. “I think they’ll come tomorrow or the next day,” I evaded. “Not all of them. Three or four. Probe our defenses. A suicide run, if they have the chance.” Because vengeance is all. Sacrifices have to be made. “It’s what I would—” My lips twisted and I corrected, “It’s what an Auphe would do.”

Niko hesitated, not like he doubted me, but more as if I didn’t have all the facts. But if there was something I didn’t know, he didn’t fill me in. Instead, he just said, “All right. That’s good intelligence to have.” He moved his hand from my forearm down to my wrist, squeezing tightly. “But don’t do it again. Don’t go to that place. I mean it, Cal. No more.” To that place in my head where things were dark and memories were black holes, sucking up everything around them until you forgot there had ever been anything to remember at all. Or to forget.

“Cyrano, shit,” I dropped my head and rubbed at weary eyes with the heel of my free hand. “It’s all we have. How goddamn selfish would I be if I didn’t use it?” The lights had gone still again outside the window. Fairy land. I pulled loose of Niko’s grip—because he let me—and in turn I yanked at his arm until he sat on the edge of the bed. “You’ve put it on the line for me all your life. It’s my turn to step up. You can’t stop me. You can kick my ass, yeah, on a daily basis if you want. But you can’t stop me. Not until this is over.”

He studied me, frowning. “You are so damn stubborn.”

“Learned from the best,” I said truthfully.

He exhaled. “Be careful, then. Can you at least do that?”

I was saved from answering by the car crash from the living room. For a second I forgot we were several stories up. The sound was exactly the same. A waterfall smash of shattering glass and the scream of twisted metal. Niko lunged into motion and I was on his heels.

In the living room, Promise’s largest window was gone. With curtains billowing, the cold air whipped through to carry with it tiny pieces of glass—a razor-edged wind. On the floor was a thick carpet of the shining stuff. Misshapen pieces of the metal framework were embedded in two walls, the ceiling, and glittered in the light as much as the glass did. Diamonds and silver.

In the middle of it all, she stood.

Not Auphe. I eased my finger fractionally off the trigger of my Glock. Not Auphe. Don’t pull the trigger. Not Auphe.

Straight black hair whipped around her shoulders, blood covered her hands and sword, and her eyes . . . I saw those eyes almost every day. Wildflowers in spring.

“They’re right behind me.”

Although Niko and I had moved into the room, it wasn’t said to us. Violet eyes found violet eyes as Promise appeared in the hall. She had a crossbow in her hand and an expression of wary affection and resignation on her face.

“Cherish, what trouble have you brought now?”

A dimple flashed by a very familiar mouth. “It’s only a little trouble, Madre.”

Robin had been the one to pull the first watch and was in the living room when the window had exploded. He now stood, back pressed to the wall, next to the absent window, with his own sword high. He took off the head of Cherish’s trouble as it flowed over the bottom edge of the window. The first of her troubles, rather. They weren’t as little as she claimed. More and more came, pouring into the apartment in an undulating wave.

That’s when the big picture hit me, jerked from Auphe dread to an almost equally crappy reality. She had crawled . . . no. With that much force, she must have raced up the side of the building to throw herself through Promise’s window. And the trouble she was talking about had come right behind her.

“Black cadejos,” Robin said as he took another head. “Whatever they bite will rot off in a matter of days. Nothing can heal it.” He swung his sword again. “And, worse yet, they smell like dog piss.”

“Don’t feel bad,” I murmured to Niko, the icy clamp at the base of my spine easing. Cadejos. Big, ugly, and flesh rotting, but not Auphe. “I’m sure you knew that.”

He growled and stepped into the fray, beheading two cadejos with one blow. Several across the room had leapt up to the wall and were running along it. I nailed them in their low-slung foreheads. They did smell like dog piss. Not surprising—they looked like dogs as well . . . if you crossed one with a weasel. Black skin, sleek black hair, short legs, long length, and a whiplike tail. They were like a living puddle of oil, but with baleful yellow eyes and a mouthful of teeth that could’ve come from the dinosaur that made that oil.

I fired again at one that vaulted toward me. The silencer chuffed as I hit it midchest. I ducked as it tumbled over my head. Another one, the size of a German shepherd, was hurtling toward me. I jerked my gun over, but before I had the shot lined up the thing was down, chopped into three separate pieces. Niko stood on one side of the body and Cherish stood on the other, both with bloody blades buried in the cadejo’s flesh. “Little boys,” she smiled at him, her dimple appearing again. A vampire with a dimple . . . what the hell was up with that? “They need protecting.”

Crossbow bolts went through the eyes of three cadejos sweeping up behind Cherish. As she looked over her shoulder, eyes widening slightly, I drawled, “When your mommy’s done watching your ass, we’ll let the adults set up a playdate for us.”

She wasn’t offended. Instead she laughed. If you didn’t know she was a vampire, you would’ve guessed her to be only ten years younger than her mother—she looked about nineteen or twenty. And her mouth and eyes were the same as Promise’s. Her chin, though, was more pointed, her face a little wider at the cheekbones, her nose thinner. But it was the perfectly black, perfectly straight hair parted precisely in the middle to fall just past her shoulders that was the first definitive sign. The light brown skin was the second: Cherish’s father had left his biological stamp on his daughter too. The third, and obvious even to me, was the madre. Spanish for “mother.” Cherish’s father was either a Spanish or Latin American vampire.

Still laughing, she whirled and took out another cadejo. Robin handled the last two that eeled through the window. That left five. Niko took two, Promise and Cherish one each, and I shot the last in the head. And then I aimed at what had wriggled in behind the couch. It wasn’t a cadejo. It was wearing clothes. I could see a slice of jeans and a bit of red sweatshirt.

“No.” Cherish stepped between us. “He is with me.” She turned. “Come out, Xolo. Come out, perrito.”

Pale fingers edged around the couch and perrito slowly edged into view. My Spanish was pretty rusty, despite Niko’s best educational efforts, but that I recognized. Puppy. And I could see why she called him that. It was a chupacabra, like the one from the bar. Puppy was a good name for something that looked like a cross between a bald dog and a lizard. It was the size of a small human—about five-three; no hair; round, mellow brown eyes; and with a bony spinal ridge that started midskull. As it moved out into the open, it pulled the hood of the sweatshirt up to cover the ridge and ducked its head shyly. I didn’t know much about chupas aside from what I’d seen in the bar. They didn’t talk as far as I could tell, they drank tequila, kept to themselves, and they didn’t tip.

“Oh, hey, another big spender. So glad I could save your life at no charge,” I snorted and let the muzzle of the gun fall toward the floor.

Cherish let her arm drape around the goat sucker’s red-clad shoulders. “Xolo. Xolo. He is a good perrito. Safe and good. I promise.”

He leaned into her side like a child and watched us with those unblinking soft brown eyes. He was a pet, not that bright, or was one introverted son of a bitch. She patted him on the shoulder and pointed to the couch. “Rest. Nap. There will be food soon.”

Unless Promise kept a goat in her freezer, “soon” seemed a little optimistic, but Xolo took her at her word. He went to the couch, like a good perrito, curled up, and was out like a light. With a bifurcated upper lip, eyes closed, and sneakers that could’ve been mine, he wasn’t much to look at. There were bloodsuckers and then there were bloodsuckers, and a goat sucker didn’t stand up too high next to the vampires, trolls, bodachs, wolves . . . the usual. Unless you were a goat, they weren’t much to worry about—as far as I knew. Trouble was, that wasn’t very far.

“Nik?”

He moved next to me, the blood staining his boots with each step. Promise’s beautiful rug was ruined, a sopping mess of cadejo blood. The entire room was a battlefield of the fallen, and the dog piss smell was not improving matters. “Chupacabras suck blood from animals. They have a mild telepathic ability said to be used to freeze their prey. Most references say they are harmless to humans.”

“Just lousy tippers.” I looked over to the piano where Promise had several photographs in polished silver frames. One I’d noticed before. It was old, a black image on tarnished metal. Promise and a little girl, dressed in clothes I’d only seen in movies. Promise sat in a chair, the little girl at her feet. The pose was stiff, but the small hand held in the larger one . . . that was warm. I’d wondered about that photo before. Vampirism isn’t a contagious disease. You’re born a vampire. Vampires have children, and I guessed now that that little dark-haired girl was Promise’s daughter.

Had Nik wondered like me, or had Promise told him? I don’t think she had, and while I was doing this whole thinking fest, I went on to the next thought, which was: That was a mistake. She had really screwed up. Seamus, now this. The past was the past, but family was family—it could fuck up things in a heartbeat. I was living proof.

“I’m not looking for a step-niece, in case you were wondering,” I told him lightly as I dug a hand into my jeans pocket. With cell phone in one hand and card in the other, I muttered as I punched buttons, “Payback time, Samuel.” When he answered, I said brusquely, “Promise’s place. Bring a van.” I took another look around. “Forget that. Bring a truck.” I was sure their psychics would know where her place was. Flipping the phone shut, I crossed my arms and took my first good, detailed look at Cherish. She was dressed in a long-sleeved, high-necked, sleek black dress. It was slit to her thighs, the skirt separated into four pieces for easy movement. Beneath it she wore black leggings and black boots. Vampires . . . they could never wear jeans like a normal person.

“Cherish, what have you done now?” Promise demanded with a weary tone to the words. The bottom of her silk robe fluttered in the rush of air circling the apartment.

Not done . . . but done now.

She had Promise’s eyes, but while the color was the same, what was in them was far different. There was a swirl, wild and wicked. It reminded me of what I saw in Goodfellow. I’d seen a street performer doing origami once—folding brightly colored squares of paper into cranes, tigers, horses, dragons, you name it. That was the quality I saw in Cherish and Robin. They treated life the same way. They twisted and folded it until they got the result they wanted. Life, like the paper, didn’t have much to say about it. But the two of them enjoyed themselves, so normally I would’ve said what the hell? Live it up.

If not for the Auphe, Seamus, and a horde of flesh rotters. If that wasn’t a hat trick of shittiness, I didn’t know what was. Cherish’s trouble was one trouble too many.

“You’re always so quick to think badly of me, Madre.” Scarlet-stained sword still in hand, she kissed Promise’s cheek. Blood and daughterly affection; it was a weird mix. Goodfellow was probably getting turned on. I made sure not to look and see. “And it was so very bright and sparkly,” she smiled, “not even you could’ve resisted taking it.”

“Strangely enough, I think I could have.” Promise returned the kiss but it seemed strained. “But you have made your bed, Cherish, as you have so many times in the past. You must handle this alone. We’re in dire straits ourselves.”

“She’s right. Next to our shit,” I nudged a dead cadejo with my foot, “this is playtime at doggie day care.”

“The Auphe are coming for us,” Niko said impassively. “If you stay here, they’ll be after you as well. I don’t believe you or your mother would want that.”

She definitely hadn’t told him. Promise had messed up indeed. Knowing Niko, knowing how he felt about Promise—how he trusted her, he might have thought that long-ago-photographed little girl was dead. Not a matter of honesty—a matter of too much pain for her to talk about.

Cherish would’ve been a lot less trouble dead, and that was my honesty—because from the set of her chin and the desperate spark in her eyes, she wasn’t going anywhere. “The Auphe.” The olive skin grayed. “How did you get involved . . . never mind.” She shook her head, the sweep of hair coming to rest on her shoulders in a fall of black silk. “I can’t leave. I can’t do this alone. And Tíío Seamus told me to come to you if I needed help. That you had friends, strong ones. I’ll need all the friends and all the assistance I can get. Oshossi wants me, and he won’t stop. He will never stop. This is what he does.”

“Hunts,” Robin cleared up our confusion. He’d turned over a glass-sprinkled cushion and dropped onto the couch. “Never met him, but he’s some sort of immortal creature. Likes to hunt. Likes to fight. Usually sticks to South America. He’s a forest type. Nature and whatnot. Likes dogs too. Obviously. If he’s come all this way to this place of concrete and steel, he is wholly pissed.” He propped his feet on a dead cadejo-canine. “So you stole from him, eh? Thievery. Tsk.” He raised eyebrows at Nik and me with his next words, “Uncle Seamus, eh?”

Cherish gave a deceptively delicate shrug, recognizing a kindred spirit. “It’s a hobby. Everyone should have one.” It was said breezily, but the pallor remained. Between the Auphe and this Oshossi guy apparently wasn’t the best place to be, but it didn’t have her offering to leave. “And, yes, if it is any concern of yours, Uncle Seamus. Step-papa Seamus, whatever you wish to call him. Family takes care of family. But when I told him that what I took I had already sold and couldn’t retrieve it, he sent me here. He knew he and I couldn’t handle Oshossi alone.” Damn Seamus, jumping at the chance to make things harder for Niko. The more distractions, the easier he’d be to kill. Then again, he wanted Promise. He wouldn’t want to risk her. He might have genuinely thought the group of us had a better chance than just he and Cherish. And when Promise told him the case was off, I doubted she’d brought up that the reason was the Auphe . . . for my sake.

Cherish sighed, a self-deprecating downward curve to her lips. “No matter how much they glitter, the things I ‘borrow’ tend to bore me quickly. I did try to make up for it. I gave Oshossi the name of who I sold it to, but either he can’t find them or he’d rather have his revenge instead.”

“Or maybe,” I said, “you really pissed him off at, I don’t know, the worst possible time for everyone in this whole goddamn room. You think maybe that’s it?” I didn’t care if I sounded bitter—I was. Uncle Seamus. Step-daddy Seamus. A full-grown daughter out of nowhere. An entire family. What the hell had Promise done to my brother?

That had some color returning to her face as she said frostily, “And what did you do to piss off the Auphe, hijo de puta?”

“I missed the family reunion.” I bared my teeth in a humorless grin. “And, yeah, Mom was a whore. Thanks for the reminder.”

It was true. I existed solely because Sophia had taken gold to screw an Auphe. I existed because not only had Sophia whored herself out to anyone, but also to anything. Like Cherish herself had said, everyone needed a hobby. And despite what Niko had thought . . .

It looked like Promise’s hobby was lying.