Doubletake

4

Several months ago, I’d killed eight members of my family.

No, that wasn’t what I meant, whether it was true or not.

Several months ago there was a somewhat, in some people’s eyes, relatively normal Cal—or by and large normal—the best he was able to be as a half Auphe. Occasionally he did lose his shit, attacked and ate deer while on road trips through the woods, created massive holes in between dimensions to shove through malevolently murderous pucks, and once in a while ripped out an Auphe’s throat with his teeth. He also opened a gate or two to save his friends, blew up an antihealer from the inside out to save the world, cleaned his guns while watching porn, and generally was a smart-ass to everyone.

Normal.

I opened the front door to the Ninth Circle to start preparation for the Panic. There was nothing normal about that.

But I had been normal, considering the world we lived in.

Again, in some people’s eyes…

Then that Cal was jumped by several Great Dane–size spiders in Central Park and bitten on his way home from this same bar. The venom caused the loss of most of his memories and separated the human part of Cal from the Auphe part for a while. The Auphe genes concentrated solely on fixing the damage located in the section of the mind that stored memory. They ignored the rest of the body and brain unaffected by the venom. And while they were occupied the rest of the suddenly mostly human Cal showed what he could’ve been—in a fictional world where Auphe hadn’t existed, where they hadn’t been half of what he was. A dream. A “what if” in a world where “what if” are the cruelest words around. Finally the poison’s effects were healed, and not only the amnesia, but something else—a mental split that had existed since birth, a defect, the Auphe would’ve said—joined back together and there weren’t two different Cals anymore: the human one who was snarky and would take you down if you deserved it and then the subconscious Auphe one who wanted out, although it took him nineteen years, wanted free, who thought control was a disease and slaughter the most natural thing there could be.

Those two Cals became one. The venom had activated the Auphe healing to the extent that it had done more than return my memories. It had interwoven what had once been separate. And now there was me. I was improved. I had control, something I believed I’d always lack.

Having control, that was something unbelievable. Incredible. There was no more reverting to the other half of my gene pool and chasing and eating Bambi in the woods, because there was no other half anymore—not mentally. There was something new and now whole formed by a joining of Auphe and human.

Something new, something old, something unlike anything on this earth.

I was in command, darker maybe, but the darkness was worth it.

Darker than dark, blacker than night. Yessss.

Enough, Gollum. Christ. I’d gotten the point already.

But it was worth the trade—I thought. Before, I wouldn’t kill you unless I had to…although I might want to if you pissed me off. Now the whole—the new—Cal wouldn’t kill you unless I had to; I’d just want to a whole lot more—and you didn’t always have to piss me off to have me fondling my guns. The drive was increased, but the decision was the same…because of the control. I held back, unless you did have it coming to you.

Killer, raper, monster, maimer.

Past Cal would’ve put you down. I would too, but first you’d have the tour. Down and down, ’round and ’round, through Caliban’s town. In the past, it would’ve been quick. Now I took my time. Your pain equaled your victims. Your amount to arrive six feet under, it took longer.

Niko believed in karma in the next life. I believed in karma in this one, and I was a stand-up soldier when it came to delivering it. The decisions I would’ve made in the past, they hadn’t changed. Much. The punishment…that I fulfilled more appropriately according to the crime and the time. I was the right hand of justice and the left hand of the undertaker.

Clever excuses. But why do you think ending the useless needs them?

The spider venom, the biological repair, had stabilized me—Niko, Robin, Promise, and I, we’d all recognized that. I hadn’t settled where others in the supernatural community would’ve liked, but I was stabilized. That, for everyone around me, was a relief, because it was one hell of a slippery slope, as they say, when my Auphe genes began to overcome the weaker human genes. Auphe genes always win—that’s what a long-gone healer friend of ours had said.

He’d been right—until now. And would be right again…maybe…sometime in the future.

There were the dreams too. Awash in blood and the hunt. Did I ever have dreams that heart-pounding? That savored?

So wild?

So wanted.

Black thoughts and scarlet dreams, they didn’t mean anything in the end—unless they were useful. I was in command of myself now and that was all I needed to know. I would do what had to be done only when it had to be done, and if I enjoyed it a great deal more, then that was a win-win.

I flipped on all the lights in the bar. The last thing I wanted was a dim atmosphere that assisted the pucks in scheming, assaulting, stealing, and a hundred other things.

While at least I was in control of my mind, I knew I was way out of my depth on the approaching situation. The Panic? No fucking way. I tied the black apron around my waist and started lining up glasses on the bar of the Ninth Circle as I used that control to consider something else besides pucks. I thought about consequences—something I rarely did.

Consequences were boring.

Yet sometimes you had to man up and face them.

That wasn’t boring. That just sucked. But for my brother, I would do it.

Not that it still didn’t suck.

“You think I made a mistake gating that SOB to the boggles before we found out what the Vayash burden is?” I asked my brother, who was working beside me with methodical movements.

The last Rom clan who’d come to hire us to find their lost duty, their burden had been the watchers of an antihealer known not so euphemistically as the Plague of the World. Suyolak could’ve destroyed all life on the planet if we hadn’t stopped him. The Black Death was just a kiddie party to him, and one he’d started. It made me wonder what the hell the Vayash were supposed to be keeping locked down.

If it was anything remotely close to Suyolak, that was bad fucking news.

Niko showed no signs of being concerned as he shrugged slightly, following my lead with the glasses. “He’ll be back, as you said. And whatever the Vayash have lost, we cannot find today. Today is the Panic, and not only are we committed, but I think the Panic may supersede any other threat on the face of the planet.”

It should’ve been a joke, but it didn’t sound like a joke, and I was under no illusions that it was.

Goodfellow was the typical trickster with typical trickster ways, but he was sane. Fairly content, even happy now that he was in what used to be the foulest curse word in his vocabulary: a relationship. But he was only one of two pucks I’d met. The other, Hob, had been insane, malignantly narcissistic, and would not only kill you for no reason, but do it more efficiently than anyone alive. When you’re the first, born conceivably a million years ago, you learn to fight like there is no fucking tomorrow. My genes were of the firstborn, but I was not a firstborn. There was a difference—as in unnumbered-amount-of-years-of-carnage-experience difference.

If they hadn’t crippled you, it would be different. Much different.

“What do you mean, ‘crippled’?” Niko asked, the glass suspended in his hand. His knuckles were white and tense. Shit, I’d actually said that aloud.

The door opening managed to get me out of an immediate explanation. Robin walked in wearing his usual outfit of expensive green shirt, black slacks, and shoes. He sat on a stool and said rapidly, “All right. Extremely important. Before the others get here you are not to mention, hint, or even think about how I’m in a monogamous relationship. Are we clear? It would ruin my reputation among the Panic. They’d hang me from the ceiling and beat me like a piñata. So keep your mouths shut. ¿Entienden?”

“Whatever,” I said. “Trust me, I’m traumatized enough. The last thing I want to talk about with a hundred other yous is your sex life.”

The green eyes shifted to something less Robin and considerably nastier as he raised his voice. “Come on in, brothers! Adelfae! Hear the news.” The door swung open again to reveal a streaming horde of pucks. “It’s true. Goodfellow is monogamous. He’s become a freak. A pervert. Depravity on the cloven hoof.”

“Or his balls fell off,” suggested another puck who came to the bar. “Or his dick. Anyone who would hang about with Bacchus is bound to get a catastrophic genital rotting illness at some point.” This one was also identical except his hair was a few inches longer and he had both ears pierced with small gold hoops.

Niko looked at me as the priest must’ve looked at the guy sitting in the electric chair in the old days right before the switch was flipped: resigned sympathy. “I didn’t know he wasn’t Goodfellow,” I protested, feeling the desperation sharply. Not our Goodfellow at any rate, but his carbon copy. “He looks dead-on Robin. He said he was Robin.”

“Implied,” Niko corrected, the sympathy turning one hundred and eighty degrees to a mildly sadistic pleasure he didn’t make an effort to hide. “He implied it. He didn’t say it.”

“He’s wearing the same kind of clothes Robin would wear”—I kept up the crumbling defense—“and all of them smell the same.” I hadn’t inherited the Auphe ability to see in the dark, but I had inherited their sharp sense of smell. “Every one of them smells like frigging Irish Spring. All green and minty. It’s not my fault.”

He put the glass down and patted my back. “It was nice knowing you, little brother. When Goodfellow is through with you and if there’s enough left to bury, I’ll find you a nice plot.” The pucks kept pouring through the door and, immune to pheromones or not, I felt pretty damn panicked as they kept coming and coming. And I wasn’t touching that double entendre with a ten-foot pole…or that one either.

Another puck came pushing through the crowd. As soon as the others spotted him they started singing some ancient seventies song: “‘Do you like piña coladas? And getting caught in the rain…’” The tone was pure derisive malice, obviously not a “Hey, great to see ya, brother. Congrats on the boyfriend” song.

A fist banged against the bar, rattling the glasses. “Who told them?” this puck demanded with a poisonous hiss that would’ve done any rattlesnake proud.

“Goodfellow?” Niko asked dubiously.

“Yes, Goodfellow. Goodfellow who has been outed as a freak monogamist whose shame will follow him to his dying day. Now who told?” He didn’t wait for an answer. He grabbed a handful of my shirt. “Why do I even ask? We are pucks. Didn’t that one brain cell you possess wake up long enough to let you know we all lie? We all deceive? We all hate one another’s attention-snatching guts and would do anything to humiliate one another?”

He didn’t give me a chance to respond. “Ah, what did I expect? You’re a Boy Scout in a con man convention. If con men had the drive and conscience of Jack the Ripper.”

Me? A Boy Scout? With the things I’d done? That was a first, but considering this company, he could be right. Releasing my shirt, he dropped his forehead onto the bar and mumbled, “We should’ve worked out a safe word. Give me three bottles of scotch.”

A hand slapped his shoulder and squeezed. “Would you like a mercy killing? I’d hate for a tainted monogamy cell to enter the race should you lose the lottery.”

It was the one who’d masqueraded as Robin. I could tell only by what he was wearing. Otherwise he and Goodfellow were beyond identical. It was creepy. The bar was full of about seventy of them, and besides length of hair, clothing, and the occasional scar, they were as Nik had said: clones. Your brain squirmed at the sight of it. It was unnatural—mirrors within mirrors. “No, thank you, Faunus,” Goodfellow said smoothly, sitting up. “I’d rather discuss how you haven’t had sex at all in a year. Did you take vows or is it true that an incubus bit off your penis in disappointment at your pathetic performance?” He grabbed the hand on his shoulder, slammed it on the bar, and pinned it there with a beautiful Spanish poniard gleaming silver and needle sharp. “Let us check and see.”

I turned my back just in time to hear the slide of material as pants were yanked down and then a pained groan from the entire bar. Apparently the incubus story edged out the taking-vows one.

“Is this the type of fight you hired us to prevent?” Niko questioned. I didn’t know where his gaze was, on Goodfellow or Faunus, because I remained with my back to the Panic. I might work that way the entire night if it was feasible—serving the customers without facing them.

“Hardly,” Goodfellow dismissed. “A fight will be when one of us genuinely tries to kill another. We need alcohol to lubricate that into motion. Give us an hour. And you can look again, Cal—not that there was anything to see.” There was a wicked gloat at the monogamy revenge in the words. “His pants are back up. Luckily he does have a belt, as there is nothing else to hold them up.”

Warily, I faced the bar again as Faunus disappeared into the jeering and laughing crowd, the bloody blade remaining on the bar. “I think you made an enemy for life.”

“We are all enemies, but keeping the race alive is more important than that. And what precisely are you doing?” I ignored his question as I uncapped the black marker I’d fished out from under the bar, leaned across, and wrote “RG” on his forehead.

“Just a precaution.” I put the marker back under the bar and handed over his three bottles of damn expensive scotch that he insisted be kept especially for him.

“Actually, that’s not a completely idiotic idea…unless it’s permanent marker.” He scowled, but let it go and pointed to several other pucks around him. “This would be Piper, Pan, Shepherd, Paein, Paniskoi, Phobos, Philamnos, Phorbas, Panikon, Puckstein—he converted—Prank, Puca, Puki, Argos…and you’ll never remember the rest. Simply enjoy the spectacle and if you have to take a break, I’d go together. The buddy system is essential during the Panic.”

“Mostly Ps. Why aren’t there any variations on Goodfellow or Robin?” Niko asked.

His face went blank but he smiled…technically. If someone had taken that poniard from the bar and carved the smile on his face, the effect would’ve been the same. “That’s a good question. I’ve wondered myself and then I wonder something else. Hob was the first, a million years on this earth. No one dared to take his name. I say I’m a hundred thousand years old, but as I can’t remember half of those, what else might I not remember? A million more? Hob went insane because he did remember. All those years and all the things that he had done. In a million years they couldn’t all be good things, now, could they? Some might be extremely bad things.”

His imitation of a smile became more unnatural as he continued. “Or if you don’t care what you do, the absolute number of years of boredom alone would drop you into the deepest pit of insanity. Maybe I’m a little smarter than Hob when I know a perfect memory can be the worst of enemies. Then again, maybes are only maybes. Maybe no one else cares enough for my name to steal it.”

The smile disappeared piece by piece, chunks of ice shoved methodically one by one into a freezer. “Do you have any interesting questions to add, Caliban?”

I felt like I’d asked someone what time it was and they beat me to death with Big Ben. Someone was cranky. I juggled more bottles of alcohol, ready to pour. “I was just going to ask why you guys have dicks if you don’t use them for the whole baby-making thing, but I think I can live without the info. Go party. Have fun. Stab somebody in the back. We’ve got it covered.”

His eyes didn’t become any less opaque, but he did turn and disappear into the crowd. “I think I might’ve pissed myself a little bit,” I said conversationally to Niko. “How ’bout you?”

“A drop. Perhaps two at the most.” Niko took the discarded poniard and tucked it away. He did like collecting blades.

“I always wondered why he wasn’t afraid of me like everyone else.” Or hadn’t hated me like everyone else. You hate what you fear. Goodfellow didn’t fear me. He never had. “My monster cred just dropped a notch.”

Both of us had started pouring drinks when one of the pucks shouted, “Where’s the entertainment? The strippers! The whores! I’ve ten thousand dollars in fives and a crotch on fire! Bring on the orgy!”

“Oh God,” I croaked. The glass in my hand fell to shatter on the floor.

And Niko didn’t catch it. Niko and his unmatched reflexes didn’t catch the glass. For the first time in his adult life, I thought my brother was frozen with fear.

“I thought all other paien left when you guys rolled into town,” I said. “Goodfellow said so. I remember. Distinctly. Very distinctly.” With the possible exception of the boggles, and I didn’t see Mama Boggle on a stage wearing pasties over her scaly chest and a G-string made to accommodate her thrashing crocodile tail. Nine feet of croc-a-croc-a burning love. “Oh shit, I think I’m going to pass out.” I clenched the edge of the bar.

“Almost all paien,” one of the pucks corrected. Puckstein—I recognized him by the Star of David around his neck. “Not the lili and lilitu. They can’t smell us.” He stretched as if he were next up in Olympic men’s gymnastics. Jesus. “Hope you have a fire hose handy to clean out the place. You’re going to need it when this night is over.”

Jesus.

I thought about shooting myself in the head. I thought about shooting the puck, but taking out seventy wasn’t going to happen. I decided on the simple: running out the emergency exit doors, if Niko didn’t beat me to them.

But it was too late. There were three reasons for that. One was the commitment we’d made to Robin—by commitment I meant the money we’d taken and had no intention of giving back. The second was the chains I saw wrapped and locked around the emergency door push bars. Goddamn mind-reading Goodfellow. The third was the worst.

The entertainment had arrived.

Seventy or so lions prowled through the front door. They walked upright, dressed in long raincoats to pass among humans, but they were lions. Until they stripped off the coats as soon as they passed through the door, and then they were lions and eagles. Male and female, they all had masses of hair—no, not hair, but manes, tawny or dark brown or a mixture of both. Sunglasses were dropped as well to reveal cat’s eyes in reverse, black with a golden slit of iris. They also had dark brown/black wings springing from their backs. That was comfortingly familiar. It was a peri bar. We were used to feathers here.

But there was something off. I took a harder look. I was used to anything these days when it came to monsters. Yet there was something…missing.

Their eyes and full-lipped mouths were so large, you almost didn’t notice—that there was only smooth skin between. No noses.

Puckstein was right: Puck pheromones wouldn’t bother them at all. Hard to smell when you’re lacking noses.

Everywhere else they looked mostly human—human with the bare minimum of sequined stripper wear to be taken off for money, and lion fur billowing where most women waxed or shaved and some men manscaped. I was half monster, but, yeah, I knew the word “manscape” and if I hadn’t, seeing enough fur escape a bulging G-string that it crept down to knee level, I would’ve invented the term.

The music started, the lights lowered and began to pulse in wild colors, and a wall-covering sheet I hadn’t given a single thought of going near was ripped down to reveal the entire contents of a porn warehouse. There were sex toys I’d seen, sex toys I hadn’t seen but was aware existed, and then there were things I hadn’t seen, hadn’t heard of, and couldn’t begin to guess what in the hell they did.

“I’m surprised Goodfellow didn’t go all out and bring in chandeliers from which they could swing,” Niko said.

I pointed to a corner where a leather swing was being set up to hang from the ceiling. “Ah.” Niko exhaled, to center himself—I’d seen him do it many times before. “You’re fascinated with the porn channel. Now you get the three-dimensional version. I’d think you’d be enjoying yourself.”

“I like a candy bar once in a while too. This is being stuck in Willy Wonka’s Perverted Sex Factory.” I started pouring drinks. It was a job. Muscle through it.

Niko began pouring as well, as a wall of impatient hands waved frantically in our faces. “The lili, male, and lilitu, female, were born under the sands of Assyria in ancient times. If you’re born under the sand, often live in sandstorms, I understand nature deciding you didn’t need a nose. They’re known to be ravenously sexually predatory, more so than—difficult as it is to imagine—pucks, I’ve heard.”

A naked puck slammed and bent an equally naked male lion over the end of the counter—my end—and I commented in resignation as the bar, glasses, and bottles began to shake furiously, “I think you heard wrong.”

I moved around to the other side of Niko, which was tight to be pouring drinks, so I started handing out bottles instead. Whiskey, scotch, tequila…whatever I could grab the quickest. Pucks had a tolerance that made a case of forty-ounces seem like a thimbleful to them anyway. I also started drinking myself. Heavily, which I rarely did in a business where you needed to stay alert to stay alive. But if I had to see what I was seeing, I preferred to see it with blurry vision.

The bar was packed, less than inches to spare. Seventy or so pucks, which was equal to about seventy thousand egos, plus seventy horny lions—the Ninth Circle wasn’t built for a crowd half this size. But everyone seemed willing to share their personal space in helpful ways such as wrapping their legs around someone else’s waist or hips, from the front or the back or upside down. There was also a tangled pile of heaving bodies—I didn’t count—in each available corner, skin-to-skin, not a millimeter of space between. Anything to keep the fire marshal away.

Wasn’t that obliging?

There were also those who hadn’t gotten past the strip shows yet. They were probably the equivalent of pucks with sexual dysfunction. It took them at least two to three minutes to get warmed up for a full-on ménage à whatever the French word for “twenty” was.

The dancers were gyrating on tables, chairs, and an agile two impressively on top of one of the thrusting and groaning mounds of sweating flesh. Female lions’—lilitu’s—breasts were bouncing, which I approved of, although the wish on the shaving or waxing issue hadn’t changed. The male lions had bouncing going on as well, but it had nothing to do with breasts.

I groaned myself, but there was nothing sexual about it. I looked in another direction quickly, but unfortunately it was where I’d been ready to serve drinks earlier. How’d I forget that? The puck and the male lion hadn’t stopped shaking the bar yet. The puck was nuzzling through the lili mane to bite the back of his neck, and the lion was roaring and then purring as his wings flared and he lifted them in the air, the puck’s legs clamping around the thickly muscled waist. The lili roared again and there was a sudden rain of russet-colored fluid that smelled of cinnamon and desert sand.

I hadn’t seen it, but I’d bet Brokeback Mountain wasn’t anything like this.

“I am so not cleaning that up,” I said, taking another swallow from my bottle of whiskey.

Robin wasn’t going to be forgiven for this, not until the day I died and was a year in the ground. Niko was fending off probably the twentieth puck of the night—they definitely liked blondes—with his sword. “Bartenders are off-limits,” he was repeating. “Tell your brothers. No means no. It also means I will remove a very different kind of sword from them if they don’t respect that.”

I looked up to see the air full of sequins that had fallen from tossed-off clothing. They glittered in the flashing lights. Money flew in gusts of wind caused by flapping wings. It was like being inside a giant kinky snow globe. The pucks weren’t interested in me, although from their dubious glances they didn’t know why, and I drank on. Another puck tackled one of the female dancers off a table and was already inside her by the time they landed on the floor. She laughed as his mouth closed over a dark golden nipple.

Okay, that I missed. “I need to get laid in the worst way,” I said mournfully.

“And that would be more than enough alcohol for you.” Niko plucked the bottle from my hand.

It passed, the “entertainment” part of the reunion. Rather like the bubonic plague passed: slowly and leaving madness and despair in its path.

Then came the puck version of after-sex. My definition was spooning with whispers in her ear of, “You were fucking hot as hell. You could kill a man with one of your blow jobs,” followed by an instant drop into unconsciousness while drooling on her shoulder. With who I screwed, you had to give to not get your throat clawed open in your sleep. I thought I did damn good. I told Niko about it when sparring one day, because two entire sentences before sleep were excessive in my mind. I was tired, damn it. I was hoping he could suggest how to pare it down to one sentence…maybe four or five words.

Niko, who had a love, not a homicidal friend with benefits, more experience in sex, and a degree in psychology, gave me a lecture on something called postcoital intimacy, affection, and mutual bonding. My way took ten to fifteen seconds; his took thirty minutes minimum. I’d searched our place for whatever romance novels he had stashed away—I was not enabling my brother’s pussified ways—but I hadn’t found any yet. No way he got it out of a psychology textbook. Men wrote some of those textbooks, and no man would write that. That was insane.

But it turned out that pucks did me one better. They didn’t go to sleep. While lili and lilitu curled on the floor in exhausted slumber, drowsy lions on the Serengeti, the pucks bragged and tried to murder one another, and sometimes they did both at once.

“Good Queen Bess, the Virgin Queen, my muscular ass!”

They’d all thrown off their clothes long ago and now were lunging for equally discarded weapons littering the floor between the sleeping lions. That had Niko and me sailing over the bar, as none of the other pucks had an interest in stopping fratricide. Clone-icide. Whatever you wanted to call it.

“She was no virgin, but I pierced that dusty hymen long before you!”

I had a gun in each hand, arms extended to press the muzzles against two puck foreheads. “Drop the swords and go sit the fuck down. This establishment is losing patience with its customers, and when it does, it doesn’t refuse them service. It refuses them life. Got it?” They grumbled but gave up the swords and wandered toward the bar in search of more alcohol.

This example cut down on the fighting some, but not the bragging.

“Rasputin? I bought his penis in a jar off eBay. It wasn’t nearly as large as I remembered.”

“Pity, but absence makes the heart grow fonder.”

“Or the penis larger.”

“Thor? You lie. Thor has never been sober enough to get it up, and he prefers blond women with breasts larger than their heads.”

“Hell, yes, I rode with Butch and Sundance, in all the ways there are to ride. It’s a forever shame about the Bolivian army. I almost choked up when I escaped out the back with the pesos. Sad times. Good times. This drink is for you, compadres.”

“Damn straight, I’m still taking bets on Jimmy Hoffa. For ten thousand you get one guess on where I planted that fat bastard. For fifteen thousand I’ll throw in the cannoli he was eating when I popped him one.”

“Cleopatra? Definitely a man. Barely looked like a woman even when you were wearing wine goggles. I couldn’t believe Caesar never caught on. The kid? That was actually a thirty-year-old toothless dwarf Cleo bought in the market. Caesar thought he had the ugliest baby in Egypt.”

“D’Artagnan’s best work was always done with his other sword, and size-wise, it was actually equal to the one he used for duels.”

Niko circled the next potential mass murder—five pucks squabbling—waiting to see if it got out of hand.

“Did I mention at the last reunion that I screwed Lady Godiva?”

“No, you credit-thieving maggot, I did.”

“No, I did, and I have a lock of her hair to prove it.”

“I didn’t care for her. Stuck-up bitch with the worst horsehair wig in the hemisphere. Now let’s talk Eve…”

“Eve? You are an idiot. I was there. That whole show was mine, all mine. It was hilarious. I kept pelting her with apples and shouting, ‘Eat it! Come on, you apple-hating nudist. Eat it!’ Then I’d hiss a few times from the bushes to throw suspicion elsewhere. I thought I was going to lose my pitching arm before I finally hit her in that incredibly empty head with the tenth one, but she at last took a bite. I know I gave her a fruit phobia for the rest of her life—not to mention death, menses, and painful childbirth, but, more important, that bet was won. I had Michael, Gabriel, Azrael, and Lucifer handing over their flaming swords and then their other flaming swords, if you get my drift and I know you do. Now, that was a party. I’ll bet their daddy paddled their asses good when they dragged themselves home a week later.”

And on and on it went. The fighting simmered down, though, until it was only reminiscing.

Niko and I returned to back behind the bar. It felt marginally safer, and why the hell weren’t they putting their clothes back on? “Suicide pact?” I said casually, wishing I’d remained half-drunk, but life’s not that easy.

“I’m thinking long and hard about it,” Niko confirmed. He continued to listen to the pucks, as if anyone had a choice, and looking both fascinated and appalled by turns. History was a sacred subject to him. But when only liars are telling the tales, what did you believe? Not the Garden of Eden guy, that I knew. There were no angels, only peris…the seed of the myth.

One of the pucks appeared in front of the bar directly before me as I was handing Niko a leftover hundred-dollar bill that a puck had tried to shove under his apron about an hour ago. As brotherly emotions went, he was less thankful than he could’ve been. When I was done, I smacked a glass down in front of the looming new puck. “What’ll it be?” But there was no drink order. This puck had something entirely different on his mind.

“There is something wrong with you.”

It was one of the pucks Robin had introduced…Pan. I remembered because of the tattoo on the side of his neck. Π—the Greek letter for P. He was old. I’d never considered Goodfellow old, as I’d never had anyone to measure against him but Hob, and I’d been too busy at the time trying to kill that bastard to make any comparisons. Now, though, with all of them gathered in one place, I could get a sense of the younger versus the older. They might be supernatural clones, but real, earned experience over cloned experience told. Their bragging was much less believable, and I’d have thought it impossible, but they were actually more annoying. Much louder too. Those made Robin seem subtle in comparison.

This one…staring at me…had hair so short it was nearly buzzed, leather wristbands, a scar that ran from his right eyebrow into his hair by three inches, already had a knuckle-duster knife in his hand, and he was old. He felt like Goodfellow felt—as if he’d known the world a thousand times over and conquered wide regions of it more than once before tossing them aside, bored. Old in the supernatural world didn’t mean feeble; it meant powerful and, in this case, aware.

Of me. And wasn’t that incredibly bad luck for him?

His eyes didn’t blink. “Wrong. Base. Vile.” He studied me. “I know you.” The green darkened to almost black in surprise and disgust as his pupils dilated. “I know.” He showed his teeth as he spit, “Impossible wretched thing.”

It hadn’t taken Goodfellow more than fifteen minutes after meeting me to know what I was. This one had taken an hour or three, but it didn’t make a difference. He knew and, unlike Robin, he seemed to hold my extinct race’s crimes against me. If he did, who was to say how the rest of the Panic would react? This one had completely no reservations about what he would and did attempt to do. He came across the bar at me blade ready with a swiftness that would make the kishi from last night seem as if they were running in mud.

Then again, the kishi had been as challenging as fighting off a pack of Chihuahuas. And this puck was no baby to be socialized and adopted. There was no free ride for him. No shred of conscience to hold me back.

It was the high point of the night for me.

I buried Robin’s poniard that Niko had tucked underneath with the glasses into one green eye. I felt the point scraping the back of the inner skull before I flipped him over the counter to land dead and heavy on the floor. Niko tipped over a pile of stacked black aprons and towels on the shelf behind us to cover the body and it was as if it had never happened. In a room full of now-drunk tricksters, it was a magic trick all its own. Pan had been there. Pan was gone. No one noticed where, when, how, or who. Oblivious, they kept drinking and shouting over one another for their bullshit to be heard.

Except for our puck.

Goodfellow, recognized by the RG on his forehead and being the only puck wearing clothes, appeared in the precise spot where a second before a wannabe assassin had stood. Not a wannabe in his day or against others, but here and now? He should’ve paid attention to what he labeled me—because he hadn’t been that far off base. “What happened?” he demanded.

“Pan happened,” Niko answered flatly. “You didn’t say they might know about Cal, or what they would do if they did.”

I reached down, jerked the Spanish dagger free from its flesh-and-bone sheath, wiped it on my bar apron, and slid it across the counter to Robin. “‘Wrong. Base. Vile.’” My hair hung forward—still no ponytail for me, thanks to Niko’s father—and I grinned blackly. “‘Impossible wretched thing.’ Practically compliments. He didn’t know me half as well as he thought he did.”

He took his poniard and put it away. “Pan is…was one of the oldest. If any would recognize your partial heritage, he would be the only one. I should’ve watched him more closely. I apologize.” Swiveling, he took in the crowd and sighed. “Thank Zeus it’s nearly over. I’ve never been at a reunion sober and monogamous. They’re somewhat tedious in this state.” He sounded relieved when he said, “But they are all finally intoxicated enough to suffer through the lottery. We’ll end this now. Again, I am sorry—for what he said and what he tried to do. You know none of it is true, kid.” He turned back to give an insistent and reassuring poke of his finger to my chest before he was gone again into the crowd, handing out coins that were each stamped with a number.

None of it? No. I didn’t fool myself. Some of it was true—most of it was true, in fact—but we all have our character flaws. You learn to deal with them. I had. I dropped another apron down to cover Pan’s head. That was one dealt with right there: covering up the evidence that was the result of an impossible wretched thing. “It was self-defense,” Niko said, low—not that any of the pucks could hear anything above themselves. “I know except for the scar, hair, and tattoo, he looked exactly like Robin, but he wasn’t. However connected they might be thousands of years ago genetically, he wasn’t Goodfellow. He was nothing like him.”

He was singing to the choir. I had no qualms about what I’d done. Pan had been an asshole. “No, he wasn’t like Robin,” I agreed without a shred of guilt. He was more like me, although not enough or he might still be alive, but that wouldn’t be something that would ease Niko’s mind to hear, so I didn’t say it. Instead, I rested my chin in my hand and proceeded to watch the lottery. “Wanna take bets on whether or not Robin gets knocked up?”

He didn’t. But from the outraged howls that all but shook the walls, the numbers of about twenty-five pucks came up. Picked out of a large intricate and ancient bronze bowl, Goodfellow held each duplicate coin up to be seen. As the livid shouts continued, I asked, “Does it make your brain hurt? Seeing so many of them so much alike?”

“It does. It’s not meant for the human eye to see. Identical twins and triplets are startling, but this? If there were only fifty of them, you could call them pentacontuplets or demihectuplets or, if going by the Latin, quinquagintuplets. But seventy, that curious to search my brain for the term I’m not.” For Niko that indicated a weariness usually unseen in him. An unknown father, the Panic, serving drinks while standing on a dead puck—I think we’d both had our fill of this day.

But it was over. The pucks were dressing and leaving, some glum at their reproduction duty, other celebrating at dodging the bullet. The lili and lilitu were doing the same with their raincoats. We’d broken up only ten fights in all throughout the night and killed one puck. Taking into account the situation, I realized it could’ve gone much worse. I’d told Nik I needed to get laid, but looking back on the entire reunion, I might go the other way and never need to get laid again.

Goodfellow joined us to watch them go. “If they avoid their obligation to reproduce, what punishment do they receive?” Niko asked.

Robin finished off a last glass of scotch. “Oh, we hunt them down and kill them. If they don’t do their duty to keep the race alive, they’re not much good to us. It’s the only puck crime punishable by death. Now that I think about it, it’s the only crime we have at all. The first, last, and single law.”

“How many times have you lost the lottery and doubled the pleasure, doubled the fun?” I asked with caustic curiosity.

Robin was equally amused and insulted by the question. “Never. There are tricksters and there are tricksters and then there is me. Losing the lottery isn’t in my future. Now, thank you for the assistance and, as a token of appreciation, I’ll take care of disposing of Pan and calling in three or four cleaning crews for the rest of it—the kind the cops call in to clean up sites of multiple murders, as there aren’t enough mops in the building to handle what’s on that floor.” He set his phone on the bar, ready. “Consider it a tip for Pan. He always was a bastard. Loved watching the lions eating the Christians in the Coliseum. A definite prick, and not the good kind that makes you want to whip out your measuring tape.” He waved a hand. “Go, and, Niko, feel free to keep all the dollar bills they stuffed down your apron.” There were wads of them. All pucks, not only Goodfellow, had a thing for my brother.

But that was a discussion for, well, not now. I took the opportunity offered and was out the door with Nik on my heels before Goodfellow had a chance to change his mind, which he frequently did when it came to physical labor. “You are splitting those tips with me, though, right?” I asked Niko as the door slammed behind us.

“As frequently as I was groped tonight, all for the greater good and continuance of the puck race…no. You don’t get a dime. I’m donating it to the spay-and-neuter program at the local shelter. It seems appropriate.”

We were still on the block where the Ninth Circle was located—a decidedly nonhuman block. It was rare that one wandered down this way. What they didn’t know, they sensed: Here there be monsters. And with all the other supernatural creatures gone, it was empty as I’d ever seen it. “You are such a greedy bast…shit.”

I’d seen the glitter of metal and the flicker of movement all at once, leaping straight down from the top of the building we were walking past. I threw myself to one side, Nik to the other, and it landed directly between us. The concrete of the street cracked into pieces beneath it.

The force and the weight to cause that…I was already unloading my Desert Eagle’s normal hollow-points to replace them with explosive rounds especially made for my gun and especially made for this situation. I landed on my hip just as I jammed the new clip home and then was I loaded but locked? Hell, no. I was ready to fire. It had taken barely a second, and I thought that would give me time to get a good aim on what was pissed off that it hadn’t been invited to the party.

I was wrong. A second wasn’t long enough. It was already lunging through the air and about to drop on top of me. All I still saw was the sheen of metal, but, frankly, I didn’t care what it was made of except for what I could best use against it. I rolled flat on my back, aimed the Eagle straight up, and emptied the clip, all eight rounds. I closed my eyes. At that close proximity, I had no desire to be blinded by the small explosions. The only way I knew it had worked was that nothing landed on me to squash me to a thin paste on the concrete.

My face was burned; I could feel the hot, tight pain of it, but that fell into the column of “shit that can wait.” I opened my eyes, sat up, and saw it, for the first time, really saw it as it stood. It was shaped like a man, more or less, but it was metal, and not any kind I’d seen. There were scales shaped like the head of a spear but at least two feet long and one foot wide, and they looked to be encrusted with dried blood, and in the thin cracks between the metal plates there was a red-hot substance that I’d swear was lava. There was the faintest smell of sulfur to it, but the smell of old blood was stronger. It stood nine feet tall at least, giving a boggle a run for its money. The majority of it was black metal with a face accented with what looked like dark tarnished iron, but wasn’t. That would have been affected by the explosive rounds to some extent, but it hadn’t been. Although at least it had been blown backward before it hit me, I didn’t see a single dent in its chest or face—only a superficial blackening of the metal. There was a type of metal cowl surrounding its head like a helmet, eyes of the same lava that ran through it, and a snarl of metal lips that showed the tips of pointed black fangs.

Its claws—and that’s all it had, claws, no hands—were huge even in comparison to its size, each one at least two feet long, four of them at the end of each wrist.

It looked like your worst nightmare had taken a Terminator, said, “Oh yeah, we can do a hundred times better than that,” and combined it with a demon from the deepest pit of hell. But I didn’t believe in hell and that made this simply one more monster to put down. One more notch on the bedpost, because I damn sure killed more often than I got laid.

“Nik!” He was on the other side of it. I ejected the empty clip, slammed in a new one, racked the slide, then added one more round. I tossed him the Eagle. “Eight rounds. Seven in the clip, one in the pipe.” Niko caught it and was already firing.

He was a master with the sword and I’d rarely seen him need to use a gun, but this was going to be one of those rare occasions. His blades would only shatter against the unknown metal of this thing.

Ignoring the explosions from behind it, the creature swiveled its head completely around, the metal moving as smoothly as flesh, but the sound it made—the motion as scale hit scale—was the sound of human bones being crushed. Two faces. It could watch its front and back all at once. Fan-fucking-tastic. This face wasn’t snarling. It was grinning, the metal lips stretched wide and every ebony fang showing. They were as oversized as its claws, and the stench of ancient blood on them was overpowering. I preferred it when it wasn’t quite as happy. But my preferences didn’t matter right then.

I didn’t think the Eagle would do Niko any more good than it had done me; nor would my Glock I already had yanked from my double holster, but I had other weapons. Right now, I had only one I could think of that would work. If we’d had more time to think, maybe we could come up with something else, but we didn’t have time.

Or the need.

Our weapons hadn’t worked, but I had one that lived in me and it never failed.

I’d gated Niko’s father to Central Park. I could gate anyone or anything to anyplace I’d been or could see from where I stood. Twice within a day, at any rate. I could put this thing in the ocean, but I had a feeling that wouldn’t stop it. It might give it a long, wet walk to get to land again, but I couldn’t know if water would bother it—not when explosive rounds didn’t. That left only one place I could send it and be sure it wouldn’t come back. Tumulus. The reason I didn’t believe in hell, because that was the true hell. The Auphe home away from home—another dimension, another world, a place out of sync with ours—I didn’t know or care.

I did know only Auphe—or the half Auphe that was me—could travel there or back. If I stuck this thing in Tumulus, we’d never see its metal ass again. Or I could open a gate inside it, but the implosion combined with the explosion—gates were tricky that way—it would send metal shards flying in a shrapnel storm neither Nik or I would survive.

Tumulus it was.

It took less than a fraction of a moment for all that to run through my head, and that fraction proved why I sucked so badly at math. It was on me faster than I’d seen any creature move—and I’d seen the best of the worst. It was too fast to build a gate around it. Too fast for me to build a gate in front of it. Too fast for me to gate myself the hell out of the way.

It crouched on all fours; then it hit me…it or a Mack truck, I wasn’t sure, but I was positive that I was held down by metal claws that encompassed my chest. They were as long as I’d guessed. I couldn’t see them, but I could gauge their length by how far I could feel them penetrate my chest wall, scraping on the outside of my right and left rib cage, pinning me to the street—jammed into the concrete itself. I felt the burn of the metal as it touched my legs. It was as hot as the burner on a stove. The eyes that contained killing magma moved closer until I was certain the molten rock would cascade over me, frying me to an outline of death and charcoal on the street.

Its mouth opened. I could see the red at the back of its throat, but I thought the teeth would get me first. Having your face chewed off or having it melted to slag and ash. Put that down as a choice I was glad I didn’t have to make. Neither seemed a time worth having. I lifted my arm and rammed the Glock into its gaping mouth and emptied the clip. Nothing happened except a good gun began to melt in my hand. I threw it to one side before my hand went with it. The last of the Eagle’s explosive rounds hit it from behind, but this time it was ready. It didn’t move, not an inch. Its mouth, the furnace of heat and metal, moved closer.

Checkout time, and me with no luggage.

I wanted to say something.

I knew this one was it. In our business, it was just a waiting game. When it took me down, my head had slammed against the concrete enough to scramble my brain thoroughly enough that I couldn’t gate out. I’d used a gate once today. A second one in one day was doable, usually, but much harder and took a concentration and an effort that a cracked skull wasn’t giving me.

Yeah, this one was it.

I heard more explosive rounds being fired and then the sound of running. Nik. Running toward death when anyone else would’ve run in the other direction. The head facing mine arrowed closer—curious or toying with me, I didn’t know. Or care. I was the mouse; it was the cat. Wondering was pointless.

Hadn’t I wanted to say something?

Did it matter?

Yeah. It did. Hell, yes. If I was going to die, it mattered. I was going out foulmouthed and spitting blood in the face of my enemy. That’s who I was. What I was. I’d die, but I wouldn’t die screaming. I’d die cursing, and screw life. What had it ever once done for me?

“Swear…not…Sarah Connor, you piece…of shit,” I gasped. The weight of the claws was incredible and made breathing almost impossible. “Nothing against Skynet…if…gets more TV channels…all for it, you metal…ass…hole.”

Niko came out of the semidarkness and threw himself on top of the metal mass of claws that held me down. “Gate us out of here,” he said fiercely. “Goddamn it, Cal, if there was ever a time to break the rules, it’s now. Gate!”

But I couldn’t.

“Run.” I pushed at him with more strength than I should’ve had, impaled and pinned. “Nik, run. Can’t gate.” Or I would’ve gated that windup tin toy from hell far from here. I’d tried. My brain wouldn’t cooperate, but it didn’t mean I hadn’t tried, wasn’t still trying. I could feel the blood pouring from my nose, the headache even more crushing than the one I had from hitting the street. The sacrifices of making a second gate so soon from the first were bad, but I’d done it before. Not this time—I pulled all of myself into the effort and nothing happened.

“Nik, run,” I repeated desperately.

He looked at me with a battlefield, hitching-a-ride-to-Valhalla flash of teeth, unmoving as the head rushed down, jaws gaping, aimed at him. “You’re such a fucking idiot, little brother.”

It was only Nik who could make me laugh, tasting the salt of blood for the single breath before we died. Nik whose father hadn’t saved him and now neither could I.

Fuck, why couldn’t I do it? If not for me, then for him. Just one goddamn gate.

Why…

And it was gone. Every molecule of metal except the claws still pinning me to the street and an inch or two of metal arm above Niko’s back. The gray pulse and black swirl of the gate had appeared, gobbled up the murder machine, and then disappeared before I was sure I’d seen it…or done it.

Niko sat up. I could see the smoke wisping up from his back where drops of the lava or whatever the hell it was had dripped onto him and were eating through his shirt and skin next. “Take off…shirt.” I managed to smack his arm. “You suicidial…moron.”

He did, but at the same time he used his cell to call Goodfellow for help. “Where’d you send it?” Niko asked. He wasn’t talking to Robin any longer. He was talking to me. I blinked at the question and the time lost—a slice of missing reality. He was now off the phone, shirtless, and running a careful hand over my side and down to the street. From his expression, I knew he could feel the claws beneath my skin. Or maybe they weren’t beneath my skin. That thing had been big; its claws could be equally big, and I didn’t have a lot of spare flesh on me, thanks to Niko’s training regimen. That could be why Niko’s touch didn’t hurt. It wasn’t me he was touching, but the claws that had captured me and burst open flesh as they slid along my ribs. I did feel cold, yet I felt a warmth running beneath me.

Blood.

It has a unique, soothing heat that lets you know you might not have bought the farm yet, but the Realtor has the contract in front of you, and the pen is in your hand.

“Cal, where did you send it?”

He didn’t look worried, which meant he was. “I don’t know,” I said, and I didn’t. I had no idea where I’d sent it. “I couldn’t gate. I hit my head”—more accurately cracked it open like an egg—“…couldn’t think straight, couldn’t…pull it together.” Not for a gate and not for the faraway Tumulus. “Before, I could…have.” When I could gate with no effort at all, no head wound would’ve stopped me. No wound would have. “Before it would’ve… been easy, but Rafferty broke me.” I said it resentfully, spitefully. But while the dark part of me meant it, the rest of me didn’t, not really. The healer had done what was best at the time, at least what he thought was best, and it had kept me sane long enough for me to find a way to stay that way permanently.

Yet now I was sane but still broken.

“Crippled,” Niko murmured. What I’d accidentally said in the bar.

“Didn’t mean it,” I denied immediately. “That was then. We didn’t know.” Didn’t know there’d be a now when limiting me to two gates with the third one killing me along with the Auphe in me would be more harmful than helpful. At the time gating had brought out the worst in me—the uncontrollable darkness in me. “Rafferty didn’t know…you didn’t know.”

I could hear Goodfellow’s rapid footsteps coming from the bar. Niko let it go. He didn’t have much choice. We could talk and bond and spill our feelings, but as I’d bleed to death in the street at the same time, I thought the girly shit could wait.

A hand rested on my forehead. I opened my eyes. When had they closed? “We have to get this off of you, and with its being embedded into the street, I think you’d rather not be conscious when that happens.”

“Just don’t mess up the face.” I slurred a little. “Only thing left on me worth looking at these days.”

He wasn’t smiling now. In the face of death, yes. In the face of this, no. But his tone was reassuring. “You’ll wake up as good-looking as you ever were, which isn’t saying much.”

Before I could reply, I saw a skin-colored flash and then I dreamed.

Of smoke and lightning and living metal that would grind you to blood and bone dust.