Madhouse

9

Niko had fixed the kind of food for breakfast that was normally banned from the apartment. Pancakes, bacon, greasy potatoes. Good, good food—not the soy, wheat, egg-substitute crap he normally tried to convince me to eat. "I should be dinner for a supernatural pit bull more often," I said around a mouthful of syrup and blueberries.

"Or not," he said matter-of-factly, turning a glass of juice back and forth between long, calloused fingers.

"Or not," I said apologetically. I didn't see the evidence of a sleepless night in his face, but I knew it was there nonetheless. I shoveled in another forkful of potatoes. "You tell the others about Sawney's new family?"

"The revenants? Yes. No one was precisely thrilled." It wasn't a surprise. Revenants weren't popular with anyone or anything. Dumb, smelly, and mean.

Leaning back with my belly full, I considered burping, but my knee gave a phantom twinge with the memory of the last time I'd had that idea. Nik enjoyed good manners and he enjoyed them in others…with great and occasionally painful enthusiasm. Painful for me anyway. Patting my chest lightly through the T-shirt I'd slipped on, I said, "Delilah did good work."

"Amazing work." He drank the juice in several smooth swallows and then pushed the glass away. "She was here nearly the entire night, but what she accomplished…" He shook his head. "She was worth every penny."

"I thought she was helping us because of Flay." I decided I could fit in one more piece of bacon and sat back up to reach for the plate.

"Yes, but she is Kin. Family is important, money is important. There's no reason she can't honor both. I admire her initiative. Your initiative, however, is a different story." A foot rapped my ankle briskly. "I cooked. You clear."

"Hey, I'm wounded," I protested. "Have a heart."

"You were wounded." His foot impacted again, this time with a little more English on it. "You are lazy. Let us work on making that past tense as well." He stood. "I teach three classes today. I'll be home by six. We'll go hunting then."

There was a barrette on the dresser in my room, all that was left of one of Sawney's victims. Katie the tomboy's sunny hair clip. "I'm ready for a little hunting trip," I said with determination. I could call Ishiah and ask to get my shift switched from tonight to this afternoon. He wouldn't have a problem with it, and if he did, I'd sic Goodfellow on him.

As it turned out, Ishiah wanted to speak to me, the sooner the better. I showed up at the Ninth Circle an hour later, wondering, not for the first time, if it was Ishiah's dark sense of humor or if there was more to peris than Robin knew.

"Good. You're here."

I continued to wrap the bar apron around my waist and nodded. "Here I am," I confirmed, puzzled. Ishiah wasn't usually one for berating the obvious. "Although, trust me, I deserved a sick day."

"You found the elusive Sawney Beane, then?" His wings were out in force and rustling impatiently.

"Rumor mill's already working overtime, huh?" The bar was mostly empty, but last night it would've been full, and monsters like to gossip the same as anyone else. "Yeah, we found him, and he pretty much kicked our asses." I poured myself a glass of tomato juice. Not as manly as a slug of whiskey, but better at replacing iron from blood loss. "So, what'd you want to talk to me about? Am I going to be employee of the month? Is there a plaque involved?"

"After impaling that Gulon with a beer tap? It seems unlikely," he said with annoyance.

"He brought in outside appetizers. It's against the rules." Not to mention that the appetizer had been a dog. A big playful mutt who hadn't had a clue what was in store for him. The beer tap had cleaned right up when I'd finished with it. No harm done, although the Gulon probably wouldn't agree with that assessment. "How is Rover doing, by the way?"

"That is beside the point," he said, eyes stony. I wasn't buying it. One of the other bartenders, a peri named Danyeal—Danny to me—said Ishiah had kept the dog, which was now fat, happy, and a veritable fountain of urine whenever his master's back was turned.

"And what was the point again?" I asked innocently.

"Never mind." He got out while the getting was good and folded his arms. "I want to talk to you about Robin."

"Goodfellow?" I said curiously. "You're not going to ban him from the bar, are you? He'll only show up more often if you do. Probably move the hell in."

"No." The wings were spreading now. It was the unconscious reaction of peris to stress or danger. Danny flared his wings at even the hint of a bar fight, but as the steely Ishiah was about the furthest thing from high-strung as you could get, I was betting that danger of the big and bad kind was the option here. "I'm hearing things," he announced quietly.

"What kind of things?" I prodded.

"There's word that Robin is being targeted. I heard it just today." Catching a glimpse of feathers from the corner of his eye, he hissed in exasperation and the wings wavered like a heat mirage and disappeared. "I don't know who's behind it. I don't know if it's true, but the rumor is out there. I would tell him myself, but his harridan housekeeper won't put my calls through. And if I showed up at his home in person, I might have to tell him over crossed swords."

I still wanted to know what had led to the peculiar animosity on Robin's side versus the vexed watchfulness on Ishiah's, but now wasn't the time. "Targeted?" The museum. "He was attacked two days ago by a sirrush. We thought it was a random thing. Shit." I grabbed my cell phone. "You don't know anything? Who's behind it? Why?"

"No. Nothing. It's the flimsiest of hearsay, the source of which I can't determine." His jaw set as his eyes narrowed. "And I've made the effort." His hand clenched into a fist. "An extensive effort."

Damn. If Ishiah couldn't get to the bottom of it, it was going to be a hard nut to crack. Goodfellow's answering machine picked up and I swore again. "I've got to go." I ripped off the apron as I came around the bar and tossed it on the counter.

"Make sure the son of a bitch watches his back," he commanded.

"I'll do one better," I responded as I hit the door. "I'll watch it for him."

When I arrived, I was sweaty and breathing hard from my run up twenty-five flights. I didn't take elevators. A good fight was about defense and offense. It was hard to get a good defense going in a steel box—a giant mousetrap, for all intents and purposes. And I wasn't fond of anything with the word "trap" in it.

After I'd pounded my fist against the door, Seraglio opened it and looked up at me with disapproval. "You most surely are a loud young man."

"Sorry, ma'am. I need to talk to Rob." I felt as if I were six and asking if my friend could come out and play.

Smelling of cinnamon and honey, she pursed full lips painted a glossy burgundy and shook her head. Her long, cascading silver earrings rang like church bells. "He's not here." But she stepped aside to let me in. "He may be at work or he may be out debauching the innocent. Lord above, I cannot keep up with that man's schedule."

"Who can?" I muttered. Robin had kept his non-human origins from the woman, but there was no way he could conceal his sexual and alcoholic exploits. He didn't even try. Hell, why would he? He was as proud as if there were a Nobel category for high living and he was up for consideration. Seducing, swilling and just proud to be nominated. I tried his cell again. Nothing. "Do you know his office number?"

Clucking her tongue, she went to the kitchen and opened a drawer to pull out a leather notebook. She then pointed out a number with a long nail the same color as her lipstick. It was amazingly pristine for her profession, I thought as I called the provided digits. He wasn't there either. "Goddamn it."

Fathomless black eyes pinned me disapprovingly as those startlingly immaculate nails tapped against the counter. "Sorry, ma'am," I said again. In the past year I'd fought against an army of Auphe and a massive two-headed werewolf and yet this woman had me bobbing and weaving. "I just need to find Rob." I remembered to use his "human" name with ease. What Sophia hadn't taught us about lying and dissembling, a life on the run had filled in.

The trouble was I couldn't tell her that I was worried about him. She would ask why and Robin wasn't here to come up with one of the brilliant and utterly false stories he was so good at spinning. I tended to go with the "What's it to you, asshole?" response to questions I didn't want to answer. And I could only picture which of the household appliances around us would be inserted in me if I used that line with Seraglio.

Her eyes were still marked with maternal disappointment at my poor etiquette, but she relented enough to say, "I can't help you, sugar. I am not psychic, and, in this house, thank the heavens above for that."

No, she wasn't, but I knew someone who was. This "goddamn it" I kept silent and within.

George didn't carry a cell phone, so I needed to show up with the rest of the supplicants at the ice cream shop near Pier 17 on the East River. As usual, I was fresh out of cash for cab fare and it took two trains and a hike to make it there from Robin's place.

George used to hold court at the ice cream shop after school. Once she had graduated, she kept the same schedule. People needed to be able to find her, to depend on her, she said. She hadn't yet decided whether college was for her or not. Service to others came first. Of course, if she'd look into her own future, she'd know if college was there. But she didn't look and she wouldn't. That would be cheating and George didn't cheat. Things happened as they were meant to, and while the little events could be changed, the big ones never could. Trying would be not only a waste of time, but also an insult to existence itself. She could tell those who came to her the small things and keep to herself the unchangeable, but she didn't see any reason to tempt herself by looking past the distant turnings of her own path. Besides, she'd once said with cheeky smile and earnest heart, it would ruin the surprise.

The ice cream shop was run by a partially blind, mostly deaf codger whose name I remembered only half the time. George kept him in business. She didn't take anything from the people who came to her, but she did gently suggest people buy an ice-cream cone or soda as thanks for having a place out of the weather. I'd yet to see a person say no to her.

Except for me.

I didn't have time to mess with ice cream and I slapped a few bucks on the counter. "Treat the next couple of kids," I ordered to the old guy half dozing behind it on a high-backed stool, and headed for George's table. She sat serenely, hands folded on Formica. The Oracle of Pearl Street. Brown eyes warm, wide mouth softly curved, she was crimson, gold, and garnet…just like my dream, just like I knew she would be. "Cal." She reached out as I sat opposite her and took my hand as easily as if she'd done it a hundred times before. "Mr. Geever has missed you."

"I'll bet." He was completely asleep now, head pillowed on the counter by my money. I looked down at her skin against mine, sunset amber against moon pale.

Monster pale.

I slid my hand from beneath hers, missing the warmth of it instantly. I didn't look at her eyes or her short cap of wavy red hair or the faint freckles that spilled across her nose and the tops of her gold-brown cheeks. I didn't have to—I had them memorized. "I need to find Robin," I said abruptly. "He's in trouble."

"Trouble?" Her brow wrinkled. Never one to back down, she left her rejected hand on the table as if it were only a matter of time before I changed my mind.

"Yeah. Something is after him. I have no idea who or what, and now I can't find him." My own hands I dropped into my lap to rest on my thighs. Get thee behind me, Satan, or get thee under the table. Whatever.

"Robin." She said it as if she were calling him, as if he were around the corner. Out of sight, but still within earshot. Closing her eyes, she frowned, eyes moving behind the copper-brushed lids as though scanning the page of a book. Several seconds passed and then her eyes flew open. I thought it was with distress or fear, but then she flushed. "Oh."

I got it immediately. This was Goodfellow she was trying for a peek at. "Oh," I echoed sheepishly before apologizing. "Shit. Sorry. I didn't think about that."

"He's very…limber." She parted her lips, showing small teeth in a gamin smile. "I'm impressed and educated."

"He's okay, then?" I leaned back in my chair, tried not to think about the word "limber" and that knowing smile she'd flashed, and exhaled in relief.

"He's fine." Eyes bright, she tilted her head. "And very happy right now. Among friends—the friendliest of friends."

"You're laughing at me," I snorted. "Go ahead. Someone should get some enjoyment out of this besides Goodfellow. Can you give me his address? He's safe now. He might not be after he leaves." She would know if he would be or not, but I wasn't going to ask. If she'd been willing to look that far, she would've told me. Besides, I refused to believe in that whole "everything happens for a reason" bullshit. Any universe that would actually plan my being born of an Auphe wasn't a universe I wanted any part of. Destiny and fate could kiss my ass.

"Yes. I can give you the address." She did and watched as I stood up. "You are stubborn, you know."

Just as she'd said that morning in my dream. "Some things are worth it," I said quietly. And they were…worth being stubborn, worth the sacrifice. Like keeping her safe. Like letting the Auphe line die with me.

"Cal."

I shook my head and stood. "Thanks for the help, Georgie." I made it to the door before she spoke again.

"You've run all your life, Caliban. You have to stop. Sooner or later, you have to." The bell overhead rang as I opened the door, but it didn't drown out the next words. "Please make it sooner."

Significant words. They deserved to be thought about, to be considered carefully. I pushed them out of my head the moment I passed through the door. I needed my resolve, which wouldn't be helped by mulling over what she had said. Or by the fact that every time I turned my back on her felt like I was turning my back on a good portion of my life. Those things couldn't matter. Not if I wanted to keep her safe, and in my life she never could be.

It was the way it had to be.

The address was in the East Village, not too far from the fifth-floor walk-up Niko and I used to live in that barely deserved to be called an apartment. Good times. I had a feeling there would be wildly colored hair, tattoos, and lots of black in the near future. Goodfellow had always liked artists—they were open-minded, adventurous, and willing to worship him in many mediums, and what better place to find them than the East Village?

Robin even had a fresco of himself hanging on his apartment wall, though the artist who'd painted that had done that for the love of a beautiful form in general, not for the love of Robin's form specifically. He'd been the brother of the woman Robin was going to marry. Goodfellow wasn't one for talking about his past—a statement not as ridiculous as it seemed. He would talk without end about every casual encounter, every historical figure he'd ever met or screwed from the birth of time on.

The key word was "casual." Robin wasn't quick to share the things that truly touched him. I thought in the beginning that it was because nothing did touch him. When Niko and I had first met him, I didn't think there could be a creature more superficial, shallow, or self-absorbed. I'd been wrong.

The puck had the depth of a long-abandoned well, and if those depths were desolate and murky, that was the result of outliving everyone you cared for. Robin was a human-lover, not a nice turn of phrase among monsters. So not only was he despised for a puck's natural trickery and thieving ways; he was scorned as well for the company he kept. His human companions would die, and the nonhuman would have little to do with him. Robin boasted of his vast circle of acquaintances—how many he knew—but knowing and being accepted are far different things.

I didn't know when Robin gave up on humans, when letting them go … when watching them die got to be too much, but I suspected it was around the time of that painting. It had been created in Pompeii days before he lost his chosen family, and now that hunk of ancient wall hung on a modern-day one—a constant reminder.

Why he'd made an effort to connect with Niko and me, I'd not yet figured out. Why he picked that moment to break a solitary pattern of almost two thousand years was still a mystery. I wasn't sure I could've been brave enough to take that chance. Hell, I knew I wouldn't have been.

I was brave enough, though, to knock at the door where George said he would be, but only just barely. I couldn't begin to guess what might be behind the door, but if I saw one donkey, I was gone. Robin could face certain death on his own. Two girls, naked except for their body art, opened the door, human female, and from the twining of arms and pressing of flesh, they were very close. I swallowed thickly and took a closer look. I mean, Jesus, who wouldn't?

One was painted in blues and greens with waves and leaping fish. The other was all over raging flames with the yellow scales of phoenixes shining through the red fire. As art went, it was pretty cool. As for the nudity, that was damn cool too.

"Is … ah … Robin here?" I asked, forgetting his name for a second as my brain decided to send my blood south for the winter.

The red girl looked blank and the blue one wrapped her arms around the other's scarlet neck and her legs around a waist painted with the eternal fire lizard. Her lips were busy sucking lightly at an earlobe and nipping the soft skin behind. It was distracting. I did need to find Robin, but how often did you get a show like this and not have to pay a big-ass cable bill for it?

"Boom chika bow wow."

Robin slid up, patterned head to toe in green leaves. He was a forest and in the forest were eyes—the cagey, wise ones of foxes peering through the foliage. "Someone has you down pat," I snorted. "Who's running around here painted like a henhouse?"

"They're resting." He grinned shamelessly. "They're very, very tired." The grin widened. "But you, on the other hand, are wide-awake. Care to help yourself?" He waved an arm toward the inside of the apartment. There were thirty people at least, all brightly colored and most of them horizontal.

"Are they all human?" I asked.

"Yes."

"Then no." I took his arm and pulled him into the hall. "I need to talk to you. There's trouble."

"Isn't there always? It's exhausting. Perhaps I should dress first?" he suggested dryly. "I'm perfectly comfortable as Zeus made me, but not everyone is as amenable."

With the two naked girls holding my attention, I hadn't even realized Goodfellow was wearing the same party attire as everyone else…absolutely nothing. "Crap," I groaned, blinked, then looked away hurriedly. "Goddamn, Goodfellow. You have a permit for that?" Talk about your weapons of mass destruction. Jesus.

"Now you know precisely why I'm so smug," he said with mock hauteur. "Give me ten minutes." He disappeared back into the interior of the apartment. I waited in the hall, a lack of faith in my own willpower keeping me there—not to mention a healthy dose of survival instinct. It wasn't only lamias that could drain a man unto death. The girls still framed in the door looked entirely capable of doing the same. Not necessarily a bad way to go, though.

"All right, kid, I'm cleaner than a nun's pair of Sunday panties. What trouble are you speaking of?" Robin, dressed with damp hair, had stepped back into the hall to close the door behind him. The red and blue girls were still intermingled close enough to be only seconds away from making purple, and I craned my head to catch one last glimpse as the metal swung to block them from sight.

"Ishiah." I straightened and said seriously, "He said someone is targeting you. He doesn't know who or why, but the word is out."

"The sirrush," he announced after a short stretch of silence as we walked.

"Yeah." The building had the typical flavor of artist tenants…old, decrepit, and smelling of pot. There was one lonely light overhead and it flickered uncertainly. "So who's after you? Who'd want to kill you?" I waited a beat and added, "Besides me, I mean."

"You must be joking," he said incredulously. "I couldn't begin to guess. Ex-lovers, ex-business partners, ex-marks…there isn't a PDA in the world big enough to compile that list."

The light gave up the ghost entirely as we reached the stairwell. There was still illumination from the street coming through a distant, dirt-filmed window, but it was gray and wispy—a ghost among us. It reminded me. "It can't be Abbagor. He's dead." Abbagor had been one of Robin's acquaintance/informants. A troll the size of a Lincoln, he'd lived and died under the Brooklyn Bridge. And Niko and I had nearly died with him. He'd been one malevolent, flat-out evil son of a bitch and every time I passed the bridge I flipped it off in his memory.

"Even if he were alive, it wouldn't have been him. Abby did his own dirty work. He enjoyed it far too much to farm it out." He started down the stairs.

"The Auphe." I hadn't wanted to say it, because I didn't want it to be true, but burying your head in the sand was only going to leave your ass up and chewed the hell off.

"No," Robin denied. "They're not above subcontracting, but they would be more subtle than a sirrush. Auphe are insidious, cunning, all the things a poor, simple sirrush is not." He sighed as he moved downward. "Thinking about my own horrific end, what a way to ruin a good orgy."

"Sorry about that." I followed him. His hands were empty, but mine were not…one of them at least. I held the Glock against my denim-covered outer thigh. "I assumed you'd want to know you've been marked for death. I don't know what I was thinking."

"When it comes to murder and assassination, it is the thought that counts. I appreciate the effort." The words were sober, the expression anything but…until he moved on. "It's hardly the first time. Or the hundredth for that matter," he said absently as he looked back at me. "You're well? Before she left, Delilah said you were recovered. Do you have full strength in your arm?"

"Normally I'd flex, but after what I saw upstairs, I'm keeping the sexiness to a minimum." The stairs were concrete and slick from years and years of pounding feet. "And, yeah, I'm fine."

"Good—that's good, because your chest looked…" He grimaced. "Never mind." Hitting the landing, he paused to say slyly, "I think she was attracted to you, our wolf girl. The situation was too dire for the customary ass-sniffing and leg-humping that is so prized on the wolf social scene, but there was definitely a look in her eye."

"Do you want more than one person trying to kill you?" I drawled. "I don't really have the time, but the inclination is no problem whatsoever."

He didn't have time to take me up on the offer. Someone…something else spoke in his place.

"Give me drink."

Goodfellow had been about to move down another step. He stopped, set his mouth tensely, and held up a hand before I could open my mouth. I turned my head and looked up past the spiraling box pattern of stairs, then down past the same. There was nothing to see or hear other than a faint dripping sound and the flicker and buzz of elderly lightbulbs.

The words were raspy as sandpaper against rock and utterly devoid of humanity. And then there was a clicking sound…nails against concrete. A slow, patient tapping, silence, then the clicking again.

A rustling started…scales or feathers, I couldn't tell.

"Give me drink."

"Go." Robin grabbed a handful of my jacket and hurled us both toward the landing door. I didn't stop to protest or ask who was so damn thirsty. If Goodfellow said go, then going was a damn good idea. I slammed into the door and flung it open.

It was waiting for us.

It was a bird. Gray as ash, round black eyes, and the size of a half-grown German shepherd. It used jet claws to score the dirty tile, sending chunks of it tumbling aside. The black beak, sharp as a sword, gaped to show an inner maw the plague yellow of jaundiced flesh. "Give me—"

"Drink," grated the one behind us.

Identical to the other, it came up the stairs toward the door propped open by Robin. It didn't waddle like you would expect from a bird. It stalked with the smooth gait of a creature used to running its prey into the ground. The flattened head cocked to one side. There was red on this one's beak and staining the feathers of its chest black. Now I knew what it had a hankering for, and it wasn't lemonade. I turned. The one in the hall had snaked closer, one clawed foot held in the air like the weapon it was. The talons were four inches long and, if they were capable of punching through the floor, they were capable of punching through flesh.

"Bad?" I said over my shoulder.

"Bad," Robin affirmed tightly.

That was all I needed. I raised my gun and fired at the one in the hall. The gray head exploded, feathers filling the air. Some, coated with black blood, stuck to the wall and floor and me. The body poised motionless for a second, then fell sideways, talons still extended in either a last-gasp pursuit of prey or from postmortem pissiness. Take your pick.

I heard the scrape of metal against scabbard as Goodfellow pulled his sword. Following that was a gurgle of someone not getting the drink they so desperately wanted. I turned just in time to see the feathered head bounce down the stairs. "Bad," I commented, "but not that bad."

"Wrong." He started down the stairs at a run. I was starting to follow when I saw something stirring in the pool of blood that had spread from the neck of the bird I'd killed. No, it wasn't something in the blood; it was the blood itself. Thick and viscous, it crept along the floor, curled up into a ball, and began shifting from red to gray. Began to sprout feathers…began to grow and grow damn fast.

"Give…me…drink."

The faintest of whispers, a garbled croak from incomplete vocal cords, but I didn't wait around to hear it improve. I vaulted the other dead one on the landing and clattered down the stairs after the puck. "What the fuck?" I yelled as he sprinted ahead, hit the next landing, then disappeared around the turn. Robin was one helluva fighter, but when it came to running for your life, he had absolutely no equal. I sped up, trying not to tumble my way into a broken neck. I did manage to shorten the distance between us … slightly. "What are those things?"

"Hameh. The story goes they arise from the blood of a murdered man and take revenge by drinking the blood of the killer. Blah, blah. Idiotic tale." The bastard wasn't even breathing hard as he bolted, taking three and four stairs at a time. "They actually arise from their own blood and attack whoever their master chooses. And as staying dead isn't a particular hobby of theirs, they're very difficult to escape."

"Give me drink," echoed from above us, full-voiced and implacable.

"We should've stayed at the orgy," Robin groaned as he hit yet another landing. "Bacchus would never get himself in this situation. He'd still be face-deep in topographical mounds and I don't mean the Seven Hills of Rome either."

Above us the cry came again and it didn't come alone. A weight hit me hard, taking me down. I hit the stairs and rolled but caught myself before I went down farther than three steps. I ignored the pain of banged elbows and ribs and raised the gun, but the Hameh was gone. It didn't want me. I'd just been in its way. I twisted my head to see it dive-bomb Goodfellow. Talons were spread and a razor beak was aimed at Robin's throat. Where better to drink? Where better to start the flow of blood?

I opened my mouth to warn him, but he didn't need it. He whirled at the sound of air rushing through feathers and speared the Hameh through the chest. It didn't squawk; didn't screech. It screamed— a human scream. A child's scream. That's what it sounded like, as if a child had been run through with Robin's blade. It was disconcerting as hell and I unconsciously tightened my grip on the Glock. And it didn't stop. The screaming went on and on as the Hameh thrashed, sending blood splattering.

"Christ, make it stop," I hissed. We could scream our guts out all day long and no one would poke their head into the stairwell, but a kid screaming? Someone was going to show up, and that someone might get a beak jammed through their eye. Not much of a reward for being a Good Samaritan.

"Stop? But I'm enjoying it so much," Robin snarled as he whipped another blade from his brown leather duster and slashed the throat of the bird. The blow was forceful enough that the head was almost completely severed. The good news was that it stopped the screaming. The bad news was that it didn't do a damn thing about the other Hameh stooping on us like a falcon on a mouse. I shot, missed, and shot again. This time I nailed it. It veered, hit a wall, and plummeted onto the stairs above us. In the seconds that took, the blood of the first was already twisting in on itself and changing colors.

"This is annoying as hell." This time I took the lead, moving past him as he took the time to extract his sword. "I've seen Hitchcock movies. I don't want to live in one."

"Did you know he wore women's—"

"I don't want to know!" I growled, cutting him off. I kept going until I reached the door to the first floor and threw it open. Only it wasn't the first floor and it wasn't the lobby. It was the basement. We'd overshot by one when racing downward and ended up in precisely the sort of box I avoided in elevators. It wasn't an empty box either.

"Give me drink. "Give me drink. Give me drink. Give me drinkgivemedrinkgivemegivemedrinkgivemedrinkgivemedrinkgivemedrink."

It was utterly black except for the soft reddish blue glow of eyes…ten, no, twenty eyes. I didn't hesitate. I emptied the rest of my clip blindly into the room, slammed the door, and headed back up, meeting Goodfellow on his way down. "You don't want to go this way. There's some seriously thirsty pigeons down there."

"Give me drink," from above answered the question to what lay in that direction as well. And in case I missed the point, let's hit it one more time—"Give me drink."

"Shut up, you flying shit-heads," I spat as I slapped another clip home. "Just shut the hell up."

"Yes, I'm sure that will clear the matter right up. In the diplomacy of predator and prey, you dominate the field. You are without peer. A veritable Kissinger of the circle of life."

"You know what? Take the flying part out and it applies to you too, Loman." I shot the next Hameh that came spiraling through the air. It somersaulted past me and, in a mass of blood, ruined flesh, and feathers, landed on Robin. Mortally wounded, it stabbed repeatedly at Goodfellow's neck with its black beak. I grabbed it from behind before it did anything worse than superficial damage and threw it to our feet, where it was impaled by Robin's bloody sword.

"Okay," I panted. "There has to be a way to kill these things for good. What is it?"

"Bathe them"—he was finally beginning to get a little short of breath himself—"in the blood of a virgin. Care to open a vein?"

I snarled soundlessly, wiped handfuls of gore-covered feathers from my palms onto his shirt, and then bolted for the first floor. The pounding at the basement door was beginning to warp the metal, and I wasn't waiting around to play games with the group of parched blood drinkers that were seconds away from coming through. "I can't believe I hauled my ass over here to warn you, and all you do is give me shit." Still pounding up the stairs, I looked back over my shoulder at him with narrowed, dubious eyes. "You are giving me shit, right?"

"Trust me, if it were true, I wouldn't be trying so hard to get you laid. I'd be selling you by the ounce instead," he retorted.

We both hit the door simultaneously and burst out of the stairwell. The building didn't have a lobby; it wasn't that sort of building. What it had was a lounging area for artwork and those who made it—an informal art gallery. There were people sitting on the floor drinking weird teas and paint-thinner-strength coffee. Canvases were piled against the walls, funky twisted bits of metal and chunky pottery were grouped here and there, and there were naked, painted people posing like living statues. I guessed that's what they did before they went upstairs to orgy central, because your paint was bound to get smeared all to hell up there.

I vaulted one guy who was lying flat, stargazing at the cracked and yellowed ceiling. I wove in and out of a few more and then I was outside. Behind me, I heard the mild wonder of: "Cool. That's one motherfucking big parakeet."

It wasn't what I wanted to hear, to say the least. Another thing I didn't want to hear was the thrum of massive wings, but I heard it nonetheless. It was raining as I hit the sidewalk. There were sheets of heavy, gray water and black clouds that brought twilight several hours early. Into that twilight flew Hameh after Hameh. I looked up as they circled. They were the color of the rain almost exactly, lost against the sky. As for hearing them…you could make out their voices over the hiss of the falling water and the blaring horns of cabs, but only if you listened hard. No one in New York listened hard.

Beside me, Robin looked up, the inhuman perfection of his profile washed clean. "Baal of the Winter Rain," he said softly. "The fortune that is finally due us."

"Yeah, it's great for the crops and all, but what the hell is it going to do for us?"

"Watch," he ordered with vengeful anticipation.

The Hameh soared, circled, and one by one they began to explode. It wasn't loud. Muffled by flesh and feathers, the whump was barely audible. From the inside out, they ruptured, and pieces of them fell along with the rain.

"Blood is the only thing they can drink, the only liquid they can even touch." Teeth flashed in the pelting water as he stepped back under a dingy awning and out from under a very different kind of rain.

There was the scent of burnt feathers and scorched flesh in the wet air as I followed him. It wasn't a pleasant smell, in the ordinary sense, but at that moment I didn't mind it at all. It was apple pie and fresh coffee to my nose. Sweet and fragrant roses all the way. I continued to watch the fireworks show above. Boom. There went another one.

And the rain continued to fall.