Moonshine

Chapter 9

Cerberus.

Let's talk about Cerberus. Days ago, when this shit had begun, Promise had said she didn't know what his "difference" was, why he was considered damaged and unfit by most of his fellow Kin. And I hadn't thought any more about it. In the beginning, I didn't care. And in the end… I didn't care, although for different reasons. Apathy versus berserk rage, yet the results were the same.

But back to my new boss, Cerberus. There were a lot of things to be said about Cerberus, but let's focus on the primary one.

Cerberus was freaky as shit.

I wasn't saying that I hadn't seen some weirdness in my day. Nothing could be further from the truth. So while Cerberus wasn't the most bizarre thing I'd ever come across, he was damn close. And would it have killed Flay to just throw out the word "twins"? Granted, Snowball was as incoherent as your typical pot-smoking fast-food worker, but one simple word was all I was asking for. Okay, I might have wondered why twins went by one name, but I might have been a little more prepared. Because, honestly… I took a closer look… damn.

"Flay says that—" one began.

"You wish to join us," the other finished.

I hoped that they didn't do that a lot. It was disturbing… like a cutesy gum commercial gone horrifically wrong. There was no pleasure here to be doubled, that was for damn sure. Taking a seat in one of the two chairs facing the desk, I leaned back in the opulent leather and tried to give the impression that I was unruffled by what stared at me from behind the desk. "What better place for someone like me? I've heard you look past differences, past"—I didn't have to fake the bitter twist of my lips—"bad breeding."

Look at me. Cool and calm. Hell on wheels and the biggest balls around. That was on the outside. On the inside I had to wonder if I was more than a little nuts to be pitting my woefully amateur undercover skills against that. I definitely saw why that son of a bitch Caleb wanted someone else to do his dirty work. To give my own eyes a rest, I snatched a fleeting look around the office. The place was a palace. All that was missing was the harem. Although, to give credit where credit was due, Cerberus did have a good start. A succubus was filing her three-inch pointed nails while draped liquidly over a couch against the far wall. With hair of midnight blue and storm-cloud silver cascading on her shoulders, she gave me a quick pout that had her finely scaled mother-of-pearl breasts heaving. A flutter of sapphire-colored eyelashes over liquid black eyes ended the flirtation, and she went back to ignoring me.

Cerberus, on the other hand, studied me unblinkingly from behind a desk the size of a small car. At least, one of them did. One head stared at me with slanted brown eyes that flared molten gold as the other turned to address the guard at the door. "Find Orrin. He's overdue and I want a report." The voice was cold and utterly emotionless, just like the eyes. It was unusual for a wolf. Whether it was raging anger, murderous glee, or overwhelming horniness, the lupines usually wore their tiny hearts and even tinier minds on their sleeve for everyone to see. The difference in Cerberus was startling and a little troubling.

Both of the heads had zeroed in on me now, and I made a mental note to kick myself later on for not wondering how Cerberus had gotten his name. The three-headed dog guarding the gates of hell… this Cerberus had only the two heads, but, hey, who was I to bitch? Humans produced conjoined twins on occasion and so did the animal kingdom, but I'd never heard of the wolf community producing any. As I'd thought to myself earlier, weakness was not tolerated in lycanthropic society, and as a rule a wolf like Cerberus should've been promptly killed at birth with one swipe of its mother's jaws. How these two had survived was a mystery, a damn unnerving one. There had to be a name for that type of conjoining. Niko would know it… if he were here. One heavily built body, two sleek heads with identical vulpine faces, short black hair slicked back into an impenetrable pelt over well-shaped skulls—that was the human form of Cerberus. I wasn't looking forward to seeing the wolfen version. Unlike Snowball, Cerberus was of the old breeding; he could choose to be either wolf or human.

The twins wore a suit in charcoal gray, expensive even to my untrained eye, and, beneath that, an ebony-colored shirt with two mandarin-style collars. It must have been a bitch to accommodate the unnaturally broad shoulders and bifurcated spinal column, but the unknown tailor had risen to the challenge. Thick but immaculately manicured nails tapped the desktop in a vaguely familiar rhythm. Then it hit me.

Peter and the Wolf. Jesus, this guy was something else. "Bad breeding indeed." Identical broad noses flared to gather my scent. "A foul, disgusting joining."

The one to the right had spoken first and then the one on the left. I realized I was going to have to either designate them as Cerberus One and Cerberus Two in my head or simply go with the flow and think of them as one creature, as Cerberus seemed to think of himself.

"Foul and disgusting," I drawled, slouching down farther and crossing my ankles. "That's me. But I'm also loyal, if the money's right. I can take care of myself, not to mention pretty much anything else that crosses my path." The grin I flashed this time wasn't bitter, but it was still dark… dark and gleeful. And then I gave him the cherry on top. "And I'm mean."

In wolf terms that meant one thing. I played with my food. It was a trait with which any of the Kin would find favor—because, after all, killing is business. But torture? That's art.

"Ah, is that so?" The nails stopped tapping, fingers stilled. The eyes took in the stitches that showed on my wrist, peeking from beneath the sleeve of my jacket. "Boaz."

"A bad poker player," I snorted. "And a worse loser." He was bound to have heard of the Boaz incident and not just from Flay. I only hoped the fight had been wild enough to make the details less than clear. Promise, as she wasn't here to kick my ass, I could pass off as a lover or an employer. Niko, however…

"He plays less now that he rots in a Jersey pet cemetery." There were identical cold grins, and then a less-than-casual "I hear there was a human there who did damage as well. Blond, with a sword." The head on the right was still with me. The one on the left had let his grin disappear and his eyelids fall to a brooding half-mast, but still kept his gaze fixed on me. Fixed on me hard.

"Yeah." I gave a light sneer. "I figured he was a bouncer." Cerberus had only to check to know that wasn't true, but even if he did, I hadn't said Niko was the bouncer… only that I thought he was. Facing my prospective new employer, I'd take uninformed and not particularly bright over the label of liar any day. "A puck will hire anything. But to give credit where it's due, he was tough." My sneer deepened. "For a human."

"For a sheep," came the correction. The massive body shifted, only slightly, but it still displaced the air like an avalanche. There was an innate sense of power about Cerberus, more natural than supernatural. A force of nature—tornado, hurricane, earthquake—it could be more destructive than any monster. I could see Flay's motivation to betray him. With this holding your leash, how could you fail to be chronically pissed? No doubt Cerberus didn't react to failure well. Hell, a bad hair day probably resulted in bodies far and wide. Flay wasn't the quickest, wasn't the smartest. He had to screw up on occasion. And he was bound to pay the price. Maybe it wasn't money he wanted for his betrayal—maybe it was simply revenge. But whatever Flay's reasoning, he had gotten me an audience with Cerberus. Now it was my job to make it work.

"For a sheep," I agreed lazily.

"You're half-sheep as well." A knuckle, thick and large, rapped the satin surface of his desk once. Immediately the succubus abandoned her couch and nail file to slink over. And a very definite slink it was. It wasn't all sexual (although certainly that was a big portion of it). It was partly the snake genes. Succubi couldn't walk without a wiggle even if they wanted to. She moved behind Cerberus and began a slow massage, paying equal attention to both necks. Not stopping there, she used a forked black tongue to caress the curve of each ear. Considering my own genetic makeup, I didn't have a lot of room to talk, but that didn't stop an inner "gah" and shudder.

I tried to ignore the Wild Kingdom mating bleeps and blunders before my eyes and tilted my head slightly. "Yeah, Mom. What a woman. There wasn't a dick that wasn't her friend, demonic or not." Of course that wasn't precisely true. Sophia had done it for the money, but now was not the time to be splitting hairs.

"Human or Auphe. Hard to determine which is more objectionable." Both heads exhaled and then said together with distaste, "Human."

To them it was probably true. Auphe had been feared and loathed, but they were still reluctantly respected. Humans, though… what was there to respect about them? From a Kin point of view, absolutely nothing. "And what happened to your slut of a sheep mother—"

"Who fornicated above her station?"

I smiled. It was a happy smile. Pure, honest, and satisfied.

"I ate her."

Of course, I hadn't actually eaten Sophia, but I couldn't help thinking she would've fit in here better than I did. Flay was introducing me to creatures with no conscience and a leg-humping rampant sexuality, and that was Sophia all over. The process of introduction wasn't exactly painless, but I wasn't sure who was more put out by it: my new co-workers or me.

Needless to say, I wasn't enjoying it. But I had to pretend that I was. The story went that Flay had known someone who had known someone who was the cousin of someone who'd been at the bar when the poker game went down. Or the equivalent of it. And that's how he'd come to make my unparalleled acquaintance. It was weak, but it made more sense than that he had tracked down the presumed Boaz slayer on his own initiative. Anyone who'd met Snowball would know that was damn unlikely. So, for now, Flay and I were buds, pals… probably borrowed each other's flea collar on a regular basis. Until I could kill him, that's the way it would have to be.

Cerberus had his office in a converted warehouse on Watts Street. I didn't know why he needed all that space, but at least it wasn't quite as clichéd as setting up shop in a bar or strip club. While his office was an oasis of all that was rich and decadent, the rest of the place was typical. Concrete floor, high unfinished ceiling, the smell of sawdust and mold, puddles of suspicious fluids… I glared at Flay and shook my foot. Droplets flew through the air and I gave an annoyed hiss at the ammonia stench. "You walk upright, most of the time, and you fur balls aren't even housetrained? Jesus."

Flay bared his teeth at me. It could've been a grin, could've been a threat; it was hard to say. It was also hard to care either way. "Fenrik. Jaffer. Lijah. Mishka."

It seemed that Snowball, brain cell diminished or not, was as good at ignoring me as vice versa. He coughed up the names as if I hadn't just shaken stale piss on his leg. The four wolves they belonged to stared at me as if I'd fallen from the sky. White-eyed, lips stretched to nothing, and claws shredding the cardboard cards they held… they had me amending the thought. They stared at me as though I'd fallen from the sky to rape their women, turn their children into beer cozies, and try to sell them life insurance.

I grinned with faithless and malevolent cheer, then sketched a casual wave. "Hey, fellas, I'm the new guy. Bet you didn't smell that coming."

In the silence, a string of saliva dripped from one foreshortened muzzle to pool on the crate that doubled as a makeshift table.

"What? No fruit basket?" I leaned down and picked up a card, bending it back and forth between my fingers. "Poker again. You pups really have a thing for the game, don't you?"

"Auphe." It was the one that Flay had designated as Lijah that spoke. Jaffer, of the unhappily wet muzzle, simply continued to stare and drool.

"Really? Where?" I looked over my shoulder. Turning back, I rocked on my heels and folded my arms. "Oh, you mean me? Hardly. Half-Auphe at best. Maybe a hint in my profile." I tilted my head to give them the full effect. "Or in my sparkling personality."

"Definitely the humor of an Auphe," grunted Fenrik, a short but impressively squat wolf. "Funny as an infected anal gland." He took a handful of Jaffer's shaggy hair and shook the head without mercy. Clumps of fur flew. "You're a wolf, you neutered bastard. Act like one."

Jaffer cowered under the treatment and hastily wiped his mouth with a hairy arm. Fire engine red, the pelt sprang up in tufts from his arms and beneath the collar of his Yankees sweatshirt. The hair on his head he kept cut to about an inch in length, but it stood straight up. It looked like a brush fire was racing across his skull. His eyes were round and yellow and his face a furred expanse of muzzle and wet nose. Jaffer didn't go out much, I was guessing. For all intents and purposes he was an upright wolf with a buzz cut. There was no way he could pass. Not at night, not among the drunkest of humans. I felt an unwilling tug of sympathy for him. The rest of us monsters in the room could. I could fool any human. And Flay, Fenrik, Lijah, and Mishka, while not completely normal, could walk the streets with no more than a few curious glances. Actually Fenrik appeared nearly as human as I did except for his eyes. Almost white, the silver blue was the same color as a husky's eyes. His hair nearly matched. Despite that, he wasn't old, late thirties maybe. When he looked at me, I thought I saw a glitter of interest behind the repugnance. He might not love the Auphe, but he was curious to see one close-up… even the bastardized shadow of one. Fenrik would bear watching. He was smarter than the others.

Mishka had to be related to Jaffer. His hair was a lesser red, more of a dull copper, and his muzzle was really just a pronounced overbite, the nose human. His eyes were a green-and-gold hazel. Lijah was more greyhound than wolf. Whipcord lean, he had a sleek fall of brindled hair. Black flecked with gold and brown, it fell loose past his shoulders. It did a good job of concealing a pair of pointed ears and a jawline far too narrow for any distant relative of a primate.

All in all, a motley crew, and except for Jaffer, they all had an air of ruthless competence. They possessed a tautness, an invisible twitch under the skin that spoke of readiness and an aggressiveness stronger than a starving shark's. Some wolves loved the chase. Loved the taste of blood on the run. These guys definitely fell in the kill-to-run, run-to-kill category. Whatever the Kin might think of Cerberus, he wasn't a fool when it came to his boys. Even Flay. Snowball might be a betrayer and unlikely to follow in Einstein's footsteps, but he was tough. Resilient.

At the continuing silence, I moved over to shove Jaffer out of his chair. Fenrik was the obvious Alpha of this little group and Jaffer just as obviously low wolf on the totem pole. I wasn't about to take his place. The red wolf showed his teeth, oddly enough utterly human, but ducked and scuttled his way to one side. '"Since I'm not much on butt sniffing as an introduction, why don't we play a hand?" I scooped up the cards and gave them a casual shuffle. "I guarantee you'll get next month's dip-and-groom money off of me. I suck."

Fenrik's pale eyes dilated and he changed. One second a man, the next a wolf. There was only a blur before my eyes, so quick that if I'd blinked, I would've missed it. Boaz had been fast, a trait of the old breeding, but this guy… he was quicker. I felt like applauding, so what the hell. I did. Three short claps. "Goddamn," I said. "I didn't even have to buy a ticket for the magic show. Is there popcorn? Can I buy a T-shirt when it's over?"

Two massive paws rested on the crate and black lips peeled back silently. It was shaping up to be Boaz all over again, except this time I was without Promise at my back or Niko busting down the door. And those were not good things to be without, trust me. Reaching under my jacket, I pulled out my shiny new gun. Flay had given it back to me after Cerberus had agreed to take me under his motherly wing. A thing of beauty, it was, and only slightly smaller than an anti-aircraft gun. I'd learned my lesson with Boaz and his boys, and I wanted stopping power this time. With stainless steel, a black rubber grip, and a futuristic barrel over ten inches long, the .50 Magnum was most often being used in big-game hunting. If these guys didn't count as big game, then I didn't know what did. It weighed more than your average five-year-old kid and I plunked it down with force on the crate between Fenrik and me. "You're making me cranky, Lassie," I said amiably. "Timmy might put up with your shit, but I won't."

The silent snarl turned into a buzz-saw rumble that ripped the air to shreds. Apparently Lassie wasn't particularly appreciative of my shit either. Then an unlikely peacemaker stepped in. Red eyes annoyed, Flay moved up to the crate, took a handful of silver fur and another of my jacket collar, and then shook us both—much as Fenrik had shaken Jaffer. "Work for Cerberus." He gave us another shake. "All work for Cerberus." Letting go, he took my gun and shoved it back against my chest and then pushed Fenrik's furry ass back down on his chair. "Stupid. Cerberus eat both. Stupid." He folded his arms and shook his head with disgust. "Shitheads."

I stood corrected. There was an Alpha, but it wasn't Fenrik after all. It was Flay. Flay of the sloping forehead, garbled speech, and self-proclaimed low IQ. I didn't know what the hell I thought about that. I reholstered my gun and reconsidered the situation at hand. "What the hell. Getting eaten on my first day isn't really a sound career plan anyway. Truce, Lassie?"

A naked Fenrik materialized out of the mass of wolf and stared at me with narrowed eyes. He might be interested in me, but it didn't mean he liked me. Who knew? Maybe that interest was more oriented on how a half Auphe would taste as opposed to simply seeing one in living color. As for his not liking me, that I was used to. If the situation were reversed, I probably wouldn't like me either.

"Truce." Fenrik ground out the reluctant word and started to dress. "I don't question the judgment of Cerberus. Not even in this."

"That's big of you." Smart as well. Cerberus didn't strike me as the kind to tolerate dissent in his ranks. At the ruby gleam aimed my way, I sighed and shifted my shoulders. "How about lunch on the new guy? Pizza. Steak. You guys name it. I'm buying."

I'd been working since I was sixteen, when we'd first gone on the run. Mostly in hole-in-the-wall bars, places that didn't care if you disappeared one day. Places that paid you under the table and didn't give a shit if you had ID or not. If I'd learned one thing there, it was that the way to coworker harmony was through food. And alcohol. Lots and lots of alcohol. I might not drink much of it, but I could fork over the money for it. "And I'll buy the first pitcher," I added. "Anyone got a bag to put over Jaffer's head?"

Steak it was—naturally. About four cows' worth. Below Fourteenth Street, the restaurant was medium-sized, dark as a cave, and fairly cheap. Of course, fairly cheap multiplied by five wolves was sure to empty the deepest wallet. There were porterhouse steaks all around, potatoes smothered in butter, sour cream, and cheese, and a pitcher of beer per wolf. Just breathing the air around us would harden your arteries, an exercise in secondhand cholesterol at its best. I chewed my own steak, rare—it wouldn't do to look like a predator puny enough to like his meat well-done. Who would buy that? The mouthful, harsh with the tang of blood, stuck in the back of my throat as I caught a glimpse of red in the gloom. A slim figure and copper hair, but the skin was creamy pale and the hair a short, straight cap. Not George. The pretty waitress saw me watching her and smiled a bit hesitantly. Considering the friends I was keeping, I didn't blame her.

I ducked my head, breaking the contact, and grimly continued with my meal. I was Auphe. The Auphe were ravenous in their appetites… all of their appetites. If I hoped to stay under Cerberus long enough to find what I was looking for, I would have to keep up with the boys. And right now the boys were making their way through slabs of meat with the speed and finesse of tree shredders. I stabbed another barely browned chunk with my fork, chewed, and chased it down with a swallow of beer. That was the one thing I held back on. As much as I needed to blend in, I couldn't afford to get drunk. I doubted I'd get loose of lip and jump up on the table to do a happy jig while singing the joys of being a spy. But it would slow my reflexes, not to mention any pretension at wits I might have. So I stuffed myself with steak and occasionally took a small sip of the beer.

It should've been noticed. Would've been, in fact, if Flay hadn't been helping himself to my glass on the sly. His tolerance was fine. The table was good-sized, but there were six of us with enough food for five buffets. It made for an impossible jumble of dishware. Since Flay was sitting beside me he could drain my glass without suspicion. And he did so, frequently. I slanted a sideways glance at him. No one had much faith in his intellectual skills… Caleb, Cerberus, even Flay himself, but I wondered. Did he maximize the minimal amount he had to work with? Or was it low self-esteem because of his wolf-scorned albinism?

Let daytime TV sort it out. My concern was George and only George. To get her back, I would take any help Flay would give me and be grateful for it. Right up until George was safe and Flay a badly skinned rug on my bedroom floor. As he noticed my attention and met my gaze, I tapped my fork against the edge of my plate and gave him a smile cold enough to burn my lips. White eyebrows lowered and a lip lifted just enough to reveal one jagged tooth. Genius or idiot, either one would know what I was picturing doing with that fork. Niko was more than capable of killing someone with the most innocent of kitchen utensils. I don't know if I could or not, but I was perfectly willing to throw myself into the spirit of experimentation and find out.

"More beer!"

Jaffer's slurred voice shifted my attention. He was wearing a sweatshirt with the hood pulled so far over his face that I could see only the faint glitter of his eyes and the wet shine of his nose, which seemed to be getting progressively more damp. I shook my head and hoped I wasn't going to end up washing dishes before this was over. The alcohol tab alone was going to be staggering. "More beer it is." I held up five fingers for the waitress, then pointed at an empty pitcher. "Cerberus doesn't mind the liquid lunches?"

"Not so much," Fenrik grunted. "Most of our work is done at night. During the day we just make ourselves available in case anything comes up. Consider us on call."

"Like doctors," Jaffer said with a happy slurp of tongue. The spray of saliva hit me all the way across the table and I reached for a napkin to blot my face.

Yeah, just like doctors. All they were missing were the stethoscopes. Dropping the napkin, I looked to my right, where Lijah had finished his third steak while I was still working on my first. Thin as a rail, but damn if he couldn't pack it away. "You guys been with Cerberus long?"

There was a shrug of the lean shoulders. "Long enough. He's a good Alpha, as long as you do what you're told." He said it with a confidence tinged faintly with uneasiness.

"And do it well," Mishka added glumly, raising a hand to reveal three missing fingers. Doing what you're told was easy enough… if that's what you wanted. Doing it well was sometimes a little harder.

"Looks like you screwed up at least once there, Mish." I pushed my plate away, my stomach tight with food. "Or Cerberus is seriously into the finger foods."

"Cerberus is a good Alpha," Fenrik repeated stone-faced. "He gives many a chance that no other Kin would touch." He pointed his own fork at me. "Many like you."

The thing was… it was true. Well, not that there were many quite like me, but I got his point. There were all sorts of monsters, layers upon layers and always one worse than the next. Monsters being monsters, there was also prejudice, blatant and severe. If you were different, in any way, someone would be happy to eat you for it. The nonhuman were completely honest in their hatred, no government mandate required. Cerberus was a change from the norm. Overcoming his own difference—by sheer force and a river of blood, I was guessing—he'd gathered other outsiders around him. And he'd made it work. He'd made the Kin accept him and his pack. That was one helluva feat, even for a cold-blooded Kin murderer.

"You're right," I admitted as I reached for my wallet and turned it inside out over the table. "No one likes the Auphe. No one respects a human. And no one, but no one, wants to work with either one. Cerberus is the Alpha in my book." I thumbed through the pile of cash. There was enough, barely, and I wedged it under an empty pitcher. "You guys finish up the beer. I've got some business to take care of."

"What kind of business?" Fenrik asked with immediate suspicion.

I aimed a leer at the gaggle of waitresses by the bar. "Guess."

"Back… eight." Flay scowled. "Business… too. Cerberus business."

"Eight. Gotcha."

"Human?" Mishka looked at the waitresses and made a hissing sound of disgust. "They're soft. No fire."

"Hey, unlike your gals, humans are in heat all the time." I tried for a Goodfellow tone, salacious and carnal. I'd heard it so often I could probably do a reasonable imitation in my sleep. "And they make a nice snack afterward." Slapping the table, I headed out… just your average cannibalistic ladies' man. Nothing to see here. Outside, lunchtime had faded into late afternoon. The sky was blue tinged with yellow, the air heavy and thick. It glued my jacket to me with a wallpaper paste of my own sweat. It would've been a relief to sink into the dubious air-conditioning of a taxi, but in this instance comfort would have to be sacrificed for caution. Wiping at the back of my neck, I trudged into the crowd and hopefully disappeared.

The hostel room was several layers below disgusting. Or it had been. Now, thanks to my visitor, it was immaculately neat and as sterile as an operating room. Nik, only Nik. He couldn't do anything about the bedspread and carpet of hideous, clashing colors that only a clown on acid could love or the junkyard-cheap furniture, but the dirt was a different matter. He'd apparently scrubbed the place down with ruthless efficiency and an entire vat of bleach. I closed the door behind me and gave a low whistle. "Dr. Obsessive-compulsive, I presume."

"You stink of beer and red meat." He sat cross-legged on the bed, a serene statue repeatedly tossing and catching his knife so quickly that it was a silver pinwheel spinning in the air before him.

"Bonding with the boys." I grabbed the desk chair and straddled it. "They ravaged my liver and then my wallet."

The long nose wrinkled fastidiously, but he let it go. "You weren't followed?"

"No." Which was why I'd walked, taken the subway… doubled back at several stops, then walked some more. Rubbing at my eyes, I asked, "Promise or Robin get any information on Caleb or his crown?"

"Not so far." Catching his knife, he uncoiled and moved to the edge of the bed. Tapping my knee with the point of his throwing blade, he asked quietly, "Are you all right?"

"Yeah," I said, dismissive. "So far I've just eaten steak and been hit with about a gallon of drool. Nothing to write home about."

There was one more tap, oddly reassuring; then the knife vanished. "And Cerberus?"

I grimaced, caught in the lie. "I didn't need a change of shorts, but it was a close thing. He's a cold son of a bitch. Or they are. Hell, I don't know."

"Ah." His mouth twitched, Niko's equivalent of a smug grin. "We may have come up empty on Caleb's location or the history behind the crown, but getting a background on Cerberus was easily enough accomplished. He has no secrets he wishes to keep hidden—on the surface, anyway. And the word you've no doubt been searching for is 'dicephalus.' One body, two heads."

"Smart-ass." The air of industrial-strength cleaner clung to the plastic and imitation wood of my chair and I swallowed a sneeze. At least it smelled clean… for the first time. I'd been staying at the hostel on the Bowery for two days now. I needed to be well and truly separated from the others if Cerberus did some cursory checking of his own. I could've stayed someplace a little more upscale, but I also wanted to give the impression I was in this for the money. Just your average working stiff willing to kill, mutilate, and wreak havoc for the Kin's version of minimum wage.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"That's what I thought."

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