Moonshine

Chapter 10

I woke up to the near-simultaneous sounds of a quietly closing door and the less subdued beeping of the alarm clock. Spitting out a mouthful of bedspread, I silenced the squealing box on the bedside table with a slap. I rolled out of bed and trudged to the door to check the hall, but Niko was already gone. As he'd said… the wind. He'd stayed to watch over me while I slept, and I vaguely remembered the occasional touch to my shoulder that had brought me out of nightmares into blissfully empty sleep. He'd also left a present for me on the table beside the clock. Hydrogen peroxide, antibiotic ointment, and a happily informative note telling me to clean my gangrenous arm before he was forced to chop it off. Brotherly love, the original sweet-and-sour dish.

I did as I was told. Contrary I might be, but truthfully the wounds were reddened and puffy. And the last thing I needed was for an infection to slow me down while I was in the midst of the dog pound. First I showered and took care of my arm, and then I made my way back to the warehouse for my first day on the job. I couldn't say that I was exactly showered with camaraderie when I stepped through the doors, but a beery burp and perfunctory growl instead of sincere ones let me know I was one of the gang. A handful of murderous lupines, and I had their acceptance. I didn't want it, but I needed it. I needed it badly.

What I didn't need, however, was the foul and stinking breath ruffling the hair at my nape, but it was there all the same.

"Do ya mind?" I snapped. "I'm half-human, and I need the oxygen, okay? Your funky stench isn't quite satisfying the lungs." It was a revenant. If you could say one thing about Cerberus, it was that he was down and dirty committed to the equal-opportunity concept. A revenant… Jesus. Forget their pleasing and well-rounded personalities for the moment; their stink alone could clear a city block. Eat the dead, smell like the dead; it was a logic that couldn't be escaped. Not that they were above a warm meal once in a while. Dead was just a preference.

There was a hiss like an angrily deflating balloon, but the heat retreated from the back of my neck. I felt the iron stiffness of my spine relax slightly. The situation was tense enough; it didn't need poisonous gas emanating from this shithead's filthy pores to make it worse. Cerberus had personally given us our marching orders for the night. It had been in the office again, but this time he was alone… except for his meal. The succubus was nowhere to be seen, which was too bad. Whether she would know any deep, dark secrets such as where Cerberus kept his jewelry box was questionable. The head honchos didn't strike me as the types to spill the post-coital beans, but who knew? One thing I did know was that Goodfellow would be better qualified to find out. At the end of that exchange, if anyone were sucked dry of their life force, I'd bet my first Kin paycheck that it wouldn't be Robin. A dirty job, he'd say, is the very best kind.

My dirty job, a much less enjoyable one, was watching Cerberus eat. Wolves liked to eat, big surprise, almost as much as they liked mating and killing. They gave a new twist to the old adage: If you can't eat it or screw it, you may as well kill it. Fine as far as it went, but wolves were of a mind to do at least two at once… if not all three. The whole species wasn't psychotically bloodthirsty, not entirely. But as I watched a liver ripped from a gaping wound and shredded under bloodstained fangs, I found that truth hard to hold on to.

Cerberus hadn't completely changed to wolf form, which was too bad. That might not have been as disturbing. The hands had thickened and gnarled, sprouting claws and a fine downy coat of black hair. Teeth had elongated to fangs as thick as my thumb and half again as long. The two skulls had flattened into wicked wedges with overgrown jaws, low foreheads, and moist flaring nostrils. Otherwise, the mostly hairless faces and ferociously intelligent eyes still looked human. The body itself was nude and faintly sheened with the same misting of black hair found on the hands. The nudity was a combination of a wolf's natural lack of shame and a convenient way to avoid ruining the expensive suit folded off to one side. Cerberus wasn't what you'd consider a tidy eater. As the body crouched over its dinner, blood splattered onto its broad chest. Still, if it weren't for the hands and faces, it would be possible to take them for men… hairy men, but just men. Yeah, let's revisit disturbing. Disturbing just wasn't doing the job in the description department. It was a night-and-day contrast to my morning meeting with the wolves. Cerberus had been all business then… coldly powerful and deadly, yes, but restrained. Now… now the savagery was so matter-of-fact, so casual, that you knew ripping apart a still-warm body was nothing more than supper, mundane as a tuna fish sandwich was to me.

"I have business for you," the head on the right spoke, the words dropping like stones from bloodstained lips.

That wasn't news. It was why we'd been called into the principal's office, to get the details. But when the one on the left gave us those details, I wished I'd stayed in the hostel and played count-the-cockroach. I'd known it might be bad. Hell, I was the last one to wallow in delusions of optimism, but I hadn't realized how grisly it could be. Would be. Swallowing the bile that burned bonfire hot in my throat, I exited the office with my partners in crime. Behind me the sounds of feeding resumed. There was one poor son of a bitch who should never have signed his donor card.

And that's how I ended up outside a homeless shelter picking out people to die.

I was also wondering fairly frantically what Niko was going to do about it. A hard, painful grip on my injured arm ended my wondering for the moment. "Choose. Lazy," Flay hissed in my ear. "Lazy… work." If he was overheard, and with the wolf ears around us he would be, it would look as if Flay was only giving a slacker a boot in the ass. A slacker was better than a spy any day of the week. I jerked my arm out of his grip and did as ordered. I chose. Randomly. I couldn't look at the people and I didn't… only pointed at them and then the bus. The others, on the other hand, were selecting by size, wanting the plumpest of prize pigs. We'd brought a bus for the livestock; it was dingy white, beat-up, and old, but scrupulously clean. The story was that we were a charitable medical organization busing a lucky group of the homeless to a new free clinic in Brooklyn where they would be given a physical. The ones that were sick would be promptly treated, also at no charge, and all provided with a nutritious box dinner. Yeah, it was a load of crap, but it would work. It was working.

Where this busload of people would end up, I wasn't precisely sure. It was in Brooklyn, Snowball had said, but it sure as hell wasn't at a clinic. Being sold for food was probably what lay in their future. To whom? Anyone. Everyone. Offhand, I couldn't think of too many monsters that didn't eat humans. Cerberus had driven that home earlier. Usually monsters caught their own, but you had to hand it to the Kin and my new boss. Sometimes you liked a full-on, dress-for-it dinner and sometimes you liked to pop something in the microwave, quick and easy. And now, for a price, they had your quick and easy right here. Don't feel like leaving the house to bag supper? Why should you? You've got a homeless Popsicle neatly folded in your freezer.

Despite myself, I did a quick scan of the general area, looking over the street and ugly, run-down buildings. Nothing. Niko had been right; I didn't see him. Although I knew he was there and knew it without a doubt, I still wished I could see him, calm and confident. Planwise, I was coming up empty. I couldn't make a move without giving myself away, and if I gave up myself, I gave up George.

Feeling eyes on me, I turned to see the milky orbs of the revenant staring at me from behind dark glasses. He was lucky it was twilight. With perpetually moist, salamander flesh, multiple joints, and the teeth of a demonic ferret, he'd have a harder time passing than Jaffer did. Some quarters said revenants were people returned from the dead. Nah. From a distance, a long distance, they did have the appearance of a corpse in the first stages of decomposition… a corpse with the speed and appetite of a trapdoor spider. But that aside, revenants had never been human.

I ignored him. Easy enough to do since he was downwind. It was less easy to watch as shambling men and women with ragged clothes and thousand-yard stares climbed onto the bus to be transported to their deaths. And fucking clever guy that I was, I couldn't think of a damn thing to do about it. Hands in pockets, acid burning the back of my throat, I counted twenty condemned souls filing past. Some had gray strands straggling from knit caps; others had black or brown hair. A few mumbled to themselves, several talked quietly with one another, and some remained stoically silent. One or two met my eyes with streetwise suspicion and wretched gratitude. The hot breath of the revenant was back on my neck, and his fingers felt like bare bone when they gripped my arm above the elbow as I nodded at the last of them, an old lady with one filmy-cataract-covered eye. She grinned with toothless cheer at me and went through the folding doors as I gave her a hand up.

Being torn to pieces would've been less painful.

"Aren't you a good little boy? A good little human." The revenant had a hard time twisting his thick tongue around the words, giving them a glottal grunt. The same slab of meat slathered the skin below my pony-tail. "A tasty human."

It was worth the painful bite I received when I ripped half his tongue out. The wolves only snickered as the revenant drooled and spit blood onto the asphalt, his eyes lurid with pain. I was expected to be loyal to Cerberus. I was not expected to roll over and offer my throat to some stinking lump of wet flesh wrapped in a concealing raincoat and baseball hat. Being seen as weak would get me killed only slightly slower than if I yelled at those people on the bus to run for their lives. "Here's your souvenir, bucko." I slapped the tongue against his chest. "Maybe you should've tasted my Auphe half instead of my human one." With that, I took my place on the bus and settled into the front seat as Fenrik slid behind the wheel. Wiping brownish black blood on my jeans, I then spread my hands and shrugged as pale blue eyes gave me a disapproving glare. I knew Fenrik couldn't have cared less about the revenant. I could've popped off the head and used it for a bowling ball and the wolf wouldn't have blinked. What he did care about was the homeless catching a glimpse of the moment and panicking. Of course, thanks to my infallible lack of luck, none of them had.

As my newly detongued pal climbed on after me, I opened my jacket to flash him a peek of my shiny new gun and raised an eyebrow. He bared rodent incisors at me, but kept trudging toward the back with bowed shoulders. He'd gotten off lightly and he knew it. The tongue would eventually regenerate; revenants could regrow almost any body part given the opportunity. He'd be running his mouth again in no time, and if that wasn't proof there was no justice in this world, I didn't know what was. I closed my jacket as the doors shut and the bus lurched into gear. As I stared blindly out of the fogged window, my mind raced in tight circles. I could all but feel the bruises as it bounced off the inner confines of my thick skull. Thick and useless. Come on, Nik, I thought grimly. If you're going to get these people out of this, there's no time like the present. And if you can't, I'll have to try, because George would never want this, could never be a part of it. And possible lack of soul aside, I couldn't be a part of it either. The fact that I'd probably die futilely without saving a one of them was just my misfortune, because I'd have to try.

The gears shifted again, diesel fumes belched into the air, and we rumbled our way down to hell, hitching a ride on the back of my good intentions. The buildings crawled by and I closed my eyes to them, leaning my forehead against the cool glass. I won't let it come to that, I promised George… and myself. This can't happen. It just can't.

And then suddenly, the tortured scream of metal came as the bus shuddered and yawed sideways like a drunken elephant. My head smacked against the window frame, giving me an instant headache, but I ignored it and jumped to my feet. Hanging on to the back of the seat, I managed to stay up as the floor rocked beneath me. There were cries of shock and surprise around me, and one worse-for-wear set of dentures went flying through the air to clip Fenrik behind one ear. He snarled but kept fighting with the large steering wheel, attempting to keep the white whale from tipping over. He was successful, just barely, until we careened to a jolting halt up against the curb.

For a moment it seemed like we would stay upright; then we went over. All the windows on the downside of the bus shattered at the impact, spraying glass upward. It was tempered and the one piece that grazed my jaw barely scratched the skin. There was no way to keep my feet as the bus tumbled over, but my natural grace, such as it was, kept me from falling face-first. Ass first was a different story. I looped an arm around the metal pole by the door and swung around, landing on my back as the bus hit and teetered on its side before stabilizing there. I blinked, feeling the grit of pulverized glass through my jacket. Inhaling an experimental breath, I took inventory and discovered I was in one piece, more or less. Turning my head carefully, I looked through the cracked windshield and saw what had caused the wreck.

We'd been rammed… by a garbage truck. The front of it was barely in view, but the shape was unmistakable. The engines of the hulking green metal monster growled, although the driver's seat was empty. Abandoned, a hit-and-run, but I did see something. It was gone so fast I might have imagined it, if I hadn't known better. A flicker of dark blond hair disappearing fast through clogged traffic and around a corner, was all the clue I needed. Within minutes there would be the telltale sounds of sirens, police and ambulance, and getting these people back to Cerberus would be a hopeless cause. Just like Niko had planned, and one helluva plan it was, considering he'd come up with it on the spur of the moment. Sitting up gingerly, I reached over and shook Fenrik's shoulder. He hadn't been wearing his seat belt—naughty, naughty—and was crumpled and bleeding against the door beside me. "Fen, on your paws. It's time to cut our losses."

Blue eyes rolling toward me, the bloody face twitched as he threw off the shock of the collision. Growling low in his throat from either pain or confusion, he pushed up to his knees and started crawling back toward the emergency exit. Flay, who'd been several seats behind me, was already kicking the rear door open with both feet. I followed in Fenrik's wake as the men and women in the bus started to come to their senses. Some began to shout for help, while others simply moaned. None, however, seemed fatally injured, and that put them heads and shoulders above where they'd been five minutes ago. I kept crawling and within seconds tumbled out onto the street, shortly followed by Jaffer, Mishka, Lijah, and that nameless, tongueless decomposing piece of shit.

A crowd was beginning to form in the deadlocked traffic and I winnowed my way through it with several well-placed elbows. Leaving the scene of the accident—in any other city it might have raised some protests. Leaving the scene with the overly hairy, the white-eyed, and the disturbingly slimy of skin—you'd think that would trigger something. At least one "Holy shit." But there was nothing but murmurs and the occasional whistle at the sight of the overturned bus. I wasn't all that surprised. Over the years I'd learned that people saw what they wanted to see. And what they didn't want to see, they absolutely refused to. I'd be wishing for a little of that blissful ignorance when we faced Cerberus with this news. The displeasure was bound to be nice and visual, painted in bloody scarlet strokes. Yeah, the shit was sure to hit the fan, but like those people on the bus I was still in much better shape than I had been. But unlike them I knew it, and I knew something else they didn't.

I knew who to thank.

"Where have you been? I was beginning to worry."

Same ugly room, same hideous bedspread, same bossy and demanding Niko. Okay, that wasn't strictly true. Niko looked less demanding and more concerned than anything. It would've been touching, if he hadn't had dinner set up on the small table by the bed. Vegetable lasagna, garlic bread, and a salad, it obviously hadn't come from the soup kitchen next door. "Darn, hope I didn't spoil your appetite," I sniped as I leaned wearily against one wall.

"It's for you, thankless brat." He pulled out the chair and planted me in it with a heavy hand on my shoulder.

"Thankless is right." Goodfellow's peevish voice came from the bathroom. "I'm starving and neo-ninja here wouldn't allow me even a bite." Moving into the room with a roll of duct tape under his arm, he toweled off his hands.

I looked at the tape, then him. "I knew it had a mind of its own, but you're taping it down now? Jesus."

"As if mere duct tape would hold it," he snorted, and tossed the roll onto the bed. "I fastened a little surprise to the back of the toilet tank. If you don't have a weapon hidden in every room, then your decoration skills are sorely lacking."

There was no denying the truth of that statement. I picked up a fork and took a bite of the lasagna; it was cold, but good. It was past midnight and the last time I'd eaten had been the orgy of steak and beer around noon. "Not bad, Cyrano. Thanks."

"I'm glad you're in the condition to appreciate it. I know Cerberus couldn't have been exactly pleased over what happened."

" 'Not exactly' is one way to put it." If not exactly pleased could also mean eating Fenrik alive. Someone had to take the blame for the accident and the loss of the livestock. Since he'd been driving, Fenrik had been the one to take the fall. I'd escaped relatively blameless, along with the others. We were still on Cerberus's shit list, but far enough down that we'd survived for now. If we didn't screw up in the near future, we might even live out the week. I took a bite of the garlic bread and chewed mechanically. I hadn't liked Fenrik… Hell, he was a cold-blooded Kin killer. A cold-blooded Kin killer who, in turn, hadn't much liked me either. He'd been driving those people to their deaths without a second thought. It was business to him and nothing more. Yeah, a killer, but… I dropped the bread onto the plate and pushed it all away. Within the savage circle of his life, Fenrik had been honorable. Loyal to his own. Loyal to his Alpha. It had been hard to watch him die. I'd shared only one meal with the guy and nothing that could be considered an actual conversation, but watching his entrails spill steaming onto the floor wasn't the highlight of my day. It had, in a word, sucked.

"Here, Loman," I offered with a sudden lack of appetite. "Eat up."

Robin accepted the plate with alacrity and settled onto the bed, pausing only to waggle his eyebrows at Niko in invitation. It was proof positive Promise wasn't going to join our little party or Goodfellow would've had nothing left to waggle. Niko, as always, ignored him and looked me up and down. "I'm guessing Cerberus didn't take his displeasure out on you or you would've signaled us for assistance."

Guessing, hoping. Niko had known when he'd rammed that garbage truck into the bus that he'd been taking a chance. He'd made the right choice, but it had also been the hard choice, and he deserved credit for both. "No, he saved the displeasure for someone else." I pushed the ugly mental picture from my brain and let my lips quirk upward. "How long did you wait outside the warehouse?"

The gray eyes narrowed with haughty question. "Did you see me by the warehouse?"

"No," I admitted ruefully. "Big surprise."

"Then how do you know I was there?"

"The same way I know Goodfellow's staring at your ass. It's a law of nature. Can't be changed."

Niko glanced over his shoulder, eyes narrowing further. Not bothering to look innocent, Robin shrugged and gave an unrepentant and utterly wicked grin as he continued to work his way through the lasagna. Turning back to me, Nik said, "I waited as long as was necessary."

Until he had seen me… undamaged and in one piece. And if he'd seen me, he would've seen Cerberus. They'd come out of the office this time into the warehouse proper. The office was good-sized, but for true bodily destruction you really needed room to work. "You saw them, then," I said quietly.

"Only glimpses through one poorly boarded-up window, but… yes, I saw Cerebus." As a rule, Niko took most things in stride. As far as I could tell, Niko had been born unflappable. Very little impressed him: the Auphe trying to destroy the world, Abbagor… a creature almost beyond description, and a homicidally possessed brother—it was a short list. Short, but I think Cerberus had just made it.

As impressions went, he'd definitely made one on me. To take Fenrik down he'd gone completely wolf. Only Cerberus's wolf was nothing like any other wolf I'd seen. I could see why the Kin had given him a chance; they hadn't had much choice.

"So?" A green gaze flickered between my brother and me. "You saw a wolf. Cerberus is simply another bad-tempered Kin bastard, or bastards as the case may be. Why the long faces?" The garlic bread was waved in casual punctuation. "A swat of the muzzle with a newspaper and you go your merry way."

"Yeahhh. I'll let you do the swatting, Loman." Fenrik hadn't bowed to certain death. Like any good wolf he'd gone down fighting. Fangs, jaws like a bear trap, incredible speed, and still he'd been nothing to Cerberus. Less than nothing. It could have been over in seconds, but where would be the lesson for the rest of us there? Cerberus in human form was impressive; Cerberus as wolf was… dread. Pure and simple. And having had my fill of dread for the night, I changed the subject. "Where's Promise?" I asked curiously. It wasn't like her to sit on the sidelines for very long.

"Still researching the crown with little luck. You're to meet her tomorrow for breakfast and she'll tell you what she's discovered."

"Make her pay," Goodfellow added with pointed annoyance. "I have yet to see my split from the poker game." Leaving the now-empty plate behind, he slid off the bed smoothly until he was forced to put weight on his injured leg. Straightening his charcoal pinstriped jacket and running a hand over the short brown waves of his hair, he limped toward the door. "I have another appointment," he said in farewell. "Watch the first flush, Caliban. I would hate for you to blow off anything of importance."

I made a mental note to check what exactly the puck had taped to the back of the toilet before I went to sleep. It sounded… interesting. As the door shut behind him, I tilted back in the chair. "Where's he going?"

"To watch over George's family. We've been doing our best to keep an eye on them when we can."

"Oh." I let the chair's front legs hit the floor and rubbed the back of my neck. "How are they doing?"

"Much the same as us," Niko said gravely.

"That good, huh?" I murmured to myself.

A hand gave me a light shove out of the chair and pushed the dirty discarded plate into my hand. "Make yourself useful. I don't think you want to see what this will attract in the middle of the night." As I scrubbed over the bathroom sink, we discussed what my next move should be. Niko agreed with me that it wasn't likely that the succubus would know any more than Flay did, but he pointed out we couldn't afford to overlook any potential source of information.

"I should've asked Goodfellow for pointers before he left," I said glumly.

"Talk with Promise instead," Niko suggested. "She may know a way to interrogate your new friend that won't involve a jealous Cerberus castrating you."

"Always a plus." I grimaced. The alarm clock flickered red in the corner of my eye, reminding me that time was ticking away. It had been almost a week since George had disappeared. Six days. In the real world, it was barely a week. In our world, it was more than long enough to pass from the world.