Roadkill

6

Suyolak’s leaving mental landmines for us, which meant he knew or felt us following him, or Niko’s smacking the back of my head; I didn’t know which was responsible for the headache, but it didn’t matter. What did was that I needed some Tylenol. Suyolak in our heads, using that mixture of telepathy, telekinesis, and whatever else Niko had said-okay, I was going with that as the cause of my aching head. Niko’s swats I was used to.

We’d pulled into a gas station at the first exit after I traveled back to the car. We needed to fill up the tank anyway, and getting about a gallon of coffee to keep ancient Rom antihealers from paying any of us another visit wasn’t a bad idea either. I could also raid the first aid kit we kept in the trunk. It didn’t fit in the glove compartment. If we needed first aid, we needed a hospital in a box-but besides morphine, codeine, staples and stitches, occlusive pressure bandages, and other advanced medical supplies, it also had your run-of-the-mill Tylenol.

I downed two with the coffee, although other than the headache, I didn’t feel bad. I wasn’t that wild about Suyolak poking around in my dreams… Mengele/ Freddy Krueger-not a good mix. But aside from that and an annoyed, worried brother, I kind of felt good-revved up, as if I’d already drunk that gallon of coffee. It seemed clear now that Suyolak couldn’t have my Auphe half gobble up the human part. If that were true, the last time I’d seen our healer Rafferty, when he’d repaired a near-fatal stab wound to my abdomen, he would’ve done the opposite. He would’ve gotten rid of my Auphe genes, and he wouldn’t have waited for me to ask either.

Suyolak was like most power- hungry monsters: He liked to mess with your mind, because to someone like him-something like him-fear was as tasty a meal as that stew he’d talked about. He was full of shit and as long as we met up with Rafferty before we came across Suyolak in the dehydrated flesh, we’d be fine-except for some nightmares.

I deftly dodged the third or so swat Niko aimed at the back of my head, as if he could behavior modify me into controlling my subconscious to not let me travel, and asked, “Heard from Dr. Sassafras or that boring guy yet?”

He took revenge by reversing the motion of his hand and flicking me briskly in the forehead. “Yes, while you were in the gas station stocking up on sugar, trans fat, and various other undigestibles, I called them both. Dr. Penjani has yet to find out anything, and he’s not boring; simply evolved beyond the Homo Pornographus that is you. Dr. Jones, however, has had better luck. There are two anthropology professors, one in Seattle, one in San Diego. Both have family members who are critically ill; both fit Abelia’s description of older men with gray hair. One has a wife with a brain tumor who has a week to live, perhaps two at best, and one has a son who was in a car accident. Multiple injuries, brain damage. Both are too unstable to be moved, which is why our thief didn’t take the easier route of bringing Mohammed to the mountain, instead of vice versa. The professor in San Diego tends to concentrate on Australian aborigines. The one in Seattle obtained his PhD twenty years ago in the varying levels of Rom assimilation from country to country. I would say he is our better possibility.”

“Which one is he? The one with the sick son or the wife?” I asked, tapping my fingers on my leg. This music on the radio; maybe it wasn’t as bad as I’d thought. The not being able to tell if the singer was a man or a woman was like a mythological time before testosterone was introduced into the gene pool.

“Does it matter?” Niko asked.

“No, guess not. Depressing either way.” Although I didn’t feel depressed or empathetic or any other of those big words Niko half believed he’d never genuinely pounded them into my head. I should have-I mean, dying wife… dying kid. Jesus. That was sad, right? They had support groups for that sort of thing, so it must be sad. But I didn’t particularly feel that way. That up feeling was still with me. What the hell-I’d feel bad for them later.

I turned the radio up a little and opened a bag of Cheetos. I offered one to Niko. He refused, of course, with a look of distaste for the food and disgust for my hopeless eating habits. I then turned to offer the bag to Robin in the backseat. “You know, for what it’s worth, this whole monogamy thing with Ish? I think you should give it a try. In your lifetime you’ve screwed your way through half the world population, if not more. Not to mention Ishiah can take your shit. And believe me, that’s a lot of shit to take. A lot,” I emphasized. “Give it a chance. Listen to the radio. There wouldn’t be a twenty-four-hour love song station if there wasn’t some truth behind that whole hearts and flowers crap, right?” I patted his shoulder with a dusty orange hand. And why not? Ish was a good guy, a good boss-trying to chop my head off with an axe wasn’t that far out of line. Forgive and forget. And Goodfellow had been a better friend than I deserved. If he could find happiness, why not?

God, I sounded like such a girl. I’d grown some ovaries without noticing. The breasts couldn’t be far behind. Yet that didn’t particularly bother me either.

Robin carefully removed my hand from his shoulder and leaned back out of reach. “I’m not sure which of the three is more frightening: that Suyolak can go highdef in your head, therefore I’m assuming our heads, for sport; that if we get too close he could give us a venereal disease that would turn us into giant, walking pus boils-also merely for his entertainment; or your new mood.”

“Me?” I asked, distracted by the taste of the Cheetos. I’d always liked them. You didn’t have to cook them, they were readily available at any store in the country, and they had no nutritional value whatsoever, but kept you alive anyway. They were the Great American Food. We should’ve been shipping them to Third World countries. It would solve all their problems-well, foodwise.

“Yes, you. You and your bizarrely altered mood.” He dusted every orange particle off his shoulder with exquisite care.

“What’s wrong with my mood?” I protested.

“It’s good.” Salome jumped on his now-clean shoulder and they both studied me with identical, unblinking stares. “I expected an improvement over your usual gloom, doom, despair, and suicidal moaning and groaning when you killed the last of the Auphe, but this?” He waved a hand at me. “And now? The Kin know about you and Delilah. That’s if not almost certain death, then certainly a huge inconvenience and probable loss of furry booty. Then Suyolak played with your mind as if it were a Rubik’s Cube-before your time, I know, not to mention a thousand times more complex than your mind, but the analogy stands.” He shook his head. “And I can’t imagine what horrific things a creature such as he could whisper in your ear.”

“That he’d turn me into an Auphe. Full Auphe.” I finished the bag and dusted my hands free of orange. “Strain my human bits out like seeds from freshly squeezed orange juice. Can’t buy that off an infomercial.”

Now he did blink. “And you’re taking that quite well. You’re as happy as those Mormons Delilah compared you to. You could even say you’re cheerful. Caliban Leandros, cheerful. It’s not only wrong; it’s unimaginable. Inconceivable. Confess. Have you gotten religion? Drugs? A lobotomy? Because this is not you, not remotely.”

“He feels good after he gates,” Niko said. “Don’t you, Cal?” While Robin had leaned away, Nik leaned in close to take me in-every breath, every beat of my pulse at my carotid artery, a scrutiny closer than any microscope.

“I noticed last time,” he went on, “but this time… This time it’s more pronounced. Isn’t that right? You said you needed to fly. Back at the bar, that’s what you compared it to. Being let out of a cage. Being free.”

“Maybe it is the traveling, but so what? If it makes me feel good, it’s no different than your getting that adrenaline high after running, which, by the way, I’ve never gotten. Just a desire to puke. I think I’m due. You get it from running. I get it from traveling, and that’s only if you assume I’m never in a good mood.” I looked between the two of them. “So? Is that what you guys really think? That I’m never in a good mood?”

Niko said, “Goodfellow, hold his head. I’ll check his pupils.”

I guess that answered that.

“You’ve got to be kidding me. Hey, cut it out,” I protested as I tried to duck, but when Niko was serious, there was no avoiding him. His hand secured my chin tightly as he stared into my eyes as the overhead lights of the gas station canopy flickered to life when the dusk swallowed the sun.

“They’re not dilated or pinpoint.” He frowned. His hand was on my neck. “Your pulse is elevated, but only mildly.”

“So you mean normal, right?” I demanded, my good mood-which I was allowed for once in my life, damn it-disappearing.

“I can’t imagine normal being applied to you in any way-hygiene, diet, exercise habits, literary or video preferences,” he replied immediately. “But you don’t seem drugged.” His frown deepened. “Let me do a reflex test.”

I was more than willing to prove my reflexes were fine by grabbing Salome by her tail and beating my brother over the head with her hairless, bony body, but Delilah interrupted all that. She pulled up on her motorcycle and said sharply, “Stop silly games. Found something. Up the road. Come.” She didn’t wait, roaring off. We were ten miles from Dyer, Indiana, where there had been, per the almighty Google, another meningitis outbreak-more dead, cold and still in the hospital morgue. Suyolak was still definitely on the Lincoln, and we were on his diseased trail.

Indiana was a big change from New York. Corn, corn, cows just for a change, and then more corn. It was old times all over again. Traveling from town to town with Sophia, draining the marks there dry, then moving on. Then after the Auphe took me and I came back, there was running for our lives instead of simply being pulled along in Sophia’s wake as she searched for new marks. I wasn’t sure how I felt about this road trip. In some ways it had me looking over my shoulder for creatures that didn’t exist anymore. But in another way… it felt right. Comfortable. We might not be accepted by the Rom, but we were Rom, born to hit the ground running.

While Niko followed Delilah’s taillights past the exit on-ramp and Abelia- Roo’s RV followed us, I used his BlackBerry to scan for disease outbreaks ahead of Dyer. There weren’t any, at least nothing reported yet, but I didn’t doubt they’d pop up. Leaks only got bigger, not smaller. Those seals weren’t going to repair themselves. Goddamn Abelia. It was her responsibility and she’d fucked up. Contaminated ingredients, my ass. It was pure ego. Abelia thought she was better than anyone and everyone, full concentration and effort not needed, but Suyolak was looking to prove her wrong.

Ahead of us, Delilah had pulled over a few miles from the gas station after turning onto a gravel road. “You do realize this could be a trap,” Goodfellow pointed out. “It’s back to nature. A city Wolf might enjoy killing you out here, Cal. An exotic back-to-her-roots vacation with your murder as a cherry on the top. If she is going to kill you, I’d have to commend her for choosing this spot and thinking outside the box. The Kin aren’t usually very good at that.”

“Thanks for that. You’re a true friend. Be sure to take pictures. I’d hate for you to forget any juicy details,” I growled. Although it was as Robin said… back to nature, but I thought if or when Delilah made a run at me, it wouldn’t be within sword reach of my brother. She was smarter than that. No, I thought that was something else entirely-but still about death; just not mine.

The interstate noise was gone. There was nothing but crickets and the distant low of a cow. Delilah took off her sunglasses-the moon would be more than bright enough for a Wolf-as we pulled up beside her. She shot a challenging glance toward me. “Yeah, it’s a graveyard,” I said. “I can smell it.” No matter how old they were, I could always smell them. “So what?”

She rolled her eyes as she undid the tie from her hair, setting it loose down her back-a cascade of moonlight. “Like teaching cub. Smell again.”

I did, sampling the air. “Shit, it’s closer.”

“Graveyards, as a rule, don’t move around on their own,” Niko observed, turning the ignition off and stepping out of the car to draw his katana from the sheath strapped to his back and hidden by a lightweight duster. We all suffered in the summer when it came to concealing our weapons. “ Cal, are you up for this?”

“Do you mean am I in a pissy mood again? Am I not going to hug whatever creepy-ass putrefying thing comes our way? Yeah, I am completely up for this,” I answered, irritated. If I got a little happy in my life, everyone assumed I was an alien pod person. How fair was that? “It’s not revenants,” I added. “Whatever it is isn’t alive. This is genuine decomposition on the move.” That was something we hadn’t run into yet, not in our lifetimes. But I was assuming if you were decomposing and still moving, a gun wouldn’t do much in the way of slowing you down. I went to the trunk and dug through my bag until I found a machete and then a second one.

“It is the mullo.” Abelia-Roo’s voice came from behind me. She and her five best had disembarked the pink pleasure palace on wheels, which had been tailing us mile for mile since the IHOP. I ignored Branje, her second, as he wasn’t worth my time, and he looked anywhere but at me. Since I’d almost cut his nose off the last time we’d met, that was the best social interaction we could hope for. And he’d thought I was human then. Now… he probably woke up every morning checking the bathroom mirror for that nose, praying that half-breed Auphe bastard hadn’t crawled in and cut it off during the night. If Branje hadn’t been such a dick last time, I might have felt sorry for him.

Nah.

“Mullo? Could you be more specific? Rom legend is rather divided on that subject.” As Niko was directing the question to Abelia, Delilah was stripping off her leathers to reveal nothing but skin. I wasn’t sure if wolves didn’t have the same sense of modesty as humans or if it was just Delilah. It didn’t matter. I simply enjoyed the sight.

“Don’t want leathers stained. New and pretty. Like to keep them that way.” Then she was on all fours, covered in white fur, and twice the size of any wolf in the wild. Her amber eyes were bright and her tongue lolled happily. The hunt… All wolves lived for the hunt, even the non-Kin ones.

“Mullo are the dead. Suyolak must have raised them. He is getting stronger at the hope of freedom or the seals are getting weaker… through no fault of mine.” She turned and pushed at the men. “Go. Back in the RV. This is why we pay their kind. To take care of this problem for us. This one and many potential others.” She smirked at us as she headed back with her men.

Other problems on top of the walking dead. Great. A man couldn’t enjoy his Cheetos without getting slapped in the face with dead raised by Suyolak and the hint that Suyolak could do more than that little trick and then some.

“Yes, be that as it may,” Niko said coldly to Abelia as she shuffled away, her skirts swinging, “our kind would appreciate a little more information. Do they suck blood as legend says?”

“You wish,” Robin complained as he climbed out of the car behind us. Salome stretched out to take the space he’d freed up, not interested in playing this time. “That would be the dhampir you are thinking of. The mullo and the dhampir have become two legends when they are but one reality. The mullo are the dead, reanimated flesh, raised by a highly annoyed healer. I’d say Suyolak is the only reason the mullo ever existed to begin with as he is the only evil healer-an antihealer, I suppose-that I know of powerful enough to do it.” He had his sword out now as well. “The dhampir are said to be the offspring of a mullo and a human, born as a large pile of flesh as slick as mucus. How decorative. Just what one wants around the apartment. In actuality, the mullo and the dhampir are one and the same-a raised corpse, the decomposing flesh of which slides off its bones. It then becomes a giant predatory and quite smelly amoeba. It covers its victim’s faces, smothers them, and then, I assume that with its task complete, goes back to rotting while Suyolak has a nice laugh.”

“Oh, you have got to be shitting me,” I said in disbelief. I’d done sewers and revenants, insane asylums and mummies, mud pits and boggles, caves and trolls. Hell, I’d even done butterfly-winged spiders that filled you full of acid and sucked out your liquified organs. But an entire graveyard full of giant decomposing amoebas that wanted to suffocate me? “At least tell me they creep along the ground at the same pace as zombies in the old movies.”

Abelia’s lips curled in a smile both satisfied and malignant. “We paid your price. Now let us see you dance for that shiny penny.” She closed the door behind her as she went into the RV.

I guessed that would be a no. Decomposing and fast; what a combo. I slammed the trunk shut. “We should’ve brought the flamethrower.”

“Be realistic,” Niko reasoned. “How often do we honestly need a flamethrower?”

“Two,” I said blackly. “This would make two. Two makes it a regular habit from now on. At least on road trips.” I looked down the gravel road dimly lit by the car lights. “How many dead people with flesh still on them could be there anyway? There have to be other graveyards. This can’t be the only one.” That had to cut down on bodies Suyolak could use.

Niko was already moving down the road. “Dyer, Indiana, has a population of just over thirteen thousand. I can’t imagine there are more than three cemeteries or so.” Nik and his damn memory; he couldn’t pass a sign with some mildly pertinent knowledge without committing it to a brain cell. “I wouldn’t think they have a high daily, weekly, or even monthly death toll, except for today when Suyolak went past and those corpses won’t be buried yet. As for bodies still moist and gelatinous enough to slither about in this cemetery, I suppose it all depends on how skilled the embalmer was.”

“Thanks for that,” I said, following behind him. “That didn’t make me want to barf at all.” Delilah loped ahead of us, tired of our careful pace. The path was lined with old trees, pines, looming enough to dim the car headlights further. The smell was sharp and fresh in the air.

“I’m sorry.” He wasn’t. “Does your work of fighting the rotting dead conflict with stuffing an entire bag of orange puffy chemicals down your throat in less than a minute?”

Before I had a comeback in defense of what I’d formerly believed to be the perfect food, I watched the ground erupt to one side of us. It was a man, a dead one, clawing himself out of his own grave. It was like a monster movie come to life, almost as if we were watching late-night television rather than something true and real directly before us. He kept digging until he was all the way out and swaying, his eyes and mouth stitched shut, his best Sunday suit covered with large stains of decay and rot.

Abelia had insinuated they were fast, but this one wasn’t. We could’ve cut him down before he managed to make it out all the way into open air, but… damn… this was our first semizombie. Of course, it wasn’t a zombie at all, not actually, but it was something you didn’t see every day, in our dark world included, and sometimes you had to let your curiosity get the best of you. This was B-movie legend. I’d seen this a hundred times on TV and in the occasional video game when I was younger. I’d enjoyed watching a good zombie throw down then-who didn’t? I wasn’t enjoying this one, but neither was I as wary or prepared as I should’ve been. What happened next showed me that.

The thing stood for a moment, wavering, and then the flesh literally fell off its bones, which did nothing good for its already compromised suit and did even less for my stomach. The rotting flesh continued to pool around the feet, wave after wave, before finally extruding hungry, mottled-green feelers in the air. Okay, that… that was not right. The skeleton, along with some stringy ligaments and cartilage left behind, abruptly collapsed with the suit, and I lost my taste for zombie movies just like that. A shambling zombie was one thing; a running zombie was not bad either, but zombie Jell-O I could do without.

And when a mass of putrid flesh dropped from the nearest tree to race across the ground on hundreds of tendrils, wrap around me, and climb to cover my head, neck, and shoulders while we were distracted watching the other show, that cinched the no- zombie thing for good. It happened in about two seconds. Abelia was right. It was so incredibly quick that I barely saw it; I only got a flash of what it looked like. It must’ve been only fairly fresh. It was still mainly flesh colored, spotted here and there with dull green and moist gray. One closed eye slid across it as it moved. How it sensed me, I didn’t know or much have the time to care. It still smelled strongly of chemicals-embalming fluid-not that it covered the stink of rot. Rot against my nose, my mouth-everywhere; it wouldn’t have to suffocate me. I’d choke on the stench first as it pressed closer against my face, wrapping even more tightly around my head.

I dropped the machetes. It wasn’t as if I could chop my own head off to get rid of this thing. I ripped at it with my hands. If Niko was calling my name, I didn’t hear as moist pulp filled my ears. He could’ve been under attack as well. I didn’t know. I continued to rip at the hood of skin and meat over my head. My fingers slid through it with a sickening lack of leverage. How do you fight putrescent pudding from Hell? You can claw and claw and never catch hold.

It wasn’t coming off. Jesus, it wasn’t coming off. I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t get it off and I couldn’t breathe.

But I could leave.

I pushed out blindly, because if he could be there, he would be there. I pushed once and hit nothing; twice and struck a hard form. Niko. I knew he’d be doing what he could if he could shake off any attackers of his own. I shoved again and let myself fall backward away from him at the same time to give myself space and not take part of him. I didn’t want to take a Nik fingertip, thumb, or entire hand through with me when I went. That wouldn’t be good-not good at all. As I fell, I made the gate around me, something that clung to my skin this time that I welcomed.

And then I was back in the car with small pieces of corpse in my hair and one or two sliding down my face. I vaulted back out, wiping them off with a hurried hand, and ran back up the road, promising myself a chance to yak up Cheetos-the perfect food no more-far and wide when this was over. I saw Niko ahead chopping my personal graveyard amoebas to smaller and more-manageable pieces. There was no martial arts skill required there; only butchery. The mullo was fast, but it-or Suyolak-had been taken off guard by my disappearing act. It slithered back and forth in confusion, still trying to find me. Niko wasn’t one to let an opportunity to fillet an opponent get away. “Are you all right?” he asked as he stamped his boot on one wriggling piece to hold it in place while he finished a damn fine filleting job on the rest of it.

“Except for smelling like Romero, the latest in zombie cologne, I’m fucking great.” And I was-I meant it. Fan-fucking-tastic. The smell still bothered me, but as for the rest? Vampire, troll, revenant, boggle, mounds of racing blobs of decomposing bodies: It was all the same-one damn good time. Bring it on. So what if it ruined Cheetos for me? There were a thousand other snack foods to take their place. I scooped up my machetes as I passed Niko and tackled another mullo that was about to take Robin from behind as he held off another one in front of him. This one had either been in the ground longer or had been a customer of an extremely crappy funeral home, because as it hit the ground with me on top of it, it virtually disintegrated. There was only a large puddle of extremely foul-smelling goo under me. The tendrils that surrounded its “body” fluttered, then melted as well.

I looked to one side to see Delilah laying into another mullo as if it were a pork-scented chew toy. But as quick as she was, it was quicker. It managed to wrap around her lower body, taking out her hind legs. She snarled as she went down-no yelping for her. When the mullo moved up toward her head, I was there to drop my machetes and grab it. This one must’ve been put in the ground only a few days ago, because I was able to hang on to it and rip it off before it could cover the snapping wolf head. It didn’t matter what the Kin had in store for her or what she had in store for me. I couldn’t let her go without giving her a chance. What she did with that chance was up to her.

But as I pulled it off her, I lost my grip as it thrashed muscularly under my hands. In the moonlight I could see it was covered with lines and curves that made up nothing recognizable now, but had probably once been a wealth of tattoos before death. He or she had been in good shape before hitting the slab, because it had more fight in it than all the others combined-a gym rat maybe putting dead muscle to strong use. Its attention turned from Delilah to me, it lunged, tendrils grasping eagerly at the air.

And that is all it got-nothing but air.

I reappeared behind it and Delilah. When it had gone for me, she had gone for it and rode it down to the ground, her muzzle buried in muscle and meat, ripping chunks of it away. I retrieved my machetes and joined in. It wasn’t long before it was a stretch of quivering pieces spread far and wide on the grass and gravel. I stood still, both blades ready, and listened, although if anyone was going to be the first to hear something, it would be Delilah. I kept my eyes on the triangular white ears that pointed forward, then back, then forward again before she yawned and began energetically rubbing her muzzle back and forth on the grass. No more mullos.

“I suppose that embalming fluid isn’t the tastiest additive to spice up your meal,” Goodfellow commented, disgust dripping from the words as he came up to us. For once, he hadn’t escaped the multisplatter that had gotten the rest of us.

Not that she’d actually eaten any of the mullo. Delilah had made it very clear in the past that she didn’t eat roadkill-which in her eyes was the dead or pathetically slow humans. The first was degrading and the second wasn’t nearly challenging enough. Robin held out his arms and grimaced at what he saw and smelled. “Don’t start,” I warned before he could complain. I was covered nearly head to toe in graveyard goop from taking down the mullo that had almost had him from behind.

“No one is getting in my car like this,” Niko said. His hand fisted a handful of my jacket. “And how did you say you were feeling again?”

Yet another good mood was washed away in the cemetery’s ornamental pond. We were attacked again, this time by two ill-tempered swans. The one time I wished Salome had come along for the fun and she couldn’t be bothered. I asked Robin if skinny-dipping with the big white birds could be considered cheating on Ishiah. If I’d had any positive feeling left at all from my traveling that Niko hadn’t managed to drown, they were finished off by Goodfellow trying to strangle me while a swan pecked irately at my head.

Then it was back on the Lincoln. With both our candidates for coffin thief living on the West Coast, there was no reason for the truck or us to leave it… and then there was the trail of disease that had led us here so far. The driver probably didn’t know we were behind him. Suyolak knew, though. If he was appearing in my dreams, he knew we were coming. No doubt he knew Abelia and her men were behind as well. Clan ties, blood ties. I hope he gave them worse dreams than he’d given me. But although he obviously did sense us behind him, I thought he was confident he could slow us down long enough until he was out of the coffin. He’d definitely oozed confidence in my dream. And with Abelia’s crappy, carelessly complacent seal application, he might be right to feel that way.

“When do we meet Rafferty? Better yet, when do we make a motel stop?” I asked Nik as the night air rushed into the car to dry our clothes on our bodies. Only Goodfellow had felt the need for nudity in the swan pond. Delilah had kept her fur on while splashing among the water lilies and swan feathers. While that water had been an improvement over the rancid slime we’d been wearing, soap and a motel shower would be better. It was a given that Abelia wasn’t letting us all pile into her RV to clean up.

“I think we’ll be able to combine the two events,” he answered. Robin was already snoring in the backseat. “I meant it when I asked, you know. How are you feeling?”

“You’re not going to let it go, are you?” I groaned. “For once I finally got something good out of the Auphe package. I think I’m due.”

“You’re more than due,” he said. “No one in your life knows that more than I do, but it seems too good to be true. And anything that seems too good to be true often is. There’s usually a price to be paid. If there is one, I want to know what it is.”

You couldn’t hold it against your family for caring too much about you. You might want to, but you couldn’t. “Is my being in a good mood that scary?” I complained halfheartedly.

“Terrifying,” he said. The word rang with sincerity. “Absolutely terrifying.”

By the time we reached Monroe County, Illinois, I was behind the wheel. Niko had caught a few hours’ sleep and Robin had yet to wake up from our graveyard festivities. He wasn’t a big believer in sharing the load. The fact that he’d changed on the road and hadn’t been fighting mullos in his pajamas from the car lot was a lucky break for us-and for the mullos, if the dead could be scarred mentally. It was a little past eleven at night when I pulled into the parking lot of the motel with the best rooms money could buy. Thirty-six bucks a night. How could you go wrong?

“We check in, shower, and keep going?” I asked. It wasn’t a problem with Niko’s and my being able to switch off driving. Delilah had a werewolf’s stamina; I knew from personal experience. Although with the Kin’s finding out about us, it was unlikely I was going to keep experiencing that too often in the future-one way or the other. I had to wonder, though, if even Delilah, fearless as she was, wanted to face my brother if she tried and actually succeeded in killing me. Delilah was Delilah, though. She believed she had no equal and in some respects she was right. But Niko… She thought she knew him, but she couldn’t, despite seeing what he’d done six months ago when he’d thought I was dead. She’d seen it, been there, but because she was Delilah, she couldn’t let herself believe it.

Niko was out of her league. Niko, when he wanted to be or had to be, was out of anyone’s league-except for Suyolak’s, who was a whole different ball game. One I wasn’t sure we could play. Killing with a thought: What the hell kind of game was that?

“No, we’ll spend the night. Rafferty is going to meet us here in the morning.” Niko flipped his phone closed after talking with the healer. Being that his side of the conversation had been yes, I see, and yes again, I hadn’t gotten much out of it, besides hoping Rafferty knew how to play Suyolak’s game and win. “He’s leaving his motel now. He also said it’s on the news: Three men were found eighty miles west of Dyer, Indiana, dead of an almost unheard-of cholera outbreak.” He tapped my forearm with the cell. “Their ID is out of state. The authorities are trying to determine now if they’d traveled outside the country and caught it there.”

“But we know better,” I said grimly. I’d given Niko all the details of my dream about Suyolak. “Three strangers with out-of-state ID. You think our thief just lost his muscle.” And lost his relief drivers, which would slow him down. “I still don’t get it. Suyolak knows what’s going on, at least enough to be messing with dreams. The slower whoever snatched him goes, the worse for him. He might think he’ll get out before we catch up, but his chances would be better if there were more guys for the drive.”

“Killing is Suyolak’s nature. He might not be able to help himself. Knowing what’s wisest and being able to do it are two widely different things.” He tapped my arm again with the phone.

“Yeah, that last one was subtle. Not aimed at me at all,” I retorted.

When he checked us in and came back with one key, that was about me, too. Delilah had parked her Harley and was lounging against it. At the sight of the key, she narrowed her eyes at him, but before she could head to the office for another room-our room-Niko told her, “If the Kin find you, they find my brother. I would prefer we showed a united front in that case.”

Robin woke up at that-part of him anyway. A puck mind could sense this type of opportunity at any level of consciousness. “A foursome should be united front enough,” he mumbled. He was climbing out of the car and his eyes hadn’t quite opened yet, but he was unbuttoning his shirt. “Prepare for the pucking of your life.”

“Ishiah,” I said. “And I can’t believe you actually consider that a pickup line.”

His eyes opened to peer through wind-tangled strands of light brown hair and his fingers paused at the third button. “You couldn’t have let me stay asleep, could you? If I’m unconscious, it can’t be cheating.” He buttoned his shirt, tucked Salome under his arm, and headed for the back of the car. “Even if I were conscious,” he muttered as he opened the trunk to retrieve his bags, “sex with the magnificence of me would at worst be considered a heroic act of community service. Ishiah would no doubt give me a medal for benefiting humanity. And that line has worked more times than you’ve drawn breath.”

He plucked the key from Niko’s fingers, scanned the squat building, and started for the far end as he grumbled on. “Cheating isn’t even a word in my language. Just as the old saying that the Eskimos have many words for snow, we have many words for sex-a thousand and three, I think, but not a single one for infidelity. Doesn’t that say something? Doesn’t that mean something?” He vanished behind the motel door, still talking to himself; still questioning himself. But Robin was the only one who could come up with those answers.

As for the issue of Delilah and me, I already had my mind made up: “Nik, I think we can handle a united front if we’re in the next room,” I pointed out.

He folded his arms and stared at me. I stared back, telling him silently that I could take care of myself. Aloud, I said, “It’s the Kin, Cyrano. I can handle the Kin. I’ve kicked furry ass in the past. Now is no different.”

“I think it’s considerably different, and you know it. There’re Kin and then there’re Kin,” he returned-not particularly cryptic to anyone, but I didn’t think he meant it to be. He let it go, though, and went for his own bags. “With Suyolak capable of toying with our dreams, I would sleep in shifts.” He slammed the trunk shut, tossing me my own bag. “If you sleep at all,” he added dryly.

I didn’t.

I wasn’t sure if Niko had either. Robin might be living the puck ultimate terror of monogamy, but Niko was a big fan of the “Trust no one” philosophy. He had his exceptions. He trusted me, and he trusted Robin as well. He trusted him to watch his back in a fight and to step up whenever we needed help. He trusted him in any situation that could go south fast. But he’d also been chased ruthlessly by Robin before the puck’s reconnection, in all senses of the word, with Ishiah. Niko had an infallibly long memory and an extremely sharp sense of survival. Whether it was a sudden catastrophic monogamy failure and things going south in an entirely different way than how the phrase was normally used, Niko would be prepared for any eventuality.

That was why I wasn’t surprised to see him in the parking lot just after dawn when I opened the door, leaving a gloriously nude Delilah stretching and yawning in bed. With an exotic and fiercely intelligent woman, is there any other kind of nude? “Go. I sleep. Will catch up.” I didn’t hesitate. She would catch up, like she said; I had no doubt about that, just as I had no doubt about what she’d told me last night in the nest of sheets with the lullaby rush of cars passing by on the interstate. “The Kin cannot control me,” she’d said, her eyes reflecting the faint light coming through the blinds in a way a human’s never would. “I will survive.”

“I know you will,” I’d replied, and I believed her.

“I will do what I must do.”

“I know you will,” I’d repeated, and that I had believed, too-completely. If she had to kill me to get back in the good graces of the Kin, she would. If she could do the same without killing me, she would do that. Until the actual moment came, I had no idea what she would do. That was life.

Possibly death too.

I closed the door behind me and spotted Nik over at his car, having breakfast while sitting in the lotus position on the hood. He wasn’t alone. There was a man with shaggy auburn hair sitting beside him, but with legs hanging over the grille and a large reddish wolf at his feet: Rafferty and Catcher-finally. “Rafferty, you son of a bitch. Where the hell have you been?” I said as I walked toward them.

He turned his head and frowned at me. I didn’t take it personally. For a healer, his bedside manner was all but nonexistent. He was the guy who would tell you that you deserved the heart attack and why not eat some more pork and cheese while you were at it, you fat bastard. Try blocking up another artery. Not a great lover of his patients in general-of anybody in fact, outside of Catcher.

“None of your business,” he grunted. He had angular features and hadn’t bothered to shave in a day or two. A nod to the June humidity, he was wearing a T-shirt in the same faded condition as the one I was wearing that said GUNS DON’T KILL PEOPLE, BUT GOOD AIM WILL EVERY TIME. He was also wearing a pair of equally faded jeans, and they weren’t fashionably faded. They had Goodwill written all over them. Rafferty didn’t give a damn how he looked or whether people liked what he said or how he said it. He couldn’t give a flying shit. I liked that about him. It reminded me of myself, minus my new discovery about traveling’s effect on me. Thanks to Niko, the happy-go-lucky, high-as-a-kite happiness didn’t last anyway. He didn’t think it was natural. He might be right, but I wasn’t sure I cared. To have my Auphe blood benefit me instead of curse me for once… I’d take that.

As for that Auphe in me…

When we first met Rafferty and Catcher a few years ago, I’d smelled the difference in them… werewolves… and they’d smelled the difference in me. Rafferty hadn’t known what the difference was at the time, or so I’d thought, because then I didn’t genuinely know what the Auphe were. Now I knew that Rafferty had known all along but hadn’t said anything. Either he didn’t want to be involved with an Auphe half-breed-couldn’t blame him there-or figured it was none of his business. I wasn’t foaming at the mouth or eating the pigeons and squirrels running around. That was good enough for him.

We’d met only in passing the first time in Central Park. Rafferty was tossing a Frisbee and Catcher was bounding into the air for it. Even then he’d been stuck in wolf form, with Rafferty, his cousin, doing his damnedest to get him back to a werewolf’s changeability. After an exchange of wary sniffs, Rafferty fished around in the pocket of his baggy cargo pants, then passed over a rumpled card. It had the letters RJ on it-for Rafferty Jeftichew-as well as that snake and staff sign doctors had plastered around and a phone number. “Here,” he’d grunted, handing it to Niko. “You might need a healer someday.” Then he looked over at me, his straight slash of eyebrows lowered. “In fact, I can guarantee it. And this one can’t go to a doctor or, hell, worse yet, a hospital, or it’ll probably be alien autopsy for you.”

Niko and he had talked some more. I thought they related. One with a sick cousin and one with a brother who might be considered a little worse than sick. Catcher and I went off and played more Frisbee. That had been three years ago. Rafferty had been right. We’d ended up needing a healer. He’d saved my life, but he wasn’t any closer to his goal.

Now Catcher gave me the second sign he was still sick. He lifted his upper lip to reveal an impressive show of large white teeth and growled. The look in his yellow eyes, many shades lighter than Delilah’s, was feral and suspicious. Catcher had been frozen a long time as a wolf. Maybe that wouldn’t have been so bad, but little by little he was losing the human intelligence werewolves kept when they shifted from skin to fur. One day he’d be wolf and nothing but wolf. I had no idea how that felt to him. No idea what it was like to be only wolf… like he was wolf now as he growled at me.

Rafferty rested a battered sneaker on top of Catcher’s head and rubbed. “It’s okay, Catch,” he said gruffly. “It’s just Cal. Half- Auphe. Possessed. So annoying his own brother stabbed him. No big deal.”

Confusion clouded the wolf’s eyes for a moment. Then they cleared and he snorted a spray of fine white mist-the leftover of a vanilla shake, from the smell of it. Just like that, the intelligence was back-human intelligence bright and sharp in wolf eyes. He yawned, recognition and dismissal all in one, and rolled onto his back for a furry nap. I knew what it was to lose myself. I hoped it was less painful for him… if not for Rafferty.

I leaned against the car. “You survived the night,” I said to Nik.

“Barely.” He continued eating a sandwich of sprouts, sprouts, sprouts, and some liquid slop to keep them on the bread-well, slop and a tangibly foul mood. “Robin and Ishiah had phone sex last night… until I cut the line. Then Goodfellow used his cell phone. I broke it, quite, quite thoroughly. When he finally went to bed, in less than five minutes he was asleep and having what I guessed from the moaning to be a dream of the nocturnal emissions kind. I slept in the bathtub with a knife wedging the bathroom door closed.”

“Gotta walk it off, Nik.” I grinned. “It’s a dangerous world.” I bit my tongue at his glare and didn’t go any further with it, not having much of a desire to be wearing that sprout sandwich.

“Ass,” he said without any surprise at the fact. He finished the sandwich and studied me with a look unreadable to anyone but me, commenting, “You survived as well.”

“Barely,” I echoed smugly. My stomach began to growl as Rafferty finished up a bear claw. “Get me one, Jeftichew?”

“Yeah, I hauled ass from Wyoming, driving all night drinking bad coffee, to bring you a damn doughnut.” He wiped his hands on a napkin. “Doing your job and keeping the world from being wiped out by a psychotic Marcus Welby from Hell isn’t enough. What was I thinking?”

I scowled. “You might’ve saved my life, Rafferty, but that doesn’t mean I won’t kick your ass, furry or not.” Now that was the normal me.

“Yeah, I smell you’re into walking on the Wolf side now.” His eyes, reddish brown, went a much paler amber. “Don’t think that means you can give me shit. Going wolf is the least I could do to you. Want to piss pure liquid fire for the rest of your life? Better yet, want to piss your pants right now?”

“Because you can do what Suyolak can do. Like when you once stopped Cal ’s heart,” Niko said quietly, not particularly concerned about my urinary tract from what I could tell.

“I can.” He finished wiping his hands. “But I don’t. Usually. I have to have one damn good reason or I wouldn’t be a healer. I’d be nothing but an executioner with a hard-on for genocide like Suyolak. Healers have that code precisely because of him. Do no harm.” His eyes paled further to Catcher yellow. “Unless you can’t avoid it. When you’re a healer and a Wolf, there are caveats.”

I, not wanting to have a urinary tract infection for the rest of my life or to piss my pants in a cheap motel parking lot, eased up. Rafferty and I were two of a kind: asses. Except that he healed and I killed. He was also having a helluva bad time with his cousin. He had shit enough in his life. He didn’t need more from me. “Speaking of Suyolak. He paid me a visit in one of my dreams. Said he could make me all Auphe. He can’t do that.” I hesitated, shifting against the metal of the car. “Right?”

He looked down at Catcher who was already kicking a back leg in his sleep. When he looked back, his eyes had reverted to their normal color. “If the Auphe were shapechangers like wolves, then, yeah, maybe. But they weren’t, so, no. He can’t make you Auphe, and I can’t make you human.” He shifted his shoulders uncomfortably. “Sorry.”

“Eh, I’m over it.”

His eyebrows shot skyward at my offhand dismissal. Niko wasn’t so quick to give up on the subject, although he approached it from a different angle-sneaky bastard. “So why can’t you change Catcher back if he’s a shapechanger?” he asked. “You say you can’t change Cal. I understand that, but what of Catcher? If that’s true, from what you told us, that doesn’t make sense. You should be able to cure him.”

Rafferty threw the wadded paper napkin as far across the parking lot as it would go. It was impressively far. “I’d tell you again it’s none of your business, but hell.” He rubbed at bloodshot, tired eyes. “I did cure him. Five years ago Catcher was off at some damn college retreat in the Amazon. He loved crap like that. Save the planet. Whatever. He’s Wolf and wolf-Were and not; guess he comes by it naturally. He’d been gone almost a year. Long time.” He leaned down and rubbed Catcher’s stomach. “We’re the only family left, except for some Kin uncle.” He curled his lip. “Thieves and murderers.”

“Catcher?” Niko prodded.

Rafferty exhaled and pushed the hair from his eyes. He was long overdue for a haircut. I don’t think he noticed. I know he didn’t care. “He came back with leukemia. ALL: acute lymphoblastic leukemia. We Wolves heal fast and we rarely get sick, but we do get sick. Once in a blue moon.” The grim joke flashed across his lean face and was gone. “By the time he got home and was just starting to show symptoms, it was too late. He’d had it for at least eight months. You know what the average survival rate is even with treatment? Not good. I thought he’d have a better chance of being healed in wolf form. We’re stronger then. But as good as I am, and I’m fucking good, don’t you ever doubt it,” he said matter-of-factly, “it wasn’t enough. He was slipping away and-shit. He’s my cousin, my only damn family. I couldn’t let him go. So I went deeper… to the genetic level… where healers aren’t meant to go.”

“And?” I said when he went quiet.

“And that’s where I fucked up,” he responded flatly. “I healed him. I healed him like no other werewolf has ever been healed. Did you think we were like vampires-a pasty anemic branch that split off from the human race? Did you think we were extra- hairy humans and along the way developed a mutation that allowed us to change to wolves?” He shook his head. “We were wolves first. We started that way. We evolved as wolves and along the way a mutation did occur. We did split from the primary race… but that primary race was wolf.”

“Then you’re not werewolves; you’re were people?” I asked with a healthy dose of skepticism.

He rotated his head and massaged the back of his neck. “Why do you think some werewolves want to get back to wolf, and nothing but wolf? It’s how we began, fifty, sixty million years ago. I did cure Catcher of the leukemia by mucking around with his DNA. Only trouble is I cured him too well. I cured the mutation. I can’t cure him now because he’s not sick. He’s how we were meant to be. And I can’t go the Suyolak way. I can’t force him to mutate. I might get a werewolf back, but it wouldn’t be Catcher. His brain would be altered-his personality. I don’t think he’d ever be fully human again when he changed. I’m good. Goddamnit, I’m the fucking best, but I did too good a job the first time and there’s no undoing it now. I’ve looked everywhere. Talked to everyone. No fucking undoing it. At least that’s what they say. I don’t have the power. I need more.” He propped an elbow on his knee and rested his forehead in his hand. “Somehow I have to prove them wrong,” he muttered so low that I barely caught the words.

Catcher slept on and for once I managed to keep my mouth shut. Rafferty had to know that no one could restore Catcher if he couldn’t, but he wasn’t able to admit it. He’d traveled the country, looking for a nonexistent cure and watching every day as bit by bit his cousin slipped away. One day he would look into the passenger seat and see nothing but wolf eyes looking back; no human intelligence; no memories of their past. Still, they were family. That they would never lose, but his cousin would be gone and an instinct-driven animal left in his place-an animal that thought, but certainly not in the same way humans thought.

He’d never remember the ski trip.

I’d never known Catcher as anything but wolf, but I’d seen a picture in their house of Raff and him on the ski slope. He looked like a good guy. A prankster. I’d bet Rafferty’s skis had disconnected from his boots halfway down one of the difficult slopes-Black Diamond all the way. I’d seen that glitter in Catcher’s eye in the photo. He was someone I might have liked… a rare finding; someone I might’ve trusted… especially rare. But I wouldn’t know now, and that was one damn shame.

“You.” It was breathed in a tangle of worship and disbelief, distracting me from my thoughts of skis, snow, and a guy who was already on his way to being half gone. “You are true. You are right. You are Wolf.”

Delilah came across the asphalt, wrapped in an orange and green polyester bedspread that did nothing to distract from her tumble of pale hair and warm glow of skin or the tattoo of Celtic knots, curves, and wolf eyes that circled her neck. It was art. She was art. But none of that was aimed in my direction. She crouched beside Catcher and began to sniff the fur on Catcher’s chest, neck, and behind his ears. Then she was nuzzling deeply. Catcher’s eyes had opened, luckily human in their awareness. They rolled up to his cousin in question. You could all but see the Uh, hello? Then again, they were wolves. Maybe it was more like Mmm, nice, but you need to get her to move a little farther down.

“This.” Delilah looked up, her eyes brighter and more intense than the rising sun. “This is what we want. This is what we were. What we want to be again. I didn’t think it could be done. I thought the All Wolf hopeless. But it can be done. We can. How? How does this happen? Tell me!”

“By accident, and it’s not going to happen again,” Rafferty snapped. “You and the other Jurassic wannabes can look somewhere else for somebody to rip your intelligence out by the roots, because I am not doing that shit. Not again.”

“Actually, it was the Pleistocene era, not Jurassic, but point taken,” Niko said, spreading knowledge far and wide. My brother, he simply could not help it. He was more helpful when he snagged Delilah’s makeshift toga and pulled her up and off Catcher. Catcher shook himself, stood, shook again, and sat down at his cousin’s feet. Then he gave Delilah a wolf grin. I recognized that grin. Human, wolf, puck. “Hey, baby” transcended all languages and all species.

“ ‘Jurassic’ sounds better and, hell, no.” Rafferty knocked on the top of Catcher’s furry head. “Don’t you even think about it, Cuz.”

There was a throaty mixed rumble and snarl from Catcher. I added, “Especially not in front of me, fuzz-butt. I might not be good enough to officially date a Kin and she’s her own Wolf, but it doesn’t mean the pride wouldn’t take a hit seeing you two go at it in front of me.”

Niko gave Delilah a push back toward her room. “Not to mention in a parking lot that’s overlooked by the interstate. Jeftichew, why don’t you get Catcher in the car. He’ll look slightly more inconspicuous.” With the top on the convertible already down, Catcher gave the rrrowrr rrowrr that was a wolf’s complaint and jumped in without waiting for Rafferty to speak up, demonstrating in his good moments he knew exactly what was going on. The baring of the teeth said, “Don’t talk about me like I’m a damn Labrador.” The humiliation of being all there and other times completely gone-lost in the wilderness of his own unpredictable brain-had to suck.

“I apologize, Catcher,” Niko said, bowing his head in realization of how the Wolf felt. Catcher sighed and lay down on the backseat, averting his eyes from all of us. Anything else we could’ve said would’ve only made it worse.

Several parking spaces away, the Rom’s RV pink door popped open and Abelia- Roo peered around the edge, smacking toothless gums in disgust. “Two more dogs. I am underwhelmed with confidence. Useless gadje. Worthless as humans, worthless as monsters. If we are to save the world, we do not do it by forming a circus train, collecting a flea-bitten zoo.” The door slammed behind her as she turned and went back inside. “Gunoi grast!” That made it through the door without trouble and I might not know Rom, but once again, some things transcend. Filthy language is one of these things and a personal favorite.

Delilah disappeared with another door slam at the same time Robin weaved out of his and Niko’s room, Salome winding through his legs causing the half stumble. “And who do we have here?” He smiled… yeah, that same “Hey, baby” smile… at Rafferty. Then the smile disappeared. “Oh Zeus, it’s you. The Hippocratic ass.”

“You still hanging around, Curly?” Rafferty drawled. Robin had been there when Rafferty had healed my stab wound and hadn’t gotten far with him then either.

“Some appreciate my grandeur and glory, you spiteful bastard.” He straightened his already immaculate silk shirt with one hand and carefully tousled his hair with the other. “And it’s Robin Goodfellow. Pan. Puck. Goblin of the Hob. Your superior by name and measurement of any other kind.”

“Is that what you think, you horny goat?” Rafferty snorted. “How would you like my foot up your grand and glorious… holy hell, what is that?”

That was Salome jumping up on the trunk of the car.

Then it was Salome and Catcher trying to eat each other in the back of Niko’s car. Catcher might fool some nosy human into thinking he was a harmless, good-natured husky mix when he was grinning and pawing the air for a treat-he had to hate the mortification of that-but in full fight: he was wolf, all wolf, and you couldn’t fool anyone into thinking anything else.

I checked my holster. “I’ll hold off the office from calling the cops.” Hopefully the cars passing on the interstate would be moving too fast for a good look below at a wolf-cat fight.

“Don’t shoot the desk clerk,” Niko warned as he, Rafferty, and Robin moved to break it up.

I growled a little myself. “If you’d seen what was living in the closet of the room they gave us, you might let me.” I looked back behind me as I moved. “Five bucks on the dead cat.” I’d seen Salome in action. That was one safe bet.