Roadkill

5

That morning was Hell on Earth, which is my definition for every morning, but especially this one. Once again I was running on little sleep, about half what I’d gotten the night before. Three hours put my thinking skills at about the level of a highly inbred hamster or a former kiddie star turned pop singer, although that was insulting the hamster.

“Huh?” I said as I kept my eyes shut. Nik had said something, but honestly, right then, I didn’t care what it was. I didn’t care if he’d told me that alien space bimbos had landed in search of our seed and they all had six breasts, all double D. I only wanted to sleep.

“I said, we’re here.” A flick to my ear woke me up to the back of a taxi and a rising sun. “Why?” I groaned. “This damn early, why?”

Niko looked at me through opaque dark sunglasses. “We’re on a mission from Buddha,” he said matter-of-factly.

I snarled at him and fought the seat belt and door to get out. It seemed hamster brains and seat belts didn’t mix. I considered sawing through it with my knife.

“All right,” he modified in a humoring tone. “We’re running a day and a half behind and we’re on a business transaction for a malicious old woman who’d happily see us dead, but that doesn’t have quite the same ring. Besides, I think Buddha would believe we will gain good karma at saving lives from a deranged healer.” He reached out with a single, somehow smug, finger and punched open my seat belt.

“Buddha can kiss my ass.” I received a stinging swat on the back of the head as I dragged my two duffel bags behind me, one packed with clothes and one with weapons, onto the curb in front of Goodfellow’s car lot in Brooklyn.

“And I know I’m heaped with good karma for putting up with your incessant bitching and moaning. If you didn’t sleep, I wouldn’t escape it at all.” He placed his own bags beside mine and paid the cabdriver. “Forget the usual hundreds of reincarnated lives one usually must pass through. It’s a wonder I didn’t become enlightened and reached nirvana before you hit puberty for my righteousness in the face of incomprehensible suffering.”

“Unh,” I growled incoherently. “Asshole.” There. That was a little more understandable.

“The first caveman grunting followed by foul language and the second a body that would’ve made Michelangelo’s chisel salute north. The Leandros brothers have arrived,” came Robin’s voice. Unlike all other times, Niko’s Eldorado was parked directly in front, convertible top down, paint proudly peeling, and two bare feet sticking up from the backseat and propped up on the side of the car.

“Tell me he’s not naked,” I groaned. “I’ll pay you a hundred bucks to tell me he’s not naked.”

“I’m the one who makes chisels rise. You tell me.” Niko took his bags to the trunk, opening it quickly enough to block his view.

The feet spread into a V, letting me see wildly tousled brown hair, overly bright eyes, a mostly empty bottle of wine cradled against his chest with several empty ones in the floorboards, and clothes. I might not be a God-fearing or believing man, but say hallelujah. There were clothes. I moved closer. It wasn’t clothes after all, but pajamas. Silk, expensive like all Goodfellow’s things were, and it looked like the shirt was on backward and inside out. There were also feathers in his hair-white and gold ones; Ishiah’s feathers; my boss’s feathers. And there was no unseeing that as much as I wanted to. “So, Goodfellow…,” I started.

“Tell Niko that I fixed his window. Free of charge.” As he tilted the wine bottle back and finished it off, I looked at the driver’s window. It was gone, and there was a mound of safety glass and a hammer on the asphalt beside the door.

“You’re one helluva mechanic, I’ll give you that.” I tossed my bags over to Niko who was looking around the open trunk at the same pile of glass. I couldn’t see the expression behind his sunglasses and that was for the best. I imagine it would’ve melted my face like a bad monster-movie special effect. “I take it you want to tag along on this job?”

“Tag along?” The puck frowned. “I do not tag along. I have led crowds of virgins to a mass fertility and deflowering rite. I accompanied the Argonauts because I thought I’d look amazing in golden fleece, and a three-some with Castor and Pollux was nothing to sneeze at. I told a drunken and toothless hedge wizard a ridiculous story about the Holy Grail and watched King Arthur’s knights roam about the countryside forever, looking under every skirt and stone for the thing. I was with Columbus when he found the New World and at the Hawaiian barbecuing of Captain Cook, who, while a cranky bastard, was quite tasty.” He pointed the empty wine bottle at me and almost made it upright in indignation. “I create adventure. I live life as it has never been lived before. I forge legends. I do not tag along.”

“You’re tagging along,” I drawled.

“Yes,” he sighed, falling back again. “I’m tagging along.”

“Why?” I asked. “You hated our last road trip. You don’t like fast food. You don’t like gas stations full of ‘the common people’… you know, anyone who isn’t you. You get bored about thirty seconds on the road and start flashing ninety-year-old women drivers.”

“Someone needs to verify they’re taking their heart medication,” he mumbled, and sat up. “Ishiah suggested it. He thinks I should go and test my resolve or more realistically, he thinks, to give my resolve a rest.”

“What the hell are you talking about?” It was way too early to follow a puck’s train of thought. They were bullet trains at the very least. They would suck you into their two-hundred-twenty-five-mile slipstream and it would be all over for you.

He hesitated, groaned, then said, “Monogamy.”

“Monogamous? You and Ish? You?” My mouth opened, closed, and opened again as I heard Niko, infallible warrior born and bred with nerves of titanium steel, fumble wildly at the M word and drop his bag. “I mean… you?” Robin? The horniest puck in a race that all but defined themselves by their level of horny. Wouldn’t other pucks rush to form an intervention? Monogamous Anonymous? They’d tell him they’d have him off his feet and onto his back again in no time. Or his front. Or all fours-whichever he’d prefer. That Robin? “Seriously?”

Robin glared silently. It was answer enough.

“How… Christ, how long?” I felt like the hammer on the ground had levitated and smacked me in the head. It was that unbelievable-inexplicable even. Only brain damage could explain it-profound, massive brain damage.

“The whole six months.” He dropped his head in his hands. “I haven’t had it this bad since… Hades, since Pompeii when I was almost married. I mean, Zeus and all his conquests: Leda and Europa and Io and Callisto and so on and so on. How can this be?” He banged his forehead on the seat in front of him. “Monogamy. How can I support such a perverse lifestyle choice, especially when it involves me? How? Better yet, why? Why would I do something so horrifying and unnatural?”

Robin had once almost been married to a woman named Cyrilla. I remembered the name because it was one of the few times he’d said something about himself that had mattered, not the usual bragging and name-dropping. Cyrilla had mattered to him; she still did, although long gone, and I hadn’t forgotten. Then was monogamy that out of the question? And he would’ve married her too, that had been clear, if she hadn’t died with Pompeii. I knew that. He’d told me and I believed him. But that had been a long time ago and just the one time. Besides…

Robin Goodfellow?

“And Ishiah has a problem with this?” Niko closed the trunk, immediately giving a minute wince that meant he wished he could take the question back. The soap opera that was Robin’s life could be time-consuming and we didn’t have the time.

But… I was curious.

“Yeah, I thought he wanted you to be a little less… er… Goodfellow,” I added. “You remember… Less whoring around, less lying, stealing, and cheating.” I’d thought that somewhat uptight. Robin was who he was. He was a puck, a trickster; he was born to do exactly what he did. Where did Ish get off saying he should be any different? “He’s changed his mind?”

“It seems so.” He kept his forehead pressed against the back of the seat. “It seems he’s mellowed somewhat over the past millennium and feels he has been unfair to me; may have coerced me into fidelity. As if anyone could coerce me into anything I didn’t want,” he snorted, promptly forgetting his rampant fear of the one-on-one relationship he’d been raving about seconds ago. “So he thought a small separation of a week would put things in perspective for me. I would decide if I wanted to jump the first Hooters waitress I saw or stay noble and true for him. And-wrap your mind around this-he’ll be all right with it either way. He’s ready to accept me for good or bad… for nonpuck or for puck. He said he was wrong and he likes me the way I am, and the way I’ve always been. It just took him a while to become a little less judgmental and come to his senses.”

“And this is bad how?” Niko asked as he swept a few stray bits of glass from the driver’s seat and sat, shutting the door behind him. “This is the perfect Goodfellow situation. You can have your cake and eat it too.” And we all knew how much Robin liked his cake. “I would think you’d be celebrating.”

I went to the passenger side and was greeted by fangs shown in a cheerful greeting, jack-o-lantern eyes, and a ruby collar with gold ID tag around a hairless neck. I opened the door and Salome, who was sitting upright, regal, and ready for her ride, didn’t move. I opened my jacket and showed her my gun. She opened her mouth and I watched her already-visible fangs slide farther out of her gray gums and double in size. I closed my jacket and got in the backseat with Robin.

“Celebrating what?” he asked mournfully. “That I’ve become something I’m not or that I’m afraid to become something new-if I even can become something new? And is new necessarily better?” This time he leaned against the backseat. “Perhaps peris and pucks cannot be. To do one justice, the other has to give up part of himself.” He closed his eyes. “Bedtime. Wake me up at the first ninety-year-old lady in need of flashing.”

“Or the first Waffle House waitress.” There were times I thought that maybe a hundred thousand years of screwing anything and everything would get old after a while, even for a puck. Then I would go to the next logical thought: This was Robin we were talking about. Not to mention that pucks were born sex addicts. It was in their genes. I knew how hard it was to fight those, even if mine was only a half dose. I was glad it wasn’t my problem to figure it out, but I had sympathy for Robin. When you were born to lie, cheat, steal, trick, and screw everything in sight-when that was your purpose designed by nature itself, that was a lot to fight against.

“When you’ve had sex with more than two people, you’re allowed a comment.” Goodfellow flicked a feather my way with an annoyed jerk of his hand. “Now? Not quite.” Then he was instantly snoring and more feathers were wafting in the air.

“Great start. Yeah, couldn’t have gone any better.” I batted them away with annoyance. “Don’t bother to wake me up in Canton, Nik, unless Suyolak is dropping every man, woman, child, and puppy in town. I don’t have any desire to say hey to Abelia-Roo.” I slid down, wedged into the corner, and got comfortable for the long haul. I planned on being nap bound as quickly as Goodfellow. I couldn’t say I blamed Promise for not coming along. Our last road trip hadn’t been enjoyable in any way, shape, or form… multiple forms. Once bitten, twice likely to stay home in the lap of penthouse luxury.

We were following the old Lincoln Highway that ran across the country to California long before the addition of newer interstates. Niko thought, and it made sense, that whoever had taken Suyolak would know the Rom… all the Rom in the country… would be looking for his truck. They would stick to the interstates for maximum coverage and if the guy was smart, he wouldn’t. And when Niko Googled last night an outbreak of ten meningitis cases, a higher number than your average outbreak, that were diagnosed the evening before in Canton, Ohio, along the Lincoln, it sealed the deal in his mind. He called Abelia to let her know where to meet us, and that Suyolak had either found some way of working through the coffin or there was one helluva coincidence in Canton. At least whoever had taken Suyolak apparently hadn’t opened the coffin or else Canton would be a dead zone and surrounded by the army, fingers ready to pull the trigger on anything that looked like a sick chicken, sneezing pig, or a rabid monkey.

As for who had taken him, Niko’s colleagues hadn’t come through yet. He had given them the parameters: researchers or professors in the country who know the Rom the best, but had recently dropped out of sight-real life or virtual. All academics lived/breathed/worked on the Internet these days. And any hint of one with a sick relative would be ideal. Dr. Samuels, Niko’s first call, wasn’t having much luck, but Dr. Jones was positive she was close-she could smell it. I didn’t doubt her. Wolves smelled everything; humans smelled gossip. But right now, that spelled nothing else for me to do except catch up on my sleep, which I was on the verge of doing when my cell phone rang. It was the missing- in-action Delilah. And Robin’s problem wasn’t mine to solve, but this one was.

“Pretty boy.”

I’d never broken her of calling me that, especially with the large scar on my chest. Wolves did love their scars. “Delilah. Did you get my voice mail about unmanning, unwolfing, or whatever you want to call it, a friend of yours?”

“Yes. Grey. He hunts forever now,” she said in what sounded like an exotic accent, but was actually vocal cords stuck halfway between human and wolf. Delilah wasn’t a high or fine breed, which should’ve put her below others in her particular Kin pack-or any Kin pack. But everything else she had going for her more than managed to overcome the social scorn that the recessive breeding sought by her minority Wolf sect, the All Wolf, brought out in the high breeds. “All wolf all the time” was their motto-no, more of a religion, I guessed. They were slowly trying to breed the human out of them to accomplish that. So far I hadn’t seen much of a success story-just some really odd-looking humans with wolf teeth, eyes, and twisted jaws, though there could be more like Delilah, the differences internal and hidden.

“You don’t sound too torn up about it.” “Hunts forever” was the werewolf polite way of saying “He’s passed on” rather than “He’s deader than a rat in a university bio lab.”

“He lost breeding equipment. Speaks not much of his fighting skills. Truth… to me, no difference before he had them than after. Have had better lovers.” I could almost hear her shrug. “Not why I call. They know. Grey found out-you and me. He told Kin… They know.”

“Yeah, so I’ve heard.” The revenant with the loose lips had turned out to be a reliable source. It was gratifying to know that I’d killed him for more than simply the practice and exercise. And I’d known there would be consequences for the Kin’s knowing about Delilah and me. Kin were for Kin. Wolves were for Wolves. Having sex outside your species was damn near anathema for a Wolf. Sleeping with a human was bad enough, but sleeping with a half Auphe was an abomination not to be tolerated.

Someone would have to die for it; at least the Kin would think so. There was no way around it.

“We’re leaving the city on a case, so I don’t think I’ll be much help.” Not that it mattered whether I was in town or out. While I was good, I wasn’t good enough to take on the entire Kin. With thousands of criminal Wolves in NYC alone, who knew how many all over the country, there weren’t enough pepper-spray-wielding mailmen in the entire world to take them all out. Delilah’s brother, Flay, had come up on the bad side of the Kin sometime ago and he’d done the only thing a Wolf could do and survive that.

He ran.

“You going to run? Meet up with Flay?” I didn’t love Delilah. Going with her and living another life on the run, again, wasn’t an option. But if she was gone, I’d miss her sharp humor, her carelessness in the face of violence… because she knew she excelled in that field-Delilah with her masses of white-blond hair, her amber wolf eyes, her softer amber skin. I’d miss her intelligence and ambition, her fearlessness in the face of my Auphe blood, and her willingness to jump me anytime anywhere.

Hey, I was a guy. Grey might have lost his equipment, but I hadn’t lost mine. The jumping part was going to figure into the equation somewhere. It didn’t mean I wouldn’t miss her for the other reasons too.

“No running,” she replied, not sounding as worried as she should have. That was Delilah. There wasn’t a situation she didn’t think she could turn to her advantage or a creature she imagined capable of taking her down. And mostly she was right, but there was also a part of her that was crazy as hell.

“The Kin aren’t going to let this go, Delilah,” I said. She had to know that as well as I did.

She dismissed the grim warning. “I have friends. In many packs. This can be fixed, but good idea to get out of town for a while. Where do you go? I’ll meet you. Help with job, for free even.”

I paused, thinking, then answered, “ Canton, Ohio. An IHOP on Cleveland Avenue. It’s a little more than four hundred miles. We’ll be there in hopefully less than seven hours, depending on Niko’s excuse for a car. Call me when you get there.”

“Seven hours,” she laughed, sounding like rough velvet. “I’ll have meal and five beers by time you come. Little boys riding tricycle.” Still laughing, she disconnected.

I closed my eyes as I leaned my head back against the seat and folded up my phone, feeling Niko’s gaze on me. “You’re looking at me, aren’t you?”

“I am.” His voice was definitely not rough velvet, but unyielding granite.

“Is it a sympathetic look full of brotherly love? You know, the kind that says I have your back? Behind you all the way?” I asked without much optimism.

“No, it is not,” he said evenly.

I kept my eyes shut. The sun-tinged pink-black was preferable to one of Niko’s glacial glares. It wasn’t as if I wasn’t suspicious. I was damn suspicious. Delilah helping on a job for free? That would happen about the same time I caught the Easter Bunny hiding eggs in our loft, but… after all we’d been through, she deserved a chance to prove herself. “But I’m a man now,” I said, “and able to deal with the consequences of my actions. You said so yourself.”

“It appears I was wrong in that respect. Your bringing Kin business, especially this business, along on a job is not the wisest or most mature of moves. In fact, I can’t offhand think of a more dangerous one. I revoke your pretend bar mitzvah. The bris is looking more likely, however.” He started the car and we took off as if there were a jet engine under the hood instead of a thirty-year-old V-8. I felt the two thumps in rapid succession. One was the curb; one wasn’t.

“The werewolf under the car?” I asked.

Robin would’ve seen the wolf slither under there, but would’ve known we would figure it out on our own and not bothered with a warning. I’d smelled it as soon as we’d gotten out of the taxi. Niko would’ve seen a stray strand of fur, a flicker of movement, or tracked a flight of birds across the sky and somehow read in their movements “potential roadkill below.” With my brother, it didn’t matter how. All you had to realize was that he would know.

“Yes, the Wolf under the car,” he confirmed matter-of-factly, “and now you know why I drive big, old cars. A werewolf does very little damage to it when you run one down.” I opened my eyes and turned to see what we’d left on the curb of Robin’s car lot. The car might not have suffered any damage, but the Kin Wolf couldn’t say the same.

The street sweeper was going to have a helluva time with that.

“More than a day for the coffin thief to make it to Canton from the Catskills.” The evening before last the meningitis outbreak had taken place-bacterial meningitis, the bad kind; the kind that tended to kill teenagers in a day, maybe two. “That’s not exactly making good time,” I observed. It should’ve been about an eight-hour drive. “Maybe whoever hired the guys to steal Suyolak came along with them, dumped the muscle when he had the coffin in the truck, and is doing the driving alone.” But still… eight hours a day? If it was as Niko and I had discussed and this guy was hoping to use Suyolak to heal a critically ill relative, he should be in more of a hurry than that.

“If Suyolak started ten or so cases of meningitis here, there’s no telling what he’s done to the men in the truck. They could have deserted. They might be in the hospital here. They might be in the morgue. This is not good news. He’s not out of the coffin; if he were, a few cases of meningitis are the very least of what he could do. But in the coffin… he shouldn’t be able to do anything at all,” Niko said, parking in front of the Canton equivalent of IHOP. Not that Nik would normally ever consider eating at a genuine IHOP, but it was a good central location for Abelia and her own muscle, Delilah, and us all to meet.

“We need to have a chat with the Wicked Bitch of the East then, huh? See what’s up with Suyolak.” I got out of the car. “I’ll go inside and get a paper while you call Abelia and find out where her wrinkled ass is. Call Delilah too, would you? She should’ve been here a long time ago.” It was two. Niko had shaved an hour off the estimate. Maybe he’d been tinkering with the engine, because while the car looked like shit, the thing could move. I patted a growling stomach. It wasn’t only a paper I was going to pick up.

“And when you return with your lard pancakes coated with diabetes-inducing syrup and chemically created whipped cream, perhaps I might give you a foot massage while you dine. We could see what kind of time you make chasing Suyolak on two broken feet,” he offered in a tone so pleasant even the Dalai Lama couldn’t have carried it off. When Niko was pleasant, it was a good idea to look for a safe place to ride out his irritation… I wondered whether they still had bomb shelters.

Niko’s opinion and mood over my inviting Delilah along or allowing her to invite herself had not improved, and that didn’t look like it was going to change any time soon. He had every reason to be pissed. There wasn’t any way this couldn’t end in trouble no matter what Delilah said. But whether it was trouble in New York or trouble wherever we happened to be, it was the same. I wanted it over with. Keeping it hanging over my head only messed with my head. It was almost poetry there and true. I’d learned that lesson more than once.

“Yeah, okay. I’ll call her,” I grumped. “A foot massage would’ve been nice, though.”

When I came back with a paper tucked under my arm and three bags, Robin was awake and Salome was following a homeless man around the parking lot. “Uh… Goodfellow?”

“She’s just playing,” he said dismissively. When he saw that didn’t quite put my mind at ease, he added, “Not serious play. We won’t have to stuff his body in the trunk or anything. What do you have against cats anyway?”

“Nothing… not against live ones that aren’t feline-shaped velociraptors.” I handed him a bag and put mine in the front seat-eminent domain, cat. Suck that up. Squatting rights were over. I also handed Niko a bag. “Plain yogurt, melon, and I bribed them to make you an egg white omelet. They cooked it in butter, but it was the best I could do. And you don’t have to massage my feet.”

“If only I could massage your brain into working,” he muttered, then exhaled, reaching out a hand to rest on top of my head and give me a light, affectionate push. “I apologize. It’s your decision, even if I think it’s an idiotically foolish one.” Nik did know how to make with the esteem boosters.

“Everyone deserves a chance.” Or the few people I liked deserved a chance. The rest of the world… eh. “You taught me that by giving me about seven more than I deserved.”

Before he could comment or give me any more ego-boosting brotherly compliments on my idiocy, a motorcycle rumbled behind me and came to a stop, going silent. “I’ll make sure there’s no problem,” I went on to promise him quietly.

“You talk of me, pretty boy? I cause trouble? Never.”

I’d smelled her over the motorcycle exhaust, but now I turned to see Delilah sitting on a pearl metallic white Harley. The paint almost exactly matched her hair, which was pulled back into a waist- length ponytail. She was wearing white riding leathers too, not to escape road rash. Wolves were too quick. If they crashed, they’d change in midair. If they did break a bone or two, they’d heal quickly in fur form. Delilah just liked to look good and she did look damn good in the leathers. Dark amber-tinted sunglasses hid equally amber eyes.

“I prefer the Godiva look, but it does have a certain superhero slickness to it,” Robin offered as he investigated the contents of his bag.

“Superhero. No fun.” She toed down the kickstand. “Supervillain.” She smiled, her teeth bright against her dark gold skin. “Queen of Wolves. Queen of World.”

“I guess that would make me one of your cabana boys,” I said dryly.

She climbed off the bike in one smooth motion. “Work on stamina; then we see. And dirty talk.” She shook her head with a disappointed clicking of her tongue. “Like Mormon with the dirty talk.”

Goodfellow choked on a bite of waffle. “You?” he coughed. “You’re bad at dirty talk? You said ‘Goddamn it to fucking hell’ in front of that Catholic priest and the two nuns in the restaurant the other day. And you are bad at dirty talk?”

There was a big difference between cursing like five shiploads of sailors and actual sexual dirty talk. “Just choke on the waffle and die already, okay?” I snapped.

“I mean, had I known you were so verbally impaired in the erotic area, I could’ve given you some pointers. Written a few hundred pages of my best lines down for you.” He stabbed another bite of waffle, obviously too entertained to bitch about how beneath him the food was. “I had to help rid you of that crippling virginity of yours, and considering your charming personality and wide variety of fashion-unique T-shirts and jeans, black, black, and more black, don’t think that didn’t take some doing. And now to know I sent an unskilled and untalented worker into my field of expertise, I can barely live with myself.” He pointed an accusing fork and waffle combo at Niko. “He’s your brother. Isn’t all this your responsibility?”

“Don’t I suffer enough?” Niko retorted. “He can easily outshoot any policeman on the New York City Police Department, but he can’t hit a target the size of a small watermelon from less than a foot away? Do you think yellow is actually a paint color I would choose for the bathroom wall behind the toilet if I had any other choice?” he asked with a resigned twitch of his lip.

This would’ve gone on for a while. It had in the past, but Abelia-Roo’s RV rolled up beside us. She stepped out a minute later, which happened to be at the same time Salome, who must have found the homeless guy too boring a prey, jumped up on the trunk of the Eldorado. The old Rom’s eyes, the spray of wrinkles around them deepening in disgust, flickered over us. “A traitor, an unholy half-breed, a goat, and a dog.” She nodded toward Salome. “The dead cat could do better than the four of you combined, I have little doubt.”

“Dog?” Delilah snarled with a genuine rumbling wolf growl. “Withered frog of old woman, will rip your arms and legs like sticks, tear your throat, piss in your foul mouth, then you know Wolf, not dog.”

Abelia shook her dusty black skirt and toyed with the earrings cascading in silvery chandeliers from her drooping earlobes while she flashed toothless gums in a superior smirk. “I have the finest and most special of herbs for a flea bath. Best among all the Rom. I’ll sell to you at the lowest price to be found. My word and my promise.”

And just like that, we were on the verge of a Rom banquet for Delilah while the rest of us ate French toast and omelets-right in the middle of the IHOP parking lot. Not that I had a problem with Delilah eating Abelia-Roo; there were simply better places for it. Canton, Ohio, was not New York. The weird, strange, the out-of-place; it would get noticed here. And we were all three. I got between Delilah and the old woman while Niko ushered our beloved employer back into her Candy Land RV.

“If you want to come with us, you can’t eat her,” I told Delilah, “at least not until after the job is over. Then snacks all around for all I care.”

She bared her teeth, but moved away back to her motorcycle and leaned against it as if Abelia wasn’t worthy of being eaten. Stringy. Maybe spoiled and maggoty in the heat. That settled, I tossed the paper to Niko when he came back to the car. “All ten kids are dead,” I said. Ten kids had been minding their own business. Then a truck drove by, and now those kids were headed six feet under-not to prom; not to homecoming; not to the science fair. They were gone for good. “Abelia tell you anything? How this could happen?”

Niko took his breakfast and started on it, although he didn’t look too enthusiastic. As it turned out, it had less to do with the cooking than with what Abelia-Roo had reluctantly admitted when he’d backed her into a corner. “It seems that our employer will admit the seals she spoke of earlier may be weakening through, of course, no fault of hers-of course,” he repeated, and Niko was not much on repeating himself. “It could only be that the zinc and iron powder she was sold was contaminated. How can she be held responsible for gadje selling chemicals that are inferior, less than pure?” The bite he took of his omelet was smooth and controlled, but if he’d let himself, he would’ve stabbed at the egg angrily. But that wasn’t my brother.

“Suyolak was able to do this shit just because one of Abelia’s subpar seals has the coffin leaking like a rusty hazardous waste barrel?” I asked, not particularly surprised-by Abelia or our luck.

“Now think what he can do if he gets out of the coffin,” Niko offered as he continued carving off pieces of his eggs with careful, controlled motions. “Nearly a thousand years of rage simmered to the sharpest of storming insanity. Damage so catastrophic that the Black Death will look like a forty-eight-hour flu.”

“So stocking up on cough medicine isn’t going to do us any good.” I’d reclaimed my seat before Salome could. Not that I got sick; I had an Auphe souped- up immune system, but I had the feeling that this Suyolak guy could take my immune system and tear through it like tissue paper. He might forget disease altogether and go for stopping my heart, burst vessels in my brain, or if that was too mundane, he could instead tie my intestines in a bow. I was sure he’d had a long time to think of a whole mass of party tricks.

“Not a good deal, no,” my brother responded dryly, “which is why we’ll need Rafferty. We’ll also need to know if the truck is still on the Lincoln or not.”

“The waitress didn’t happen to mention a truck and a coffin, did she? A man weeping into his pancakes over his dying relative or just weeping fluids in general, green and puslike, perhaps?” Robin finished off his waffles, unfazed by his self-painted image. “And did she happen to be hot? Stunning? Worthy of a shred of my attention?”

“Believe it or not, no, she didn’t see anything. No big black trucks that anyone saw. And, yeah, she was hot… in that I-never-saw-a-sheet-cake-I-didn’t-like kind of way. I’d never seen knuckle hair on a woman before. Go for it. I’m sure Ishiah would understand your leap off the monogamy diving board into that pool.”

I opened my bag and had my French toast, cream cheese, blueberry deluxe down in three minutes flat. “So what now? Keep following the Lincoln?” And keep checking the Internet via Niko’s BlackBerry for disease outbreaks. Those were about our only choices. Canton wasn’t New York, but it was still far too big a city to stop at every gas station to ask questions.

“Go west, young man,” Robin confirmed with a yawn as he balled up the trash, tossed it at me, and took advantage of the free backseat to stretch out again.

Salome eyed me in the passenger seat, her grin less cheerful than usual, but she settled down on Robin’s stomach. And that had me wondering… I looked around the parking lot, double-checking, and groaned, “Oh damn,” at the sight of a limp body hanging over the edge of a Dumpster. “You psycho cat from Hell, you didn’t…” The legs at the Dumpster kicked and the homeless guy came back out with a prize of several bags of leftovers.

“Calm down,” Robin said dismissively. “She doesn’t kill humans.”

“How do you know for sure?” Niko asked pointedly.

“Because I spray her with a water bottle if she does. Very effective.”

Delilah, back on her Harley, pulled up on my side of the car. “Ride with me?” She patted the seat behind her with a coy smile. “Vibration can be interesting. Very interesting.”

I would bet it could. Delilah and I cruising down the highway, with me sitting in the politically incorrect “bitch seat”… There’d be some serious vibrations all right, but I just couldn’t do it. If she didn’t kill me, Nik would for giving her the opportunity. “Sorry,” I said. “I’m not sure I’m that secure in my masculinity.”

She gave a snort down her elegant nose. “True. Why would you be?” Then she roared off while I continued to sit in a pimpmobile with fuzzy dice, feeling an odd kinship with the soft and easily squashed dual fluff balls hanging from the mirror. “You know,” I exhaled, “I’ve had better times on a job.”

Niko started the car. “When?”

I thought about it, then gave up. He was right. They all sucked in their own unique way, although with the Kin trouble, I expected this one to stand out. “Why don’t you drive already?” I growled.

He raised an eyebrow, punishingly turned the radio on to something that made even Salome howl in terror, and we were off on the Leandros Road Trip to Hell.

Meditation led to control-sometimes. Other times, meditation led to naps in the warm sun that streamed over the convertible. Take it a little further and naps led to dreams. And when the dreams turned into a nightmare, I wasn’t much surprised. With my life? Get real.

But there was a difference between this nightmare and my usual ones. It was startlingly clear. Normally I have only flashes of claws and teeth, darkness, and the sensation of falling, pain, and screaming. Fun. Flashes were all I wanted of that. I was into abstract dreaming. If you could frame one, you could sell it as art… extremely deranged, horrific art. This one, though-this one was crystal clear, painted not with a brush but with the sharp edges of a knife.

The day was gone. It was night with a moon so huge and brilliant that the horse cast shadows on the dried mud road. There were reins wrapped around my hand, and I knew if I turned my head, I’d see a gypsy wagon painted in red, yellow, and green, although the colors would be muted and faded even under this moon. A harvest moon-I had no idea what that meant, but I knew that’s what hung pregnant and heavy in the sky.

“It’s a time for the gadje to celebrate what they scrabbled in the dirt for. Their plump and juicy vegetables, which later on we’ll barter for, stealing those muddy farmers blind in the process. Then we’ll make a nice stew and drink wine to toast their stupidity. With full bellies, we’ll sleep with our wives or the willing wanton. The good old days.” The man was straddling the broad rump of the horse and facing me. He had hair to his shoulders. It was black like mine, but with a slight wave to it. He also had dusky skin, dark eyes, and a sly and cheerful smile. He was dressed in black pants and a rough, woven shirt. Cream or white, I couldn’t tell. Over that was an embroidered vest, his best festival gear. His feet were bare and dirty-roguish. He was a good- looking guy, Rom through and through. The women probably loved him, gadje and gypsy both. Robin would’ve jumped him in a heartbeat.

And that’s what made it disturbing when that smile widened. “And when we leave that farm, Mama, Papa, and their three little ones will be dead. Cholera. In minutes they’ll be rolling on the floor, clawing at their throats while bucketfuls of vomit gush from their mouths. Masses of it until they choke on it. I’ll let their dog live, though. I like dogs. Not that they like me.” He swayed with the horse and rested his hands on his knees. “They don’t like you either, eh, my friend? Because they know who you are, what you are, just as I know what you are.” The horse stopped and the man leaned slightly toward me. “I can cure you.”

That’s when he changed. The shoulder-length hair, its waves turned to tangled clumps, fell to his corpse- raddled feet. The clothes were rags and the body beneath them a skin-covered skeleton. The face was the same: a skull with skin; dingy teeth framed by shriveled lips. The hands that had been resting on his knees were now resting on mine. His nails were at least a foot long-thickened and yellow. They were twisted and corkscrewed, a graveyard party favor. The eyes were blank white orbs. There was nothing to see in a pitch-black coffin, was there? He’d kept himself alive… barely… all these years, devouring himself, but there was no point in wasting energy in keeping your vision if there was nothing to see.

“Suyolak.” I jammed a hand against his bony sternum and pushed him away from me. The horse was a skeleton now too, one covered with a dusty hide and a slow swish of a matted tail.

The living skull grinned. “The Plague of the World”-one perverted spiral of a nail touched my own chest-“meets the Unmaker of the World. What good Rom doesn’t like a little competition?” The nail was touching my chest, but I felt it in my head. “I could remake the Unmaker, Caliban. I could kill those worthless parts of you and let the better take over. You could be whole. For the first time in your life. One. Complete.”

There was an ache in my brain that sharpened to a stabbing pain. “You can’t make me human,” I gritted. “No one can.”

“Human?” The skull flew back and the laughter spiked the pain in my head to the nearly unbearable. “No, bar. No, my brother. I said cure, not castrate.” The white eyes glowed like the moon. “I’ll make you what you were meant to be all along. Auphe.” The nail flicked up as the palm of the desiccated hand moved to take its place on my chest. “So easy it would be, brother. You’re human on the outside only. Let me put you right. Let me cure you.”

For a second I saw myself as if I were separate from my body. I saw albino skin, jaggedly sharp angled joints, pointed chin, a legion of metal teeth, an acid rainfall of pallid hair, and eyes that were a blazing red inferno that would eat you alive.

If you didn’t already live there.

If it weren’t already home.

I woke up on the living room couch, trying to back my way through it. I’d already pulled my gun from its holster and was a millimeter of force away from shooting our front door. With my other hand I was feeling desperately at my face. It was all I could do not to try to rip it off. But it was the same as it had always been. Human. No matter what that bastard said, I was at least half human. It didn’t seem like much, but it was. I wasn’t an Auphe in a cheap polyester human Halloween costume. No fucking way. I put the Eagle back in the holster, grip sweaty and tight, and drew in ragged lungfuls of air. Human-human enough. That was all that mattered-never mind how I ended up on the couch; never mind the pure-Auphe trick.

My cell phone rang. Not a big surprise. You went to sleep in a car somewhere in Ohio and woke up in your loft back in New York and that was going to make anyone’s sphincter pucker, even Niko’s. I ran a quick hand over my face again, just to make sure, and answered it. “It’s not my fault,” I said as soon as I flipped the phone open.

“Somehow I doubt that,” Niko said grimly. “Where are you?”

“Back at the loft. I had”-Jesus, how humiliating-“a bad dream. Either that or Suyolak paid me a visit. If I get to pick, I think I’ll take the dream.”

There was a pause. It was either Niko thinking, un-puckering, or both. Finally he said, “We can’t rule out that he did speak to you. Healers ‘talk’ to your body while they mend it. They tell the blood when to clot or when to thin, tumors to shrink. It’s a combination of telepathy, telekinesis, and skills as yet uncategorized. Your brain is part of your body. He well could have spoken to you while you slept and your conscious defenses were down. But as fascinating as I find all my own lectures to be, I’m more concerned with your building gates in your sleep.” I heard him take a deep breath and go on more evenly. “And how you’re going to get back here.”

It couldn’t have been the most entertaining event to be driving down the highway and without any warning see your sleeping brother glow gray, then pop out of existence-the same brother he’d thought dead months ago. It was enough to strain even Niko’s legendary calm. “Do you think you could pull over into the emergency lane?” I asked.

“Do you imagine I’m still driving down the road looking for a new third to chip in on gas money?” he snapped. “I’ve already pulled off and backed up to where you disappeared.”

Definitely strained. I closed my eyes and felt for the car. It was like following a path in my mind, gray and winding… cold… silver and mist. “Can you find us?” Niko’s voice echoed distantly in my ear. He knew I couldn’t travel to a place I hadn’t been to before at some time in the past. I had to know the way. I’d never left a moving car before though, but…

“I know the way,” I said confidently. And because I knew the opportunistic bitch had made her move, I added, “Toss Salome in the back and I’m there.” I built the gate around me instead of in front of me-didn’t want to dissolve the dashboard, and then, as I’d told Nik…

I was there.