I checked my watch. We had another hour before we’d said we’d be back, and a quick trip to Delilah’s work shouldn’t get her noticed by the Auphe. “If anyone would know his movements, it would be the Kin,” I commented. “Is she at work this early?” An extra hour wasn’t going to have Cal forgetting about what had happened, but as for distracting . . . I thought Delilah was up to the task.
“Yeah,” he tried for a grin, but as with the chili dog, he only made it halfway through. “I think they have a breakfast buffet.”
He was right. The strip club did have a breakfast buffet. I avoided it like the plague it was. We sat at a table while Delilah, not as picky in her nutritional needs, methodically made her way through an entire pound of bacon. As bouncer, she apparently ate for free. At least it was cooked. She looked at me and shook her head as she delicately snapped another piece in half and chewed. “You fight like wolf and smell like sheep. Strange.” I wasn’t a complete vegetarian, but I was close, and I suppose to a wolf I did smell less than predatory. Cal, on the other hand, must have smelled like the great stalker of pepperoni and cheeseburgers that he was. A meat and nitrate eater through and through.
When she finally finished the pile of pork, she pushed the plate away and leaned elbows on the table. “You two come here. What happened to not safe? What happened to Auphe? What happened to no sex? No sex.” Blond eyebrows lifted mockingly in Cal’s direction. “You think you are so special? You think your dick is so . . .”
I gripped Cal’s shoulder sympathetically and decided that being elsewhere for this discussion was a good idea. I rose and crossed the room, dodging tables and early clientele. The bathroom was cleaner than I would’ve given it credit for. It was barely offensive at all . . . except for the incubus. He was one of the dancers, unless the leather chaps and G-string were simply personal-preference morning wear. With an incubus, you never knew. Like his sister succubi, he had blue and silver hair. It was tied back in a long tail that rested across skin that glittered like mother-of-pearl. Makeup and dye to those who didn’t know better. Liquid black eyes took me in as he finished his business. The lascivious smile he flashed me didn’t show his snake tongue, but I knew it was there.
One might think it odd for an incubus to work in a male strip club that catered to gay men, as opposed to one for women. It wasn’t. Incubi and succubi had one priority, and that was to suck a human dry of energy. The sex of their victim didn’t particularly matter. Did it matter to the average diner if his steak came from a cow or a bull? Incubi and succubi were no different. Male or female victims, they’d weaken or kill them and move on. I wondered how many customers had dropped dead of “heart attacks” since this one had started work here.
The Vigil had their philosophy: Humans were all fair game as long as you didn’t get noticed while eating them. Cal and I had once had a philosophy as well. You don’t bother us, and we won’t kill you. When you were on the run, you didn’t have time for other people’s problems or playing hunter to lions gone man-eater. You looked after your own and kept moving. But now we’d settled. This was our home. If the occasion arose that I could make it a slightly safer place . . .
And practice was practice.
I turned and opened the bathroom door. “Delilah,” I called in a low voice, knowing her wolf ears would pick it up easily over the thumping music. “Incubus. Yours or mine?”
She waved a hand and said loudly enough for my human hearing, “He started yesterday. My day off. Idiot human boss. Bad for business. Yours.”
I turned back and closed the door behind me. The incubus’s salacious smile turned to a baring of impressively long snake fangs. He had more than the teeth; he had the quicksilver agility of a snake as well. That helped him for nearly ten seconds—which was impressive for an incubus. They didn’t often have to fight. Their prey was usually more than willing. This one, though, he was more challenge than most. The bathroom was too cramped for the katana, and I pulled my shorter wakizashi sword in one hand and my tanto knife in the other. He reared back, then jerked toward me in an attempted strike. It got him gutted for his trouble. It didn’t stop him. He slithered backward, bones suddenly liquidly malleable. He streaked up one wall and across another before hurtling through the air at me. I swung my blade. A neck parted. Practice was over. Quickly.
Disappointing.
His body continued to writhe, serpentlike, for several moments, the nearly invisible scales whispering against the tile floor. When it stopped, I cleaned the cobalt blood from my blades with paper towels, and sheathed them. As I stepped out of the bathroom, Delilah was there to lock the door and slap an out-of-order sign on it. “Full now,” she said. “Will eat for lunch.”
I had no idea if she was serious or not, and I didn’t ask. I had a thirst for knowledge, but there were some things I didn’t need or want to know. This was one of them. There was something else, however, that I was curious about. The table where we’d been sitting was now empty. “Cal?”
“Manager’s office.” Her smile wasn’t as lascivious as that of the incubus, but it was close. “Watch front door. Ten minutes.”
“This, Delilah, is my brother you’re talking so glibly about,” I said sharply, catching her ponytail in a firm grip as she started away. When she lifted her upper lip in a challenging snarl, I added levelly, “Twenty minutes. He’s had a difficult morning.”
The snarl faded as she said, amused, “You are good brother. Twenty, if he survives.”
He did, and looked a little more relaxed for it. Outside the bar, I inquired, “You did take the time to ask about Oshossi, I’m assuming. Much in the same way I’m assuming I won’t have to take you to the dojo and beat a measure of sense into you.”
“I asked,” he responded defensively, although there was a brief sliver of panic on his face as endorphin-soaked brain cells struggled for the memory. “The Kin doesn’t know anything about Oshossi. They did notice the extra wildlife in Central Park, though. So we’re one for two. But she said she’d look into it.”
“How much?” I asked.
“You saying the mind-blowing sex isn’t payment enough?” He grinned smugly.
“No, of course not. You’re a stallion,” I said blandly. “How much?”
“Two K.” Disgruntled, he put his jacket back on. “Bastard.”
“You’ll think ‘bastard’ when we start meditation exercises today,” I said, entertained by the look of distaste that crossed his face.
“Oh, Christ, just sitting there, not doing anything. Not napping or watching TV. It’s not natural.” He flagged down a taxi and gave Seamus’s address. “And it looks boring as hell. Why the hell would I want to do it?” he finished.
“It’s about control, Grasshopper,” I said, trying to keep it light. We had enough of the dark at the moment without adding to it. “Control is useful in the restraint of emotion.”
“Control,” he echoed. “Control is good.” He went silent for the duration of the drive. I was fairly sure he believed me when I said he wouldn’t hurt anyone. Opening a gate was a far cry from picking up his gun and blowing away whomever was annoying him—which he had done in the past. But they had deserved it. Still, there were easier ways to kill than a gate to Tumulus, and he knew that. Instinct . . . reflex, whatever you wanted to call it, you might not be able to erase it, but you could blunt it, redirect it, control it. Unfortunately, Cal had a lot of anger—most of it justifiable, but that it was didn’t make things any easier.
Control was the answer, at least the best one I had. No, Cal wouldn’t use his Glock or his combat knife over a loss of temper with anyone he actually cared about, but opening a gate instead wasn’t desirable either. Sooner or later something was bound to come out of one of them. Cal had told me once that the gates were two-way. You could go in or something—the Auphe—could come out. But with enough will you could hold it, you could make it one-way. He had done it once, but with this—opening them unconsciously—an Auphe might very well slip through before Cal could close it or lock it to one direction.