"Niko?"
Promise had moved up silently behind us. "Hob took Niko? No." She shook her head in denial. "He couldn't overcome Niko. No one could." Then her gaze touched the katana in my hand and pansy-colored eyes turned velvety black, even the whites swallowed whole by the dark cloud. "The first of your kind, Robin, but he will not live long enough to be the last. I'll kill him myself."
"Get in line." I started back toward the club. I didn't expect to find clues or hints to Hob's location, no bullshit like that. Hob wouldn't be anywhere close to that stupid. But there was something in the building that would help. Had to help, because it was our only shot. I quickly grabbed what I needed and hauled it back outside.
Stopping by the pile of Niko's attackers, I gave Flay's fur-covered arm a hard shake. "Niko," I snapped. "Find him."
When his cub had been taken, Flay had come home to discover shattered furniture, blood, and Slay's dead grandmother broken on the floor. The kidnapper's scent turned out to be that of Caleb, but the wolf wasn't able to determine that at first. Too many changes of cars were made; too many hours had passed. He lost the trail. He hadn't been able to find his son. But while the trail had been old then, and degraded, it was fresh now.
"Find him." I shook him again.
Slay, resting against his father's shoulder, growled. It was a wholly lupine sound emitting from wholly human lips. With clawed hand cupping the ginger head tenderly, Flay made a wordless soothing sound before wrinkling his upper lip at me to reveal red-stained teeth. "You find mine." He put his blunt muzzle up and drew in great draughts of air. "I find yours." There was one more sampling, and then he ran. Slinging the boy to sit up on his neck, he went down on all fours and became the wind.
Goodfellow ran for our transportation while Promise and I followed Flay on foot. Three blocks away the van caught up with us. It slowed and we both climbed in while it was still moving. Robin then careened us around a corner and up onto the curb to take out a newspaper box, and kept going. He wasn't the only one scorning the streets. Flay and his passenger didn't stick to them either. Alleys, vacant lots—it was all fair game. We managed to keep him in view, flickerings of phantom white our guide.
There were other flickerings… red and yellow ones ringing my vision. The rage wouldn't die, wouldn't subside. The fear was side by side with it. It wouldn't let me take a breath without squeezing my lungs with acid-coated fingers. Without Nik, I was nothing. Living life to prove your genes wrong wasn't worth doing. Living life to be the reflection of who your brother thought you were, thought you could be, that was worth it. That made the price of existence not quite so steep.
"Won't Hob suspect we'll use Flay to follow him?"
Robin addressed Promise's question with a logic that proved familiarity breeds contempt. "I strongly doubt it. He'll assume Flay has what he's come for and will move on. Hob doesn't understand the concept of loyalty. He especially wouldn't apply it to one who runs with the Kin. Arrogance, it's the downfall for my race. For every last thrice-damned one of us."
I had something else planned for Hob's downfall. The metal glimmered across my lap with the coldest of comforts. Goodfellow went on. "He wants George's ability so he can rise to power again. With it, he could blackmail anyone, manipulate everyone … be what he once was. It's not as it was in the old days. The brightest, the most respected, even the most cunning, they don't always win anymore. He needs an edge if he wants to play in these politically unenlightened times." If it had been any other situation, he would've waxed poetic about the time when all you needed was a toga and an in with the Roman army. But it wasn't any other situation. It was this one.
This one.
"Drive faster," I ordered gutturally. It whirled in me, the rage, bright and furious. An emotion so intense that it was nearly an entity all its own. Aware… plotting. When your subconscious has a mind of its own, things happen. They fucking do indeed.
"I can't. This is as fast…" The words trailed away as Goodfellow checked my reflection in the rearview mirror. His shoulders twitched and he hissed, "Not the time. So very not the time."
The shadows swirled out of Promise's eyes as she turned and looked behind me. "No. Not now. Not now." As I gazed back at her implacably, she said with a worry strained to near desperation, "You're doing it again, Caliban."
Like I didn't know. As if I didn't feel the turn and suck of the gateway behind me. It was small, no larger than the size of my hand. I didn't have to see it to know that either. It was mine and I knew it, inside and out. The shifts and eddies of it, the ferocious bite. It was an attack dog, only mildly loyal and completely untrained. I had a choke chain on it for now, but the leash was slipping through my fingers so fast I could feel the burn.
"Where does it go?" Robin asked with a desperation that mirrored that of Promise.
I smiled.
"Ah, gods," he breathed, "what are we going to do?"
The smile grew and I bared my teeth in a death's-head grin that would've done any Auphe proud. "Drive faster."
He did. At one point he nearly ran down our wolf. I heard the yip and snarl of surprise through the metal walls of the van. It didn't restrain Goodfellow's driving. The gate was traveling with us… with me… and that concerned him more than a close call with Flay's hairy ass. Fifteen more minutes passed and I wondered in the back of my mind, the only portion that still had the smallest grip on rational thought, how long the wolf could keep up the brutal pace. He was lupine, but even a wolf couldn't run forever. Fortunately, he didn't have to. We stopped at a church, old but lovingly maintained.
"A house of God. Appropriate," Goodfellow murmured. "He always considered himself one of the first."
He'd killed the lights a block down when he'd seen Flay begin to slow. The van rolled quietly to a stop and the panting wolf flowed inside to deposit a grinning three-year-old into a seat. "Again!" Slay demanded, bouncing on the cushion. "Again!" Someone, at least, had enjoyed the headlong rush.
Flay's eyes widened to show the whites as he saw the now cantaloupe-sized whirlpool of gray light behind me and he put himself between it and his son. "Inside church. Puck, brother, girl. Others."
"What others?" Promise had discarded her cloak and stepped out as a singular figure of black silk and cold steel.
"Same. Revenant. Vodyanoi. Many." He shifted uneasily on splayed feet as I passed him on my way to the street. The gateway followed me, a luminous shadow. "I not go."
I hadn't expected him to. He had his family to protect now. He had his life back, and I hadn't anticipated his risking it again. I nodded in acknowledgment. "Keep the engine running. Just in case."
Unease and impatience twisted his face as his features slid into something closer to human, but he nodded. "Fifteen minutes. Then we go."
It was a fair offer and I took it. I turned and headed toward the church, making no effort to hide. How the hell could you begin to hide a rip in reality itself as it trailed behind you? And it was still there. Hungry, impatient, and growing inch by slow inch no matter how I tried to rein in the process. It was pulling at me harder now, every minute. I didn't have much longer. "Heel," I murmured under my breath. "That's a good boy."