"Language, language." Bending down, I broke open the minibar and helped myself to a bottle of beer and a bag of pistachio nuts. After a long, cool swig, I continued. "I'm doing what I've always done. I'm looking out for number one and getting paid in the bargain. Isn't that what you do, Loman? Isn't that what you've always done?" I tossed a few nuts back and washed them down. Two tastes, both salty but wonderfully different, mixed on my tongue. "And that leads me to a curious question. Why are you changing your ways now?" I tsked sorrowfully. "Had enough of this life, have you? Don't they have medications for that sort of thing?"
"Loman," he came back after a moment of silence, tone subdued but still set. "You called me Loman."
"I'll call you Mary Margaret if I want to. Or Danny boy. That's more appropriate, don't you think?" I hummed a few bars of the legendary dirge before deciding I'd had enough of Goodfellow and his changing ways. New backbone, midlife crisis, whatever. All that mattered was the end result, and the result would be his end. "Nik around, old friend? I'd like a word."
"I'm not your friend," he countered vehemently in my ear. "I was never a friend to you or any of your kind. I can't believe I didn't recognize it when Cal told me. I can't believe I didn't guess it was you."
It wasn't really that hard to understand. The mirrors were a relatively new thing for me, as I'd picked that up only in the past five hundred years or so. The other male banshees had never pulled that trick and now that I was one of the last, they never would. So it wasn't all that surprising Goodfellow didn't know of it. It didn't keep me from twisting the knife, however. "Yeah, that's too bad, huh?" I offered genially. "You could've saved Mr. Morose. You probably could've gotten a few more years of whining out of him, at any rate. What a tragedy." I finished the beer in one last swallow. "You might have saved him, but you were drunk and you didn't. I'll bet Niko's really loving you on that one."
Silence. But sometimes silence can be as sweet as any melody.
Dropping the bottle into the wastebasket, I said briskly, "Nik's not home, is he? There's no way you'd still be holding the phone if he were. That's all right—I'll call back. Nice chatting with you, Goodfellow. It'll be interesting to see how much you have to say when I see you next." I added as a cheerful afterthought, "When I rip out your heart and shove it in your mouth." Turning off the cell phone, I tossed it over my shoulder onto the bed. I could've called Niko's own cell and had another chatfest, one probably even more entertaining, but right now there were other sensations to enjoy, other pleasures to seize. And the sharp cramping of the stomach was a good indicator of which I should choose. I reached for the room service menu. The nuts and the conversation with Goodfellow had only whetted my appetite and my taste for blood. It was time to see what this place had in the way of a steak… an extremely rare one.
As I waited for room service, I went to the bathroom and stood, Caliban's pride and joy in hand, watching with interest as urine splashed into the gleaming white bowl of the toilet. Humans, they were really the most amazingly primitive pieces of work. They had a brain that elevated them almost to reasoning organisms, but still had the plumbing of the most basic of animals.
"What are you doing, worthless creature?"
I gave a surprised yelp and whirled. Luckily the shock to my system froze the stream of urine and I managed to avoid decorating the bathroom in sunshine yellow. It also did something else curious. The pride and joy became the embarrassment and shame. Like a turtle it withdrew promptly, leaving me with a lot less in hand than I'd started with. "Hey," I protested automatically. "Where did it go?"
"Be grateful I don't relieve you of it altogether." Long nails split the shower curtain with lightning speed and an Auphe stepped through, throat working to spit out the human words. "It would make your stay here less pleasing, yes?"
Upper management—the bastards were never happy unless they were busting your balls… literally, in this case. "I'm just doing the job, boss." I zipped up with alacrity. Best not to let temptation hang out there. "Everything's going according to our plan."
The head cocked and molten eyes narrowed on me in murderous contemplation. "It is the Auphe plan, never the Darkling plan. You are to do as you're told. This"—he waved and arm and hissed—"this is not as you were told."
"This" would be the hotel room, Boggle, and all the rest, I was guessing. I hadn't expected the Auphe to keep that close an eye on me. They never had during the other jobs I'd pulled for them. I should've realized that this one would be different. This was the big enchilada and they were going to try to micromanage the hell out of me. Gating into my bathroom and giving me shit was actually the very least of what they might do if they thought I wasn't taking my work seriously.
"You are making ripples." He abandoned the human tongue and reverted to Auphe, which I understood. It sounded like cockroaches had crawled into your ear canal and started mating, but I understood it. "Ripples become waves. Waves attract attention we cannot afford." He leaned close enough that I could see my reflection in the metallic sheen of his teeth. I looked pretty damn good. "Waves drown those who make them."
"All right, all right. I can lie low if I have to. But there are some things that need doing. Caliban's brother, Goodfellow—they're going to make trouble," I pointed out with annoyance. "You have to see that."
"Not if they cannot find us or you. And if you keep your rapacious ego in rein, they will not." The pointed jaw worked with the effort to keep from burying those shiny teeth in my throat. "You will do as you've been told or the next thing you animate will be your own bloody bile."
The Auphe did not usually waste their time on threats. They simply killed and went on. A threat really wasn't part of their belief system. Promises, however, were. But it was a different story now… a different situation. Whatever I did, whomever I wasted—and even if I danced in the streets buck naked—the Auphe couldn't harm me. Without me they had no plan. Without me they had no options. So I took this all with a grain of salt, smothered a yawn, and solemnly promised to be a good boy from then on. With a satisfied growl, he pulled another gate from thin air and disappeared back to the Batcave or wherever; I didn't much care.
Trying to instruct me as if I were a child. Trying to tell me how to do my job as if I hadn't been doing it since time had blinked its first sleepy eye. Trying to rein me in. I felt a muscle in my jaw bunch. Forget that I wanted to kill Nik and Goodfellow just on general principles. Never mind that seeing their blood pour free would give me a chubby of enormous proportions. That wasn't the point. I was a professional, and I knew that if those two weren't taken care of, they would ruin things. Nik's relentless determination combined with Goodfellow's sneaky ways could very well throw a wrench in the works. The Auphe might not see that, but I did. And I would do what was needed to take care of the matter. If the bosses didn't like it, they could suck my dick. If it ever reappeared, that is.
Room service finally came nearly twenty minutes later. After I cleaned the plate, I went over to the climate control with a jaw-cracking yawn and comfortably full stomach. I cranked up the heat as high as it would go. I wasn't cold-blooded anymore, but I still had a lingering appreciation for warmth. Whether it was basking in the sun or a sweltering four-star hotel room, it was all good. I blinked torpid eyes and settled bonelessly on the bed. Sinfully decadent heating, it was another amenity to soon bite the dust. A spark of genuine mourning pierced my chest. All this luxury doomed to nothingness before I barely had a chance to enjoy it. It was enough to make you cry. Or take a nap. I picked the second option. There was time enough later to wreak havoc and foment chaos. All the time in the world.