Pun intended.
Chapter Sixteen
Dogfights—if you wanted one and looked hard enough, you'd find one eventually. If you were lucky, you'd lose only your money. If you were unlucky enough to stumble onto the wrong one, you could lose a whole lot more than that. Some fights had a very selective clientele. Those were the ones where the dogs usually bet on themselves. It made for interesting odds.
I had a word with the bitch at the door. She hovered halfway between wolf and woman, frozen into a mutated shape, not one or the other. A fiercely thick uni-brow shadowed amber yellow eyes. Her jaw, while of human shape, was longer than usual with an underbite to make an orthodontist cringe. Her brown shaggy hair was pulled high into a bushy ponytail. It was the same color as the hair that showed in abundance from the neck and armholes of her sleeveless T-shirt. She had that European look nailed.
It was a myth that werewolves are made. They're not. They're born. But not all are born equal. Among a certain stratum of werewolf society, inbreeding was the norm. They felt it brought them closer to pure wolf with less of the contaminating human element. That was their theory, anyway. A normal Were could switch from human to animal at will, completely human to completely animal. For these that wasn't enough. Total wolf at all times was the only acceptable goal. This lovely lady was the less-than-ideal result. I chatted her up a bit and she could smell the difference in me right away. Good noses on the wolves, even better than those of the Auphe. Her eyes practically crossed at her first whiff of me. Not Auphe, not human, not Darkling. None of those things, yet somehow all three. It must have been an interesting scent. She snuffled my hair with splayed nostrils repeatedly as we talked, and rumbled happily deep in her throat. As long as she didn't start humping my leg. I'd caught the distinct jump of fleas in her hair out of the corner of my eye. You knew you were in trouble when you had to dump the condoms and go for a flea collar instead.
I slipped her a fifty and she slipped me two names. Passing her, I went down the stairs to a dark basement filled with people, some furry and some not. The air was thick with the coppery tang of blood and the smell of wet dog. There was a circular cage roughly constructed of chain link fence in the center of the room. Inside it two wolves were going at it. More lupine than the female at the door, they were given away only by a missing tail on one and a pair of purely human blue eyes on the other. Fur and blood flew as fast as the buzz saw snarls, and I watched the fight for a moment. I was appreciative of the unleashed savagery and not a little envious of the clean slash that ripped one throat to a red ruin. Wishing I'd dropped a dime on baby blue eyes, I headed through the crowd for the far corner. Two figures hunched around a small table, sharing a bottle of cheap wine. The male could've passed for human if it hadn't been for a mouthful of jagged ivory teeth and an overabundance of facial hair. The female had a smooth face, round light brown eyes, and slightly pointed ears tufted with thick pale blond hair.
Stopping beside them, I smiled and said lightly, "Fido, Bowser, hear you're looking for a job."
The woman's blond ears twitched with annoyance. Ramming a thumb against his broad chest, the male growled. "It's Wolfgang and Fang." His broad nose sniffed the air with suspicion as he regarded me with either squinting myopia or intense stupidity. The two looks were remarkably similar. "Who the hell are you?"
"Oh yeah, that's less of a cliche," I snorted. "I'm the guy who has enough cash to keep you in chew toys for a long time. That good enough for you, Spot?"
Wolfgang, apparently not a fan of straight talk, cocked his head and narrowed his eyes to icy slits as the growl that slid up his throat from his chest vibrated the table itself. Blunt nails scored the wood as knuckles flexed with an obscenely painful popping sound.
"Okay, you're a canine of few words. I respect that. Look, I'm not here to bust your balls." I'd leave that to the vet of his choosing. Pulling up a chair, I dropped into it. Removing my dark glasses, I met belligerent eyes with serene silver ones. "But, buddy, you do not want to get into a pissing contest with me, I promise you that." I put a hand in a pocket to remove a thick wad of cash. Dumping it on the tabletop, I continued, my eyes still fixed on his. "You look like a good doggy. And a good doggy would take the money, shut his trap, and listen."
The growl transmuted into a bass roar, then faded to silence as slender fingers fanned the green in Wolfgang's face like a winning hand of poker. As with most couples, Fang had her grip firmly on the finances of the relationship. With a grumbling sigh and after pulling his head back turtle fashion between arching shoulder blades, Wolfgang snarled, "Okay, okay. So talk already. What do you want us to do?"
"What comes naturally. Snack." Hands behind my head, I tilted back in the chair and raised my eyebrows. "After all, isn't that what big bad wolves do? Eat up grandmas and little girls?"
It wasn't that I knew for a fact that Georgie Porgie was going to be trouble. In some ways she was in this deeper than perhaps even she was aware. That was the trouble with psychics—you never really could know for sure. Georgina might not go to Niko, but it was a dead certainty he would go to her. Grasping at any and every straw to locate me, Nik would get around to George sooner or later, if he hadn't already. She had certainly stonewalled him earlier when he went to talk to her about the soda shop incident, and she'd definitely known then more than she was saying. There was no telling what she'd do now. Maybe she'd continue to keep it zipped up, and maybe she wouldn't. Maybe she actually knew something, and maybe she didn't. Either way I couldn't take the chance. Besides, an adorably wise little red-haired psychic? Please. She was simply too cute to live. I was doing the world a favor.
I was just that kind of guy.
Sometimes you have to stop and smell the roses. I still needed to check in again with the Auphe and see how things were progressing before they got antsy and paid me another visit—or, worse yet, started spying on me again. I'd kept a careful eye open this time and hadn't seen any sign of them. Hopefully, it would stay that way. As for the roses, I had managed to divvy up some of my work. Things were getting accomplished on schedule and I didn't see any reason I couldn't enjoy myself for a bit. In this city there were a thousand and one entertaining things to do and amazingly enough not all of them were violence related. It was time I played tourist and took advantage of the place while it was still around.
I watched the fights for a while, hit on Fang much to Wolfie's displeasure, and had a few drinks. When I surfaced on the streets again, evening was a dusky tint in the sky, and the twilight chill was cool fingers sliding along my skin into my hair. I inhaled the cold air with a scowl and a strong desire for my warm hotel bed with its scorching hot electric blanket. Deciding not to let the weather spoil my good time, I headed down the block listening for one of my favorite things, music. It was a given I was a fan. Had to be with my banshee sisters. Male banshees sang too, just for different reasons. No lurking on a castle turret bemoaning the approaching death of its lord or lady, not for us. No, thanks. Bringing death was one thing. Just sitting around and waiting for it, that was another. I mean, shit, how passive-aggressive can you be?
Yeah, I liked music. All music. It all had something to offer in one respect or another. It was the one thing in which humans had no equal. They might not have their own innate magic, but when it came to music, they made magic. Rock was the best, but I wasn't choosy. Over the years I'd managed to find something to appreciate in all the genres. If it had a beat, if it got my blood pumping, and if I could kill to it, it met all my requirements. It was while on the hunt for all three that I ran into something that distracted me. It was something that I'd thought about earlier but had forgotten until I saw it staring me in the face.