"You beat me to her, big brother," I said with mock wistfulness as I heard his phone click on. "Or did you?" I knew he had called her to warn her, but a sliver of anxiety, no matter how illogical, can still give a knot to the stomach and the burn of sweet acid to the throat. And I was nothing if not about the giving. "Vampires don't turn to dust, did you know that? More of a puddle of goo really. Sticky too. The maid might want to bring an extra mop."
"You—"
I didn't wait for the happy descriptions of my personable self that were bound to follow. Instead I motioned to the kid standing ten feet away. Chomping his gum like Bessie's socially challenged cousin, he shoved the twenty I'd given him into his pocket and then slammed an elbow into the Mercedes at the curb. As I cursed convincingly, the sound of the car alarm traveled simultaneously to the cell phone and across the street. Looking over at Niko and Robin, I saw the simultaneous turn, and the realization in their eyes. Standing frozen for a second, I dropped the phone, turned, and ran.
Cal had been quick, lithe with a natural runner's grace. I was quicker. The combination was enough that I had to force myself to lag, to maintain a strictly human speed. I struggled through crowds on the sidewalk, let a car clip me on the hip with a grazing blow. I took the fall with a grunt and endured the asphalt-scraped palms all in the name of a good performance. Method acting, it was the key to believability. As I lunged to my feet, the car door swung open and a pale oval hung in the gloom. Impenetrably tinted windows, rich leather interior, caveman-browed driver… I should've recognized the car even before it hit me.
"Lady of the pearls." The smile that cut my face was blacker than her windows and as curdled as rancid blood. "I thought you'd be waiting for me upstairs to give me the ride you gave my brother."
Her face remained calm and untroubled. There were no pearls this time, only a hand held out to me. The darkest violet silk glove protecting it, her hand moved into the sun toward me. "Come with me, Cal. I'll take you home."
Why did they keep trying? Why the hell couldn't they see it?
"You've got it wrong, vampire," I spit. "I'm bringing home to you. To this whole goddamn world." With her hand hanging in the air behind me, I turned my back on Promise and kept running, this time flat out to regain the distance I'd lost in the fall.
The park was not that far and looking over my shoulder, I caught glimpses of Niko in the distance—Niko and that piece-of-shit Goodfellow. I was truly going to enjoy teaching the randy goat that he should've stuck with screwing as his avocation, because the noble-hero crap was getting on my nerves. The worthless son of a bitch wasn't anything more than a horny tomcat who inexplicably thought he was a tiger. He knew who I was, knew the things I was capable of. If he thought he was a match for me, he'd better lay off the juice. It was giving him delusions.
There were people in the park, although not as many as usual. No one gawked as I ran through. Could be I was a jogger. Could be I was a mugger chasing a victim. Hell, a mugger could be chasing me. Didn't matter. That was Central Park. They went on with their business and I went on with mine. Before long I was in the trees and moving toward a wilder area. Not like the old days wild, but as wild as it got in this time and place. Once I settled into position in a thick clump of underbrush, I took several huge breaths to hyperoxygenate my lungs.
It was a trick Niko himself had taught me. When he and Robin came into view I stopped breathing. Unless you could hear my heart beat, I was a silent presence. Niko's ears were good, but no human's were that good. And while Goodfellow had his talents, listening had never been one of them.
I watched as they paused. Niko knelt and ran a hand lightly through the yellowing grass. Standing, he exchanged a wordless glance with Robin. They knew I'd been through there. It was obvious enough if you knew how to read the signs… the bend of a blade of grass, the crumpling of a leaf. Obvious, and I hadn't made any effort to conceal it. But what lay beneath that grass, below that leaf, wasn't quite so apparent. Buried in dirt not nearly liquid enough to suit him, Boggle waited with all the patience of a trapdoor spider. And he came up out of the ground with the same arachnid speed. It was a thing of beauty.
They'd taken a step, intent on pursuing me. Niko was dressed in his traditional black coat long enough to conceal at least twenty lethal blades. Goodfellow was in a dark green sweater, artfully faded jeans, and a brown leather duster similar in length to my brother's. Jesus. Nik was dressed to fight. Peter Pan, on the other hand, was dressed for a photo shoot—fall wear for the monster killer on the go. Did I enjoy it when Boggle ripped that expensive ensemble to shreds?
You bet your ass I did.
On their second step, Boggle got them. He catapulted through the covering earth like a heat-seeking missile. One swat of his massive hand had Goodfellow flying through the air as weightless as a child. Green yarn hung snagged on the long black claws as they swiped at Nik in turn. The blow missed. I wasn't surprised. Bog had never been a match for my brother, not alone. Fortunately, he wasn't alone now. As Niko twisted with liquid grace out of Boggle's reach, I stepped out of the brush, aimed, and fired all in one motion. It would've been a great time to say something sharp, something witty, some catchphrase that made box office gold. Damn satisfying, but it could've slowed me down. I was a kick-ass monster, but my brother could kick some serious ass in his own right. One on one, I could take him. Since the days of apple-peddling snakes there hadn't been anyone or anything I couldn't put down. Cyrano wouldn't be any exception, but… he could hurt me. He was almost as deadly as I was and he could do some damage. The Auphe wouldn't be too appreciative of any delay because I happened to get my ride banged up. They wouldn't be appreciative of any of this if they found out.
So… no warning. No smart-ass comments. No wisecracks. Nothing but silence and a bullet to the chest. The impact knocked Niko backward several feet before he hit the ground hard. He lay sprawled motionless on his back with legs and arms spread. His face was blank and his eyes even blanker. They stared up at the sky, not surprised or shocked, not swimming with pain or fear, not full of the glory of heaven or the horror of hell. No, there was none of that. There was only emptiness.
It was disappointing, I didn't mind admitting. A complete lack of drama. With the sharp smell of cordite perfuming the air, I gave Boggle a pat on his crusty shoulder in passing. "Good job, Bog. Now go rip a leg off the other one, would you? I want to pay him some personal attention in a minute, and I don't want him scampering off." Goodfellow had his chance to run and he'd wasted it. Now I had a chance to take his ass to school, and that I was not wasting. Shoving the gun, another of Boggle's souvenirs, into my waistband, I savored the heat of the muzzle against my skin. It warmed me against the chill in more ways than one. Kneeling on the ground beside Niko's still form, I took a handful of the blond braid and gave it an affectionate tug. "Strike one, big brother. I'll bet you never guessed the bigger man would turn out to be a monster." I laid the tight twist of hair on his chest and straightened the collar of his coat. "I always told you I was one, didn't I? But you never listened." It was as the hand suddenly looped around my wrist that I noticed… no blood. On his chest, there was no blood, only charred cloth.
The eyes blinked, the emptiness transmuting into something far more dangerous. "You are a monster." The voice was hoarse, roughened with pain. "But my brother isn't."
Bulletproof vest… the bastard was wearing a bulletproof vest. Abruptly, I realized that as well as I knew Niko, he knew half of me equally as well. He knew Cal's heart wasn't in the way of the sword, but rather in the way of the gun. When push came to shove, Cal could use any weapon, but personal preference was always going to tell. All that familial intimacy had come back to bite me in the ass. The grip squeezing my wristbones until they ground painfully together wasn't too pleasant either. Sticking around didn't seem like the best idea at the moment and I flashed my other hand toward the gun at my waist. My hand was on the rubber grip when I felt a sharp pain over my breastbone. Half an inch of Niko's favorite dagger was sticking into my shirt—not to mention my flesh. A quarter-sized stain of blood blossomed around the metal as I released the gun.