“Think it would work?” I perked up. Killing from a distance wasn’t usually my thing, but in this case, I’d make an exception.
“Unfortunately, no.” He dropped the braid and dusted mote-sized bits of Suyolak off his hands. Horton wasn’t hearing a Who on any of those-not unless it was a frothing rabid killer Who-and he wouldn’t want to listen to one of those anyway if he was smart.
“The driver’s dead,” Robin said a few feet below us. He was catless. Salome was not only not with him; she wasn’t in the car either. She’d jumped out of the window onto the top of another car that we’d passed at the ranger station going in the opposite direction. She must’ve decided, with whatever filled the empty space between her pierced ears, that not only was the station as far as she cared to go, but that, in fact, she would like to travel in a direction far from us. I thought her tail waved a cheerful good-bye, but it could’ve also been feline for Screw you and your little werewolves too. What did I know? It was a cat. Live ones were a mystery and dead ones… way out of the ball field.
“Great.” Although truthfully, I didn’t care one way or the other. Kirkland started this mess. Yes, to save his wife, and, yes, back me into a corner and I could say without a doubt I would’ve done it for Nik. But it wasn’t me. This wasn’t a hypothetical coulda woulda shoulda. Suyolak was gone and my empathy had gone with him, so the hell with the dead guy.
Niko jumped down and started toward the front of the truck, with me behind him. “Rafferty can’t save him? Bring him back?”
Robin snorted. “Jesus fresh off his Lazarus Tour couldn’t do a thing with this one.”
Both Niko and I still took a look for ourselves. The driver’s door was open, thanks to Rafferty or Robin. I was going with Rafferty, because I’d seen roadkill that was more photogenic than the late professor, and I couldn’t see Robin panting in anticipation for a closer look. Kirkland could’ve been a corpse that had lain under the desert sun for months. Dried skin shrunken to frame the skeleton, coarse short hair drained of moisture and color that had fallen away from the scalp in patches. Eyes turned to raisins in the hollow of his skull. He was a long-dead spider found under your refrigerator. A husk.
He looked quite a bit like Suyolak had in my head.
“Mihai, Yoska,” said Abelia, a still-scuttling spider chock-full of poison, standing behind us. “I might find a use for bits and pieces of him later. If nothing else, he’ll be a good attraction for the marks. Mummy man, cursed to death by the hand of the Rom. ”
“You are a shame on any people, including the Rom,” Niko retorted, but he stepped out of the path of the two men. It was simpler. An empty truck was easier for cops to overlook in their files than an empty truck with a dead man in it. The other two Rom stood to one side and respectfully behind Abelia while their brethren hauled the husk of Professor Kirkland over to the RV and stashed him away. The parking lot was empty by then. No one saw and if they had, they would’ve passed it off as a Halloween prop.
“Shame.” She spat on the asphalt. She did have a thing for the liquid expression of her emotions. “It is you who are the shame and your own blood the monster. Now let us find the other monster and end this business.”
“For the betterment of humanity and the improvement of the present company by your removal, I’m forced to agree with you.” Nik did have a way with an insult-a way that sometimes required a dictionary, but a way all the same. He turned his back on Abelia, another insult but more pointed, and shut the door of the truck. “Rafferty?”
“He is gone. On the hunt. Following prey.” Delilah had pulled up on her motorcycle seconds ago and was now undoing her braid, the silver hair falling to her waist. She too was ready for the hunt. Despite the purple shadows of twilight, she was a brilliant flash of white. Her hair, the leathers; she was the moon come to Earth. “We follow.” She stepped close to thread her hand in my hair and kiss me with a heat and familiarity that made it hard to forget that I’d had this so short a time. It seemed like years. I returned it with enthusiasm, refusing to wonder if I tasted different to her now. An extra dollop of Auphe in all likelihood would only make me spicier to Delilah. And there I was thinking about it after all, but before I could push it out of my mind, I heard a clearing of a throat. Niko. He was right; it had gone on for a few minutes, but I didn’t have the ability to store up sexual pleasure like British rock stars with their freaky Tantric batteries. I had to take it when I could get it. There was a cough this time that would be promptly followed by a thwack of a sword to the back of my knees if I didn’t step back.
I stepped back.
Delilah gave me a smile ripe with anticipation of the chase before us. “In case we hunt no more.”
“Great for you two,” Robin complained. “But what if Niko and I end up ‘hunting no more’? Where’s our kiss of potential death? Or quickie of potential death? I’m open to all options.”
Both Delilah and Niko snorted and Robin did without. I knew he was serious about the kiss; I wasn’t as sure about the rest as I saw him finger his cell phone before hitting a number. Speed dial. This relationship could be more serious than I thought. Monogamy and ranking on Robin’s speed dial. He turned his back to us, but that didn’t keep wolf or human ears from hearing. “It’s me… of course. Who else would bother to call your cranky feathered ass?” He paused, listening. “No, everything’s fine. We’re about to wipe this walking, talking, antibiotic-resistant son of a bitch out of existence, and I should be back soon.” Goodfellow could lie like no one I’d seen in my life, except my mother, but this time, I wasn’t so sure he pulled it off. “I only wanted you to know that you are wholly responsible for the vow of the priesthood I took on this trip. And if by some completely unlikely chance I don’t survive, I fully expect you to pack your dick away in shipping foam and never use it again. Fair is fair.” He paused again, then said briskly, “No, I’m not saying that or implying that. I just wanted… oh Hades.” He flipped the phone shut. Good-bye was what I guessed that he refused to say and when the phone rang, he turned it off, sticking to his guns on the subject.
I didn’t blame him. Saying good-bye was an impossible thing sometimes; no matter how long you had to prepare yourself. Niko and I’d learned that a few times more than I wanted to count. And when you didn’t know in your heart precisely what you were saying good-bye to… that had to be worse.
Delilah turned out to be right about Rafferty. He was gone and Catcher had disappeared with him, but they weren’t far away. We caught up with them in a short matter of time, all of us: Niko, Robin, Delilah, Abelia-Roo and her four men, and lucky me watching our flank. Fortunately, it was Delilah’s flank I was watching and if I was going to die, that wasn’t a bad last image to take with me.
We moved quietly along wooden walkways surrounded by trees, some kind of pine or fir. Big though, whatever they were. More than a hundred feet tall, easily. The wind played through the needles, a song you couldn’t quite make out the words to, but a nice song. Peaceful-until the trees fell; hundreds of them, in slow motion, as roots gave way and they tore loose from the ground. The first one would’ve landed right in front of some of us and on top of the rest if we hadn’t heard the creak of wood and been hit with a cascade of now-silent needles, brown and dead from above.
No one said run. The situation was self- explanatory in that respect, and if it wasn’t, then Darwin was ready to take your hand and lead your oblivious ass to extinction. Delilah and I ran past Abelia and her men. I didn’t help little old ladies across the street. I should have, but I didn’t. And if I didn’t do that, I wasn’t going to play out the tale of the Frog and the Scorpion with Abelia- Roo. It was the scorpion’s nature to sting the frog. It would be Abelia’s pleasure to stab me in the back if I hoisted her up on it, only unlike the scorpion, she’d wait until I’d hauled her to safety first. I let her men deal with scooping her up and fleeing with her.