We’d checked with Promise to make sure she was all right. The body was too tall to be her, but on the inside I couldn’t tell vamp from human, except for the teeth and they retracted at death. I didn’t blame Niko for calling her. It was quicker than running back up twenty flights to make sure you weren’t off on the height by a few inches. She would also arrange for the police to be called as they already knew about the bodies and a killer, just not a supernatural one, but she’d give us a few minutes until we were done. With his katana still in one hand, he used his other to take pictures with his cell phone to better research what type of monster was into skinning people alive. He’d remarked on the three cuts in the chest. All three crossed each other, but whether it was supposed to be a mathematical shape or a letter, I had no idea. The murderous asshole must not have made it past kindergarten in monster school.
I left my phone in my pocket. I didn’t want pictures, I sucked at research, and if I had pulled it out, Niko would’ve most likely inserted it in a place I was saving for my colonoscopy when I turned fifty. My caution didn’t help. Once we were out of a cab and home, my plans for the whole Niko having a life having taken a nosedive, he used words instead. The second we made it through the door, it was all over for me.
“You somehow thought in your minuscule mind that it was a good idea to keep the fact to yourself that another Sawney Beane is turning the city into his hunting ground?” he demanded.
Although it had been only a lie of omission and an extremely short omission at that, I gave him the truth now. “It was for your own good.”
“My own good?” he echoed, not impressed with my logic. “That is what an adult tells a child, an impatient adult, and it’s certainly not what I told you when you were young.”
He was right. He’d always explained exactly why things were the way they were or why things had to be done. He hadn’t once brushed me off with an “it’s for your own good.” Even as a kid he’d been a better man than I was now. It didn’t bother me a bit. Watching out for Nik was more important than being a better man.
“You were a good big brother. Still are, which is why I wasn’t going to tell you. It really was for your own good.” I dumped my jacket on the battered couch. “If the dickhead hadn’t dumped a body on us”—less metaphorically than I’d have liked—“it would still be for your own good.”
“It would be for my own good to let people be slaughtered when we might be able to stop it?” His duster went neatly on a hook he’d hammered into the wall beside the door the day we’d moved in. He’d done the same at every place we’d lived since I could remember. I had an image flash through my brain of a solemn blond nine-year-old hitting a nail into a stained plaster wall, using the heel of a shoe for a hammer.
Everything in its place. I felt the corners of my lips quirk at the memory. We all developed coping mechanisms. Niko imposed order on chaos. I imposed chaos on those not fast enough to get out of my way. Whatever worked.
I flopped on the couch and propped my feet up on the cheap coffee table. “This is New York City. Someone is always being slaughtered. We’re in a big enough mess as it is. If our calendar was wide open, I’d have told you.”
Possibly, but I wouldn’t have dropped a fifty on that bet. It wasn’t exclusively the big brothers who leaned toward the overprotective range. Little brothers, we gave as good as we fucking got.
With the Wolves, revenants, boggles, lamias, succubae, incubi, and on and on in the city, slaughter was on the menu every day. Although they killed to eat. They just happened to eat people. What we called slaughter they called dinner. The paien serial killers were different. They might take a nibble here and there, they might play at having a snack, but when it came down to it—they killed because they liked it. It got their supernatural dicks hard. No other reason. That made them less predictable, which made them harder to catch. They also tended to be—at least Sawney had—batshit fucking crazy. And that had made him almost impossible to catch.
To me it didn’t make much difference. Slaughter for food, slaughter for fun—NYC was one giant combo buffet and toy shop and it was always open for business. We could work for free twenty-four/seven and that wouldn’t change. If it was selfish not to want my brother to join the body count, then I was fine with that. Selfish was good. Selfish was great. Stamp it on my forehead. God knew the Peace Corps wasn’t calling my name.
“But our calendar isn’t open thanks to Grimm and his Bae kiddies.” The new Auphe—if fully grown man-eaters could be called kiddies. “We’re full up. You’re full up. So, ream me out all you want. You’re not changing my mind: it was for your own good,” I emphasized with all the stubbornness I could scrape up. And that was a lot. “If we could whittle your conscience down to a normal size, you’d agree.”
My feet were pushed off the table with a light swat. “What about Ishiah’s conscience? Our two to your one.” He frowned down at me.
“Ishiah has enough conscience to tell me about it, but thanks to some peri rule that sounds like bullshit to me, he doesn’t have enough to do anything about it himself.” I took off my holster to lay it and the guns on the duct-taped cushion beside me. I raised my eyes to the narrowed ones fixed on me. We had the same gray eyes, but I hadn’t to this day managed to pull off that look of solar-flare-heated annoyance yet. I grumped and put up my hands to preempt a further teachable moment about consciences. “Hey, I get it. The asshole threw a body at us. That’s not random. Booked calendar or not, we’ve been called out. He’s after us for some reason or another. Grab the hip waders because we’re in the shit now. I’m on board, okay already?”
He was silent for a moment, arms folded, blond hair pulled back so tightly to fall in a braid down his back that it gave me a headache just looking at him. “The body . . . it was a woman.”
“I know.” I wasn’t blind. Sawney Beane had killed women too . . . pregnant women, young women, little girls. Being the more reasonable sex didn’t exclude you from an early death. And every one of their bodies had been a nightmare, the same as the body tonight. “Even though I’d like to keep your anal-retentive ass alive doesn’t mean I don’t feel when I see them.” Innocent bystanders weren’t always annoying. Sometimes they were slaughtered lambs, bleeding their lives away in crimson pain, horror, and despair.
“I know,” I repeated, picking at a corner of the duct tape. I wasn’t defensive. I knew my brother. That’s not what he was thinking.
“I realize that.” His jaw tightened. I wasn’t defensive, but he was. “That little girl Sawney killed. I remember that you found it . . . difficult, although you tried to hide it. Now on top of that, we have your gates making you overconfident combined with your pathological need to guard me like an entire pack of attack dogs against even the knowledge of a new supernatural serial killer.”
That wasn’t the pot calling the kettle black, not at all. I let it go as I summed it up for him. “Be careful?”
He relaxed. “Yes, Cal. Be careful.”
On two of the three, no problem, I’d go along with them. On the attack dog issue, that wasn’t going to change. Sawney hadn’t been that long ago. He had come close to killing all of us, Niko included. The memory had stuck with me. The little girl had stayed with me, too. I still had her sunshine-colored barrette tucked away in a drawer, I thought with a sharp pang.
It wasn’t a good idea. Sentiment for unknown victims either made you miserable or got you killed in our line of work. I should throw away that barrette. Yeah, I would.