Apparently there was no equivalent in nonsupernatural biology, although Niko tried his best to come up with a close comparison. Apogamy, androgenesis, adventitious embryony…all terms I’m sure I knew at one time, when Niko had been shoving biology into my brain with a crowbar seven or eight years ago. But I’d done my best to forget them, and my best was damn good.
“Male apoximes?” had been his last guess.
Robin had scowled. “Yes, Niko. Pucks reproduce exactly like Saharan cypress trees. In fact, we’re kissing cousins. Shall I show you my impressively large trunk?”
“Just tell me we don’t have to buy you maternity clothes if you lose the lottery,” I’d asked at that point during the briefing, pushing the meatball sub far away at the thought of a hormonal puck. “Jesus, I’m going to barf.”
“Gods.” He stared at me, disbelief dripping from the word. “How do you function when the hamster on the wheel between your ears takes his lunch break? Never mind. Just…here. Wrap your tiny brains around zygotes. It’s far more complex than that, as we are far more complex than you, but one puck essentially splits in two. The new puck will also have all the memories, personality, and skills of the original, which is another reason we hate one another so much. We yearn to be unique when in essence we all started out the same as someone else. We immediately part ways and the new puck will start developing memories of his own. As he does, his personality changes slowly as well. We all become different sooner or later.”
“Except for the ego, sex drive, trickery, lying, stealing, et cetera,” I said.
“Well, naturally. Why would we want to change the best of our race’s qualities?”
“You actually are family. In fact, you’re closer than family,” Niko had mused. “You’re supernatural clones.”
“All born of Hob,” the puck said quietly. As the three of us had nearly died at the hands of Hob before delivering him up to a well-deserved death, we skipped over talking more about the first puck to be whelped by the earth.
“How long does it take?” I’d asked, curious despite myself. “Is there a cocoon involved? Is it like
“Armani does not make a cocoon,” Goodfellow had replied with a sharp frost edging his voice, and fun time was over. He then went on to tell us about the Panic.
Capital
In ye olden times, ancient Greece, ancient Rome, ancient who gave a crap, people had thought that panic was caused by Pan, pucks, whatever, unseen and rotten as hell, rustling and shaking the bushes off the paths to basically scare the living shit out of travelers. Not true. The word was still around today, but that definition wasn’t any more true than it had been in the beginning.
What was true about the Panic, Goodfellow had said, was that pucks produced pheromones by the buckets. Normally the chemical led their fellow supernatural creatures, not humans—it didn’t affect humans—to trust them. It made it all the easier for the pucks to steal from their fellow supernatural races and for them to believe the pucks when they said they were off for a romantic bottle of wine while in actuality they were shagging their thieving asses to safety, hauling gold, jewels, whatever they could steal. The pheromone also led the preternatural to lust after them—all the easier to get laid and…yeah, well, that was more than enough benefit there.
Eventually after a few thousand—or thirty or forty thousand years…who was counting—the pucks’ supernatural buddies eventually caught on—or at least their genes did—and after generations upon generations of other races being robbed, lied to, and somehow talked into an orgy with five of their best pals, the pheromones couldn’t overcome the nature-driven evolution of an innate and rather deserved mistrust.
That was the pheromones of one puck at work.
One.
Enticing in the beginning, suspicious and distrustful in the end…but, still, only one puck, Robin had said. But get more than one puck together and things changed. The pheromones mixed into something new, thanks to that evolution of suspicion and wariness—something new and unpleasant. Get five pucks together and everyone supernatural would become extremely nervous. Get ten together and there would be fighting, screaming, and running. Get the entire race in one spot and the chemical overload could conceivably drive lesser species mad or stop their hearts from fear alone. For the hardier predators, it would be as if they were a single small child drifting in the ocean while a hundred giant great white sharks circled them.
That was the Panic.
That was why all supernatural critters were fleeing NYC as fast as if someone had told them the Red Sox were invading. All of that sounded like a good excuse for me to desert Niko to the job. Keep my share of the money. See ya when I see ya. Send up a flare when it’s over. But, Robin had admitted sourly, Auphe weren’t affected. As with most poisons and venoms, they were immune to the pheromones. The Auphe were never any fun. The Auphe never played fair. The Auphe ate my brothers, sisters, dog, and crapped in the back of my pickup truck. Bitch, bitch, bitch. Here was the one time I thought I could use that in my favor; being half of the genetic monster to first crawl out of the primordial ooze…before turning around to murder the second slimy thing to creep out…but no.
When did I get my goddamn silver lining?
It obviously wasn’t going to be today. I went straight to my bedroom. The fight with the kishi had been light exercise. Goodfellow’s briefing had been as brutal as boot camp twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, five years in a row. I wanted sleep and I wanted it now.
Niko stayed up to read or meditate or trim his bonsai tree while thinking of ten ways to kill a revenant with its tiny gnarled branches and leaves. Those weren’t smart-ass guesses; they were what I knew. Niko had many interests, some lethal, some not, but I knew them all. Family. I hesitated in my bedroom doorway. “It’s kind of weird,” I said.
Niko had been headed for the main area of the apartment after I’d finished the first aid on my leg. He stopped to look back at me as I stood in the doorway of my room. His eyebrows lifted in silent question. “Family,” I elaborated. “I was thinking about family when we were fighting the kishi. I thought it was because they were making a home for their own family, but then Robin comes along with every family member on the face of the planet. Maybe I’m psychic; you think?” I didn’t want to be psychic. I had enough nonhuman traits to deal with as it was.
He whirled quickly enough that I couldn’t avoid the book he threw to nail me in the stomach. I grunted, but managed to catch it before it fell to the floor. Niko’s reflexes were the best I’d seen, among man or monster. “Did you see that coming, O psychic one?” He held out a hand and caught the book I tossed back at him.
“No. Ass.” But I rubbed my stomach and grinned. He was right. The Auphe hadn’t been psychic and our mother only pretended to be. “Let me know in the morning how many ways you come up with to use your puny shrub as a deadly weapon.” I changed and hit the bed hard. I slept hard as well. If that didn’t prove I didn’t have the slightest psychic ability, nothing else would.
But cursed?
That was a different story.
It was eight in the morning when someone banged a fist against our door. Niko was in the shower washing away the sweat of evil exercise. He’d already been out and run his ten miles. As my leg was tenderized and marinated by baby kishi Alpo, he’d given me a onetime break and hadn’t forced me to join him. I was still in bed when I heard the knocking, but I staggered up, cursing at the hair hanging down past my eyes and wearing nothing but sweatpants and two pairs of socks. My feet got cold. Hercules probably had acid reflux. We all have our weaknesses.
I passed through the large open space that formed the combination living area, kitchen, and workout gym to the door of our converted garage, and undid the one bolt. Most New Yorkers had several. Unless it was a particularly nasty case we were working, Niko and I didn’t have a problem with encouraging break-ins. Spontaneous sparring was like a jolt of extra caffeine in your coffee. Perked you up.
Opening the door, I began to snarl a natural, “What the hell do you want?” It was way too damn early and I embraced NYC manners like a native. What else would I say?
It turned out I didn’t end up saying anything at all. I swallowed the words as I saw it…him.…all in a split second. I saw the dark blond hair and olive skin, the familiar profile, the way he held himself on the balls of his feet, cautious and loose. A fighter. A warrior. I saw it all in an instant and I gave him what he deserved. Not a word, not
