Roadkill

howl in terror, and we were off on the Leandros Road Trip to Hell.

Meditation led to control-sometimes. Other times, meditation led to naps in the warm sun that streamed over the convertible. Take it a little further and naps led to dreams. And when the dreams turned into a nightmare, I wasn’t much surprised. With my life? Get real.

But there was a difference between this nightmare and my usual ones. It was startlingly clear. Normally I have only flashes of claws and teeth, darkness, and the sensation of falling, pain, and screaming. Fun. Flashes were all I wanted of that. I was into abstract dreaming. If you could frame one, you could sell it as art… extremely deranged, horrific art. This one, though-this one was crystal clear, painted not with a brush but with the sharp edges of a knife.

The day was gone. It was night with a moon so huge and brilliant that the horse cast shadows on the dried mud road. There were reins wrapped around my hand, and I knew if I turned my head, I’d see a gypsy wagon painted in red, yellow, and green, although the colors would be muted and faded even under this moon. A harvest moon-I had no idea what that meant, but I knew that’s what hung pregnant and heavy in the sky.

“It’s a time for the gadje to celebrate what they scrabbled in the dirt for. Their plump and juicy vegetables, which later on we’ll barter for, stealing those muddy farmers blind in the process. Then we’ll make a nice stew and drink wine to toast their stupidity. With full bellies, we’ll sleep with our wives or the willing wanton. The good old days.” The man was straddling the broad rump of the horse and facing me. He had hair to his shoulders. It was black like mine, but with a slight wave to it. He also had dusky skin, dark eyes, and a sly and cheerful smile. He was dressed in black pants and a rough, woven shirt. Cream or white, I couldn’t tell. Over that was an embroidered vest, his best festival gear. His feet were bare and dirty-roguish. He was a good- looking guy, Rom through and through. The women probably loved him, gadje and gypsy both. Robin would’ve jumped him in a heartbeat.

And that’s what made it disturbing when that smile widened. “And when we leave that farm, Mama, Papa, and their three little ones will be dead. Cholera. In minutes they’ll be rolling on the floor, clawing at their throats while bucketfuls of vomit gush from their mouths. Masses of it until they choke on it. I’ll let their dog live, though. I like dogs. Not that they like me.” He swayed with the horse and rested his hands on his knees. “They don’t like you either, eh, my friend? Because they know who you are, what you are, just as I know what you are.” The horse stopped and the man leaned slightly toward me. “I can cure you.”

That’s when he changed. The shoulder-length hair, its waves turned to tangled clumps, fell to his corpse- raddled feet. The clothes were rags and the body beneath them a skin-covered skeleton. The face was the same: a skull with skin; dingy teeth framed by shriveled lips. The hands that had been resting on his knees were now resting on mine. His nails were at least a foot long-thickened and yellow. They were twisted and corkscrewed, a graveyard party favor. The eyes were blank white orbs. There was nothing to see in a pitch-black coffin, was there? He’d kept himself alive… barely… all these years, devouring himself, but there was no point in wasting energy in keeping your vision if there was nothing to see.

“Suyolak.” I jammed a hand against his bony sternum and pushed him away from me. The horse was a skeleton now too, one covered with a dusty hide and a slow swish of a matted tail.

The living skull grinned. “The Plague of the World”-one perverted spiral of a nail touched my own chest-“meets the Unmaker of the World. What good Rom doesn’t like a little competition?” The nail was touching my chest, but I felt it in my head. “I could remake the Unmaker, Caliban. I could kill those worthless parts of you and let the better take over. You could be whole. For the first time in your life. One. Complete.”

There was an ache in my brain that sharpened to a stabbing pain. “You can’t make me human,” I gritted. “No one can.”

“Human?” The skull flew back and the laughter spiked the pain in my head to the nearly unbearable. “No, bar. No, my brother. I said cure, not castrate.” The white eyes glowed like the moon. “I’ll make you what you were meant to be all along. Auphe.” The nail flicked up as the palm of the desiccated hand moved to take its place on my chest. “So easy it would be, brother. You’re human on the outside only. Let me put you right. Let me cure you.”

For a second I saw myself as if I were separate from my body. I saw albino skin, jaggedly sharp angled joints, pointed chin, a legion of metal teeth, an acid rainfall of pallid hair, and eyes that were a blazing red inferno that would eat you alive.

If you didn’t already live there.

If it weren’t already home.

I woke up on the living room couch, trying to back my way through it. I’d already pulled my gun from its holster and was a millimeter of force away from shooting our front door. With my other hand I was feeling desperately at my face. It was all I could do not to try to rip it off. But it was the same as it had always been. Human. No matter what that bastard said, I was at least half human. It didn’t seem like much, but it was. I wasn’t an Auphe in a cheap polyester human Halloween costume. No fucking way. I put the Eagle back in the holster, grip sweaty and tight, and drew in ragged lungfuls of air. Human-human enough. That was all that mattered-never mind how I ended up on the couch; never mind the pure-Auphe trick.

My cell phone rang. Not a big surprise. You went to sleep in a car somewhere in Ohio and woke up in your loft back in New York and that was going to make anyone’s sphincter pucker, even Niko’s. I ran a quick hand over my face again, just to make sure, and answered it. “It’s not my fault,” I said as soon as I flipped the phone open.

“Somehow I doubt that,” Niko said grimly. “Where are you?”

“Back at the loft. I had”-Jesus, how humiliating-“a bad dream. Either that or Suyolak paid me a visit. If I get to pick, I think I’ll take the dream.”

There was a pause. It was either Niko thinking, un-puckering, or both. Finally he said, “We can’t rule out that he did speak to you. Healers ‘talk’ to your body while they mend it. They tell the blood when to clot or when to thin, tumors to shrink. It’s a combination of telepathy, telekinesis, and skills as yet uncategorized. Your brain is part of your body. He well could have spoken to you while you slept and your conscious defenses were down. But as fascinating as I find all my own lectures to be, I’m more concerned with your building gates in your sleep.” I heard him take a deep breath and go on more evenly. “And how you’re going to get back here.”

It couldn’t have been the most entertaining event to be driving down the highway and without any warning see your sleeping brother glow gray, then pop out of existence-the same brother he’d thought dead months ago. It was enough to strain even Niko’s legendary calm. “Do you think you could pull over into the emergency lane?” I asked.

“Do you imagine I’m still driving down the road looking for a new third to chip in on gas money?” he snapped. “I’ve already pulled off and backed up to where you disappeared.”

Definitely strained. I closed my eyes and felt for the car. It was like following a path in my mind, gray and winding… cold… silver and mist. “Can you find us?” Niko’s voice echoed distantly in my ear. He knew I couldn’t travel to a place I hadn’t been to before at some time in the past. I had to know the way. I’d never left a moving car before though, but…

“I know the way,” I said confidently. And because I knew the opportunistic bitch had made her move, I added, “Toss Salome in the back and I’m there.” I built the gate around me instead of in front of me- didn’t want to dissolve the dashboard, and then, as I’d told Nik…

I was there.

6

Cal

Suyolak’s leaving mental landmines for us, which meant he knew or felt us following him, or