And Goodfellow, of course, jumped on the bandwagon. His mouth was faster than a speeding bullet, in all sorts of ways I didn’t want to think about, like all pucks, but definitely when it came to talking.
“Hunt no more? That’s dead for Wolves,” he pounced. “If you can’t take Suyolak, you’d better speak up so we can turn this parade around. I can think of better ways to die. Ten thousand at the very least.”
Rafferty ignored him, but this was a puck we were talking about. You couldn’t ignore one of them any more than you could a kindergarten class with each kid hyped up on five pounds of pure cane sugar. Goodfellow asked again… and again… and then again. That was when my cousin paralyzed the puck’s vocal cords. When Goodfellow turned in the seat and started to swing a quick and what looked like a lethal fist, Rafferty leaned out of reach and, unimpressed, said, “Keep it up and your hair will fall out, your eyes cross, and I’ll make you impotent for the rest of your long life.” His eyes flickered back and forth between the colors of a noontime sun and a setting one. “There’s immortal and there’s immortally limp dicked. Think about it. You’re asking me to kill a healer. ‘Do no harm’ has fallen by the wayside. Got it?”
He didn’t wait for the puck to ponder the pros and cons of yapping endlessly like a newborn cub versus being the bald, double-visioned actor on the erectile dysfunction drug commercials for the rest of eternity. Instead, Raff handed the computer to Cal, slid down, leaned against me, and went to sleep, but not before murmuring too low for human hearing, “I’m not leaving your furry ass, Catch. Got that? Never.”
I didn’t complain at his weight against me as he began to snore. He needed it. He’d been up all night driving, and I’d heard Cal ’s call for help when Suyolak’s little present got him. I might have been getting my tail half chewed off by that mutant cat, but I could still hear. I rested my muzzle on top of Rafferty’s head, my fur mixing with his hair. He never had cared that much about getting haircuts in the old days… in high school or college. He was just that kind of guy who waited until his girlfriend dragged him to a barber. He didn’t think about it at all now; he just chopped at it with scissors when it got too long and hit the Salvation Army when his clothes wore out. That was his life now with me. I wanted it to be better when I was gone. I hoped he meant what he said, because I didn’t want him throwing that life away on Suyolak.
“Did healing you somehow infect him with your attitude?” Robin frowned at Cal, his vocal cords working again as one hand checked his hair and the other checked his crotch. He gave a long exhalation of relief when he was assured he was as puckable as he ever was. I rolled my eyes. Pucks. They were enough to make a Wolf change his mind about the whole Humane Society’s neutering campaign.
“Half human, half monster, all attitude,” Cal replied mockingly. He had attitude all right, but he came by it honestly. I had my problems, but I wasn’t sure I would’ve exchanged them for his. Although his girlfriend… Kin or not, she was something. White fur-I’d always had a thing for white fur. It reminded me of snow, racing across it under the moon and stars, and having sex in the chill under a pine tree laden with icicles. Rafferty wasn’t the only one who needed to get laid.
“I’m starving. And if I’m starving, I know Delilah is,” Cal went on, idly searching my computer for games. I perked my ears up. Delilah, that was good; talk more about Delilah. “I can wait. Delilah probably could wait, but I doubt she will.”
A Wolf with appetites; I liked that. Of course at this point, any Wolf with a pulse was looking good. It had been a long,
“That’s what drive-throughs and bad diners are made for, not to mention what you live for. I’ll stop at Omaha,” Niko said, not that concerned with his brother’s state of near starvation. “Did anyone-”
Cal interrupted him, “I was sick. I’m never sick. I could’ve died. I need to build my energy back up. At least-”
This time it was Niko’s turn to interrupt. A box of Twinkies was tossed over the top of the front seat to hit Cal squarely in the chest. That was a good interruption. Straight to the point. Niko was a man of few words and flying sugary snacks. I liked that in a human. “There,” he said sharply. “Happy? Convert your entire body to a Cal-shaped pile of sponge cake and creme. Now, may I continue?”
Cal immediately smelled contrite-more so than he would have for just annoying his brother. He’d said something to Niko that had sharply hit home, cut deeply to the bone. I didn’t know what it was, but he must’ve felt genuinely bad, because he let the Twinkies drop carelessly to the floorboards, which was a crime. I loved Twinkies. “Yeah, sorry. I was being a fucking idiot as usual. I’m listening now,” he responded quietly.
Okay, there was sorry and then there was stupid. He might not want a Twinkie, but I did. Before I could turn my head, though, and yip a protest, Niko exhaled and the scent of brooding worry faded to the more appropriate irritation. “Eat your Twinkies. You probably do need the energy.” He watched in the rearview mirror and waited while Cal unwrapped the first one, which I promptly snatched from his hand without disturbing Rafferty’s comfortable slump of sleep against me. Cal glared at me, which I ignored in creme- filled bliss, before he opened another. That was when Niko said, “Dr. Jones called again last night. Seattle professor Daniel Kirkland hasn’t been by his wife’s side for several days now, according to friends on the faculty, which is not just unusual. It’s unbelievable to them. They were the closest of couples. He has never given up hope and has never left her side since she slipped into a coma. They even said he typed on his computer with one hand while holding her hand with his other.” The computer he could’ve done his research on, found out the most likely location of Abelia-Roo’s clan… and Suyolak. “So there is a very good chance he is our man and our driver all in one. He might have hired men to do the stealing, but he didn’t trust anyone but himself to do the actual delivery.”
“And those guys killed Abelia’s men without thinking twice. Now he’s hauling Suyolak’s ass back home. Love can make you do some truly fucked-up shit.” Cal shook his head and looked like he was going to say something else, but he didn’t. He didn’t have to. I had the feeling everyone in this car, minus the cat, knew the last was truer than any of us cared to admit.
Niko cleared his throat and asked, “Did anyone have a Suyolak dream last night?”
Cal shook his head. “Like I said, I didn’t sleep much. I’m still waiting for one of you to have that fucking unparalleled joy.”
That’s right, I thought with a grumble to myself, rub it in. He might smell like Auphe, but he smelled like Delilah too under the soap of a morning shower. Goodfellow wasn’t happy either, muttering, “I had a dream or two, non-Suyolak related, and unfortunately for me, just dreams.”
“Yes, I and the long-suffering maid who will have to wash your sheets are more than aware,” Niko retorted. “So none of us dreamed of him?”
“One doesn’t have to sleep to dream. Life itself is only a dream, my brothers,” the nightmare spoke.
Rafferty’s head jerked up as he woke instantly. I growled and snapped, foam flying from my jaws. I couldn’t help it even though I knew he wasn’t really there. He had no scent. He wasn’t real. Suyolak-the nightmare that Niko and Cal had talked about. He wasn’t sitting cross-legged on the hood of the moving car, a skeleton covered with skin, pale moon eyes, and a gnarled mass of dusty dreadlocks that didn’t move in the rush of air that swept over the convertible. He wasn’t any of those things, although I saw him as he was. He made the dead cat look as normal and wholesome as our grandma Amelia’s apple and squirrel pie we’d eaten when we were cubs.
For a healer to appear in dreams was one thing. For a healer to appear as a hallucination in the brains of the conscious, that was another. That took the kind of healing power I didn’t want to think about. I remembered my thought that Rafferty was the best of this world and Suyolak the best of his. What if Suyolak was the best… period? What then?
“Don’t shoot, Cal,” Niko was saying. “He’s not actually there.”
“Yeah, I know.” But I saw that Cal ’s trigger finger was having trouble catching up with his brain, same as my snapping jaws were with mine. “But wouldn’t it be better to double-check?”
“I don’t want to buy a new windshield because of this talking disease.” Niko kept driving. Yes, a human was unfazed enough by the so-called Plague of the World sitting on his ancient boat of a car to keep it at an even seventy down the Lincoln. He was brave. His balls might not have been furry, but he most definitely had them. I had to give credit where it was due. He’d have made a good Wolf.
“That’s what you are, Suyolak, a disease. You’re not human; you’re not a person; you never were. You were born a living disease, and as all diseases do, you have a cure,” Niko continued.
The cracked and shriveled lips parted in a grin. “Do you think you’re my cure, Vayash? Or do you think that mongrel behind you is? Is my equal? That a cur can face the man who reaped a continent? The
