Black Death himself?” The grin widened. “He is a jackal, only good for feeding on the dead that fall in my path.”
I moved to leap over the seat. Nobody talked about my cousin like that-nobody. I felt hands on me, Cal and my cousin holding me back. Suyolak raised his hands to seemingly hook withered fingers over the top of the windshield, his bleached eyes staring dead on into mine. “Why, look at you, brave dog. Look at what has been done to you,” he said with a gloating marvel. “Maybe I was wrong.” The eyes moved left, to Rafferty. “Maybe you will entertain me. I kill, but you took his mind. Which is worse? Which is more thrilling?” A bone-pale tongue tip touched the upper lip. “The taste of that, you left his life and took half his soul… well done, my Wolf brother. We are two of a kind after all.”
Then he was gone. The bastard was gone.
I settled back on my haunches. My teeth were still bared, as much at Niko and Cal as they were for Suyolak-for getting us into this. For getting Rafferty into this. Then I shook my head, fur flying, and turned to stick my nose directly in my cousin’s ear. He was frozen. It was more in the face of the accusation than in the hideously dessicated one of Suyolak, I knew. Suyolak had hit my cousin directly in a wound five years in the festering. He hurt him, like no one else could. And now I was the only one who could reach him. I blew through my nose hard, sending an ice-cold spray against his ear-drum. He jerked back to the here and now and away from my muzzle. He scowled before saying with a sigh, “Yeah, yeah. I know.”
Not your fault. You did the best you could, the best any healer alive could. I said it silently and hoped he heard me, smelled it, that he really did know. It was the truth, but even if it weren’t, I would’ve said the same thing.
It was what family did.
9
You shouldn’t see things like that in daylight. You’d think it would be better… to see the yellowed spiral of a long nail scrape playfully down the windshield… in the sun. It would be less of a horror, less of an icicle stab to the heart. It wasn’t. It was worse in the day. It didn’t belong. Suyolak was wrong, but he was so much more wrong in the light than in the dark, because there was no way to deny it-to deny him. There was no way to say the nightmare was just that… only a nightmare. In our life, denial could get you killed, but a few seconds of it when the time was right could also keep you sane. Just like salt… A little made the bland taste a little better and a lot raised your blood pressure, dropped you with a massive stroke, and boom, you were dead. Denial and salt, not totally bad things on the surface of it, but in the end they both could equal death; who knew?
Lucky we had a healer with us.
Although from the heat of the unblinking glower searing the side of my face, someone wished we didn’t. I’d gone back to poking around on the laptop after Suyolak disappeared. We didn’t all sit around and discuss the meaning of it. What’s to say? He knew we were coming-we already knew that. He wanted to kill us-still no news. He wasn’t impressed by Rafferty. He was an egomaniacal genocidal killer; impressed or not, he wouldn’t show it. Egomaniacal genocidal killers rarely did. If they did, they’d be sensible, modest genocidal killers, and those were fucking hard to come by.
So, no discussion needed. Niko drove on, leaving Illinois behind us as the Lincoln dipped south toward Omaha, Nebraska. Googled five dead there-same as what had hit me: viral pneumonia. I’d thought it before; I’d think it again, but, goddamnit, if he was doing all this now, what the hell would he do if he got out of that coffin? They were futile, poisonous thoughts and I gave up on them before they drove me nuts. Besides, I had a distraction to help me out there.
I had to make an effort not to raise a hand and feel the side of my face to make sure it wasn’t melting from the acid gaze. Finally, I couldn’t take it anymore. I turned to face the yellow eyes, radioactive twin suns of absolutely nuclear pissiness aimed at me-which was unusual for Catcher. He was the happiest damn Wolf I’d ever run across. Lassie had nothing on him. He was happy, cheerful, probably a Boy Scout as a kid-well, considering what he was, a Cub Scout. But with the current situation, I could understand the change in mood. “Look, I’m sorry, okay? If he were my cousin, I’d be mad as hell that anyone got him involved in this mess too.” Rafferty was asleep again. He’d driven all night, healed me, and destroyed millions of hyperdeadly mutated germs floating in the parking lot and office. A helluva thing to see-that crimson explosion-but also a helluva drain on your resources, Wolf stamina or not.
But past all that, I could see he wasn’t the same as he’d been when I’d last seen him, years ago. There were lines that weren’t just weariness-permanent lines, years of disappointment. The last thing Rafferty and Catcher needed was us fucking up their already-fucked-up lives. That we didn’t have a choice didn’t make it any better. “I’m sorry,” I repeated, “but this son of a bitch Suyolak can take down the whole goddamn world. Frankly, I don’t give a shit about most of the world because it damn sure doesn’t seem to give a shit about me, but there are a few people in it whom I do care about. Even if we hadn’t called you, even if Rafferty hadn’t answered Nik-hadn’t felt that evil mojo tickle-once Suyolak got loose, eventually it would’ve become your problem too. A few hundred thousand dead people would have Rafferty after Suyolak sooner or later. He’s single-minded, but sometimes you have to do what you have to do.”
The dark brown lip that was peeled back to show Catcher’s dinnerware didn’t move at first, but after a few seconds it slowly lowered, but the eyes were no friendlier. They did look away, though, as he searched for his pencil on the floorboards. When he located it, he reached over with it to the laptop, switched to the window that held the Word document already up, and beneath the
He had a point. We were getting fifty thousand for this. It wasn’t fair to expect them to put their lives on the line for nothing. Robin never took our money… He had more than we’d ever see in our lifetimes, but Rafferty and Catcher weren’t Kin or immortal con men. They worked for a living or had. I’d seen the tired, old ranch house they’d lived in. They could use the money, especially to keep their search for a cure going. “Yeah, that’s reasonable. How about half? Twenty-five thousand? Assuming you want a penny that Abelia-Roo has touched with her poisonous hands. Probably dusted it with arsenic powder, the bitch.”
The Wolf gave a shrug so subtle it didn’t move his cousin, again slouched against him, as if to say money was money, which was true enough. All money was touched by blood sometime or another-the way of the world. Clicking the caps lock off-assured I was paying proper attention-he typed again.
And I’d thought Suyolak was bizarre. Now here I was negotiating with a Wolf who typed at least twice as fast as I did and without having to use spell-check. If Lassie had had a laptop, Timmy could’ve cut his down-the-well time in half. “Okay,” I said dubiously, “what do you want?”
Taptaptaptaptap. When he was finished, the screen may as well have been a bloody strip of his soul plastered in light and pixels. I gave it the respect it deserved and read it in silence this time. It was what he wanted.
Big order. Tall order. But he was right. Without Rafferty, I wouldn’t be sitting here. He’d saved me twice now. Without him, Niko would be without a brother and I’d have died at least two damn unpleasant deaths. We owed him and even if we didn’t, I knew what it was like to contemplate life without the only family you had. No one deserved that existence, definitely not the man who’d saved me and was now ready to try to save the world.
“All right,” I said, grim at the memories and the ever-shitty nature of what- ifs. “Hey, why not? Adoption’s the big thing in Hollywood right now. At least he’s already potty trained.” Up front, Robin started to
