Roadkill

open his mouth. Niko’s hand firmly cut off the interruption. He would’ve guessed what I’d promised. Robin would’ve guessed too if his mouth weren’t always a half second faster than his brain.

Catcher dipped his head, accepting my promise. I’d sounded like a smart-ass when I said it-I couldn’t help it. Smart-ass was my native tongue, but I meant it and he knew it. The yellow eyes were on mine again, holding me to the assurance. He managed to hide his soul this time.

I added, “But he’ll find a cure. Rafferty’s the most stubborn bastard I’ve met, aside from Niko.” The furry head nodded again, the eyes rolling in “Ain’t that the truth” acknowledgment before they blinked and the muzzle wrinkled. That’s when the wolf typed a PS:

BTW, could you get some cologne or Febreze or something? Sorry, Cal, but you’re killing me here. He gave me a sheepish, sideways grin, then added, Take it out of the twenty-five thousand. Fair’s fair.

“My smell? You’re bitching about how I smell?” I slammed the laptop shut. “Oh, you son of a bitch. Do I complain about the fur? Another fifty miles and I’ll be hacking up hairballs. Did I bitch when you ate half the Twinkies?” Actually I had, but they were my Twinkies. “And let’s talk about Delilah, not my girlfriend, but we are doing it, but do I ask you to make it harder for her to hit on you? Hell, no.” More like there was no point in asking. Delilah would do what Delilah would do, but damn it, I was pissed. And I’d never been one not to share my feelings, especially that one.

“I never would’ve thought I’d rather discuss a pestilence-spreading living corpse than listen any longer to this conversation,” Robin groaned from the passenger seat before reaching into his linen blazer-he was all dressed up for the road trip-and pulling out a slim roll of cloth. He untied it and with one quick flip, unrolled it down the back of the front bench seat like a professional assassin from a James Bond movie. It held about ten glass vials. “Choose your poison. From Bulgaria, Aqua at the top; Bijan and several others far too good for you in the middle; and the neutralizer that blocks one from any and every nose, including werewolves’, at the bottom. I sell that to Delilah by the gallon to keep her place Auphe-free and you a secret from the Kin. Up until recently, at least.”

“Forget it,” I snapped. “Einstein here can soak me up. I hope I get Auphe killer funk all over him. I hope…”

Niko bent his arm over the seat, took the last vial, and squirted me liberally, not once looking away from the road. Catcher grinned at me, tongue lolling, as a bead of the liquid rolled down the line of my nose, poised at the tip, then dropped off. Chuffing in amusement, the wolf fished around in the seat, finally raising his hindquarters to pull out one of my old T-shirts from beneath, and offered it to me with his muzzle.

At the volunteering of my shirt covered with his ass fur, I gave him a snarl every bit the equal of his earlier one. “Yeah, I’m wiping my face with that.”

He grinned and tossed it into the wind. It was up over our heads and then gone. Just because I didn’t want it then didn’t mean I didn’t want it at all. I could’ve washed it. “That’s coming out of your twenty-five thousand too,” I gritted. “That was worth at least three”-eyes slitted, I amended-“okay, two cans of Alpo, you mutt.” He didn’t seem to much care about my loss as he lifted his nose into that same wind and enjoyed the ride, all the while ignoring me. He was back to Catcher. Business taken care of and living in the moment, and that moment was flying in the wind-heaven for any canine-related creature.

By the time we reached Omaha, I’d given in to the boredom, the ultimate forgive-and-forget incentive, and was back on the laptop, playing hangman with Catcher. Not a very exciting game, especially when he won every time. It was beginning to be a trend-losing in Go Fish to a chupacabra and hangman to a Wolf. What the hell was a Paphiopedilum bellatulum anyway? An endangered orchid, Niko informed me. “What is wrong with you?” I asked the Wolf. “That’s what you learned in college? What about bonging beers? Banging sorority chicks? Road trips?” I caught myself. “Right. That’s what we’re on now. I can see why you skipped them.”

“Spring breaks.” Rafferty yawned, straightening from his nap. “The spring breaks were good, except this ass stole most of the girls.” Catcher was grinning again, which I took to be a smug agreement.

“Speaking of women,” Niko began, turning enough to flash a stern look at me. “ Cal?”

He was right. Catcher and Rafferty were in this. They needed to know all of the dangers, not just about Suyolak. I put the computer back in their bag and rested my hands on my knees. “Delilah,” I said matter-of-factly, “she’s going to try to kill me. I think. Hell, I don’t know. She might. She might not. But the Kin know about her and me. I have that from a reliable source-as reliable as a knife and an axe can make it anyway. She’ll have to do something.”

“What concerns me is not knowing what exactly that might be,” my brother added as he took the first exit in search of food. “With the Kin, options are limited. We assume she was offered the choice of execution by her Alpha or by her pack and her Alpha. I don’t underestimate her by any means in that regard. It would probably take them both. Her second option, the one I imagine she chose, would be killing Cal. They know he was involved in killing the Alpha Cerberus, and, amoral criminals that they are, they don’t consider him worthy of life even outside of that.” That was Niko’s polite way of saying they considered me an unnatural freak and ridding New York of me would make it an all-around better place to eat, sleep, and lift a leg.

“Our good friend Caliban was of the opinion that it would be fine entertainment to let her come along so that we might play a game of ‘Does Cal get screwed tonight or does Cal get screwed tonight?’ ” Goodfellow drawled. “The second ‘screwed’ being, of course, Delilah eating his liver with ‘some fava beans and a nice Chianti. ’ I’ve never been a fan of fava beans myself; a little too spicy. I like a calm stomach when killing or having sex or doing both simultaneously. The last,” he said pointedly to me, “is my bet on how Delilah will make her run at you. I recognize my own. She is a creature of very particular appetites.”

“You’re usually too lazy to kill unless you can’t avoid it,” I said. It was a way to escape the conversation for a few seconds, but it was also true. Robin had once done something similar to what he’d said to save a girl I’d known-and loved. He’d killed a succubus, and considering succubi were predators who killed with sex, I imagined he’d done it in the midst of the act. But I hadn’t asked, and he hadn’t told. He had done it for me and for the girl. There hadn’t been much more to say.

The puck was an unbelievable fighter with thousands of years, maybe hundreds of thousands, to sharpen his skills, but he didn’t much seek out battles anymore. He was satisfied with the good life unless, like now, we could use his help. Thanks to Niko and me, we’d brought him out of retirement, and while he was our friend-and as lonely as he’d been, had been desperate to be our friend, I still wasn’t sure we’d done him any favors.

“I’ve mellowed over the years,” Robin retorted. “And there were none that didn’t deserve what I gave them. At least from my point of view at the time.” His carelessly jaded smile reminded me of another puck who once had almost killed us all. It made me damn glad Robin was a friend-had fought so hard to make Niko and me accept him as one. And mellow was good. It didn’t make me like his cat any better, though.

“Anyway”-I rolled up an empty Twinkie wrapper and tossed it at him-“long story not short enough, Delilah will probably try to kill me, but I wanted to give her a choice.” That didn’t make me soft. It made me a guy who’d been given a lot of chances in my life when I’d done bad things… They could be blamed on a creature that had taken me over, blamed on genes that should never have existed, much less have been combined with human ones. It didn’t matter who or what was behind the things I’d done. What did matter was I’d been given chances to prove I was better than that. I’d be one damn big hypocrite if I denied Delilah the same.

“Very noble. Very giving and understanding. Very much reeking of bullshit.” Robin couldn’t read minds, but he didn’t have to. This was his field of expertise. “It’s the sex, Hugh Hefner. Intercourse, coitus, carnal knowledge… especially the way Wolves do it, but one thing it is not is philanthropy.”

“As if I could even touch the level of horndog you’ve reached in your life,” I snorted. “I’m surprised you have a dick left at all. That it’s not whittled down to a toothpick.”

“If this is the way it’s going to be the whole way, I’m going to get another car.” Rafferty rubbed his eyes and yawned. “This is why you meditate, Niko? To keep from ripping them to small-enough pieces that even I couldn’t put them back together? Not that I would bother to try without one helluva fee.”

“Let’s say it helps. Partially. At times. I’m looking into additional philosophies.” Niko parked at the first restaurant we spotted. A truck stop. “We should eat on the road. Except for the pneumonia in Omaha,