them with sweat. The half- nude Goodfellow wasn’t what made me puke… I’d seen more of him than that once, accidentally. It had mainly made me feel inadequate. It probably would’ve made a stallion at stud feel inadequate. No, this was the heat, the spores sprouting a new field of weeds in my respiratory system most likely equipped with grazing rabbits, and a run twice as long as I’d ever done.
When we reached the house and I pulled on my jacket to cover the holster and gun, I didn’t mind the sniff Catcher gave me. I offended even myself and I couldn’t smell the half Auphe that went with it. You can’t smell your own genes.
I hadn’t paid too much attention when we’d passed the house earlier. Tired and droopy, small, once painted chocolate brown but now the color of mud, one story, three windows and a door in front, two windows on each side, and a reddish-colored pit bull lying on its side on the porch. That was enough details as far as I was concerned-house, points of entry and exit, and a possible threat sleeping on the porch, but Niko could’ve told you if the dog was male or female, the classification of scrubby grass in the yard, how many shingles were missing from the roof, and if the wind chimes hanging from the one tree were made of wood, metal, or glass.
There was one spindly tree in the front yard-I didn’t care what classification it was-and I leaned against it. Waves of sweat rolled down every inch of skin I had. The red dog had been still lying in the same position as when we passed it hours ago. It had lifted its cone-shaped head when we’d come down the road and grinned at us broadly. A happy dog, it liked Catcher and Rafferty instantly, cheerful almond eyes on them. Then it paid attention to me. A lazy, sleepy dog, too, or it would’ve caught a whiff of me long before I came into view. Dogs can smell that far and much farther. White bloomed around its eyes and its ears went back as it began to foam at the mouth, not in aggression, but in fear. It inched backward across the dirt and brown grass for several feet, then turned and ran, disappearing behind the house.
Dogs didn’t like me. Never had. Never would. One drop of Auphe blood was one drop too much. Wolves were the same, with the occasional exception-Catcher, Rafferty… Delilah. It was not the time for thinking about that; it was time for breathing and not puking again. The second didn’t do much for my rep as cranky monster-slayer.
“I hate to be the bearer of bad news, especially when it affects me, but I don’t see a car or a garage,” Goodfellow pointed out. “However, I suppose we could use their phone.”
“It wouldn’t hurt the situation if you put your clothes back on,” I said as I wiped yellow-tinged sweat from my face.
“It depends. It might actually help to have the physical embodiment of a living sex god standing on their porch, revealed in all his magnificent glory,” Robin retorted, but began dressing as Salome jumped down to investigate the scraggly yard with a tail twitch of curiosity. Niko was already at the door. He knocked once while I was still depending on the twig of a tree to hold me up. “You should’ve let me travel. Open a gate for us all. We could’ve been here in sec-” I shut up in mid-word as Niko turned a dark gaze on me. “But running is good. Cardio and all that. Glad we did it.”
The look only became darker as my brother waited five seconds, knocked again, and then kicked in the door. It was too bad for the lazy son of a bitch who couldn’t get his ass off the couch fast enough. He yelped as the door flew open, barely missing him. It was a lesson for the kiddies. No car didn’t always equal no one at home, and if someone knocked at your door, you should answer it promptly.
“What the fuck?” the guy demanded. He was a tall man in a dirty white T-shirt and boxers that hung on what had probably once been a large frame. Now he was skinny, all bones, bad teeth, and hair that would’ve been blond, but now was so greasy and lank that it was brownish gray.
“Excuse me,” Niko said smoothly as he walked over the remains of the flattened door. “You should be quicker about answering your door. We need to use your phone.”
I concentrated on getting my ragged breathing under control and heaved myself upright to follow him into the gloom of the house. No bright and sunny windows here-just blinds and heavy drapes. There were shapes of furniture-a sagging couch, a fake leather recliner with a perfectly preserved ass imprint, and a shotgun propped up in one corner, which our proud home owner was lunging for. “Hey,” I said with satisfaction as I jammed an elbow into his side to block him, sending him tumbling back onto the couch that had been his downfall. “A shotgun? For me? You shouldn’t have.” As I’d lost several of my old toys in the car fire, I thought I deserved it. I grabbed it as the guy nursed his ribs, then cracked it open to discover it was even loaded with slugs. Buckshot was okay, but slugs did the kind of damage I was into. I went searching for more ammunition.
Niko did a quick check of the place, sparing little sympathy for the man moaning on the decrepit couch. We spent most of our work chasing down or working with monsters, the criminal kind. It wasn’t hard to spot a bent human as well. This guy didn’t smell right and it had nothing to do with his hygiene. It didn’t take long to find out why. Nik was quick with his search and the house was about a thousand square feet-a good size by your average New Yorker’s standards, but small and cheap by the local ones. “Meth lab in the bathroom,” he said as he headed for the phone.
“An entrepreneur,” Goodfellow commented as Niko picked up the phone on a table by the recliner. “I’ll wait outside. I have no desire to be involved in two explosions in one day, especially in a domicile I haven’t seen the likes of since I lunched with some Neanderthals.” He went back out the front door. Rafferty and Catcher hadn’t bothered to come in.
“Bastards. What the fuck do you want? You keep away from my stuff, you got it? Stay the fuck away.” His breath was far more nerve- racking than his threat, and as the threat wasn’t nerve-racking at all, it didn’t truly emphasize the rankness of his breath.
I tapped our friendly meth- head on the shoulder with the barrel of the shotgun when it looked as if he’d gathered enough courage together to get back up. “What do we want? You don’t listen, do you? The phone. Just the phone… oh, and the gun. Or if you have a problem with that, we might also want to bang your head against the floor until it splits like a melon. Up to you. I’m flexible. You choose.”
He picked not having his head treated like a basketball. Some guys are no fun. Seemingly. But he pleasantly surprised me by yanking a bowie knife, or an el cheapo knock-off version he’d picked up at a swap meet, from beneath the couch cushion. Niko had taught me many disciplines of thought when it came to knife fighting, and there were many, although they all seemed to come down to two options: “You’re going to get cut, but suck it up and take the bastard down” versus “I will not be cut and dispose of my opponent like a child armed with a plastic picnic knife.” The second option was mostly held by those living in a fantasy world where they whacked off to martial arts magazines and Chuck Norris movies.
But there were times your opponent was so pathetic that you could actually get away without a nick. Our meth buddy was one of those. He may as well have been a poodle with a switchblade-a hyped-up poodle, but still a poodle. He wasn’t worth it. He definitely wouldn’t provide any entertainment or further my education in knife fighting. Instead, I kept my distance from his desperately jagged slashes and smacked him with the barrel of the shotgun again, this time on top of his head. He went facedown into some truly nasty carpet or the flat nap that was left of it.
Over the next forty minutes he occasionally got to his hands and knees, felt around with a floppy, uncoordinated hand for the knife while dripping a good dose of drool. I’d wait until he got the knife in his hand-he looked so proud at the accomplishment, like a kid graduating from kindergarten-and then I’d whack him over the head again. After two times, Rafferty stuck his head inside the door and told me to stop playing with my food and either fish or cut bait.
I almost protested that’s not what I was doing, but it would have been pointless. On the subject of food and playing with it, a Wolf would know.
Niko, while he wasn’t cutting the phone line, didn’t step up to defend me, which meant I probably
We left behind us a nonfunctioning phone, not that that ass was in any position to call the cops. We also left that same ass unconscious on the floor. Maybe if we were lucky, his dog would come back and eat him. It was a happy dog, but happy dogs get hungry too. And an hour later we were back at the exit that had
