Roadkill

it would be the right thing to do, the noble thing, the Niko thing. And yet Niko himself would never let me. He never had before.

And he thought I had survival issues.

“Brothers.” I held out my hand and he gripped that instead of my arm. “But if you had any damn sense, you’d kick my butt off a ten-story building.”

“Brothers,” he reaffirmed. “And I know, but smothering you with your pillow would be less messy. You know I despise messy.” Behind the joke, he’d answered me in all seriousness. For the first time I thought he did actually know and wasn’t in denial about who or what I really was; yet that knowing still didn’t make a difference to him.

Hell, Niko was as screwed up as I was.

It was a revelation, but it didn’t change the fact that it was also a moving moment, doubly so when a foot slammed into my ribs, moving me over and against Nik. “This? This is why I give you the money that keeps starvation from our door? So you can sit in the dirt like a worthless beggar, the soulless monster and his clan traitor of a bar?” I’d picked up by now that bar was brother, and I also discovered an evil, vicious old woman could swing a mean old-lady shoe. Her foot was the size of a child’s, but it had the feel of a three-hundred-pound football player’s size thirteen… with a pointy heel.

An arm came over me and across my chest to hold me back. Niko knew before I did myself that I was going for Abelia-Roo and I couldn’t blame it on the Auphe. I could’ve been human to the last cell, with ancestors who came over on the damn Mayflower, squatted on Plymouth Rock having tea and biscuits, and never saw a cute little fairy under a cabbage leaf, much less screwed a monster, and I would’ve felt the same: homicidal. She was calling Nik a traitor, when he’d almost died because of her? That took balls and if she’d been a man, I would’ve relieved her of them.

“We wait and we wait, because of you. Suyolak causes this.” She waved an arm at what was left of the wreck down the interstate. “We hire you to work, and work means you find ways around Suyolak’s machinations.” Dusty black and purple skirts rustled as she aimed another kick.

Niko caught her foot with his spare hand, which was smart. If I had caught it, I would’ve turned it into a paperweight and she could’ve beat her next subcontractors with the stump that was left. “Attracting the attention of the authorities will only slow us down and give Suyolak more time to pull ahead of us. Also the fact that I won’t let my brother take your foot home as a souvenir doesn’t mean I won’t pick up your eighty pounds of venom-spewing ancient body and stuff you back in that eye-searing RV from Easter Egg Hell. Now go.” He released her foot. “And reexamine your knowledge of souls. Those without aren’t equipped to make judgments about the status of others.”

She hissed in a way that made any monster, including an Auphe, seem like an amateur. I was too hard on myself, because she gave me a run for my money and then some. Strangely enough, it made me feel a little better-all human and worse than ninety-nine percent of the monsters I’d run across. Skirts swirling, she turned, less than five feet tall, but that didn’t make a difference. When she moved back down the highway, she was a miniature tornado of pure spite.

“Plague of the World and all,” I said, getting to my feet, “is Suyolak honestly that bad?”

Niko was already up. “Next to her, maybe not, but we’re not comparing apples and oranges. We’re comparing black widows and black mambas. Both can make you wish you were dead. Now let’s rid the world of at least half of that combination.”

This time Rafferty drove. Any one of us would’ve had to fight him for the wheel. We were close, he said. As a wolf or Wolf on the scent, he would know. As a healer, he knew absolutely; he’d already told us. He wanted Suyolak and not for a fee or to save the world. He wanted him for Catcher and that was a thousand times more motivation than the rest of us had. I’d seen the same motivation and intensity in my brother a half hour ago that Rafferty was showing now in nailing the antihealer to save his cousin. Either kill Suyolak or drain him dry, whatever it took.

Best of luck to him.

14

Catcher

Knock knock.

I’d said that to Cal, but I should’ve been saying it to myself too.

Knock knock. Who’s there?

Catcher… as I’d told myself a hundred times before. Catcher. I was Catcher, yes, now. But before? No. There wasn’t any point to lying to myself. I’d gone bye-bye. That was six times in the past month. I could blame what had happened earlier for my last trip if I wanted, but that was still the most times ever. I could only pin one of those on Cal.

I’d seen a different side to him with the Ordogs, his Auphe side, the one I’d tried to ignore at our McDonald’s McNugget-up-the-nose stop. There was no ignoring it at the creek. I’d been right there with him when we caught up with the truck traveling off the road and also caught up with Cal ’s own traveling. What he did, I couldn’t describe it to anyone else but a Wolf. Humans couldn’t see what we could. I’d been in human form and wolf form and although as a human I saw more colors, as a wolf I saw depths and textures humans couldn’t imagine. I saw reality bleeding around Cal every time he disappeared and reappeared. It was like a visual scream. The world was screaming.

I wasn’t sure if that’s what tipped me over into wolf and nothing but wolf. It could have been that or the battle. Sleek black shapes here, there, everywhere. There was flesh ripping under my teeth and the taste of blood. I wasn’t Kin. I was proof that all Wolves weren’t criminals and careless murderers. I’d been a biologist. My cousin was a healer. I didn’t go looking for trouble. Sometimes you couldn’t avoid it, no matter how hard you tried, not in our world where almost everyone was a predator-it was only a matter of big or little, slow or fast.

But me? I was a peaceful guy, laid back and fun loving. In the day, I could bong a beer and tutor you in anatomy. I’d pledged a frat… all the better to blend in, and, to my shame, get free beer. Once in a while in my past I’d run into those a little less nonviolent than I was. I’d tried to be reasonable, but there were those who wouldn’t listen to reason. Then there were the times you just had to go to the woods, the forest, the jungle-whatever was available-to run and hunt. We were Wolves, first and foremost, above all other things. It was natural, and there was no denying we were at our most wolf in the hunt.

Either Cal or the blood; it didn’t make a difference what had been the trigger. I remembered tearing into the Ordogs and then I remembered waking up in the car. In between were the dreams you forgot two seconds after waking up. You knew there’d been something and you had a sense of the emotion, even the happy, slow drift of colors, but anything tangible was gone. I woke up floating in blissful satisfaction and to a full stomach. Deer. I could still taste it. It was a familiar taste. It was what we “tame” suburban Wolves tended to hunt. The Kin would kill and usually eat their enemy. I couldn’t do that. If it talked, I couldn’t eat it. It could deserve to be eaten, but it didn’t make a difference. If it could talk, I couldn’t knosh down on it. I was a softy that way. I couldn’t eat octopus either. I’d done a study on them in college. Those things could open jars to get at food. Jars… with screw-top lids. That was smart. I didn’t remember how long it took me to figure out how to open jars when I was a kid. I knew it hadn’t been anywhere near as fast as an octopus and I’d gotten all gold stars in kindergarten.

Rafferty had once said I was the closest thing to a wolf vegetarian he’d ever seen. A tree- hugging, vegetarian wolf-worse yet, Wolf, and he was embarrassed to be seen with me. This from the guy who healed broken wings on birds and tossed them back, free, into the sky. “What?” he’d gruff. “I just ordered pizza. I’ll take pizza over blackbird any day.”

It was why he fought the Ordogs as wolf instead of killing them with a brush of his fingers. It was to give them a chance. It was what was right and fair. He’d only ever killed as a healer to give mercy, the way he had the pregnant woman Suyolak had corrupted beyond all hope of curing. That he was going to change that