Roadkill

too many blonds in a crowd.

I hit the ground as two Ordogs sailed over me, missing me by inches. I heard them hiss and mutter in annoyance. “Food. Food gone. Food hide. Food like rabbit.” That was fine. Insult me all you want in a fight. I did it too, but it was only worth doing if you were the one walking away afterward. As they turned, literally in midair before landing-bodies slithering into a serpentine U-I shot them both. Other than bleeding and dying in the next breath, they had no further comment. In that same moment I was hit from the side by a big gray Wolf. When you couldn’t get your gun up in time, there was one move to save your throat from being ripped out. I’d done it before, but it didn’t mean I looked forward to doing it again. It worked, but it hurt like hell.

I rammed my forearm into the Wolf’s open jaws, back to the teeth that ground bone, not the ones up front made for tearing the meat. It kept my throat in one piece and let me put one bullet into its right eye. Werewolves were tough and could recover from most wounds, but the brain and the heart were as vulnerable as a human’s. Lead also did the job fine and was a whole lot cheaper than silver.

I kicked the body off me and was back up a split second before going down under three Ordogs. You wouldn’t think at the time, Christ, this was not my damn day. A murderous antihealer, a failing good healer, werewolves, Ordogs, and give a guy a break already. No, you might think that later… if you survived… while lying in bed nursing your wounds, because that was easier to swallow than what you actually thought at the time, which would be more of a less manly “Shitshitshitshitshit.” But that didn’t sound quite as macho, so you ran through the things you would’ve thought, might’ve mentally said, if you hadn’t been A) fighting for your life and B) not to be repetitive, but fighting for your fucking life.

My other hand already held my favorite revenant slicing combat knife. I sliced one sleek black body from jaw to tail and the fact it moaned, “No. Hurts. Hurts,” made me hesitate for less than a second before shooting the other two. I made it to my feet again, wearing a good deal of the Ordog I’d all but turned inside out, and this time, instead of being a target, I saw another one. A brown Wolf, a damn big one even by Wolf standards, was in midleap toward Niko’s back. Nik was taking care of four more Ordogs facing him and two more to the side. That didn’t mean he wasn’t aware of the Wolf and it didn’t mean he couldn’t take care of the Wolf, but he had a lot on his plate. I didn’t like to take chances if I didn’t have to, not when I had so few to take. I hit the Wolf from the side and rode it to the ground while pulling the trigger and putting one in its heart.

“Your charity, not that I need it, is appreciated.” Niko’s back hit mine as I climbed, again, to my feet. We were ringed by Ordogs and three more Wolves. We’d faced worse… not more times than I could count. I could in fact count the times our asses hadn’t been quite so far up the creek, but there had been a few worse, and I didn’t doubt we could handle this… until I heard the gunshot. I looked in confusion at my finger on the trigger on a gun that abruptly felt heavy. My finger hadn’t moved. I hadn’t fired the shot, and no one else was carrying a gun.

And how had I gotten on the ground? I hadn’t lost my gun. Never lose your gun. Over and over, Nik had told me that, because I wasn’t like him. I wasn’t Bruce Lee with an honorary license to kill from Her Majesty’s Secret Service. I was… I coughed and tasted blood. I was a good fighter hand to… shit… hand? Tentacle? Paw? Whatever I was up against, I could give it a run for its money, unless it was human, and then I could kill it without much effort. I’d never killed a human with my bare hands… not yet. I could, though, but I’d never be as good as my brother and he knew it. Always hold on to your weapon, he told me, and there was that shitshitshitshit again when I finally realized.

Someone had shot me.

“Traitor!” The howls began. “No Wolf is such a coward. No Wolf kills out of reach. No Wolf.” The howls were everywhere now. “You are not a true Wolf. You are not our Alpha. You are not Wolf.”

It wasn’t Delilah’s voice. It wasn’t a single voice either. Three, maybe four. The rest of the pack, those left alive. They didn’t sound happy with Cabal. No, not happy at all. A white Wolf leaped over me and was gone-on a mission, not from Buddha, but I heard the sounds of that mission being completed. Snarls and growl after growl that would send shivers down your spine at how it took up every molecule of air around us. They call them a pack of wolves. They should call them a storm. A storm of wolves rolling over an ex-Alpha to wash this place clean of him. I didn’t shiver at the sound; I didn’t have the energy. I swallowed blood, touched my chest to feel more of it, and resumed my standard shit… shit… shit-only slower and with less enthusiasm.

Besides the sounds of Wolves fighting one another and dying, I heard the slice of metal sizzling through the air to hit flesh with a meaty thud. “How is he?” The voice cracked. “Merciful Charon, turn away. Another time we need a thrice-damned healer and he’s currently occupied dying himself.” Robin… Robin talking about Rafferty’s dying, talking about my dying. Well, hell, give a guy the benefit of the doubt. But it was also Robin protecting me while I was down, giving Niko a chance to check me out. Because there was nothing else for Nik to do. Like Robin with Ish, Niko couldn’t say good-bye. He’d done it once. I didn’t think he could ever say that again.

The moon gone from orange to red radiated a light so bloody, I wouldn’t have known where my own ended and the light began. Did I really want to see it pouring out of me that badly? Wasn’t suffocating in it enough?

“Cal.” Hands pulled me up so damn carefully until my head and upper shoulders were supported against him. Nik, on his knees, bent down the rest of the way to murmur in my ear. “It’s all right. Cabal shot you, but it’s all right. Rafferty will heal you.” Because Niko could never admit to himself again that I could die on him. It took months to drag him back from the hallucination of it, back to himself. I refused to let him go back there again. I wouldn’t let Cabal put him back there for real.

Cabal, a Wolf with a gun… a Wolf with a gun and damn good aim. His pack was right. That wasn’t the Wolf way. My reputation preceded me and that had caused a Wolf to do what a Wolf would not do, which in turn had a bullet proceeding into my chest… into one of my lungs from the blood that kept rising in my throat. Preceding and proceeding and hadn’t he bothered once to look past me to see the real monster? Rafferty was dying, Robin had said, and Niko refused to believe. If Rafferty did die, Suyolak would kill us all… to a man and to a Wolf, and my keeping my brother sane, instead of the usual other way around, wouldn’t be a problem.

Niko’s hand rested on my chest. I saw the dark fluid that ran between his fingers, instantly covering his hand. With his other, he dug in my left jeans pocket. “Messy. I can always depend on you to be so damn messy… yes. Your sheer lazy ways save your life. Why am I not surprised?” He pulled out a Twinkie wrapper, uncovered the wound by pulling up my shirt with bloody fingers, and spread the plastic wrapper to cover the gunshot wound with it. The air that had been whistling in and out stopped. A Hostess wrapper wasn’t the next best thing to sterile, especially with a bit of creme still left on it, but it did get the job done. I could breathe the tiniest bit better. One death by sucking chest wound slightly delayed. Go team.

Nik kept his hand pressed to the wound, keeping the plastic airtight. “Rafferty, now. Kill that bastard now!” The Ordogs were dying in droves around us, Robin no longer looking as if he didn’t know what to do with his sword. He was an avenging angel, righteous with fury. An avenging, very horny angel. Ishiah was rubbing off on him, the avenging part at least. The metal flashes of the blade were so fast, so damn quick, I didn’t know if I saw it at all or if it was the streaks of light that heralded the darkness of approaching unconsciousness.

“Nik?”

He looked down at me, grim and furious, at fate… at me. I didn’t blame him either way.

Six months ago I had died… only I hadn’t.

And I didn’t plan on doing it for real this soon either. I wouldn’t put him through that again. Not now. Not for as long as I could avoid it. I wouldn’t do that to my brother. That was the easy way out, and while I liked easy, for Nik, I would and could do the impossible.

I wasn’t going to die and neither was Rafferty.

I spoke again before he could, feeling the blood trickle down from the corners of my mouth, hearing the faint gurgle behind my words. “I fought with… my girlfriend today.” I sucked in a breath and kept going. “Ate a Big Mac. Lost part… of me. A good part. Human part. I fought… for my… life.” I grinned at him, more blood in the back of my throat, rising higher. “Don’t you… fucking dare… think I’m… done yet.”

His hand, calloused from years of training, fighting, weapons sparring, rested on my forehead. “Promise, you bastard?” His mouth had always been home to the most fleeting of smiles, the wry quirk of lips, the angry line when someone crossed his, the twist of pain, the curve of belief. It was curved now. He