Madhouse

  “Thinking of asking her out?” I asked with a snort. Not even Goodfellow had the balls for that.

  “I don’t date those with children.” He touched a finger to his jaw and wiped meticulously at the blood. “It takes the focus from where it should truly lie.”

  “With you.” Promise carried it with a heavy dose of irony to its natural conclusion.

  “Am I wrong?” Finishing with the blood, he used his free hand to comb carefully through his curls. He was grooming himself. In the aftermath…hell, it wasn’t yet an aftermath…during, he was grooming himself during a battle. “There are those who wish to experience me and those who wish to kill me. If that’s not exclusive focus, what is? You can’t be considered self-centered, if you sincerely are the center of all attention, now, can you?”

  I didn’t respond. The violent disturbance of the water had stopped, and as I took a step forward, Niko’s hand settled on my shoulder. “Wait,” he ordered. “She doesn’t need us getting in her way.” That we didn’t particularly need to be torn apart by a blood-enraged boggle, he left unspoken. The water rippled, calmed….

  Then it turned blacker than it already was. The will-o’-the-wisp of our lost flashlights was slowly vanquished by billowing darkness. I didn’t know what color Sawney’s blood was—despite temporarily having his arm chopped off, Sawney hadn’t felt it necessary to bleed a drop for us. What I did know was that boggle blood was black. A spill of octopus ink, just like this.

  “I’ll pass on pick of her litter. Raising carnivorous offspring does not fit my lifestyle.” Robin, along with Niko, had fished a secondary flashlight from her jacket pocket and lit the place up. But the light wouldn’t touch some things and Sawney was one of them.

  He rose out of the water and hung inches above it. In one hand he held either a handful of cloth, a blanket, or…shit. Scales. The material rippled with scales and was lined with the black velvet of blood. “These caves”—drop by drop that same black fell from the point of the scythe to the water below—“they are not the chill of the sea caves of home.” He shook it, his new blanket, to the rustle of the largest piece of snakeskin in the world. He’d skinned her, and, from the blood that had poured free, he’d done it while she was alive. The dead didn’t bleed. I imagined, also, that the skinned didn’t live long after the process.

  “I shall wrap myself in it when the cold finally comes.” The bright blaze of his eyes was back as he pulled the skin up to his face and rose higher in the air. “Ahhh, the sweet smell of a mother. The incomparable scent of orphans. I cherish your gift, travelers.”

  I’d let the Glock go, but never the Eagle—not with what it held. I pulled, fired, and with three shots, I saw Delilah coming up behind and below Sawney…. I saw it through him. The hole was not quite the size of a grapefuit, although the rounds should’ve blown him in half. There should’ve been Sawney on one side of the tunnel and fucking Beane on the other. Whatever he was made from was as hard as stone…harder. Delilah wasn’t deterred. She hit him. Landed on his back and wrapped her jaws around his neck with room to spare. He was man-sized. She was not. She was Wolf and Kin and she dwarfed him. Not as Boggle had, but enough that she could’ve torn through his throat as if it were paper. Could’ve.

  Should’ve.

  Didn’t.

  She leaped free a split second before the scythe would’ve opened her up. When she landed, she was shaking her head hard as if her jaws or teeth ached. Gritting my own teeth, I aimed and pulled the trigger again, this time aiming for his head. But he was gone. Between one blink and the next, he’d faded like smoke. He was fast, Niko and I had seen how fast in the warehouse, but this…Christ. How can you hope to kill something you can’t possibly catch?

  Quick or not, he could’ve gone in only one direction. I refused to believe he could’ve gone over our heads without us seeing at least a flicker of motion. I started forward down the tunnel, only to be knocked backward by a wave of water and flesh. Raw, weeping flesh. Horrifically injured, she’d been stripped of skin from neck to crotch. Flayed and still alive.

  “Where?” Boggle roared, arms uplifted, fists clenched. “Where? Where? Where?” Turning, she pounded those fists against a wall to bring down another section next to the rough entrance she’d made. “Where? Where?Where?” Whirling, she snatched up the nearest creature, which happened to be a wolf, and pulled him into two pieces like a tasty piece of taffy. The lupine jaw snapped feebly for several seconds afterward, and it was far more disturbing than I wanted to admit.

  “As the Irish, a brilliant people, say, a good retreat is better than a bad stand. Also the Bard once pontificated that the better part of valor is discretion. I am nothing if not loaded with discretion. Shall we?” Robin turned and began to sprint back the way we had come.

  I couldn’t say he had the wrong idea. Attacked by our own wounded, crazed ally and Sawney gone…things weren’t going as planned. One half of the wolf, a gray male, fell from Boggle’s hand and the other was thrown against the far wall. The back legs and hindquarters slapped limply against the surface, then dropped into the water.

  “Where?”

  “Fortune may favor the brave, but pucks are remarkably long-lived. I say we go with the latter advice.” Niko yanked me the rest of the way aloft as I was pushing up from the water. And for the second time in a week we were running through a tunnel. This time we had the addition of Robin and three wolves—as well as the world’s most pissed-off boggle.

  We could have killed her. She was more savagely fierce than her mate had been, but she was injured and there were seven of us. It would’ve been enough, but…she was our partner. We’d gotten her into this. It didn’t seem right to finish off what Sawney had started. Although in the end, it wouldn’t have mattered what our moral stance was on skinned boggles and their murderous rampages. If she had chased us, that stand Robin wanted to avoid would’ve taken place, brutally and instantly. If she chased us.

  She didn’t.

  She chose to go after Sawney. He was long gone, I had the feeling, but I wished her the best of luck. I also hoped she lived. I couldn’t spend every day tossing raw meat at a mud pit full of baby boggles. I had a job. I had things to do. I was responsible for their father’s death. I didn’t want to go there with their mother too. Guilt gets old. It gets so damn old.

  Beside me ran the white wolf, who within six steps transformed to a naked human female. Except for the scars on her stomach and the choker tattoo around her neck, she was wet and gloriously nude. I handed her my jacket as we ran and her upper lip lifted to show her teeth in an amused smile. She also thought about patting me on the head, I could see it, but she took the jacket and slipped it on.

  I liked Delilah—why, I wasn’t sure. Perhaps because she was like Niko…if he were a completely immoral female. Lethal and laconic. The familiar is always comfortable. The fact she was sexy as hell didn’t hurt.

  She wasn’t Georgina. Never would be—I knew that. But I’d have to learn to settle for a warm touch or a secret smile from someone else, and it would have to be enough. Or I could spend that part of my life alone. Not only did I have hormones that strongly disagreed with that, but without that wall between us, George might eventually convince me.

  And then she would die. Or worse. Delilah or Charm would never die for me, not if they could avoid it.

  We all ran on, slowing when it was clear Boggle wasn’t following us but delving farther into the depths for Sawney. When we finally hit a maintenance tunnel, we had three half wolves—one in my jacket and two naked. None of them minded. The two males were partially covered with patches of fur here and there, one with a stub of tail and the other with a misshapen jaw and joints. Badly bred or not, they ran far faster than the rest of us did, although I knew Promise could’ve kept up.

  They disappeared around a turn and I turned to Delilah. “Sorry about your friends.”

  She was wearing my jacket with casual flair. It fell past her hips and hung open enough that I saw the curve of h
er apricot-colored breasts. I’d already seen them in their entirety; it didn’t change the fact I was still looking.

  “Friends?” Her amber eyes slanted in my direction. After she’d changed back from what Wolves considered their true shape, her silver-blond hair had fallen free to hang like a wedding veil in color and sweep. “Keep up with the pack or don’t. Die for the pack when needed. Pack is all. There are no friends.” With that, she was gone too. Despite her sly glances and my hazily half-ass thoughts on the matter, I didn’t know if I’d see her again or not. Delilah was Delilah. She lived, like most fur creatures, in the here and now. Planning ahead wasn’t a priority or a concern.

  “Furry women are tricky, kid.” Robin was waiting for us. “I suggest a spoonful of butter before and after any snorkeling activities. Hairballs. Also, diamond-studded flea collars? They are a bitch to find for anniversary gifts.” He’d put away his sword under his coat and continued with a more serious and uncertain shrug. “On the other hand, her abdomen. You know…she may be infert—”

  I waved him off with a growl. “I think the fact Sawney got away again is a little more pressing, okay?” We were letting down a dead little girl right and left. It was in my pocket, my reminder—the sunny barrette of a girl who would never see the sun again. My social life and the lack thereof paled in comparison to that.

  “And he nearly slaughtered a boggle to do it. Single-handedly.” Niko had retrieved his cello case from where he’d left it, dry and safe. We hadn’t been hit with a random search yet, but our luck would run out sooner or later. If Sawney stayed down here, we were going to have to find a different access.

  “The fact that he did it with a hole that ran the entire depth of his body isn’t encouraging either.” Closing the case with a snick of buckles, he looked at me steadily. “Next time, go for the head shot.”

  I was a good shot, not Olympic quality or anything, but competition-wise, I could’ve held my own. A head shot, though, on a moving target wasn’t easy under the best of circumstances, and I’d yet to see anything remotely less than absolutely crappy circumstances demonstrated during our recent battles. Niko knew that as well as I did, if not better.

  “Head shot,” I confirmed solidly.

  “No wiseass remarks?” he asked, hefting the case. There was no mockery in the comment, no faked surprise; he knew what he was asking of me.

  “Too bad Halloween’s over. We could use his head as a pumpkin. Stick a candle in there and scare the kiddies.” I put the Eagle in its holster. “That work for you?”

  It wasn’t much of an attempt, a letdown of my smart-ass tongue. But the entire night had been a letdown. Other than taking out more revenants and losing two wolves and a fair piece of Boggle, we hadn’t taken care of Sawney, hadn’t learned anything new. That the rest of us were alive was our only achievement.

  15

  The walk from forgotten to abandoned and maintenance tunnels, then to the new construction took a while, and Delilah had peeled off after her Wolves long before that point. Without my jacket to hide it, I handed off my holster to Niko to conceal in the cello case. I tucked my gun in the back waistband of my jeans and covered it up with my sweatshirt before we hit the street level. Then minutes later it was back underground to hit the 6 train home. We had just stopped to stand on the platform, ignoring the sideways glances at our soaked clothing, when I heard it.

  It wasn’t loud, the bang. Barely audible over the train that roared out. A small sound, a stumble, and then Robin was falling face-first on the floor. It looked as if he had tripped. Only now, instead of bitching and groaning about scrapes and bruises, he was unmoving.

  God.

  I could tell that his torso wasn’t moving because he wasn’t breathing and he wasn’t talking. You don’t breathe, you don’t talk. Goodfellow—with no words? Not a single one? I believed in monsters, I believed in the grimmest of fairy tales, but I couldn’t believe that.

  Strange that I wasn’t breathing either, but I was still alive, could still feel the ragged pump of my heart, the acid burn in my lungs. And when I raised my eyes from that unmoving back to stare at Niko, I could still see. If I could do all those things without breathing, why couldn’t Robin?

  Niko’s face was completely blank and devoid of anything…killing machines don’t need emotions to get the job done. “Left,” he said with a voice as empty as he turned and moved in that direction.

  “Right.” My face wasn’t empty. It was full of bad things, hidden things that I hadn’t let myself feel since George was taken, Niko almost sacrificed. They’d been shoved down, smothered, dismissed, but they were still there. They’d been waiting for their chance, and here it was.

  With speaking came oxygen and with that came the ability to drive my body to the right through the mass of people. Some had picked up on the faint sound of the shot and run, but most hadn’t caught it and were hovering around Robin. Maybe it was his heart, maybe drugs, maybe goddamn mutated pigeon flu…the muttering and whispering swelled. I drove through the vultures with lowered shoulders and vicious elbows as I went right.

  Niko had already gone in the opposite direction. I thought I heard Promise call from behind me as she bent protectively over Robin’s body, but it was lost in the sound of the crowd, the rush of the train, and the blood raging in my ears. I ran on. He wasn’t getting away, the murderer who had done this. Sawney had, but he wouldn’t. It didn’t matter that I hadn’t seen who had pulled the trigger; I would recognize him when I saw him. I would know him.

  I tackled a cop moving toward me with wary eyes and steely intent, rode him to the ground, choked him out, and kept going. That the bastard assassin was human wouldn’t save him.

  And he was human.

  I saw him—walking a little faster than those around him. As I got closer I could see and smell the human in the tiny beads of sweat winding down the back of his neck from his hairline. He didn’t hear me behind him. It’s almost impossible to run silently across concrete and tile, sneakers or not, but with people milling and stomping about like cattle, I had the perfect auditory camouflage. Perfect, yet it failed me. Although the killer didn’t hear me behind him, he looked over his shoulder anyway. Professionals don’t look and they don’t sweat. Amateurs hold the patent on that. They also run instead of taking the offensive, as my amateur did. He bolted the moment his eyes caught mine. Not used to killing. Too bad for him I was.

  Let the bastard run. Let him run all goddamn night. At the end of it, he would still be dead. A sirrush, Hameh birds, this son of a bitch—they were all the same. Monsters. I couldn’t get rid of my gene, but that didn’t mean I gave a shit if his were one hundred percent normal. For what he’d done…

  He was dead.

  I almost pulled out the Eagle, but that was bound to attract its fair share of attention from at least some of the commuters. As it was now, they were only clearing a path for us as we ran. The dead man, so goddamn dead, snatched another look over his shoulder, shoved a woman who hadn’t meandered out of his way quickly enough, and then vaulted her when she fell to her hands and knees. He hadn’t taken out his gun either, which led me to believe he’d already dumped it. He didn’t want to be caught by the cops with a weapon, now, did he?

  He should be that lucky.

  The next time he looked for me I was nearly on top of him. Barely three feet away I could smell the fear coming off of him. I could also smell determination and resolve or maybe I was seeing it in his dark eyes. I was so focused on him, so ferociously aware, that I couldn’t tell where one of my senses began and the other ended. The same went for my sanity and something a little less than. He’d taken my friend. He had taken the first person I’d learned to trust aside from my brother.

  Months ago I’d been on the edge of losing it utterly when I’d thought George and Niko were gone for good. Robin had told me then that the frozen control I’d used simply to be able to function would come back to bite me in the ass. Told me that when you bury emotions like that, you’re only
pissing them off…making them stronger, because you’re burying them alive. They don’t like that, and one day they’ll make sure that you don’t like it either. He’d been right. But against the odds and my own screwed-up psyche, I had found George and Niko.

  I’d never find Robin again.

  But I’d found his killer. Right here. Right now. And restraint and composure, they were just words to me. Meaningless sounds, worthless concepts.

  I’ve felt savage rage. What I felt now was beyond that. When he jumped down to the tracks and took off down the tunnel, I was with him. On him. I saw only him, felt only him when I tackled him. I didn’t feel the thud of the ground rising to meet us, him twisting beneath me or the fists that hammered my ribs. I didn’t feel the gun that I had in my hand either, but I know he did. The matte black steel dug into the flesh under his chin until a small rivulet of blood welled around the gunsight and wound down to pool in the hollow of his throat. And because I could see only him, I could see the rapid pulse beating beneath the red with startling clarity. There was the blood rich with copper, sweat sour with dread, and breath heated and harsh.

  “What you do to me doesn’t matter. My task is done,” he panted. Somehow, outside of his fear, the bastard had found satisfaction. “The betrayer is dead.”

  I should’ve pulled the trigger. The clean jerk of it, the kick of the recoil, I wanted that. But I also wanted something else. “Are you the only one I get to kill?” I asked, the question leaden and guttural in my throat. I jammed the gun barrel harder into his neck until he gagged against the pressure. “Are you? Or is there someone else? Die hard and alone or easy and with company. Which is it going to be, you son of a bitch?”

  He spat in my face, contorted his body, and shoved me off in a move that I’d not seen before, not even from Niko. I staggered as he lunged upward, but I managed to stay on my feet as I aimed the Eagle at his chest from six feet away. “No, not yet,” I said more to myself than to him. “Not that easy for you.” I lowered the muzzle to point at his knee. If I fired, he’d be an instant amputee, but he’d tell me whether he was in this alone. That was worth a leg to find out. He was dead anyway. He could bunny-hop his way through the Gates of Hell, for all I cared, and think of me while he did it.