Master of None (11 page)

I was no marksman. I’d probably fare better armed with a big stick.

It would have been silent, except for the birds babbling their feathered heads off. Didn’t they know there were people with guns down here? I straightened slowly and shifted my weight to my good leg. Had to move away from Jazz before someone showed up looking for trouble with a capital Shoot to Kill. I limped in the direction Ian had disappeared earlier and realized that whoever had been left standing would have no problem finding me—with my foot dragging
on the ground, I was about as stealthy as an elephant.

Ten feet, then twenty, and no sign of anyone. Ian or otherwise. Much farther in, and I’d have trouble finding Jazz again. Everything looked the same. There were probably fifty different varieties in here, but to me, a tall brown thing with green stuff was a goddamned tree. I would have stopped and waited for them to come to me, but Jazz and Cyrus were still too close. I picked up the pace, unmindful of the racket I made, and blundered another fifty feet.

On a tangle of dried weeds, I found my answer. The score was tied—one for us, one for the thugs. Harmon or Pope, minus his throat, sprawled face-up with clouded eyes fixed on the branches above. I guessed Harmon, because only a guy called Pope would take the time to thumb a cross on his dead buddy’s forehead with his own congealing blood after shooting the wolf that brought him down.

The wolf lay on his side a few feet from the body. Crimson stained his white muzzle, and his fur glistened darkly in at least three spots I could see. At least his eyes were closed.
Jesus, Ian, I thought you couldn’t kill humans.
Apparently, there were exceptions to this rule. Maybe they could only kill people while they were wolves. I stood and watched him, hoping to see a twitch, a shallow breath, anything that might herald another miraculous recovery.

When nothing happened, I made yet another colossally stupid decision.

“Hey, Pope!” I bellowed. A handful of startled birds burst into flight above me. “Trevor’s gonna hand your ass to you in a basket when he finds out you two morons couldn’t even bag a chick and a kid.” I turned in a slow circle, alert for any sound. At least the birds had given it a rest.

Something crunched to my left. I swung the gun and fired blind.

An answering shot thundered. Splinters burst from a tree behind me. I dropped and rolled, crouched opposite the wounded side of the trunk. “You’re a lousy shot, Pope. What’s your regular job, doing Trevor’s laundry?”

“That you, Donatti?” Pope’s voice sounded holy, all right. Like he’d eaten a cactus. I hoped Ian had gotten a few chomps in before he went down. “We figured you’d turn up eventually. Too bad about your dog, huh?”

We? Did he mean Trevor we, or dead-guy we . . . or were there more of them out here? “Shame about your buddy, too,” I shouted. “Hell of a way to go. You ready to join him?”

Pope’s gun roared. The bullet skimmed the side of the tree, inches from my head. “Ladies first.”

“Oh, you’re clever. Did you pick up your insults at Thugs R Us?” Jesus, that was close. I tried to remember what I planned on doing after I’d gotten his attention. And then I remembered that I didn’t have a plan. Shit on toast.

No response from Pope. The silence highlighted my heart pounding in my ears. Took him long enough to figure out what I was up to. Trevor didn’t make a habit of employing idiots. Seeing a wolf tear his partner’s throat out must have unhinged him a little, but he’d recovered now. Nothing I hated more than smart thugs.

I had to move soon. My leg screamed a protest under my weight. Sweat soaked my temples and dripped cold down my back. Holding my breath, I felt the ground beneath me and closed my fingers around a good-sized rock, then inched up the tree trunk slow and easy.

A whisper of sound behind me. Couldn’t let him get the advantage—
he had a bigger gun. I lurched around the tree, ready to brain Pope on the other side. He wasn’t there. I knew I’d heard something. Before my mind could process this development, a sensation I’d experienced too often tonight presented itself: a gun jammed against me. Right between my shoulders.

“Drop it, Donatti.”

He must have come around the opposite side. The .22 tumbled to the ground. Useless thing, anyway. I almost dropped the rock that he hadn’t even noticed, but in a snap, I realized that if Pope intended to kill me, he’d have done it by now. Which meant Trevor’s arrogant ass still wanted me alive.

Not gonna happen.

I stilled and transferred all of my weight to the leg without the hole in it. Had to act fast, before Pope decided what to do with me. If I missed, I’d take another bullet for my trouble. I leaned forward and spun around, arching the rock up and out, then sling-shotted in for his head.

The dull crack of stone-meet-Pope sounded like salvation.

He didn’t go down right away. He blinked, stumbled back, and jerked. The gun went off, and the bullet sailed away through the trees without my body to block it. At last, the thug toppled to the ground with an expression that said,
Where’d you get that cement fist?

I snagged his piece from limp fingers and foraged for the Browning. I hoped the blow had only knocked him out. I’d leave killing him to Trevor. Sometimes my morals really interfered with the job. Kind of pathetic, if I thought about it too hard. When it came to stealing, I’d break the law six ways to Sunday, but murder, now, that was a crime.

Going through his pockets was second nature. Toss the wallet, didn’t need it. Crunch the cell. If he woke up, he could
thumb his way to call for a pickup and execution. I would’ve kept it, but I knew Trevor would be able to track it. Don’t even try to figure out why Pope carried a travel-sized lube tube and the barrel of a mechanical pencil.

I kept the spare cartridge and the butterfly blade with the cross etched in the handle. Felt good to be armed properly again. I’d leave him the string of mint-flavored condoms, though.

With no idea how long he’d be out, I had to immobilize him. I dragged him to the base of a slender tree, positioned his arms on either side of the trunk, and took off his shoes and socks. They stank like last week’s dinner left on the counter. I knotted the socks together end to end and used them to bind his wrists on the far side of the tree. Not satisfied, I repeated the process with his shoelaces.

As I lashed the end of a lace to a thick root arching up from the ground, twigs snapped, and vegetation crunched in the distance with foot-stepping regularity. I pushed away the faint hope that the sound had come from Ian and ducked behind a fat pine.

If this was the “we” Pope had mentioned, I might have to injure my morals.

The footsteps stopped somewhere in the vicinity of Pope’s trussed form. I waited for an indication of who owned the brush-cracking feet. When it came, I experienced a figurative desire to kill her for being dumber than me.

“Guess I won’t need this after all.”

I stumbled out and glared at Jazz, who’d armed herself with a big stick and Cyrus with a little one. “You were supposed to stay hidden. What if something happened to him?”
Or you?
I couldn’t vocalize that part. She’d never welcomed protectiveness,
and I wasn’t ready to proclaim a feeling I didn’t understand.

“Relax, Donatti. I knew you had it under control. Just had to make sure your compassionate streak didn’t limit you to giving this asshole a stern lecture, instead of knocking him the hell out.”

“Thanks for the vote of confidence. Put the damned stick down, will ya?” I handed her piece over and watched Cyrus poke at the ground, as if he was prospecting for treasure. “I take it there were only two.”

“Yeah. But they didn’t bring a wolf.” Jazz looked at me, her expression perfectly calm—the closest I’d ever seen her to fear. “This piece of trash said something about your dog. If you don’t mind my asking . . . what the hell is going on?”

I frowned. If Stupid was my middle name, Pragmatic was hers. She’d no sooner believe in magic than she would don a pink dress and take high tea with the queen. “You know, I have no idea what he meant,” I said, going for casual and probably scoring a ten on the bullshit meter. “I don’t have a dog.”

“No. But apparently, you have a wolf. Or had one, at least.”

“Uh, right. About that . . .” I trailed off, glanced around, and my stomach took a dive. “Where’s Cyrus?”

Jazz whirled. “Cy? No, don’t go over there!”

She ran off, and I spotted the kid at the edge of the clearing where Ian and Harmon lay. Cyrus moved with determination toward the wolf, head cocked, stick abandoned in favor of this new discovery. I dragged after them as fast as I could manage and reached the clearing to see Cyrus burble something that sounded like
doggie
and stroke the wolf ’s massive head.

At his touch, Ian glowed.

“Oh, my God.” Jazz bent, snatched the startled boy around
the waist, and yanked him back. Cyrus turned a quizzical glance to his mother, who stared at the changing form on the ground as if she’d burst into flames if she looked away. “Donatti,” she whispered. “What . . .”

I couldn’t suppress a grin of relief. “Like I said before. It’s Ian.”

The light seemed to run off him like rainwater. Ian, unharmed once again, sat up slowly and blinked at his audience. “I assume you have taken care of the other one, then. Partner
.
”

“I think we can drop the partner bit,” I said.

Jazz backed away. Cyrus squirmed in her arms, but she tightened her grip. “How the fuck did you do that? Sorry, Cy. Don’t say fuck. Was it a costume? Secret government technology? I never thought you were really a magician. . .”

Oh, boy.
I glanced at Ian, who didn’t look too pleased with me, and wondered what I’d done now. “Uh. Can we tell her?”

Ian nodded.

“You know what? I don’t want to know. Just get me the hell out of Freaksville.”

“You have to know.” I moved toward her. She backed up another step, maintaining a lock around an increasingly struggling Cyrus. “Trevor does want him—so he can get to me. You’ve got to understand what we’re facing so you can help me protect him.” I was spitballing, but it sounded good. Unfortunately, it also sounded like the truth.

Jazz paled, appearing on the verge of a slump. “All right,” she said flatly. “What do I have to understand?”

“Ian is . . . well, he’s not exactly human. He’s a djinn.”

“A djinn.” Her lips pursed, and her body relaxed. Cyrus, sensing freedom, slid to the ground and headed for Ian. Jazz didn’t try to stop him. She’d apparently decided we weren’t
dangerous, just nuts. “That’s fascinating. I’m actually a unicorn. Lemme guess, Donatti. You’re a fairy prince, right?”

“Come on, Jazz. I’m serious.” I turned to Ian. Cyrus had reached him and stood tugging on his coat. “Can’t you magic something so she’ll believe it?”

Ian reached down and almost absently scooped up the kid, who promptly snuggled into the crook of his arm and popped in a thumb. “I told you before—”

“Yeah, I know. No trifles. Christ, this is ridiculous.” A sharp twinge in my leg reminded me that I had a rather untrifling need. “Think you could fix the bullet hole before I bleed to death?”

“That little scratch? It is hardly necessary.”

“Ian . . .”

“Fine.” Ian held his free hand out and murmured something. After a minute, blessed normalcy returned to my calf.

“Give it a rest.” Jazz folded her arms and glowered. “If he could just fix you up like that, why did you call me to patch him after . . . wait a minute.” Her eyes widened, and she seemed to notice the unbroken skin of his chest for the first time. Her mouth opened in silence.

“At the time, I did not have enough power to transform myself,” Ian replied. “It is the only healing method available to djinn in this realm.” A small smile played on his lips, and his gaze met mine.

“That’s not funny, Ian. I’d better have a human leg under here.” I went down on a knee and used the knife I’d relieved Pope of to cut the shirt strips free. A small, ragged hole still adorned my jeans. I tugged them up and found my own undamaged leg attached to my knee.

Ian chuckled. “Relax, thief. I said it was available to djinn, not humans.”

Jazz sat down hard on the ground. “You are serious.” Her voice came out small and awed, like a kid finding Santa in the living room on Christmas Eve. She shook herself and grew solemn. “What does Trevor have to do with this?”

I crossed to her, offered a hand, and helped her up. “He knows about them. The djinn, I mean. He . . . has one in his basement.”

A pained look crossed Ian’s face. He said nothing.

“Wait a minute. Trevor has a djinn on his payroll?”

“I don’t think Trevor’s djinn volunteered for the position.” I shuddered at the recollection of Shamil’s tortured body and his plea for release. The questions I hadn’t asked in the basement returned to demand attention—but first, I had one that had formed more recently. “Ian. Why didn’t you get up until Cyrus touched you?”

“I would have recovered sooner, if you had bothered to concern yourself with my condition.” The anger he displayed broke Richter-scale records. “It is far more difficult to transform from the wolf state, but I can amplify my power through proximity, and especially contact, with—” He broke off and looked at Cyrus, who’d just about fallen asleep against him. Poor kid had to be exhausted. “Blast it. Why did it have to be you?”

I knew he meant me. Though I was tempted to adopt Jazz’s don’t-wanna-know philosophy, my traitorous mouth had other ideas. “Contact with what?”

Ian’s jaw clenched. He raised his head, and his eyes blistered me.

“With my descendants.”

I could have sworn Ian had said
descendants.
Of course, that was impossible. So I asked him to repeat himself—and he said it again.

“Around here, descendant means direct relative,” I told him. “What does it mean on your planet?”

“The same,” he said. “I like it no more than you, and I would appreciate it if you would stop playing the fool.”

“But . . . Ian, this isn’t funny. If you’re gonna mess with me, at least try to come up with something remotely believable.”