Moonshine (25 page)

"I'm sure as hell not here to spread around my plastic surgery skills." I kept Branje pinned to the ground as I wiped the scant amount of blood from the metal onto my jeans and then sheathed the knife.

"Do you have any idea of the crown's purpose?" From the avidly gleeful flush in her face, I had a feeling it was nothing good.

"Granny," I said, "I couldn't give a shit if I tried."

I should've given a shit, and Abelia-Roo was more than happy to gloat over every detail that told me why I should. I'd thought the crown had looked too drab and plain to be your typical bauble. I was right. The Bassa had made that innocuous bit of metal for a reason—a very dark and infinitely practical reason. They'd created a thief… or a tool for a thief. Wear the crown and take from a person anything you wished. Their life, their knowledge… their power. I doubted Caleb needed any help taking lives or was interested in any extra smarts. He thought he was as clever as they fucking came.

But power… that was a different matter entirely. Take away the first two and it's the only option left. He wanted the ability to take someone's power… their gift. Although it couldn't be as easy as all that. Not many creatures in the world had talents he might envy. What could he want? What did he covet so profoundly that would be worth this much trouble—oh. God, I was stupid. So damn stupid.

There had been more unpleasant information dancing on the tip of the old Rom's tongue, I could tell as I'd cursed my idiocy, but at the last second she decided to keep it to herself. For fun or profit, and since she wasn't haggling for even more money, I was guessing it was pure, malicious fun. Granny had a way about her; she damn sure did.

"So he wants Georgina's gift." Niko held the circlet up to the dimly flickering firelight after I shared my grim thought. "He could see whatever he wanted. Know the future, the past, and all that lay between. It makes sense; what Georgina has is invaluable." He exhaled and shook his head. "But it also complicates things to no end."

"How?" I demanded. "It's not as if we planned on letting Caleb walk away in the first place. The second we have him in our sights, we give him the crown." I watched the fire reflect sinuously in the curve of the metal. "Promptly followed by a bullet to the brain."

"I have a feeling it won't be quite that simple."

Through the drifting smoke I saw that across the campsite Goodfellow was handing over two duffel bags of cash to Branje. Abelia-Roo didn't waste any time muscling him aside to unzip them and count their contents with flashing fingers. Both Promise and Robin had contributed to the Calabassa fund, since Niko and I barely had two nickels to rub together. The price wasn't that of a small country… quite, but it was damn close. "No?" I looked back at the crown and frowned. Ugly goddamn thing. "Then I guess we'll just have to make it that simple."

"Easier said than done." Between one breath and the next Niko had crossed the six feet between us. He was closer than close and as angry as I'd seen him. Scratch that. He was furious… with me, and that I had never seen. "Nothing is simple at the moment, not with your recent moronic behavior. What the hell were you doing with Branje?"

"Is that why you're pissed?" My frown deepened. "Hell, Cyrano, it was your idea. Rip off his mustache and feed it to him, you said. I just picked different things to slice and dice is all."

"Cal, you cannot go off without thought, without reason…" He tilted his head down until his eyes were level with mine, utterly pissed off and completely inescapable. "Without
backup
."

"You watched my back," I pointed out with what I thought to be fairly evident logic. "You were right there, same as always."
Same as always
… you always remember the words that come back to bite you in the ass, no matter how much you'd like to forget them.

"I could've been there more quickly if you'd bothered to let me know what was going through your head." His free hand fisted in the collar of my shirt. "Branje isn't much of a threat; you could've handled him before you could crawl, but if you try that imbecilic recklessness on someone else, someone along the lines of Abbagor or Cerberus or worse yet the Auphe, they will put you in your grave. Is that what you want?" He shook me, hard enough that I felt the snap of it in my neck. "Is it?"

It was a fair question, and denying that would be a lie. George was gone, the Auphe were back, and things had long spiraled out of control. But as selfish as I was, even I had my limits. I couldn't do that to my brother, no more than he could've done it to me. "No, Nik," I answered soberly. "It's not what I want."

The fury, a masquerade for something much starker, drained away as quickly as it had come. "All right, then." He exhaled and released my shirt. "Let's not have this conversation again."

I looked down at my shirt, then stuck my finger through the new Niko-fashioned rip and said wryly, "I'll try and keep that in mind."

He gave one abrupt nod and ordered, "Do that." Then, letting the issue go, he went on, "Let's eat. We've been invited to dinner by Abelia-Roo. I think…" Reluctant amusement tweaked his lips upward. "I think she may have her eye on Goodfellow. She might find him less than a man when it comes to haggling, but apparently that isn't the only standard of measurement she uses."

She should be grateful she wasn't around when Robin had "haggled" with a succubus. That may have changed her mind about his manhood damn quick. "Sounds entertaining." And a few weeks ago, I would've paid good money for that kind of entertainment, but now… I looked up at the sky. It was moonless and clear; I could see hundreds, thousands of stars and every fiery blink was a second lost. "But we need to go. We don't have much time."

"We have time to eat, to relax—even if only for an hour." His hand reached for mine and folded my fingers around the Calabassa. "Besides, it will maintain a little goodwill with the Sarzo. We might need their help again someday."

"We couldn't
afford
their help again," I groused, but relented. "An hour, okay? Then we go."

"An hour," he agreed. "I'm sure Goodfellow will be indebted to you for that. He's even more anxious than you to get on the road."

With a toothless Roo on his tail, I didn't blame him. I turned the metal under my hands, my skin crawling at the feel of it. There was one last thing I needed to do before we sat down to a heaping helping of Goodfellow humiliation. "Here," I said gruffly, pushing the crown back into his hands. "You hang on to it."

"Cal." The amusement reflected in the quirk of his mouth faded.

"I've already lost one." I folded my arms and tucked my hands out of sight. "That's my limit, thanks."

I'd half expected an Auphe to appear the instant the Gypsy Calabassa had been unveiled. I
fully
expected to wake up every night with Auphe claws in my throat and a doorway to hell before me. I'd slept with my knife for so long that it'd finally become a comfort to me. But knowing what I knew now, I could sleep with a thousand knives and it wouldn't make one bit of difference.

I walked away before Niko could try to convince me that I hadn't frozen in the face of the enemy. I had. It had cost us the first crown, and I wasn't about to risk losing another. Frankly, guarding George's last chance wasn't a responsibility I was up for.

An hour and a half later we were back on the road, flush with success… and something else. "Jesus." I grimaced as the alcohol fumes wafted my way. "Goodfellow, it's actually coming out of your pores."

A haunted look sought me out over a rapidly emptying bottle of fruit brandy. I'd long lost track of how many such bottles he'd sucked down during the previous hour. "I've lived through the fall of Rome,, the Hundred Years' War, even that sleazy Troy debacle, but I've never faced anything such as that." He took another hurried pull on the bottle before repeating in a shell-shocked whisper, "Never."

Dinner had not gone well for our puck. Abelia-Roo's hands had been anywhere but on her fork. For once, Robin had been the hunted, not the hunter, prey of a wizened, bare-gummed predator. Niko, behind the wheel, was not surprisingly unsympathetic to his plight and offered little comfort. "Be grateful we didn't leave you there. She seemed quite serious about the leash threat." He arched an eyebrow in consideration. "Then again, it may have been more of a promise than a threat."

Goodfellow had a response to that. By now, I knew that he had a response to anything. I managed to turn on the radio just in time to drown it out. After tuning in to the first station I came across, I pulled on the lever on the bottom of the passenger seat to ease it back. Toeing off my shoes, I put my feet up on the dashboard, shifted onto my side, and dozed off. Stomach heavy with food, mind dull with heat, there wasn't much else to do. There was a long stretch of blissfully empty darkness that was broken what must have been hours later by a hand on my shoulder. I squinted at the orange and pink sky outside the window and revised my estimate.
Many
hours later—it was morning. I sat up and ran fingers through sleep-rumpled hair. Beside me, the owner of the hand that had pulled me from sleep growled, "Trouble."

Trouble all right, and it was reflected in the rearview mirror as flashing red and blue lights. Fan-fucking-tastic. I glared at Flay, who seemed to have replaced Niko at the steering wheel, and asked with typical morning ill humor, "Do you even have a license, Snowball?"

"Do
you
?" came his impatient gargle.

He had a point. Mine hadn't come as a prize in a box of cereal, but neither had it come from the DMV. While it was good enough to pass a casual glance, it couldn't fool the computers, which was why we were driving instead of flying. Good fake ID was easy enough to come by; excellent fake ID was increasingly rare in this hyper-security-sensitive world.

"Shit." I looked over my shoulder. Niko, Promise, Robin—they were all already awake. I immediately pegged Goodfellow as our best bet. He'd been running under the radar longer than the rest of us by far. If anyone had passable paper, it would be him. It was a good thought, in theory, until I took in the bloodshot eyes and white-knuckled fists pressed to his head, and breath that could embalm a corpse. I went immediately to our next best hope. "Promise?"

She could've pulled it off, I think. If not by convincing the cop that she'd been driving, then by the simple fact of being Promise. I'd never know, because it didn't come to that.

The Auphe came first.

I didn't see the rip in the air he plummeted through, but I doubted that it was more than ten feet up. He came down fast—too damn fast.

Walking toward us, the cop was freshly stamped from the hero cookie cutter. Square jaw, wide shoulders, impenetrable sunglasses paired with an impenetrable expression. Disciplined, stalwart, a noble defender of order—it took less than five seconds for him to die. The Auphe landed on top of him, knocking him to his hands and knees. An infinity of teeth found the bare strip of skin over the starched collar and passed through it as if it were no more substantial than a flesh-colored mist. Then there was another mist, this one red and viscous. I didn't remember moving, yet somehow I'd traveled from my seat to the back of the RV. Hands pressed against the glass, I saw the cop try to struggle upward. With one hand supporting his weight, he used the other to claw at the nightmare on his back. It was futile. His strength had disappeared with the blood pouring from his mutilated throat.

I wouldn't have recognized the growl that filled the air as my own if it hadn't been for the searing sensation of barbwire in my throat. I did recognize the gun in my hand, and better than that, I recognized that I could shoot through the window glass as if it were air. But as my finger tightened on the trigger, someone beat me to the punch.

Niko was a dark shadow in the sun's morning glow.

He was on the Auphe as quickly as the Auphe had been on the cop. Unfortunately, the Auphe had preternaturally fast reflexes, something his victim lacked. Or rather, had lacked. The dark glasses had fallen from the cop's face to reveal eyes that passed from stunned to empty. Arms and legs spasmed, then gave way and the cookie-cutter hero fell. He didn't get up again. He never would.

The Auphe rode him all the way down. Lean and sleek, the bundle of sinew and claws showed the new day a dripping crimson smile. It was the same grin he turned on my brother as Niko's sword swung to separate head from body. Overconfidence—it wasn't a failing exclusive to humans. The Auphe knew how fast he was—what he didn't know was how fast Niko was. It was a mistake, a big one, and it lost him the bottom half of that charming smile. The narrow mandible disappeared in an explosion of black blood and bone as the Auphe flipped backward, saving the rest of his head. Niko followed so closely that it was impossible the Auphe could escape. Unless…

Shit.
Shit
.

I tore through the RV, tumbled through the door, and ran. A car, the first to pass since our stop, nearly hit me. It had slowed to gawk at the fallen cop. When I rocketed into its path with a gun and a matching metallic snarl, the driver swerved, gave up on the looky-lou, and sped off with squealing tires. I ignored the breeze of a bumper kiss and kept running. I passed the dead man lying in the emergency lane, vaulted the dry ditch, hit sand and scrubby grass, and kept moving. I was still fifty feet away when I felt it. It was only a shadow of the eviscerating sensation I'd felt when I'd unwittingly opened my own, but it was still a first. I'd never been able to sense an Auphe doorway before it opened—not until now. A ghostly hand pulled my intestines into a knot just before the air began to bleed gray.

The Auphe couldn't speak, not without a jaw, but he made sounds nonetheless. They were horribly triumphant gobbles that sprayed blood in an arc as he threw himself on Niko's sword with enough force to impale himself right up to the hilt. Arms wound with ropy muscle wrapped around Niko's shoulders and with what was either a laugh or a death rattle, the Auphe fell backward with him toward the gate. I hit them both in an impossibly long tackle, taking us away from that hungry silver light. As we hit the ground, I screwed the Glock into one pointed ear and pulled the trigger. Repeatedly. The pointed skull deflated into a misshapen mass and turned the surrounding soil into a rancid blot. Repugnant, but not as much as the door that hung before us—still open, still ravenous.

"You don't want to go there."

Niko's hand was on my arm gripping hard. "Where does it go? Cal, where does it go?"