Doubletake (8 page)

A fist banged against the bar, rattling the glasses. “Who told them?” this puck demanded with a poisonous hiss that would’ve done any rattlesnake proud.

“Goodfellow?” Niko asked dubiously.

“Yes, Goodfellow. Goodfellow who has been outed as a freak monogamist whose shame will follow him to his dying day. Now
who
told?” He didn’t wait for an answer. He grabbed a handful of my shirt. “Why do I even ask? We are pucks. Didn’t that one brain cell you possess wake up long enough to let you know
we
all lie?
We
all
deceive?
We
all hate one another’s attention-snatching guts and would do anything to humiliate one another?”

He didn’t give me a chance to respond. “Ah, what did I expect? You’re a Boy Scout in a con man convention. If con men had the drive and conscience of Jack the Ripper.”

Me? A Boy Scout? With the things I’d done? That was a first, but considering this company, he could be right. Releasing my shirt, he dropped his forehead onto the bar and mumbled, “We should’ve worked out a safe word. Give me three bottles of scotch.”

A hand slapped his shoulder and squeezed. “Would you like a mercy killing? I’d hate for a tainted monogamy cell to enter the race should you lose the lottery.”

It was the one who’d masqueraded as Robin. I could tell only by what he was wearing. Otherwise he and Goodfellow were beyond identical. It was creepy. The bar was full of about seventy of them, and besides length of hair, clothing, and the occasional scar, they were as Nik had said: clones. Your brain squirmed at the sight of it. It was unnatural—mirrors within mirrors. “No, thank you, Faunus,” Goodfellow said smoothly, sitting up. “I’d rather discuss how you haven’t had sex
at all
in a year. Did you take vows or is it true that an incubus bit off your penis in disappointment at your pathetic performance?” He grabbed the hand on his shoulder, slammed it on the bar, and pinned it there with a beautiful Spanish poniard gleaming silver and needle sharp. “Let us check and see.”

I turned my back just in time to hear the slide of material as pants were yanked down and then a pained groan from the entire bar. Apparently the incubus story edged out the taking-vows one.

“Is this the type of fight you hired us to prevent?”
Niko questioned. I didn’t know where his gaze was, on Goodfellow or Faunus, because I remained with my back to the Panic. I might work that way the entire night if it was feasible—serving the customers without facing them.

“Hardly,” Goodfellow dismissed. “A fight will be when one of us genuinely tries to kill another. We need alcohol to lubricate that into motion. Give us an hour. And you can look again, Cal—not that there was anything to see.” There was a wicked gloat at the monogamy revenge in the words. “His pants are back up. Luckily he does have a belt, as there is nothing else to hold them up.”

Warily, I faced the bar again as Faunus disappeared into the jeering and laughing crowd, the bloody blade remaining on the bar. “I think you made an enemy for life.”

“We are all enemies, but keeping the race alive is more important than that. And what precisely are you doing?” I ignored his question as I uncapped the black marker I’d fished out from under the bar, leaned across, and wrote “RG” on his forehead.

“Just a precaution.” I put the marker back under the bar and handed over his three bottles of damn expensive scotch that he insisted be kept especially for him.

“Actually, that’s not a completely idiotic idea…unless it’s permanent marker.” He scowled, but let it go and pointed to several other pucks around him. “This would be Piper, Pan, Shepherd, Paein, Paniskoi, Phobos, Philamnos, Phorbas, Panikon, Puckstein—he converted—Prank, Puca, Puki, Argos…and you’ll never remember the rest. Simply enjoy the spectacle and if you have to take a break, I’d go together. The buddy system is essential during the Panic.”

“Mostly
P
s. Why aren’t there any variations on Goodfellow or Robin?” Niko asked.

His face went blank but he smiled…technically. If someone had taken that poniard from the bar and carved the smile on his face, the effect would’ve been the same. “That’s a good question. I’ve wondered myself and then I wonder something else. Hob was the first, a million years on this earth. No one dared to take his name. I say I’m a hundred thousand years old, but as I can’t remember half of those, what else might I not remember? A million more? Hob went insane because he did remember. All those years and all the things that he had done. In a million years they couldn’t all be good things, now, could they? Some might be extremely bad things.”

His imitation of a smile became more unnatural as he continued. “Or if you don’t care what you do, the absolute number of years of boredom alone would drop you into the deepest pit of insanity. Maybe I’m a little smarter than Hob when I know a perfect memory can be the worst of enemies. Then again, maybes are only maybes. Maybe no one else cares enough for my name to steal it.”

The smile disappeared piece by piece, chunks of ice shoved methodically one by one into a freezer. “Do you have any interesting questions to add, Caliban?”

I felt like I’d asked someone what time it was and they beat me to death with Big Ben. Someone was cranky. I juggled more bottles of alcohol, ready to pour. “I was just going to ask why you guys have dicks if you don’t use them for the whole baby-making thing, but I think I can live without the info. Go party. Have fun. Stab somebody in the back. We’ve got it covered.”

His eyes didn’t become any less opaque, but he did turn and disappear into the crowd. “I think I might’ve
pissed myself a little bit,” I said conversationally to Niko. “How ’bout you?”

“A drop. Perhaps two at the most.” Niko took the discarded poniard and tucked it away. He did like collecting blades.

“I always wondered why he wasn’t afraid of me like everyone else.” Or hadn’t hated me like everyone else. You hate what you fear. Goodfellow didn’t fear me. He never had. “My monster cred just dropped a notch.”

Both of us had started pouring drinks when one of the pucks shouted, “Where’s the entertainment? The strippers! The whores! I’ve ten thousand dollars in fives and a crotch on fire! Bring on the orgy!”

“Oh God,” I croaked. The glass in my hand fell to shatter on the floor.

And Niko didn’t catch it. Niko and his unmatched reflexes didn’t catch the glass. For the first time in his adult life, I thought my brother was frozen with fear.

“I thought all other
paien
left when you guys rolled into town,” I said. “Goodfellow said so. I remember. Distinctly. Very distinctly.” With the possible exception of the boggles, and I didn’t see Mama Boggle on a stage wearing pasties over her scaly chest and a G-string made to accommodate her thrashing crocodile tail. Nine feet of croc-a-croc-a burning love. “Oh shit, I think I’m going to pass out.” I clenched the edge of the bar.

“Almost all
paien
,” one of the pucks corrected. Puckstein—I recognized him by the Star of David around his neck. “Not the lili and lilitu. They can’t smell us.” He stretched as if he were next up in Olympic men’s gymnastics.
Jesus.
“Hope you have a fire hose handy to clean out the place. You’re going to need it when this night is over.”

Jesus
.

I thought about shooting myself in the head. I thought about shooting the puck, but taking out seventy wasn’t going to happen. I decided on the simple: running out the emergency exit doors, if Niko didn’t beat me to them.

But it was too late. There were three reasons for that. One was the commitment we’d made to Robin—by commitment I meant the money we’d taken and had no intention of giving back. The second was the chains I saw wrapped and locked around the emergency door push bars. Goddamn mind-reading Goodfellow. The third was the worst.

The entertainment had arrived.

Seventy or so lions prowled through the front door. They walked upright, dressed in long raincoats to pass among humans, but they were lions. Until they stripped off the coats as soon as they passed through the door, and then they were lions and eagles. Male and female, they all had masses of hair—no, not hair, but manes, tawny or dark brown or a mixture of both. Sunglasses were dropped as well to reveal cat’s eyes in reverse, black with a golden slit of iris. They also had dark brown/black wings springing from their backs. That was comfortingly familiar. It was a peri bar. We were used to feathers here.

But there was something off. I took a harder look. I was used to anything these days when it came to monsters. Yet there was something…missing.

Their eyes and full-lipped mouths were so large, you almost didn’t notice—that there was only smooth skin between. No noses.

Puckstein was right: Puck pheromones wouldn’t bother them at all. Hard to smell when you’re lacking noses.

Everywhere else they looked mostly human—human
with the bare minimum of sequined stripper wear to be taken off for money, and lion fur billowing where most women waxed or shaved and some men manscaped. I was half monster, but, yeah, I knew the word “manscape” and if I hadn’t, seeing enough fur escape a bulging G-string that it crept down to knee level, I would’ve
invented
the term.

The music started, the lights lowered and began to pulse in wild colors, and a wall-covering sheet I hadn’t given a single thought of going near was ripped down to reveal the entire contents of a porn warehouse. There were sex toys I’d seen, sex toys I hadn’t seen but was aware existed, and then there were things I hadn’t seen, hadn’t heard of, and couldn’t begin to guess what in the hell they did.

“I’m surprised Goodfellow didn’t go all out and bring in chandeliers from which they could swing,” Niko said.

I pointed to a corner where a leather swing was being set up to hang from the ceiling. “Ah.” Niko exhaled, to center himself—I’d seen him do it many times before. “You’re fascinated with the porn channel. Now you get the three-dimensional version. I’d think you’d be enjoying yourself.”

“I like a candy bar once in a while too. This is being stuck in Willy Wonka’s Perverted Sex Factory.” I started pouring drinks. It was a job.
Muscle through it.

Niko began pouring as well, as a wall of impatient hands waved frantically in our faces. “The lili, male, and lilitu, female, were born under the sands of Assyria in ancient times. If you’re born under the sand, often live in sandstorms, I understand nature deciding you didn’t need a nose. They’re known to be ravenously sexually predatory, more so than—difficult as it is to imagine—pucks, I’ve heard.”

A naked puck slammed and bent an equally naked male lion over the end of the counter—my end—and I commented in resignation as the bar, glasses, and bottles began to shake furiously, “I think you heard wrong.”

I moved around to the other side of Niko, which was tight to be pouring drinks, so I started handing out bottles instead. Whiskey, scotch, tequila…whatever I could grab the quickest. Pucks had a tolerance that made a case of forty-ounces seem like a thimbleful to them anyway. I also started drinking myself. Heavily, which I rarely did in a business where you needed to stay alert to stay alive. But if I had to see what I was seeing, I preferred to see it with blurry vision.

The bar was packed, less than inches to spare. Seventy or so pucks, which was equal to about seventy thousand egos, plus seventy horny lions—the Ninth Circle wasn’t built for a crowd half this size. But everyone seemed willing to share their personal space in helpful ways such as wrapping their legs around someone else’s waist or hips, from the front or the back or upside down. There was also a tangled pile of heaving bodies—I didn’t count—in each available corner, skin-to-skin, not a millimeter of space between. Anything to keep the fire marshal away.

Wasn’t that obliging?

There were also those who hadn’t gotten past the strip shows yet. They were probably the equivalent of pucks with sexual dysfunction. It took them at least two to three minutes to get warmed up for a full-on ménage à whatever the French word for “twenty” was.

The dancers were gyrating on tables, chairs, and an agile two impressively on top of one of the thrusting and groaning mounds of sweating flesh. Female lions’—lilitu’s—breasts were bouncing, which I approved of, although the wish on the shaving or waxing issue hadn’t
changed. The male lions had bouncing going on as well, but it had nothing to do with breasts.

I groaned myself, but there was nothing sexual about it. I looked in another direction quickly, but unfortunately it was where I’d been ready to serve drinks earlier. How’d I forget that? The puck and the male lion hadn’t stopped shaking the bar yet. The puck was nuzzling through the lili mane to bite the back of his neck, and the lion was roaring and then purring as his wings flared and he lifted them in the air, the puck’s legs clamping around the thickly muscled waist. The lili roared again and there was a sudden rain of russet-colored fluid that smelled of cinnamon and desert sand.

I hadn’t seen it, but I’d bet
Brokeback Mountain
wasn’t anything like this.

“I am so not cleaning that up,” I said, taking another swallow from my bottle of whiskey.

Robin wasn’t going to be forgiven for this, not until the day I died and was a year in the ground. Niko was fending off probably the twentieth puck of the night—they definitely liked blondes—with his sword. “Bartenders are off-limits,” he was repeating. “Tell your brothers. No means no. It also means I will remove a very different kind of sword from them if they don’t respect that.”

I looked up to see the air full of sequins that had fallen from tossed-off clothing. They glittered in the flashing lights. Money flew in gusts of wind caused by flapping wings. It was like being inside a giant kinky snow globe. The pucks weren’t interested in me, although from their dubious glances they didn’t know why, and I drank on. Another puck tackled one of the female dancers off a table and was already inside her by the time they landed on the floor. She laughed as his mouth closed over a dark golden nipple.

Okay, that I missed. “I need to get laid in the worst way,” I said mournfully.