Roadkill (25 page)

But I hadn’t turned out that way, so I still blamed them plenty, not for me, but for turning their backs on Niko. “You can’t heal her?” I asked, my gun still pointed. She was dying, a storybook mom in a fairy-tale house, and, damn, that sucked, but no way was I facing that thing inside her without a gun. I didn’t care what Rafferty said about its expiration date. If it got out . . . the last thing I wanted to face without a gun was a Suyolak mini-me.

“I could keep her alive, but I can’t heal her.” He ran a hand over his face hard enough to redden the skin, then reached over to touch her knee. Her eyes immediately went blank and she slumped forward limply. The thing inside of her still moved for a moment or two, distorting her stomach, but then it stilled too. Call me a chickenshit, but I was glad I hadn’t had to see it. I couldn’t imagine what it looked like now, but I was sure it was nothing like a newborn baby boy.

“What the hell kind of disease does this?” I dropped the muzzle of the gun to point at the blood splattered around her bare feet. There was a butterfly tattoo on her ankle, a color between red and pink. Rose—as rosy as her life had been before Suyolak had decided to play.

“Not a disease,” Rafferty responded as Niko ripped the sheer white curtains from the window and draped it over the woman’s still body. “Genes. Suyolak turned the fetus’s genes into a mirror image of his own.”

“Genetic tampering,” Nik said, turning to him. “You said he could do only so much in the coffin and that wasn’t much. Kill a few people with bacteria and viruses that already are available. Genetic manipulation is far beyond that.”

“He’s more than a thousand years old. How does he know about genes anyway?” I added, stepping back from the blood slowly pooling outward.

“First, genetic manipulation is assuming the patient lives. This . . . atrocity . . . never would’ve lived outside its mother and neither of them more than ten minutes. It was his mirror, to lure us here, and mirrors reflect, but mirrors don’t live or have the talent of what they imitate.”

“Easy to twist and destroy,” Robin said quietly. “Not so easy to remake a living creature and keep it that way.”

Catcher leaned against Rafferty’s leg as the healer said without emotion, “No. It’s not. As for genes, healers have known about genes since there were healers. Even if they didn’t know what to call them, they could still sense them, but there aren’t many strong enough to manipulate them.”

“Except for Suyolak?” Niko commented, leaving the “and you” silent. There was still another victim downstairs. Who the hell knew what he might do?

“Except for Suyolak . . . and right now all he can do is make a temporary mirror of himself to lure us off track and give his driver time to get farther away.” Rafferty’s eyes were lamps of gold now, rage directed at Suyolak, and I was thinking probably for him too. “The husband is dead. We need to go.”

“Is that your opinion, Hippocrates? Are you sure you wouldn’t want to wait around for monsters- made-from-scratch waiting to pop out just for the fun and distraction?” Robin asked acidly. Despite the fact he’d lived longer than we had and seen more than we ever would, he was still shaken. Hell, we all were, but Goodfellow was always the most vocal of us all. He had the guts to show what the rest of us hid. “Because this first was so enjoyable.”

“Shut up,” Raffety ground out between his teeth.

It didn’t stop Goodfellow. “The proud mother- to-be may have died a death from the most unsettling of horror movies, and the father is deceased on the kitchen floor, but that’s no reason we can’t stop, have an Irish coffee, and eat some cake on our way out. I’m quite sure she was a great cook. There’s bound to be sugar-and-butter-filled goodness somewhere in the refrigerator. We should enjoy. Because that would be more useful than anything
you’ve
done so far in this place.”

“Shut up.” This time it was me, saying it under my breath as I moved casually between the puck and the healer. “Really. Shut the hell up before he . . .” Well, there were so many things I could think of at the moment: pieces rotting and falling off; pieces I liked and preferred to keep. It didn’t pay to forget Rafferty was a healer, but he was a predator too—a carnivore; a massively pissed-off, guilting carnivore. Healer or predator, which came first? I preferred Suyolak found that out, not the rest of us.

“Shut up? You have the unmitigated gall to tell your elder and your superior in every way to
shut up
?” Robin was a predator too, only without the fur and fangs. We all were predators. But . . .

Niko finished my thought before I barely began it. “We are after Suyolak, not one another. I want civility, and I want it now. Do any disagree?” He didn’t idly swing his katana toward his feet as he normally did. Instead, he buried more than two inches of the blade into the bloody floor and didn’t look like he’d have a problem doing the same to flesh instead of wood. Rafferty and Goodfellow weren’t the only ones who were pissed. We all were: mad and more than a little rattled, not that we’d admit it. I’d seen a lot of killers in my day, some sane, some insane. I’d always thought the insane were the worst and we’d thought Suyolak the same way, but right now . . . Suyolak was too sane. Sociopathic, genocidal, but with a focus so crystal clear, it was like a laser. Burning. Blinding.

“Let’s go find this son of a bitch and do things to him that make this seem like a fucking baby shower,” I said with savage bite.

Robin exhaled and let his dissatisfaction with Rafferty go. “Fine. I refuse to admit I was out of line. I am never out of line. In fact, I created the line, but I will graciously skip the kitchen when we leave.”

That was the best we could hope for. Rafferty paid no attention to what was, for a puck, almost an apology, and headed for the stairs, Catcher at his heels. The rest of us turned to leave a nursery where Pooh had seen things no bear ever should. I grimaced and then gave Robin’s shoulder a light shove. “Which line did you come up with? The one you don’t cross or the one you jump over with both feet?” He glared back at me and his hand hovered near one of the daggers he kept tucked away.

“Naughty, naughty.” I gave him a dark grin.

Niko, behind me, said abruptly, “It wasn’t much of a distraction, however, was it? Horrifying, yes, but time-consuming? Not by as much as would be worth the trouble. Suyolak had us following his false shadow for an hour at the most. Why did he bother if he couldn’t slow us down more than this?”

As answers went, the one we received was immediate and succinct.

First the detached garage out back blew up, and seconds later Niko’s car followed it.

Timing, as with women, gambling, fighting, and massive fiery destruction, really is everything.

A car fire wasn’t that much to see, whether it was in an already-engulfed garage or just out front in the open, not in comparison to other things I’d seen. An explosion was an entirely different animal from just a fire, but, hey, I’d been four seconds from ground zero of a nuclear one. Sort of. There was enough truth to that that a simple car explosion shouldn’t faze me; not that or the flames visible through the house’s shattered windows, front and back. And it didn’t . . . until all the ammunition in the trunk of Niko’s car started exploding with it. I carried a lot of guns and even more ammunition. Better safe than sorry; better lead than dead. There was enough in that trunk to start my own gun shop if we broke down in the Midwest with no way home, not that that was my plan, but it was good to be prepared. But now the stock was going up with the car and there wasn’t much we could do about it as we dived to the living room floor as bullets randomly slammed into the outside of the house and some came through the walls themselves. Until now, I never met an explosive, incendiary, or armor-piercing round that I didn’t like. That was the military for you. Six hundred bucks for a toilet while an armory sergeant was smuggling out whatever it would take to buy that big boat or pay for little Susie’s med school. And if he was busy, there was always eBay.

One round punched through the front door and then the stairs, about ten inches from Robin’s nose where he was flattened on the floor. He didn’t notice. “My clothes. My suits. The Kiton, the Brioni, the Luigi. Gods, not the Caraceni. Someone is going to pay. Someone is going to
die
.” He glared at me. “And if this is Delilah taking advantage of Suyolak’s distraction, it will be you.”

Delilah . . . I couldn’t lie to myself there. It could be her. Let Suyolak do half the work while she finished a job he hadn’t been smart enough to complete, that very well could be Delilah. It had her street smarts all over it. When I’d slept with her, before the Kin found out and after, I never knew if the moment would come . . . if she would genuinely try to kill me. I’d tried to anticipate how that would feel. It was impossible. If it was Delilah now, I wouldn’t have to guess anymore.

Niko was already slithering on his stomach toward the back of the living room where another large window was supposed to let in the light of the sun. Now it was a framework to flames about thirty feet from the house—until a bullet shattered it too. Then it was a frame to flames and an entrance for wind stinking of gasoline. Nik went over the sill and disappeared. I followed him and heard Catcher, Rafferty, and Robin going through the kitchen.

“I will never let you pack your own gear again,” Niko said as he moved through more of those blue-purple flowers. “You’re a menace to anyone without his own bomb shelter.”

I was right behind him, rounding the back corner of the house. “You can’t honestly expect me to anticipate your car’s blowing up. If you don’t get that thing serviced, it’s not my fault. And I’m a menace, period.” But I still had my Desert Eagle, not to mention my backup—the Sig—and both were up and ready. Cars rarely committed suicide or spontaneously combusted, and especially not in groups like lemmings. They usually had help. We came in sight of the front yard and of the blackened frame of Nik’s car caught in glimpses through the flames. The trunk had been blown open thanks to my explosive rounds.

No Delilah yet, and I couldn’t detect her distinctive scent over the scorched metal.

There was motion on the other side of the house, Catcher and Rafferty . . . and Robin pulling up the rear with a sword and an expression of cold rage. The man took his clothes seriously, but he took attempts on his and our lives as much so. After the quick look that equaled ours, they and Niko and I pressed against the respective sides of the house for a few minutes until the bullets stopped splitting the air. The others did the same, and when we finally moved out front, we all moved as one. Raff and Catcher might not be Kin, but they were Wolves and, whether in wolf or human form, they moved like mercury sliding along glass. Quick. Quiet. Potentially deadly.

Now where was the bitch or son of one who’d done this? Suyolak was an antihealer, not a pyromaniac. If this wasn’t Delilah, then someone had to have done this for Suyolak. A lit twist of cloth in the gas tank would’ve accomplished it easily. It couldn’t be his driver. He needed him. It wasn’t the others who’d helped steal the coffin—they were all dead. And I didn’t want it to be Delilah, no matter how foolish that was. So who . . .

Fuck.

Branje. It was Branje. Dead. His body was sprawled on its stomach in the dirt about fifteen feet from the burning car with his face turned to the side, facing us, the chin tucked down. He had some burns on his jaw and on his arms, but I didn’t think that’s what had done him in.

Salome sat on the dead man’s back, licking blood from her furless paw with a dried suede scrap of tongue. She spotted us, yawned, and curled up in a ball, basking with a sawmill purr in the heat of the burning Eldorado. The dirt had soaked up the blood around Branje’s head and neck. I didn’t have to lift up that head to know his throat had been ripped out.

I didn’t think the spray-bottle punishment was working as well as Goodfellow thought it was, but with Branje being responsible for toasting our ride, I gave Robin’s disciplinary methods and Salome’s hunting a pass, although it was getting embarrassing that the one with the highest body count on this job was a mummified cat. I squatted beside them, giving Salome a gingerly pat on the wrinkled bald head. “Good kitty. Nice kitty.” I scowled at the dead Rom. “I knew I should’ve cut your nose off when I had the chance.”

“Branje must have run from where the Rom RV stopped half a mile back.” We were doing the heavy lifting while Abelia was watching
Judge Judy
in air-conditioned comfort. Niko crouched beside me. “But why? If he were under Suyolak’s control, he would’ve let him out of the coffin before it was ever stolen. And so far Suyolak has shown no ability to control anyone. Visit you with dreams or nightmares, but actually control? A healer . . . even an antihealer can’t do that, can they, Jeftichew?”

Kneeling on the other side of the body, Rafferty shook his head. “No.” Okay, that was simple and to the point. “But . . .” Damn. Life would be so much better if the human race had never come up with the concept of “but.” It got you every damn time. Resting his hand on Branje’s singed hair, the healer’s face showed disgust in the twist of his lips and the lowering of his brows at what he felt. “This is the sickest bastard who ever roamed the face of the earth. Why they didn’t find a volcano to drag his ass to and dump him, coffin and all, into it, I’ll never goddamn know.”

“Guess all the hobbits were getting the hair on their feet permed.” I moved to the other side with him. The flames were superheating air that hadn’t been that cool to begin with.

“What did the son of a bitch do now?” Robin demanded, staying several steps away from the blackened and bloody body, preserving the condition of the only clothes he had left. The world needed saving, but so did his wardrobe. A puck had to have his priorities.

“This one. He must’ve been one of Suyolak’s regular guards.” That made sense. Branje was one of Abelia-Roo’s most trusted. “Long-term exposure. The seals didn’t have to be that weak at all. Just a pinhole of an opening and years to work.” Rafferty stood up and wiped his hand on his jeans. “Schizophrenia. Suyolak screwed with the chemistry of this guy’s brain six damn ways to Sunday. He would’ve been hearing voices, hallucinating, easy to influence, for months, maybe years. Tough guy to hold it together and keep it secret. At the end Suyolak was just one more voice in a hundred, probably telling him if he did this, he’d make all the rest go away. And this poor dead bastard was far enough gone to believe it. Not far along enough to open the coffin. He had a lifetime of knowing what that would mean, but burning a few cars to get the voices to go away, that he could do.”