Roadkill (34 page)

“He’s a wise person.” Niko crouched on the other side of me. “You should listen to him. If you won’t listen to me.”

I closed the laptop and said to Catcher, “Scoot, Scooby.” The wolf made a sound halfway between a growl and a grunt, seized the computer in his teeth, and trotted off. I brushed dust idly off my jeans. It was just something to do. I was sitting in the stuff. I wasn’t coming clean. “I always listen to you, Cyrano,” I said, still uselessly rubbing at the dirt—my brand-new hobby, “except when I ate Bambi’s mom, and as I’d rather not mentally relive that, can we skip over it if I promise not to make any more exceptions in the future?”

He didn’t look at me, and I didn’t mind saying that scared the shit out of me more than the thought of being Auphe. Nik was always there for me. When I was a kid, if bullies picked on me, he was there . . . usually to pull me off the bullies’ backs as I tried to strangle them with my backpack strap, but he was there. He was there to stand between me and a scotch-bottle-throwing Sophia; there when the Auphe took me—just too busy not burning to death to be able to do anything about it, but he was still there when I came back psychotic as hell—temporarily psychotic, but still no damn picnic. And when the Auphe took me again, that time he did get me back, and there was never a time in my life he wouldn’t meet my eyes. But my eyes were different now, weren’t they? They were the only physical feature we shared in common and now we didn’t even have that.

He continued to look at the ground, braid of hair over his shoulder and lying on his chest, as he sketched a few letters in the gritty dirt.
Fratres
. “Do you know what that means?” He didn’t wait for my answer, although I actually had one that time. “It means brothers. The plural of the Latin word for brother. It’s part of that tattoo around your arm. At least they spelled that word correctly. We’ll discuss sterility of instruments, hepatitis, and the ablative case of Latin later.” Now he looked at me, amusement layered over something deeper and darker. “Yes, you have ‘brothers- in-arm’ tattooed around your biceps instead of ‘brothers- in-arms,’ but as always, it’s the thought that counts.”

Before I could groan at my . . . no, the tattoo parlor’s stupidity . . . Nik gripped that same tattooed arm. “I’m kidding.
Fratres-in-armis
is correct. Although you should have me vet all future tattoos in foreign or dead languages. Just in case.” His grip tightened as that deeper and darker became more so. “We’re brothers, Cal. We always will be. I don’t care if you grow fur like Catcher and hunt down and eat a deer every night. Six months ago I thought you died. This is nothing compared to that. I don’t care about your Auphe genes, and no matter what you do, no matter
what
,” he emphasized, “you will always be my brother.”

That was a big promise to keep, especially in the face of so many things. “Mayhem, violence . . . murder?” I asked quietly. “If I try to do those things? If I try to do them to you?”

“You already know the answer to that.”

I did. Real brothers, true brothers, stood by each other—even if it came to a Butch and Sundance moment. If there came a time that, like Catcher, I wasn’t myself and never would be again, if Nik had to be my combination Butch and Bolivian army, there was no one I would rather be the one to do it. I hadn’t wanted to talk to him earlier because I’d failed him. I often did and he more than often denied it. Sometimes I thought if I hadn’t been born, I still would’ve found a way to let him down. Sounds impossible, but I would’ve found a way to do it. Been incarnated as a cranky Chihuahua and mauled his ankle. Who knows? But if I had faith in anything besides my brother, I had faith in that. Niko believed in karma and I had bad karma stamped on my ass from the day I was born; yet I’d gotten nothing but the good kind in the form of my brother. It was hardly fair to him or his life, but incredibly good luck for me and my fucked-up one. I would be an ungrateful bastard to spit on it, although it would be the right thing to do, the noble thing, the Niko thing. And yet Niko himself would never let me. He never had before.

And he thought I had survival issues.

“Brothers.” I held out my hand and he gripped that instead of my arm. “But if you had any damn sense, you’d kick my butt off a ten-story building.”

“Brothers,” he reaffirmed. “And I know, but smothering you with your pillow would be less messy. You know I despise messy.” Behind the joke, he’d answered me in all seriousness. For the first time I thought he did actually know and wasn’t in denial about who or what I really was; yet that knowing still didn’t make a difference to him.

Hell, Niko was as screwed up as I was.

It was a revelation, but it didn’t change the fact that it was also a moving moment, doubly so when a foot slammed into my ribs, moving me over and against Nik. “This? This is why I give you the money that keeps starvation from our door? So you can sit in the dirt like a worthless beggar, the soulless monster and his clan traitor of a
bar
?” I’d picked up by now that
bar
was brother, and I also discovered an evil, vicious old woman could swing a mean old-lady shoe. Her foot was the size of a child’s, but it had the feel of a three-hundred-pound football player’s size thirteen . . . with a pointy heel.

An arm came over me and across my chest to hold me back. Niko knew before I did myself that I was going for Abelia-Roo and I couldn’t blame it on the Auphe. I could’ve been human to the last cell, with ancestors who came over on the damn
Mayflower
, squatted on Plymouth Rock having tea and biscuits, and never saw a cute little fairy under a cabbage leaf, much less screwed a monster, and I would’ve felt the same: homicidal. She was calling Nik a traitor, when he’d almost died because of her? That took balls and if she’d been a man, I would’ve relieved her of them.

“We wait and we wait, because of you. Suyolak causes this.” She waved an arm at what was left of the wreck down the interstate. “We hire you to work, and work means you find ways around Suyolak’s machinations.” Dusty black and purple skirts rustled as she aimed another kick.

Niko caught her foot with his spare hand, which was smart. If I had caught it, I would’ve turned it into a paperweight and she could’ve beat her next subcontractors with the stump that was left. “Attracting the attention of the authorities will only slow us down and give Suyolak more time to pull ahead of us. Also the fact that I won’t let my brother take your foot home as a souvenir doesn’t mean I won’t pick up your eighty pounds of venom-spewing ancient body and stuff you back in that eye-searing RV from Easter Egg Hell. Now go.” He released her foot. “And reexamine your knowledge of souls. Those without aren’t equipped to make judgments about the status of others.”

She hissed in a way that made any monster, including an Auphe, seem like an amateur. I was too hard on myself, because she gave me a run for my money and then some. Strangely enough, it made me feel a little better—all human and worse than ninety-nine percent of the monsters I’d run across. Skirts swirling, she turned, less than five feet tall, but that didn’t make a difference. When she moved back down the highway, she was a miniature tornado of pure spite.

“Plague of the World and all,” I said, getting to my feet, “is Suyolak honestly that bad?”

Niko was already up. “Next to her, maybe not, but we’re not comparing apples and oranges. We’re comparing black widows and black mambas. Both can make you wish you were dead. Now let’s rid the world of at least half of that combination.”

This time Rafferty drove. Any one of us would’ve had to fight him for the wheel. We were close, he said. As a wolf or Wolf on the scent, he would know. As a healer, he knew absolutely; he’d already told us. He wanted Suyolak and not for a fee or to save the world. He wanted him for Catcher and that was a thousand times more motivation than the rest of us had. I’d seen the same motivation and intensity in my brother a half hour ago that Rafferty was showing now in nailing the antihealer to save his cousin. Either kill Suyolak or drain him dry, whatever it took.

Best of luck to him.

Knock knock
.

I’d said that to Cal, but I should’ve been saying it to myself too.

Knock knock
. Who’s there?

Catcher . . . as I’d told myself a hundred times before. Catcher. I was Catcher, yes, now. But before? No. There wasn’t any point to lying to myself. I’d gone bye-bye. That was six times in the past month. I could blame what had happened earlier for my last trip if I wanted, but that was still the most times ever. I could only pin one of those on Cal.

I’d seen a different side to him with the Ördögs, his Auphe side, the one I’d tried to ignore at our McDonald’s McNugget-up-the-nose stop. There was no ignoring it at the creek. I’d been right there with him when we caught up with the truck traveling off the road and also caught up with Cal’s own traveling. What he did, I couldn’t describe it to anyone else but a Wolf. Humans couldn’t see what we could. I’d been in human form and wolf form and although as a human I saw more colors, as a wolf I saw depths and textures humans couldn’t imagine. I saw reality bleeding around Cal every time he disappeared and reappeared. It was like a visual scream. The world was screaming.

I wasn’t sure if that’s what tipped me over into wolf and nothing but wolf. It could have been that or the battle. Sleek black shapes here, there, everywhere. There was flesh ripping under my teeth and the taste of blood. I wasn’t Kin. I was proof that all Wolves weren’t criminals and careless murderers. I’d been a biologist. My cousin was a healer. I didn’t go looking for trouble. Sometimes you couldn’t avoid it, no matter how hard you tried, not in our world where almost everyone was a predator—it was only a matter of big or little, slow or fast.

But me? I was a peaceful guy, laid back and fun loving. In the day, I could bong a beer and tutor you in anatomy. I’d pledged a
frat
. . . all the better to blend in, and, to my shame, get free beer. Once in a while in my past I’d run into those a little less nonviolent than I was. I’d tried to be reasonable, but there were those who wouldn’t listen to reason. Then there were the times you just had to go to the woods, the forest, the jungle—whatever was available—to run and hunt. We were Wolves, first and foremost, above all other things. It was natural, and there was no denying we were at our most wolf in the hunt.

Either Cal or the blood; it didn’t make a difference what had been the trigger. I remembered tearing into the Ördögs and then I remembered waking up in the car. In between were the dreams you forgot two seconds after waking up. You knew there’d been something and you had a sense of the emotion, even the happy, slow drift of colors, but anything tangible was gone. I woke up floating in blissful satisfaction and to a full stomach. Deer. I could still taste it. It was a familiar taste. It was what we “tame” suburban Wolves tended to hunt. The Kin would kill and usually eat their enemy. I couldn’t do that. If it talked, I couldn’t eat it. It could deserve to be eaten, but it didn’t make a difference. If it could talk, I couldn’t knosh down on it. I was a softy that way. I couldn’t eat octopus either. I’d done a study on them in college. Those things could open jars to get at food.
Jars
. . . with screw-top lids. That was smart. I didn’t remember how long it took me to figure out how to open jars when I was a kid. I knew it hadn’t been anywhere near as fast as an octopus and I’d gotten all gold stars in kindergarten.

Rafferty had once said I was the closest thing to a wolf vegetarian he’d ever seen. A tree- hugging, vegetarian wolf—worse yet, Wolf, and he was embarrassed to be seen with me. This from the guy who healed broken wings on birds and tossed them back, free, into the sky. “What?” he’d gruff. “I just ordered pizza. I’ll take pizza over blackbird any day.”

It was why he fought the Ördögs as wolf instead of killing them with a brush of his fingers. It was to give them a chance. It was what was right and fair. He’d only ever killed as a healer to give mercy, the way he had the pregnant woman Suyolak had corrupted beyond all hope of curing. That he was going to change that when he took on Suyolak wasn’t his fault. Only a healer could stop another healer as strong as Suyolak. Rafferty had to do it because that bastard had to die. I could live with that. Rafferty could too. I didn’t know if either of us could live with his doing it by draining Suyolak of a life force that was as tainted as a well poisoned with cyanide.

Whether or not using it could bring me back to what I once was wasn’t the issue. What was, was what would Rafferty be if he did. I’d give up my furry butt—no, I’d give up my life for my cousin, and I knew he’d do the same for me. While I didn’t want it to come to that, it was part and parcel of family, the right kind of family. What I couldn’t accept was his changing. Not the way I had changed, but like Cal had changed during the fight. I didn’t want to be whole and right again, only to look into my cousin’s eyes and see a shadow of Suyolak staring back at me. If he could pull it off and make me like I once was without darkening himself, that would be great. I’d pay for the party . . . buffet and piñatas. We’d hit Mexico and the beaches and not come back for a year. Nothing but fun, sun, and knock-you-flat tequila. We more than deserved it.

But if he couldn’t put me right and keep himself the same in the process, I’d rather live a clean if intellectually simplistic life. I’d rather be the Catcher who lived only in the moment, a Catcher without an identity beyond the most basic concept of “me.” A Suyolak-contaminated Rafferty was not a clean life, for either of us. It was wrong, a polluted existence. And I couldn’t do anything about it. I couldn’t change his mind; I could only hope he was telling the truth: that he could handle it.

“Ah, but, dog, what if he cannot?”

I swiveled my head as I sat in the passenger seat of the moving car but saw nothing. It didn’t stop Suyolak’s oily voice from sniffing around the inside of my brain like a cat in heat, ravenous for any satisfaction he could get. I didn’t know if anyone else could hear him, although no one looked as if goosed with an icy finger, which was how I felt. All that was missing was a doctor telling me to cough.