Rob Thurman - Roadkill

“Except for smelling like Romero, the latest in zombie cologne, I’m fucking great.” And I was-I meant it. Fan-fucking-tastic. The smell still bothered me, but as for the rest? Vampire, troll, revenant, boggle, mounds of racing blobs of decomposing bodies: It was all the same-one damn good time. Bring it on. So what if it ruined Cheetos for me? There were a thousand other snack foods to take their place. I scooped up my machetes as I passed Niko and tackled another mullo that was about to take Robin from behind as he held off another one in front of him. This one had either been in the ground longer or had been a customer of an extremely crappy funeral home, because as it hit the ground with me on top of it, it virtually disintegrated. There was only a large puddle of extremely foul-smelling goo under me. The tendrils that surrounded its “body” fluttered, then melted as well.

I looked to one side to see Delilah laying into another mullo as if it were a pork-scented chew toy. But as quick as she was, it was quicker. It managed to wrap around her lower body, taking out her hind legs. She snarled as she went down-no yelping for her. When the mullo moved up toward her head, I was there to drop my machetes and grab it. This one must’ve been put in the ground only a few days ago, because I was able to hang on to it and rip it off before it could cover the snapping wolf head. It didn’t matter what the Kin had in store for her or what she had in store for me. I couldn’t let her go without giving her a chance. What she did with that chance was up to her.

But as I pulled it off her, I lost my grip as it thrashed muscularly under my hands. In the moonlight I could see it was covered with lines and curves that made up nothing recognizable now, but had probably once been a wealth of tattoos before death. He or she had been in good shape before hitting the slab, because it had more fight in it than all the others combined-a gym rat maybe putting dead muscle to strong use. Its attention turned from Delilah to me, it lunged, tendrils grasping eagerly at the air.

And that is all it got-nothing but air.

I reappeared behind it and Delilah. When it had gone for me, she had gone for it and rode it down to the ground, her muzzle buried in muscle and meat, ripping chunks of it away. I retrieved my machetes and joined in. It wasn’t long before it was a stretch of quivering pieces spread far and wide on the grass and gravel. I stood still, both blades ready, and listened, although if anyone was going to be the first to hear something, it would be Delilah. I kept my eyes on the triangular white ears that pointed forward, then back, then forward again before she yawned and began energetically rubbing her muzzle back and forth on the grass. No more mullos.

“I suppose that embalming fluid isn’t the tastiest additive to spice up your meal,” Goodfellow commented, disgust dripping from the words as he came up to us. For once, he hadn’t escaped the multisplatter that had gotten the rest of us.

Not that she’d actually eaten any of the mullo. Delilah had made it very clear in the past that she didn’t eat roadkill-which in her eyes was the dead or pathetically slow humans. The first was degrading and the second wasn’t nearly challenging enough. Robin held out his arms and grimaced at what he saw and smelled. “Don’t start,” I warned before he could complain. I was covered nearly head to toe in graveyard goop from taking down the mullo that had almost had him from behind.

“No one is getting in my car like this,” Niko said. His hand fisted a handful of my jacket. “And how did you say you were feeling again?”

Yet another good mood was washed away in the cemetery’s ornamental pond. We were attacked again, this time by two ill-tempered swans. The one time I wished Salome had come along for the fun and she couldn’t be bothered. I asked Robin if skinny-dipping with the big white birds could be considered cheating on Ishiah. If I’d had any positive feeling left at all from my traveling that Niko hadn’t managed to drown, they were finished off by Goodfellow trying to strangle me while a swan pecked irately at my head.

Then it was back on the Lincoln. With both our candidates for coffin thief living on the West Coast, there was no reason for the truck or us to leave it… and then there was the trail of disease that had led us here so far. The driver probably didn’t know we were behind him. Suyolak knew, though. If he was appearing in my dreams, he knew we were coming. No doubt he knew Abelia and her men were behind as well. Clan ties, blood ties. I hope he gave them worse dreams than he’d given me. But although he obviously did sense us behind him, I thought he was confident he could slow us down long enough until he was out of the coffin. He’d definitely oozed confidence in my dream. And with Abelia’s crappy, carelessly complacent seal application, he might be right to feel that way.

“When do we meet Rafferty? Better yet, when do we make a motel stop?” I asked Nik as the night air rushed into the car to dry our clothes on our bodies. Only Goodfellow had felt the need for nudity in the swan pond. Delilah had kept her fur on while splashing among the water lilies and swan feathers. While that water had been an improvement over the rancid slime we’d been wearing, soap and a motel shower would be better. It was a given that Abelia wasn’t letting us all pile into her RV to clean up.

“I think we’ll be able to combine the two events,” he answered. Robin was already snoring in the backseat. “I meant it when I asked, you know. How are you feeling?”

“You’re not going to let it go, are you?” I groaned. “For once I finally got something good out of the Auphe package. I think I’m due.”

“You’re more than due,” he said. “No one in your life knows that more than I do, but it seems too good to be true. And anything that seems too good to be true often is. There’s usually a price to be paid. If there is one, I want to know what it is.”

You couldn’t hold it against your family for caring too much about you. You might want to, but you couldn’t. “Is my being in a good mood that scary?” I complained halfheartedly.

“Terrifying,” he said. The word rang with sincerity. “Absolutely terrifying.”

By the time we reached Monroe County, Illinois, I was behind the wheel. Niko had caught a few hours’ sleep and Robin had yet to wake up from our graveyard festivities. He wasn’t a big believer in sharing the load. The fact that he’d changed on the road and hadn’t been fighting mullos in his pajamas from the car lot was a lucky break for us-and for the mullos, if the dead could be scarred mentally. It was a little past eleven at night when I pulled into the parking lot of the motel with the best rooms money could buy. Thirty-six bucks a night. How could you go wrong?

“We check in, shower, and keep going?” I asked. It wasn’t a problem with Niko’s and my being able to switch off driving. Delilah had a werewolf’s stamina; I knew from personal experience. Although with the Kin’s finding out about us, it was unlikely I was going to keep experiencing that too often in the future-one way or the other. I had to wonder, though, if even Delilah, fearless as she was, wanted to face my brother if she tried and actually succeeded in killing me. Delilah was Delilah, though. She believed she had no equal and in some respects she was right. But Niko… She thought she knew him, but she couldn’t, despite seeing what he’d done six months ago when he’d thought I was dead. She’d seen it, been there, but because she was Delilah, she couldn’t let herself believe it.

Niko was out of her league. Niko, when he wanted to be or had to be, was out of anyone’s league-except for Suyolak’s, who was a whole different ball game. One I wasn’t sure we could play. Killing with a thought: What the hell kind of game was that?