Rob Thurman - Slashback

I raided the fridge for two six-packs: one for him and one for me. Yeah, nice alliteration and one I was going to do my best to scrub from my own brain cells. As he looked down his nose at anything as common as beer, I was pouring Mountain Dew and Dr. Pepper into a glass with the beer on top of that. Beer for the amnesia, the rest for caffeinated coherence. I wasn’t good with mornings either. I considered one or two p.m. still morning. I considered five thirty a.m. an abomination. If Hell had existed, it would always be five thirty there.

“Seriously?” Goodfellow asked dubiously as he watched me mixing the brew with the combat knife that had proved useless against Jacky-boy or what might be Jacky-boy as Robin remained on the fence there. At least the puck was distracted from his own horrifyingly domestic brew.

“Dr. Dew. Good for what ails you and a barrelful will decompose a body if you’re out of sulfuric acid.” I had no idea if that was true, but it sounded true. It also felt true as the first swallow hit my stomach and became a miniature nuclear explosion. I was back on the couch and guzzling. When I felt my eyes begin to burn and my nerves do a convulsive dance, I said, “Okay, I’m awake. For about forty minutes. Jack-our monster of the month. Maybe. Go.”

Robin had finished his first, second-hell, he was on his fifth beer in less than a minute. “Black, fog or mist, possible wings, the ozone smell you said, I’m thinking some sort of storm paien. Too bad it’s not a parasite, looking only to drain energy. They’re more pests than anything. This one, however, sounds far above the pest category. Hopefully it’s a creature or spirit and not a god.” Yeah, we’d fought pseudo-gods before. Not fun. “Perhaps in earlier days he associated with uptight humans. Your people are quite good at that, labeling anything such as sex, gambling, and drinking as being depraved.” All of which happened to be the puck’s favorite activities. “Insanity beyond the pale. You said Ishiah was certain all the victims were human, yes? That would make sense if he clung to humankind for a pace. We hate what we love and love what we hate. Let me consider this for a moment longer.”

All human victims. Or at least partly human when it came to me. Then once tasted, I was off the menu. That hurt my feelings.

As Goodfellow closed his eyes to concentrate, I finished my Dr. Dew. When I came back with a second one, my knife that had been on the coffee table was gone. I glared at Niko, who was drinking soy milk with the obvious delusion there was some sort of taste to it.

“When you stop twitching like a lab rat with electrodes in his brain, you’ll get it back,” he responded calmly. “Stir your poisonous concoction with your finger and if it eats the flesh from your bone don’t come crying to me.”

I stirred, drank, and growled. My finger turned slightly red but that was probably psychosomatic. When I said so, Niko told me I didn’t have the depth of imagination for a psychosomatic disorder. I poured half of the Dr. Dew in his grass milk. He poured all his milk over my head. Normally he would’ve flipped me over the couch, but this was his way of being considerate of my stitches.

“This is what you do while I think?” Robin’s eyes were now open. “Squabble like children in a sandbox?”

“No, usually I kill something when I’m bored, but there’s nothing here to kill except you,” I complained halfheartedly. “And Niko hid my knife.” I tried to wring the milk out of my sopping hair.

“Lack of an immediately convenient weapon. Never was there a truer sign of friendship.” He got to his feet. “I have an idea or two and someone to verify them. Fortunately, her business is open twenty-four hours a day. She’ll be awake. Let us go.”

“How about a shower first?” I complained.

“No, leave the milk.” His lips curved in a way I long recognized as being at my expense. “She’ll like you better for it. Apollo knows, you need all the brightening of your personality that you can get.”

“But. . milk?”

“Milk,” he confirmed at the door before pausing.

“Oh. And a dead rat if you happen to have one.”

“A cathouse? You brought us to a whorehouse?” Niko, arms folded and eyebrows furrowed, looked up at the face of the four-story brownstone built of warm-colored stone and accented with creamy white. Nice. Expensive. Classy. This wasn’t the place if you wanted a quick fifty-buck suck-and-fuck.

“Now you sound as judgmental as Jack-the-skinner-Sprat, if that’s who it is. And it’s not a cathouse. It is the Cathouse. It has existed for well over four thousand years in different locations. I have stock in it. It’s quite profitable. . except for the kilos of catnip they go through monthly. That does eat into the profit. But we all have our vices.”

It had been a twenty-minute cab ride here and I now smelled like sour milk. I had two guns under my jacket and Niko had given me my KA-BAR knife back, but my mood was not good. There was the caffeine crash combined with the itch of new stitches and it was still too goddamn early for anyone or anything to be upright and viable for life.

Sometimes I hated my job.

I ignored the doorbell, a softly glowing button surrounded by a curved brass sleeping mouse, and pounded on the door. “We’re three little kittens who’ve lost our mittens. Ah, the hell with it. It’s a whorehouse.” I pounded on the door again. “Kits who need tits. Open up.”

“I wish I could believe he was drunk. But I know his Auphe metabolism better,” Robin grumbled as he nudged me aside to press the bell. “Are you certain you raised him or did you let Hannibal Lecter babysit him? Genghis Khan? Attila the Hun? Please, enlighten me.”

Niko was undisturbed per usual. “Cal is his own person. I learned at a young age to accept that or step in front of a bus and move on to my next incarnation.”

Goodfellow gave a peculiar hum. “You always have been a glutton for punishment. Over and over and over again.” It sounded, best guess, half smug and half melancholy and entirely more specific than his usual random comments on Niko’s Buddhist philosophy. My general annoyance factor needed no extra commentary, apparently, but before I could ask him anything he was already ringing the bell again.

“Why are we here? You wanted proof. How are we going to find proof here?” I asked.

“A den of iniquity-Zeus, how I love them-is a prime source of every rumor in the wind. I plan on speaking with my good and formerly intimate friend to see if she’s heard any such of certain paien being in the city.” He held up a finger. “Their presence could rule out Jack. For example, Taranis.”

“Celtic god of thunder. Usually associated with a wheel,” Niko supplied.

“He didn’t slice me open with a goddamn wheel. I’d have noticed that. And no more gods. We fought one god, that’s enough,” I countered.

“Lei Kung.” Goodfellow held up a second finger.

“A Chinese spirit known as the Duke of Thunder. He supposedly punishes mortals guilty of concealed crimes and carries a drum, mallet, and chisel.” Niko started to elbow me, remembered the stitches and accused, “You should know this. We discussed Chinese supernatural creatures three months ago.”

“You might have discussed. It’s safe to say I just nodded and watched whatever game was on TV. And neither of us was beaten, sculpted, or assaulted with a drum solo. You can probably cross off the Duke of Earl.” I yawned and fished in my pocket for a lukewarm can of the last Mountain Dew I’d had in the fridge.

Robin already had his third finger up. Our back and forth was probably like white noise to him now or, as usual, he was more interested in listening to himself. “As much as I dislike talking trash about my own kind, there is also the Lakota trickster, Heyoka, the spirit of thunder and lightning. He-” The opening of the door cut him off. That was damn lucky for us because no matter what he said, talking trash about other tricksters and how they didn’t measure up to his wild and wicked ways was one of Goodfellow’s favorite pastimes.