Rob Thurman - Slashback

I recognized the species of paien in the doorway although I’d not come across one in person until now. The air from inside the house that flowed around it carried the smell of oranges, honey, cinnamon, and some interesting spices I didn’t recognize offhand. Oh, and sex. I smelled so much sex I was surprised the intense musk of it, as strong as a natural gas leak, didn’t cause the brownstone to explode. Then there was the smell of our friend the doorman. Doorwoman. Doorperson. Blood and flesh and decomposition rank on her breath. Someone hadn’t brushed since their last meal. The exhalation of a scavenger, the kind who made certain you were clinging to life when they started to eat you. Where would the pleasure be if you were already dead?

She stood well over seven feet tall, bending down to see us, and had eight arms, seven of which held swords. Wearing something consisting of numerous leather straps, she also had a split skirt of silk that fell to bare brown feet. Thick black hair fell nearly as far, black eyes with pinpoint white pupils, and the triangular teeth of a voodoo statue from B-movie hell in a mouth almost as wide as a bear trap. In addition, there were claws on the hands that held the blades-long, lethally curved and as black as the hair and eyes. No surprise in that. There were days the entire world was made of bloody claws and tearing fangs.

Just not today. It was way too damn early for that.

“Need appointment and card.” The single unarmed hand with the ebony talons was held out palm up. The voice was surprisingly understandable considering the freakish size of the mouth and the equally freakish number of teeth, although she didn’t have much to say. Couldn’t blame her attitude there as I understood it. I wasn’t doling out advice to the sad and lonely at my job, bartender or not. The less I had to talk to what passed for clients at work, the better.

“Ah, yes.” Robin reached inside his jacket for a wallet, gave it a brief glance and returned it before fishing out a second one. “Actually I don’t need an appointment and how you fail to recognize me time and again, I will never know.”

“This puck, that puck, all fucks. Who can tell the difference?” Robin was told with bored indifference.

He stiffened. “You could not be further from the truth if you were the drooling picture of sub-intelligence-which you are. I have no difficulty seeing why you’re working the door instead of upstairs as you have so little personality to work with, despite what you could do with eight hands.” Flipping open the apparently extra-special wallet, Goodfellow had his mouth open for more insults, barely warmed up, when he said something else instead.

“Where’s my card? I have a lifelong platinum-class come-and-go-as-I-please membership card. Wait. . where’s my card for Aphrodite’s Pleasure Palace-best strippers in Greece? Godiva’s Clothing Optional Hair Salon?” Replacement cards were pulled out, read in the light spilling from inside the house, and discarded as if they burned to the touch. “The Salvation Army? Big Brothers, Big Sisters? Soup Kitchen? Humanitarian aid in a trickster’s wallet? My wallet?” The horror was clear and true in his voice. “I am tainted beyond redemption.”

Niko squeezed his shoulder with false comfort and commented smoothly, “As you said, it’s inspirational when your sexual partner accepts you for who you truly are.”

“No hair salon, huh?” I popped the top on my soda. “It’ll be hard to be a pretentious ass with an eight-dollar Supercuts’ special.”

“That pigeon will rue the day his mother laid that rotting, spoiled egg that hatched him,” Robin gritted before pushing past the guardian, his sword in his hand so improbably fast that I barely saw his hand move. “Tell Bastet that I am here and don’t pretend you don’t know who and what I am. Tell her now . You can do that as you are or with my sword through your heart. That choice I leave up to you. Are you listening to me, you misbegotten vulture? That glazed look of insipid boredom, believe it or not, is not inspiring me with reams of confidence. Go .”

She gave him a look that was anything but bored. It was seething with the metal-edge of rage and the red haze of hunger. Her kind was always hungry. It didn’t stop for them. For a moment I thought she’d act on it, but she turned, and moved toward the stairs, suddenly all but drenched in disinterest. To the eye. I pulled in and sampled a deep breath of the adrenaline leaking out into the air before asking with casual curiosity, “How attached is your friend to the help? She a big fan of her pet peymakilir?”

“Of one such as this? Not likely. Rudeness to the clients wouldn’t be tolerated if she knew about it.” Sword still in hand, Robin deposited his woefully charitable wallet into a small trash can that looked to be made of gold. Idly, I wondered if it would fit under my jacket. “And, believe me, she’ll know the very moment I see her.”

The peymakilir was halfway up the stairs now, as slow as if every step was weighed down by chains. Slow and not worth a second glance, you would’ve thought. Yeah, and if you had that thought in our world, you wouldn’t have many more of them.

Because here she came.

In a heartbeat the Hindu scavenger of war’s battlefields had turned and leaped into fluid motion over the banister. She almost flew. Like a bird following a propeller of whirling steel, she soared toward us. . nearly beautiful even knowing what she was. One who stripped the meat from the bones of the dying, consuming their flesh and life gleefully all in one. An inexplicably cruel part of nature. Yet, still impossibly beautiful-an angel of death with every sword a flash of quicksilver.

Then she was nothing more than meat. That tends to happen when I open a gate inside of someone rather than around them. In midair she disintegrated in an explosion of tarnished gray light, followed by the billowing stench of burned flesh, the spray of blood and long, cauterized limbs scattered everywhere. What was left of her fell, a tangle of parts, swords, and snuffed-out wildness.

Bambi’s mom goes down. And stays down.

Not that Disney ever showed you that part.

I had ducked a tumbling sword that had flown overhead, nearly taking off my head. I should’ve thought more about the swords. Eh, water under the bridge. I took another swallow of Mountain Dew. The caffeine was just not kicking in. “You’re right, Robin. She was one rude bitch.” Most murderers, male or female, were. The foyer was now somewhat of a mess, but it had been a little uptown for me anyway.

Goodfellow let the tip of his sword hit the marble floor, which wasn’t the way to treat your weapons. “What did you do?”

“I’m having an identity crisis.” I shifted my shoulders without much concern. “And there’s the fact that she was trying to kill us, then eat us. Hopefully in that order. I did what I do.”

“It seems as if the now ex-doorman liked her job and didn’t want to lose it over your complaints,” Niko said. He wanted to say more and he would say more, but not until we were alone. He trusted Robin, we both did, but there were things he said only to me-the things that I hated about myself. The monster in me that would never let me be right or clean. The darkness that waited and not at all patiently for its turn.

All that wasn’t true anymore.

Niko hadn’t quite gotten it in the past months. I wasn’t shamed by what I was. I didn’t hate it, not any longer; I was confused, some, yes, but not ashamed. Or more likely, Nik being Nik, he did know and that made it all the more important that the coming conversation be private. He didn’t want anyone else, even Robin, to realize the half Auphe wasn’t half these days. No. . I was farther along the road than that now. He trusted me, but he wasn’t the only one in my world and not all of them would feel the same.