Rob Thurman - Slashback

Folding his arms, not a bead of sweat on him, he looked down at me with raised eyebrows. “Would you like to tell me what you did wrong with that particular move? Everything. Every single thing you did was utterly wrong.”

“Isn’t it usually?” I rolled from my side to my back, making no effort to get back to my feet. The sparring area of our converted garage apartment was generally the most humbling place around for me. Nik was right. If I stopped using the gates as first line of defense or offense-offensive on so many levels-that was me. If I did stop and then went sideways in the worst possible way, he could handle me-the same way he was handling himself now. With perfect ease.

Nik was good. Fine. Better than I’d begun to hope back at the restaurant.

I, conversely, wasn’t doing such a bang-up job. Unless you counted the banging-into-the-wall part of the workout.

His eyes narrowed as he studied me. “You’re thinking. When you should be thinking, you don’t. When you shouldn’t be, you do. Research puts you in a virtual coma. There have been times I’d have been tempted to check your pulse if I couldn’t see your drool spreading over my antique books. And this”-his bare toe prodded the bottom of mine-“should be pure muscle memory by now, but your brain is bouncing so hard inside your skull that you ran into a wall simply because I stepped out of the way.”

Flipping me over his shoulder-hell, nearly over his damn head-was not “stepping out of the way.” But in our version of a sparring routine it was close enough to the truth that I let it slide.

Crouching next to me, he swatted the side of my head. I’d been thinking all right and as usual Nik knew what about. “Do not be an idiot, little brother. You’re still you. You told me you needed my help to keep you that way. I should’ve listened. I didn’t, not like you needed me to. Now I know. I’m not humoring you any longer and that means I’ll make damn certain you will stay Cal. Now and always.” His lips quirked fondly as he gave me a light pat to the chest. “The once and future king of smart-ass.”

Knowing the truth and feeling exactly the same about me, wasn’t that better than denial? Hell, yes. It was the best. If you got that in your lifetime from anyone, you were damn lucky. Feeling an ugly knot of bristling barbed wire unwind itself in me, I grinned up at him. “You’re getting your feelings all over me. It’s disgusting.”

“There are many times, uncountable really, that I’ve mentally replaced you in this scenario, Caliban. You can’t imagine.” Robin had drifted silently, as always, through our locked door to lean against the concrete wall and watch us.

“You’re right. I can’t imagine. Don’t want to imagine. Your fantasies have to have been banned by the Geneva Conventions as psychological torture.” I sat up. “And even you can’t find being smacked and lectured a turn on.”

The smirk was so rapacious I could see the neon XXX pop up over his head like in an old Acme cartoon. . with an added huge dash of porn. “Do you think I’ve not been so naughty in my life that I didn’t deserve some discipline?”

The images of Catholic uniforms, rulers, the principal’s office-basically every porno cliche I’d seen in my life with the addition of Goodfellow and my brother shut down my brain instantly. For my own protection. Minutes later when it rebooted or whatever computers do when you turn them off and then back on after kicking them viciously, I was still sitting on the mat and Niko and Robin were talking about Jack.

“No,” the puck was saying. “I’ve had no luck. The paien community wants nothing to do with him. They’ve a good track record of they leave him alone and he sticks to humans for the entire skinning and horrific deaths situation. If they knew anything, which they don’t, they wouldn’t help. They’re quite big on survival instinct.”

Niko had sat down on the couch to pull his socks back on. He made that simple action look deadly. Considering how many times he’d threatened to kill me with one of them, that wasn’t surprising. “Cal and I did find out some further information on his victims. They were all involved in behavior that the strictly moral with no shades of gray could find objectionable. There is no centralized location from where he chose them however.”

Goodfellow frowned. At least he wasn’t looking at Nik’s feet. A foot fetish might’ve finished me off right there. “That will make him impossible to hunt down. Over eight million people in the city and call me cynical, but you can take it to the bank at least four million are doing something morally objectionable in Jack’s eyes. Even jaywalkers aren’t safe. Some hipster might dine and dash and be skinned before he had a chance to digest that stolen appetizer. There isn’t any possible way to anticipate where he might go and his next victim. There simply is no way to narrow it down.” Then a smile flashed across his face. It was more lascivious than the one he’d given while watching the aftermath of our workout.

“I was wrong. There might be one place that would draw him in. I had my annual reminder in my e-mail this morning.” The smile widened far enough that I didn’t need to worry about Jack. My skin was ready to leap off my body and leave without me all on its own.

“Oh God,” I said involuntarily.

“Keep that thought. You’ll be saying it repeatedly over the next few hours. Get dressed.” He frowned. “There will be a pat down involved. Weapons might be a problem. And, Niko, any coat like your dusters that resemble trench coats well loved by flashers will probably be frowned on.”

“Oh God,” I repeated. “Let Jack have New York. We’ll move.”

Goodfellow slapped my shoulder. “Be brave. We’re going on a field trip.”

The Javits Convention Center was hardly a field trip, but what was inside was a different world, I’d give the puck that. We’d come to the sane conclusion that we’d need our weapons if Jack did show up. That meant getting into the center via a fire door locked from the outside and avoiding security while getting the badges necessary to wander around without paying for them.

For a trickster that took less than ten minutes.

That there was a storm system brewing above looked promising on the Jack front, but what was inside was so much more promising I may have forgotten about Jack temporarily.

I moved through a not particularly busy crowd but a very enthusiastic one and did my best not to walk right over anyone who stopped in front of me because my attention was elsewhere. Too many elsewheres to keep track of.

“What did you say this was called again?” Niko asked Robin as they walked beside me. That’s where it sounded like they were, best guess. I wasn’t going to waste any of my vision on them to confirm it. My vision was all booked up, thank you very much.

“The Triple-Xpo. It’s a yearly event that applauds quality in the adult film industry and the sexual lifestyle industry that goes with it,” Goodfellow replied as smoothly as if he were president of it all. Hell, he probably was.

“Ah,” Niko said at the same time I summed it up. “Porn stars.” And they were everywhere. This was a thousand times better and easier than trying to stake out ten thousand prostitutes, most of them in Brooklyn.

There was no ducking the smack to the back of my head. I didn’t even try. “You are to respect these women and their career choices,” Nik told me firmly.

“I have nothing but gratitude in my heart for each and every one of them,” I said truthfully. “Do you know how long it’s been since I broke it off with Delilah?” If that’s what you called threatening to shoot your sociopathic, murder-spree-bound werewolf friend-with-benefits-broke it off, gun to the head. To-mato, ta-mato. “These women have gotten me through a very difficult period in my life. God bless them, each and every one.”