Rob Thurman - Blackout

But when the one Wolf broke, there was more than enough bitching to go around. I was sitting in a chair, singing my lungs out while Robin did his wailing standing on top of our table. Whether he was drunk or not didn’t make a difference. I was grateful he’d kept his clothes on. Get a person up on a table and it’s a given. Clothes start flying off—the same way the Wolf flew toward me. I saw them—wait, just the one—damn double vision headed toward me like a fur-covered Scud missile. He was young, an All Wolf, a mixture of human teenager and wolf, even when he changed. He lost his clothes, but he still had dark blue human eyes and thickly callused human hands with wolf nails. I knew because I felt them around my throat.

I tipped the chair over, landed on my back, jammed a foot in his fur-covered stomach, and tossed him over my head. Goodfellow dodged him neatly, kept singing, and, yep, the shirt came off. He was whipping it around, dancing some sort of Irish jig, holding a bottle of whiskey in one hand, and the son of a bitch continued singing as if a homicidal Lassie hadn’t that second flown by.

It was impressive. I was impressed, no denying it, as I lay on the floor and drank my beer. I’d have been more impressed if he’d put his shirt back on. Well, shit, the Wolf was back. This time he landed on my chest and stomach with enough weight and pressure to have me spewing beer into his face. Coughing, I waved a hand at the Budweiser foam now dripping off his snarling muzzle. “Cujo. Old Yeller.” I waved a hand. “Someone give me a gun to put the poor rabid bastard out of his misery. Wait. I have a gun. I think I have two.”

I wasn’t serious. I’d learned my lesson. You don’t bring a gun to a dogfight and you definitely don’t bring one to a puppy fight. This guy barely qualified as a puppy. One of those Lupa Wolves would’ve swallowed him whole. I broke my beer bottle over his shiny black nose. Moist shiny black nose—that meant he was healthy. If he left me alone, he might stay that way.

He didn’t—leave me alone or stay that way.

Now the rest of the Wolves were getting caught up in the fight. The growls had tripled and when Old Yeller, who had tumbled backward yelping at the pain in his nose, started back toward me again, he had a friend. This guy was not young; he was twice the size and five times the Wolf. He had scars running thick and gray through his black fur, fangs that were made for tearing flesh, half of one ear missing, and from the abrupt silence of howls in the bar, he was one badass son of a bitch.

Goodfellow hadn’t stopped singing, although the Wolves had, but the choice of songs was too close to home now. This one—he could’ve been mistaken for a small black bear in the woods but with the temper of a grizzly. He was a fighter, a killer, and he knew what he was doing.

Him, I shot. Teen Wolf, eh, not worth it. I peppersprayed him. Mailmen and monster killers of the world, unite. The black Wolf I put a round in didn’t make a sound. He went down, crawled a few feet away to settle in a pool of his own blood and watched me with enraged eyes. Wolves healed fast. He was biding his time. The kid, the Wolf version of Benji, had changed back to curl naked on the floor, his swelled-shut eyes flowing with tears, and his nose pouring snot. But they were both alive … and it didn’t have to be that way. Neither one looked the least bit grateful, though. Bastards. Someone else wasn’t grateful for my restraint either.

Leandros came through the front door, walked through the quiet Wolves muttering in confusion, the sirens who were applauding Goodfellow’s talent, before grabbing my shirtfront to drag me up off the floor and out of the bar.

“Hey,” I protested, “don’t take it out on me if your ass froze out here for two hours. I didn’t ask you to follow me. And the Wolves started the bar fight. It was hardly a bar fight anyway. Barely counted. I didn’t kill anybody, did I?”

He did wait until I managed to get my feet under me before continuing to drag me, this time not as silently. “Maybe you should have. Maicoh, the one you shot, holds grudges. Or instead of killing him, perhaps you should have tried thinking instead. If you are intoxicated, especially this intoxicated, which you’ve had the sense to never be in the past, you run the risk of someone better than Maicoh killing you. Someone besides me. And pepper spray? Are you suicidal? You are not a mailman.” I was about to say that was what I’d been thinking, except more pro-mailman, when he gave me a not-so-gentle shake—ninja punctuation to equal my vomit punctuation from last night. “And why were you singing? You don’t sing.”

“It’s a wake, and ‘Danny Boy’ is what you sing when someone dies. It turns out I cut my hair for the right reason after all.”

He stopped again. “Who died?”

“No one you know.” This time I was the one moving him. I shoved him or he allowed himself to be shoved. I saved my ego and didn’t guess. “Look. A tattoo place. Ishiah said it opened yesterday. Run by some ancient Mayan guy. Acat. Another one of those, ‘Yeah, I’m a god, okay, maybe not, but I live forever’ things. Good for business. Keeping the street monster-eclectic and human free.”

“Are you feeling the victim of discrimination?” He had immediately stopped yet one more time the moment I’d said tattoo, balancing with ease on the curb. It looked effortless, and apparently it was, because when I shoved harder, he was concrete—a mountain.

“Nah, I have sheep solidarity with you. At least I can say there are two humans in the city. Good to know.” He tensed under my hand as I said that, but I was too drunk to know why and too drunk to care that I didn’t know why. And too drunk to care that I didn’t care. It was a very Zen thought process. Good for me. Good for drunk-off-his-ass me. “And, Niko, you’re getting a tattoo. I have one.” I waved the arm it was on. I was proud that I didn’t stagger. I was a mountain too. Look at me. “Brothers-in-arms, right? It’s a brother thing. In the fucking handbook, I know it—if I could ever find the fucking handbook. Now it’s your turn.”

So he’d understand.

When the time came, I wanted him to understand. The tattoo would tell him then what I couldn’t tell him now.

“And what tattoo am I getting?” The mountain was shifting, minutely, under my hands.

“Bros before Hos.” I got him off the curb and across the street, where he stopped for the last time.

“My body is a temple. I may let you deface it with graffiti if it means that much to you that I reciprocate your brotherly brand, but that phrase is not an option.” Ah, there was a limit to all that family do-or-die after all.

“It’s not that exactly. Christ. It’s just sort of the same sentiment, but without the hos and with the same sort of rhyming… . Just shut up and get the goddamn tattoo, would you?”

He did. In the tiny shop that was spotlessly clean, he did it because I asked, maybe to get more of the brotherhood back that a spider had stolen. Or maybe he was just too damn tired to fight about it. Mourning one brother, adopting a new one—because Cal and I weren’t the same, as much as Niko was trying to tell himself that we were. Trying to tell himself I was the old Cal, only with a creamy icing of happy-go-lucky contentment on top.

It was hard work, adoption and lying to yourself. It would make anyone tired, this superninja included. I handed the wrinkled napkin to a red guy with earlobes down to his shoulders and four arms—or that might’ve been that annoying double vision. Niko, in the chair with his shirt off and his upper arm bared for the needle, frowned at the writing on the stained paper. “What is that? I don’t recognize it.”