Rob Thurman - Blackout

She saw us. She could’ve seen us from the moment we walked in. If it was a trap, it paid to get there first. Saluting us both with the glass, she sipped the champagne and wrinkled a slightly aquiline nose at the bubbles. That quickly the goddess disappeared and something much harder to resist appeared in her place. She took another small swallow and laughed. I could feel the sensation of the carbonation tickling my own nose. I wanted to laugh with her. I could now smell her flower-honey-cinnamon scent over the scent of anyone or anything else. She was your cute baby cousin, if you had one, going to her first school dance, and you’d do anything to make her happy. Get her a limo. Not beat up her loser rocker boyfriend. Take a hundred pictures like a huge-ass dork.

Tilting her head slightly, she smiled directly at us both, bent her fingers in the tiniest of waves, and it became ten times worse.

“Okay, is she fucking adorable or is it just me?” And “adorable”—not a word I’d ever used before, but one I was aware (just barely) existed—was dead-on. She was … had been hot as hell, gorgeous as they came, but without the sexual hunger that quality brought out. Beloved baby cousin was gone and now we had a kitten, a soft bunny … er … rabbit, a puppy with sweet-smelling milk breath. She was all that, the tactile and emotional draw of hundreds of them, and you wanted to go pat her on the head, tickle her tummy, and talk, goddamn truth, baby talk to her.

How the hell do you fight an adorable goddamn monster?

Come on, Auphe, kick in. You, the first killers on Earth, probably wore real, live rabbits on your feet for bunny slippers. If ever I needed some good old murderous rage, now was the time. And here it came, here it came, here it … Shit.

I had nothing.

I groaned. “We are so dead.”

A sex thing, that I could handle. We’d all run across succubi before. I’d slept with a sexual psychotic. Niko’s girlfriend would be very disappointed in him if he were susceptible … in a way that might lose him his dick altogether. Goodfellow was a sexual predator of sorts. If it was legal, he would take it down or had in the past. Kink of the Jungle. There wasn’t a creature alive that could out-sex-vibe him. All of us were inoculated to a certain degree against that approach. But this one?

Screwed. Screwed, screwed, screwed.

“I didn’t know you knew the word ‘adorable,’ ” Niko said as this time I was the one to grab his arm.

“Shut up . I want to go rub her stomach and let her chew on my fingers. I want a piece of yarn for her to play with. I want to get her some milk,” I said, my grip on him getting tighter with desperation. “Jesus, isn’t she getting to you?”

“Some. But I’ve done all those things before.” There was a pause, but I knew it was coming. Sure as shit, I knew it was. “With you. You know, when I changed your diaper and dusted on the baby powder. I didn’t want you getting a rash on your tiny little—”

“Say it and I’ll shoot you right here, right now.” I glared and let go of his arm, but the desire to throw myself into a pile of life-energy-sucking kittens had decreased. “Better yet, let’s go shoot her instead.” Of course, she was gone by then, but she left a scent trail that had me looking down with every step to make certain I wasn’t squashing a puppy. It was headed where we’d wanted her, the rooftop terrace. It was a good choice for her as well. If she was exposed down here, the vampires and Wolves would very easily decide twenty or thirty dead humans were worth killing Ammut, and there were enough of our clients here to do that—to do both. “Should we get the others?”

Niko shook his head. “Goodfellow might be all right, but he does love that murderous bald cat of his. Ishiah? I have no idea. And Promise only just lost her own daughter. I think that opens her up to maternal feelings that could be turned back on us.”

We were at the stairwell, locked at our request to keep the civilians out of the combat zone. It wasn’t locked any longer. “And you and me?” I asked.

“Do you have a deep, hidden desire to rub my stomach?” he countered with lifted eyebrows.

“Okay. Great job, Nik. Thanks. I’m feeling as pissed off and bloodthirsty as it possibly gets. Let’s get this cuddly kitten bitch before I try to beat you to death with a Jersey Costco-sized container of baby powder.” I took the stairs two at a time, the Eagle out. He was on my heels, this time with nothing to say about powder, diapers, or baby Cal’s diaper-rash-ridden ass.

We reached the roof in seconds and slammed the door behind us, blocking it with a heavy wood lounge chair jammed under the handle. That took care of the civilians, but it wouldn’t stop anyone discovering we were missing and wanting to rush up to help.

Civilians . This laugh was nasty and gleeful. Sheep. Bleating prey. Walking leeches. Foolish tricksters. Pigeons of a powerless god. All are nothing.

Now you show up, I thought with cranky irritation. Shadow-time is back, got it? We need to get our shit together. All our shit, regardless of how dark. This situation is going to call for it. Or do you want to go out, the last Auphe on the planet, while fetching this bitch a bowl of goddamn milk?

I didn’t get an answer. I did get a question, though.

“Where are your brothers and sisters?”

The voice came from everywhere … as a goddess’s voice would. Gone were the happy and fluffy. She had us where she wanted us and she had friends far more effective than kittens and puppies. She had her spiders. There were fifteen or twenty; they were climbing over the edge of the roof so quickly it was hard to count them all… . They were beside us, in front of us, over the top of the stairwell door behind us. I waited until three were on the edge and about to jump when I shot them with three silenced rounds in the midst of their daisy yellow eyes. For all my life, five minutes the way we were going, I’d forever link spiders and daisies—bright, sun-seeking daisies that opened their petals to the light to reveal a poisonous black predator hiding within.

“I’m his brother. If you are that interested, you should be talking to me.”

Niko had cut me off before I could ask her what she meant. It was one of the few memories I was still lacking. Niko was my only family, my only brother, and her obsession with me having more was bizarre. It made me wonder … Was she in New York by chance and appetite, or was she here for me and everything else was collateral damage? What did she want from me? Besides what Wahanket had wanted?

“You are hardly worth my interest. I want his true family. I want the whispers and the rumors made flesh. Made real. As they must be. If there is this one, how can there not be others?”

Practice makes perfect, baby boy, baby boy.

More spiders swarmed over and landed on the terrace, but I didn’t shoot them. My gun was up, finger on the trigger, but … fuck … she was right. If there was me, how could there not be more? When Wahanket had told me I was half Auphe, I’d known I was an experiment. Felt it in my gut. I was a freak of monster science, but how many brand-new experiments turn out right the very first time? Or the second? Or the twentieth?

None.

Here you have brothers and sisters.

Worthless failures.

Toys for you, baby boy, baby boy.

The saw grass, the moon white crocodile. Nevah’s Landing. It hadn’t been a sanctuary. It had been an invitation to a fucking family reunion. I could see it—the green, the white, the red … the silver flash of metal.

“Nik, there’s a crocodile out back.” Like in the book … like Peter Pan .