Rob Thurman - Deathwish

I hadn’t known that . . . that there might be the potential for more than sex between Delilah and him. I should have. Delilah wasn’t afraid of Cal. That was rare among the supernatural community, and I knew how incredible that must’ve felt to him—to be accepted. How could he not want more of that?

“What do I think?” He mused as he bent to pick up his gun from the coffee table. “I think you deserve the best,” he murmured, studiously not looking at me as he turned away to absently eject the clip from his Glock and slam it home again. “But there’s no such thing as the best. There’s good enough, though. Sometimes. Can you trust her for good enough?” He started for the hall, pausing only to say, “She made you happy, Nik. A happy brother’s not such a bad thing. And, Nik? I don’t have a problem being suspicious enough for both of us.”

When he was gone, I thought of how Promise hoped her daughter cared for her. I never had to hope my family cared for me. I knew.

Family—it can be the making of you or the breaking of you. If it had been only me as a child with Sophia, with no one to protect, to stand with, to share that cold, empty life . . . Sophia could’ve been the breaking of me. Cal . . . Cal had been the making of me.

I settled in to watch for the Auphe, Seamus, and any more of Cherish’s problems. I turned the lights all the way down and did silent katas in the dark. You could lose yourself in the smooth movements, in the structure and the balance. If you let yourself. I didn’t. I moved and listened and watched. I shifted the inner tangle of emotions aside and pushed away the image of pale blond and earth-brown hair spread over a silver-gray pillowcase. I ignored the phantom sensation of skin against mine, intermingled breath, and a giving warmth under my hands.

Conflict and confusion could get you killed. Focus and a calm mind kept you alive.

I doubted Seamus felt conflicted or confused—he knew exactly what he wanted—but that next morning he was dead nonetheless.

The sun was barely coming up when Cal’s cell phone rang. It was lying on the couch where he’d discarded it after calling Samuel hours before. I wasn’t surprised it was Samuel again. Cal wasn’t the most social of creatures. Very few people had his number, especially since he’d convinced Robin to stop writing it on bathroom walls.

“Yes?” I answered.

“Niko?” Samuel said.

“Yes,” I repeated evenly. Despite his help with the cadejos, I was still on the fence regarding Samuel. I couldn’t imagine that would change anytime soon.

From his reserved tone, he picked up on that. “We have a cleanup at your friend Seamus’s place. You might want to take a look first, since he was your client.”

“He’s hardly our friend and no longer our client,” I said shortly. “If we do go there and he’s alive, I’ll kill him. And as I’m human, I can be as overt as I care to be. And right now I’m in the mood to be extremely overt.”

“Trust me, the alive thing, you don’t have to worry about that.”

He was right. An hour later we were looking at Seamus’s body and head, neither of which shared a relationship anymore. When that person was trying to kill you, you like to see that sort of thing with your own eyes. To be certain—and I was certain: Seamus wouldn’t be a problem for me anymore.

“Well, this has to be the best news you’ve had all week,” Robin observed, nudging the decapitated head with a foot covered in one highly expensive shoe. There was very little mess. Once the heart stops beating, which would’ve been nearly instantaneously, there’s nothing to pump the blood out. Despite what most literature said, vampires did have hearts that beat as human ones did, and they stopped just the same.

“He’s been drinking blood,” Cal reappeared from a quick recon of the loft.

Promise, who’d been looking at Seamus without a hint of emotion in her eyes, lifted her gaze. “Drinking? How do you know?”

“The dead girl in the bathtub was pretty much a dead giveaway,” he answered grimly. “Her neck’s torn out. I guess Seamus wasn’t taking those Flintstone vitamins you guys swear by. Bastard.” He delivered a perfunctory kick to Seamus’s body, which rocked under the blow.

Although she had said she would kill him herself, Promise now winced and said with dark melancholy, “Seamus, cara mo anam , how far you fell.”

I almost reached out and ran my hand in one sweep from her shoulder down to her wrist, but I didn’t. Although, current differences aside, I understood how she could feel that way about him considering their history—bloody and violent though it may have been. She wasn’t feeling for him, but for what she thought he had managed to become. Another lie—his this time.

“Cal.”

“What?” He folded his arms stubbornly and glared at me. “He tried to kill you, and it looks like he killed enough girls to have the Vigil on his ass. He deserves exactly what he got.”

Robin, for once defusing the pressure rather than adding to it, said lightly while scanning the walls, “His art will most likely triple in value. Anyone for a souvenir?”

Only Cherish seemed shocked and upset. She knelt by his torso and rested her head on the still chest. “Tíío. Papa.” There were no tears, but grief hung gray beneath the pale brown of her skin. Xolo, in what was turning out to be typical behavior, lurked in her shadow. Cherish raised her eyes to Promise. “This is your Seamus, Madre . Our Seamus. Why do you just stand there?”

“Yes, this is Seamus, and he was a killer long past our killing days. He killed innocents and he tried to kill Niko. He’s my Seamus no more.” Promise’s melancholy disappeared under an iron determination. “Obviously, he won’t be needing his place any longer, and Oshossi’s cadejos don’t know of it. They do know of my penthouse. You will be safer from them here as well as from the Auphe, hija .” She reached down and smoothed the black hair.

“But Oshossi . . .” Cherish began instantly, her mood shifting just as quickly to demanding and desperate as she rose from Seamus’s body.

“No matter what you think, Cherish, Oshossi isn’t nearly the threat the Auphe are. This is the best way to protect you, and I do want you protected. Call us if he manages to find you again and we’ll do what we can to help you.” Pausing, she corrected, “I’ll do what I can to help you.” She felt she couldn’t speak for me, and I certainly wasn’t sure I could speak for Cal in this case. He watched out for me the same as I did for him, and while he had suggested last night that I would be happier with Promise than without, there was no guarantee he would want to lend our support to Cherish when we could least afford to give it. I’d say Robin would be even less inclined. But as for me . . . I couldn’t not say it.

“I’ll come as well.”

Cal’s jaw tightened, Cherish’s son-of-a-whore remark still with him, I knew, but he gave in. “Shit. Fine. We’ll help.” The “but I don’t have to like it” hung unspoken in the air.

“Lemmings,” Robin sighed, “all of us. Still, it should be entertaining if we don’t end up dead and buried.” He walked to one wall and took a painting of blues, purples, and an acid green. “I wonder who did our artist friend in. The Vigil is good, but good enough to take Seamus’s head without a struggle? They would definitely be a force to be reckoned with.” He considered another painting and took it as well. “Ah, now, this one I like.” It was a nude, of course, in a startling primary red.

“A force indeed.” I gave Seamus one last look and then dismissed him as ancient and decomposing history. If I nursed a feral satisfaction, no one need know about it. “Are we done here?” I addressed everyone, but Cal in particular, whose face had gone from annoyed to bored in a heartbeat as Robin had rambled on about the power needed to kill Seamus.