Rob Thurman - Deathwish

“Nik?” The last ccoa slid into the gray. I closed the rip and ignored the disappointment of letting it go. Control. I had it. I did.

“You opened that thing and you weren’t you. Before you touched the blood. Before you spoke that hell-spawn language. I knew the second you opened the gate and weren’t paying attention .”

It was something Niko didn’t allow himself often—anger—and it was completely justifiable. I hadn’t paid attention and I’d nearly gotten lost. I’d gone from swearing not to open any more gates, to doing it to try to outthink the Auphe, to emergencies in case of attacks, and finally to just cleaning up around the house.

Which is how the road to hell is paved with a little maid service.

“It won’t happen again,” I said grimly.

“See that it doesn’t. I won’t enjoy knocking you out, but I will.” I took it for what it was: reassurance. Niko was my lifeline. If I started to fall, he’d drag me back.

“No one I’d rather have beat my ass into unconsciousness,” I said wryly.

“Not that this macho brotherly love fest isn’t bringing a tear to the eye,” Robin drawled, “but I think we need to talk about moving. Oshossi knows where we are now. If we don’t go, every night is going to be Sundown Social at the Zoo. Pet the predator. Kiss the carnivore. All things I could do without.”

It was a good point. Niko, Robin, and Promise discussed it; Cherish watched my every move with wary eyes; and I, ignoring her as I ignored most of the others who gave me that look, ended up playing Go Fish with Xolo. Which, in a strange way, was what I needed. I didn’t want to think about Oshossi and his overgrown kitties. I didn’t want to think about the Auphe. I didn’t want to think about me.

The chupa had crept out of the back bedroom while the others talked, silently watched them with those large eyes for a while, and then moved over to me. I was on the couch, arms folded and doing my damnedest to keep my mind a blank. No matter what Niko would’ve said with dry sarcasm, it wasn’t that easy. Xolo sat on the floor opposite me and placed a pack of cards on the artistic metal curve of table between us. The shaved dog face regarded me gravely. I scowled back. It was habit. I didn’t have anything against Cherish’s pet. He tended to stay out of the way, gave up the remote when I wanted it, and didn’t eat my leftover pizza in the fridge. As roommates went, he wasn’t so bad. Weird, but not as bad as Robin, who’d gotten so desperate it wouldn’t have surprised me to see him humping a table leg.

“What?” I asked. “What do you want?”

Just as gravely, he dealt the cards. Seven to me, seven to him. Hell, why not? I played Go Fish with him. He held up his fingers when he asked for my cards. Any threes? Up would go three fingers. It didn’t work so great for jacks, queens, and kings, so we discarded them. Those eyes would blink, moonlike, the fingers would flash, and the cards would go down. The bastard couldn’t talk, couldn’t fight, could barely dress himself, and he beat me seven games to three.

I turned the cards around to look at the backs. “Are these marked? Are you cheating?” Or was I less bright than a mentally challenged chimp?

“I hate to interrupt your vastly important task”—Niko’s hand pulled the cards from mine and slapped them on the table—“but we’ve narrowed our options.”

“Yeah? Rafferty’s place?” Rafferty was a healer we’d used before. He’d disappeared months ago, but as it was most likely a voluntary disappearance, there wasn’t much we could do about it. He wouldn’t want us sticking our noses in his business, and he had a lot of business to take care of. His cousin was sick, a kind of sick Rafferty couldn’t heal. We’d checked his house after a month of not being able to contact him. . . . We had business too, and it frequently called for a healer afterward. From the looks of the overgrown yard, the house had been locked up and temporarily abandoned. Both Rafferty and his cousin were gone. Rafferty wasn’t one to give up. If he couldn’t cure his cousin, he’d find someone who could.

“Figured,” I added.

“Or Ishiah’s,” Nik said. “From what you’ve said, he can handle himself well.”

“Ishiah’s?” I leaned back against the couch. “You’re shitting me, right? One day, and he’d kill us before Oshossi or the Auphe could.”

Robin immediately backed me up—so immediately, in fact, that I wondered who he was actually trying to keep safe—us or Ishiah. “All of us shoehorned into that overgrown canary’s place? That’s an exercise in natural selection waiting to happen. Survival of the fittest. And that walking feather duster is fit.” His left eye twitched. “Very fit.” This had to be the longest Robin hadn’t gotten laid in, damn, at least in the span of human existence—at least once we’d stopped braiding each other’s back hair and thinking of lice as a tasty treat. “Desperate” didn’t begin to cover the shape he was in.

I was so locking my door tonight.

Rafferty’s place. On the one hand, Rafferty did have the nature preserve behind his house, a good location for supernatural wildlife that wanted to eat you. On the other, it might take Oshossi a while to find us there. I said so, and Niko agreed. As for the Auphe, of course they had to be watching us, but following us on the open road in daylight? Doubtful. We’d lost them time and time again when we’d lived on the run. They always eventually found us, but that we lost them to begin with proved they weren’t infallible.

“Once we get the report from Mickey, we will definitely have to be more proactive about tracking down Oshossi. Robin and Mickey are doing what they can, but we need to get this resolved more quickly,” Niko said. Now that we’d committed ourselves, which I still didn’t think was the best idea, he was right. But helping Cherish fight off a few cadejos and snakes was different than actively going after the one who sicced them on her. He was probably going to be a little harder to take care of than the wildlife.

“Tracking him down and killing him in a truly inspired fashion,” Promise added. Cherish flashed her a smile that was laced with surprise at the fiercely maternal note. If nothing else, this whole thing appeared to have her seeing the error of her criminally wild and wicked ways and bringing her and Promise closer. Good for them. Not too good for the rest of us trying to avoid maiming, mutilation, and, worse yet, pet-dander allergies, but good for them.

“What is up with Oshossi and that goddamn temper of his? And what did you steal from him,” I asked Cherish, “that pissed the living hell out of him?” If I were going to get killed, it’d be nice to know it wasn’t over a lamp or a first-edition Mark frigging Twain.

Cherish frowned, but turned a dining room chair around to face the rest of us and stretched languidly on it. Yep, Robin in a female body. I still couldn’t figure why they hadn’t gotten together at least for a night. She might be the vampire version of eighteen, but apparently had her hormones more in control than Goodfellow did.

“Oshossi,” she considered. “Oshossi is powerful. Every forest in South America belongs to him and he engages in constant guerilla warfare to prevent their destruction.” She tapped fingers on the knee of one long black-clad leg. “But don’t think that makes him some sort of hero. He will kill anyone— anyone who threatens his agenda, crosses his path in the forests, or simply annoys him. He is not a creature of patience or forgiveness.”

“And you, not doing your research, took him for an easy mark.” Robin shook his head. “Even the lowliest of my junior salesmen would know better than that.”