I hated kidnapping cases. Hated them with an unholy
passion.
And trust me, unholy was something I knew about—hell, I
wore it like a faded old T-shirt. One I’d had since birth.
There were those who said I couldn’t let go of that, and
that it was long past time I did. But, hey, if you can’t
bitch about your monster half, what can you bitch about?
As for kidnappings, no surprise there on how I felt about
them. Several months before, someone I knew had been
kidnapped—two someones actually. Although the second
taking had lasted less than an hour, the first had lasted
two weeks. Despite the difference in time, they both had
left their mark, physically and mentally. My shirt and
jacket hid the first. I wasn’t sure anything hid the
second, but I gave it my best shot with caustic sarcasm,
brittle bravado, and good old-fashioned denial. That was a
triple threat that had done well by me for a long damn
time, and I had no plans to give it up now. A swat smacked
the back of my head briskly. “I’m curious, Cal, do you
plan on paying attention anytime soon or would you like to
have the kidnappers reschedule? I’m sure they’ll be
amenable. Kidnappers so often are.” Niko Leandros. He had
been one of those who had disappeared on me, even if only
temporarily. As brothers went, he was a good one, despite
a horrifying obsession with health food, meditation, and
things generally not revolving around pizza and beer. But
we all have our crosses to bear…mine was to be smacked
when I wasn’t with the program, and his was to be over-
educated, as self-aware as the Dalai Lama, and to keep my
ass alive. Poor bastard.
"I’m paying attention," I lied instantly, rubbing the back
of my head with a wounded glare.
He snorted, but didn’t call me on it as sharply as I
deserved. Apparently the swat was punishment enough. “Then
let’s move on before you pay so much attention that you
fall asleep where you stand.” Like I said, a good brother,
and good brothers, besides keeping your ass alive, also
don’t let it get away with much. But there was no denying
he was letting me slide a little. Why? Because he knew me,
and he knew a case like this wasn’t going to trigger any
good memories. Grunting in reply, I moved along at his
side. “So they kidnapped the mistress of a vampire,” I
grumbled. “She’s a lamia. I’ve seen lamias and I don’t
know why the hell anyone would want one back.” Like
vampires, lamias fed on blood. These days most vampires
had found a better way, but lamias weren’t looking to
improve themselves. And although they fed on blood, there
the similarity to vampires ended. A lamia’s bite, usually
on the chest—or if they were really into you, other, more
sensitive parts—had a chemical in their saliva that
paralyzed their victim. Like a leech they would stay
fastened to you and drain your blood…very, very slowly. It
could take days—days in which you couldn’t move, couldn’t
scream, couldn’t beg for a faster death.
Sure, that’s my dream girl. Bring her on.
But obviously a vamp felt different and here we were.
"I think it matters less about his taste in bed partners
and more about us getting paid." I didn’t see his dark
blond head move, but I knew Niko was scanning the area
unceasingly.
"I keep telling you if you’d go with the whole trophy
boyfriend thing, life would be a lot easier,” I pointed
out helpfully.
From the narrow eyed look shot my way, apparently I wasn’t
as helpful as I’d thought. Niko was tight with a vampire
of his own, Promise. Promise was, to say the least,
loaded. Five excessively rich, as well as excessively
elderly, husbands in the past ten years had her set up for…
well, not life—after all she was a vampire. But it would
keep her comfortable for a long, long time. And Niko
absolutely refused to take advantage of it, not that he
had some sort of macho hang up. He simply would make his
own way as we had all of our lives. Right now, making our
way revolved around an agency we’d set up with Promise.
Kidnappings, bodyguard work, cleaning some killer clowns
out of a carnival…we were up for all of it. The fact that
it didn’t quite cover our expenses yet had us working
second jobs. Niko was a teacher’s assistant at NYU (pity
the kid that walked late into one of his classes.
Decapitation is a big deterrent for tardiness.) As for me?
I tended to move around a lot. Mainly bars. It wasn’t good
to get attached. I’d learned that from a lifetime of
running from my relatives…the ones with claws and hundreds
of teeth. And although the running had stopped, habits
were hard to break. Which, I guess, is why we’d made
monster hunting a career instead of an occasional
necessity.
And Central Park was full of them. They liked the park. It
was big, and it was full of snacks. No one notices if a
mugger, murderer, or rapist goes missing. It was a good
place to hit the human buffet and not be noticed. We’d
once had an informant here of the very same opinion. He
was gone now, dead by Niko’s sword. Somewhere to the north
lay a mud pit empty of a boggle with the worst New Yawk
accent I’d ever heard. I kind of missed him sometimes. If
nothing else, he’d been entertaining. Bloodthirsty and
homicidal, but amusing—up to a point. Trying to kill Niko
had been that point.
"Are we there yet?" I checked my watch. We had about five
minutes until the meet.
"Did you look at the map that was sent with the
instructions?" Niko looked down his long nose to ask in a
forbidding tone that said he already knew the answer to
that one.
"That’s what I have you for," I grinned. “I’m just here to
carry the heavy stuff. The union says thinking rolls me
into overtime.”
Niko pulled his katana from beneath his gray duster,
looked at the moonlight glimmer of it, and then looked at
me with an eyebrow raised.
"Yeah, right," I dismissed, unfazed.
"You’re assuming I wouldn’t paddle you with it like the
child you are."
Okay, that threat I bought. He could do it all right, and
he actually might during one of our sparrings just for his
own personal amusement. "And, yes," he added, "we are
almost there." He took another three steps. “And now we
are.”
I looked around, but didn’t see anything even in the
bright moonlight. Shoving my hands in the pockets of my
black leather jacket, I took a whiff of the cool November
air. Instantly, I grimaced. I might not see anything, but
I damn sure smelled it. The scent was dank—stagnant water
with the ripe and rancid taint of day old fish beneath it.
"They’re coming." I freed a hand and rubbed at my
nose. "And they stink like you wouldn’t believe. Something
from the water." A fish of the day you definitely didn’t
want to order.
"Aquatic," Niko murmured. "That narrows it down to a few
hundred in the nonhuman pantheon. Very helpful."
"Hey, I tried." Getting accustomed to the smell, I shifted
impatiently on the grass and checked my watch
again. "Crooks, monster or human, they’re all the same. No
damn consideration."
I suppose that’s how my gun found its way in to my hand as
the first figure appeared out of the trees. "Bishop fish,"
Niko murmured. "Nothing extraordinary. Easy to kill."
If I was a little disappointed at that, I kept it to
myself. As creatures went, it wasn’t that impressive. I’d
seen someone more grimly unnerving in a mirror. Sometimes
I wasn’t sure whom I meant by that. It could’ve been the
creature known as Darkling, who a year ago had crawled out
of a mirror to put my body on like a snazzy suit and take
it cruising on the road to Hell, or it could’ve been my
own mundane reflection. Either way, there was no denying
the both of us had our moments and either of us could eat
fish boy for lunch. Although dead Darkling, every molecule
the monster to my half, might’ve enjoyed it a little more.
Maybe.
Dappled here and there with the ghost of scales over
nearly transparent pale skin, the Bishop fish had the form
of a human. Sort of. The shape of his head was a little
off. Hairless and only lightly scaled, it was oddly
flattened and the mouth had thick, rubbery lips and tiny
triangular teeth. No kelp eater, this one. He wasn’t
wearing a stitch—not a damn thing, which told me he didn’t
rub shoulders with the local New Yorkers much. I looked
down. Even they would give that a glance. Yeah, that.
Now I knew where fish sticks came from.
I decided keeping my eyes on his was the lesser of two
evils despite their unblinking bulge. Guess you can’t
blink if you don’t have eyelids. Round pupils took us in
and the mouth opened to gurgle, “These are the demands.
First….”
That’s when I shot him.
My patience with kidnappers was long gone before I had
even taken a step into the park. I put a bullet in his
chest, which exploded like an overripe tomato and
splattered fluid in a wide arc. With his impossibly wide
mouth gaping, he teetered and began to fall. I stepped
forward and slipped the paper from the fleshy claw as Mr.
Fish Stick crumpled to the ground with a disturbingly wet
slapping sound. “I can read, asshole,” I muttered. Niko
said from behind me, “Really? When did you learn?” Raising
his voice, he asked mildly, “Is there anyone here we could
negotiate with that my brother would find less annoying?”
Like me, he knew there was someone else in the trees. I
smelled them and he heard them. Rustle one leaf, step on
one frost-brittle piece of grass, and he would hear it. He
was all human, Niko, like our mother, Sophia Leandros, but
when he did things like that you had to wonder.
The smell I was picking up from a distance wasn’t as bad
as that of the fish. It was the scent of old things and
attic must and hundreds of abandoned spider webs. In other
words, it smelled like Niko’s library of books. Knowing
Niko would be watching its approach, I squinted at the
paper in my hand, ignoring the damp slime on it. If the
moon hadn’t been so bright and plump in the sky, I
wouldn’t have been able to see anything. I might have
monster smelling, whoopee…what a superpower, but I had
human vision. As it was, I could only make out a few
words. Money wasn’t mentioned. I wasn’t that surprised.
Very few monsters were into the material world. Vampires,
pucks, and werewolves liked to live high on the hog, but
most of the nonhuman world was more interested in eating.
Lots and lots of eating. The ransom mentioned people.
Nice, plump people. Nice, juicy children. The kids. Why
was it always the kids?
Some kidnappers don’t want to earn their money, and some
don’t want to catch their own dinner. Trade one lamia for
a truckload of humans, what a deal. In the end they were
all lazy psychotics and the one that finally came to
Niko’s call was no different. You could all but see the
waves of craziness coming from her, shimmering like heat
off a summer road. “Black Annis.” Niko sounded almost
pleased. “I thought she was a myth.” She scuttled with the
back-and-forth motion of a poisonous centipede. Part of
the time she was on two feet, the rest on all fours. She
looked like an old woman, but not a sad wraith in a
nursing home or cheerful crocheting grandma—unless it was
one who’d have no problem picking her teeth with a sliver
of Hansel’s gnawed leg bone.
Now, this was a little more disturbing than the fish. And
it became more disturbing when six more of her appeared to
race across the grass.
"You thought she was a myth. She. Singular. Is that what
you were saying?" I dropped the paper to the ground. I
still had my gun in my right hand and I drew my knife with
the left from the double holster under my jacket. Ugly and
serrated, the blade had been a constant and faithful
companion for a while now. Niko did give damn fine
Christmas presents.
"Apparently the myth is incorrect. It only makes things
more interesting," he said blandly. “Surely a few old
women don’t concern you?”
Old women, my ass. The seven of them were covering the
ground with a freakish speed. Long, thick fingernails
scored the ground sending dirt and grass flying, and their
teeth…let’s just say they weren’t the kind that got put in
a glass on the bedside table. The Annises, Anni, Black
Annies…whatever—they weren’t identical, but they were so
similar they may as well have been. They all wore the same
ragged black shifts too. Torn to streamers in places, the
cloth fluttered and tangled as they ran. I saw flesh
through the holes, flesh I suspected was cyanotic blue
although it appeared gray in the glow of the moon.
Whatever color it was, I didn’t want to see it.
"Fine. You play shuffleboard with the grannies and I’ll
cheer you on from the sidelines," I retorted. Not that I
would have, but one of them made sure I didn’t have the
option. She went from scuttling to leaping. From nearly
thirty feet away, she launched off the ground and
propelled herself onto my chest with a force I didn’t
expect from her spidery frame. I hit the ground hard.
Unable to get the gun between us, I buried the knife in
her back. I was hoping to sever the spine or at least put
a serious dent in it, but the blade practically bounced
off the bony structure. “Goddamnit,” I gritted and went
for another target instead. With her teeth snapping at my
throat, I plunged the knife in the side of hers.
"Leave one alive, Cal, to lead us to the lamia."
Thick and bitter fluid flooded out of the Annis’ throat
and across my face. Trying not to retch as it worked its
way into my mouth, I spat with revulsion and shot
back, “I’ll try and show some self-control.” Then I
stopped tasting the blood and caught the scent of it…or
rather what was in it. “Oh hell. We are so not getting
paid.”
I tossed the thing off of me, its teeth still feebly
gnashing, and saw Niko, who had moved a distance away to
get a little elbowroom. He was surrounded by four of
them. “Forget the restraint,” I called. “They ate her.” I
smelled it in the one twitching beside me…in the blood, on
her last breath…hell, leaking out of her damn pores.
Niko shook his head. "Annoying." He swung at the nearest
Annis to decapitate it, only to have his sword repelled by
that unbreakable spine. I heard the grating clash of metal
and impervious bone. He frowned. "Even more annoying."
Stepping back with a deceptive speed of his own, he
sheathed about nine inches of his sword through the
Annis's single eye. Niko turned to present his side to her
and lashed out with a foot to propel her off the blade and
into the nearest other Annis.
He had things, as always, under control, and I decided to
take care of my own business. Two more of them were
circling me, wary of the knife. What they weren't
concerned with was the gun I had hidden behind my leg. One
snarled, I swear, just like the cranky old woman we'd
lived next to in one of the trailer parks where our mother
had set up her fortune teller scam. That old biddy had
sicced her yappy, ankle-biting dog on us more times than I
could count. The Annis didn't need a dog, yappy or
otherwise.
"Shouldn’t you be baking cookies or playing bingo,
granny?" I gave her a black grin, tapping the muzzle of my
gun on the back of my thigh. She crabbed closer, her hands
bent into claws in front of her.
"You are no little boy." Her grin was so broad I could see
the black gums gleaming slickly. "Your flesh will not be
soft." It was gloating, the words rolling around her
tongue as though she were already savoring the meat in her
mouth. “We will eat it anyway.”
I’d heard it all before.
I shot the mouthy one. I nailed her in mid maniacal,
choking laugh. She saw the gun as I whipped it from behind
me and she’d already started to move. It didn’t do her a
damn bit of good. Despite the one second it took, the
other one was already on me. Like I said…quick.
It hit me from the side. I’d already been turning to
prevent it from getting behind me. This time the teeth did
reach me, fastening on the junction of neck and shoulder.
Like the ragged edge of a saw, they ground in and locked.
And there went the chunk I’d been so sure that I wouldn’t
lose tonight.
As with the first one, I used my knife, but this time
opened the belly. Whatever spilled free slithered down my
hip and leg. Slithered…not fell. That was some serious
motivation to get granny off my neck and the hell with the
mouthful of flesh she might take with her. Ripping her and
her death grip off of me, I spun her off and threw her as
far as I could, and then I took a look at what was twining
its way around my leg.
Holy shit. I mean, really…holy shit.
The bright pain and blood flowing steadily under the
collar of my jacket to stain my T-shirt took a backseat
just like that—because what felt like snakes wasn’t. Not
that that wouldn’t have been bad enough, snakes falling
out of someone’s gut. But I couldn’t get that lucky, could
I? Nope. What I got was a crawling combination of worms
and intestines with a little barracuda tossed in. They
undulated slow and sure like the worm, were ropy and
dripping intestinal fluids, and had the bear trap mouth of
a barracuda. Did I shake my leg like I was having an
epileptic seizure? Yes, I did. Did I scream like a B-movie
bimbo? No…but it was a close thing. Niko never would’ve
let me live that down.
I stepped back from the seething mass. "Jeeesus."
"Problems?" Niko was already peeling my jacket off one
shoulder to examine the wound.
I swiped it with my hand. The pain was subsiding to a
sharp ache and I decided the Annis had gotten away with
less than the mouthful I’d thought she had. It had been an
appetizer at best.
Past Nik I could see one Annis still alive. Her wrists and
ankles were handcuffed, and she was writhing, hissing, and
biting the ground like a rabid dog.
A monster wearing handcuffs—it was a little reality
jarring at first. We’d started carrying them months ago
when we needed to restrain a werewolf, one who really
didn’t care to be restrained. He might’ve shattered them,
I wasn’t sure how strong Flay was, but he’d been injured
and barely alive. He’d been incapable of lifting his head,
much less ripping apart steel. Still, it was a useful
learning experience, and we’d carried them with us ever
since.
Niko was still frowning at my neck. “It’s more messy than
fatal. They have the teeth of an adolescent crocodile.”
"Didn’t feel like a baby one to me,” I grumbled as I felt
the punctures and slashes. The blood was slowing and I dug
in my pocket for something to hold pressure with. Of
course there was nothing but a flyer for a Chinese
restaurant.
Exhaling in resignation at my lack of preparation, Niko
pulled a package of gauze and a roll of tape from inside
his coat. With quick, efficient moves he had the wound
covered and taped up in seconds. “It’s amazing how hard I
work to keep you from bleeding to death on so many
occasions, and for so little reward.” He finished and
stepped over to the tortuous twining of the bile-dripping
creatures on the ground. “Do you want a pet? One would fit
nicely in a terrarium.”
"Yeah, and I’m just one giant nummy num on the other side
of the glass. Thanks, but no thanks,” I pulled a repulsed
face.
"‘All things bright and beautiful, all creatures great and
small,’” he quoted.
"Right," I said dryly. "God," making the huge assumption
there was one, "did not make those."
"Perhaps you’re right." He pulled yet two more things out
of his duster…a small container of lighter fluid and a
pack of matches. Once the barbecue was started and the air
stank of roasted barracuda, Niko made a call and we went,
picked up the surviving Annis, and moved on. A vampire met
us near the edge of the park. He stood among the trees,
could’ve been one of them as he blended into the darkness.
Black hair, black eyes, and an equally dark Armani suit.
At least, I assumed it was Armani. It was the only
expensive brand I knew. To me, all fancy suits were Armani.
We dumped the snarling, spitting Annis at his feet, and I
considered but decided not to stick my hand out for the
money. I had a feeling I might draw back less than I put
out—a few fingers less. Vampires mourn too, apparently
even over lamias. Niko had already delivered the bad news
over his cell phone. Now all he said was, “She is the only
one left. The others are no more.”
"And they suffered?" His voice was cool and empty. It
didn’t bode well for the Annis. At least with rage you
would go quickly. It would be messy, but it would be
quick. Icy retribution could go on for…shit, it didn’t
bear thinking about. My appetite for dinner had already
been ruined by the smell of cooking intestines; I didn’t
need to kill it altogether.
"Yeah, they suffered," I confirmed. "And the godawful
things in them suffered too." The Annis hadn’t really
suffered, not the way he meant, but it was going to have
to do. A job was a job and torture wasn’t on our menu. Not
for pay anyway. But there was no point in disappointing
him. Cranky vampires are a pain, and I’d had enough ass-
kicking for the night.
Despite what I’d said earlier, we did get paid. An
envelope thick with cash was passed to Nik. Living off the
radar, we didn’t exactly have the ID to set up a bank
account. We could’ve gotten the fake stuff and Promise had
offered to keep our share of the payments for us, but once
again, we fell back on the ways we’d always known. We’d
bought a safe and stuffed what we made in there.
Unfortunately, it was still pretty damn empty.
As we left, we heard one sharp scream after another. It
seemed like torture was on someone’s menu. I wondered if
it sounded like the screams of the people that the Black
Annis had killed over the years, because you know they’d
screamed, too.
Karma, she is a bitch. But in this particular incident,
not my karma, not my problem.
We moved on. We were nearly to the edge of the park and
for a few moments the night was perfect. Cool and crisp
with the rustle of falling leaves. Perfect. Right up until
we saw what was hanging in the last line of trees. Heavy
and ripe like fruit, the color of a nectarine…pale salmon
blooming with red. Lots and lots of red.
In the trees.
Bodies.