Cal and Niko - Moonshine Part 14

"What do you want here?" the obvious leader demanded harshly when we stopped about ten feet away. "We're not running a boarding kennel." The slow sneer was flashed at Flay. Flay yawned, unimpressed, yet showing some rather impressive teeth. He'd heard it all before, most of it from me.

Niko ignored the posturing. "We're in search of something. To buy."

That perked the Rom's ears up although he refused to show it. Looking Niko up and down, he curled his lip. "Vayash, eh?"

He was right. Our mother had been of the Vayash clan. That in and of itself wouldn't have been too amazing of a guess; the Vayash were the only clan to sp.a.w.n blonds. How he knew Niko was of Gypsy stock was another matter.

"Yes," Niko confirmed. "Our mother was Vayash."

There were worlds of meaning behind that statement. We were Gypsy, but we'd not been raised Gypsy. The man nodded and frowned. "That hair, those eyes, that nose. Vayash." His eyes traveled past Niko to take me in. It couldn't be more clear that Flay wasn't Rom, and neither was Goodfellow with his coloring. "You." He shook his head. "The Vayash, always polluting themselves with the Gadje." Gadje... outsiders, non-Gypsy. "We thought they'd finally seen the error of that particular way."

It was a free pa.s.s if ever we'd been given one. They didn't know I was Auphe. Sure, I was half-Vayash at best. Polluted, second-cla.s.s, not true Rom, but it was a definite step up from abomination. It was also a h.e.l.luva lucky break and Niko didn't waste any time in taking advantage of it.

"Our acquaintance"-he indicated Goodfellow with a jut of his chin-"has a good deal of money. Perhaps you can help him spend it... if you have what we're seeking."

Robin's groan was nearly inaudible, but considering his money-grubbing ways, that was the equivalent of a ringing endors.e.m.e.nt. Four sets of dark eyes focused on him, brightening with a look I'd seen more than once in Goodfellow's own. Baseball bats hung at rest and white teeth flashed expansively under a thick black mustache. "We have many, many things. Surely one will be what you seek. I am Branje." He swept an arm toward an RV to the right. "We'll sit, we'll talk, we'll drink. We'll take very good care of our new friends." Bulls.h.i.+t, every word of it. We knew it, and Branje most likely knew that we knew it, but it was the game, and the game had to be played.

Although not by me. Flay didn't seem much interested in the dark and gloomy interior either. Instead he wrinkled his nose, shook his head adamantly, and sat his furry a.s.s on the ground. I kept him company under the broiling sun, leaning against the hot metal. Drinking and conniving, watching the highest levels of tricksters, the Rom and a Puck, going mano a mano, none of it much interested me. I'd sooner sweat and bake.

"Smell weird."

The clack of the door closing above our heads had been several minutes ago, and I'd been sitting with eyes shut as I listened to the sound of a million enraged bugs. At least it seemed like a million. Swatting yet another mosquito on my forearm, I asked incuriously, "What smells weird?"

"You."

I opened my eyes and slanted a glance at Flay's moist face. I'd have thought the panting would mean he wouldn't have to sweat, but it seemed s...o...b..ll had gotten the worst of both worlds there. "Yeah, yeah, I smell like Auphe. Monster. Stinky. The subject's been covered."

Eyes rolled in annoyance under the brim of the baseball cap. "No. Smell weird. Not just Auphe stink. More. Human weird."

"So you're saying, now I'm stinky and I smell weird?" I summed up as I wiped the sweat from my face. "Great. My self-esteem says thanks for playing."

The T-s.h.i.+rt-covered shoulders shrugged. "Tell what I smell."

At any other time that would've been funny. The casual toss off by a tourist-gear-wearing wolf. I almost wished I could appreciate it, but if I did, there would be other things waiting to push in... things I would appreciate a lot less. I closed my eyes again. "Promise likes calla lilies. Her apartment is always full of them, all colors."

Seconds later I heard Flay get to his feet and start moving from RV to RV, knocking on the doors. I seriously doubted he would find any out here, but then again you never knew. It was nearly twenty minutes later when I was interrupted again. The sun had started to fall and the temperature had dropped nearly an entire degree when the door flew open and Goodfellow came storming out. He was cursing at the top of his lungs; I didn't have to recognize the words to know just how filthy they were. It was Romany he was speaking, the original language of the Gypsy clans. The dialect tended to vary from clan to clan, tribe to tribe, but as a rule every Rom knew it. Niko and I, however, didn't. Sophia hadn't let more than an occasional Romany word slip and those hadn't been exactly educational. Apparently, Robin's grasp of Rom foul language far exceeded Sophia's own, because I'd yet to hear anything that I knew.

Pointing a finger back at the RV, Goodfellow swore again, then switched to English. He'd once remarked to me that no language was quite as good as English for spitting disgust and disdain. French was close, but English won out in the end for sheer crudeness. "Soul-sucking harridan. Shriveled, toothless old crone. Put your malicious, grasping fingers away. You won't get a single penny from me."

There was the gentle thud of boots in the dirt beside me and Niko sighed, "Negotiations have begun. This may take some time."

"They have it?" I almost slipped. I almost felt the desperation. Yeah... almost. But you know what. they say about almost. Hand grenades and horseshoes. Nothing but hand grenades and horseshoes.

"It's a possibility." He sat beside me to watch the show. It turned out that the old woman, not the man with the mustache, was the leader-at least in the field of negotiations. "Abelia-Roo is a cagey opponent."

She came rocketing out of the RV shaking a wrinkled fist and swinging an elaborately carved cane. Not sharing Goodfellow's belief about English, she howled out a string of consonants and vowels in Romany that had even the perpetually jaded Robin's eyes widening. "My hair? My hair? You prune-teated old goat, you'd best take that back. Take it back or I'll rain fire on this miserable campsite until it's wiped from the face of the earth."

"Can he actually do that?" I asked skeptically.

Niko snorted. There was the tart smell of blackberry brandy on his breath. He had swallowed the traditional thimbleful to start the business at hand. "Hardly. If he could, every two-star restaurant in the city would be smoking ruins."

That was true enough. I watched as two gnarled fingers went up behind the white head like horns and Abelia-Roo made a sneering comment. "A leash?" Goodfellow shot back. "I think you're sadly mistaken, witch from h.e.l.l. You've never kept one of my kind on a leash. Oh, I think perhaps you wors.h.i.+pped us as lowly cave apes should, and if anyone wore the leash, it was you." He spit onto the dirt at her feet. "Lying, thieving human."

This time she did switch to English. "Lying, thieving puck." Her spit actually hit Goodfellow's shoe.

Ah, it was like old times. I stretched my legs out into the dirt. "We're on a schedule, Nik. This is going to take forever."

"Have faith." His shoulder b.u.t.ted against mine. "Our shark against theirs? How can we not prevail?"

"I don't know. We've done a pretty good job of it so far." I drummed fingers on my leg and said pragmatically, "We could hurt someone. That would speed things along nicely, I'll bet."

There was an uncustomary hesitation on Niko's part before he said smoothly, "True." His finger thumped my knee before pointing. "How about her? She doesn't look precisely fleet of foot. We could run her to the ground in seconds." A pregnant Rom girl peeked at us from a doorway across the camp. Seeing our eyes on her, she quickly disappeared and slammed the door behind her. "We could break her wrist. It wouldn't take more than a minute at the most."

As brotherly lessons went, it was a little less subtle than usual. "I was thinking more of Branje," I drawled, "but you've made your point."

"Have I?" He was poised to say something more, but Flay moved past us carrying a handful of plum-colored lilies. Niko watched his progress as the wolf loped back toward our home away from home. A less-than-amused look was then turned on me. "I'm curious, little brother. How long have you had these suicidal impulses?"

"You're not afraid of a little compet.i.tion, are you, Cyrano?" I elbowed him in a move so automatic that it worked entirely independently of my brain. "Besides," I added, "it gives him something to think about other than his kid." I closed my eyes again. "Wake me up when Goodfellow stops talking."

There was a swat on the side of my head, not hard enough to hurt, although it definitely stung. The words were more gentle. "Hang in there, Cal. We're halfway home."

Hours later, we were still only halfway there and Niko was giving new consideration to my idea. Eyeing Branje across the leaping campfire, he said thoughtfully, "We could rip off his mustache and feed it to him. That is sure to inspire a little spirit of cooperation."

The fire, less for heat and more for driving away the bugs, billowed with a peculiar green smoke. It worked. The air was thick with the acrid smell of sage and eucalyptus, but the mosquitoes were gone, though the night had brought out another kind of predator. Promise stood at Niko's side, a single lily tucked in her hair. I'd seen the look exchanged between the two of them when she'd first appeared wearing the flower. Pure affectionate humor.

"It is an exceptionally unfortunate mustache."

Promise agreed. "You'd be doing him a favor. I'm sure he'd be much more attractive without it."

Goodfellow chose that moment to stomp over with an expression of outraged frustration on his face. "I give up. I do. That maniacal old crone cannot be reasoned with. Not now. Not ever." His hand moved up to nervously smooth his wavy hair. "She cursed me, said my hair would fall out before the next full moon." He pulled his hand away and peered at the palm carefully for any deserters. "My hair," he murmured, still shocked over the audacity.

"You don't actually believe in Gypsy curses, do you?" I asked with a faint overlay of scorn.

Green eyes narrowed on me with impatience. "Of course not. I, an immortal creature, am only standing here with a vampire, a half Auphe, and a walking talking wolf. Why would I possibly believe in something as ludicrous as a Gypsy curse?" He rubbed the heel of both hands over tired eyes and went on to snap, "And then there's that entire year I spent impotent thanks to one."

Niko skipped straight over that information as more than any of us wanted to know and said, "They won't sell it, then?"

"Sell it?" he repeated with disgust. "They won't even admit to having the Calaba.s.sa. They have, however, tried to sell me everything else under Zeus's infinite regard."

"After all that time?" Promise touched a s.h.i.+mmering nail to her lower lip. "Abelia-Roo must be a formidable opponent indeed."

"She would eat every one of my salesmen for breakfast and have room for a champagne chaser," he said glumly.

Goodfellow went on to say something else, but by then I had drifted off. It was a casual stroll with what looked like no particular destination in mind, yet I ended up past the fire and closing in on Branje. I didn't pull my Glock. The Rom were skilled knife fighters; they didn't respect the gun. And I wanted their respect. I wanted their fear more, but a little additional respect wouldn't hurt matters any. Branje, drinking from an unlabeled brown bottle, didn't see me coming until he was on the ground and the knife at his throat. I wasn't quite as practiced in the art of silence as Niko, but I was close. After all, I'd been taught by the best. Branje was tough, though-I had to give him that. With my knee buried in his stomach and my blade in the softness under his chin, he cursed and grabbed at his own knife on his belt.

I cut him.

The wound was two inches long and shallow, but it was enough to still Branje's hand. "My men will kill you," he hissed.

"I think they have their own problems," I said serenely. I didn't look up to verify that. I didn't need to. I could hear the whip of Niko's sword through the air and his cold command of "Back away. Now." I'd heard his low curse as he'd spotted me right before I reached my goal, and I'd known he wouldn't be far behind me.

The Rom's eyes flickered from one side to the other, then back to me. "Then Abelia-Roo will curse the p.e.c.k.e.r right off your body."

I moved the knife from his throat to insert the tip in his nose. "Probably, but how much comfort will that be to you after I cut your nose from your face? Or maybe your ears." I considered for a few seconds as I idly twisted my wrist. A tiny trickle of blood began to creep from his nostril over his lip. "Or maybe-just maybe-I'll take it all. Nose, ears, eyes, tongue." I gave him a consoling smile. "I'll leave the mustache. You seem very proud of it."

I felt him twitch beneath me, but his face remained unmoving and stoic. Like I said, he was tough. But were his people gathered around us as tough? Some might be, but there were bound to be others with slightly weaker stomachs or softer hearts. Someone would break... sooner or later. I pulled the knife back and said truthfully, "It's nothing personal, Branje. Try and keep that in mind." This time the blade found his ear. He had large, fleshy lobes. I could take half off and he'd still have enough to spare. The first drop of blood had appeared when a voice stopped me.

"Now, here is one who knows how to negotiate." There was the approving smack of Abelia-Roo's toothless gums. "Now, here is a man."

If you only knew, I thought with dark amus.e.m.e.nt before my emotion s.h.i.+fted to cautious surprise. This wasn't the surrender I'd been shooting for. This was Grandma having b.a.l.l.s to put all ours to shame and a shriveled soul to match mine. I looked up to see her duck under Niko's blade as if it were a garland of flowers. Arthritic knees popping like gunshots, she crouched beside Branje and me. "You want the Calaba.s.sa, do you?" Brown eyes flecked with gold and black nestled in the midst of tissue-paper skin folded into hundreds of wrinkles.

"I'm sure as h.e.l.l not here to spread around my plastic surgery skills." I kept Branje pinned to the ground as I wiped the scant amount of blood from the metal onto my jeans and then sheathed the knife.

"Do you have any idea of the crown's purpose?" From the avidly gleeful flush in her face, I had a feeling it was nothing good.

"Granny," I said, "I couldn't give a s.h.i.+t if I tried."

Chapter 17.

I should've given a s.h.i.+t, and Abelia-Roo was more than happy to gloat over every detail that told me why I should. I'd thought the crown had looked too drab and plain to be your typical bauble. I was right. The Ba.s.sa had made that innocuous bit of metal for a reason-a very dark and infinitely practical reason. They'd created a thief... or a tool for a thief. Wear the crown and take from a person anything you wished. Their life, their knowledge... their power. I doubted Caleb needed any help taking lives or was interested in any extra smarts. He thought he was as clever as they f.u.c.king came.

But power... that was a different matter entirely. Take away the first two and it's the only option left. He wanted the ability to take someone's power... their gift. Although it couldn't be as easy as all that. Not many creatures in the world had talents he might envy. What could he want? What did he covet so profoundly that would be worth this much trouble-oh. G.o.d, I was stupid. So d.a.m.n stupid.

There had been more unpleasant information dancing on the tip of the old Rom's tongue, I could tell as I'd cursed my idiocy, but at the last second she decided to keep it to herself. For fun or profit, and since she wasn't haggling for even more money, I was guessing it was pure, malicious fun. Granny had a way about her; she d.a.m.n sure did.

"So he wants Georgina's gift." Niko held the circlet up to the dimly flickering firelight after I shared my grim thought. "He could see whatever he wanted. Know the future, the past, and all that lay between. It makes sense; what Georgina has is invaluable." He exhaled and shook his head. "But it also complicates things to no end."

"How?" I demanded. "It's not as if we planned on letting Caleb walk away in the first place. The second we have him in our sights, we give him the crown." I watched the fire reflect sinuously in the curve of the metal. "Promptly followed by a bullet to the brain."

"I have a feeling it won't be quite that simple."

Through the drifting smoke I saw that across the campsite Goodfellow was handing over two duffel bags of cash to Branje. Abelia-Roo didn't waste any time muscling him aside to unzip them and count their contents with flas.h.i.+ng fingers. Both Promise and Robin had contributed to the Calaba.s.sa fund, since Niko and I barely had two nickels to rub together. The price wasn't that of a small country... quite, but it was d.a.m.n close. "No?" I looked back at the crown and frowned. Ugly G.o.dd.a.m.n thing. "Then I guess we'll just have to make it that simple."

"Easier said than done." Between one breath and the next Niko had crossed the six feet between us. He was closer than close and as angry as I'd seen him. Scratch that. He was furious... with me, and that I had never seen. "Nothing is simple at the moment, not with your recent moronic behavior. What the h.e.l.l were you doing with Branje?"

"Is that why you're p.i.s.sed?" My frown deepened. "h.e.l.l, Cyrano, it was your idea. Rip off his mustache and feed it to him, you said. I just picked different things to slice and dice is all."

"Cal, you cannot go off without thought, without reason..." He tilted his head down until his eyes were level with mine, utterly p.i.s.sed off and completely inescapable. "Without backup."

"You watched my back," I pointed out with what I thought to be fairly evident logic. "You were right there, same as always." Same as always... you always remember the words that come back to bite you in the a.s.s, no matter how much you'd like to forget them.

"I could've been there more quickly if you'd bothered to let me know what was going through your head." His free hand fisted in the collar of my s.h.i.+rt. "Branje isn't much of a threat; you could've handled him before you could crawl, but if you try that imbecilic recklessness on someone else, someone along the lines of Abbagor or Cerberus or worse yet the Auphe, they will put you in your grave. Is that what you want?" He shook me, hard enough that I felt the snap of it in my neck. "Is it?"

It was a fair question, and denying that would be a lie. George was gone, the Auphe were back, and things had long spiraled out of control. But as selfish as I was, even I had my limits. I couldn't do that to my brother, no more than he could've done it to me. "No, Nik," I answered soberly. "It's not what I want."

The fury, a masquerade for something much starker, drained away as quickly as it had come. "All right, then." He exhaled and released my s.h.i.+rt. "Let's not have this conversation again."

I looked down at my s.h.i.+rt, then stuck my finger through the new Niko-fas.h.i.+oned rip and said wryly, "I'll try and keep that in mind."

He gave one abrupt nod and ordered, "Do that." Then, letting the issue go, he went on, "Let's eat. We've been invited to dinner by Abelia-Roo. I think..." Reluctant amus.e.m.e.nt tweaked his lips upward. "I think she may have her eye on Goodfellow. She might find him less than a man when it comes to haggling, but apparently that isn't the only standard of measurement she uses."

She should be grateful she wasn't around when Robin had "haggled" with a succubus. That may have changed her mind about his manhood d.a.m.n quick. "Sounds entertaining." And a few weeks ago, I would've paid good money for that kind of entertainment, but now... I looked up at the sky. It was moonless and clear; I could see hundreds, thousands of stars and every fiery blink was a second lost. "But we need to go. We don't have much time."

"We have time to eat, to relax-even if only for an hour." His hand reached for mine and folded my fingers around the Calaba.s.sa. "Besides, it will maintain a little goodwill with the Sarzo. We might need their help again someday."

"We couldn't afford their help again," I groused, but relented. "An hour, okay? Then we go."

"An hour," he agreed. "I'm sure Goodfellow will be indebted to you for that. He's even more anxious than you to get on the road."

With a toothless Roo on his tail, I didn't blame him. I turned the metal under my hands, my skin crawling at the feel of it. There was one last thing I needed to do before we sat down to a heaping helping of Goodfellow humiliation. "Here," I said gruffly, pus.h.i.+ng the crown back into his hands. "You hang on to it."

"Cal." The amus.e.m.e.nt reflected in the quirk of his mouth faded.

"I've already lost one." I folded my arms and tucked my hands out of sight. "That's my limit, thanks."

I'd half expected an Auphe to appear the instant the Gypsy Calaba.s.sa had been unveiled. I fully expected to wake up every night with Auphe claws in my throat and a doorway to h.e.l.l before me. I'd slept with my knife for so long that it'd finally become a comfort to me. But knowing what I knew now, I could sleep with a thousand knives and it wouldn't make one bit of difference.

I walked away before Niko could try to convince me that I hadn't frozen in the face of the enemy. I had. It had cost us the first crown, and I wasn't about to risk losing another. Frankly, guarding George's last chance wasn't a responsibility I was up for.

An hour and a half later we were back on the road, flush with success... and something else. "Jesus." I grimaced as the alcohol fumes wafted my way. "Goodfellow, it's actually coming out of your pores."

A haunted look sought me out over a rapidly emptying bottle of fruit brandy. I'd long lost track of how many such bottles he'd sucked down during the previous hour. "I've lived through the fall of Rome,, the Hundred Years' War, even that sleazy Troy debacle, but I've never faced anything such as that." He took another hurried pull on the bottle before repeating in a sh.e.l.l-shocked whisper, "Never."

Dinner had not gone well for our puck. Abelia-Roo's hands had been anywhere but on her fork. For once, Robin had been the hunted, not the hunter, prey of a wizened, bare-gummed predator. Niko, behind the wheel, was not surprisingly unsympathetic to his plight and offered little comfort. "Be grateful we didn't leave you there. She seemed quite serious about the leash threat." He arched an eyebrow in consideration. "Then again, it may have been more of a promise than a threat."

Goodfellow had a response to that. By now, I knew that he had a response to anything. I managed to turn on the radio just in time to drown it out. After tuning in to the first station I came across, I pulled on the lever on the bottom of the pa.s.senger seat to ease it back. Toeing off my shoes, I put my feet up on the dashboard, s.h.i.+fted onto my side, and dozed off. Stomach heavy with food, mind dull with heat, there wasn't much else to do. There was a long stretch of blissfully empty darkness that was broken what must have been hours later by a hand on my shoulder. I squinted at the orange and pink sky outside the window and revised my estimate. Many hours later-it was morning. I sat up and ran fingers through sleep-rumpled hair. Beside me, the owner of the hand that had pulled me from sleep growled, "Trouble."

Trouble all right, and it was reflected in the rearview mirror as flas.h.i.+ng red and blue lights. Fan-f.u.c.king-tastic. I glared at Flay, who seemed to have replaced Niko at the steering wheel, and asked with typical morning ill humor, "Do you even have a license, s...o...b..ll?"

"Do you?" came his impatient gargle.

He had a point. Mine hadn't come as a prize in a box of cereal, but neither had it come from the DMV. While it was good enough to pa.s.s a casual glance, it couldn't fool the computers, which was why we were driving instead of flying. Good fake ID was easy enough to come by; excellent fake ID was increasingly rare in this hyper-security-sensitive world.

"s.h.i.+t." I looked over my shoulder. Niko, Promise, Robin-they were all already awake. I immediately pegged Goodfellow as our best bet. He'd been running under the radar longer than the rest of us by far. If anyone had pa.s.sable paper, it would be him. It was a good thought, in theory, until I took in the bloodshot eyes and white-knuckled fists pressed to his head, and breath that could embalm a corpse. I went immediately to our next best hope. "Promise?"

She could've pulled it off, I think. If not by convincing the cop that she'd been driving, then by the simple fact of being Promise. I'd never know, because it didn't come to that.

The Auphe came first.

I didn't see the rip in the air he plummeted through, but I doubted that it was more than ten feet up. He came down fast-too d.a.m.n fast.