Downfall (3 page)

I loved that about Robin. He had one helluva sense of humor.

“Hey.” I knocked on the stall door again, asking, “If you had to spend your afterlife as some kind of trinket, what would it be? My nana, for instance”—I didn’t have a nana, but it made for a good story—“collects wind chimes, the kind made of natural materials. Wood, stone—oh, and bone. She says nothing sounds like bones do when they rattle in the wind. Her birthday is in a month. You might not know it, but Goodfellow lately has been heavy into arts and crafts, you know, in between the orgies. I was thinking of asking him if he could make Nana—”

The door slammed open and the puck was out of the
bathroom and gone. A flash of brown hair, green eyes, and leather pants and then nothing. It was nothing I was very grateful for. “Don’t let Robin wear leather pants,” I told Ishiah. “I like my eyes. I need them. I don’t want them to go
Ark of the Covenant
on me and melt down my face.”

“You are not in the minority of that issue, trust me,” Ishiah snorted. “You should’ve seen him back in the day in a toga. No, the kilt was the worse. No, wait. When he dressed up as a handmaiden with Loki when they were trying to pass Thor off as the fertility goddess Freyja. That was . . .” He stared past me with glazed eyes and a look more haunted than any house built over a Native American burial ground in all the best cheesy movies. “I don’t want to talk about this any longer.”

Shaking off the memories, the peri folded up his white-and-gold-feathered wings. They instantly disappeared. They always came out if there might be a fight. He’d once said it was for flight, maneuverability, and another way of knocking weapons from people’s hands. I’d called bullshit and told him he was the feathered version of a blowfish. He was trying to puff himself up to look more badass.

He’d replied that he was an ex-angel of the Lord and his levels of badass couldn’t be measured by mere human means. I threw down the “I’m not human” card, the “the Auphe were on earth long before you were” card, and rounded it off with the “my bad-assery had gotten me the nickname of Unmaker of the World and yours gets you anally perched on Christmas trees every year” card. And when I emphasized that yes, I meant anally, not annually, everything had gone downhill from there.

That no one knew that a resulting knock-down, drag-out fight would spill several bottles of common cleaning solutions that then could conceivably mix into an explosive that caused the temporary loss of part of the roof
was a lack of education and not my problem. I never claimed chemistry was my best subject.

That was my first week of docked pay.

“Hey, Robin knows Loki and Thor? Loki and Thor are real?” For Nik and his love of mythology and me and my love of radically incorrect (but screw accuracy—look at those giant Amazonian Wonderbreasts) comic books and superhero movies, the concept was equally cool. “He hung out with the God of Mischief and Chaos and that other surfer dude with the hammer?” Then I homed in on the important part. “He dressed up like a bridesmaid? Goodfellow?” That was a bit of mythology Niko had told me that I’d for once enjoyed, although neither of us knew Robin had been there. “Oh, damn. I am going to give him shit
forever
.”

“Best not. He might tell Loki and Norse gods care about the Auphe the same as most
paiens—
not at all. And certain trickster gods such as Loki in particular have a special hatred for them.”

“Are you saying if Goodfellow invited him to New York, I might end up in a bridesmaid dress for the rest of my natural life?”

“He’s not that kind of trickster. He prefers his lessons short and to the point. You’d spend the rest of your life as a puddle of blood, bone fragments, and liquefied spleen,” he said dryly, “in a jar on his mantel with you still conscious and aware despite your souplike consistency until he eventually tired of listening to your splashing and burbling.”

Okay, that I could do without. Stay away from Loki. I got it. I gave in as Ishiah provided me with a light shove toward the bathroom door. “The lamia sliced you fairly deep. Go home. We don’t want you bleeding all over the bar tonight.”

I was mopping at my forehead with a wad of paper
towels and gave in with a grumble. He was right. Head wounds, no matter how minor, bled like crazy, and when you worked in a bar that catered to vampires, Wolves, revenants,
vodyanoi
, lamia, and too many other ghoulies to count, you didn’t want to hang around leaking blood until someone finally snapped and fell off the wagon. It didn’t have to be blood drinkers. Blood could also trigger rage, the smell of prey, and all kinds of other things Ishiah wouldn’t want to put up with.

Normally I would’ve run home. It’s far, but if I did run it, I could skip the ten miles in the morning. But smelling of blood and having difficulty with my usual emergency mode of travel, I took a cab. It had a mirror too, not like the one in the bathroom—the bright sliver that had tumbled through the air showing in brilliant detail things I didn’t want to see. That I probably hadn’t seen, had only imagined. This one now was your typical dark rearview mirror. I would’ve had to lean forward to see anything at all in it.

I didn’t.

I wasn’t ready. I wish we could’ve stuck with the Norse god discussion, because I wasn’t prepared to think about this. Not mirrors, reflections, any of it. I wouldn’t be ready at home either, but there I could turn on all the lights. Be in a safe place. If there was anything to see at all, and there probably wasn’t. I have good vision, but I’d only a split second to see my warped reflection in the shard the lamia had thrown at me. That isn’t enough time to see anything more than a trick of the light.

Right?

Right.

*   *   *

I checked the locks on the door to our place. No signs of anyone trying to pick it, although they’d have better luck taking a crowbar to it. Niko was serious about his locks
after several break-ins of the less than human type, who had no interest at all in stealing our TV. Stealing our lives or livers or both, yes, but our electronics were safe. Looking up at the second-floor window, I could see the metal bars and glass were intact. Good to go.

Opening the four locks on the door of our apartment, I walked in and locked up behind me as automatically as I’d done since I was seven or eight. There were as many human monsters in the world as there were Grendel/Auphe and Niko had taught me how to stay safe early on. I’d learned defensive moves with a kitchen-fucking-Ginsu knife he’d stolen at a flea market almost before I’d learned to tie my shoes. Hey, my life was worth more than laces. That’s what Velcro is for, asshole.

I dumped my jacket on the floor. My double shoulder holster I left on, as well as the knife in each boot, and the holster at the small of my back. Most accidents happen in the home. If a flesh-crazed zombie cockroach was going to come after me—and it wouldn’t be the first time—I wanted to be prepared.

I liked our place, the best by far we’d ever had. It had been converted from a garage and was about the space of four good-sized apartments. Promise, Niko’s one and only, had taken a small amount of money from her five late husbands, which told you how much money they had had to consider this investment small. She had it redone and rented it to us for practically nothing, which was exactly in our price range most of the time: practically nothing. Sometimes we were flush and sometimes we were flushed. It was the nature of the business.

Paying assholes hostage money and making sure to get the hostage back. Paying assholes ransom money, then killing them if the hostage was already dead, and returning the money to the family. Kidnapping children-eating assholes, holding them for ransom, and then
dropping them off thirty-story buildings. That was one of my favorites. Exterminating poison-spitting pixies. That was the least of my favorites. Fucking pixies. Clearing a pack of kishi out of a Kin neighborhood as kishi howled at a frequency that made Mafia Wolf ears bleed. Blowing up a mausoleum to get rid of a ghoul. Granted, doesn’t show a lot of respect for the dead, but once ghouls eat enough of the dead, they move on to the living. Nipping that in the bud is in everyone’s best interest. Not to mention explosives. I had a no doubt unhealthy—but who cared?—love of explosives.

It was a dirty business. Even if Niko tried to keep us on the more moral side of it, it was also a business that someone would be paid to do. It might as well be us. We were familiar to the extreme with the
paien
population—the monsters that humans have no idea exist. A kelpie living in a Central Park pond had killed ten pony lovers who tried to push it out of the water to safety before we put it down. You’d have thought the blood-soaked mane, unnaturally glowing bog green eyes, and three rows of piranha teeth would’ve made a person think twice, but nope.

People . . . too stupid to live, . . . yeah, that’s all. Too stupid to live.

I was dragging my feet with all the crap that had nothing to do with what was lurking in the depths of my murky subconscious, looking for a way . . . any way to hide. No putting it off any longer; that would only make what I’d imagined worse. If I had seen it at all. It could’ve been an illusion caused by the speed of flying glass and my jerking movement to try to avoid it. It
could
be nothing. It didn’t have to be what I’d automatically assumed. I only had to look and get it over with and then I could laugh at my paranoia. Even if it was from the fetal position under my bed, it was still laughing. That counted.

I walked down the hall and into the bathroom. For all the size of the open area of kitchen, living room, gym, and then add on the two bedrooms, the bathroom seemed small and getting smaller the longer I stood in it staring at the ragged green towel. It was partially rolled to wedge on top of the medicine cabinet with the rest falling over to hide the mirror. I’d put it up one day years ago in a different place, but no matter where we moved, the position of the towel never did. And Niko never commented on it. Hell, Niko, to save me the humiliation, was the one to put it up.

I don’t like mirrors, as I’d thought in the bar. By now that’s not news, right? It certainly wouldn’t be news to anyone who knew me—really knew me, I mean. Three or four people, which wasn’t a long list, but I had no desire to add to it. The more on your list, the more likely you’ll fuck up and let the wrong person in. In my world, you often find out who that wrong person is a second or so after he buries a dagger in your back. I didn’t care for that, and it made an awkward fit when it came to my jacket. They say it’s not paranoia if people are really out to get you. What do they say when there are people . . . creatures whose sole purpose in being
born
is to get you?

Ah well. Things weren’t likely to change.

Popularity is for pussies anyway.

So, yeah, I had a handful of people who knew my thing about mirrors. The not-liking thing. It wasn’t a phobia. It absolutely was not . . . anymore. Not that it would matter if it were. I was a low-maintenance guy. I shaved by feel and pulled my not-quite-shoulder-length hair back into a ponytail. If my hair grew out too long, my brother cut it for me. He’d started after the first time he caught me trimming it with a KA-BAR serrated combat knife. All in all, it was under control. All hygienic chores would be, and were, done reflection-free. No mirrors
required. And if I missed a patch shaving, no one at the place I bartended would mention or notice for that matter. The clientele were a little more than hairy and/or furry themselves. Living without mirrors was a helluva lot more doable than looking into one.

But, let me repeat, not a phobia.

Unfortunately tonight I did need a mirror. Niko wasn’t here to help me out. He was out with his vampire ball-and-chain Promise. Not that he would call her that, nor would he do anything to stop her from dislocating my arm if she heard the not so affectionate nickname. Sadly, it even wasn’t true. They were one of those meant-to-be couples. Romeo and Juliet, minus all the angst and suicide. Paris and Helen of Troy, without the war, mass destruction, and stupidity of a guy who couldn’t keep his dick in his pants . . . under his ancient leather miniskirt—whatever. Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie, but lacking the litter and the ability to be a living tour of Nations of the World ride at Disneyland, Alien and the Predator if . . . nope, that was perfect. Same interests, same hobbies, and one had fangs while the other a deep,
deep
appreciation of deadly weapons.

A disgustingly perfect couple who didn’t deserve to have their night interrupted over a slight mental malfunction I’d picked up years ago. They should be on Promise’s sofa, drinking wine and surfing Transylvanian Web sites for orphaned vamp babies to adopt. They should have at least that first part of a night together, as the second part never could or would happen.

My brother had always put me first in his life, probably a result of raising me himself. Nik had once let it slip, and only then because it had been the first, last, and only time he’d been too drunk to self-censor, that our mother, Sophia, hadn’t bothered to pick me up out of the birth-blood-streaked bathtub she’d delivered me in. She’d cut
the cord with a rusty steak knife and stepped over me to stagger out of the tub. After telling Niko “Here’s that pet you’ve been nagging me for,” she went to her room to fall into bed with a bottle of whiskey. With that stellar maternal reaction, I doubted she’d given me any further thought other than to look at me with an eye calculated as to whether I was small enough to flush down the toilet. But too bad for Sophia. Niko said I’d been born small, about five pounds. Five pounds isn’t much, yet still larger than your average dead goldfish.

With Promise being more understanding about Niko and my
Titanic
-sized case of codependency than . . . hell . . . any woman, vampire or human, I wasn’t going to crash their alone time. Naughty time. Pervy time. Whatever time they had going on, it didn’t matter. I could handle this myself.

First I’d check the cut to see if it needed stitches. I’d done stitches enough times I wouldn’t see anything in the mirror but the slice to the skin. It had long become pure reflex, done on enough different body parts, my brother’s as well as my own, that I didn’t need to pay attention. When that was done, I could focus on the mirror itself for a second or two to see if anything looked . . . off.