Moonshine (4 page)

"Really?" She cut the smallest possible bite and lifted it on her fork.

"Yeah." I took a real bite and chewed with enthusiasm. It wasn't often I had full-on breakfast food. Along with the martial arts, Niko had picked up the whole body-is-a-temple philosophy. He lived, breathed, and worshipped at its dry, tasteless altar. Soy milk, egg white omelets, organic fruit, no thanks. I'd take my dry Sugar Crunch any day of the week. "He either heard me fixing breakfast or the buzzer. One of the two. The man has the ears of a b—er… cat." Hastily, I shoved another bite in my mouth before my size eleven gave me an embarrassing case of athlete's tonsils. After swallowing I finished, "He's just doing his usual morning routine, sitting there staring at the wall like a lobotomy victim."

"It's called meditation, Cal," Niko said from behind me. "It helps me survive the daily trials and tribulations of a lazy, smart-mouthed younger brother."

"He's cleaning up his language for you, Promise." I pushed another plate in front of Niko and loaded him up. "If that's not love, I don't know what is." Ignoring the needle-sharp glare aimed at me, I added, "Breakfast as pledged. Now, eat up."

He didn't want to. Sugar, oil, butter—he probably would've made the sign of the cross if not for the company we were keeping this morning. Still, he recognized the pile of syrup and chocolate for what it was… my thanks for his sticking around last night. Sighing, he bowed to the inevitable and dug in, his bite every bit as small as Promise's had been. The whole world seemed to be on the same diet. Well, the hell with them, it just meant more for me. Stacking the last of the pancakes on my plate, I moved over to the living room couch and turned on the TV. It wasn't precisely privacy, but it was the best I could do for Niko and Promise. Our new apartment was actually smaller than our last, but it was a helluva lot nicer with decadent luxuries like heat and hot water. Our last place, sandwiched firmly between a dump and a slum, had been all but destroyed when the Auphe had come for me that last time. Not only had we bitten the deposit on that one; we were probably on a warrant list somewhere. It didn't matter. We hadn't used genuine ID since we'd hit the city. We still didn't. A quirk of Niko's there. The Auphe might be deader than the dodo, but there was no telling when it might prove to our advantage to be invisible to the eye of the authorities.

There was the low murmur of voices as I polished off my pancakes and then Promise raised her voice to include me. "I may have a new client for us."

"Oh joy," I said flatly, dropping my fork with a clatter on the empty plate. At least she'd waited until I had finished before she ruined my appetite. I noticed that she didn't ask how the work for last night's client had gone. Niko must have filled her in on the phone when he'd canceled their plans. "What is it this time? Hansel and Gretel go missing? You find Red's basket by Grandma's partially chewed leg?"

Promise didn't take offense at my irritable snap. She knew well enough where it originated. "No, this is actually somewhat more subtle, some undercover work actually—with werewolves. It may not even come to violence this time, Caliban. At least, I hope not."

Wolves… they didn't usually eat kids. Not on a regular basis anyway. I reached for the remote and turned the television down. "I'm all ears," I said, calmer. "And Niko's all nose. In other words, we're a captive audience."

I wasn't sure, but I thought I saw the faintest of pink flushes along Promise's cheekbones as she slid an amused amethyst glance toward Niko. Apparently, she liked his nose just fine. Five dead husbands and she blushed at the sight of my brother. It was enough to make you believe in all that crap they splattered in greeting cards.

"Undercover?" Niko frowned, missing the bigger picture at his side altogether. Or maybe he hadn't, I thought, rather amused myself as he tilted his head expectantly toward Promise. "Among wolves? How exactly are we to accomplish that?"

Sometimes he forgot; he honestly did. That he could amazed me, literally, and it humbled me too. I pushed the plate aside and propped my feet on the coffee table. "Don't worry, Cyrano," I drawled, drawing his attention. "We won't have to tie furry ears and a bushy tail on you. I'll do just fine."

That didn't help the frown much, but he did see the logic in it. I might not be a wolf, but neither was I completely human. A wolf would know that the instant he smelled me coming. "So." Niko stood and began to clear the table. "Who exactly is this client, and what does he want with our services?"

"His name is Cerberus. He's small-time in the Kin, from what I hear, but with aspirations." The slow smile showed just a hint of pearly fang. "And don't we all have aspirations?"

The Kin was basically the Mafia of the nonhuman world. They ran numbers, trafficked in drugs and prostitution… you name it. They had a larcenous paw in every till in the city, and while they might subcontract out, werewolves ran the show. They were the power and the glory, and if you forgot that for even a moment, it wouldn't be just kibble they dined on that night. Niko hadn't crossed their path, gambling, snortable wolfsbane, and succubi not being his thing, but I had. Well, not precisely me. While I was under the influence, so to speak, I'd hired two wolves to kill a girl for me. A girl who was quite sure that she was
my
girl. It hadn't worked out too well… for the wolves, better for me and mine. I'd moved through their ranks with ease then. There was a good chance I could do it again.

"What kind of aspirations?" Niko asked evenly. "Rising among his own kind or taking over the city?"

"Niko, I wouldn't involve you in anything that might compromise your principles." She touched his arm as he reached down for her glass and plate. "You must know that." That was a pretty broad statement.

As Robin had once said with exasperation, Niko had so very goddamn many principles. I hoped Promise could live up to her pledge. "He simply wants to rise in the ranks and with his… differences… that will not be easy to do. He suspects one particular 'friendly' rival within the Kin is planning a move on him in the next week, and he wants proof before he makes a preemptive strike. One misstep and all the others will turn on him. They respect his talent and ruthlessness, but as it stands now he lives only by their sufferance."

Wolves didn't have much acceptance for differences. To them difference equaled weakness and a wolf wasn't one to tolerate weakness. That wasn't to say there wasn't a wide range of wolf types. Some were completely human when they wanted to be and utterly wolf when they wanted that as well. Others were stuck somewhere in between, half of one or the other. A human with fur and fangs or a wolf with limpid blue human eyes and hands instead of paws. Bad breeding will tell. But as long as you were strong and could kill with the pack, that made you wolf. As for the moon and the whole werewolf-bite curse, I don't know who started that. It was a good story, mind you, but just a story. Wolves, just like vampires, were born, not made. They could chomp on you all day long; it wasn't going to make you turn furry at the next full moon. And all the Goth-dressing wannabe monsters in the world couldn't change that fact no matter how much they wished it were different.

"What's wrong with him?" I asked with admittedly morbid curiosity. "He missing an arm or something?" That would definitely have him living on sufferance, and a damn uncertain place for a wolf to dwell that would be.

"I have no idea, actually." She shook her head. "I've been dealing with his accountant, a well-mannered if boring creature. Cerberus appears to be far too busy to deal with us on a personal level."

"Or he wishes to keep as much distance between himself and his plot as possible." Niko finished stacking the dishes in the sink, gave me a pointed look to let me know that was my chore for the day, and wiped his hands on a towel. "He's intelligent if nothing else. Cautious as well. Unusual for a wolf." If I'd blinked, I would've missed the almost imperceptible brushing of his fingers over her bare shoulder. "Could you set up a meeting for us?"

"Of course." She gathered the cloak from her lap and stood next to him. Side by side, the vampire whose beauty was mysterious as the morning star and the man whose touch was deadlier than a viper—as couples went, they were cuter than a basket full of puppies. "I have the car waiting downstairs. Would you like a ride to class?"

And that had my humor dissipating into a morose mist. I hadn't had the lecture in a few days; I was about due. It was only brought home by the look Niko flashed me as he accompanied Promise out the door. Education, college, a normal life.

Who needed it?

College, he just wouldn't stop with it.

We'd gone on the run just after Niko's freshman year, which had put a decisive end to higher education for my brother. If things had been reversed, it wouldn't have mattered much to me. I might have gone to college, yeah. But I would've been one of the usual students, average, the lowest common denominator. Skipped a lot of classes, drunk a lot of beer. Graduated with a degree in marketing and absolutely no prospects for a job. Don't get me wrong. It would've been fun, college. Hell, yes. But it wasn't something I would have really ached over the loss of.

Niko did. He never said a word to me or indicated it in any way, but he did. So when the whole mess was over and we could lead a life, while not exactly normal, certainly a whole helluva lot more stable, I was glad he decided to go back to school. He was only twenty-two, even if he acted fifty. It wasn't as if life had passed him by or anything. It would've been pretty pointless for him to take sophomore-level classes, though. While we'd fled for our lives he'd kept his studies up while homeschooling me. Imminent death and destruction were no excuse for a wasted mind, he would say. Really, he would actually say that.

Can you believe it? Now with the help of a little creative paperwork he was taking grad-student classes at NYU. Robin had presented him with a fake degree from a university in Athens where the puck had an old acquaintance who still got a kick out of teaching, despite hemlock rumors to the contrary. Niko was now well on his way to a master's in history. Considering his love of old weapons and his archaic sense of honor, it was a good fit. Niko was smart as hell; brilliant was probably a better word. He
needed
to learn, to test his mind, to constantly strive. It was exhausting to watch.

I, on the other hand, was happy enough to just lounge on the couch and watch bad TV. I didn't want to take classes or go to college. We had our business up and staggering. It wasn't as if I needed letters behind my name or a piece of paper stuck up on the wall. That made perfect sense to me, but Niko wouldn't let it go.

Yeah, perfect sense… and a bit of a lie too, which was how I usually operated when it came to the twisty inner workings of my own mind. True, I didn't see a need for school, but that wasn't the only reason I didn't want to go. I'd come to terms with what… no…
who
I was. I wasn't a monster, my occasional melodramatic wailings aside. But neither was I human, not completely. Not quite a man and not exactly a monster. College, classes, dating—it all seemed a little like trying to make me into a "real live boy." And that wasn't so much pointless as it was tempting fate. That I'd survived the Auphe was miraculous… damn near unbelievable. Now was the time for being grateful and keeping my head down. Poking a stick in the eye of fate wasn't on the agenda.

I'd been swatted enough in my life, thanks so much. I was ready for the easy ride, the coasting. And damned if I wasn't due.

I was also due at a certain soda shop in a few hours. So I might as well take a shower and do a load of laundry to kill some time first. I didn't want to be too early. I was no Goodfellow, not on my best day, but I did have
some
reputation to protect. Okay, realistically, I didn't. But the plan itself was still sound, and I did know how to appreciate a good plan.

Two and a half hours—and three wasted trips downstairs looking for a free washer—later I had dragged a full bag of clean if newly pink clothes back to the apartment. I then grabbed the M15 bus to Pier 17 and the Fulton Fish Market and there I was, hammering futilely on the security gate over the storefront. "Geezer," I called out in exasperation for the second time. "Let me in already."

"Cal." The laughing disapproval came from behind. "How nice is that? Mr. Geever would be hurt if he heard that."

"But he never does, does he?" I grunted with one last rattling bang on the metal. "He's deaf as a post." I'd smelled her coming. Honey and oatmeal soap, the orange and clove shampoo, and underneath it all was the scent of Georgina. Sunlight. Don't ask me how someone can smell like sunlight. I don't know. It was corny and trite and simple truth. Luckily for me she also smelled of shockingly mundane toothpaste, minty and completely ordinary. It let me keep at least one foot on solid ground—at least that's what I stubbornly told myself.

Turning, I looked down at George. Granted it was only by a few inches; I was of average height at best. She stood wearing a white dress that fell to her ankles. Simple cotton and sleeveless, it glowed against the amber of her skin. Most girls her age were wearing jeans that settled precariously below hip bones and tiny tops so skimpy they showed as much skin as a bathing suit. Not that that was a bad thing in my book. I was a twenty-year-old horny guy; tight jeans and lots of skin were a God-given constitutional right as I saw it. But when it came to George, she was more than a girl three weeks past her high school graduation. She was a seer and a prophet.

I'd known her for almost three years now. When Niko and I had first come to the city we'd stumbled into her, a fifteen-year-old miracle, by accident. At least I thought it was accidental. George probably had a different opinion on the matter. The universe moved in ways that were frequently heartbreaking and for the most part unchangeable, but always for a grander purpose. At least it did in her eyes. And she'd kept believing that, although she'd lost her father to AIDS and her uncle to death at the hands of the Auphe. Despite it all she kept the faith that things were as they should be. I wished I had a tiny fraction of her belief in the greater good, no matter how cynically I discounted it.

She had her mass of copper curls pulled up in a ponytail at the crown of her head, an uncontrollable red-gold halo in the morning light. Many races mixed in her dark brown eyes, round face, and full lips. The freckles kept her from being classically beautiful and made her more than beautiful. They made her real… touchable.

For some people.

I unconsciously mimicked her posture, folding my arms and tucking my hands out of sight. "So, Freckle Queen, what's the story? I thought Geezer wanted me to watch the place for him today."

She opened a hand and dangled a set of silver keys before my eyes. "He decided to go visit his sister early. I told him I'd meet you and help you open up the shop."

The look on her face was pure innocence and my mental alarm kicked into high gear. Niko and Promise might be lost in a mist of uncertainty, but George knew she was my girl. She knew it though I'd never told her or given her the slightest inclination I thought of her as anything other than a younger sister. In fact I spent the majority of my time keeping her at arm's length. It wasn't a safe distance, but it was the best I could do. As I watched the glitter of the keys reflected in her dark eyes, I had the sudden feeling that the best I could do just wasn't going to cut it.

Silently, I held out a hand for the keys. She dropped them in my hand and I went to work unlocking the security gate. The warmth of her at my back could've been mistaken for the heat of a tropical sun if I hadn't known better. Knowing better… it was no goddamn fun. "You holding court today?" I asked, clearing my throat. I already knew the answer to the question; it was just something to say. Something to break what I would swear was a doubling of atmospheric pressure.

"Don't I always?" The touch of her hand resting lightly against my arm had me jumping in spite of myself. "There's a little girl," she said softly, her lashes dropping to screen her eyes. "She's in her pajamas holding a teddy bear. They're red, the both of them. All over red."

I jerked my arm away and said sharply, "Don't."

"I'm sorry," she apologized instantly. "God, I am so sorry. I didn't mean to, Cal. I swear."

George didn't "read" people without permission. It was an invasion of privacy, and no one knew that better than she did. The fact that she had read me unconsciously said very clearly that my oh-so-vaunted arm's-length distance wasn't worth a damn to either of us.

I shoved the gate up, scraping the metal across the abrasion I'd gained in climbing the Ferris wheel the night before. The momentary sliver of pain grounded me. It was no big deal. As long as that was all she'd seen, it would be okay. I fumbled with the keys and jammed them one by one into the lock of the door. George, no doubt knowing which was the right one, stayed silent behind me until I opened the door and stepped through.

She followed after me. "Honestly, Cal, I would never—" she started.

"It's okay," I cut her off. "I know you wouldn't look without asking." It was the first time George had read me… short moment though it was. I was very careful about that. When we needed help or guidance, it was Niko she read. What she had learned about me through him, I didn't know and I didn't ask. What I did know was that I was no goody bag to be rummaging through. There were bad things in me, things no one should have to see. Hell, I didn't even know if George was aware I wasn't fully human. Some days I told myself she had to know. She'd had to have picked up on that while reading Niko. She had known her uncle was destined to die at the hands of the Auphe; how could she not know what that made me? But other days… I wasn't so sure.

Moving behind the counter, I checked the temperature on the freezer, fed the slushy machine with ice, and then quickly began to stock the ice-cream bins under the glass counter. The place had once been a drugstore with a soda counter, long before I'd been born. Now it was a soda counter with a lot of empty space and a lonely magazine rack. Mr. Geever kept the place running solely by virtue of George's calling. She sat in the shop for several hours a day and helped those that came. And come in large numbers they did. While she didn't take any money for her services, she always gently urged each person to buy an ice cream from the Geezer. It kept the old guy in false teeth and stool softeners with a little left over for trips to see his equally ancient sister.

"Cal." Funny how a voice of cinnamon velvet could be so utterly implacable.

It was a familiar tone. Horrifyingly familiar. "Niko been giving you lessons?" I grumbled to myself, and then, relenting, I looked up.

An unwavering gaze faced me. "What could I see that would be so bad?" she asked with a shot-to-the-heart honesty.

What a question… and one with too many not-so-nice answers. "Dead little girls for one," I said flatly.

Her lips tightened, but she didn't back down. "If you're thinking that's a first for me, you're wrong."

Not much of a surprise. I had one helluva track record with being wrong. "Then why would you want to see any more?" Along with being wrong, I also had a record of digging in my heels. Laying out the last gallon of chocolate, I reached automatically for the spray bottle of disinfectant and the slightly grungy towel beneath the counter and began to wipe off the glass.

"Caliban," she sighed, and bent her head to blow lightly on the surface of the icy glass.

Not so long ago I hadn't been comfortable with my full name. It brought up some conflicted emotions, to say the least. With a dark twist of humor, Sophia had named me for a slouching man-beast of Shakespearean fame. In my snarky and sullen teenage years I'd made a stand and demanded to be called Caliban and nothing else… not Cal, not anything that might let me forget what I was. I was certain I was a monster and I was determined to wear the label. Niko ignored me as he always did when he felt it was in my best interest. Even now he called me only Cal.

Lately, though, I'd gotten sort of used to the occasional "Caliban." Promise, George, and Robin, they didn't realize the emotions it carried with it and would use it now and again. And when George called me that… hell, the emotions became all new ones. Good ones, if I could let myself admit it.

But they disappeared almost immediately when I saw what her finger was sketching with quick strokes on the frosted glass. She'd drawn on the glass once before like that, but what she'd done then had been much more innocuous than what flowed from her now. Only a few lines, but the face jumped out at me as if it were alive. Pointed ears, streaming hair, a thousand metal teeth. Auphe. How did it go? Say the devil's name and he'll appear? It probably was the same for doodling his driver license's photo. Extinct or not, I didn't want to take the chance. Instantly, I reached over with the rag and wiped it away. She rested her hand on mine before I could pull it back. "That's not you, Cal. It never could be."

I guess that answered my question on how much she knew, I thought numbly. "It is me, George," I countered grimly. "Part of me anyway." The bell tinkled and I looked past her. "Looks like your first disciple is here. Better go show them the light." Carefully I slid my hand from beneath hers and turned my attention to unlocking the cash register.

It was part of me and I could never let myself forget it. Hey, almost destroying the world… it's kind of hard to gloss over. And it had been close. Really, really close. That was what the Auphe had wanted me for, from my very birth. I was part of an experiment in breeding, born and bred for destruction. It seemed the Auphe needed a very special type of creature to further their goal. And that goal was nothing short of wiping out this world and replacing it with another. The Auphe traveled via holes ripped in the fabric of space itself. Gates, doors, whatever you called them, they could slice one into the air, step through, and be someplace far away when they arrived on the other side. Now, if only they could form a rip not just through space but through time as well. The few of them that were left could go back to a prehistoric time when they, not the dinosaurs, ruled the earth. Armed with twenty-twenty hindsight, they could wipe out humans before we even got started. And with my involuntary help, they almost had.

Yeah, that kind of thing made it hard to forget just what you were.

"Stubborn." It wasn't said under her breath; it wasn't even a whisper. And it was accompanied by the sharp sound of her heel hitting the floor as she turned on it and whirled away. Georgie in a temper—there was a first, and despite the unsettling turn to the situation I felt my lips twitch. Then the half-born smile faded. She knew. She knew and she didn't seem to care. What that might mean to me I couldn't even begin to wrap my mind around.