Unfortunately for the Kin, the Kishi, as a race, howled at a decibel level that would have any Kin wolf’s ears within ten blocks bleeding. Curled up in homicidal furry balls, moaning for their mommies, they hadn’t had much success in taking down the Kishi. Luckily for Niko, me, and our bank account, human ears couldn’t hear notes that high.
And although I wasn’t entirely human, my hearing was. That made us the go-to guys for this job. It had seemed easy from the hiring and from the half of our fee that was slapped into my palm—if it hadn’t been for Niko’s research, finding out the Kishi were highly intelligent, if extremely malevolent. That meant the adults were fair game, but the younger Kishi we had to pat on the head and then find a goddamn supernatural foster and rescue organization for murderous fur babies that would raise them right, socialize their asses, put rhinestone collars on them, and take them off our hands.
How many of those do you think were in the phone book? Nada? Good fucking call.
But the bottom line was, it was all about family. The adult Kishi were taking down prey for their young—which luckily only numbered one at this point—feeding him or her, setting up a nest, claiming this place for their own. They were doing what evolution had bred them to do. They were killers—predators to the bone. They would slaughter anything they thought they had a chance of bringing down—but to give them credit, they looked after their family.
That’s where family became a bitch in yet another way. You eat people for your family; you piss off the Kin for your family; you die for your family.
As a random bastard had once said to me when I was a kid in the fourth grade as he demanded my sneakers and backpack, life isn’t fair. I agreed with him by punching his annoying teeth down his equally annoying throat. If that’s what the world wanted to be, I’d go along. I didn’t make the rules. I only played by them.
Since when?
Since never.
This wasn’t a schizophrenic voice—at least I hoped not—this was just my subconscious, or half of one. It was the bad thoughts people think—normal people, too—that they shouldn’t, don’t like to admit to, and don’t act on. But as I wasn’t normal and wasn’t exactly the Webster’s Dictionary definition of a person, my bad thoughts were much more bad than most, and I did sometimes act on them. Sometimes or often or frequently or very frequently, depending on my mood . . . no judgment needed or wanted.
They were almost as much of a bitch as family could be, with the inner squabbling, but I’d learned to mostly tune them out. Slowly they were beginning to taper off. Not because any part of me had less to say, but because two halves were becoming a whole. Two genetic and mental halves melding into one. Out of the way, Sybil, there was a new nearly cured crazy in town. Many psychotherapists would be proud of my progress—the ones who hadn’t met me and, if they had any sense, wouldn’t care to.
Soon I wouldn’t be good or bad. I’d only be me.
They’d have to invent a new adjective for that.
I shook my leg futilely one more time and exhaled in irritation at the molten mercury eyes, the dark red coat dappled with silver spots, the milk-white teeth—as large as a German shepherd’s adult teeth—that continued to gnaw at my thigh. “Three seconds and he’s a rug under the coffee table. Your move, Cyrano.”
Did Niko have a proud, hawklike nose? Yes, he did. Did I give him hell over it? What do you think?
I answered my still-ringing cell phone as I shot the last Kishi that leaped through a boarded-up window. Wood split, glass shattered, and bone splintered. The combination made for one dead Kishi whose stomach was rounded and full with its last meal, which, I was guessing, had been the last occupant of this street. From the hypodermic needle the parahyena coughed up in its dying throes, that meal had most likely been a tweaker.
They say drugs kill, but does anyone ever listen?
“Yeah, Leandros,” I said into the phone. “Death and destruction by the dollar. The meter’s ticking. Go.”
I hadn’t had a chance to check the incoming number, not with Kishi Junior both seducing and making a meal of my leg. But it didn’t surprise me to hear a familiar voice. Five people total had my personal number. Our work came by referral only these days. “Kid, thank Bacchus,” I heard the relieved exhalation. “I need you and Niko at my place now.”
The three seconds was up and I had the muzzle of my Desert Eagle planted between toddler Kishi’s moon eyes as he gnawed harder at my lower thigh. I had a high pain tolerance—you learned to in this business, but to balance it out, my tolerance for nearly everything else in the universe was low. Damn low. Too bad for baby. It was night-night time. I might as well stop the pattern now. The same as his parents, he would grow up to be a killer anyway.
Like you did?