I snorted. "No comment." Actually I had plenty of comments about the rather bitchy Lady Luck, but we had things to do and Scottish assholes to kill.
Robin had declined an invitation to our hunting trip, but Promise had come along. The three of us spent the night combing the parks, the piers, and any condemned and abandoned buildings we could locate. The parks were good hunting grounds and any large empty structure could function as a substitute for a cave. It was a reasonable plan … if this wasn't New York City. A city this size? We were whistling in the wind and we knew it. But we kept it up. It was better than doing nothing and we hadn't heard back from Ham yet.
Yeah, it was the best we could do right now, but that didn't change the fact we came up empty—that night and the two nights following that. We didn't run across a single Redcap or revenant, which was unusual. Revenants were plentiful in the city. A few of them worked for the Kin doing jobs that the wolves considered beneath them. The others worked for themselves, eating what they could catch. They weren't bright, but they were fairly quick. They didn't go hungry too often, and it was unusual to go through the park at night and not spot at least three or four. We didn't see a single one…anywhere.
But at one park we did run into several sylphs cocooning a lowlife for later consumption. They were smaller creatures, the size of a seven-year-old child, with pale gold skin and hair and the amazing wings of giant butterflies. Purples, blues, greens, red, orange, yellow…any color you could think of. Their eyes were huge and the same gold as the skin. Beautiful, like the fairy tales in books…not the fairytale reality that stalked our streets. When you saw a sylph, it was enough to make you believe in Peter Pan, Tinkerbell, and a place built solely on magic.
And you'd keep believing it right up until they ate you.
It was at that same point you'd probably notice they had eight multijointed golden legs and were more spider than butterfly. And like the spider, they didn't drink blood or eat flesh, not separately. After cocooning their prey, they injected a chemical that dissolved the internal organs to soup. Eventually there would be nothing but a dried husk hanging in a tree that would disintegrate in the first brisk breeze.
Frankly, I didn't care if the homicidal butterflies ate a hundred muggers or drug dealers. New York could use a little cheap crime control. But, as Niko logically explained while smacking the back of my head, it might not always be a petty criminal they snared.
There were many things I'd done and many things I'd killed, but there was something about killing a giant butterfly, even one with spider legs, that wasn't going to leave any fond memories. I'd never been one for pulling the wings off something smaller than I was. But when they opened their mouths and I saw poison-dripping pincers and a circular gullet lined with tiny triangular teeth, I changed my mind. Tinkerbell took one in the gut, and, as it snarled with sizzling poison gushing from its mouth, the only thing I felt was gratitude I was out of spitting range.
Other than leaving scattered wings like ludicrously colored autumn leaves, we accomplished nothing. Not a damn thing. The only positive was there weren't any further attempts on Goodfellow's life. And I kept thinking it was positive up to the point he showed up at my door with a plan of his own.
Goodfellow tapped his watch when I opened the door. "Tick-tock. We have places to go and cherries to pop." He looked me up and down. "Could you change into something a little less…homeless-friendly?"
It was five in the afternoon and the last two hours had been spent working out with Niko. That wasn't anything I couldn't do in sweats and a T-shirt. Getting my ass kicked by my brother wasn't a black-tie event. I ducked as a lamp came hurtling from behind to bounce off my shoulder and shatter against the door frame.
"That could've been a dagger," Niko said reprovingly. It wasn't an idle observation, because the next one was. I caught a glimpse of it from the corner of my eye and dived to the ground. Robin caught it point-first and examined the blade. "It's dull. Now, what type of teaching tool is that?"
"He's delicate," my brother offered gravely.
I growled and rose to my knees, and then tackled Goodfellow to the floor while snatching the thrown dagger from him as I did. I rolled to keep him between Niko and me and held the training blade to his throat.