“That pigeon will rue the day his mother laid that rotting, spoiled egg that hatched him,” Robin gritted before pushing past the guardian, his sword in his hand so improbably fast that I barely saw his hand move. “Tell Bastet that I am here and don’t pretend you don’t know who and what I am. Tell her now. You can do that as you are or with my sword through your heart. That choice I leave up to you. Are you listening to me, you misbegotten vulture? That glazed look of insipid boredom, believe it or not, is not inspiring me with reams of confidence. Go.”
She gave him a look that was anything but bored. It was seething with the metal-edge of rage and the red haze of hunger. Her kind was always hungry. It didn’t stop for them. For a moment I thought she’d act on it, but she turned, and moved toward the stairs, suddenly all but drenched in disinterest. To the eye. I pulled in and sampled a deep breath of the adrenaline leaking out into the air before asking with casual curiosity, “How attached is your friend to the help? She a big fan of her pet peymakilir?”
“Of one such as this? Not likely. Rudeness to the clients wouldn’t be tolerated if she knew about it.” Sword still in hand, Robin deposited his woefully charitable wallet into a small trash can that looked to be made of gold. Idly, I wondered if it would fit under my jacket. “And, believe me, she’ll know the very moment I see her.”
The peymakilir was halfway up the stairs now, as slow as if every step was weighed down by chains. Slow and not worth a second glance, you would’ve thought. Yeah, and if you had that thought in our world, you wouldn’t have many more of them.
Because here she came.
In a heartbeat the Hindu scavenger of war’s battlefields had turned and leaped into fluid motion over the banister. She almost flew. Like a bird following a propeller of whirling steel, she soared toward us . . . nearly beautiful even knowing what she was. One who stripped the meat from the bones of the dying, consuming their flesh and life gleefully all in one. An inexplicably cruel part of nature. Yet, still impossibly beautiful—an angel of death with every sword a flash of quicksilver.
Then she was nothing more than meat. That tends to happen when I open a gate inside of someone rather than around them. In midair she disintegrated in an explosion of tarnished gray light, followed by the billowing stench of burned flesh, the spray of blood and long, cauterized limbs scattered everywhere. What was left of her fell, a tangle of parts, swords, and snuffed-out wildness.
Bambi’s mom goes down. And stays down.
Not that Disney ever showed you that part.
I had ducked a tumbling sword that had flown overhead, nearly taking off my head. I should’ve thought more about the swords. Eh, water under the bridge. I took another swallow of Mountain Dew. The caffeine was just not kicking in. “You’re right, Robin. She was one rude bitch.” Most murderers, male or female, were. The foyer was now somewhat of a mess, but it had been a little uptown for me anyway.
Goodfellow let the tip of his sword hit the marble floor, which wasn’t the way to treat your weapons. “What did you do?”
“I’m having an identity crisis.” I shifted my shoulders without much concern. “And there’s the fact that she was trying to kill us, then eat us. Hopefully in that order. I did what I do.”
“It seems as if the now ex-doorman liked her job and didn’t want to lose it over your complaints,” Niko said. He wanted to say more and he would say more, but not until we were alone. He trusted Robin, we both did, but there were things he said only to me—the things that I hated about myself. The monster in me that would never let me be right or clean. The darkness that waited and not at all patiently for its turn.
All that wasn’t true anymore.
Niko hadn’t quite gotten it in the past months. I wasn’t shamed by what I was. I didn’t hate it, not any longer; I was confused, some, yes, but not ashamed. Or more likely, Nik being Nik, he did know and that made it all the more important that the coming conversation be private. He didn’t want anyone else, even Robin, to realize the half Auphe wasn’t half these days. No . . . I was farther along the road than that now. He trusted me, but he wasn’t the only one in my world and not all of them would feel the same.
Instead when he commented, he was as studiously detached as only he could be. “So . . . you know what a peymakilir is. Studying behind my back?”
“Goodfellow has one painted on his guest bathroom wall behind the toilet. It’s screwing a satyr and the whole thing is labeled in hellish detail in gold paint. Hard knowledge to avoid when you’ve got a full bladder.”
Robin, meanwhile, hadn’t caught on to the fact that the peymakilir disposal conversation was over. “You blew her up. You opened a gate inside her like you did with Suyolak.” Suyolak, the antihealer who’d started the Black Death. Suyolak, the Plague of the World. Suyolak, the asshole who’d totally had it coming.
Goodfellow moved his shoe so the remnants of a peymakilir hand slid off that fine Corinthian leather. “But Suyolak was desperate measures.”
“Then,” I agreed.