“Walk slower,” Cal said from in front of me as he plodded, steps tired and occasionally wobbly. “I can still smell you.”
By the time we were home, Cal had recovered and took a quick shower before coming out back. I kept as far away as our tiny backyard would allow as he threw me the soap. He uncurled the hose while I stripped and dumped my clothes in the garbage can for later burning. For once I was thankful we couldn’t afford to live in a neighborhood that had streetlights. If any of our neighbors saw me as anything other than a smear paler than the night, then they were trying too much. Cal would be happy to go paint a giant P for pervert on their doors if they did.
“Ready?” he asked. But he didn’t wait for my answer. How would that be fun for him? A stream of ice-cold water hit me in the face. I grimaced but began soaping up as Cal hosed me down like an elephant on a hot day at the zoo.
I scrubbed every inch thoroughly before waving my arms. “Cal, all right, stop. I think I’m fine now.” Except that I expected my skin had turned blue and I was freezing. Cal was right. Mrs. Spoonmaker would have to pray for me.
Cal took an experimental sniff, then shook his head. Part of the decision, I thought, was driven by how much he was enjoying himself. Little brothers and water hoses are deadly combinations. “One more time. To make sure it doesn’t get in the house. You really, really stank.”
I couldn’t disagree with that.
11
Cal
Present Day
I absolutely stank.
Being attacked by the dead will do that. A few years ago I would’ve been yakking my guts up over it, but you can, as they say, get used to anything. We’d fought enough things that while weren’t dead, they did smell that way or worse. It turned out the real thing wasn’t quite as bad as some of those. It wasn’t enjoyable, hell no, but at least I could fight now without taking a time-out to puke on the feet of whatever I was shooting or carving up at the time.
We did keep an all-but-industrial-strength soap on hand for these occasions though, as Niko’s hippy-churned natural crap wasn’t going to do the job—unless the job was making me smell like a bowl of zombie cereal with a healthy serving of goat milk over the top.
The cuts on my legs weren’t as bad as I expected. Whatever type of mist hid Jack’s inner jagged self, it had been enough of a barrier to keep me from impaling myself when I’d gated on top of him. It wasn’t as if I hadn’t thought about it, but a little impaling—the kind you survived, if not walked away from—was worth it to take out Jack. I’d have happily crawled away from the scene of the deed if it meant putting down that son of a bitch. But, as it was, the cuts were superficial. Some antibiotic ointment and I was good to go, no bandages required. I did have at least one cracked rib though, maybe two from where Jack had fallen on me as shockingly as if the moon had fallen from the sky. But I’d had cracked ribs before—and I’d have them again if we could get Jack out of the picture. Move carefully, don’t breathe too deeply, eat pain pills like M&M’s, and I’d be fine.
Bending my head down to scrub my wet hair with a towel, I stepped into the main room in time to hear Promise say, “But there are no such creatures as zombies.”
“You’re ruining a lot of fantasies by saying that,” I pointed out as I straightened and dropped the towel on the floor. “Don’t get between a geek and a good apocalypse. They’ll probably kill you quicker than Jack would.”
Promise turned her head from where she sat on the couch and gave me a glance as opaque as they came. It didn’t help her. I knew what she was thinking. I was wearing sweatpants but was shirtless. That made it easy to see that I had more than my share of scars, some of them uglier than others. I also had a line of stitches across my stomach and a dark garden of bruises blooming up like black roses over my ribs. I thought Promise could make her peace with scars, more specifically Niko’s. He had fewer than I did; he was the better fighter, but he still had a few. But when a job ended in spilled blood, and as she was a vampire I knew she could smell mine, and cracked ribs—that was new, wasn’t it? Not old scar tissue you could write off to “he was younger then. He’s better now. Undefeatable, human or not.”
If a half Auphe like me was this mortal, what did that say about the true mortal?
I knew what Promise was thinking and who she was thinking it about because I thought the same thing. Nik, oblivious to his mortality while others brooded over it, glared at my discarded towel. “If it weren’t for your ribs, I would rub your nose in that.”