"As if I give a damn where you put those bastards," Niko said with icy sharpness. There was the riffle of cash as Barty-boy decided to not push his luck and forked over our fee.
Hardest fifty bucks I'd ever made.
Chapter 2
It wasn't really just fifty, of course. But after rent, groceries, and Niko's new hobby, fifty bucks was probably close to what was left. Our first official job was a success and not for one second did it feel that way. It was easier when the only asses we worried about were our own. When you're on the run for three years, half a step ahead of certain death or worse, you don't have much time or emotion to spare for anyone else. How much of a bastard did it make me to wish it were still the same? I didn't miss the running, God, no, but the other… shit, what could you do?
Take a bath. That's what. Take a goddamn bath.
Put her in the water.
Clenching my teeth, I discarded the fifth washcloth, stained beyond repair, and picked up the next one from the edge of the tub. A shower hadn't touched the bodach blood and now I was sitting in a tepid mix of water, soap, and three gallon jugs of orange juice. It was working… slowly. The crap was coming off, more or less, and I counted myself lucky it was taking only a few strips of skin with it. I was scrubbing at one arm with more interest in getting the fetid goop off than keeping my pasty hide in one piece when the bathroom door was opened. Inquisitive green eyes peered around the frame, took in the apparent lack of weapons, and narrowed slyly. "You've the look of a pinto pony," came the amused drawl. "A half-drowned, not particularly well-bred pinto pony."
A perfect ending to a perfect shit of a day. "Boundaries, Loman," I said indifferently. "Personal space. Look into the concept, why don't you?"
Assured that I was armed only with terry cloth, the eyes were soon followed by the rest of the irritating package. Curly brown hair, lithely muscular frame, and a smile so wickedly knowing the Vatican would label it a carnal sin. Robin Goodfellow, the Pan, the Puck, the everything else rumored to be lurking in the forest seducing virgins, conning innocent travelers, and hitting every orgy Rome had ever spawned. We'd met him the previous fall just before the entire Auphe nightmare came to a head. Niko and I had been looking for a car for our getaway and who should be running the lot but salesman extraordinaire Rob Fellows? A better salesman than Willy Loman by far, but the nickname annoyed him so thoroughly that I wouldn't have dreamed of giving it up. Within less than a second of meeting him, or smelling him rather, I'd had him pegged for nonhuman. It took slightly longer to get the whole story out of him. In the end he'd helped us… very probably saved us. He was a friend, the best. He was also annoying and vain, never said one word when twenty would do, lied with ease, and could drink Bacchus under the table. And had done so, to hear him tell it.
He was also lonely.
And I don't mean the kind of lonely you read about in great books or see in overwrought award-winning movies. It wasn't the type of loneliness a human could comprehend. Hundreds of thousands of years he'd lived, if not more, and would continue to live. His kind was mostly gone; there weren't more than a handful of pucks left to play Goodfellow these days, and most other monsters shunned him. Robin liked humans… for companionship, not a bedtime snack. Doing business with a human might be a necessity at times, but socializing with one? That was just perverse. There was the occasional vampire, as Niko knew from not-quite-intimate experience, who felt the same as Robin did. And there were a few other exceptions that proved the rule, but mostly humans just weren't that popular, and neither were human-lovers. But where vampires might live a thousand years, Robin was pretty much forever… excepting a violent end. Everyone he loved died. Everyone he cared for, everyone he hung out with to have a mug of mead or a glass of wine, everyone he knew, even in passing… they all died. I felt for the guy. God, did I.
It didn't mean I wanted him watching me take a bath.
"Ridiculous human psychological theories." He waved a dismissive hand and took a seat on the edge of the sink, leaning back against the wall. There was no mirror, not there or in the rest of the apartment. Let's just say I didn't much care for mirrors. Not after last year. "Freud, who wore ladies' underwear by the way, didn't have a clue. It was rather sad really, the way he strutted around with that cigar five times bigger than his—"
"Seriously, Loman, I'm not in a good mood right now. What the hell are you doing here?" My arm was raw and slightly weeping, but clean, and I moved on to my chest.
"Not in a good mood now?" he echoed incredulously. "You're never in a good mood. If I waited for that momentous occasion to show, you'd never see my suave self."
"And the downside to that is what exactly?"
"Sour as Nero's piss as always." Sighing, he tossed me a plastic bottle filled with milky yellow-green fluid. "Niko called me. Here. This should take off the bodach blood and leave enough of your skin intact that you can walk the streets without scaring children. The orange juice was a good idea, but this will work better."
Shaking the bottle dubiously, I asked reluctantly, "Do I even want to know what this shit is?"
The grin was wide, bright, and utterly evil. "Didn't I just tell you? Nero's piss." The door closed behind him before I could lob the bottle at his head.
Whatever it was, and with Goodfellow there really was no telling, it worked. I had a few spots that were painful and red, but as he'd said… I was mostly intact. And some days that is the best you can hope for. Dressed in sweats, I made my way to the kitchen to see Niko sitting at the table with my gun spread before him in pieces. Snorting, I moved to the cabinet that did duty as overflow first aid storage. The fact that the medicine cabinet in the bathroom wasn't big enough for all our supplies told a story, one not suitable for bedtime. "How will I ever learn if you keep that up?"
He picked up a brush and began to clean the dock's barrel. "Over the years I've learned exactly how long it takes to train you." The smell of cleaner was sharp in the air, but not quite as sharp as the glance he threw me. "My peace of mind doesn't have two more years in it."
Two years added to the two that I'd already been carrying a gun—it was a harsh estimate. Unfortunately, it was also probably true. Sitting down at the table opposite him, I rubbed an antibiotic cream on the only truly bad spot, the long raw abrasion on my arm. "Goodfellow gone?"
"Yes." He watched as I applied the salve, and satisfied with the result, he went on. "Apparently he squeezed us in between an early date and a late-night dinner cruise. Do you want more details? I have them. Quite a few of them."
His vexed tone had the corners of my mouth twitching. Niko liked Robin, and in fact had been friends with him before I had. Being infested with a creature that took control of my mind, body, and scraps that lay between, I'd been too busy with the wreaking havoc and attempted murder to do a whole lot of bonding in the beginning. Still, liking Goodfellow and being able to bear up under the soap opera that was his social life were two different animals altogether. He loved to share every gory detail and he didn't like to spend his nights alone. And considering the fact he was pansexual, as he repeated on more than one occasion with an elbow to the ribs and a gleefully self-amused chuckle, he pretty much didn't have to. It all made for a helluva lot of stories to spin.
"No, thanks," I declined with a faint grin as I pulled the sleeve of my sweatshirt back down to cover my arm. "I'm still reeling over the triplet story."
"Aren't we all?" Within seconds he reassembled my gun with a speed that was straight out of an army training film. Niko might not have a lot of respect for weapons with moving parts, but he was as adept with them as he was with his blades. "He mentioned that you seemed more… relaxed."