This girl had been nice, with coppery hair, cheerful blue eyes, and penny-bright freckles across the top of her pale breasts. And clothes on or off, she always wore her mala beads. I knew Niko wore two or three of the bracelets as well, but unlike his brother, Cal definitely didn’t come across as the Zen kind. But he was going through the motions, fingers moving from one bead to the next while his lips framed soundless words-his mantra, because I sure couldn’t see him praying. He wasn’t the praying type. Niko was watching him and, unlike his brother, he wasn’t happy, eyes dark over his hawkish nose. I could sample it in his scent as well. He was watching Cal… closely… and when Cal caught that look, he settled down, dropping his hands into his lap and the calendar onto the floor. “It’s okay, Cyrano,” he said with an assurance I wasn’t buying. What exactly was okay? Or not okay? I didn’t think this was about what had happened to Robin. It smelled darker. Much darker.

I was about to get on the laptop and ask Rafferty what was up. If it was what we’d suspected, smelled-that Cal was more Auphe now than he had been last time we’d seen him. But that was pointless. What else could it be? I didn’t need Rafferty to verify what both our noses had told us. But life decided we got a nice close shot of it anyway.

Something else showed us in brilliant, unforgettable detail that Cal might be less human than my werewolf cousin and I.

The Ördögs.

We hadn’t been back on the Lincoln for even thirty measly miles when we saw it. A black truck. The black truck. I didn’t need the ring of my cell phone from Abelia-Roo still following us in the pink RV of the queen of con artists to tell me that. I could smell the graveyard must creeping in despite the air-conditioning. So could Catcher. And Rafferty? I imagined he could smell and sense Suyolak. Half a mile behind him… it… and where were my explosive rounds when I needed them?

It wasn’t a semi, but it was big enough to haul a coffin or two and more than several minions… ex-minions. Minions usually always ended up as ex, deceased, or late and not necessarily great. These guys had gotten their pink slip with a nice side order of cholera, and while that didn’t taste as bad as hominy or the dreaded brussels sprout, it still couldn’t have gone down too well. Read a fucking comic, for God’s sake. Watch a superhero movie and you’d know that when your boss is powerful enough and motivated enough to destroy the world, you’d have to wonder: what good are you to him in the long run? Pensions are going to be scarce.

“It’s him,” Rafferty and I said, not exactly in harmony, but it was as close as echoes came.

“Pull up beside him,” Niko ordered.

Robin gave him one of those incredulous glances that he was so good at. “On the Lincoln? Are you going to jump across and cling to the metal door like a ninja refrigerator magnet? Or is Cal going to shoot the driver? Neither of which, I’m sure, will draw any attention of the cars around us.” He shook his head. “Blonds. They do try, but…” He tapped a finger against his temple.

Niko leaned closer to Robin, something the puck would’ve normally liked, and bit off one arctic word at a time. “Pull… up… beside… him.” My brother wasn’t happy about Suyolak and was worried about me-not that he should’ve been, and he was not in the mood for making things more difficult than they had to be. If shooting the truck driver on the Lincoln was our best opportunity, he’d take it.

“Fine, fine. Hold your no doubt pristinely organic urine.” Robin moved into the fast lane and the car up next to the truck. The windows were tinted in the cab, not as black as the paint job, but enough that I couldn’t make out who was driving or inside of the cab, especially as I was on the far side of a wolf and healer. While I would’ve liked to have seen the inside so I could’ve made a little hop in there, I didn’t need to see the driver. It was a man, a stupid and desperate man, and it didn’t matter what he looked like or what his name was or even why he was doing this. It only mattered we took him out before he let loose something that could potentially eradicate life on the planet and, worse yet, do it just for shits and giggles.

“I smell something else,” Rafferty said as he studied the truck through his window.

“Me too,” I responded. It was sharp and musky, mixed with old and new blood. It was the scent of an animal, only much stronger, and not one I’d ever come across. “But I don’t have a damn clue what it is.”

Catcher was growling softly, but that was his only comment, which meant he didn’t know either. “All right then. Suyolak’s picked up some new friends. He, like me, is a popular guy,” Goodfellow said as he kept pace with the truck as it began to speed up. “Are we going to ride along until he invites us to a playdate with him and his entire tea party? Or are we going to do something productive?”

“All my plans are productive,” Nik said, holding a hand over the seat. “Cal, your SIG Sauer.”

That was the backup I’d been wearing when the other car had gotten torched. Niko was in the passenger seat. He had the better shot. “Why not the Desert Eagle?” I asked as I passed over the pistol-a 9mm SIG Sauer 226 X-Five tactical model-double action. I hadn’t quite gotten a hard-on reading the description in the gun catalogue, but it’d been close. It was a great gun-accurate and good for those who shoot to kill, not just shoot to play.

“Because I didn’t feel the need to spend a good chunk of my teen years measuring my penis. I prefer accuracy over size.” He accepted the grip of the gun. “Although I do have both.”

“Brag, brag, brag. Just shoot the son of a bitch.” But he hadn’t waited for my encouragement. He’d already aimed through the glass, not taking the time to roll down the window. But Suyolak’s driver, the Seattle professor-I’d seen the license plate for verification-must’ve yanked the wheel and the truck was off on an exit that was too damn convenient to be true, so much so that not only the world had to be against us, but the universe as well.

Goodfellow veered across the lane, cutting off Abelia’s RV, which spun in a quick one-eighty and ended up off the road. I saw a shaking fist out one window, so I wasn’t too worried. Then again it could’ve rolled over and tossed her through the air like a hundred- year-old Frisbee and I wouldn’t have been wasting an iota of concern. We made the exit and that was the important thing.

The town was something- ville, something-burg. I didn’t catch the full name and that was fine. All these little towns were beginning to blur together into one big four-way stop-ville-like when we were kids. From town to town, school to school, liquor store to liquor store, and eventually jail to jail. Bribing a bum old enough to post bond on your mother was always a fun time. The stars, the clean air when we weren’t driving through clouds of pollen, the green, the quiet… It was missed, but as for the rest, I appreciated New York with new eyes. There were no Sophia memories there. There were Auphe memories, but also ones of victory over the Auphe. It was home and I was more than ready to kick this guy’s ass and get back there.

“Never send a samurai to do a street punk’s job,” I grumbled, slamming into the door as Robin treated the exit like a snowless slalom and he was shooting for the Olympics. “Don’t lose them.”

“Lose them? I was a charioteer in Ben-Hur. A car is nothing compared to four recently gelded and consequently highly pissy horses.” He maneuvered around a slow-chugging Toyota and a slightly faster-moving, rusted-out pickup truck with a ruthless speed that would’ve had a New York cabbie bawling like a baby. The black truck missed them both as well. Maybe it wasn’t a Seattle professor, but Charlton Heston behind the wheel.