Madhouse (Cal Leandros, #3)(11)

So we went elsewhere for the whole seven-hundred-tops discussion. After dressing, Robin decided lunch would be a great forum for cannibal tales and picked the restaurant, because after one three-ninety-nine buffet, he would never let me choose again. This place seemed interesting, though, and I let the thought of a tasty twenty-five-cent eggroll go. The restaurant didn't look too fancy from the outside, a few dingy windows and a faded striped awning, but the inside made up for it. The tables were old, dark wood with mosaic tile tops, and the chairs…they were just ugly as hell. With claw feet and worn velvet seats, they looked like props from Count Dracula's castle. From the ceiling hung several non-matching chandeliers. Some were looping metal, some whimsical blown glass, and some looked like they'd been banged together by kindergartners with a lot of enthusiasm and absolutely no talent. Everything in the place did have one thing in common, though—it was all old. Antique, and I could see how Robin would like that.

He ordered for us, some dish called Tavuk Gogsu, and then got down to business. "Turkish." He waved off the waiter before Niko or I could even take a look at the menu. "It's magnificent. Trust me. You'll bring offerings to my altar in thanks. Now, what about dusty old Sawney? Oh, and by the way, he wasn't a cannibal, as he wasn't—"

"Human. Yes, we're now aware," Niko interjected. "Promise's acquaintance at the museum filled us in regarding that, at least that he wasn't human. She didn't say precisely what he was."

"A Redcap," Robin said absently as he accepted a drink from the returning waiter. "Try this. Kahlua, soy, honey, very much like a mead I had in pre-Nero Rome. Quite tasty."

Niko and I exchanged looks of tolerant resignation, gave in, and drank. Robin operated on Goodfellow time and mere humans, or human-Auphe hybrids, couldn't change that. After a polite swallow, Niko put his glass down. "Sawney's a Redcap? I didn't know they were that powerful. And why the human-style name?"

My own swallow barely made it down and I pushed my glass away with a curled lip. Pre-Nero Rome could keep that crap. "What's a Redcap? Some sort of goblin, right?"

"A Scottish-English legend," Niko elaborated. "They were said to murder travelers and then stain their caps with their victims' blood, hence Redcap."

"And once again, the folklore monkeys got it wrong. Caps stained with blood." Robin gave a foamy snort into his drink. "Yes, how frightening. A capering evil wearing a hat. Maybe he wears suspenders and short pants as well. Will the terror never end?"

"No caps, then?" Niko said mildly.

"No." He finished his glass and promptly reached for my discarded one. "They use the blood on their hair. They have this mess of twists and tangles, matted together with gore and stinking to high heaven. They're unpleasant, filthy, nasty creatures, but only dangerous to the unwary or simply stupid. However…" He tapped my now empty glass against his and frowned. "Sawney Beane was quite a different thing altogether. Is a different thing, I guess, if what you say is true and he has come back. That's quite the trick, and one I wasn't aware he was capable of. I'm still doubtful." Sighing, he leaned back and linked fingers across his stomach. "Besides, what he was capable of was more than enough to begin with. As for the human name, who knows? Familiarity? They deal with humans. Fool humans. Eat humans." He shrugged.

"Then the legend of Sawney Beane as we know it is mostly true?" Niko was flipping the serving knife from wrist to palm and back again. Lunch was no excuse to let a practicing opportunity pass by. "He and his incestuous clan robbed and murdered travelers during the fifteenth century. They dragged their victims back to their cave in Bannane Head, hung them from hooks, dismembered them, and ate them. You put the body count a few hundred lower, but do the basic facts hold true?"

"Except for the incest." Goodfellow beamed at the waiter who had chosen that particular moment to appear with our food. "They're brothers," he said to the server, shaking his head woefully. "I tell them that close is good, family is good, but don't be so quick to limit your options."

I lashed out with my foot, but only succeeded in banging the shit out of my toes on his chair leg. Both Robin and Niko gave me a look of disappointment— Robin's mock and Niko's more genuine. "Later we spar in the park," my brother ordered. "If we can find you a worthy opponent from the playground."

By that time the waiter had made his escape, the lucky bastard, and Robin continued. "Redcaps aren't into incest. That was a typical human soap opera addition, because mass murder and cannibalism simply weren't juicy enough."

I swirled a fork through the pale mound on my plate dubiously as he went on. "In reality, Redcaps don't much care for one another's company. Loathe each other. The male and the female even more so. Consequently, they have the quickest mating habits one could possibly imagine. In, out, handshake, see you next year—this is how much they hate one another. Which is what made Sawney so unique. He brought over forty Redcaps together. They killed together, dwelled together, and didn't try to eat each other during it all … astounding." He took another bite.

"And what of the rest of the legend?" Niko asked, ignoring his food for the moment. "How they came to their end."

"Half true. In the original, the women and children were burned and the men bled to death after having their hands and feet chopped off. In reality there were no women or children. They were only male Redcaps and the humans burned them all. I heard that Sawney, as their leader, was given special attention and burned separately. If his remains were gathered and put in a cask, then I suppose that was true." Unfazed by the subject matter, he continued to make his way through lunch with enthusiasm.