Madhouse (Cal Leandros, #3)(43)

I was taking another swallow rich in hops when I deciding ducking wasn't such a bad idea. As I did, Danyeal came hurtling over my head. He hit the wall behind the bar wings-first and slid down. He twitched once, then lay frozen, copper head tilted to one side, but eyes still blinking slowly. The Amadán who'd done the throwing started toward the bar to finish the job. Amadán, some sort of faery if I remembered right, were nasty. They excreted a venom through their skin. One touch and you'd be paralyzed for at least an hour. It made hand-to-hand combat rather tricky, as Danyeal had been so helpful in demonstrating. Hand-to-hand combat always had been seriously overrated in my book. I pulled the Glock, pointed it between opaline almond eyes, and peeled my lips back in a welcoming grin. "Interesting fact. I get paid whether the customers are alive or not."

With shining waves of silver and black hair, lithe figures, and ever-changing eyes, the Amadán were the supermodels of the unnatural world. Skinny, hungry as hell, and couldn't buy a brain cell with a bucketful of credit cards. Fortunately for this one, he was capable of wrapping the empty space between his ears around the fact that a bullet bouncing about in the confines of his skull might be undesirable. He faded back into the seething mass of the crowd, everyone he touched skin to skin falling at his feet as he moved.

Goodfellow, who had fallen during his lunge to avoid Danny, was staggering back up and still looking to defend King and Country. "Come to me…" Then as Camelot fell, so did Robin. I caught him by the back of his shirt before he hit the floor. His head hung as slackly as that of the paralyzed Danyeal with his chin resting on his chest. He was out cold, but unconscious or not, he still kept talking. "I was a god," came the barely decipherable murmur.

"I'm sure you were," I snorted as I pulled him up and over the bar. Depositing him in relative safety beside Danyeal, I went to help Ishiah shut the place down. What was left of it.

Two hours later I was home, Goodfellow was on the couch, and I barely made it to bed. I paused only to touch the barrette on my dresser. A reminder…a promise to a dead little girl. Neither Nik nor I had ever gotten to be a normal kid with a normal life. Ours had been taken away before we even had one. This girl's had been taken away too, and in a far more brutal fashion. I wasn't going to forget that and I wasn't going to forget her.

I stripped, fell into bed, and five seconds later was listening to Niko explain his plan. At least it seemed like five seconds—six, if you were generous. Definitely not the hours it had been. Blinking against harsh daylight, I felt the cool rub of the sheet against my face and rocked a little at the firm nudge to my shoulder. "Then we're clear?" Niko said.

"What? Yeah. Clear," I mumbled. "Crystal. Bye."

"You've committed every word to memory?"

"Right next to The Road Not Taken.' Swear." I rolled over and pulled the sheet over my head. I hadn't heard Nik come in or the door shutting. It didn't worry me. I hadn't heard him precisely because he was Nik. The door would've been shut with complete silence, and I tuned out the sound of the key turning in the lock as only he, Promise, and Robin had a key. If I'd heard a different sound, the stealthy one of claws skittering against wood or the scrape of a metal pick against the lock, I'd have woken up instantly. I wouldn't have answered that door alone either. I slept with a knife under my pillow, a gun under the mattress, and a sword under the bed. If I could have litter-box-trained an alligator, I would've had one of those under there as well.

But since my subconscious did know it was Niko— here we were. I'd slept through the plan and was attempting to sleep through the post-game. I knew better, but hope and laziness spring eternal.

"Good. Then I'll leave the recruiting the boggle up to you."

That woke me the hell up. A bucket of ice water and a shot of adrenaline couldn't have done it any faster. I rolled back and propelled up to a sitting position. "No," I refused as quickly as I could snap the word out. "We agreed. No more boggles."

"Did we?" He had showered at Promise's. Damp blond hair, closely shaved face—the goatee of several months prior had disappeared not too long ago. There was the smell of a different shampoo, but the scent of the soap was the same as what we had in our bathroom. Some sort of all-natural herbal, goat-milk concoction without the faintest tinge of artificial chemicals. I didn't know where he got it. I just used it and went on with my life. Promise obviously did know which store sold it or Nik had started taking stuff over with him. Either way…

I gave him a crooked grin. "You're nesting, Cyrano. That's cute as hell." The desire to yank his chain faded as quickly as it had come. "And, yeah, we did agree. No more goddamn boggles." I'd once hired werewolves to kill George when I was "under the influence" so to speak. And I'd done the same to Niko and Robin, under the same influence, using a boggle instead. Nine feet of scales, mud, and killing fury, a boggle didn't have to be pushed very hard to do what was already natural instinct. That I'd personally known that particular boggle had only made it easier.

"It wasn't you," my brother said, knowing the twisted lane my memories had traveled down, "and this boggle won't be that one."

"Why are we talking about boggles anyway? Shit." I swung my legs to the floor and rested my head in my hands. "What was that plan again?"