Slashback (Cal Leandros, #8)(26)
Robin already had his third finger up. Our back and forth was probably like white noise to him now or, as usual, he was more interested in listening to himself. “As much as I dislike talking trash about my own kind, there is also the Lakota trickster, Heyoka, the spirit of thunder and lightning. He—” The opening of the door cut him off. That was damn lucky for us because no matter what he said, talking trash about other tricksters and how they didn’t measure up to his wild and wicked ways was one of Goodfellow’s favorite pastimes.
I recognized the species of paien in the doorway although I’d not come across one in person until now. The air from inside the house that flowed around it carried the smell of oranges, honey, cinnamon, and some interesting spices I didn’t recognize offhand. Oh, and sex. I smelled so much sex I was surprised the intense musk of it, as strong as a natural gas leak, didn’t cause the brownstone to explode. Then there was the smell of our friend the doorman. Doorwoman. Doorperson. Blood and flesh and decomposition rank on her breath. Someone hadn’t brushed since their last meal. The exhalation of a scavenger, the kind who made certain you were clinging to life when they started to eat you. Where would the pleasure be if you were already dead?
She stood well over seven feet tall, bending down to see us, and had eight arms, seven of which held swords. Wearing something consisting of numerous leather straps, she also had a split skirt of silk that fell to bare brown feet. Thick black hair fell nearly as far, black eyes with pinpoint white pupils, and the triangular teeth of a voodoo statue from B-movie hell in a mouth almost as wide as a bear trap. In addition, there were claws on the hands that held the blades—long, lethally curved and as black as the hair and eyes. No surprise in that. There were days the entire world was made of bloody claws and tearing fangs.
Just not today. It was way too damn early for that.
“Need appointment and card.” The single unarmed hand with the ebony talons was held out palm up. The voice was surprisingly understandable considering the freakish size of the mouth and the equally freakish number of teeth, although she didn’t have much to say. Couldn’t blame her attitude there as I understood it. I wasn’t doling out advice to the sad and lonely at my job, bartender or not. The less I had to talk to what passed for clients at work, the better.
“Ah, yes.” Robin reached inside his jacket for a wallet, gave it a brief glance and returned it before fishing out a second one. “Actually I don’t need an appointment and how you fail to recognize me time and again, I will never know.”
“This puck, that puck, all f*cks. Who can tell the difference?” Robin was told with bored indifference.
He stiffened. “You could not be further from the truth if you were the drooling picture of sub-intelligence—which you are. I have no difficulty seeing why you’re working the door instead of upstairs as you have so little personality to work with, despite what you could do with eight hands.” Flipping open the apparently extra-special wallet, Goodfellow had his mouth open for more insults, barely warmed up, when he said something else instead.
“Where’s my card? I have a lifelong platinum-class come-and-go-as-I-please membership card. Wait . . . where’s my card for Aphrodite’s Pleasure Palace—best strippers in Greece? Godiva’s Clothing Optional Hair Salon?” Replacement cards were pulled out, read in the light spilling from inside the house, and discarded as if they burned to the touch. “The Salvation Army? Big Brothers, Big Sisters? Soup Kitchen? Humanitarian aid in a trickster’s wallet? My wallet?” The horror was clear and true in his voice. “I am tainted beyond redemption.”
Niko squeezed his shoulder with false comfort and commented smoothly, “As you said, it’s inspirational when your sexual partner accepts you for who you truly are.”
“No hair salon, huh?” I popped the top on my soda. “It’ll be hard to be a pretentious ass with an eight-dollar Supercuts’ special.”
“That pigeon will rue the day his mother laid that rotting, spoiled egg that hatched him,” Robin gritted before pushing past the guardian, his sword in his hand so improbably fast that I barely saw his hand move. “Tell Bastet that I am here and don’t pretend you don’t know who and what I am. Tell her now. You can do that as you are or with my sword through your heart. That choice I leave up to you. Are you listening to me, you misbegotten vulture? That glazed look of insipid boredom, believe it or not, is not inspiring me with reams of confidence. Go.”
She gave him a look that was anything but bored. It was seething with the metal-edge of rage and the red haze of hunger. Her kind was always hungry. It didn’t stop for them. For a moment I thought she’d act on it, but she turned, and moved toward the stairs, suddenly all but drenched in disinterest. To the eye. I pulled in and sampled a deep breath of the adrenaline leaking out into the air before asking with casual curiosity, “How attached is your friend to the help? She a big fan of her pet peymakilir?”
“Of one such as this? Not likely. Rudeness to the clients wouldn’t be tolerated if she knew about it.” Sword still in hand, Robin deposited his woefully charitable wallet into a small trash can that looked to be made of gold. Idly, I wondered if it would fit under my jacket. “And, believe me, she’ll know the very moment I see her.”
The peymakilir was halfway up the stairs now, as slow as if every step was weighed down by chains. Slow and not worth a second glance, you would’ve thought. Yeah, and if you had that thought in our world, you wouldn’t have many more of them.