Death's Mistress (Dorina Basarab, #2)(119)

“Now’s good,” I said fervently. “Thanks, Fin.”

“Where to?” the cabbie asked.

“Chinatown.”

A body hit the dirt at my feet, hard enough to send a gout of blood splashing up onto my face. I wiped it away and stared upward. I hate it when that happens.

“You will die a worse death if you do not leave my domain,” a voice thundered down from the third story of the old tenement. “I am a servant of the Sacred Fire, the wielder of the flame of Arnor—”

“So I should call you Gandalf?” I asked, getting the toe of my boot into a crack in the wall.

There was silence for a long moment, except for the sound of brick flaking off under my boots as I scrabbled for purchase. I got a hand on the lowest rusty rung of the fire escape just as my toehold gave way. A wiggle and a heave got me up to the first landing, where a feral-looking cat hissed at me before jumping up to the next level.

I’d have preferred to use the door, but we were trying to cover all exits. Fin’s boys were in the lobby, and Frick and Frack were watching the sides. This was the only way out left, and I wasn’t about to let him use it.

“Aw, fudge,” floated down to me, as a couple of golden eyes peered over a third-floor window ledge. “You’re a freaking dhampir. Why are you reading Tolkien?”

I shrugged, then had to dodge the potted geranium he threw at me. “After five hundred years, you’ve read just about everything. Besides, he had hella world-building skills.”

“You’re five hundred?” A head with small, curved horns came into view. “No way.”

“Yep.” I followed the cat up the trembling staircase. Flakes of rust clung to my skin and ate into my palms as I hefted myself over a couple missing stairs and up another floor.

“Well, you don’t look a day over four,” I was told, as a ceramic lamp exploded on the railings right beside me.

One of the shards must have hit the cat, which sent up a mewl of distress. Suddenly, my objective’s entire head stuck out of the window, regardless of the danger. “Oh, no! Pooky!”

“Pooky?” I demanded, as a squat creature crawled out onto the window ledge and held out a pawlike appendage beseechingly.

“Come to Daddy,” it crooned, but the cat was having none of it. It hissed at both of us and tried to run between my legs, but I scooped it up, careful to keep those sharp, little claws out of my flesh.

“You have a cat?” I asked, one brow raised, as the fur ball in my arms spit and hissed.

“Why shouldn’t I?” The creature’s face wasn’t real expressive, but its voice was defensive.

“You’re a dog.”

“I’m a luduan!” it said huffily.

I looked it over. It would be maybe three feet tall in its stocking feet, if it had feet, which it didn’t, or was designed to walk standing up, which it wasn’t. The body covered in golden brown fur looked a lot like a dog’s, except for the too-large lionlike head with a curly brown mane. To further confuse the issue, it had a unicorn-type horn in the center of its forehead.

“Dog-ish,” I corrected.

“Give me my cat!” it demanded.

“Or what? You’ll smite me like a Balrog?”

The golden eyes narrowed. “I quote Tolkien because he puts it better. But I can still open a can of whup ass all over you.”

“You’re right,” I told him. “He does put it better.”

The creature used its horn to snag a radio by the handle, preparing to launch it at me. I dangled the kitty over the long drop. “Just try it.”

His face crumpled. “Oh, come on. Don’t do that. You’ll scare her!”

“Maybe we can work something out,” I offered.

He sighed in resignation. “I don’t have any money, okay? So you can tell whichever one of those sharks you’re working for that he’s wasting his time.”

“I don’t want money.”

“And you’re not getting a pound of flesh, either!”

“I’m not here to beat you up.”

The big head tilted. “Then why are you here?”

I pulled the cat back in. She didn’t look particularly scared to me. Maybe because the “body” down below had vanished like the cut-rate illusion it was. “I just want to talk to you.”

“About what?”

“About what happened at Ray’s place last night.”

He blinked those enormous eyes at me. “Come again?”

“You heard me.”

“No, I didn’t. That’s the kind of talk that could get my horn ground up.” He petted it nervously. “It’s supposed to be an aphrodisiac, you know? Not that it’s done me any good lately. Do you know how few lady luduans are in existence?”

“Not really.”

“Neither do I,” he said miserably. “I just know there’s none around here.”

“That’s a bitch. Now are you going to help me or not?”

“Not!”

“Here, kitty, kitty.”

“Cut that out!”

“Look, you can talk to me, or you can talk to Fin’s boys. They’re waiting downstairs. But I’m nicer.” He shot me a look. “Okay, that was a lie. But I can help you out.”