Delilah disappeared with another door slam at the same time Robin weaved out of his and Niko’s room, Salome winding through his legs causing the half stumble. “And who do we have here?” He smiled… yeah, that same “Hey, baby” smile… at Rafferty. Then the smile disappeared. “Oh Zeus, it’s you. The Hippocratic ass.”

“You still hanging around, Curly?” Rafferty drawled. Robin had been there when Rafferty had healed my stab wound and hadn’t gotten far with him then either.

“Some appreciate my grandeur and glory, you spiteful bastard.” He straightened his already immaculate silk shirt with one hand and carefully tousled his hair with the other. “And it’s Robin Goodfellow. Pan. Puck. Goblin of the Hob. Your superior by name and measurement of any other kind.”

“Is that what you think, you horny goat?” Rafferty snorted. “How would you like my foot up your grand and glorious… holy hell, what is that?”

That was Salome jumping up on the trunk of the car.

Then it was Salome and Catcher trying to eat each other in the back of Niko’s car. Catcher might fool some nosy human into thinking he was a harmless, good-natured husky mix when he was grinning and pawing the air for a treat-he had to hate the mortification of that-but in full fight: he was wolf, all wolf, and you couldn’t fool anyone into thinking anything else.

I checked my holster. “I’ll hold off the office from calling the cops.” Hopefully the cars passing on the interstate would be moving too fast for a good look below at a wolf-cat fight.

“Don’t shoot the desk clerk,” Niko warned as he, Rafferty, and Robin moved to break it up.

I growled a little myself. “If you’d seen what was living in the closet of the room they gave us, you might let me.” I looked back behind me as I moved. “Five bucks on the dead cat.” I’d seen Salome in action. That was one safe bet.

7

The office was fake wood on the outside, fake wood on the inside, and had one set of double glass doors. It also had a fat guy who’d checked us in last night when I’d gone for the extra room. Last night he’d worn a faded T-shirt with the logo of some local barbecue joint. A pig’s ass and the family friendly name of the place, PORK ’EM, emblazoned over the pig’s chubby-cheeked, curly tailed butt. He looked happy as hell to be eaten. Things had tried to eat me on many occasions. I didn’t think I’d ever looked close to that happy when it happened-if an ass could grin, this one was doing it.

The man from the night before was still wearing the shirt, but there was no grin from him. He also still had the comb-over greased to the top of his head and dull blue eyes. This time, though, they weren’t dull from stupidity. They were dull and cloudy from death.

He was lying flat on his back, one hand limp at his throat, although I could see the dried blood from where he’d clawed at it tearing at his skin. The other hand was limp at his side and covered with a green-yellow coating of… I didn’t have a remote idea. There was more of it on his mouth, face, nose-all spread to pool on the floor around him. There was so much that only part of it had dried. It was mucus. Under the secretions his face was bluish purple from lack of oxygen. He’d drowned in his own mucus and pardon me if I didn’t whip out my PocketMD to run down that symptom. I coughed and felt a rattle in the base of my lungs.

Oh shit.

I grabbed at my cell phone and got Niko. “Put Rafferty on, Nik. Put him on now.”

I didn’t read much. That wasn’t news to anyone who knew me. Old detective novels with big- breasted hookers with hearts of gold. Old Westerns with big-breasted saloon girls with hearts of gold. Old science fiction books with four-breasted alien brood queens with hearts of gold-plated titanium. That was good enough for me. But once… out of sheer stupidity… I’d read a different kind of book. I’d been sixteen. We’d been at the local library of whatever town we were hiding in then. Niko had started homeschooling me a few months before and it was book report time. If boobs weren’t on the cover, I didn’t care what I read. So I’d just walked down an aisle, closed my eyes, picked a book at random, and what do you know. I’d lucked into Stephen King’s The Stand.

At first the weight of it alone was pure terror. Twenty-five pounds if it was an ounce, but Niko was right there, an amused glint in his eye, and there was no backing out. And then it managed, unbelievably, to get worse.

There was no way anyone could’ve convinced me the flu could scare me almost as badly as the Auphe. Swollen blackened necks, people gasping for their last breath as their eyes started from their sockets, choking and gasping for help through the gurgles of slime blocking their airway. Oh, and God and Satan, separating the good and the bad like naughty schoolchildren by killing off most of the population. Gotta break some eggs to make that omelet. It made me glad I didn’t believe in God.

I believed in Rafferty, though. As soon as I heard his voice, I said, “Owner’s dead. It was…”

“Suyolak,” Rafferty finished for me. “It’s viral pneumonia. It’s nasty and he’s made it about a thousand times more contagious and aggressive than it should be. If I hadn’t been thinking about other things”-like Catcher-“I’d have known when I pulled into the parking lot. Hell, I would’ve known twenty miles down the road.”

At least it wasn’t the legendary fictional, fucking badass flu of all time. I rubbed my chest. It was beginning to ache. “Contagious. Great. There’s probably some floating your way from when I opened the door.”

“I know,” he said quietly. “And it already has you. Do you feel it?”

I coughed again. I was feeling it all right-the increasing rattle and with it a heaviness at the base of my lungs. “Yeah, and not a bottle of cough medicine in sight.”

“Sit down, back against the wall or the desk. Whatever you do, don’t lie down, got it?” he ordered. “You lie down and you’ll drown.”

Didn’t get much clearer than that.

“Got it. And whatever you do,” I said, echoing him, only more sharply, “don’t let Nik come with you. He’d drop dead an inch past the door.” If he made it to the door. This was taking me down and doing it fast. Like I’d thought, Suyolak had ripped through my Auphe immune system as if it were tissue paper. Our barbecue- loving friend had probably died in seconds. I sat down hard, back against the desk while Santa’s bowlful-of-plague-ridden-jelly twin lay to the side, keeping me company. His conversation was for shit. He wasn’t exactly fragrant either.

I watched through the door as Rafferty spoke to my brother and roughly from the looks of the finger he jammed in Niko’s chest. He then pointed the same finger at a still cat-battling Catcher who promptly fell over asleep in the backseat, ending the fight. Salome preened and made herself comfortable on the furry new heap of a bed. Robin grabbed Niko’s arm when he started after Rafferty as the healer began running toward the office. Niko yanked and Robin refused to let go. Niko could’ve gotten away, but he knew coming to my side only to die before I did wouldn’t do me much good. Not exactly as festive as a Get Well Soon balloon.

My cell rang. “Nik,” I answered, “stay put and don’t worry. Hell, Rafferty rewrote Catcher’s frigging DNA. All I have is pneumonia.” I coughed yet again and began to shake as the temperature of the room felt as if it had plummeted thirty degrees in a single moment. “It reminds me, though.” My teeth chattered as I glanced at my office mate again. What’s blue and purple and dead all over? Hell, you had to be philosophical there. The pork clogging his arteries would’ve gotten him before too much longer anyway. “You know that goddamn Stephen King killed off my favorite character? Did I put that in the book report?” I smothered another cough. It was the last. Suddenly there was barely enough air to use to cough and the rattle had become a rising tide of thick mud.