And then I was soaring.

Through the window and into the night. Air rushed up past me as I fell. Lights dopplered as the street rose beneath me with dizzying speed. Behind and around me I could hear the Auphe, laughing as happily as a weasel in a nest of baby rabbits, their white hair streaming like the tail of a comet. We plummeted together, joined by a murderous purpose and the sheer joy of raising hell. Then the gate opened and we exited the world together. But we would be back, to remake that same world into a new image, or rather an old one… very, very old. For now, however, to this place we were no more. Elvis had left the building.

Chapter Fourteen

There are a lot of truths in this world.

When it rains it pours. It's always darkest before the dawn. He who smelt it dealt it. There was no limit to the little homilies, the facile and easy words. If humanity was good at anything, it was shooting off its collective mouth. They had a saying for literally every situation under the sun. Although there was one in particular that had always stuck with me. Choose your friends wisely. It bore repeating. Choose your friends wisely.

That and everyone has their price. That was a good one too. Right up there.

Combine the two and that pretty much summed up my philosophy in life: Pick the right side and get paid to do it. Calling the Auphe my friends might have been an exaggeration. Still, they had once been a reigning force and the way things were shaping up they would be again. I could take care of myself—that was a given—but being on the Auphe's bad side was no way to start a millennium. Besides, as I said, I had my price and they were more than willing to pay it. It was just too damn bad the assignment had called for a stop in their summer home. Which led us to another truth.

Tumulus was no Vegas.

The warm-blooded half of me was more intimate with that fact than either one of us cared to be. And so was my cold-blooded self. We had both been in Tumulus at the same time years ago… for exactly the same reason. Working for the Auphe. There wouldn't be any other reason to grace that pit. The place hadn't improved an iota since then either. Vegas? Hardly.

No buffets, no babes, no gambling. Hell, there was barely air. An hour there refining the details of the Auphe scheme and I was more than ready to be on my way. Not that I wasn't having the time of my life yukking it up with the black sheep of the Fae, but the Auphe did tend to be pretty damn intense. I enjoyed a good slaughter, same as the next guy. Wasn't I doing dirty work for the Auphe? There weren't many that could claim that particular distinction, doing the evil deed for creatures who had practically invented the phrase. Yeah, I could hang with the baddest of the bad, but even I had my limits.

Nothing ruined a good hobby faster than talking it to death with a bunch of drooling fanatics. If the Auphe had a problem, in my book it would be that they were just too single-minded. There was nothing wrong with having more than one interest in life. Carnage could be a wonderful thing, but there were other fish to fry out there that were almost as tasty. I liked to think of myself as a Renaissance creature… as a Renaissance man now. The Auphe were not, and even if they had been, their shit hole was definitely not my idea of luxury accommodations.

By the time I stepped through the door to Central Park I was more than ready to bid a fond farewell to icy, screaming winds, sullen red skies, and the fetid stench reminiscent of a hundred thousand rotting bodies.

Corpses were nice to look at and fun as hell to make, but I could do without the smell. Bad for my sinuses.

Not that the air in New York smelled much better, but it was warmer… barely. The temperature had taken a major nosedive since I'd been gone. Time in this world and in Tumulus had no real correlation. Step from one place to the other and minutes could've passed or weeks, and it was never the same. The Auphe understood how it worked, but I damn sure didn't and barring a handheld Einstein and the most expensive calculator money could buy, I wasn't going to. Quite frankly, I wasn't too concerned over it. From the looks of things a week or two had passed, and that guess was good enough for me. Around me winter had started to gobble up fall. Folding my arms against the chill, I shook off the effect of the rip the Auphe had opened for me and started walking. Theoretically, I should be able to open up a doorway myself now. This body was genetically hardwired for it. And after all, that was what I'd been hired to do… open the mother of all gates.

But for now that was off-limits. The Auphe were clear on that. There couldn't be any mistakes. It had taken years beyond the telling to get a breeding to work. They didn't want to lose their one and only mutt if I screwed up and took an accidental trip to the bottom of the ocean or the center of a volcano. So no trips without supervision. That was all right. I could be a good boy… for a while. There were other ways to travel. In fact I'd be willing to bet that somewhere out there was a sports car with my name all over it.

No more mirrors, though. Just as I wasn't coldblooded anymore, neither was I ephemeral enough for surfing the reflective waves of light. I didn't mind, though—it was more than a fair trade in my book. I'd never set up house in something alive before. I had a long, illustrious career doing this and that, sort of a jack-of-all-trades. Mostly I guarded things. You couldn't beat good pay for sitting on your ass. Have a treasure you want protected? No problem. A crumbling relic of a lost age that needs to be preserved at all costs? Can do. A castle full of smelly live squatters that you'd like turned into smelly dead ones? Where do I sign up? Hire me and I'd move into whatever you wanted for as long as you wanted. With me inhabiting your most cherished possessions, you could bet they were safe. But this time my guardian aspect wasn't the only reason the Auphe had pulled me in for this task. In fact, I'd known of Caliban long before I started shadowing him in mirrors, and I'd been doing that much longer that he had realized. I'd been on the Auphe payroll for this job even before he'd been born.

As a rule the work was good, the perks and pay even better, but now I had the feeling I wouldn't be returning to dwelling in the inanimate for a long, long time. All those years, I had no idea what I was missing. Although I could solidify to a certain extent, my natural state was more tenuous. Incorporeal. But a human body… I couldn't get over what an amazing high it was. No cool will-o'-the-wisp fluid gently sliding through corkscrew-twisted vessels that were barely more material than a thought. Humans had fiery hot blood that pumped with all the force and speed of a raging river. They had bubbling hormones that gave an unbelievable punch to every single emotion. And adrenaline, holy hell, why wasn't someone bottling that?

I liked this body. I liked it a whole helluva lot and if it survived the Auphe's scheme, I didn't think they'd mind me holding on to it for a while. If it didn't survive, it'd be a disappointment but not a genuine problem. I'd just hop to something else. My choices would be drastically reduced if things went as planned, but that was the breaks. I'd make do. I always did.

For now I had a few days to kick back and enjoy myself. The big bosses needed that time to prepare, pick a site, and pull their entire population together. Until then all I had to do was keep this body in one piece and have a good time. Oh, sure, there were some loose ends to tie up in a nice, pretty bow, but that would be a huge part of my good time. There was only so much reining in by the Auphe that even an easygoing guy like myself could tolerate. They hired me to do a job. How I did it was a matter of my discretion, not theirs. I was a professional. In other words, don't teach your grandma to suck eggs.