"It wasn't as bad as it appeared at first glance. Several penetrating claw wounds to his arms and legs, but they're fairly clean. No ripping. I believe traveling with you through your gateway affected him more. Pucks don't take well to it is my guess." He handed me a wet washcloth for my face. I'd cleaned it up as best I could in the car using the front of my shirt…just enough to get me into our building without people stopping to donate money to the axe-maniac survivor fund.

"Probably no one does." I scrubbed at my face, careful not to jostle my head too much. If it weren't for my Auphe half, the nausea I felt when opening and traveling through the gate would be a helluva lot more debilitating. "No one normal."

Niko frowned, a slight downturn of tightened lips. "You know better." He'd spent a lifetime, mine at least, telling me that I was normal, that I wasn't Auphe, wasn't a monster. Though he could save my life, my sanity, and everything in between, it was the one thing he couldn't fix, couldn't change. But I'd finally come to realize that as long as I could remain who I was, I could survive what I was. It was only bad genes. Alcoholism gene, cancer gene, monster gene, choose your poison and work around it. Thanks to Niko, I was doing that. And when I faltered in that belief, he was there to kick my butt back on the path.

I dropped the washcloth on my leg. In the past opening a gate would drain me, exhaust me. Goodfellow had once said that he thought that would pass with practice. He was right. I was tired, damn tired, but not like I had been in the past. But the headache…shit. What the hell was with that? And the blood? The last time I'd used the ability months ago, I'd opened a gate and kept it open for nearly a half hour. Maybe a full-blooded Auphe could do that with ease, but I didn't think so. Ripping a hole in the world or between worlds—it wasn't something meant to be long-term. "I think I broke something." I grimaced, massaging my forehead with the heel of my hand.

Niko picked up the cloth and pulled my hand back down to fold my fingers around the damp material. Steering it to the area on my jaw by my ear, he released me and agreed, "I think you may have." He waited until I'd wiped at my skin again for a few seconds, then took the bloody cloth from me and put it aside. "Or strained it. How is the headache? Improved any?"

We'd thrown some Tylenol at it. We may as well have thrown it down the toilet and flushed. "It'll pass," I evaded. "On the plus side, I can still hear." Through the open door in the hall came a nasal snore more suited to a constipated moose than a puck. "But on the downside, I can still hear."

"You didn't rupture your eardrums, then. Do they still hurt as well?"

"Let's write off the entire area above the neck. It'll save some time." I knew what he was thinking. CAT scans, MRIs, all the things that weren't possible for me. Our mother, Sophia, had never been one for doctors or anything that cost money. We got our shots at whatever local clinic we were living near at the time, but only because the schools demanded it. If I got hurt or Niko got sick, we toughed it out. And when we were older, Niko and I had come to the realization that hospitals…any place with imaging equipment, any place that would want blood tests…were out. I was human on the outside, but it might not be the same on the inside. We'd eventually met a healer and when he'd found out the truth about me, he'd confirmed it. I was different. Subtly, but noticeably different. I didn't ask how. I didn't want to know.

The bottom line was, no hospitals for me. And as our healer hadn't answered his phone in a while, we had to make do. This was another make-do situation.

"No more gates, Cal," Niko said uncompromisingly. "None."

"Maybe if I give it a few months," I hedged. I didn't like opening them. It only reminded me of a part of myself I'd sooner forget. But there was no denying that if you had your back to a wall with a giant serpent leaping at you, it came in handy.

"It's been several months already." He stood and headed into the kitchen. "Next time it might be your brain that comes out of your ears. I'd like to avoid that." Returning, he handed me a soft pack from the freezer. "Although it would be proof there was something in your skull besides laziness and inept swordsmanship skills."

With the pack covering my eyes and the cold seeping through, I relaxed minutely. "You forgot my blinding charisma and stunning popularity."

This time he didn't play along. "No more gates, Cal. I mean it."

I gave in for the moment, peering out from under the pack at him, but I had a feeling I was making a promise I couldn't keep. More honestly, didn't intend to keep. "Okay. No more gates." I'd survived nearly my whole life without them, but there was no denying that an emergency exit like that could save my life. Something to think about…maybe later when Nik wasn't studying me so suspiciously. Sliding down another few inches, I pulled the pack back in place and waited for the cold to kick in and lessen the headache. "Robin said it was a sirrush, whatever the hell that is. So, what was it doing in the basement trying to eat us? Do you think Wahanket sent it after us? That'd be about par for the fucking course with Goodfellow's buddies."

"I asked him while dressing the puncture wounds. He said no, that it wasn't Wahanket's 'style.' "

"But did the wizened son of a bitch know it was there?" I pressed.

"That, Robin said, would be entirely his style," Niko said sardonically. "And a sirrush is a Babylonian creature—part snake, part cat. Why it was hunting in the basement of the Met is anyone's guess."

"Everyone makes it to the Big Apple sooner or later, huh? See the sights." The cold was beginning to work, easing the pain somewhat, and I yawned. "The Valkyrie going to pay us for the extermination on the side?"

"I've always enjoyed your sunny optimism, little brother."

I was glad someone did.

5

As much as I hated kidnapping cases, I wasn't a whole lot fonder of the extermination ones, but work was work, and money was money. And truthfully, extermination came up about as often as kidnapping did. Where's the cool factor in that? No-damn-where. We'd also done babysitting, and babysitting something that can eat you if you try to give it a timeout makes exterminating a fun gig by comparison. Usually. Mostly. On the whole.

Other times you just get screwed.

And that morning we ended up so very, very screwed. After three hours out on Staten Island, we'd taken the ferry back to Manhattan and made our way home with clothes singed and hair covered in bird shit all courtesy of an Aitvaras, otherwise known as a demonic chicken from hell. A fire-breathing, crap-slinging half rooster, half serpent that weighed all of sixty pounds had nearly served our asses to us on a silver platter. It'd also burned down one-third of the house of our less than completely satisfied client. And a less than completely satisfied gargoyle isn't a pretty sight. A satisfied one isn't either for that matter, but they hawk up less granite-sprinkled phlegm when paying the bill.

After cleaning up and changing, we jumped on the 6 train and headed up to Promise's penthouse for some brainstorming. I tended to not be so good at that type of thing, but I sucked it up. And there was food there. That always helped. Promise had a turkey and bacon club sandwich for me and some sort of vegetable soy cheese thing for Niko along with an antioxidant carrot-cranberry juice mixture. I could smell the healthiness of it from across the table and gave an internal blech. Taking a huge bite of my sandwich, I wondered who made the food. I never saw a cook there, but the thought of a vampire slaving over a skillet wasn't an image I could wrap my mind around. Especially an extremely wealthy vampire. They did eat food, though apparently not very much, along with massive doses of iron and some kind of other supplements, but Promise making a casserole? Nope, couldn't see it.