Slashback (Cal Leandros, #8)(6)

Did I mention it was a flaming sword? Angels were a myth, but the seed that had started the myth, the peris, were close enough for shagging your ass toward the Promised Land without stopping to think maybe a map and a timetable would be good things to ask for first.

In this case, the Promised Land was a street shrouded by the cloying breath of dangerous night and the less poetic ammonia stench of were-cat urine sprayed on the curb. I didn’t care what anyone said. No one moved to New York for the ambience—except for monsters and they had considerably more leeway when it came to ambience.

I checked my watch. I had thirty minutes before the end of my shift. That meant I could do my brother a favor and try to keep his love life from going down in flames. Or at least toss him a fire extinguisher because he was already in the doghouse and that, too, was my fault. I walked toward the next block. Cabs didn’t come down this street, unless a monster shrouded in human clothes was driving one. You could call this street the point of no return, the edge of the earth like the old days, and it was for oblivious humans. Luckily, nature kept most humans from wandering onto a feeding ground. Some subconscious sense of ill-ease had them veering off to safer streets where shadows were only that.

But sometimes you run into something different. With monsters there was always something different, but with humans, open book—open, harmless pop-up kiddie book. Except for Nik, who fell in a category all his own, there were rarely any surprises with humans.

Tonight I was surprised.

They lined up on both sides of the street, barely an inch from where open season on sheep began. They knew. They were human and they knew and not just subconsciously. Not that the inch was more than a suggestion. Nearly any creature would kill a human anywhere in NYC, much less an inch or so off pure monster-ville territory. But, the fact these men knew there was a territory at all . . . huh. Suddenly I wasn’t quite as bored as I had been.

There were eight of them, four on each side until four walked over and it was eight on one side—my side. I smelled the youth on them. It made it past the stink of living on the streets: filth, and rotting food, cigarette smoke and decaying teeth, but oddly no alcohol. No scent of heroin, a sleepy smell, or meth, tinfoil and edgy. They were homeless, but not too old and not too young. In their twenties it looked like under the hoods of their identical white hooded sweatshirts and the scruff of beard. What kind of homeless managed to team up to wear white? That’s what it was under the patches of grime and it made no sense. Their world was a dirty one and white had no place in it. It was odd as was the fact that they were all in their prime, as much as the underfed and unsheltered could be.

It was interesting.

This wasn’t a mugging. I hadn’t had anyone try to mug me since I was sixteen. Pit vipers and me, we both gave off an unspoken, “You want to screw with me? Really? Because I would f*cking love that.” We had the time and the tools and we were more than happy to put them to use. Muggers tended to veer off for easier-appearing targets.

No, this wasn’t like that. This was different entirely. For one, there were eight of them. Even for this city that was more than your usual dose of daily violence aimed at a single source.

I stopped and let them circle me, catching another smell as they came closer. Metal. On every one of them was the sharp, sweet singing whiff of a good chunk of metal. Knives or guns. I didn’t smell cordite or gun oil. Only knives then, but all armed, and that made them more interesting.

Interesting.

Fun.

Playtime.

No, no. I was bored, but there were other ways to entertain myself. None were coming to mind, but there had to be at least one or two. And these were humans, not sheep. Humans.

“You guys here for some exercise?” I checked my watch again. “You should probably look elsewhere. I’m having identity issues right now, which is frustrating, and I tend to express my emotions with bullets. It’s so much cheaper than therapy.”

I needed an outlet for my monster, a specific one. One that would challenge me and take all my effort to put down. I hadn’t had a distraction like that in a month now, which meant things tended to spill over in all directions. Then, wham, I was all “put the lotion in the basket” and no one, but no one was happy with that attitude.

I was doing my best, trying to hold back. I gave them one warning, which was one more than I usually gifted unto any jackass. All they had to do was take it . . . quickly, if they were smart, but they had an out.

Years ago I tried to avoid killing people if I could—whether they deserved it or not. It seemed like an important distinction. Monsters go down, humans go to the hospital. Sometimes I couldn’t get around it, but most of the time I managed to wound instead of kill. Recently I’d begun to wonder if that was bad decision making. There were human monsters that were every bit as bad as the real deal, some worse. I’d known that my whole life. Did they deserve a free ride?

Nope, I was thinking they did not.

Their genetic makeup didn’t come into it at all. I treated all monsters equally. After all, that was only fair, right?

I was one step off the Ninth Circle open buffet invitational, but the streetlights were out, the shadows dense. This was a human street, but it wasn’t a safe one by any means. One of the men, this one wearing the same white sweatshirt as the others with the hood up, almost like a monk, with filth-covered jeans, and ratty sneakers, stepped closer to me. He had reddish stubble, a pockmarked face, and remarkably clear eyes. Too clear. Eyes that focused, that bright, that shining usually meant there was one thought and one only in the gray matter behind them. When you have only one thought—a single unwavering incandescent unshakable goal—that made you generally ape-shit. The ape-shit could rarely be reasoned with.