“I’ll… um… I’ll just be a minute.”
“Take whatever time you need.”
Nero didn’t respond. He’d already grabbed his shirt off the floor and headed into the kitchen. He returned a moment later with a roll of paper towels that he tossed at Josh before he headed off down a hallway beyond the entertainment center. Bedroom wing, maybe?
Meanwhile, Josh finished cleaning up the mess, then carried his soup and crackers back to the kitchen. He felt stupidly weak but was able to slurp down the rest of the broth. That warmed his belly and steadied his head, but it did nothing for his chaotic emotions. He’d gone from trying to kill Nero a half hour ago to feeling tender empathy for the guy’s pain. And he had no answer for the lust that happened in the middle.
And none of it even touched on the Big Bad in his thoughts: the idea that he might be a werewolf, and WTF did that mean?
It was too much to deal with. So he sat at the breakfast bar in the kitchen and nibbled on saltines. He focused on that one simple act, and before long, he heard Nero come back down the hall. The guy had changed into a navy blue polo and another pair of khakis. His hair was wet, as if he’d ducked his head under a faucet and then towel-dried it. His feet were bare, though, and for some reason Josh found those big dumb feet endearing. Like Fred Flintstone feet. Big and strong enough to run a cartoon car down a freeway on the way to the quarry.
Josh smiled at the image and was even more amused when Nero’s expression turned to confusion. “What’s so funny?” he asked.
“Just wondering how many pairs of khakis you have.”
“Dunno. Five? Six? They’re professional and casual. Allows me to dress up or down easy.”
For some reason that honest answer tickled Josh’s funny bone even more. His grin widened as he pointed to his empty bowl. “I finished the bone broth. I’m feeling better now.”
As expected, the guy’s expression relaxed and his shoulders eased. He clearly took Josh’s well-being to heart and was pleased by the report.
“That’s good. Give it another fifteen minutes and then try some real soup. Vegetables, definitely. Meat if you can handle it.”
Josh nodded, though an assessment of his stomach told him that heavy foods were out for the moment. Instead, he nibbled on another saltine and waited for his opportunity to learn more about his very interesting captor. It came about three minutes later, after Nero had pulled out carpet spray to douse the area where the soup had spilled, and while they waited for the foaming cleaner to do its work.
“So was Mother your… um… actual mother?”
“What? No. She was a werewolf on my team.”
“Was she anyone’s mother?”
He shook his head. “She never had kids, but she was the only girl here. She used to point at garbage we’d leave lying around or stains that we never cleaned up, and she’d say, ‘Do I look like your mother? Clean up your shit or else.’”
Intrigued, Josh leaned forward. “Or else what?”
“That’s what we asked.” He waited a moment, his focus distant and his mouth curved in delight as he no doubt wandered through his memories. “She said, ‘Or else I’ll leave my shit where you live.’ And she did. Whenever we didn’t clean up after ourselves, she’d shit on our stuff. Real turds, real stinky. We’d lock our rooms, put away our stuff, but if someone left a mess, so did she.” He looked at the floor. “Her nose was really good, especially as a wolf. If you left a mess, it was pretty easy for her to tell who’d made it.” He looked up. “We learned to pick up after ourselves, but we called her Mother as revenge.”
“I suppose there are worse names.”
“Lots. And she had her softer moments, for sure. But mostly she was this firecracker of a woman who gave as good as she got.” He turned away, his movements heavy as he opened a closet and pulled out an upright vacuum cleaner. “I miss her. She… died last week.”
“How’d she go?”
Josh didn’t think he’d answer. Nero was silent as he plugged in the vacuum and sucked up the mostly dry cleaner. He was quick and efficient in his work, finishing up and putting everything away in silence. But when it was done, he crossed to a desktop computer on a nearby table. A few clicks later, he pulled up a picture of himself with four other grinning people at a summer barbecue.
“This was my team.” He pointed to faces. “Mother and her partner Pauly. Cream and Coffee.” He touched each face with a shaking finger, but his voice remained solid. “We got word of a demon eating ice fishers in northern Wisconsin. An easy run by our standards, since most demons are stupid, violent things. Like putting down a rabid dog. They’re dangerous but not that smart. Everything started as usual, and we almost had the thing licked.”
As he spoke, he clicked through other pictures of his team. The summer barbecue was over, and now Josh viewed Halloween costumes, then nap time on the couch while someone drew a fake mustache on Coffee. Cream apparently loved waffles, and then Pauly mugged for the camera from a mountain summit. One by one, the images clicked through until the screen abruptly changed. Instead of grinning faces, he saw black, wolf-shaped smears in a blast zone.
“The demon had some sort of plasma fire. It killed them all in an instant. The only reason I escaped was because I was in the energy state between wolf and man, and even then, it was a rough ride. One second we were doing our jobs, the next—” His voice choked off. He couldn’t even say the words, but then he didn’t have to. Image after image on the screen told the story. They were all dead. He wasn’t.
“And the demon?”
“Still in the water somewhere. It needs to recoup, recover, reform. We’re not exactly sure. We’re looking for it, but we haven’t been able to find it.” Then his gaze lifted to Josh. “I’m going to kill it. Soon as I’m done with you newbies, I’m going back there, and I’m going to blow that fucker into tiny orange chunks. And then I’m going to piss on every smoldering inch.”
Josh watched Nero’s face, seeing the fierce determination screaming through every cell in the man’s body. If this were a movie, he’d be the first one to applaud. But life wasn’t a movie, and the good guys didn’t always win. All he had to do was look at the ash outlines on the screen to know that. It grieved him to think that Nero had nearly become one of those spots on the dead ground. And if Nero didn’t have something more than fury in his arsenal, then he absolutely would be ash if he went up against the demon again.
That’s what pushed him to poke a man who was so wrapped up in his grief that he focused on pissing over a demon’s remains rather than the steps up to that glorious end.
