Doubletake: A Cal Leandros Novel - Softcover

Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Rob, short for Robyn (yes, he is really a she) Thurman lives in Indiana, land of rolling hills and cows, deer, and wild turkeys. Many, many turkeys. She is also the author of the Cal Leandros Series: Nightlife, Moonshine, Madhouse, and Deathwish; has a story in the anthology Wolfsbane and Mistletoe; and is the author of Trick of the Light, the first book in the Trickster series.

Besides wild, ravenous turkeys, she has a dog (if you don’t have a dog, how do you live?)—one hundred pounds of Siberian husky. He looks like a wolf, has paws the size of a person’s hand, ice blue eyes, teeth out of a Godzilla movies, and the ferocious habit of hiding under the kitchen table and peeing on himself when strangers come by. Fortunately, she has another dog that is a little more invested in keeping the food source alive. By the way, the dogs were adopted from shelters. They were fully grown, already housetrained, and grateful as hell. Think about it next time you’re looking for a Rover or Fluffy.

For updates, teasers, deleted scenes, and various other extras, visit Rob Thurman's website and her LiveJournal.

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Chapter 1

Black Sheep

Family . . . it is a fucking bitch.

Just like he was a bitch. I had seen him—wallowing amongst the game, but never tasting of the herd. More perverse, he lived with prey, had been raised by prey, had been taught the ways of the world by prey when I’d had to teach myself. Clawing myself along, I had chewed my way through knowledge as grimly as I’d once chewed discarded putrid meat and bone. Everything I’d earned, I’d earned with blood, mine or someone else’s. I had done what no one else could do.

The castoff failure, but look at me now. Damn right, look at me. Look hard and look good—right before I gut you.

Then there was him, the golden boy, yet look at what he had done.

Naughty and bad, bad and naughty. But much worse: disobedient. Not what they’d expected of their one true success at all.

I laughed at the irony of it.

I laughed, but I hated him, hated him, hated him, hated him, hated him.

Not for what he’d done, but that he’d been the one instead of me to do it.

That was all right, though. That was fine and fucking dandy, as someone I used to know once said. Fine and fucking dandy, because I hated everyone anyway. The only difference was, I was related to this one . . . and that made the hate sweeter. Hate was all I’d known. All I had ever been given and all I had ever had. I was created from it, molded by it, lived by it. Hate was like air, necessary to life. I wore my hate as a second skin and let it warm me when nothing else did.

I saw him through binoculars where I lay atop a roof far enough away that he wouldn’t know I was there. It was night, but I saw him clearly. Light was for the fearful herd; the night was for me. Not that it was ever truly dark in this immense mound of misbegotten roadkill waiting to happen.

Yes, I saw him. He had black hair, pale skin, light–colored eyes. Nothing like I was at all. That I didn’t hate. That I liked—I was better, purer, closer to the truth.

It was all about the truth.

The new truth.

My truth.

And he was part of that, whether he wanted to be or not.

Family was a hateful bitch; it was. I had the hot poker scars of that burned into my flesh to prove it, but, scars or not, sometimes family was all you had worth playing with. Maybe he would see that. Maybe he would want to play too. I played rough. I played to win.

Did he?

I’d bet he did if given the chance, not that this boring scuffle I was watching was anything to go by. It wasn’t a fraction of the challenge I’d give him.

The Unmaker of the World, they had called him.

Unimpressed, I waggled black gloved fingers in a mocking wave. We’d see. Sooner or later, we’d see exactly what family and blood meant to him. He might look like one of the cattle, but he would never be one.

Besides, if he could unmake the world, how much more fun would it be for me to remake it instead?
 

Chapter 2

Family . . . it is a bitch.

The thought came out of nowhere.

Or maybe not, considering my current situation. There was no denying that it was true. Everyone thought it sooner or later, didn’t they? If there’s only you, you’re good—lonely maybe, but good. You can’t fight with yourself. If there’re two of you, it can still be good. Your options are limited. You make do and appreciate what you have, unless it’s the stereotypical evil–twin scenario. Then you aim for the goatee and blow his ass back to the alternate dimension he popped out of.

A kishi—better known as my paycheck in the form of a supernatural hyena—hit my back with staggering force. I flipped it over my shoulder and put a bullet between its eyes.

Yeah, normally two was a doable number for family. It was when you hit three and higher that things started to go bad. That was when the bitching and moaning started, the pitting of one against another, the slights that no one forgot. No one could tell me that Noah didn’t pitch a few of his relatives kicking and screaming off the Ark long before the floodwaters receded. It was no familialLove Boat, and I believed that to my core.

Which brought up the question: Did that wrathful Old Testament God kill the sharks? I don’t think he did. You can’t drown a shark. I think they were snacking on biblical in–laws right and left. Noah, Noah, Noah . . .

I swung around and kicked the next kishi in the stomach as I slammed another clip home before putting three in its gaping, lethally fanged mouth as it jumped again. It sounded easy, but considering the one I also had attached to my other leg . . . it was a pain in the ass.

Family–wise, I had no pain in the asses. I was lucky. I had one brother and he was a damn good one. Once we were on our own, I’d escaped the curse of screaming Thanksgiving dinners. . . . I had a turkey pizza; Niko had a vegan one. No bitter arguments around a Christmas tree . . . Niko gave me a new gun; I gave him a new sword. Absent was the awkward discovery of first cousins shacking up at the summer vacation get–togethers at the lake. I didn’t have to wait for summer. I saw my brother every day when he winged my sopping towel off the bathroom floor at my head or I asked—after the fact—if I could use his priceless seventeenth–century copy of some boring book no one but him and the author had read to prop up a wobbling coffee table.

Summer vacations . . . if you thought about it, what kind of people actually gathered together at a lake with cabins and all that crap anyway? Hadn’t they ever watched Friday the 13th? Jason? Hockey masks? Machetes? A good time for me, yeah—oh hell, yeah—but not as much for the members of your average Prius–driving middle class.

Stupidity is everywhere.

But for me, right now, things were good. My brother and I kicked supernatural ass for fun and profit. I had a shirt that said that with our phone number. Humans wouldn’t take it seriously. Humans didn’t know what the world really hosted. But the kind that hired us—nonhuman—they knew a walking billboard when they saw it. Running your own business is a bitch. You have to advertise. Promo. Market. Niko did that. I couldn’t be bothered with that crap—unless it resulted in my offensive T–shirt slogan. He and I had been doing this for four years now. Before that we’d done the same, but it had been a hobby, not a career.

Okay, I say hobby, but it was self–defense, pure and simple. When you’re half human and half of the worst monster to walk the earth—a creature that ate the supernatural for appetizers without putting hardly any effort into it—you weren’t popular with the other monster types. And there were thousands of different kinds. Some immediately attacked me, sensing the half human in me and assuming it would make me weaker—they were wrong. Some ran—they were smart. And some didn’t care either way—we hung out and had a beer.

Good family. Interesting and well–paying career. Half monster . . . well, everything couldn’t be perfect, but otherwise right now things were good. I was hoping they stayed that way. Except for Niko. I didn’t have to hope when it came to family.

The rest of my life might be challenging in some other areas, like at the moment as an adolescent kishi was either trying to eat my leg or hump it to the bare bone, but family? I knew I had that under control. I watched my brother’s back; he watched mine. We were a Hallmark card dipped in blood and made of unbreakable steel. I’d never had a doubt about my family and I never...