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  PRAISE FOR THE NOVELS OF ROB THURMAN

  THE CAL LEANDROS NOVELS

  Downfall

  “This series continues to walk on the dark side of urban fantasy as it repeatedly shows us that monsters do exist in the world and sometimes the difference between them and us is nothing more than a degree of separation.”

  —Smexy Books

  “Thurman’s writing ability seems to increase with each new novel.”

  —Buzzy Mag

  “A game changer with fascinating implications for the future, Downfall is a book no Leandros fan should miss.”

  —All Things Urban Fantasy

  “A terrific writer who focuses as much on characterization as on plots. [Thurman] offers a lot of humor, especially in the dialogue banter among the characters. I thoroughly enjoyed this addition to her Leandros brothers canon and the in-depth view of Robin Goodfellow.”

  —The Qwillery

  Slashback

  “The eighth addition to this urban fantasy series (after Doubletake) should please Thurman’s many fans.”

  —Library Journal

  Doubletake

  “Rob Thurman conjures up one of the grittiest tales of the Leandros brothers yet.”

  —SFRevu

  Blackout

  “Thurman delivers in spades . . . as always, a great entry in a series that only gets better with each new installment.”

  —SFRevu

  Roadkill

  “Readers will relish this roller-coaster ride filled with danger. . . . The unexpected is the norm in this urban fantasy.”

  —Alternative Worlds

  Deathwish

  “Thurman takes her storytelling to a whole new level in Deathwish. . . . Fans of street-level urban fantasy will enjoy this.”

  —SFRevu

  Madhouse

  “Thurman continues to deliver strong tales of dark urban fantasy.”

  —SFRevu

  Moonshine

  “[Cal and Niko] are back and better than ever . . . a fast-paced story full of action.”

  —SFRevu

  Nightlife

  “A roaring roller coaster of a read . . . [it’ll] take your breath away. Supernatural highs and lows, and a hell of a lean over at the corners. Sharp and sardonic, mischievous and mysterious.”

  —New York Times bestselling author Simon R. Green

  THE TRICKSTER NOVELS

  The Grimrose Path

  “Thurman’s comic timing is dead-on [and] well-targeted in Trixa’s cynical, gritty voice . . . a fast-paced urban adventure that will have you cheering.”

  —Fresh Fiction

  Trick of the Light

  “Rob Thurman’s new series has all the great elements I’ve come to expect from this writer: an engaging protagonist, fast-paced adventure, a touch of sensuality, and a surprise twist that’ll make you blink.”

  —#1 New York Times bestselling author Charlaine Harris

  THE KORSAK BROTHERS NOVELS

  Basilisk

  “Thurman has created another fast-paced and engaging tale in this volume. . . . Fans of great thriller fiction will enjoy Basilisk and the previous novel Chimera quite a bit.”

  —SFRevu

  “Basilisk is full of excitement, pathos, humor, and dread. . . . Buy it. You won’t be sorry. It is one heck of a ride!”

  —Bookshelf Bombshells

  Chimera

  “Thurman delivers a fast-paced thriller with plenty of twists and turns. . . . The characters are terrific—Stefan’s wiseass attitude will especially resonate with the many Cal Leandros fans out there—and the pace never lets up, once the two leads are together. . . . Thurman shows a flair for handling SF/near-future action.”

  —SFRevu

  “A touching story on the nature of family, trust, and love lies hidden in this action thriller. . . . Thurman weaves personal discovery seamlessly into the fast-paced action, making it easy to cheer for these overgrown, dangerous boys.”

  —Publishers Weekly

  BOOKS BY ROB THURMAN

  The Cal Leandros Novels

  Nightlife

  Moonshine

  Madhouse

  Deathwish

  Roadkill

  Blackout

  Doubletake

  Slashback

  Downfall

  Nevermore

  The Trickster Novels

  Trick of the Light

  The Grimrose Path

  The Korsak Brothers Novels

  Chimera

  Basilisk

  Anthologies

  Wolfsbane and Mistletoe

  EDITED BY CHARLAINE HARRIS AND TONI L. P. KELNER

  Kicking It

  EDITED BY FAITH HUNTER AND KALAYNA PRICE

  ROC

  Published by New American Library,

  an imprint of Penguin Random House LLC

  375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014

  This book is an original publication of New American Library.

  Copyright © Robyn Thurman, 2015

  Penguin Random House supports copyright. Copyright fuels creativity, encourages diverse voices, promotes free speech, and creates a vibrant culture. Thank you for buying an authorized edition of this book and for complying with copyright laws by not reproducing, scanning, or distributing any part of it in any form without permission. You are supporting writers and allowing Penguin Random House to continue to publish books for every reader.

  Roc and the Roc colophon are registered trademarks of Penguin Random House LLC.

  For more information about Penguin Random House, visit penguin.com.

  ISBN 978-0-698-18498-5

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Version_1

  Contents

  Praise

  Books by Rob Thurman

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Acknowledgments

  Epigraph

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  About the Author

  For G.L. and R.—see you on the flipside.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  All my thanks to but the smallest amount of those who held down a hand to lift me up when I needed it most—and then told me to stop my bitching and kicked my ass promptly into gear: Jeanne C. Stein; Di Pharoah Francis; Barb Hendee; Farzana Karim; Marcia Howard—there is nothing she can’t do and very little she hasn’t already done; Christopher Lynch; Zach Adams; Sadie Ballesteros Romine; Theresa Bane; Glenn Bane; Nix Rodriguez; Rhiannon Miller; Matthew Boronson (a research god); then the goddess among women, Flora Demuth, and her partner in crime, Winston Demuth; Drew Bittner; Betsy Dornbusch xoxoxo; and J. C. Ferguson, who says he has been saving himself for me since college—he is a man among . . . well . . . he’s a man! Also, thanks to Nicole Paone, Liza Tobias Hebert, Rachel Eckstein, Desiree
Adams, Joni Carrigen, Patrick Hadrian, Tracy Wood, Jamie “Cat Hat” Arnold—the very first fan for whom I signed a book—and Kate Baird.

  This only is denied to God: the power to undo the past.

  —attributed to Agathon (448 BC–400 BC) by Aristotle (384 BC–382 BC), The Nicomachean Ethics with English Translation by H. Rackham (1926)

  I never claimed to be God, just a helluva lot more motivated.

  —Caliban Leandros

  Prologue

  People die.

  All the time. Everyone knows that, right? The world is dangerous. Existence is precarious, the footing beneath you shaky. Your first breath isn’t a guarantee and if you get that, your next breath is the same. Touch and go. Life doesn’t come with a warranty. It’s something to be snatched, clawed for, and held in the tightest of grips. Life cuts you no slack, doesn’t care if you’re around or not, but death . . . death can’t wait to drag you to his party. And once he does . . . you know that old song is as true as they come, “It’s hard to leave if you can’t find the door.”

  People die . . . but they usually don’t die over something so meaningless. Me? I was the exception to that. I was the trigger. At least thirty people died all thanks to my one seemingly harmless mistake, one trivial, overlooked chore.

  I forgot the pizzas.

  Insane, right? That the world should end because I forgot several boxes of cheese, pepperoni, and grease. They weren’t even the best pizzas in town. But that didn’t matter. I’d brought down Heaven, lifted up Hell, and set the world on fire, all thanks to one slip of the memory.

  How’s that for the worst fuckup of all time?

  One casual everyday event like forgetting my phone and running back a block to our place for it. That meant a five-minute shift in my routine, just enough to sidetrack my brain to revert to my normal schedule. I unconsciously skipped over the irregular task of the pizza pickup I’d been stuck with at the last minute, and that was it . . . the world ended. Not with a whimper or a thousand radioactive mushroom clouds. No, it ended because I was an idiot.

  It ended because I’d forgotten I’d lost a coin toss.

  The only reason I didn’t end with it as well was just dumb luck. I’d remembered at the last second fifteen feet inside the bar, cursed, and left, annoyed and impatient enough to use the “emergency door” to get them. I should’ve been there when it all ended, but, again, dumb luck.

  No. Not true.

  It wasn’t dumb luck. It was bad luck. Worse luck. The darkest of goddamn fucking fortune.

  Hell, wasn’t that the story of my life?

  There was a certain grungy bar, cramped, but popular among a certain crowd, that I’d been standing in less than three seconds ago when I remembered the pizzas. The name of the bar didn’t matter. That I worked there most nights didn’t make a difference either. What did matter was that the building where it squatted on the first floor slinging alcohol right and left was hit by an eye searing blast of light. It was as bright as it was incomprehensible. It was barely dusk. What could be that bright? I’d seen the flash from the corner of my eye as I stood at the pizza truck parked at the other end of the block. I turned to see what it was, not where it was. I should’ve known the where was what mattered, but I didn’t have a flicker of suspicion that it was the bar, my bar. The one full of people, my people. It was one of those things you can’t think. You can’t know, as once you do you can’t unknow it. That part of your brain shuts down. If it didn’t all of your brain would stop . . . stop thinking, stop feeling, stop everything, and chances were good it’d never start again.

  It was too late for all that now. I had turned. When I did, I wished I’d been smart enough to not turn, and when I had, then to not look, to live in blissful ignorance a few seconds more. But I wasn’t that smart, never had been. I didn’t register that it was an explosion, one that temporarily deafened me. In that silence I had turned. I had seen. I had seen it all.

  It was as if the sun had plunged from where it hung bloodred and low to crash down on top of the city.

  It was all it could be. The sun had fallen from the sky, I thought numbly as the money drifted from one hand as the pizzas slipped off the balancing palm of the other to tumble through superheated air to the street. The sun had fallen and we were all on fire—not the city alone, but everything. It was early evening with thin stripes of twilight purple clouds, and we should’ve stood in shadows, but we didn’t. It was bright as day on the street and we were on fire.

  The entire world was on fire.

  I fucking prayed the way atheists like me do when the sky falls and their world is ripped away. I prayed that it was a lie. But I got what prayers gave you when you need their help the most. A kick in the gut and a spiteful laugh in your face as it was granted.

  Because the world wasn’t on fire.

  It would’ve been better if it were.

  No, the world didn’t burn, I knew, only a small piece of it.

  That I’d had the thought at all—the whole world burning to a cinder—had been shock and despair tearing my brain to shreds—not for thinking that it was true, but because I knew it wasn’t. The world gone with a fiery snap of some child-eating pagan god’s fingers, all of us . . . to the very last of us, dying with the earth, I could take that. I could take it with a, yes, sir, may I have another. But being left behind, a survivor who had no fucking desire to survive? That was the true nightmare. That I couldn’t take.

  I stared at the inferno that raged; it already had consumed the first floor front of the building. Gobbled up where I’d worked and drunk for years and had just stood heartbeats ago. I hoped with everything in my tarnished soul that its appetite would spread to at least the city if not to everything flammable on the planet. I hoped that it would roll over me like a wildfire and take me along with the rest of what it had already stolen.

  It didn’t happen. What you want the most hardly ever does. What you need the most never does.

  Instead, it concentrated on my handful of the world, small as it was, with more inescapable flame than could remotely be needed for one small bar. The fire had grown before I could take a single breath. It was a breath I didn’t want to take, knowing that the Auphe in me, compared to the human, would sharpen every scent a hundred times over. I didn’t care if I took another breath again, for that reason and a thousand others, but your body overrides your wishes, no matter how desperate. Lungs rebelling, I gasped, pulling in that unwanted breath. I smelled ammonia, nitrate, other chemicals I didn’t bother with. . . .

  And flesh. They smelled different, the roasting scent of several Wolves from the lesser number of peri, and both distinct from the crowd of vampires. Every group similar but not the same as the other, but soon to end as identical charred fumes. Above them all, I caught the smell of two others. Not a group—just two. The two that mattered most.

  Until now one had smelled of grass, fallen leaves, loamy earth, and musk. The other of sweat and weapon oil for cleaning every type of blade at the end of sparring, of goat milk soap and unbleached cotton from the shower that followed, of the clean bite of a chill wind only truly found on the top of a mountain where the air grew thin.

  One puck.

  One human.

  Neither would give off their born scent again, the way they once had. Not in reality, and not in my memories that would be as blackened as the mound of rubble that would act as the tomb that covered them when the fire eventually died.

  Not that I would be around to see their makeshift grave in the aftermath and not that I would have memories of any kind.

  The smallest sliver of a second later there came a second explosion, a massive fireball ten, twelve stories high erupted, though the building itself was only four stories tall. It came close to incinerating anything left of the brick and metal of the bar and the bodies inside. The backwash of incredible heat and a concussive wave threw me flat, knocking the ai
r from my lungs before I was able to vomit at the stench that had crawled inside me to stay.

  An infinity of fire: Hell couldn’t have claimed it all.

  I sat up slowly and painfully to the sight of what the second one had birthed, a Jacob’s ladder of fire that stretched up to touch the sky, maybe Heaven itself. It made the first look like an amateur attempt at a Boy Scout campfire. It burned with the rage, flame, and heat of a hundred phoenixes. Yet when it finally would burn down, hours maybe days—ashes to ashes—no new phoenix would rise from it. Nothing would. The reaper owned this place now and everyone who’d been in it. One swipe of a scythe hotter than the sun had taken it all.

  Now I am become Death.

  Something that had been said in history a time or two.

  Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds.

  I didn’t think about who had done it—who was Death.

  I already knew the answer to that.

  I didn’t think about how it had been done.

  I didn’t think why. I knew the why was a who. And I was still here as the fuckers had missed.

  I didn’t think anything but the bottom line of it all.

  I didn’t care.

  Who, why, how, none of that mattered now.

  My own personal Armageddon had arrived.

  As the heat seared my skin, I sprawled on the asphalt with—unbelievably enough as forcefully as I’d been thrown back—the pizza boxes that had landed with me, one beside me, the other against my leg, almost in my fucking lap. A mocking jeer from the powers that be. “Your life is over, but dinner’s on us!” My eyes were half-blinded by the fire, not that I cared to better see details of the apocalypse meant for me personally . . . but had missed.

  It hadn’t been able to steal my life, but as a trade, it had taken and destroyed my reason for living it.

  As much as I hated to give them the satisfaction, they’d won. I didn’t have to be at their ground zero in a failed aim at wiping me from existence. One block away was close enough to know that your heart could beat and your lungs could fill with oxygen, but it didn’t make you less dead.