Deathwish can-4 Page 18

  “I’m never wrong.” Completely untrue, but he needed to hear it anyway. Because he was right. I’d been wrong in the past, I’d be wrong in the future. But I would not be wrong about this. “And trust me, the last time I thought the best of you was before you spoke your first word.”

  He gave a half grin. “I come by that naturally. Good old Sophia probably knew words I still don’t.”

  “At least ‘mother’ was part of it. Couldn’t leave the other half off, could you?”

  Not true, of course. His first word had been much shorter. He still said it every day. Like this moment.

  “Nik, do we . . .” The words trailed off as he settled back against the bench, the anger visibly reduced. Still there, but faded. He exhaled, “Stupid. There’s no ‘do we,’ is there? We have to tell everybody. Hate for someone to have to die for taking the last piece of pizza.” It was a joke, yet it wasn’t, and it deserved only one thing.

  “Idiot.” I swatted again. “(A) You are not going to kill anyone over artery-clogging food. (B) We tell them only if you want to.” I said it and I meant it. Without reservation.

  “After what Promise did, keeping an entire family secret? You think that’s okay now? Not telling them something that important?” he asked with a skeptical curiosity. “Me being the last . . . you know.” He grimaced, but went on, “That won’t make a difference to their survival, one way or the other, but this might. And you don’t think we should tell them?”

  There it was, wasn’t it?

  “Just because I’m your teacher doesn’t mean I still don’t have a thing or two to learn,” I answered ruefully. “I haven’t lied to Promise about you since the entire mess first came out with Darkling, but . . . I would.” How odd I hadn’t known that about myself. I’d assumed a situation wouldn’t come along where I, the so highly principled Niko, would stoop from my pedestal of unyielding truth and honor to actually lie to someone I cared for.

  I would.

  Cal was my brother, but I had also raised him. My brother, my family, the one I’d protected from the moment he took his very first breath. I would tell any lie to anyone to keep him safe. Make any omission. Promise had told her lies for a different reason . . . to keep herself safe from the heartache of her failure and the blood-soaked memories of her past family. But all the lies originated in the same place. To protect. I wasn’t in a position to be her judge.

  “So good enough can be good enough?” he asked.

  “That makes absolutely no sense, and, yes, maybe it can.” For Promise and me—if she understood what Cal was to me and it wasn’t a burden, maybe it could be enough. I spotted a hot dog vendor setting up down the block. “Hungry yet? You can eat all the mystery meat you want, and this once I won’t say a word.”

  “Really? Mustard, chili, onions, the whole nine yards? And no bitching?” He stood and dug for a few dollars in his jeans. The crumpled paper appeared and he folded the bills back and forth as he hesitated. “Nik? You’re not afraid, then? Of me?”

  “Afraid of you?” I leaned back to drape an arm along the back of the bench and cross booted ankles. “I’m still waiting for your testicles to drop so we can buy you a cup for sparring. Now go eat your hot dog,” I commanded.

  The glower, snarky grin, and annoyed mask he wore as armor against the world—I’d seen the making of those over the years, and I’d seen through them just as long. This time I didn’t have to. There was nothing to hide the emotion: relief, pure and strong. It was in the loosened set of his jaw, the curve of his mouth, the lightening of his eyes. Then he shifted his gaze away for a second before looking back again with the armor once more firmly in place. “Just for that, you bastard, extra onions,” he promised vengefully. “Until it comes out my pores.”

  “And that would be different from a normal day how?” I snorted. “Bring me back some bottled juice. And remember, just because it’s orange does not necessarily make it juice. Look at the label. Try a little of that reading thing you hear so much about.”

  He was thinking of flipping me off, I knew it. But I also knew he was thinking of what had happened the last time he had. Ah, the interesting process of making a brace for a sprained finger using a Popsicle stick. Education at its finest. Grumbling under his breath, he turned and crossed the grass to the sidewalk. I put on my sunglasses against the just-risen sun and watched him go. Jeans, old cracked and worn combat boots, and a beat-up black leather jacket. Wind-tangled mop of hair and a scowl only a native New Yorker could’ve equaled. Despite what he thought, he was so human, in all the very best and worst ways there were to be human. Grit, loyalty, determination. Anger, vulnerability, fear.

  Afraid of him? No. Afraid for him? Every day. Every single day.

  He came back with a bottle of something purple that consisted, per label, of nearly two percent genuine fruit juice. It was effort on his part and so, against my better judgment, I drank it. The chili cheese dog was half eaten and the rest tossed to the squirrels brave enough to face the onion fumes. There weren’t many.

  “You only get one bitch-free one,” I reminded him as he tossed a piece of bread with mustard toward a squirrel sitting on a brightly colored swing set. “You shouldn’t waste it.”

  “I know. Just not all that hungry.” He threw the last bit and wiped his hands on his jeans. After a minute of quiet, he said, “When I opened the gate, I had a flash . . . a feeling. It was what I was thinking before, but this . . .” He shrugged. “It might confirm it. I don’t think the Auphe are done playing with us, with you guys yet. I think they still want their fun. The end game is coming. . . .” When they would kill us and take him to an existence a thousand times worse than any death. “But right now?” he continued. Rubbing a thumb along the arm of the bench, he studied the faint rust smear as if it held the secrets of the universe, before looking up at me and saying flatly, “I think they still want to play. Pick you off one at a time and let the rest of us wallow in it. But . . .”

  “But?” I prodded.

  “I don’t know for sure. Hey, I’m only the diluted product.” He gave a humorless grin. “Watered-down whiskey. The half-and-half of the evil empire. But still good enough for stud service. Lucky me.” He gave a minute twitch that I saw him refuse to let grow into a shudder.

  I ignored it. He would’ve wanted me to. Sometimes support is all that keeps us standing, and sometimes it’s what lets us give up and fall to our knees. So instead, I snorted. “Only you could make a dairy reference melodramatic.” If that were his best guess, that’s what we’d have to rely on, because the Auphe followed no logic of battle I’d read of. They had the driving purpose of a dying race. They had obsession and sadistic madness; it was a mixture that was difficult to predict.

  “Also, I’ve been thinking. . . .”

  “Thinking? That’s astounding, little brother,” I interrupted, tilting my head down to peer over the top of the dark glasses. “Would you like a gold star for that? I’d hate for excellence to go unrewarded.”

  “I’ve been thinking,” he repeated between gritted teeth, “maybe we should ask Delilah about Oshossi. He could be holed up in Central Park or staying someplace else and just keeping his pets there. She might know.”

  Or he could simply want to put off returning to where he’d lost control and opened up a gate to hell without even realizing it. Either way, I could see the benefit. He needed time, and we could use the information. Cherish wasn’t going to go away, no matter how tempting it was to wish that she would. At least she’d made the offer to stand on her own. That had meant something to Promise.

  I checked my watch. We had another hour before we’d said we’d be back, and a quick trip to Delilah’s work shouldn’t get her noticed by the Auphe. “If anyone would know his movements, it would be the Kin,” I commented. “Is she at work this early?” An extra hour wasn’t going to have Cal forgetting about what had happened, but as for distracting . . . I thought Delilah was up to the task.

  “Yeah,” he tried for a grin, but a
s with the chili dog, he only made it halfway through. “I think they have a breakfast buffet.”

  He was right. The strip club did have a breakfast buffet. I avoided it like the plague it was. We sat at a table while Delilah, not as picky in her nutritional needs, methodically made her way through an entire pound of bacon. As bouncer, she apparently ate for free. At least it was cooked. She looked at me and shook her head as she delicately snapped another piece in half and chewed. “You fight like wolf and smell like sheep. Strange.” I wasn’t a complete vegetarian, but I was close, and I suppose to a wolf I did smell less than predatory. Cal, on the other hand, must have smelled like the great stalker of pepperoni and cheeseburgers that he was. A meat and nitrate eater through and through.

  When she finally finished the pile of pork, she pushed the plate away and leaned elbows on the table. “You two come here. What happened to not safe? What happened to Auphe? What happened to no sex? No sex.” Blond eyebrows lifted mockingly in Cal’s direction. “You think you are so special? You think your dick is so . . .”

  I gripped Cal’s shoulder sympathetically and decided that being elsewhere for this discussion was a good idea. I rose and crossed the room, dodging tables and early clientele. The bathroom was cleaner than I would’ve given it credit for. It was barely offensive at all . . . except for the incubus. He was one of the dancers, unless the leather chaps and G-string were simply personal-preference morning wear. With an incubus, you never knew. Like his sister succubi, he had blue and silver hair. It was tied back in a long tail that rested across skin that glittered like mother-of-pearl. Makeup and dye to those who didn’t know better. Liquid black eyes took me in as he finished his business. The lascivious smile he flashed me didn’t show his snake tongue, but I knew it was there.

  One might think it odd for an incubus to work in a male strip club that catered to gay men, as opposed to one for women. It wasn’t. Incubi and succubi had one priority, and that was to suck a human dry of energy. The sex of their victim didn’t particularly matter. Did it matter to the average diner if his steak came from a cow or a bull? Incubi and succubi were no different. Male or female victims, they’d weaken or kill them and move on. I wondered how many customers had dropped dead of “heart attacks” since this one had started work here.

  The Vigil had their philosophy: Humans were all fair game as long as you didn’t get noticed while eating them. Cal and I had once had a philosophy as well. You don’t bother us, and we won’t kill you. When you were on the run, you didn’t have time for other people’s problems or playing hunter to lions gone man-eater. You looked after your own and kept moving. But now we’d settled. This was our home. If the occasion arose that I could make it a slightly safer place . . .

  And practice was practice.

  I turned and opened the bathroom door. “Delilah,” I called in a low voice, knowing her wolf ears would pick it up easily over the thumping music. “Incubus. Yours or mine?”

  She waved a hand and said loudly enough for my human hearing, “He started yesterday. My day off. Idiot human boss. Bad for business. Yours.”

  I turned back and closed the door behind me. The incubus’s salacious smile turned to a baring of impressively long snake fangs. He had more than the teeth; he had the quicksilver agility of a snake as well. That helped him for nearly ten seconds—which was impressive for an incubus. They didn’t often have to fight. Their prey was usually more than willing. This one, though, he was more challenge than most. The bathroom was too cramped for the katana, and I pulled my shorter wakizashi sword in one hand and my tanto knife in the other. He reared back, then jerked toward me in an attempted strike. It got him gutted for his trouble. It didn’t stop him. He slithered backward, bones suddenly liquidly malleable. He streaked up one wall and across another before hurtling through the air at me. I swung my blade. A neck parted. Practice was over. Quickly.

  Disappointing.

  His body continued to writhe, serpentlike, for several moments, the nearly invisible scales whispering against the tile floor. When it stopped, I cleaned the cobalt blood from my blades with paper towels, and sheathed them. As I stepped out of the bathroom, Delilah was there to lock the door and slap an out-of-order sign on it. “Full now,” she said. “Will eat for lunch.”

  I had no idea if she was serious or not, and I didn’t ask. I had a thirst for knowledge, but there were some things I didn’t need or want to know. This was one of them. There was something else, however, that I was curious about. The table where we’d been sitting was now empty. “Cal?”

  “Manager’s office.” Her smile wasn’t as lascivious as that of the incubus, but it was close. “Watch front door. Ten minutes.”

  “This, Delilah, is my brother you’re talking so glibly about,” I said sharply, catching her ponytail in a firm grip as she started away. When she lifted her upper lip in a challenging snarl, I added levelly, “Twenty minutes. He’s had a difficult morning.”

  The snarl faded as she said, amused, “You are good brother. Twenty, if he survives.”

  He did, and looked a little more relaxed for it. Outside the bar, I inquired, “You did take the time to ask about Oshossi, I’m assuming. Much in the same way I’m assuming I won’t have to take you to the dojo and beat a measure of sense into you.”

  “I asked,” he responded defensively, although there was a brief sliver of panic on his face as endorphin-soaked brain cells struggled for the memory. “The Kin doesn’t know anything about Oshossi. They did notice the extra wildlife in Central Park, though. So we’re one for two. But she said she’d look into it.”

  “How much?” I asked.

  “You saying the mind-blowing sex isn’t payment enough?” He grinned smugly.

  “No, of course not. You’re a stallion,” I said blandly. “How much?”

  “Two K.” Disgruntled, he put his jacket back on. “Bastard.”

  “You’ll think ‘bastard’ when we start meditation exercises today,” I said, entertained by the look of distaste that crossed his face.

  “Oh, Christ, just sitting there, not doing anything. Not napping or watching TV. It’s not natural.” He flagged down a taxi and gave Seamus’s address. “And it looks boring as hell. Why the hell would I want to do it?” he finished.

  “It’s about control, Grasshopper,” I said, trying to keep it light. We had enough of the dark at the moment without adding to it. “Control is useful in the restraint of emotion.”

  “Control,” he echoed. “Control is good.” He went silent for the duration of the drive. I was fairly sure he believed me when I said he wouldn’t hurt anyone. Opening a gate was a far cry from picking up his gun and blowing away whomever was annoying him—which he had done in the past. But they had deserved it. Still, there were easier ways to kill than a gate to Tumulus, and he knew that. Instinct . . . reflex, whatever you wanted to call it, you might not be able to erase it, but you could blunt it, redirect it, control it. Unfortunately, Cal had a lot of anger—most of it justifiable, but that it was didn’t make things any easier.

  Control was the answer, at least the best one I had. No, Cal wouldn’t use his Glock or his combat knife over a loss of temper with anyone he actually cared about, but opening a gate instead wasn’t desirable either. Sooner or later something was bound to come out of one of them. Cal had told me once that the gates were two-way. You could go in or something—the Auphe—could come out. But with enough will you could hold it, you could make it one-way. He had done it once, but with this—opening them unconsciously—an Auphe might very well slip through before Cal could close it or lock it to one direction.

  Cal stared out the window, hand tightly fisted in the pocket of his jacket. I could see the round outline of it. Cal knew all about control. He had it in spades, although it might not appear like it to anyone else. To anyone who caught him napping on the couch, snarling at the Ninth Circle’s patrons, or slamming a revenant’s head repeatedly against a wall until brain matter came out its ears, it might not seem that w
ay, but every minute of every day Cal was exercising a control he wasn’t even cognizant of. His mind used it subconsciously to keep two years of his life lost, to keep it from driving him insane—literally. He himself used it on a more aware level to not kick daily multiple asses of every creature out there that mocked, scorned, or outright hated him for his Auphe half. He used it to stay in one place when running, from the police seeking Sophia and then from the Auphe, was all he had ever known. He used so much of it, in fact, that I wondered . . .

  Was there any left?

  When we finally stood outside Seamus’s building, Cal took several seconds to carefully scrape back every strand of hair and tie it off. Stalling. Thinking. “I think it might be best,” I offered before he could speak, “if we waited until later to worry about telling them about the gate. With Cherish and that chupacabra there—they have no need to know, even if we knew they could be trusted.”

  He nodded immediately with relief. “When all this Oshossi and Auphe shit is over. Yeah, then.”

  I slipped off one of my Tibetan prayer bead bracelets. I wore a double row of them on each wrist. Made of steel, they were as good at deflecting a blade as they were for meditation. I handed it to him and he stretched the mala curiously, then put it on. “Robin will think we’re going out,” he snorted.

  “I’m quite sure I don’t want to know what Goodfellow thinks about anything dating related. There’s only so much depravity I can face on a daily basis.” I tapped the beads around his wrist. “It’s for meditation. Say one mantra per bead. Do the entire bracelet every hour.”

  “Mantra, huh?” he said. “And what’s my mantra?”

  “Whatever you want it to be.” The temperature had dropped drastically, and the sun was gone. Several scattered flakes of snow blew past, a few hitting my jaw. “It’ll work best if it’s tailored for you. A word or two or three that makes you feel calm. Safe.”

  “ ‘Thermonuclear warhead’ is a mouthful.” He fingered the bracelet, then pulled the jacket sleeve down over it. “So is ‘wholesale Auphe genocide.’ ”