Downfall Read online

  Nik’s hand, warmer than mine—enough so that we couldn’t be the same species. It wasn’t possible or was it too possible? Did he care? I don’t think so. The heat of his hand slid into mine and passed over a pair of sunglasses, dark enough to hide whatever color my eyes decided to be at the time. “Thanks,” I muttered, putting them on.

  “Thank me for something like that again and I’ll kick your ass,” he said, calm and sincere.

  I couldn’t help elbowing him sharply in brotherly affection and appreciation. Nik, brother to a human, brother to a half-breed, and brother to an Auphe. He didn’t care which of the three.

  “Let me tell you something about Ishiah,” I said, the vivid and angry flashback of what had happened here twelve years ago circling in my head like a whirlpool. How could he do that? How could he do that to kids? Just . . . how? It kept going round and round.

  “Me? Why? He’s your boss.” He steered the car onto the interstate. “I wouldn’t say we were friends. His and my low tolerance for annoying personality types makes us too much alike.”

  I put my feet up on the dash in revenge of that remark, aimed solely at me.

  “He’s helped us before with Spring Heeled Jack. Saved Robin once when he was shot in the throat. He let us back in the bar after an Auphe killed one of the other peris to piss us off and terrorize us. He forgave us for it. All in all, without him, the three of us would be dead.” He slapped down the sunscreen and gave me a considering glance that meant he might steal my sunglasses. “I suppose I trust him. What else is there?”

  Trust him, I thought, and he had saved us from Jack. He, as a peri/ex-angel, could’ve died doing that or been expelled from NYC for killing a pagan storm spirit. It was in everyone’s best interest that Jack go down, but rules were rules whether I understood the concept or not. Ishiah understood them, but had fought against them. That time. I’d given him more truth than I thought he was prepared for in that carnival long ago. All the truth and then some. I imagined that he’d ignore it except when it came to Robin, but there had been Jack. And there had been Danyael, the peri who had died for no other reason than I worked at the bar with him, and the Auphe were making certain I knew no place of mine was safe. Danyael died because of me. Nik wasn’t wrong in saying Ishiah had forgiven us . . . forgiven me. I didn’t think I’d be that forgiving.

  I might’ve been wrong. People can change.

  “Never mind,” I said, elbowing Nik in the ribs again. “How about some fast food? I’m starving.”

  People and creatures and peri and angels, they do change.

  Helping us kill Jack and save Nik was one point chalked up to Ishiah to demonstrate he may have.

  One point. I wasn’t sure the thirteen-year-old in me would consider one point enough.

  I’d watch.

  We’d see.

  10

  Goodfellow

  The brothers called to let me know they were embarking on their twenty-hour road trip, during which Niko absolutely refused to stop and let Caliban rob a pharmacy for epinephrine so that he might gate instead. Neither would he steal a faster car with an improved sound system. He also ignored all the more tasty of the greasiest food establishments. Following all that, the brothers made it home . . . or to my home.

  I was stretched out on the contoured sofa and glared at them when they unlocked the door and came in, Cal wearing a T-shirt that said I (HEART) PIG WRESTLING and carrying with him a bloodstained, brain-spattered rusty shovel that had clearly been used to beat someone or something to death—the condo board, cooperative when enough money passed hands, would have no difficulty if anyone had spotted that. A filthy gardening implement carried by what could only be a mass murderer who enjoyed wrestling pigs while not out and about on a frenzied, shovel-waving killing spree. I suppose those all would cover the entirety of Arkansas’s statewide hobbies, true. Perhaps someone on the condo board was originally from Arkansas and would slide this under the rug in a fit of nostalgia.

  After leaning the shovel against the wall beside the door . . . for the latest in my string of housekeepers to see to, I could only imagine . . . he walked over to drop onto my chest a bag of what had the stench of grease-laden chicken parts compressed into deep-fried lumps and then fell on the sofa and my feet. “Eat up,” he drawled. “Even zombies wouldn’t mob that stretch of the highway. If this wouldn’t turn a zombie vegetarian, nothing would.”

  At my further investigation of the temperature with one fastidious finger, they were approximately twelve-hour-old stale chicken parts compressed into deep-fried lumps. Much more thoughtful. Fourteen-hour-old ones would be impolite. “Your gift giving astounds me.” I picked up the bag gingerly, hoping my shirt hadn’t been contaminated by the film of grease, and let the faux-food drop onto the rock crystal of the coffee table. It was the only safe surface to face what was soaking through the bag. “Also, calling me over ten times during a car trip because you are bored and wish to whine about all the things your evil brother won’t do is enough that I now consider you a seven-year-old girl.”

  “Yeah, I went to voice mail a lot after the first ten hours. I’m hurt.” He went for my phone and swiped it with what appeared to be mild interest off the table. Niko, who had dropped into my overstuffed recliner, gave me a subtle, close-to-invisible concerned shift of his shoulders. That was Niko for He’s traumatized. I’m letting him do as he pleases to distract him from it. Save me. The man could say a considerable amount in a shrug

  I switched my gaze back to Cal. The streaks of white in his hair had definitely grown—soon it would be half white—and his eyes weren’t gray with red specks now and again any longer. They were either completely gray or completely red and I’d already seen them change twice in the two minutes since they arrived.

  “I know,” he said when he caught me staring. “I knew it might happen some day, but . . .” He took a deep breath and gave his familiar snarky grin that did little to hide the darkness within. “Can’t do anything about it and I guarantee no one will ‘forget’ to tip me at the bar now.”

  I gave Niko credit for recognizing whose skills at distraction were more advanced of the two of us. My viewpoint when it came to trauma was to offer a different and more horrifying trauma to put things into perspective. It hadn’t failed me yet.

  I’d distracted Socrates from his refusal to slavishly follow the rules of his death sentence, his hemlock-laced state punishment. His annoyance became another rant at finding that same hemlock-poisoned goblet empty hours later after I’d poured it out during one of his several previous frothing rants as we discussed the ridiculousness of moral philosophy. One argument and he was teaching yet in Greece today . . . if under a pseudonym. Cal would be less of a challenge to preoccupy.

  “About my phone you’re smudging with your plebian fingers, word to the wise,” I warned carelessly as Cal found the pictures on the phone and began scrolling through them. The warning was far too late, of course. How else would I inflict twice the trauma if the warning was in time? “Do not look at the pictures.”

  “Why?” it was an idiotic question, but generally those were the only kind I could manage to pry from Cal if he’d had less than twenty-eight hours of sleep. The man was a sloth, more so than I was, which I’d thought impossible.

  “They’re mostly nudes and not the tasteful kind either.” I arranged a brocaded cushion under my head, then folded my hands across my stomach and waited for the trauma.

  It was bound to be intriguing, especially if he saw the several of Ishiah and me together, in all the ways there were to be together. And there were hundreds. Ishiah, for all his observance of human nature over his time spent in service of his God, once had no idea whatsoever what humans and particularly pucks could get up to when they put their mind to it . . . or their genitals. Or their minds and genitals when combined with kitchen appliances.

  For Cal personally the one of his brother might
be best. That might scar him for life, especially if I didn’t reveal that it wasn’t voluntary and had cost me five hundred dollars to the cleaning company that worked Niko’s dojo, including the dojo gym shower. I definitely considered that five hundred well spent.

  “What’s that?” Cal turned the phone from side to side and then upside down. His eyes narrowed and then widened in a phrase I like to pull from one of the more recent wars: Shock and Awe. He fumbled the phone and then tossed it back on the table as if it were on fire and singeing his practically nunnery produced hands. “That was . . . and you two . . . in fucking midair! In midair, I mean! Just midair!”

  “No, no, you were correct with the term ‘fucking.’ Wings aren’t simply for transportation.” I gave him the slowest and most depraved of smiles.

  I didn’t have to see the battle of curiosity against the profound desire for denial of this subject. I knew it was there. I knew Cal. “Ishiah doesn’t mind?” he asked dubiously. “With the whole used-to-be-an-angel thing? Because that was perverted. That was seriously perverted, and I don’t think possible if you have a skeletal system at all. If you’re not a jellyfish, that shouldn’t be . . .” He ran out of words to explain his own apparent lack of flexibility.

  Ah, naïve youth. I shrugged. “Do you honestly believe there is a creature alive I could not convert to my wild and wicked ways if I chose to? Why do you think the temple virgins of Rome and Greece disappeared? They did so long before the temples themselves did. It was something of a mystery at the time.” I crossed my ankles, which wasn’t easy while Cal was sitting on them, and tried on an innocent expression. I hadn’t pulled that one off . . . ever, I thought. “A mystery until now. It was me. You can’t have temple virgins if there are no virgins left.”

  “But there were other people. In the pictures. On the phone.” It was if he thought he kept the comments short, the situation would be easier for him to deal with. He was oh so wrong. “Who the hell else do you have naked pictures of besides Ishiah and the two of you while you were all . . . ?” He put his hands together in a twisted convoluted ball that I had to admit was fairly accurate of one of the pictures he must’ve seen. “Doesn’t Ishiah mind it’s not just him?”

  “It’d be easier to ask whom don’t I have nude pictures of.” I flashed him an amused smirk. “And Ishiah is of the opinion that if I merely look but do not touch, all is well. The ones of myself naturally don’t count.”

  He regarded the phone on the table as if it were a cobra about to strike, then gave me a look ripe with even more suspicion. “You? You take them of yourself too? Holy shit, that one that I thought was the Loch Ness Monster?” He was off my feet now and sliding down the couch.

  “The Loch Ness Monster is smaller, but yes.” I raised my eyes to a sky that lurked beyond my condo ceiling. “Did you think I wouldn’t have hundreds of self-portraits? I am my favorite subject.”

  “Niko? Tell me I didn’t scroll past Nik,” he asked in the way people do when they have no wish at all to actually know the truth. Cringing and wan.

  “So you didn’t get that far. Pity. A very nice shot. Artistic really. The wet hair falling to just above buttocks of marble, a true work of art.” Niko would take it as a joke in the ongoing effort to transfer Cal’s trauma, although it might be best for me to also do some transferring off my phone in case he, untrusting soul, checked.

  Cal glowered at me, for the first time since coming through the door not avoiding my eyes, not wanting me to see what he was becoming. That was progress. “And me?”

  “With your prudish fear of nudity in front of the same sex, you’d think not.” I met his crimson eyes with a sly Cheshire grin and said while fetching my coffee off the table, “But you’d be wrong. The time the Titan injured you and you were bedridden, I obtained at least ten pictures off that. Then there’s the spy camera I planted in your bathroom. Niko invariably covers it up with a washcloth, but I’m thinking he didn’t feel as if telling you about it would be in his best interest. I have a Web feed on that one. Fifty dollars a hit, and five dollars each minute after. You should consider lengthening your shower time, paying thorough and exceptional care to certain areas.” I sipped the coffee. “And if you could get your brother in there with you—”

  “I don’t know if I can fit that whole coffee cup down your throat,” Cal growled, “but I’m willing to try.” The fact that he hadn’t noticed he’d met my eyes with the currently Auphe ones of his own made the rather sad threat worthwhile.

  I slid a glance at Niko, who was far more relaxed now that Cal had different non-Auphe problems on his mind. With his eyes half-shut, he gave me a small, thankful nod before asking, “You said Grimm was at our place before Cal gated. What did he say after we left? He did send a few Bae after us, but that was the same as trying to take us down with the equivalent of attack Chihuahuas. Did he say what he wanted?”

  Ignoring the question, I raised an eyebrow and sat up with my cup. I pointed at the whipped cream on it, then to Cal or more specifically his crotch, and finally to my phone. “If you happen to be in the mood, I’d be interested to see what sort of artistic composition you could come up with.”

  He moved away from me again, nearly a foot this time, but wasn’t touching that topic except for “You drink coffee with whipped cream? Not very manly. Or puckly.”

  “I’ve lived a very long time and I have slept with more women than currently live in the continental United States. Whether or not I like whipped cream has nothing to do with where I put my cock, how often I put it there, or that there isn’t a woman in the world who would choose you over me if I put my mind to it.” I took a finger scoop of whipped cream and sucked it off my finger, hoping he was thinking that I was thinking of Ishiah as I did it—which I hadn’t been, but was now. Hmm.

  “Which isn’t to mention the equal number of men I screwed over the years,” I continued, regretfully saving the fantasy for later, “and in a time when most did have to follow certain societal guidelines or end up constantly fighting instead of having sex. I personally did not mind the fighting when it was for a good cause. If I am forced to kill someone to save him from his own prejudice, I will give in and do the necessary work. I’m giving that way.”

  I bared my teeth in the same grin I’d given hundreds of bigoted dead men. There’d been a staggeringly high turnover rate for priests during the Spanish Inquisition when I happened to travel through Seville sometime in the sixteenth century. Or would it be considered a turnover if that included turning them over to flip into their grave? That was an excellent question. “I’ve not killed quite as many as I’ve fucked over the years, but if you could resurrect any of those I did, I doubt they’d have comments whatsoever on how I take my coffee these days.”

  Cal was my brother in any life, this one included, but that did not mean I would accept a lack of respect. I had slain thousands for trying to force me to be something I was not. Women, men, and all the paien sexual flavors in between, I would do what I liked, fuck who I wished, and no one should dare try to stop me.

  Or mock my fondness for whipped cream . . . whether it be on a beverage or an intriguing body part from so many of which there were to choose. Ah, and I was back in another happy little pornographic fantasy. I might need to take a personal break in my bedroom for a short while. Hmmm.

  Cal slumped. “Yeah, sorry. I forget sometimes that I’m fucked up in the sexual arena and that you’re the gladiator that rules it,” he said ruefully. “So, did Grimm say anything?”

  Sadly, Cal was correct. He was fucked up quite severely in the sexual area, but that wasn’t his fault. The fact that he incredibly feared anything that might tempt him at all to be less so was his sacrifice. There would be no more Auphe, he’d sworn, and if he hadn’t once found Delilah, whose uterus had been clawed out by her high breed Alpha who had no tolerance for All Wolf cubs, and if I hadn’t found him nymphs who pollinated and couldn’t possible breed his ge
t, then I had no doubt he wouldn’t have any sex. He didn’t trust condoms against Auphe sperm or vasectomies against the Auphe body’s ability to repair itself in peculiar manners, and I could not say he might be wrong there.

  He did have that horny history of his throughout all his other lives, and it was a shame he was thoroughly heterosexual in this life, as even an Auphe couldn’t impregnate a human male, as opposed to some of his other lives when both sexes were fine by him. He’d preferred women, true, but he hadn’t been limited by them. Of course Greece, Rome, Macedonia, and many others he’d grown up in had been much more flexible when it came to sexuality during certain eras. What he was doing now was against his former natures, if only considering the part that had often been exceedingly oversexed—by human standards. By my standards he could’ve fit in more orgies, but on the whole, for a human, he’d been impressive. I should let him bitch. I shouldn’t call him on it. Aphrodite knew whether or not it was a sacrifice I could’ve made. She didn’t need to know. I knew. I couldn’t have made it.

  I handed Cal my coffee. “Try it. You’d be boggled what truly expensive whipped cream can do for one’s mood.” And mine made Bavarian cream churned by milkmaids in erotic push-up bras seem cheap. “What I’ve already told Niko. He’s back to play the game. That would be the game where he tries to slaughter you in some horrific manner while simultaneously trying to get you on his side to create his improved Auphe race. He’s schizophrenically optimistic, isn’t he?” I tapped his knee with a sharp finger. “It is a valid vetting process, I must admit. If he can kill you, you’re not worthy and the position goes to Bob-the-intern.” I tapped again. “I know you don’t want the position, terrible pay, long hours, becoming the epitome of soul-flaying evil, but do try to be worthy. I prefer you alive. I’m positive that killing Grimm will be a succinct thanks-but-no-thanks for the opportunity that his corpse won’t be able to ignore.”