Blackout can-6 Read online

  Things were looking bleak, my investigative skills even bleaker, and my dog-whispering skills nonexistent. For one brief second I thought about going to the cops and admitting I didn’t know who I was. They could plaster my face on their database to see if anyone was missing me. But there was the arsenal under my mattress, the fact I knew about monsters, and that I knew that the people living their lives in Nevah’s Landing were cocooned in ignorant bliss. I didn’t belong here. I knew that, but in a world full of houses, dogs, diner food, department stores, condos, sushi, cars, trains, subways, ordinary people doing ordinary things, could I belong anywhere? Or was I like a rat, sticking to the shadows; part of the world, but outside it too?

  Did rats have friends? Colleagues? Competitors? Were you born into the rat business or did you just fall into it?

  Did anyone give a shit I was gone?

  I did. A big one. I felt … a lack, to use a better word. There was a gaping hole in my life and it wasn’t only my memory. Every time I looked over my shoulder, I expected someone or something to be there. It never was, and until I found out who I was, I wouldn’t find out who or what I thought … I knew should be there. And I wouldn’t feel right until it was there.

  Of course my brain was scrambled and good, so what the hell did I know?

  A hand slapped me briskly on the back of my head, and Miss Terrwyn snapped, “Are you deaf, boy, or mentally challenged? Did you not hear me say be back bright and early?”

  I rubbed the back of my head and quickly pushed down the knee-jerk growl. “It is bright and early.”

  “Lord help me, a lazy one. Bright and early was three hours ago. Get up and get in there and start slinging the hash. And don’t you have anything but black to wear? You look like the Grim Reaper himself moping around. You think anyone wants Death serving him up pancakes? No, for a fact they don’t.”

  I was through the still-swinging doors as she kept dressing me down from behind. She could bitch like there was no tomorrow. I didn’t have to take it, even though, as I’d thought earlier, it was in a bizarre way comforting. I could turn around, walk out of here, and get a bus ticket to New York City—land of my fake IDs. But my brain twisted in a knot trying to avoid that reasoning. There was still no way to find out anything there; it was too goddamn big, and there was no denying there was something about this place. There was something about the Landing that gripped me, a hand around my wrist. I couldn’t deny something was here for me—a clue to who I was. A feeling of safety. A feeling of responsibility. A feeling of belonging, even though I knew there was no way that I did. It didn’t fill that hole in me, but it knew me, somehow, even if I didn’t know it.

  The confusion didn’t clear, but it did get shoved to the back of my mind at a particularly hard pinch over my ribs, and my day at the diner began all over again. It wasn’t bad. I didn’t get breakfast as I was late and too busy serving it, but I did get lunch. Joe, a big bald guy working the grill, made me a cheeseburger almost too big to fit on the plate. I had a separate plate for the thick-cut fries and a big glass of tea. That was another thing I learned about the South. The tea came already sweet, the kind of sweet where they tossed a tea bag in a pitcher of sugar and there you go. They called it sweet tea—a nice innocent name for something I would’ve called a glass of diabetic death. But it was good and the food was great. The grease was thick, the cheese hot and melting, the meat pink in the middle, and those were apparently things I liked quite a bit. I wiped at my chin with a napkin, gave Joe a thumbs-up, and he grunted.

  The same happened at supper—hot chili with a huge wedge of cheddar. A thumbs-up and a grunt. Four days later I was sitting at a table in the corner. It was Reuben-and-fries day, and I was trying to eat without getting it on the blue shirt Miss Terrwyn had given me, saying she couldn’t look at my silly vampire-wannabe white-boy self anymore. She must’ve gotten it from her brother, Lew. It was the same button-down look and it was patriotic as hell with the red-and-white checkered apron.

  Joy.

  But I wore it, because my boss wasn’t that bad. She had a soft spot for strays like her brother, whether she’d admit it or not. She’d acted as if the shirt were nothing, but she’d pushed my hands aside to button up the last three buttons for me and spun me around for a look to make sure I was all tucked in—like I were a kid off to his first day of school. She also hadn’t threatened to cut my dick off since that first day with Luther of the sinful desire, which meant her sharp eyes had seen no wickedness in my soul. That meant something. When all you know is that you have snarky tastes in T-shirts and you’re a killer of monsters and you pass Miss Terrwyn’s good-character test, you had to think maybe you weren’t too bad. If I’d killed monsters, then I’d saved innocent people. I defended the honor of teen girls from perverts, even if I overreacted somewhat. I wasn’t such a bad guy. When you had amnesia, finding out something that seemed simple was actually pretty damn huge. Cal Whoever-the-hell wasn’t a bad guy.

  Not a bad guy. Not a bad guy.

  That I repeated it silently to myself almost hourly was a little weird, but I didn’t hold it against myself. Shit, what hadn’t been weird since I’d woken up on that beach, except for working at the diner? I didn’t mind it. It was peaceful in a way. The customers were all regulars and not one of them was ever in a hurry. Although I didn’t smile as much as Miss Terrwyn told me I should, they still tipped big for the effort, which was good because Miss Terrwyn hadn’t been lying about the pay being for crap. And everyone in town passed through here. None of them had mentioned knowing me, not yet. But it had only been a few days. I hadn’t come across everyone in the Landing yet, but I would. There wasn’t any hurry to take off.

  There was one big goddamn hurry.

  I didn’t stop eating at the internal shout. I had them frequently, every day, but countering them was the inescapable, annoying feeling I was here for a reason. I tended to take the middle path and ignore both bickering sides of my brain. It wasn’t as if either side was reliable. All I could do was all I could do, and right now that happened to be dipping a French fry bigger around than my thumb into ketchup. The door of the diner opened. I didn’t hear it open, but I saw the light change on the tile floor. I saw someone’s shadow—someone very quiet because that door creaked like a weather vane in a high wind. I’d noted that the first time I walked through it. I’d also noticed there wasn’t any place where I didn’t instantly determine the back way out or notice who was coming through the front way in.

  This guy, the quiet one, was tall, dark blond hair pulled back in either a ponytail or a braid, olive skin. He was dressed in a black shirt, black pants, and a long gray duster that moved in the way my jacket had moved when I’d been armed. Everyone else who walked through that door was a happy and harmless goldfish, splashing obliviously along. This one was a shark, a dorsal fin slicing smoothly through the water with not a sound to give him away. My silverware—fork, steak knife, and spoon—had been wrapped in a napkin when I’d sat down to eat. The napkin was wadded up beside the plate. In a split second the steak knife was in my hand under the table; a second later I was back to slathering the fry with ketchup. This guy didn’t belong here, and he didn’t belong here in exactly the same way I didn’t.

  Wasn’t that a coincidence?

  I was chewing my French fry when a fist slammed down on the table, rattling my plate. “Where in the unholy hell have you been?” a voice demanded, sounding furious. There were other emotions behind the fury, but as that was the one most relevant when you were armed with diner silverware, that was the one I concentrated on.

  “Who wants to know?” I countered placidly, dipping another fry and tightening my grip on the knife. I wasn’t a bad guy, I’d figured that out, but I didn’t know the same about him.

  “Who?” The anger was overridden by another emotion, one that made me doubt that the fury had been completely real. This one was, though, as real as they came and easy to read: dread. “Your brother, Cal. I’m your brother.”


  Well, fuck me running.

  I hadn’t seen that coming.

  3

  I deserted the rest of my food and walked out of the diner, with more than my arm up my sleeve. I waved an “I’ll be back” at Miss Terrwyn, then ducked her scowl before hitting the door. She had a soft spot all right, but no tolerance for slackers. Outside, I considered standing but decided, whatever this guy had to say, I’d prefer to hear it sitting down. And with a knife, I thought, I could hurt someone standing or sitting. Was I that confident? I took stock in myself and four dead spider monsters and decided that, yeah, I was. This guy could be as quiet and armed as he wanted. I was armed too, and had a T-shirt whose EAT ME message no one had yet been able to take me up on. I might not be a bad guy, but nobody had said I couldn’t take care of myself.

  While I might have the haircut of a sheepdog, I was one badass motherfucking sheepdog.

  I sat on the bench and leaned back as if this sort of thing happened to me every day and twice on Christmas. “You’re my brother,” I echoed him. I started out very skeptically, but his darker skin to my pale, his blond hair to my black, all meant nothing when I looked into eyes the same color gray as mine. All right, we were related, but that didn’t mean brothers, and being related didn’t mean there was love, warmth, family bonding, and all that shit either. Cain and Abel. The Godfather movies. These were some of the things I hadn’t forgotten. I had to play it safe. I wasn’t a bad guy, but I wasn’t a stupid one either. If my brother was so worried about me, where had he been when I’d taken on four giant spider monkeys from Hell by myself?

  “Are you waiting for a brotherly man hug?” I drawled. “Yeah, keep waiting, buddy.”

  He crouched down in front of me to be eye to eye. I could feel my knees pop in outraged sympathy at the fluid movement. “You don’t remember, do you?” For a moment he looked lost beyond an innate confidence he wore the same as he wore his skin. That lost expression was the same lost I’d been feeling for days. “Damn. We were afraid that might be it.”

  “You found him? More lost than Atlantis ever claimed to be and there he is. Grab him and tag his poutanas yie ass before he wanders away again.”

  I spared the quickest of glances toward a brown-haired man about thirty feet down the sidewalk and moving toward us fast before I had the knife at the blond guy’s throat the second I faced him again. “No one is grabbing or tagging any part of me. Period. We clear?” No, I wasn’t stupid, and I didn’t like the looks of this one damn bit. I hadn’t killed Luther the perv when I tossed him through the window, and I had no real desire to kill anybody, because I was not a bad guy. This guy, though, wasn’t your average anybody. He was like me. He moved like me, carried weapons, was a killer. I’d seen that in one quick look. But what I couldn’t see was what kind of killer he was. I killed monsters. I didn’t know where he drew the line or if he had a line at all.

  “Goodfellow, stay back.” The eyes that so oddly mirrored mine stayed calm. “Cal, I’m going to take the knife. Don’t be alarmed.”

  Don’t be alarmed. He had balls, I had to give him that. He could fight me for the knife and, from the way he moved, he might give me a run for my money, shark to shark, but to tell me up front that he was going to disarm me and think that I was just going to let that happen. He could kiss my …

  Holy shit.

  The knife was gone and my hand was empty. I was unarmed and facing someone very dangerous. This was serious, but more than that, it was flat-out embarrassing. I flexed my fingers and dropped my hand as casually as if I’d been swiping a fly instead of holding a blade at someone’s throat. He was like me all right, only better, and that added proof to having the same color eyes. “Cal,” I said, disgruntled. “You called me Cal. So which is it? Calvin, Calvert, or Calhoun?”

  Brother. I might have a brother. I’d wrapped my mind around a lot of crazy-ass shit these past few days, but I could have hit a wall on this one. A brother … holy hell. When I looked over my shoulder at that empty spot, was he the one I was looking for? This guy? Tired, he looked tired—at least he did to me, with the skin under his eyes a deeper olive than the rest of his face, but his lips still quirked up slightly at the edges at my belligerent question. “Caliban. It’s short for Caliban.”

  “Like the monster, the one from Shakespeare.” Jesus. I was all about that, from the beach to my fake IDs to the real deal. I flashed monster cred as if it were a goddamn gold card. I was a wannabe like Miss Terrwyn had said. Again, embarrassing. Could you roll your eyes at your own idiotic ego?

  My remark about Shakespeare had the almost-smile fading from his lips. “No, not like the monster.”

  “Where have you been? Have you been here all this time? The days and days we searched without sleep, with barely a hope to keep us going, and, Zeus, what are you wearing? Is that gingham? Tell me that’s not a gingham apron. I’m not sure I care to go on in this vale of tears knowing that you are actually wearing a gingham apron. Why are you wearing a gingham apron?” The other one, the brown-haired guy down the sidewalk, had stayed back for all of two seconds before he was at our side, his green eyes pained as if it hurt to look at me.

  “Because I can’t cook,” I answered absently. It was happening. Right now. I hadn’t found my past, but it had found me and hauling family with it. I’d thought maybe associates in the same business. I’d thought maybe, wild chance, a friend or two. But a brother? I didn’t know if I was prepared for a brother. Worse yet, I didn’t know if a brother was prepared for me. Then again, I worked hard at the diner, and slaying monsters. I wanted to mouth off once or twice or twenty times, but I didn’t, because it wasn’t smart, careful, or safe. I’d been nothing but those three things since I’d woken up in the Landing, with the minor exception of throwing Luther through the window. Maybe I wasn’t giving myself credit. I wasn’t a bad guy, right? So maybe I was a good deal in the brother department too. On sale and barely used.

  As for his being a killer, if I was his brother and one he missed enough to come looking for, he couldn’t be that bad either. No worse than I was, or I wouldn’t have had anything to do with him. I knew right from wrong. I knew people from monsters.

  One, like Luther, you disciplined. One, like the spiders, you destroyed.

  “You’re wearing an apron with ruffles because you can’t cook. Ah. That makes perfect sense. You’ve no idea how I appreciate your clearing that up for me,” the other guy, the fashion critic, said. “You’re wearing blue as well? Bright, frighteningly neon blue? I’ve never seen you wear anything but black and gray. And your hair, what by all that is unholy … Actually I approve of the hair. If less were hanging in your face, that would be better, but overall—I approve.” He sat on the bench beside me with a weary “Whoosh,” stretched his legs, and wrapped an arm around my shoulders to give me a slight shake, then a rough squeeze. “You scared us, kid. Scared the Hades out of us.”

  I dropped my eyes to his hand on my shoulder. The man, the self-proclaimed brother who had disarmed me as if I were a kitten with a ball of yarn, smiled. “There’s that brotherly man hug you’re so intent on avoiding.”

  “He’s my brother too?” I asked, mildly panicked.

  Mr. Touchy-feely answered for himself. “No, you’re not that fortunate. You’re not as endowed, not as fashion conscious, not as rakishly charming, not as … Malaka!” he yelped as I stabbed him in the leg with the fork I’d had up my other sleeve. I had two sleeves. I wasn’t only arming one of them. I’d slipped a knife up one and a fork up the other before I left my table in the diner.

  “I’m not as crazy about being touched either.” I stood up, pulling the fork out of his leg as I did, to face “my brother.” All that smart, careful, and safe I’d been so smug about a moment ago had disappeared. That was interesting. As for the not-a-bad-guy thing … I knew I shouldn’t kill people, but I didn’t think good guys stabbed people with forks either. These two were bringing out the worst in me or they were bringing out the me in me. I hoped it was the firs
t. “If you think I’m going to swallow whatever crap you two are throwing at me without some questions, lots of goddamn questions, and without some proof, then brother or not, you don’t know me at fucking all.”

  But maybe it wasn’t them at all. Maybe it was just him doing it, the one I’d stabbed, because I smelled it now. I smelled him.

  Three drops of blood fell from the tines of the fork to make a trinity of scarlet on the sidewalk. The smell grew even stronger. My subconscious had known what my conscious hadn’t. I should’ve smelled the difference, noticed the difference sooner. If they were telling the truth, though, they knew me and I knew them, which meant I was used to them, used to the green-eyed one’s smell. He wasn’t human. He didn’t smell like Lew or Terrwyn or anyone else in this town. He smelled of grass and trees, the musk of bucks in rut, the dew on a meadow blanketed by a morning mist. He also smelled of a fox in the henhouse.

  Sneaky.

  “You’re one of them.” I changed my grip on the fork, a less respect-my-space hold and more of one suited to puncturing a carotid artery. Thank God I hadn’t grabbed a spork. “You’re a monster.”

  Why I could smell that and no one else could was something I didn’t have time to think about. I had to decide whether to take out a monster in broad daylight in front of the diner patrons watching through the window and the sheriff who’d be showing up soon. Or should I back away from this all? Let these two explain themselves. Do the sensible thing like I had since I’d washed up here.

  Fuck that.

  He was a monster.

  Abomination.

  I slashed at his throat with the fork; then something happened. I had no idea what. It was that abrupt, as if I were watching a movie and the power went out. No people. No light. Nothing at all. When I woke up in the backseat of a car, “the something that had happened” was driving and I could see the hair was in a braid, not a ponytail. Not that it mattered, but it was always nice to get things cleared up. I sat up slowly and rubbed my forehead with the heel of my hand. It hurt—my head not my hand. Not much, but there was a definite mild ache.