Blackout

12

I didn’t want to leave Niko alone, not until he was one hundred percent, so I asked Goodfellow to stay with him. The puck had calls to make, the rest of that party to set up. Niko could recover and, between calls, Goodfellow could bore the crap out of him by discussing the origins of Roman vomitoriums, because he’d yet to shut up about it. Show the guy some puke and it was nostalgia time for the wild and crazy days of a crumbling empire.

Niko was all about history, though. He might enjoy it … until the part where men were gladiators, body oil was cheap, and if there was a hole, someone’s dick was shoved in it. It reminded me of pictures in the news where deer would get their heads stuck in plastic Halloween pumpkins. I could visualize oiled-up gladiators running around in a drunken, panicked frenzy with their dicks stuck in ancient Roman wine bottles.

“Amphorae,” Robin said, punching in another number on his cell while Niko moved through some katas on the exercise mats, his way of recuperating—working the poison out of his system. “Ancient Roman wine vessels were called amphorae.”

“Shit, did I say that out loud?” The fact I had was only half the reason I was getting out of our place, but it was reason enough. I’d already popped some Tylenol for the residual ache in my legs. “But, hey, whatever. Fun, new knowledge … about the correct name of where gladiators could put their dicks if they were out of other options.”

“In Rome, you always had options.” His wicked smile was enough to have me bolting for the door as he started talking on the phone again.

“Cal, I told you I didn’t want you going out alone, not when Ammut obviously knows who you are and where to watch for you.” Niko stopped his workout. He was still paler than someone with his darker skin should be and the blond hair was almost brown from sweat. He looked sick, better, but still sick, and I kept that in mind.

“It’s broad daylight,” I protested. I’d showered—for a vegetarian, Niko could vomit with the best of them—and now I was back in fresh jeans and a black T-shirt. Just black. I’d run through all my clean and barely passable as clean T-shirts with nasty sayings that came courtesy of Goodfellow’s gift certificate, and had borrowed one of Nik’s shirts. Or stolen it, let’s be honest.

“And we were only just attacked in broad daylight,” he said, extra slowly in case I’d missed that fact.

“Inside. I plan on staying outside where all the world can see. I have a hunch about Ammut I want to check out. You need to get better and you have only hours to do it. I’ll be back in no time.” From the sweat he ignored running down his face, he wasn’t convinced. He squinted his eyes at the flow, like Clint Eastwood … damn macho. The sweat did not exist; only me and my idiocy did. “I’ll even bring back some Pepto. Have you in the pink in no time.” I grinned and was out the door before his poison-weakened body could lay a beat-down on me … or a sit-down. That was more likely. He’d tackle me and sit on my back until I came to my senses.

Unfortunately, the senses I was coming to weren’t what he wanted, and I slammed the door behind me, sprinting down the block as fast as my sore legs could carry me. Neither he nor Robin came after me. I’d trusted them in the past week, more than I’d have guessed I could trust anyone when I’d woken up in Nevah’s Landing. Now it was their turn, and they came through. Without trust, in our world—my world now—you had nothing. It made me feel kind of bad that I’d lied like a dog to them and lied better than Niko had to me since he’d shown up in my lost life. That answered that question. It definitely made him the better brother.

I had no plans on staying outside and I had no hunches, gut feelings, nothing like that about Ammut. I did have them about someone else, which was why I went back to the museum to see the mummy … Wahanket? I’d done something to him, something bad, something that kept trying to claw its way out of the pit in my memory that Niko’s nepenthe potion had shoved it into. And it wasn’t only that, with every new hour I had more and more memories leaking into my brain; dirty dishwater into a sponge. Dirty, because shadowed Cal in that shadowed photo wasn’t clean, but that wasn’t my judgment call to make. That wasn’t my job; being a brother was. Here was hoping Wahanket didn’t hold a grudge.

Sangrida—I remembered her name, which was helpful—was equally helpful in walking me past security again and escorting me to the correct basement door. I thought I was done with basements after Ammut, but they weren’t done with me. “Why is your brother not with you?” Her blond hair was pulled back into a tight, elaborate braid that looped around her head. She was Princess Leia—with a bleach job and a bucketful of steroids.

“Ammut,” I explained. “Nik’s okay, but he needs to stick close to the toilet. Hurling issues.”

Apparently Goodfellow wasn’t the only one with Too Much Information syndrome. She sighed, her massive bosom heaving. On other women it would’ve been breasts, melons, tits, whatever, but on her, it was bosom. If I forgot that—of all the things I’d forgotten from the last museum memory, this was a thought that still echoed—I was positive a size-eleven Valkyrie boot would end up in my ass. It was a bosom, to be respected, not stared at, and, yeah, maybe I’d go on down the stairs while she was studying me, contemplating God or Odin knew what. I did know that I did not want to end up as Thor’s bitch in Valhalla. “Thanks, ma’am,” I said hurriedly, and went down the steps faster. A mummy versus a Valkyrie—I’d take the first any day.

There was a basement, then a subbasement, and it was somewhat familiar. Unfortunately, the familiar was of the where-the-fuck-is-he kind. Wahanket liked his privacy and that made finding him difficult; I remembered that—I did, a genuine flash of recalled annoyance. This time I worked on sniffing him out. Although there were quite a few things down there that smelled mummified, the largest one was the one I tracked down. It was a strong scent of mummy and … barbecue.

He hadn’t moved from last time. I remembered that too—the large space. The computers mixed with Egyptian artifacts. The mummified cats perched on surrounding crates towering high. Salomes wherever you looked. Pooh … the koala bear, I meant, was still dead on a metal table. Long dead and no longer undead and that was good. Then I got a look at Wahanket and figured out why he hadn’t moved to a new undiscovered location.

He was a torso.

Granted, a torso with a head and one arm, but, basically, a torso.

Yeah, now I remembered. I remembered the axe.

The other arm and two legs were neatly stacked in a pile on the floor and beside that was a large curved needle strung with wire, the same wire that was holding that one arm on with neat stitching at the shoulder. As soon as Wahanket saw me, the arm dragged the body behind an Egyptian bench of some kind and blackened teeth bared as the mummy hissed at me. I’d done a bad thing to him all right. Part of me felt every bit like the monster he was, part of me didn’t give a damn, and another part of me felt as if the cats were cheering me on.

And yet another part of me chose to ignore the shadows that grew around me. They were my shadows, and I was done denying or refusing that.

“Hank, it looks like a helluva craft project you’ve got going on.” I pulled up a chair, gold with smooth pieces of inlaid blue, red, and black stone. Sitting, I spread my legs some, took out a knife in one hand—I didn’t see a gun doing much good—and patted my knee with the other. In seconds a mummified cat was draped across the denim, making a grinding, grumbling growl of pure bliss. Where Salome was gray and hairless, had lost all her bandages, and was sporting a small gold and ruby hoop earring, this guy—and it was a tomcat with shriveled, mummified balls—was mostly wrapped. But between the yellowed bandages, the skin was paler in spots and almost black in others. It was spotted like a piebald pony.

“How you doing there, Spartacus?” The first to step forward, he got the name—so sayeth the movie. I rubbed between his ears. Goodfellow knew everything and everyone—Captain Cook, Ramses, the Pied Piper, and even Caligula, he’d once said. I couldn’t quite hear the echo of that particular memory, but I knew it. Chances were he’d known Spartacus in the day too … and had that movie cued up on his DVR and ready to go at all times. Plus, Salome might be less inclined to bite off my head if I brought her a friend.

“You did this. You did this to me, you empty vessel. Worthless and weak.” The mouthy mummy remained pretty crispy too. Niko … Niko had set him on fire. That was what had happened. It wouldn’t destroy him, he’d said. It wouldn’t hurt either, only slow him down. Good informants were hard to find; he’d said that too. Wahanket would survive it, and he had. Then I’d come along—me and a convenient fire axe. He’d survived that as well, but that impression … It would be a little more lasting.

That was the first time I’d seen the shadows and felt the pain inside. That was the first time my brother had drugged me. Niko had also said the mummy had once tried to shoot me and before I’d made with the axe, he had tried to strangle me as I’d deprived him of something. Wahanket had been clear. I’d had something he’d wanted, but I’d lost it. But what was that something? The same thing Ammut wanted? The same quality the boggles and Wolves thought I was missing? Creep, creep, came the memories, but not fast enough—not as fast as Ammut was moving.

Now was the time to find out the why of all those things. That was why I’d come back to Wahanket. He knew who I was—what I was—and he was going to tell me. I wasn’t waiting on the Nepenthe venom to wear off on this. This was something I might not want to know, but I needed to know. Ammut had proved too dangerous to the others to let things take their natural course.

Wahanket, professional disperser of information, was going to tell me all those things I didn’t want to hear about Cal, but I needed to, because Cal was far more likely to be able to handle Ammut than I was. Cal would be able to protect his family and friend when I might not be able to. The first night in Nevah’s Landing, I’d turned out the light and slept in the darkness, because, while monsters lived in darkness, so did killers.

I’d guessed killer for me. I thought now I’d guessed wrong.

“I don’t think I’m as empty as you thought.” I sniffed the air. “You smell Extra Crispy. I’d have taken you for an Original Recipe guy, but you never know.” Spartacus wrapped his paws around my wrist and proceeded to chew away mouthfuls of the rugged, water-stained black leather jacket and spit them on the floor. “You never goddamn know. Take another look at me, Wahanket, and tell me what I was and what I’m becoming again. Tell me or I’ll chop you into pieces so small you won’t be able to stitch yourself back together with your teeth, because I’ll pound them to dust. And whatever you have that passes for lips, I’ll rip off. Your gums … hmm. What the fuck. I’ll just pop your head in a box and toss it in the East River. See how that affects your sewing project. Home Ec. What a bitch, huh?”

Spartacus agreed by tearing off half my jacket sleeve. Oh yeah, this destructive little shit was going straight to Goodfellow. For all the torment he’d caused me, the puck deserved it. Salome might kill things and people; this guy would kill an apartment—more specifically Goodfellow’s penthouse.

Wahanket’s marsh-light eyes sharpened as they fixed on me. “You are correct. You are becoming again.” The teeth snapped in a satisfied smile … or mummy constipation; it was a hard expression to read. “You shall be you again, and if Ammut does not have you, one day I will.”

I tickled Spartacus’s stomach and the cat opened his mouth to show me a preview of Jaws 15, the IMAX version. Luckily, it was a yawn. “Yeah, I’m bored too, buddy. Now where did I leave that axe?” I didn’t ask as a threat. I asked out of genuine curiosity. I was bored. I was done playing around with this barbecued son of a bitch. Playing with something that can’t run or even crawl—where was the challenge in that? “Who am I, Wahanket? And if you don’t cough up something in the next five seconds, you’ll have to write down the information I want, because I’m going to cut out your tongue.”

Wahanket pulled himself up onto the ancient bench, lying on his chest to watch me. He wasn’t bored at all. “Do not worry. I shall tell all you wish to know. The meat tastes sweeter when it knows why it was chosen, flavored with the disbelief that any could bring it down. Despair and disbelief, nothing teases the palate so much as those.” Gold flakes had transferred to the bench into the blackened flesh of his hand. I could see the spark of them, a starry night, when he pointed at me. “You … You are Auphe.”

That was what the boglet had said. I was off, that wasn’t news. I was absolutely off. But the word wasn’t completely that. It was somewhere in the middle of “Off” and “Ouph-fey.” A human tongue couldn’t exactly replicate it. But I could see the word in my head, dripping with black bile, smelling of blood, part of me. In every part of me.

I was Auphe.

Always had been, always would be. A word made of screams and slaughter, murder and madness, albino pale skin, red eyes, the shine of hypodermic-needle teeth—more needles than a hospital would need in a month. White, red, and metal, like my Peter Pan crocodile.

Here you have brothers and sisters. Baby boy, baby boy.

The shadows grew wider around me, but I didn’t stop. I did have a brother. Not one that a crocodile had given me, but a real one, and he needed the real Cal. And real or not, Cal or not … I kept my promises. I told Niko I’d be his brother and there was only one way to do that—by bringing Cal home. “Auphe,” I said with a distance so great that I may as well have been on the moon. “Who are the Auphe?”

“Were. Who were the Auphe?” One of the flakes of gold fell from his hand to the floor. A speck of the sun falling to Earth, a soul falling much farther. “They are all gone now, except for you, half-breed. But once they were the first.”

“The first what?”

“The first of anything. The first of everything. They were the first to walk this world. They were the first to kill simply for pleasure. They invented murder, created torture, conceived terror. This world was theirs for millions of years.” The yellow glow softened. “So very long ago, when Death itself bowed to its masters.”

“They set the gold star standard for nightmares like you. Great. How did I get to be one? Half of one?” Because one of them damn sure hadn’t been trolling for a good time and met up with Sophia. Easy or not, she had to have some limits.

The gold is gone, and you’re still here, brat. You’re still goddamn here.

Or not. Sometimes a whore is a whore to feed herself and her children. Sometimes it’s for drugs or rent or because it’s her body to do with as she pleases. And sometimes someone like my mother sets a gold star standard of her own. They’d paid her to make me … not to have me. You have babies; you make monsters. I’d been an experiment; I knew it. I knew it. I didn’t know why yet, why the Auphe would want a half-breed, but the hell with the how and the why of it. That was coming fast and furious on its own, clawing up through my subconscious. I’d know, whether I was ready or not, and I didn’t need this asshole to tell me that.

“I’m a monster then, like Ammut?”

Wahanket laughed. It sounded as if he were choking on his own mummified organs, if he hadn’t removed them. “No, you are not a monster like Ammut. Ammut will be a child in your shadow when you return. Ammut is simply a creature like any other creature, eating to live. Enjoying meals that taste especially finer than others, as you would taste. She kills to survive. You … Auphe … You are the only monster in the world. We all pale before you.” He clacked his teeth together. “Which is why you are a challenge; why your life will taste the most flavorful of all there is.”

This piece of shit was sewing himself back together for one reason only—to get his own chance of sucking me dry of Auphe. To make a meal of someone and something he should never have fucked with from day one. Informants are difficult to come by, eh? Then we’d have to try harder. This one had answered his last question, although he had told me what I required. Cal, the real one, could handle Ammut. It was all I needed to know.

I put the mummified cat down and I found that axe.

When I was finished, I didn’t need to put his head in a box. A hundred skull fragments weren’t going to knit a Christmas sweater or put themselves back together again. I dropped the axe in the midst of a pile of shattered bone, cracked resin, and one very ex-mummy. “The first,” I said to the remnants. “I’m one of the First of this world.” They invented murder, created torture, conceived terror, he’d said.

“Invent, create, conceive, and you wanted to screw with that. You should’ve thought about what the First would do to you instead of what you would do to it.” Bone crunched under my boot. “And you, mighty Wahanket, were barely worth the fucking time.”

When I turned to leave, I felt a weight thud onto my shoulder. Spartacus rubbed his bedraggled, bandaged head against mine with the same death-by-avalanche purr that Salome had. “I’m not leaving you, Kojak. I have a better home for you. In fact …” The eyes still glowed on top of the crates. Wahanket had made pets, but he hadn’t made any friends. Not one had interfered in his destruction. There were what looked like ten mummy cats watching me watching them. “Eh, why not? If Goodfellow is so oversexed that he can’t put his damn pants on to answer the door, he deserves what he gets. Come on, guys. Get your wrinkly King Tut tails in gear and let’s show a trickster what trickery and revenge are all about.”

One of the best things about NYC … An ex-but-soon-to-be-again monster can walk down the sidewalk surrounded by a bunch of loping dead cats, catch a cab with an extra fifty thrown in by calling himself a vet student with some patients in dire need of bandage changing, make an extra stop, and not long after that be back home. I opened the door, sat on the couch, grabbed the remote, and turned on the TV.

Niko was now in the kitchen, showered and mixing something that would not only eradicate any Ammut toxins remaining, but probably anything living at all. “Where did you go?”

“Wouldn’t you like to know, Mom?” I changed the channel. “Oh, hey, Robin.” He had started talking about tonight’s party when I’d left for the museum and he was still on his cell phone, making plans for the catering, talking a mile a minute, when I’d returned. If Ammut ate us, that would be one big, fat wasted catering bill. “You’d better shut off your phone and get your ass back home. I left you a present.”

He brightened, a magpie at the sight of a shiny coin. “A present? I love presents. I can’t believe you, especially you, actually got me … Oh, skata. What am I thinking?” He jammed the phone in his pocket, grabbed his coat, and was out the door before I made it to the next channel.

“What did you do?” Niko demanded, turning off the blender. “What did you get him?”

I held up one arm that was missing three-fourths of what had been a tough, thick leather jacket sleeve and grinned at him. “Eleven dead cats. The doorman thought it was hilarious. I don’t think he likes Robin much. And I think the condo board is meeting as we speak to discuss enforcing pet limits with a subcommittee looking into pet aesthetics. Not everyone can be Best in Show or win beauty pageants. Stuck-up asses.”

“Buddha save us.” From the glance he gave the blender and then me, he was entertaining the thought of throwing the contents at me. “You took Wahanket’s mummy cats. Why?”

I shrugged, turned back towards the TV, and changed channels again. “Well, first off, he was a malicious evil shit who killed cats to make mummies out of them. That is beyond sick. They deserved a better home.”

“Don’t tell me you just said, ‘He was a malicious evil shit.’ “

“That would be reason two.” I clicked off the TV. “No one needs an informant like that. I don’t care how hard it is to find one. He tried to shoot me, strangle me, wanted to eat me, and he was a cat killer. The first three I could deal with. Cat killer, no.” I peeled off the ruined jacket and tossed it over the back of the couch. Twisting again, I could see the kitchen area where Niko was thinking. I could see the quicksilver motion behind his eyes and all but hear the hum. Wheels turning, and it was a few hours too soon for that.

I tried to distract him. “Since you found me, Niko, tried to show me who I was”—and keep me who I wasn’t, I thought—”you’ve been something for me to shoot for. You walk the straight and narrow. You’re a good man, best man I’ve known in my whole week now. But you’re a good man in a job where good is a drawback. You’ve made allowances, excuses, and you’ve made them, I know, for what you thought were the right reasons. Let a cat killer live; maybe get information to save other lives. But, Nik, when you do wrong, the reason is never right enough.” It was a difficult concept to grasp as the shadows wrapped around me, but I did. For now … I still did. Cal wouldn’t, but I did. Then again, I might be underestimating Cal. For himself, he might never know, but for his brother … I thought he did. Niko had his honor, and I would’ve guessed Cal would do anything to let him hold on to it. Who’s to say a monster can’t love his brother?

“You are lecturing me?” Niko sounded as if that would knock him flat before his toxic milk shake would.

“I’ve seen the T-shirts I bought myself for Christmas. I’ve seen the way Wolves and others act around me. If there’s something to be done, something in the gray area,” the dark areas … darkest of the dark, “I think that’s my half of the partnership.” I was proud of that choosy phrasing. “Think,” not “know”—and I did know.

If wrong had to be done, I would do it. One of the First, born of the First, and living in the shadow and the murk. As the details of my life grew less and less sketchy, I knew that all of his life Niko had protected me. I’d done the same for him when I was old enough to, and I’d keep doing the same. I would let him be who he was by being who I truly was or had been. I would step into those shadows for the last and final time to let Niko step back into the light where he belonged.

Right now, shadows or not, I was hungry. I got up and made a sandwich, all while Niko continued to watch me, a distinct aura of suspicion overcoming the odor of the sludge in his untouched glass. “You said you’d stay outside. You lied to me.”

I raised my eyebrows at the last remark, which took real balls for him to actually say, what with all he was trying to keep from me. I chewed my bite of peanut butter and jelly without comment. It was enough to have Niko drinking his sludge. Ninjas in glass houses …

I finished and changed the nonsubject. “Goodfellow said we’d need formal wear for the party. What’s formal wear?”

“You are dead to me. No, you are worse than dead. The worst thing I can do to you is let you live to make every minute of every day of the rest of your life an eternal hell.”

When he opened his door this time, Goodfellow was dressed—in a way. With wavy hair standing on end and a ratty bandage draped over it, he was wearing an expensive, a given there, tux—James Bond style. I could admit, masculinity intact, that it was pretty sharp, or it had been once. Now it was missing one pant leg from the knee down, one arm at the shoulder, and there was a mummy cat hanging from his shredded tie.

Spartacus showed his garbage-disposal teeth in a grin at me as he swung from the cloth strip that was meant to be knotted in a bow tie around the puck’s neck. “Spartacus, hey, pal, are you telling Robin how to dress?”

“You named it. You actually named it, and you named it Spartacus. Zeus, I hate you.” He stalked off, Spartacus hanging in there happily. Inside the penthouse, the contour couch was now a scrap pile of leather, stuffing, and wood. The walls were clawed until they formed the optical illusion of the bars of a prison cell. A once highly expensive rug was about a thousand pieces of cloth mixed with strips of frayed bandages scattered about the place, and undead cats lounged everywhere. Salome perched on top of that giant refrigerator with dimly glowing eyes crossed in pleasure—a queen overseeing her domain and her new minions. It was only right. Every powermad villain merited minions.

Ishiah, his tux in one piece, closed the door behind us. “This wasn’t the brightest thing you could have done, Caliban. Robin is one of the best, if not the best, tricksters in this world. Are you familiar with the Greek tale of Oedipus Rex? It wasn’t simply a story. It was truth. There were two prophecies. Robin had nothing to do with the first or the second, but when chariot rage, the original road rage, ended in murder, he did arrange for the rest of the prophecy to come true. Marrying mothers, jabbing out eyes with golden hairpins, suicide. All three members of that royal family were murderers or potential ones. Tricksters don’t care for either. That was only a job to him. Justice. This”—he waved an arm at the inside of the penthouse and twenty-four avid yellow eyes followed the movement—”is personal.”

I’d felt my own eyes cross the same as Salome’s, but mine was in boredom, not pleasure. “Sorry. I missed most of that. Oedipus Rex … Was that a dinosaur? Like a T. rex?”

“I may as well post the ad for your replacement now.” He followed the puck. “Your tuxes are in both bathrooms. If your ‘gifts’ haven’t eaten them.”

He flipped me off when I called after him gravely. “Adoption is love. I saw that on the side of a bus, so it’s gotta be true.”

“That wasn’t very angellike,” I added as I watched the finger disappear with him.

“Understandable, since he isn’t one.” Niko went for the first bathroom. “And if Robin does cause you to blind yourself with anything from an antique hairpin to a banana, I will have no sympathy.”

All the cats purred louder as I walked through them. At least they were happy to see me. Dogs didn’t like me and I’d figured out why now. Nothing could smell a twisted genetic product like a Wolf or a dog … but cats didn’t have a problem with me. After all, they played with their victims. No rush to judgment there.

I found the other bathroom, only because the door was open. I wasn’t opening any closed doors here. Seeing wet feathers in the massive whirlpool tub was enough to have me dressing so quickly, I tucked the shirt into my underwear instead of my pants. The tux was all right, black on black—with no tie of any kind. Goodfellow definitely knew me there, but Miss Terrwyn would’ve again been shaking her head at my vampire-looking, silly white boy self. Except that vampires existed, and I wasn’t white. My skin was pale, but it hadn’t come from being some British-Scottish-Irish-German-American mutt. I’d gotten that from the Auphe; otherwise I’d have been a pale brown like Niko … or our mother.

Born of the first murderers to walk the earth and unable to get a goddamn tan. Welcome to my world.

It was enough to make me wish for the whole amnesia enchilada back and not the half-and-half I had now. But wishes weren’t promises, and tainted genes or not, I was keeping that promise to Nik. It didn’t matter that he didn’t know I’d made it. I knew, and that was enough.

I’d woken up in water, sand, and dead spiders with a deep hatred of monsters. Then I found out I was one. I hadn’t seen anything that addressed that on the side of a bus—only the adoption ad. Adoption and love—good stuff, but self-worth? You were on your own there. Ammut thought I had worth anyway and then some. Here was hoping she’d show up and tell me all about it. I opened the bathroom door back up to face cold ruthless eyes not quite an inch from mine. Ammut’s?

Worse.

They were Goodfellow’s.

“Do you know there are things … No, there are words, actual, simple words—I’m reasonably positive that I could trim them down to six total—that I could say to you that would make you unable to function sexually for five years? Even with yourself?”

Whoa. “You’re a witch?” Couldn’t be. There was no magic in the world. Monsters, yes. Magic, no. It was one of those things I did know instinctually without anyone telling me.

“No, Caliban. I’m not. I’m merely extremely knowledgeable in the psychosexual fields and I’m also very, very vindictive.”

“Um … Niko? You out there?” I backed up a step and Goodfellow followed, maintaining the exact lack of distance.

“Remember Alexander the Great? Not that great, especially when he poisoned my friend. What’s good for the gander is … good for the gander.” He smiled. It was the first of his smiles I’d seen that wasn’t sly or wicked. It was goddamn scary. “Then there was Genghis Khan. He should’ve paid more attention to the blade I gave his kidnapped princess and the ingenious place she was hiding it and less to killing every male child as tall as his steppe pony’s shoulder. The princess was a nice woman and didn’t like child killers any more than I do. Ah, and who do you think said, ‘Release the Kraken’? That horny rapist named Zeus? Hardly. He was always trying to steal my thunder.” Two more steps in perfect synchronization—me back, him forward.

“And then there’s you—you who released the equivalent of the Ten Plagues on my home. Can you imagine what I plan on doing to you?”

“Nik!”

“Yes?” Nik was behind Robin, his hand on the puck’s shoulder. “Do we have a problem?”

“I think Goodfellow wants to poison me, stab me with a knife I’d prefer sterilized first, then make me watch a god-awful, bad-special-effects movie from the eighties.” I slid past him before he tried to escape Niko’s hand. “I could’ve stabbed you with that fork, you know,” I told the puck, “but I didn’t. And with the cats, I saved lives … unlives … whatever, and this is the thanks I get. Bastard.”

“You could’ve left them with Wahanket,” Goodfellow snapped.

That flipped a switch in me. Cheerful and dark. From the feel of it on my face, my smile was the mirror of what the puck’s had been—goddamn scary. “In spirit maybe. But the only thing useful with Wahanket anymore is a DustBuster and a Ouija board.” I put the smile away. It wasn’t for them. I was saving it for Ammut. “And you’ll be able to find homes for them. Every rich vamp will want his own mummified cat. Except Spartacus. He stays here. He’s for Salome.”

“And how precisely do you figure that?”

I kept Niko between him and me. “Spartacus likes me. Salome wants to eat me. Okay, she doesn’t eat. Kill me. Whatever. If Salome likes Spartacus, I have it made. He’s my wingman to peace and not being eaten.”

“You are truly pathetic.” Goodfellow shook his head, but he lost his bad humor or switched it to a new source when he saw my shoes. “You are not wearing black sneakers with a Brioni tux. I won’t allow it. I won’t be seen within a mile of you.”

“If Ammut is there, I plan on some running. Those shoes you gave me—nice for looking at my reflection, but they suck for running.”

“I think it’s time for the party. The discussion about history-making vengeance and foot apparel can take place later,” Niko interrupted. “I do have a date, and it’s not Ammut, waiting for me there.”

That date was Promise, the sad vampire. It sounded like a children’s book. Promise, the sad velvet vampire—won’t you be her friend? I dimly remembered why she was so solemn now. Her kid … Her daughter had died. No … That wasn’t quite it. Think, think. Ah. Her daughter had been killed—by Niko. Yeah, that was right. Her daughter had been a true nightmare of a creature. She’d done things that not only were unforgivable but also not survivable, depending on whom she did them to. She’d done those things to us all, but most particularly to Nik. Promise had raised a monster beyond redemption.

Why was I sure Niko was incapable of doing the same?

Nature versus nurture.

Genes versus a determined big brother, with fish sticks and Scooby Doo cartoons, who’d taken care of you from your first breath.

Which wins?

After we met Promise at her place, then took her chauffeured car to the Tribeca Grand, the first thing I did when we made it past the doormen, all four of whom looked with disdain at my shoes, I pulled her aside. “Can I talk to you for a second?”

She waved Niko back with a small flick of plumcolored oval nails in a motion so minute that I barely saw it. I wished I had him trained half that well, but then again the rewards were vastly different. “What is it, Caliban? Are you doing better? Niko has been not very forthcoming on the subject.” That irritated her. I could tell by the rapid touch of her fingers checking her hair. The brown and blond was swept up into some sort of something that probably had a complicated name I didn’t have a clue about, but Promise wasn’t the nervous, fidgety type. She was the still pond, the unmoving stone, the unchanging mountain—the same as Niko. Like for like.

If she was irritated, it was because she’d been left in the dark, and not the kind vampires cared for either. “You don’t know. He didn’t tell you.” Across the massive foyer, Niko, fidgeting himself, gave a careful smooth to the front of his own tux. Two Zen peas in a Zen pod.

“Tell me what?”

Her eyes, violet before, were now dark purple with concern. They were the same color as the dress she wore that fell to the floor, the flash of the same color reflected in the black pearls wrapped around her neck. Such an … I don’t know … elegant woman. Not for my kind, but for Niko, yes. He deserved her, and I didn’t want to hurt her, but I needed to know. If I was wrong, many more people than Promise would get hurt. “You didn’t know he started drugging me a few days ago? With the Nepenthe venom? Trying to keep all my old memories gone for good? He’s been trying to keep me … shit, happy, I guess.”

“Without telling you? No. He wouldn’t do that,” she denied, her head shaking in the negative instantly. “Niko’s honesty is … insurmountable. Trust me. I lied to him once and that was all but the end of us.”

I came close to remembering that too, but it wasn’t important, not now. “And what would he tell me, Promise? What reason would he give me for getting me to take the drug voluntarily? What’s the truth he doesn’t want me to know?”

She looked away for a moment, then back and remained silent. Goodfellow and Ishiah had been willing to give me clues, but she was completely loyal to Niko. I didn’t mind. In fact, I preferred it.

“I don’t want to ask you this,” I continued, “particularly since I only half remember knowing you, but I have to. It’s coming back, all of it—mainly because Niko is a shade less smart than he thinks he is at drugging people and because part of me has been breaking through all along, even when drugged. But that’s a small part.” I took her hand. It was warm and why wouldn’t it have been? Vampires were alive, not dead. Born, not made. I remembered. I turned it over and traced the lifeline. It didn’t look any different from mine. “Niko has taken care of me my entire life, from diaper one.” I quirked my lips. “And I’ll always do the same for him, but I can do that better the way I was before.” The way I was close to being now. “I know that. But what I need to know is, in the end, is it worth it? Or am I like your daughter was? Am I beyond redemption? If I try to save Nik, will I end up doing … things? Bad things? Things he couldn’t live with?” Things he couldn’t let me live with. “You raised a monster, Promise. You know one when you see one.” I looked at Niko again. “Am I a monster worth its life because I can save my brother’s? Or am I just a monster—period?”

She took her hand from mine, cupped my cheek, and as Niko had been constantly doing to himself for me, she threw me under the bus for him. It was symmetry. “You do whatever needs to be done to save Niko. You do that, Caliban. You do anything. Do you hear me?”

In a way, it was the answer I’d been looking for, but not the reassurance I’d wanted. That was life. With the good came the bad. It was all about balance.

I knew she loved him, though, which made it better. She loved him more than she loved anything or anyone. Good for him. Good for them both. I held out my arm. “Is this how they do it? I’ve seen it on TV.”

She slid her hand into the crook of my elbow, already having second thoughts. “Cal, I shouldn’t have… .”

“I won’t tell him.” If I did, that would indeed be the end of them. It wouldn’t be very brotherly, and it wouldn’t be right. “What’s to tell? With my memory?” I grinned. “You’re good for him, Promise. Better than I’ll ever be. We were just talking about you adopting a mummy cat. That’s all.”

“A what? A mummy …” Goodfellow walked up in time to hear her confused remark.

“Ah, good. I’ll pick out a nice one for you. Two would probably be better. To keep each other company, less bored, less inclined to kill your neighbors. Would you prefer male or female? Not that it matters. Death and mummification are the ultimate spay and neuter program. I’ll have someone drop them off at your place tomorrow, should we survive tonight.”

Niko took Promise’s other arm and led her away from the dead-cat discussion. Since I’d come back, he hadn’t had much time with her and I knew why. He’d expected honesty from her. How could he then be with her when he was being anything but honest even to himself?

A conscience … More and more they seemed a pain in the ass.

Goodfellow, Ishiah, and I watched them go, dark blond head bent to the brown/blond one. “She looks like a tiger with that hair,” I mused.

“And she’ll eat you like a tiger if you piss her off onefifth as much as you’ve pissed me off,” Robin growled.

I gave him a narrow-eyed glance and an equally narrow smile. “Do you really want to play, puck? I can make the time.”

Surprise flashed behind his eyes and as quickly was gone. Pucks were much better than my brother at playing a part, and he didn’t want to have to tell Niko the show was over. That he gladly would let me do. “You’re back then?”

My smile—only half of what I’d pretended it was, I hoped—widened. “About seventy, seventy-five percent.” I hooked an arm around his neck and squeezed, messing up his tie and collar mostly on purpose. “I missed remembering you, you horny bastard. Besides, think about it. Would a ‘good’ Cal dump eleven dead cats in your apartment? Or turn Wahanket into a dust pile that could double as an ant condo?”

“Good Cal tried to stab me with a fork,” Robin pointed out as he tried to straighten his tie, but he didn’t shake off my arm. Before Nik and I had shown up, and before Ishiah had come around to admit his own stupidity, Robin hadn’t had many friends—any friends. There were prejudiced bastards even among the supernatural kind. Tricksters weren’t favorites by any means.

“Good Cal thought you were a monster,” I reminded him. “Now I know what a monster is.”

“Ammut?” Ishiah standing beside us murmured, and although I couldn’t see the wings, I heard them rustle.

“Her too.” But she wasn’t the only one. I let go of Goodfellow and straightened my suit jacket to feel the weight of my weapons in place. I smelled her all right. She was here, and my grin now? I didn’t think there was a word for it. Not in these modern days. Not anymore. The first to invent, create, conceive. The first to smile for all the wrong reasons.

“Come on, guys,” I said. “Let’s go kick some Egyptian ass.”