Deathwish

13

“I can’t see it,” I said, calm. Maybe a little too calm. The bogeyman was right outside, but look at me. Look how calm, cool, and collected I was. Like ice. You could frost a beer mug on my ass. “But it’s out there.” The Auphe bitch. I breathed on the glass and wrote in the condensation I SEE YOU. I didn’t really see it, but I felt it—as much as if it had been standing outside the window, inches away, facing me, all grins and murderous cheer. “It must have opened its gate pretty far away, because I didn’t feel it.”

“But you feel it now?” Niko stood by my side and kept his eyes focused on the night beyond the glass. “This is new, isn’t it?”

“Yeah, new.” New, fun, and exciting. Feel a monster’s eyes on you. Hurry and call in now for a sample. Comes with a free prize. “All the traveling I’ve being doing lately. Maybe it’s another instinct thing that finally popped up. Pack animals sensing their own kind.”

That sense of being watched for days—it’d started out small, like a small dose of paranoia, and it had grown and swelled, to the point that I was looking over my shoulder every hour or so, until I’d looked out of the window today, this very minute, and known. “They’ve always known where I was, Nik. Always. Since the day I was goddamn born. It was part of their plan.” And remaking the entire world in their image, that had been one helluva plan.

“We guessed they were watching us since we stopped running, but this makes even more sense,” he said. “They wouldn’t have to watch us all the time to know where we were. And it would explain how they followed us all those years. How we wondered why we never lost them for long. How they always managed to track us down again and again.”

“They could sense me, no matter where we went.” A biologically built-in tracking system. GPS built into the genes. The results were slower but as sure. Sticking together these past few days had been the worst thing we could’ve done, all of us, because I led them to us. The Auphe could sense themselves in me. Sense their blood just like I was one of them. It was one more repulsive goddamn tie to them and a hideous thought, but that thought, as horrible as it was . . .

It gave me another one.

I grinned darkly and saw the reflection of my teeth in the glass.

A really nasty idea.

One every last piece of shit of them deserved.

Timing. It was all about timing. The same way setting off a bomb is about timing, because the Auphe were a living bomb. Too late and you might miss your target. Right on time, way to go. Too soon? Too soon usually meant you weren’t going to be around to appreciate the other options. . . . You were going to be tomato-colored paste on a wall somewhere. And when the explosive had a mind and an agenda of its own, yeah, you were probably screwed. It didn’t bother me that my whole life hung on a “probably.” Hell, it always had.

The next day, Delilah, who had refused to talk on the phone, refused to fear any Auphe, now shivered with an all-over body twitch of disgust when I sat in the cubicle beside her in the main branch of the New York Public Library, the mythology section. It seemed appropriate. “You stink.” She cupped her hand over her nose. “Of suburbia.” It was as close to horrified as I’d ever seen her.

I wasn’t sure what suburbia smelled like. Pink flamingos, Virgin Marys, waving flags, and Big Wheels, maybe. “If you weren’t so damn stubborn, you wouldn’t have to smell me,” I retorted.

Every time I’d tried to talk to her on the phone she’d disconnected, until I’d finally agreed to meet her. Since I was an Auphe homing beacon, I made sure she was there a half hour before I arrived and she’d promised to stay a half hour after I left. Then again, promises and Delilah—I wasn’t sure she was patient enough to always keep them. Smart enough, yes. Patient . . . different story.

“Better clean death than your stench.” She left her cubicle to sit on the desk of mine, very obviously not there for the book learning.

“The Auphe won’t give you that.”

“Yes, yes.” She rolled copper eyes. “To wait thirty minutes. Sneak like weasel. Cower like sheep. I understand.” Her silver ponytail hung over her breast. “Where is your keeper?”

“Safe.” Nik was a lot safer alone and on the move than he was with me. Not that it hadn’t taken some convincing . . . on both sides. We’d had to convince each other and ourselves that it was the right thing to do. If I was wrong about the Auphe being imprinted on me like Satanic baby ducklings, if they were simply following with more skill than any creature should have, I could lose Nik. If I was right and the Auphe got pissed off that I was the only one they could find . . . then Nik could lose me.

Of the games they’d played with us the past week this time, I was finally dealt in. And my hand was good—aces high, because I didn’t think I was wrong.

Not this time.

And that promise I’d made to Nik, how I’d outthink them, how I’d get us out of this—I might just be able to keep it.

They were all gone now—Promise, Cherish, and Robin. They’d scattered before the sun had come up. The Auphe watching that night had been joined by another one and had stayed put as the others left. Both had melted out of existence when Niko and I had driven off that morning in his car before going our separate ways in the city. I hadn’t felt one since. Not yet. Definitely not when Niko and I had split up.

It had to be one of the hardest things I’d ever done. I knew the Auphe wanted him, almost more than they wanted me—because of me. Walking away from him based on a feeling, an ability I barely knew existed—“tough as shit” didn’t begin to describe it.

And for him to let me go? He almost couldn’t do it. Literally. He’d spent his life making sure I kept mine, and to not be there to watch my back now? I didn’t think he could take that first step away. He didn’t think so either. This wasn’t a fight with a mummy or a battle with a werewolf. This was the big time—the real monsters. Our monsters.

Walk away? Now?

I saw it in his eyes. Impossible conflict. My big brother, who’d guarded me since my first breath, and he couldn’t do it. Not even if it meant saving us all. He believed in me—he did—but when belief runs up against a lifetime of habit, belief can be kissing the canvas in a heartbeat. Just that one step . . .

I took it because I knew he couldn’t.

“Tell the son of a bitch Samuel hey for me.” I grinned before turning and merging into the crowd on the sidewalk. If it was the last look he ever had of me, I wanted it to be of the same cocky, cynical, stubborn bastard I’d always been. That thanks to him, I’d lived long enough to be. When I finally gave in and glanced back, he was gone.

It was the right thing to do, but I’d never felt more alone in my life. Your brother watched your back and you watched his.

Always.

God.

But he was safe. I believed it. I believed it because I had to.

“Safe.” In the library Delilah leaned down to whisper by my ear. “Safe is overrated. Safe is not fun.”

I let my thoughts shift from Nik to the image of a very nude, very limber werewolf, then gave myself a metaphorical smack back to reality. Not that doing it in the stacks with Delilah wouldn’t have been entertaining, not to mention some stress relief, but I didn’t have the time. And not really the concentration. Knowing the Auphe could appear on the top of a shelf any second and snatch me away while I was going at it was enough to take the lust out of anybody’s thrust.

“Safe is all I’ve got right now, if I want to stay above ground and kicking.” I ignored the warm press of her upper leg against my arm. And I didn’t sweat. No court in the land could make me swear otherwise. “I need a favor.”

She sighed, bored. She didn’t pout. Wolves don’t pout. They may get indigestion from eating you if you annoy them, but they don’t pout. “Favor? What favor?” she demanded with a careless yawn.

It was an easy enough one for her, just information, though for what she charged you’d think it was much harder. Before I left she did kiss me with a punishing nip of teeth and the soothing silk of tongue. It had me wanting to rethink safe, but I couldn’t. I’d been heading for this moment my whole life. Whether I lived or died, it ended now.

I left the library, hoping Delilah was smart and patient enough to stay behind as long as she’d said, because I had one of them on me now . . . watching. It had just moved into range. Of course, I wasn’t sure what that range was, so it wasn’t too helpful to me. I assumed within eyesight. I didn’t look around. We had one small advantage in this, and I didn’t want to give it away. My phone rang while I was clambering down the bottom of the stairs. I answered to hear Niko say brusquely, “You alive?”

“It’s cute how you worry.” I grinned, equally relieved to know he was in the same shape himself. “How’d it go with Samuel? Did they go for it?”

“They did. More importantly, they have the equipment upstate, although they also said officially it didn’t exist.” For some reason that seemed to amuse him, but he didn’t say why. “They flew it down from Fort Drum. I met them and was instructed on it. What’s the address Delilah gave you? I’ll call it to Samuel.”

I gave it to him. Flew it down from the army base. Damn, the Vigil did have some unbelievably serious influence. “You haven’t seen any of them following you, have you?”

“No, I’m clean as far as I can tell. You were right. They are homed in on you. Do you have any?”

“One.”

“One.” Nik didn’t say it like it was good news. To him it wasn’t. One could as easily call in the other seventeen, and he wouldn’t be there. That was the bottom line. He wouldn’t be there.

“Just one. Broad daylight. Thousands of people.” All separately might not have stopped them, but the combination could pull it off.

He exhaled, sounding calm and matter-of-fact, and absolutely not fooling me one damn bit about any of it. “Samuel said they can be ready starting tonight.”

“Be nice if one time was all it took.” The sky was as pure blue as yesterday when we’d come tumbling out of it. “Everyone else crawled in a hole and pulled it in after them?”

“Yes, although Promise and Robin aren’t too happy about it.” Promise and Cherish had gone to New Jersey. If Oshossi’s animals could sniff them out in that smell, more power to them. Robin had gone wherever Robin went. Someplace where condoms were stored by the crate and clothing was not only optional but highly frowned upon.

It made facing the Auphe a shade less terrifying.

“It was you and me in the beginning, Nik,” I said. “You and me in the end.” It was the way it was supposed to be. Meant to be. Fate coming full circle.

“If this time in the beginning you could come already potty trained, it would be a big plus,” he said dryly before disconnecting.

I snorted and slid the phone into my jacket pocket as the second watcher joined the first. Five minutes later, there was a third. They had to be curious. Annoyed. Ticked the hell off. Where were the rest of us?

“Yeah, you keep watching,” I muttered. I’d been right when I’d talked to Nik on the beach days and days ago. If I’d ran while the others hid—even if they’d had to do it all their lives—they would’ve been safe. Although Niko was like the Auphe. They might have genetic GPS, but in a way, so did he. There was no guarantee who would’ve found me first.

I ducked my head against the cold wind and started walking. It was going to be a long day of dragging these bitches from place to meaningless place. And the night? I didn’t want to think about the night. That’s when it could go wrong in all the worst ways.

I had hours to kill before that, though, and there was one thing I’d always meant to do. If I was going to go out, good hand or not, and chances were much better than ever that I was, I wasn’t going out with that on my body. That was a black and red tattoo I had on my bicep. I’d been possessed once—yeah, yeah, old news—and my pilot during the whole ordeal thought it would be an absolute blast to get MOM surrounded by a heart on my arm. To say I’d considered peeling the skin off with my combat knife didn’t really give the flavor of how much I hated it. Had hated her.

I wasn’t going to die with that on me. I found the nearest tattoo parlor, waited my turn before sitting, taking off my jacket, rolling up my sleeve, and saying, “Cover it up.”

The guy—big, fat, and with a curly beard—blinked, bored. “With what?” Whether I didn’t love my mommy or not anymore wasn’t his concern.

“With damn Big Bird for all I care. Just cover it up.”

It wasn’t that easy. It’s never that easy. A whole slew of them came over to discuss the situation. A tattoo was a reflection of your inner self, your true blah, blah, blah. You couldn’t just slap anything on there. Well, obviously I had, as no one had fought me about the whole mom issue. Apparently moms got more respect than Big Bird. One guy had actually suggested that it would be easy to blend the tattoo I had now into a dragon, as if that wouldn’t get me laughed out of the bar. Assuming Ishiah ever let me back in after Cambriel’s death.

A dragon. Christ. While piles of flaming lizard crap from the sky were deadly enough if you weren’t careful, it certainly wasn’t worth bragging about to have survived. I could never wear a short-sleeved shirt again.

Finally I pointed at a red and black band on the wall. Funky lettering. I felt the invisible Niko thwap me over my ear and corrected myself quickly. Latin. It was Latin. “What about that? What’s that?”

“Armband. A lot of our guys retiring from the military are getting that. It says ‘Brothers in Arms,’ ” Curly said.

Huh. How about that? The right colors and, this time, the right sentiment.

Last time it hadn’t hurt or the thing inside me had enjoyed the pain. Hard to say. This time it did. I didn’t mind.

The things that matter are worth it.

You could still see the heart with the MOM, but just barely, and only if you knew where to look. The ghost of gone. Just like Sophia herself. She was gone, but if you knew where to look in me, you’d still see her. It was the best that I could hope for, though, and I was happy with it. I let them tape it up with gauze, paid, and headed outside. Hours had passed and the light was bleeding from the sky.

Timing. Now was when I found out if I was on the right side of it—or tomato paste on the wall.

Radioactive tomato paste, as it turned out.

Because that note in Nik’s voice on the phone? Can I just get a “Holy shit” from the choir, please?

“A nuke? A goddamn nuke? A fucking nuke? A . . .” My mouth was still moving, but nothing was coming out. I’d run out of curse words to say. Me. That hadn’t ever happened in my life. “What’s wrong with a nice normal bomb? You know, in case things go wrong, we only take out a few buildings, not the whole damn city.”

Robin had found Niko and me a place to stay temporarily. It was a furnished studio apartment, the best he said he could do on short notice, but it was on the first floor. That’s all we needed. The first floor. I met Nik there and I would’ve wrinkled my nose at the smell of old cat piss dried into the floor if I didn’t have other things on my mind—radioactive things.

“First off, there is no such thing as a nice normal bomb. There are bombs dropped from planes. There are missiles. Trucks filled with fertilizer and diesel fuel. And there are multiple charges placed around a building to detonate it. None of which fill our need. Besides, I thought the mere idea of a nuclear weapon would make you happier than the porn you hide under your bed. It certainly puts your Desert Eagle in the shade,” he replied, a wickedly amused glitter in his eye while his face remained passive.

Despite my love for my Eagle and various other weapons of semiexplosive destruction, I wasn’t, believe it or not, turned on by the thought of a nuke. “There has to be something. We brought down the last warehouse without a stick of dynamite.”

“That’s because then you were the bomb.”

Not much you could say to that.

“Well, what the hell were you asking for when you called Samuel?” I asked, sitting on the fold-out couch that sagged a good half foot in the middle cushion. I didn’t think Robin had tried as hard as he said he had. I doubted he appreciated those days and days of celibacy.

“I thought since the Vigil has contacts within the police and city government, they would most likely have agents within the military as well. Thousands of years of conspiracy does give one maneuvering room for job placement. And the military has weapons, including explosive devices, that the public know nothing about.”

“Seems complex.” I grunted. “There are bombs out there that should wipe out anything the size of a couple of football fields that you don’t need a truck to haul around. I’ve seen them.”

“There are?” Niko asked as he leaned against the cracked wall. It held his weight, surprisingly. It looked like a forty-pound five-year-old could take it down. “Where did you see them?”

“You know, TV, movies. Mission: Impossible wouldn’t lie.”

He closed his eyes. “I tried, Almighty Universe. I did my best.” Straightening, he went on, “Since the Auphe move so quickly, we need a large area of destruction, and since you cannot build a gate big enough to drive a truck through, the Vigil suggested a suitcase nuke as being the most appropriate for the task.”

“The Vigil trust us with a nuke? Even a baby nuke?” I asked skeptically. A nuke? The Vigil had a nuke? They did have a finger in every pie, pretty scary pies.

“Probably not, but Samuel does. He’s seen what we would do to keep the Auphe from taking the world back. I didn’t say what their plan was this time.” He wouldn’t. Niko wouldn’t tell anyone that. “But that they had one and they had to be dealt with. Now. He convinced his superiors that whether our plan worked or not, we would make sure that the city would be safe. We’d die to keep that promise.”

“Dying’s the easy part,” I muttered. As plans went, it was like most of mine—semisuicidal—but even I hadn’t come up with the damn nuke. And the Vigil knew the Auphe. They knew that even eighteen could one day, no matter how many hundreds or thousands of years it took them, take back what they thought was theirs. They still must have trusted the hell out of Samuel . . . and Niko. If they knew anything about the supernatural community, if they had investigated Nik, they knew he would keep his word. NYC would be safe.

When they’d investigated me, and I’m sure they had, they must’ve thought it was a good thing they had Nik to fall back on. I was one of those guys who didn’t look too good on paper, or while being possessed, or creating mass chaos going undercover in the Kin.

Or being the last male Auphe. Good thing they didn’t know about that. Even if a human male would do, just not as well, I was sure the Vigil would think long and hard about popping one in the back of my skull to be on the safe side and try to deal with the Auphe another way.

But there was no other way.

I didn’t want to think about this anymore, the pressure of not taking out NYC with me if I bit the dust. Thinking about if we did pull it off, I still might not be coming back—the rational part of me anyway. Really, really didn’t want to think about it. I rested my head and stared at the ceiling. A nuke. Goddamn spy movies. And why did our government have suitcase nukes? Weren’t only terrorists supposed to have them?

“How many followed you?” Great, a subject worse than nukes.

“Three.” I looked back down at Niko, my ass already complaining from the couch. I didn’t think it’d be any more comfortable when we folded it out, but it didn’t much matter. Sleep was going to be hard to come by until this was over anyway.

“Three,” he repeated grimly before adding, “fifteen more to go.”

I got up to check out the bathroom, because the thought of eighteen Auphe in one place—that’ll make your bladder sit up and take notice. “Shit!” I called out. “Is there such a thing as a giant supernatural cockroach straight from the depths of hell?”

“No. Be a man and deal with it.”

I could’ve shot it. It was that big. I kicked it in the toilet and flushed. Three times. Then I returned to Cat Urine Central. “Okay. The world is safe for pissing again. Enjoy.”

“And to think I worried about you today, being alone.” Niko drew his katana and looked it over. “Almost.”

I snorted. “I think I feel a tear coming on.”

He turned the katana over and laid it on the back of his hand. It balanced perfectly. “You are sentimental, I will give you that.” He sheathed the sword. “Your plan or not, you’re coming back, Cal. All of you. I won’t have it any other way.” I’d made it clear I wasn’t too damn sure about that, and it showed. I could hide a lot of things, but not that.

But what the hell? Sanity was overrated. What had it ever done for me anyway?

“I’m sentimental. You’re optimistic.” I dropped back on the couch. “Watch out, Snow White. There’s two new dwarves in town.”

He wasn’t distracted. “Are you ready for this?”

“I’ve been ready a long, long time.”

And I had been.

Before I was born. When I was nothing but a pile of gold in a whore’s hand, I’d been ready.

Waiting, like timing, can be a bitch.

I’d hoped it would be the first night. I wanted it over with, and I wanted it over with now. Of course it wasn’t. The next night, I felt five outside. My stomach tensed, I carried my gun with me the entire night, and didn’t sleep one minute of it. Five could be enough. Five might do the trick for Niko and me. But they’d tried four times before. Two times playing, two times in sincerity . . . although it was a mocking sincerity. I didn’t think there would be any mocking this time. I thought they were coming for Nik, coming for me, and game time was over.

The third time is the charm. Isn’t that what they say? It didn’t feel like a charm, but it felt like a chance, and that was the best we could hope for.

I’d been dozing on the couch off and on that night. Staying awake three nights in a row turned out not to be doable, but the feeling brought me out of the drowse instantly. Eighteen. Eighteen of the bitches were out there, and they weren’t going to stay out there long. All they needed was the time to catch a glimpse through the window, to see where they were going, and they’d be there. That’s why we kept the small window covered with a blanket, and it was the only thing that gave us the time we needed.

“Nik, now.” I bolted off the couch fully dressed, shoes on. It was the way we’d catnapped for the past days now.

I hit the door running, Niko right behind me. We were on the street in seconds and in a cab in minutes. We moved fairly briskly through the nighttime traffic and were at the warehouse district in less than a half hour. Delilah had given us the address—long abandoned by humans or Kin, and abandoned was what we needed. It was a hulk of a building with windows.

Huge, unobstructed if grimy windows. The Auphe had good night vision. They could see where they wanted to go—see the way in. And they were there, every last one of them, following us from rooftop to rooftop, maybe. From the top of a bus or truck. I didn’t care. They were there, and that’s what mattered.

Niko and I pushed through the front doors, then slammed them behind us. They were unlocked. Wasn’t that lucky? Yeah, right. Planning is better than luck any day.

It was a trap. The Auphe knew it was a trap. A paste-eating, booger-picking kindergartner would’ve known it was a trap. That was the Auphe weakness. They were strong, incredibly fast, fanatical, hard as fucking hell to kill, but they were arrogant.

Promise, Cherish, Robin, Niko, and me. What could the five of us possibly accomplish against their eighteen? Take one or two with us? Maybe. But other than that, not a damn thing.

But there were no Promise, Cherish, or Robin. There were others, though, those who wanted the Auphe gone almost as much as we did.

Niko and I made our way to the center of the warehouse. He didn’t draw his sword, one of the strangest things I’d seen in a battle—Niko without some blade drawn. “Samuel!” he rapped. From twenty feet away, Samuel tossed him a large metal briefcase that just happened to contain a nuclear device. Tossed. Okay, Nik had explained a suitcase nuke was much smaller in destructive power than the kind dropped from a plane that can take out whole cities. But it would take out a chunk, and they were tossing it like a basketball—even though Samuel had told Niko it weighed only about fifty pounds.

“Don’t worry, Cal. It’s not volatile. It has to be triggered, not dropped,” Samuel said.

Right. That guy should watch more TV.

I didn’t pull my gun from my holster, another first for an expected battle. I looked at my brother and wanted to repeat what we’d said after we’d fallen out of the sky. I wanted to ask if he was sure. He still had a chance to make a run for it. He still had a chance to live.

He anticipated me. “Together,” he repeated.

I barely had time to nod when the eighteen gates opened behind us, and Niko and I dropped to our knees instantaneously. That’s when the Uzis of thirty of the Vigil who had been waiting in the warehouse moved between the Auphe and us and fired. Just as Niko had planned it with Samuel and his companions four days before, they formed a shield for us, to give us time to do what was needed. They were a line of the best-equipped human assassins in, if at least not the entire city, definitely a fifteen-block radius.

They might as well have been carrying Super Soakers.

The Auphe had smelled them, smelled more than the five they’d counted on, smelled a far bigger trap than they’d been expecting, and they didn’t care. Nope, a shit they simply did not give. And if it had only been the Vigil, they wouldn’t have a reason to. They couldn’t have smelled anything in the air but a cloud of fear sweat. The Vigil had been around, and Uzis were fun and all, but this was the Auphe. The Vigil might be the only humans alive besides Nik who knew what the Auphe were and what they could do. They had every reason to be afraid, and the Auphe proved it. A blur of motion, they leapt from their gates, some up to the walls and some across the floor straight toward the men and into the near wall of bullets.

I was occupied wrapping a cloth over my nose and mouth and tying it behind my neck. It smelled strongly of the oil Niko used on his swords. I was going to use my gun oil, but something that smelled of Niko . . . it had a better chance. Gave me a better chance.

“How many seconds?” Niko asked as he opened the case.

We’d discussed this at least twenty times in the past few days, but it came down to me. How fast I could open a gate and how fast I could shut eighteen down. Then there was moving through and . . . shit. Shit. I didn’t know. I could only guess.

“Cal.”

Niko had his hand hovering above a computerized trigger. The Vigil were being torn to pieces around us. Bullets, bullets everywhere, but these were the Auphe. If they couldn’t dodge it, and most they could, it didn’t matter unless it took their head off, and I didn’t see a single headless Auphe torso. Which I happily would’ve wanted an eight-by-ten glossy of if I had. I did see human guts, heard screaming, limbs ripped from bodies, and throughout it all the switchblade stab of hyena laughing. I saw it all—the future of the world. If the Auphe had their way.

Fuck ’em. They weren’t getting it.

I wrapped the second cloth over my eyes. “Five seconds. Go.” I heard the click of the timer being switched on, and I opened the gate to hell. Tumulus. It was half of the plan. Forget gating. The Auphe can run too. We needed someplace we could blow up the size of a few football fields. Even the Auphe couldn’t run that fast. Especially with what Niko was packing.

When I said “Go,” I tore a hole in reality. I couldn’t see it, but I could feel it—inside me, howling in glee, all but screaming my name. And I discovered there was something better than meditation for pushing down my inner monster; the thought of a nuke three feet from me.

Niko’s hand grabbed my arm and yanked me through. I felt the ripple of pure power and then we were there. I couldn’t smell it, only the oil-soaked cloth over my mouth. I couldn’t see it, thanks to the blindfold. But it touched me. The biting cold on my face, the grit of glass sand under my hands and through the knees of my jeans. I was back.

Four seconds.

Niko had said no when I told him back at Rafferty’s what we needed to do. He’d seen me the first time I’d returned from Tumulus. He’d heard and seen what I’d done when hypnotized to recover the lost memories of this place and what had happened to me here. We both thought the same. If I went back, that’d be it. No lost memories to save me. No juvenile traumatic amnesia this time. More likely the two years I’d lost to begin with would all come flooding back and do to my brain what the Auphe had done to the Vigil.

But it could be that wasn’t true, I’d argued. Maybe every time I thought of going back to Tumulus and losing my sanity, I was thinking of being dragged there by the Auphe. Maybe it wasn’t just the place but the monsters that went with it and what they would do to me if they ever took me there again.

Three seconds.

I felt the eighteen gates open around us.

I’d argued with Niko for hours over it. Saying it was worth the risk. He wouldn’t agree—it wasn’t going to happen—until I said the Auphe were following me. They wanted Niko dead. They wanted me alive. Either way, if Niko went through to Tumulus without me, there was no guarantee all the Auphe would follow him and his bomb. Some would stay for me, and Nik knew it. It was the only reason he’d given in. It was him, naturally, that came up with blocking my sense of sight and smell. Blocking as much of Tumulus as we could. And it seemed to be working.

And the time element . . . if I kept the gate open, like Niko had suggested when he’d wanted to go through alone earlier in the week for reconnaissance, if I kept it anchored to our world, it might keep the time flow there and here the same. Although, hell, at this point, the time difference was the least of our concerns.

They came through their gates. I heard the whisper of sand under their feet and claws. I felt their eyes on me the same as I’d felt them watching me the past days.

Two seconds.

I didn’t think they knew what the bomb was, but they did recognize a trap that would actually work. Smelled the confidence on Niko, the vicious triumph on me—not the fear they’d scented on the Vigil. Mad, feral, but smart as the most cunning of predators. A predator like that would retreat, think things over, see what would happen.

Too bad I slammed their gates in their faces. At Niko’s harsh “Now” and hard squeeze of my shoulder, I closed them all.

I knew how they did it. I knew it in me—when they had done it to mine, they’d taught me to do it to theirs—but knowing and closing one was one thing. Closing eighteen. Could I do that? Guess what. I’d learned last year, if you’re willing to die, physically you can do almost anything before you go. To kill the Auphe, I was willing to die. . . . But I didn’t. I closed their gates and my brain didn’t explode. Did it hurt? Jesus, yes, it hurt, but I was still conscious, and that’s what mattered. Niko hit me midchest and knocked me back through the only gate left—mine. I felt the concrete floor of the warehouse under my back, his weight on top of me and I closed the door to Tumulus instantly. It was gone.

One.

The world shook. I pulled off the rags from my face as the pounding in my brain continued. There was no light brilliant enough to burn away the flesh from your bones. No force strong enough to take out city blocks. There was nothing, but the world still shook. The glass didn’t quiver in the windows; the dust motes floating in the dim lights set in the ceiling didn’t drift a millimeter. I didn’t care. I still felt it. A part of a world—not this one—but a part of some other world had just died.

I started to ask Nik if he felt it too . . . but I saw it. Quicker than the other seventeen. More of that razor-edge intelligence. It couldn’t open its gate, so it used mine. It came through with us, fast and alive when it should’ve been dead. Metal teeth that had grinned through so many of my childhood windows and adult nightmares. Eyes more radioactive than any mushroom cloud. Claws, transparent skin, jagged joints, death . . .

No.

Red glass granules on my hands cutting them . . . like before.

No.

That thin, cold air that wanted to suck your lungs inside out.

The bitch should’ve died there.

I growled and threw Nik off me, before he saw it behind him. Threw him off like he weighed nothing. The sand, the cold, being naked in caves, being fed meat, and told what kind it was only after I was done. Discovering as bad as eating it was, being forced to eat it again after you’d vomited it on the ground was worse. Beaten and clawed and fed handfuls of it from the stone. Fed by what could’ve been the same goddamn bitch. Because they needed their tool healthy, to open a gate back in time to when the world was new and wipe out the humans before they had a chance to get the smallest grip on life.

My teeth were in its throat, ripping it with one smooth motion as I took it to the floor. It had moved to evade. I had moved with the same speed. Used the same throat tearing I’d seen them use on the weaker or wounded ones. Or sometimes they killed each other just for the hell of it—in the caves or under the boiling sky. A game. And now I got to play too.

Black blood flowed down its chest, but it wouldn’t kill it. It would only slow it down for half a second . . . a second. More than enough for an Auphe to take advantage of, and I did.

I’d seen them use their claws in those caves, not just their teeth. I didn’t have claws, not homegrown, but I had others. My hands went into my jacket and came out with two dirk daggers, one in each hand. Narrow blades, the perfect size to fit the eye sockets that held those pools of lava and blood. I sheathed them there to the hilts and punctured the malignant tumor of a brain. Its body bucked under me, its claws trying for my face, my side, but the spidery hands went limp first and fell to the ground.

“Unworthy,” I hissed. I withdrew the blades and slammed them home one more time. It bucked again, and the faint hiss of air bubbled through the blood that was still pumping from its throat, but more slowly. And slower still.

Then there was no more gurgling. No more fighting to escape. Only the last escaping breath ripe with the smell of Vigil flesh. There was a bead of moisture on my bottom lip. I’d ripped out its throat with such speed that only a drop of blood touched my mouth. I touched it with the tip of my tongue, sampled it. It tasted like poison and death and the rich earth of a long-forgotten graveyard.

It wasn’t half bad.

“Cal. Come back.”

I looked up, a boiling acid glare through the strands of black hair that fell over my face. “My kill. Mine.” The words hurt my throat. Weren’t right. They twisted and knotted the air, they didn’t flow through it.

“Cal, I told you I was bringing you back with me. All of you. I meant it. Now come back.” I recognized that voice. He was there the first time I’d come back from . . . that place. He’d been there, waited for me. My brother.

Like he was waiting for me now—in the warehouse, not at a burned trailer. No, not waiting. He’d been with me to hell and back. Blown hell to hell and back.

I laughed. It didn’t sound quite right either, but better than the words I’d spat.

“Cal, now.” There were hands on my arms, gripping hard.

I let go of one of the dirks and rubbed my eyes, then the blood from my mouth. “Nik.”

The random mixing of colors I’d seen settled into olive skin, with a touch of green from the gate travel, dark blond hair, warning eyes. My brother’s face. “The Vigil,” he said softly enough only I could hear and steely enough to let me know I was on the edge of Auphe-ing myself into the Vigil’s classification of overt as King Kong pregnant with Mothra’s baby, and telling Oprah all about his mood swings.

I’d been as fast as an Auphe, killed an Auphe in seconds, spoke Auphe, had been considering . . . no one needed to know what I was considering. I didn’t need to know. But I did know. I knew what Auphe did with their prey.

The Auphe’s heart stopped under me.

It had stopped breathing a moment before, but sometimes the heart takes some time to catch up. It did, and this time my brain did explode. I fell off the Auphe, over onto my back, and began convulsing. There had been lights in my brain. A dark and grim constellation, always there but I’d never known it. I knew now because they all blinked out. They very last one wavered, faded, and disappeared. The half-genetic, half-telepathic web was gone. I’d only known about the connection for days, but it felt like millions of neurons were dying. It was as if every single star in the universe went out. Every single one.

Now I really was the Last Mohican.

Nik’s hand was on my shoulder as he turned me from back to side, in case I vomited. “Get away,” I heard him snap, probably to Samuel. Let’s face it, all the Zen in the world wasn’t getting Nik over Samuel’s onetime serving of the Auphe. Seeing me actually taste Auphe blood, though, no big deal. I had the little-brother-get-out-of-jail-free-forever card. Big brothers. “Cal, can you hear me?”

I could hear him, but I couldn’t keep my teeth from chattering long enough to answer. And I thought three things—the last was the worst by far and away. The first, seizures were bad. The second, seizures could kill you. Third, seizures could make you piss your pants. Dear God, don’t let me piss my pants, I thought desperately as the thrashing turned to shuddering and from there to utter limpness. Niko moved me onto my back again. Someone had already dragged the Auphe away. “Can you hear me?” he repeated tightly.

“Tell me . . .” I swallowed and blinked, vision clearing. “Tell me . . . I didn’t . . . piss myself.”

He bowed his head for a moment, shoulders relaxing, then looked up to slap my face lightly. “Not so much that you’d notice, little brother.”

I glared with hazy eyes. “You suck, you know that?”

Samuel ignored Niko’s warning for a moment, either a brave man or a stupid one, and moved closer. “They’re watching,” he muttered low. “If Niko hadn’t pulled you out of it, I don’t think they’d just be watching.”

Yeah, I’ll bet the Vigil was watching—or what was left of them. “He still sucks,” I mumbled. I tried to get my hands under me to push up. The dizziness was sharp, my muscles like spaghetti, and I nearly fell, but Nik braced me with one hand behind my back. My legs weren’t cooperating yet. “I think I’m going to puke.” I closed my eyes. “Or die. Or both.” A hand grasped my face and shook it carefully until my eyes opened. Niko looked into them. Apparently, what he saw satisfied him and he exhaled with more emotion than he usually let show. “I think you’ll recover, wet pants and all.”

I looked down automatically and scowled at perfectly dry jeans. “I repeat, you suck.”

“So you keep saying. Do you remember anything?” he asked, pulling my face back up to get my eyes on his. “You acted like you remembered something. From before.”

“Before” meant only one thing with us. When the Auphe had me for two years. I frowned and for a second . . . I had known something when I took out the Auphe. Remembered something, hadn’t I? To kill it like I had, I would’ve had to, because that wasn’t me. I was good at killing, but not like that. Not that fast, not that hungry to see death. I held my breath, scared shitless, that I did remember. That the flood-gates would open and wash me away. But it didn’t. My head hurt and felt weirdly empty and dark, but no lost memories lurked there. At least not anymore. “No.” I slumped slightly in relief. “Not a damn thing.” I looked over to see five remaining Vigil, not counting Samuel, rolling the Auphe up in a tarp to put in one of their vans that was pulled up to the now-open door. “They took out twenty-five Vigil in, what, two seconds? Twenty-five men with machine guns. How the hell did we pull it off?”

“You said you would outthink them.” Nik helped me to my feet. “You kept your word.” He sounded as if he hadn’t expected anything different. Like I said, big brothers. They had faith in you when you’d forgotten what the word meant.

With an emotion so huge I didn’t have a name for it, I watched as the last Auphe in the world was hidden from sight. The hell with the dizziness, the bile burning my throat, my brain turned to red-hot cinders. They were gone. Jesus Christ, they were gone.

Except for one half-blood who for at least a minute had been every bit the Auphe he had killed.

“Think we got them all?” Samuel said, his still-smoking Uzi in one hand, as he steadied me as I swayed with his other hand. Niko allowed it . . . barely.

With Nik on one side, his hand now gripping my upper arm in protective support, and Samuel on the other, they managed to keep me upright as the relief faded a little. “I thought that once. I’m not sure I’ll ever think that again.” But the darkness in me told me different—they were gone.

“But for now . . .” Nik said.

“Yeah, for now.” It wasn’t a grin. It was too twisted for that, but it was satisfied, like I’d never been so satisfied in my life.

“Time for you to go,” Samuel said. “Even around here someone was bound to notice this.” The Vigil were already bagging up their own dead now. “And I think you might want to consider us even now. At least from the Vigil’s point of view, if not mine. No more favors.”

Then he let go of me, face serious. “Stay strong. Keep your head down.” Then he walked toward the doors and passed through.

Keep it down, because the Vigil had seen what I’d done. I didn’t think I could do it again, had no idea how I’d done it at all, but in their eyes, half Auphe might be too much Auphe.

As I steadied myself on my feet, the dizziness and headache were fading fast. Too fast for a human. But probably about right for the last Auphe. The Vigil might be right, saw what Niko didn’t want to. That was definitely a thought for another time. I wasn’t ruining this. Nothing could ruin this. I said, “I think I want a beer. If Ish will let me in the place. I want one beer, and I want to feel normal.”

“No bar. No beer. Convulsions and beer do not mix,” Niko retorted. “And you always were normal.”

I cocked my head. “Cyrano, seriously, you have delusions only massive drugs could explain.”

“Normal to me,” he countered firmly. “As far as I’m concerned that’s all that counts.”

As we walked outside, the dizziness disappeared as did the headache, and I was good as new in record time . . . the sort of time that definitely wasn’t normal, no matter what Nik said or thought. I ignored the feeling and felt around for more Auphe out there. None. We were clean. Suddenly, I felt good. Right. This was right.

“You going to Promise and Cherish’s new hide-out?” I asked as we kept walking. A taxi might take you here, but it sure as hell wasn’t going to be cruising here for pickups. We could’ve called, but walking felt good and right too.

“No. This is our night. Tonight we go home,” he said as if there was no other choice. No hot vampire girlfriend waiting. He was right, though. It was our night. The Leandros brothers, who’d turned survival into an art form like nobody else ever had.

“Tomorrow I’ll see them. I especially want to discuss the Oshossi situation, which I’m finding more questionable as time goes on.” He looked back through the door at the dark stains of blood that were scattered across the floor. “It’s over.” There was an odd note in his voice, part satisfaction, but mainly puzzlement.

I knew he meant, How can it be over?

It was a good question, and one I could still hardly understand. One with an answer I wasn’t sure I could admit to. After all that had happened, after a lifetime of watching for, running, or fighting a nightmare, how could it really be over? It was almost unbelievable.

“You want a hug?” I drawled, just as unsure myself. “Will that bring you closure?” Normally he would’ve swatted me a good one on the back of the head, but convulsions gave me a free ride there for now. And I was bullshitting anyway, because I felt the same. Relieved, strong, yet . . . how? The Auphe were dead. They were gone. But I was like Nik. How could it be over? After all these years . . .

How could we be free?

But I knew one thing: Their whole race had nearly been destroyed in a warehouse. It was goddamn poetic we could send the last ones out in one just like it.

We went home, a place truthfully I didn’t think we’d ever see again. There was a new door and a bill taped to it courtesy of our landlord. Hell, I was relieved it wasn’t an eviction notice.

There we were with our battered couch, battered table and lamps . . . battered everything. Right then it was better than a mansion in my eyes. We didn’t have to worry about watching, waiting. We didn’t have to stay alert every second for death to come tearing out of the air. We could relax. We could sleep, not that half-assed dozing you do when something’s breathing down your neck. We could really sleep.

Neither one of us did.

We sat on the couch until the sun lightened the morning sky. Who wanted to waste the first real taste of freedom on sleep? I had my brother. I had my life. I was going to enjoy every damn second of it. All that was missing were the fish sticks and cartoons.

The sky streaked with tangerine, pink, and violet-blue, and the sun peered through the shadow-black buildings. It looked to be a damn gorgeous day.

One of the best of my life.

Robin called me that afternoon after Niko had already left to see Promise and Cherish. He wanted to meet at the bar and get the story up close and personal. We’d called everyone the night before to clue them in on the survival thing, but Goodfellow liked details. Lots and lots of details. It was the next best thing to being there. And he would’ve been there if we’d needed him to be, but I thought he was damn glad we hadn’t, especially once I mentioned the nuke. He’d taken that about as well as I had.

“So it’s over.” Reliving it all hadn’t been as tough as I’d imagined. Skipping one part of it had certainly made it easier. I’d managed it so thoroughly I kept half forgetting where I’d lost my dirks. Not the eye sockets of an Auphe, nope, and it was the end of the Auphe. How could that be bad? Forget it and go on.

I had a flash of a thought that the real end of them might not come until I was gone, but what we’d done the night before . . . it was good enough. I’d made the decision not to rain on my own parade, and I was sticking with it.

Despite Nik’s order from last night, I had a beer. Last night was last night and today was seventeen hours later. That was a long time—in my book anyway. I nursed it, though, as it was the single one I tended to allow myself. Sophia had been the type of alcoholic that would’ve needed a 112 step program. It didn’t pay to tempt fate.

“Thank Zeus, it’s about damn time.” Robin was working on a bottle of wine, fancy glass and all. “The Vigil came through, eh? I suppose Samuel is as remorseful as he says he is.”

“Sorry is sorry, but I think he probably considers thirty Uzi-armed Vigil and a nuke cleans the slate.” I took another swallow of beer.

“Nuclear weapons.” He shook his head and swirled the wine in his glass. “I’m not sure humans are too far from the Auphe in some ways.”

Being both, I wasn’t much in the position to make that call. “How was the orgy?” I asked instead.

“Actually, I picked up Salome and spent quality time with the shriveled feline.” He went on defensively, “I didn’t want her snacking on the neighbors.”

Sure. That was the reason. I grinned into my beer.

Halfway through my beer, Ishiah came up to the table. He hadn’t said a word when I’d come through the door. He’d looked at me briefly, then went back to serving a customer. It wasn’t an engraved invitation or anything, but I took it to mean I wasn’t banned. He didn’t mention Cambriel when I went up for my beer. I’m not sure he ever would. I wasn’t sure I wanted him to. Cambriel deserved better. To be remembered. But to think of him was to think of his severed head dangling from the hand of an Auphe, and I couldn’t. I couldn’t go there, knowing if it weren’t for me he’d still be alive.

I finished my beer in several swallows, nursing it be damned, but the memory didn’t disappear as easily as the alcohol did.

“So,” Ishiah said to Robin, “you survived the Auphe.”

“I did,” Robin said smugly, as if he’d actually been there. But I’d give him credit this time. It might not be lying, bragging, or his enormous ego. He could be referring to the entire crappy experience instead of only last night. “I was beyond brave, an unparalleled fighter, a morale booster with no equal.”

“And he didn’t get laid once,” I added, which seemed the bigger feat to me.

Ishiah raised a disbelieving eyebrow. “You’re saying after all these years you’re finally listening to me?”

“Listen? To you?” Robin scoffed. “If I listened to you and your thousands of years of bitching, I’d be a monk. A poorly dressed, destitute, horrifically celibate monk.”

“I simply wanted you to behave like a halfway rational creature,” Ishiah retorted.

Oh, this was going to be good. I leaned back out of the way.

“Behave? Oh no, what you wanted is for me to cut back on the drinking, the lying, the stealing, the conning, and the whoring about. The very things that make me the magnificent specimen I am today,” Robin said indignantly.

“Maybe if you had, you wouldn’t have ended up on the verge of being killed by descendants of former worshippers,” Ishiah pointed out, brutal but true.

Robin sputtered, “Please. As if you weren’t chased over sand dunes by a band of Israelites desperate for a holy souvenir. They plucked you like a chicken. You looked like a mangy pigeon when I found you.”

Looking less like Niko by the second, because where Niko’s anger was cold, Ishiah’s was red-hot, Ishiah said dangerously, “I did not.”

Robin countered spitefully, “They could’ve barbecued those things and served them up in a sports bar.”

Oh yeah. This was good, all right. And I didn’t even have to pay for a ticket.

They were leaning over the table, almost nose to nose, eyes narrowed to slits, faces flushed with rage. Robin huffed out a breath and said between gritted teeth, “Are you coming back to my place or not?”

Ishiah growled, “No, we’re going to mine. It’s closer.” He tossed me the apron. “Close up the bar tonight. I won’t be back.”

I caught it, surprised. That wasn’t the way I’d thought it would go at all. Then again . . .

Niko and Ishiah resembled each other. It’d taken me a while to notice, but it was true. Dark blond to light. Dark skin to pale. Gray eyes to blue-gray, but still, they could’ve been brothers. They looked a lot more like each other than Nik and I did.

I’d always thought Robin had a thing for Niko, but now it seemed more likely that Niko had reminded him of someone else. Although he hadn’t been a substitute—from Robin’s hounding, it had definitely been a true attraction, but now . . . the truth came out. Niko would be one relieved son of a bitch.

And as soon as I closed up the bar, Robin and Ishiah wouldn’t be the only ones getting some.

I hoped.