Deathwish

14

The New Jersey location Promise and Cherish had chosen was a house much more elaborate than Rafferty’s had been. Promise was like Robin, although she would hate to admit it—she liked the luxuries in life. I scanned the arched ceilings and doorways and gave an appreciative murmur, although truthfully between spartan and opulent, I would choose spartan. But one tried stalling techniques when he could. Unfortunately, it didn’t work.

Promise had been relieved we’d survived the Auphe and furious we had not let her participate in the plan. But as it had once started with my brother and me, it had ended with my brother and me. It was the way it should have been. The way it was.

“You could have died,” she snapped.

We could’ve worse than died, and what had happened to Cal . . . one more thing I hadn’t shared with her. The slippery slope, but it was what we had, and as I’d told Cal, I’d have to see if good enough was good enough. What had happened to my brother I wasn’t sharing with anyone. It had been one moment brought to life by a trip he shouldn’t have had to ever make again, and an Auphe who refused to die with the others. He had come back, though—his mind somewhat slower than his body, but he had come back. No one else would’ve had the will—the absolute stubborn hardheaded will. No wonder I could never get him to pick up his dirty clothes.

“Died,” she repeated.

We could’ve died anytime in the past week, but I thought it wiser not to bring up that point. Promise, normally cool and collected, rarely showed her temper, but when she did it was best to ride it out. Perhaps do a mantra or two during the experience. Focus on the lotus . . . an expression of beauty from the dull mud that spawned it. Trace the soft colors of its petals. Regard the glitter of its inner jewel. Or, as a change of pace, imagine the precise sweep of the blade required to disembowel a revenant. The silver shimmer . . .

I realized several seconds of silence had reigned, and I refocused to see fangs bared and her eyes, black as night, on me. “Are you listening, Niko, because I would hate to think that you are ignoring me.”

Buddha had no teachings I knew of on domestic disputes with vampire partners, so I went with silence and a raised eyebrow. Cherish reclined nearby on a black silk couch, and laughed. “Where is the celebrated strategist now?”

“Discretion has always been the better part of valor.”

Promise’s eyes didn’t turn any less black at my words. “Tell me again. Every detail. I want it all.”

I repeated it all, minus the first exception and Cal’s urination phobia. I didn’t think the last was a revelation he would appreciate my sharing. Promise paced, murmuring words under her breath that were no doubt unladylike. With her long life, she probably could’ve taught my brother a few obscenities. “There were so many ways that it could’ve gone wrong. So very many.”

“But it didn’t. It worked as planned,” I pointed out, finally sitting. This was looking as if it might take some time, and I still had Cherish to interrogate.

“Because Cal did something he shouldn’t have been able to do. Shut eighteen gates. One day he won’t be so fortunate,” she said, facing me.

He hadn’t looked particularly fortunate seizing on the floor, but I knew what she meant. “Now that the Auphe are gone, truly gone, he shouldn’t have to go to such extremes.” I wouldn’t let him push himself that way again. There could be no reason desperate enough and no call to close any gates ever again. Gates in general . . . we would have a very long talk about those and their use. More importantly, their disuse.

“He won’t have to do what he did again,” I countered. “There will be no other gates to close.”

“Only his own,” she said. Implacable and true, and as I’d said to myself, I would take care of it.

“Cherish.” I looked away from Promise. There was no further place for the conversation to go. Cal was my responsibility. I would help him take care of the monsters in his life, even if only their shadows remained. “I want to talk to you about Oshossi.”

She curled her legs under her, much as I’d seen her mother do many times. The smile was different, however. Cooperative but wicked, with a quick flash of pointed canines. “What do you wish to know?” Xolo had climbed on the couch and leaned into her side. Beauty and the beast. Granted, a very small beast—a very small beast with very large eyes. Amazingly deep and large.

“I find it difficult to believe even the proudest of creatures would chase you across country after country, transporting all his creatures, to take vengeance over one piece of useless jewelry.” I finished flatly, “Very difficult.”

“Not so difficult, if you know the kind of creature he is. How his sense of pride is his greatest treasure. How none can defeat him. His ego simply won’t allow it.” Her fingers stroked the pale cheek of the chupa, its eyes brighter than usual. “You can see how that might be.”

Promise, who’d once called her daughter a liar and a thief, a shame to her, agreed immediately. “There are those like that. Niko, you’ve told me yourself. Wasn’t Abbagor the same?”

Actually, Abbagor had not been the same. The troll’s tastes had run to slavery, and to his final battle looked forward to the majority of his life, but vengeance over a necklace? It was beneath him, and I would’ve thought beneath Oshossi.

“No,” I responded. “I would think only madness would lead to extremes, and Oshossi seems anything but insane.”

“Pride can be a kind of insanity,” Cherish said lightly. “Can’t it? Can’t you see that, Niko?” Xolo leaned his head against her shoulder, his eyes still on me—dreamy and drifting.

Perhaps . . .

Perhaps she was correct there. Madness could take many forms. We’d seen that over the years. Although Oshossi didn’t seem that way, it was possible I could be wrong. And even if it weren’t a necklace that had inspired Oshossi to such radical methods, maybe it had been something else. Something . . .

But was that really important? I shook off a sudden spell of light-headedness. Lingering effects of the concussion, no doubt. But that wasn’t important either. Wasn’t dealing with the problem now more important than anything else? Anything at all? The dizziness began to dissipate.

Yes, it was much more clear now. With the Auphe gone we would be able to concentrate more on helping Cherish. Because whatever she’d done, she shouldn’t be hunted like an animal. She was Promise’s daughter. Helping her was simply the right thing to do. Hadn’t I thought nearly the same thing at the Harlem brownstone? There was no need to doubt now.

We spent the rest of the day into the evening discussing Oshossi, plans to track him in Central Park—nearly impossible—and any other information Cherish had about him, what I’d gathered from mythology books, and what little more Robin had provided through acquaintances. Once or twice more the vertigo returned, but my train of thought would shift and the feeling would eventually vanish. The time passed quickly and it was nearly two a.m. before I was home. I’d taken the PATH train into the city and ran the rest of the way for the exercise. It was cold, but unlike Cal, I didn’t mind the cold. It scoured your lungs, made you feel alive, aware, calm, and free.

And we were free.

The pound of the pavement under my shoes, the chill air against my face, it was a return to normality. As close to normal as Cal and I would come, and it was good. Up to then we’d had to search for the good . . . the light, but it was here and now. No matter how long it lasted, it was here and now.

I ran up the stairs in our building, the cold streaming away. Our hall was empty, and the walls were painted a battleship gray. The same as it always was. Normal.

Until I saw our door, partially open.

It was never unlocked and it was never open unless we were walking through it.

I silently drew my sword and slid into the apartment, only to see Cal lying on the floor. For a second I was annoyed. He’d ignored our safety protocols, leaving the door open. He’d ignored some of the most important rules of our lives. Defeating the Auphe was no reason to ignore the rules. Besides, we had work to do, finding Oshossi, and my brother was taking a nap. He was always napping. Lazy as a cat, had been his whole life. This time he hadn’t even bothered to get on the couch. He just lay there in a pool of dark red, staring at the ceiling as if he hadn’t heard me come in.

My breath burned my throat.

As if I wouldn’t notice the mess.

I felt the katana fall from my hand.

As if I wouldn’t give him hell.

As if I wouldn’t . . .

Wouldn’t . . .

“Cal?”

The floor was hard beneath my knees. There was blood on my hands, soaking my shirt as the heavy weight of his head rested against my shoulder, black hair covering his face . . . except the eyes. They were half open, the gray dull. Not the cocky and sly eyes that looked at me across sparring swords. Not the ones I’d seen as I walked him to the first day of first grade—clear and solemn. Or the roll of them with his first glimpse of NYC, combined with the sarcastic drawl: “One helluva roach motel.”

Not the terrified madness of them as I yanked the steering wheel under my hand to drive us away from the burned-out shell of our trailer—a teenage Cal curled in a fetal ball in the passenger’s seat, twitching whenever I spoke and pulling out of reach desperately if I unexpectedly tried to touch him. Months later I’d seen his first smile fleeting in the gray after being taken by the Auphe; a year later I saw his first laugh catch there. I saw his determined stare at his first gun, his grip uncertain. His first kill, a grip like iron and eyes just the same. I saw the ferocity in them the first time he’d saved my life; I saw defiance there the first time he had died.

The first time he had died.

This time, the very last time . . . I saw nothing.

Nothing.

The gray of gone.

My brother was gone.

Then I was in the hall, the katana I didn’t remember picking up back in my hand, my mala beads discarded. The blood seeped through my shirt, sticking it to my skin. My hands were covered with it. There had been ccoa around him . . . five dead. I knew who had sent them.

I was the gray of gone as well, but I heard a familiar whisper. Cal telling me the same thing I would’ve told him.

Wake up.

Telling me that, because brothers know you can fight like this but you shouldn’t. But waking up wasn’t an option. Waking up to his surviving the Auphe but not a South American immortal. No. If I woke up, I wouldn’t be able to do what I had to do.

Wake up and I’d know.

I couldn’t know. Not now. Not yet.

Not until every last one of them was a cooling corpse.

I didn’t listen to any more whispers, and I didn’t know anything after that. I made sure of it. I didn’t know how I made it to Central Park, but I was there. I didn’t know how long I searched for them. I didn’t know if I found them or they found me. I didn’t know if it was cold. I didn’t know if there was snow or grass beneath me. I didn’t know anything. There was only a whiteness in my head, an emptiness with only one thought. One concept. One word.

Death.

There were cadejo, slippery black canine shapes. They lunged and retreated. Came and went. I sliced them to pieces. They couldn’t touch the white void in me. Nothing could.

The ccoa were quicker, some on the ground, some leaping from the trees. They didn’t die as quickly, but they died. My hands, still covered with blood . . . now dried a red-brown, swung the katana and they died. Some with slit throats, some with open bellies. It didn’t matter . . . as long as they died.

The Gualichu came—the spider with a thousand legs. A thousand to avoid. A thousand to cut.

It was timeless in the void . . . the cadejo, the ccoa, the Gualichu. They were swallowed and gone in the whiteness. To note how long it took was to care. I didn’t care about anything anymore. Beyond death there was nothing.

Only the white.

Only the void.

My blade cut through the spider’s bulbous body. Thick fluid poured free. I moved through it to chop the creature in half. It may have screamed. It may have not. Everything was muffled, wrapped in layers of cotton—sound was distant, the moon an amorphous haze, the lifeless bodies around me meaningless shadows.

Only one thing was clear, one figure sharper than anything seen in my life.

Oshossi.

“All this for a thief.” He stood on the swell of a hill. “All this fury and rage over a common thief.”

Words. Meaningless words.

I walked toward him, unable to even feel the ground beneath me. Unable to feel the air in my lungs. I didn’t need air. I only needed this. Death. Vengeance.

I’d said I’d keep him safe. I’d told him that before he even knew what the word meant, and then I’d turned my back and this piece of dead flesh standing before me had made a liar of me.

A liar to my brother.

A failure to him.

A crack appeared in the void and the white filled with blood. My lips peeled back from my teeth. I had no words for Oshossi, because there were no words for what I would do to him. No way to express the agony in which he would die. There would be blood in my head, on my hands, and filling the air like a warm rain. After that, I thought that red-drenched void might then swallow me as it had swallowed everything else, and it would be a long, long time before I came out. If I ever came out.

I’d lied to him, I’d failed him, and I’d lost him.

I took another step, a double-handed grip on my katana. I met gold eyes and moved to extinguish them.

“Nik?”

It was the only thing as clear as Oshossi. The voice.

His voice.

I turned my head, so slowly—the air as thick as glue, and saw him. Impossibly solid, impossibly there, impossibly real.

Caliban Leandros of the Vayash Clan.

Cal.

My brother.

Whole. Not bloody. Not torn. Not dead.

How could that be? It couldn’t. It was impossible. A trick. Just another shard of broken glass that sliced my brain.

“Nik, what the hell are you doing here alone?” He had his gun in one hand and his cell phone in the other. The GPS tracker connected to mine. Beside him a white wolf whose back came as high as Cal’s waist snarled silently.

A trick . . .

I looked down. My hands were bloody but not with the dried blood of before, not Cal’s blood. This was fresh animal gore. My coat was streaked with it, too, but my shirt that had been stiffened and caked with the blood of his body held against mine, head cradled on my shoulder, it was clean cloth again.

But which was the trick?

“I came home. The door was wide open. Your mala beads were on the floor.” I had dropped them, hadn’t I? They’d held nothing for me anymore. He looked past me and growled, “What did this piece of shit do to get you here alone?”

Only a goddamn trick.

I fell to my knees, let the katana tumble from my hands, and pressed my eyes with the heels of my hands. Cal’s hands were instantly on my shoulders. I recognized the hard grip of them, recognized the urgency. “Come on, Cyrano. You’re starting to scare the shit out of me.” I looked up, seized his jacket, and pulled him against me in a rough hug, one hard enough I know his ribs groaned under the pressure. His eyes—worried, determined, fierce—and alive. Not the dead, dull gray. They were alive.

“Nik?”

I rested my forehead on the top of his shoulder and struggled to find my way out of my own Tumulus, my own private hell. He smelled like beer, wolf, and my herbal soap, since he could never be bothered to buy his own. He smelled like my brother. He smelled like one last chance at sanity. A hand cupped the back of my head. “Nik, what the hell did he do?”

I pulled air into my lungs, breathed for what seemed like the first time since I’d seen him dead on the apartment floor. Straightening, I let him go but refused to release my one-handed grip on his jacket. If this was the trick, I didn’t care. I would take it and not look back. I turned my head to see Oshossi still standing on the hill, unmoving. “You said thief.” My voice was guttural and thick. It had been one of the few words to penetrate the void. “You said a common thief.”

“You know nothing, do you? You truly do not know,” he said, gold eyes narrow with disdain. “You only spring to the defense of family, vampire family, take her word, no doubt, until she could have Xolo force you to take it, whether you wanted to or not.”

“Xolo? What’s this have to do with that goat sucker?” Cal demanded, gun between Oshossi and us. Behind us the white wolf, Delilah, stood stiffly with head lowered and ears back.

Oshossi whirled his machetes casually. “Nothing. You literally know nothing. It’s amazing. Criminally so.” He jammed one machete into the ground at least eight inches and kept the other one in movement. “Xolo is mine. He is special among his kind. Most chupacabras have mild telepathy, only enough to immobilize their simpleminded goat prey.” The pointed teeth smiled. “They are nearly as simpleminded as the goats themselves, but, ah, our equally simpleminded Xolo has much, much more mind control than his average brothers and sisters. He is a potent weapon, an idiot savant with a rare talent. Once he has time to study his new prey, to feel out the workings of their mind, he can push their thoughts here and there. And he can make anyone see anything. Put a picture, a memory in their head that is as real as any genuine one. All he needs is someone to pull on his leash and tell him to do it. You can see how valuable that would make him to me.”

A picture . . . a portrait of my brother and blood and death. How easily I’d been persuaded to Cherish’s way of thinking today and earlier at the Harlem brownstone. As soon as a doubt would surface, so would the dizziness, and then they would both just as quickly disappear. The more I questioned, the further I’d been pushed into ignorance and compliance. Xolo. All Xolo. He hadn’t known us long enough to map out our minds until now, and as we’d previously agreed to help Cherish, she hadn’t needed to order him to manipulate us that much. Not until I started questioning. And then Cherish had him make a kamikaze of me.

“Christ, I get it now,” Cal cursed. “That’s how she pumped my brain about Nik at Rafferty’s and the hospital—what a fighter you are. Were you the best of us? Were you my keeper? No wonder I’d talked so damn much. I never talk that much. Not about us. Not about family. And I never would’ve thought she was part of the family without that damn chupa. She was looking for the perfect weapon. And, shit, Niko, you are the perfect weapon.”

That was it, then. My questioning earlier in the day might have hurried her plan a little, but it had been her plan all along. It was why she’d watched us spar so closely, watched us all fight. Robin, Cal, and I; she chose among us the one she thought best able to defeat Oshossi.

She had also made the most fatal mistake of her life.

“You can see how valuable that makes Xolo to me, the things he can do. You can also see why I could not allow him close to me with his new mistress. Why I depended on my creatures to dispose of her and bring him back. He is completely docile to whoever has him and feeds him.” Which was why Cherish had become so alarmed to see Cal trying to give blood to him in Rafferty’s kitchen. “And he knows well the workings of my mind. He could have me drown myself in the river, if so ordered, while thinking I’m but walking through the forest.” Which was why he could walk into the car lot but fled the brownstone where Xolo had been.

He stopped the motion of the last machete and let it point down toward the ground. “I use him to save what forests I can. To save what belongs to me. I want him back. I need him back. He can move the minds of men . . . the will of governments.”

“Then take him. If you have more creatures, find her, kill her, and take him,” I said, my voice empty and savage all at once. “We won’t stand in your way.” When I didn’t come back from Xolo’s illusion, she’d know either Oshossi had killed me or we’d killed each other. Either way, she wouldn’t stick around. In fact, I was positive she was gone already.

“And if she were here now?” he said, dark face curious.

“I’d kill her myself,” I responded flatly.

Oshossi looked around at the death that surrounded us. “My pets.” His stony face set dangerously, then relaxed slightly. “Victims, all of us. Go. But stand in my way again and you’ll be my victims next time.”

We went. I couldn’t feel my legs, but they still worked. Cal had come up from his crouch with my katana and wrapped my hand around its hilt. My other was still firmly fisted in his jacket. “Do you want to tell me what the son of a bitch Xolo made you see?” He had a good guess, I knew, but a guess wasn’t the same as details. Details I could not do.

“No.” There was snow beneath us—I could see it now—white and pristine as the void had been . . . the void that had shattered into a thousand pieces of sharp-edged, blood-streaked milky glass inside my head.

“You have interesting lives. Even Kin life not quite so interesting.” Delilah walked beside us in human form now, the change so quick it was a blur. Her bare feet walked through the snow without hesitation. “Pretty boy, give jacket now.”

“I lose more jackets this way,” Cal grumbled, but his worried gaze was still on me. “And stop calling me pretty boy. Upgrade me to smoking-hot man-meat, at least.” Delilah laughed until she nearly howled . . . a genuine wolf howl. Cal waited with uncustomary patience as I managed to unlock my fingers from his coat. He passed it over to a still-laughing Delilah while I immediately grabbed a handful of the back of his shirt.

“Where were you?” I demanded, and shook him. Shook him hard. And he allowed it without complaint. “Where were you?”

He didn’t bring up that I’d been gone only a half hour less than he had. He let it be. “I closed up the bar and met Delilah back at our place about two thirty. Like I said, the door was open, your malas were thrown down. I knew something was wrong.” His jaw tightened. “Really wrong. I used the GPS in our phones and tracked you to the park. I made a gate, Delilah came along for the ride, and we pinpointed your location.” He looked over his shoulder at what lay behind us. The Vigil would be busy tonight, if there was anything left that Boggle and her brood didn’t eat. “You killed everything, Nik. Everything.” He didn’t say it with awe—he said it for what it was. Fact. Cherish might have needed proof, but Cal had always known what I was capable of.

“I’m not done yet. She almost got her way. That evil bitch almost got her way,” I said with an emotion so dark and jagged it cut more easily than all the blades I owned.

“You want me to call Promise and tell her?” he asked. “Fuck it. That’s a stupid question. I’ll call her.”

He did. I didn’t listen. I, who listened to everything, paid notice of the smallest detail, didn’t listen. I hadn’t listened to much since two a.m. I knew she would be hurt, even after Xolo’s effects had worn off and she remembered how she’d trusted her thief and liar of a daughter with such an unnatural ease, considering their history. I knew she would be shamed and guilty that Cherish had risked all our lives over a lie and a lust for power to equal the Auphe’s. I imagined she ached for me, although Cal couldn’t tell her exactly what Xolo had made me see. She would guess like Cal had guessed, and all the guesses in the world couldn’t equal what I’d seen. I’d seen Cal die twice in my life. Two failures to protect him; one real, one illusion, both as carved into my memory with the same sharp edges.

Could a four-year-old be held to a promise?

Yes.

Could he do it justice?

Not always.

We were headed for the subway when Delilah began to peel off in another direction, the jacket making her barely legal. Her copper eyes looked through me, one roughened pad of her finger touched my forehead, then my chest. “Sick. Run it out. Hunt it out. Fight it out.” She shook her head. “Or go to the woods and never come out.”

Because that’s what a sick wolf would do—go to the woods, whether the woods were trees or a jumble of empty buildings, and wait to die.

As far as I could tell, it was better than that hospital bed I’d spent that night in. The wolves weren’t wrong. Cal had been listening to Delilah, because he had us off the subway ten blocks from home and had us running it. Ten blocks was nothing compared to my normal regimen, but after the battle I barely remembered, it tired me.

But not too much. The moment we entered the apartment, I pulled my tanto knife out and savagely slashed the rug in front of the coffee table to shreds before tossing it into the hall. It was where I’d seen Cal, seen the circle of blood. I still saw it, not with my eyes, but I still saw it. I couldn’t have that thing in here. Not with me.

Cal closed the door behind the flying cloth and gave a light shrug. “Never liked it anyway. Too Pier 1.”

I stood in the center of the floor, with no idea where I should go or what I should do. “You keep dying,” I finally said. I didn’t mean for it to sound accusatory, but I thought that it did. So much for my lifelong vaunted self-control. “You keep dying, and I keep breaking my promise.”

“I’m still here, so you haven’t broken it yet.” He moved in and peeled off my coat. Stained in blood and fluids, it probably wasn’t salvageable, but he tossed it in the sink anyway. “But, yeah, I can see how it’d seem that way.” He took my arm and moved me toward the bathroom. “You were supposed to let me carry the weight this time, Nik, remember?” He turned on the shower. “And I did. At the last second, I figure out how to get rid of the Auphe. And guess what? You still get screwed.” Once possessed by a creature that had lived in mirrors, he’d had a fierce phobia of the reflective surfaces for nearly a year. Fighting the fading but still-lingering effects of it now, he looked at himself in the simple square of glass bolted to the wall. “I don’t look like so much to be such a huge damn Achilles heel, do I?”

I wondered how long it had been since he’d actually seen himself full-on, not just in quick snatches. His hair had grown since the phobia had started, but he kept it cut at shoulder length, so no change there. His face had become more lean, his brows darker and thicker, but his eyes . . . Once you’re no longer a small child, the color of your eyes doesn’t change, but what’s behind that color does. Whatever lurked there had gone darker in Cal. And then I looked at myself to see the same thing. After this week . . . after this night, I’d gone darker as well.

“I think I need a haircut.” His faint grin faded as he went on. “I’m probably going to die before you, Nik.” His eyes locked with mine in the reflection. “I’m not as good as you are. I’m not as smart. And it won’t be your fault. It’ll just be life and death and all the fuckups in between. You made a promise to yourself eighteen years ago when you should’ve been playing with Legos. Well, you did it. You kept me alive. Despite Sophia and the Auphe, you managed to keep my ass alive. Now let it go. It’s my responsibility from now on.” He bumped his shoulder against mine. “Keep watching my back, yeah, and I’ll keep watching yours, but bottom line . . . you’ve put your time in. If I go, it’s not because you failed. It’s because whoever I was taking on was better or luckier than me or, shit, I was just having a bad day. And, hell yeah, still kill the son of a bitch who took me out, make it hurt too, but . . .” The smile was dark, worried. “Just try to do it with a little less suicidal fury. Homicidal fury is good. Suicidal, bad. Got it?”

“And you’ll do the same if it goes the other way?” I already knew the answer to that. I’d seen him dive headfirst into death twice in the past year to save me. He’d do the same to follow me.

“Yeah.” He hung his head for at least a minute, then shook it ruefully. “We’re screwed, aren’t we? Okay.” He exhaled, straightened, and accepted it. I couldn’t do any less for him than he would do for me. “So we go out together, then. Just like with the Auphe. Sounds like a plan.” He pushed me toward the streaming water. “You’re a bloody mess. I doubt you want any souvenirs of tonight, much less spider intestinal goop on your leg.”

He left and I showered. When I was done, we sat side by side on my bed, his shoulder resting against mine to remind me what was true. I couldn’t even go in the living room without seeing the lie in vivid detail—an afterimage on the floor that was as bright and real to me as any camera’s flash. Like the night before, we watched the sky lighten. This time it wasn’t celebrating our freedom. This time it was me not being able to close my eyes for more than a minute without seeing Xolo’s handiwork, and it was Cal not letting me spend that time alone.

The sun came up on a new day.

I hoped it was Cherish’s last.