Deathwish

16

The bar didn’t have any uncovered windows to speak of. The Ninth Circle’s patrons liked their privacy, but it did have a few tiny stained-glass panes here and there that gave little away . . . unless you were very observant. I was. Through one triangle of grape-colored glass I saw Robin’s arm gesticulate wildly. In annoyed surprise or shock, I guessed. He’d been caught up on the entire ordeal in the past week. Now, what could possibly surprise him to that extent?

Ah.

Seamus, I thought with a little annoyance of my own. Resigned amusement as well. Cal. He did for me what I did for him. Hard to take him to task for that. I would at some point certainly, for going without my knowledge and for using a gate when it was still quite dangerous. Although, considering the efficiency he’d shown, it was hard not to want to reward him with one of his favorite cardiovascular-damaging foods. Positive reinforcement—it truly was the best way to train children and animals, and I’d say Cal fell about halfway between those two.

Yes, he’d handled Seamus well. I’d rather he’d have let me handle it, but spilled milk is just that. I leaned back against the cold surface of the building directly across the street from the bar and folded my arms. I was surprised, however, that it had taken Goodfellow this long to figure it out, although we most definitely had been occupied. I supposed he could be forgiven the lapse of his usual inquisitiveness.

Cal wanted to handle someone else besides Seamus. He wanted Cherish, and he wanted her badly. “For what she did to you, Nik,” he’d said adamantly. “I’m not letting her walk away from that. I don’t give a damn about Xolo or Oshossi or all the other shit she put us through, but for what she did to you, I’m not letting that slide. I will blow her fucking head off, swear to God. And if she’s lucky, that’s the least of what I’ll do to her.”

I’d given him the one reply, the only reply that would change his mind. “She’s mine.” That wasn’t enough. “I need it, little brother.” That was.

I didn’t ask for things often. I didn’t need them often, but if I did . . . Cal would move heaven and hell to get them for me. This time he had only to step back and, for me, he did.

I kept my eyes on the bar. Only two weeks, and I stood here across the street. Cal had done well by me; otherwise I would’ve been standing in the bar inches behind his chair, breathing down his neck. He had done everything he could, done everything right, and here I was . . . in one piece, physically and mentally. More than slightly cracked, but held together with the best glue Cal could produce.

He had run, which he hated. Meditated, which he also hated—when he managed to stay conscious. Fought, which he actually enjoyed, except for its direct conflict with his inherent laziness. Delilah had been smart, Cal driven, and the result was I could actually go almost an hour at a time without picturing what Cherish had Xolo shove into my brain. It was an improvement—a vast improvement.

A man walking down the mostly empty sidewalk caught my eye. The Ninth Circle wasn’t in the best part of town. You were unlikely to see crowds drifting along, and there was the feel of something different and strange that kept most humans away. But once in a while, the stupid or the unlucky didn’t pay attention to what their subconscious was trying to tell them. Predators ahead. I focused and saw the faint glitter of a blade held against his leg as his jittering eyes hit me. A junkie and his knife. In other words, a rank amateur. Breaking the well-known rule of “Don’t let a man see your knife until it’s in him,” I raised an eyebrow and held the side of my duster open to show a glittering array of nine blades strapped within. He twitched, hesitated, then ran across the street and went into the Circle.

Stupid and unlucky. It would be the last anyone saw of him.

My cell phone rang and I answered it. Samuel spoke without preamble. “Your buddy Oshossi took a walk off a very tall building in Atlantic City. We were cleaning him up with sponges.” We’d asked him before for Oshossi’s location when we’d believed Cherish, when we’d been desperate, but he and the Vigil had been silent on that subject. But now they knew. I’d been very clear in letting them know what Xolo could do, and several guesses what Cherish would do with him. She could rule at least a country or two if she and Xolo had access to the right people. It seemed that was potentially overt enough for the Vigil to provide some assistance. “Our psychics say your other friend is in room seventeen-eighty at the Borgata Hotel. Now, seriously, Niko, don’t call me anymore. This was an exception because of what that chupa can do. We are even. You know that. You’re an honorable guy. The Vigil won’t stand. . . .”

It was the same thing he’d said in the warehouse. No more favors. I gave it the same weight now as I had then. “I couldn’t care less about the Vigil,” I interrupted him to say levelly. “For what you did to Cal, we will never be even. Keep taking my calls or we’ll talk in person. Trust me, Samuel, you don’t want to talk to me in person.” I disconnected before he could reply.

Honor. People were so quick to talk about my honor. Promise, Robin, even Cal, who should’ve known better. I did my best to have honor, my best to maintain that core in almost every aspect of my life, but where my brother began, honor ended and instinct took over. Instinct knew very little about honor, and cared even less.

With this call, I knew what had to happen. What was going to happen. I could only hope Promise felt the same way, because for me it was the only way.

I dialed her number and waited as it rang. So Cherish hadn’t gone far. I had thought she wouldn’t. Oshossi was at a disadvantage in a city, and no matter how it had ended when she had Xolo send me after him, she knew if he were alive he’d be either wounded or without his creatures. A city wouldn’t be his friend, but it would be hers.

And it had been. Oshossi was dead. He’d gotten too close to her and Xolo after all. Instead of being swallowed by a river, he’d fallen to his death, all the while no doubt thinking he was but walking in the forests of his home.

“Hello?”

I didn’t hesitate. “She’s in Atlantic City. Oshossi’s dead. She still has Xolo.” With whom she could do whatever she pleased. Control anyone. Rule anyone. Kill anyone. Surround herself with mind-warped puppets. None of it was good, and none of it began to approach my problem with her.

I heard Promise exhale, lost and certain all at once. “This can’t go on. She has to be stopped.”

I waited.

There was a hesitation; then her voice was weary. “She’s not my daughter. She’s a monster.” There was silence as I knew she was thinking of taking the matter into her own hands, that Cherish was her daughter and her responsibility. But in the end, she couldn’t. “I wash my hands of her,” she said tonelessly, which said while she couldn’t do what had to be done, others were welcome to. Specific others. There was the buzz of a dial tone in my ear, and I slowly flipped the phone shut.

Four hours later, I was in an Atlantic City hotel. Mickey had managed to make it back to his junkyard after Oshossi had flipped our car by the park. He hadn’t been too enthusiastic about getting involved until I told him Oshossi and all his creatures were dead. Then—for a price, naturally—he came along. I’d borrowed one of the cars from Robin’s lot. Aside from the clumps of rat fur in the passenger’s seat, I didn’t think he’d mind.

In the past year, I’d had Robin teach me some of the more rudimentary points of lock picking. When it came to a casino hotel door complete with keycard, I accessed the lock via the heel of my boot. I did it as quietly as possible, and at four in the morning the hall was empty, if you didn’t count the woman passed out by the elevators.

Mickey, huddled in a hooded trench coat, streaked past me into the darkened room, and by the time the lights flashed on scant seconds later, he said, “Is done.”

I could see it was done. Mickey was nothing if not quick. He had swaddled Xolo up in the bed comforter. Covered from head to toe, there was no chance of those large hypnotic eyes catching mine. As Xolo had never met Mickey, he hadn’t mapped his brain yet. He couldn’t control the rat before he was contained, not like he could have me.

I closed the door quietly behind me. Cherish stood beside the other bed, where she’d been sleeping. She was dressed in a white silk nightgown and held a sword in her hand. She could’ve tried lying or playing innocent, but with one look at me she knew. Lying, charming, thieving—none of that could help her now.

Once when Cal was seven, he’d been chased by a dog. Hammer. A vicious giant of a canine, it had broken its chain and leapt on Cal. It had ripped his backpack off with one tear of its massive jaws, and I knew my brother’s neck was next. Hammer was the first thing I’d ever killed. I’d run, snatching a rusty pickax off the rickety porch of one of the trailers, and with one swing buried the sharp end between the dog’s amber eyes, deep in his brain. That was the first time. I’d killed for Cal many times since.

This time I did it for myself.

She could rule masses of people with Xolo. It was true. I could say there was the threat she could come back for us. With what Cal could do, with the way I could fight, if she could have the chupa control us, there wasn’t much in this world she couldn’t have. That was true as well. Saving the world like a genuine hero. It was a good reason for what had to be done.

But it wasn’t mine.

“I can make you see him die every minute of every day for the rest of your life,” she hissed, the normally beautiful face twisted and ugly as murder itself. “He’ll scream for you, and you’ll fail him. Every time he dies. Every single time.”

Once had been enough, and that was my reason.

It wasn’t long before I was looking down at her fallen body. Her sleep-tousled black hair was spread around her now still face, Promise’s violet eyes wide and empty, the smallest amount of blood staining the white silk over her heart. Her sword at her side. I’d given her a chance, warrior to warrior, and she’d wielded the weapon admirably. She’d been almost as skilled as she was beautiful. She’d also been intelligent, charming, charismatic, clever, and with the potential for so much more.

I’d felt worse about killing Hammer.

He couldn’t help what he was. She could have. A monster, her own mother had labeled her. She could’ve gotten Promise or any of us killed with her lies. She nearly had. She’d been a kidnapper and a thief, made me an assassin, killed Oshossi, and counting all that, I doubt she had even warmed up. But worst of all, she’d cost me my brother. Temporarily or not, she’d taken him away from me.

Now when I closed my eyes, maybe I’d see her body instead of his.

I turned to Xolo, wrapped passively in a blanket as Mickey watched it all with ink-spot eyes. I suppose the chupa belonged to me now. Oshossi was gone, Cherish as well. All that was left was a living weapon that could rend your mind in half. A living, breathing nuclear bomb. We didn’t need any more of those.

I took his head swiftly and painlessly. With the muffling blanket he never saw it coming. Like Hammer, it wasn’t his fault he was what he was, but he was too dangerous to let live. I suppose there were those who thought the same about me.

It’s all perspective, and you did what you had to do.

Cherish’s eyes were beginning to film over. Her mother’s eyes fading from purple to an ordinary dark blue behind the fog. I wondered whose choice it would be now. Would I ever be able to look at Promise again without feeling my world fracture? Would she be able to look at me without seeing a little girl with dark hair holding her hand and smiling the sweetest of smiles? She’d known what had to be done, she’d given her consent, but consenting and facing the one who’d carried out that consent? Vastly different things.

Would either of us be able to look at one another again without seeing our families die?

Five months later I found out.

It took two months before I stopped waking up knowing Cal was dead and gone—seeing it. Although once in a while his note hit me before the memory did. Pain-in-the-ass little brothers—occasionally they knew what they were doing. It didn’t mean I fixed him waffles every morning. Rewarding good intentions; encouraging laziness. It was a fine line.

It took another three months before every monster—every revenant, every sylph, every djinn—that I killed no longer had Cherish’s face. Three months before I could kill and not enjoy the killing. When that happened, I chose an afternoon and went to her door. I knocked, and when she opened it, I saw her. Not Cherish. Not Cal, bloody and limp. I saw her. Promise. Pale skin, unpainted mouth, wise eyes, the coffee-and-cream tumble of her hair. I saw all the things between us, the good and the bad, and the more I hoped to come.

What did she see?

Past her I saw her piano. The picture, the old-fashioned photo of her and the little girl, was gone. In its place was a single calla lily I’d once given her. Both it and the vase that held it were crystal. The brilliant glassy shine of the petals was the same color as her eyes. A long-lived flower for a long-lived love, I’d thought when I’d given it to her. I hadn’t said it aloud. That wasn’t my way. She knew all the same, though, because she’d seen me. She had seen me then.

And she saw me now.

She smiled and held out a hand.

I took it.

Watch out, Cal and Niko,

there’s a new girl in town . . .

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