Doubletake

5

Interesting.

And fucking annoying.

He was maimed. Spoiled. He hadn’t gated away. Couldn’t gate away, but why? He was the Unmaker of the World. He had once been able to build a gate to the past…to millions of years ago. You can’t create a damned and doomed doorway such as that without the innate ability to gate with unmatchable ease.

Nearly unmatchable, that is. There was me, wasn’t there? Yes…ah, yes…there was me.

I took another bite of my dinner and chewed as I put down the binoculars. He had looked dead as the pathetic meat bag of a human and the goat tried to free him from the metal claws of a thing the likes of which I’d never seen. A curious thing too, but I didn’t have time for another curiosity. Caliban was my one and only at the moment. I’d gated his attacker to the top of a building far across the city. It seemed to like building tops. Whatever that thing was, it wasn’t mine, but it might prove useful to keep around. One never knew when death incarnate would be needed. But in the end my brother was my toy; his miserable life or death belonged to me alone.

I swallowed and took another mouthful. Caliban might have looked dead, but he wasn’t. He was family, and our family didn’t die easily. No no no no no. I was proof of that. I had lived through twenty years of torture…lived and escaped. Twelve more years hadn’t made me forget every burn, every sear, every slice of a blade, every week of starvation—none of it, because those memories made me stronger and more determined.

This failure was going to prove to the family that rejected me, the family that was gone but not forgotten, that I was better than they were…so very much better.

And the success…Cal-i-ban, something had happened to him. He had built a gate to the past. I’d “talked” to those who roamed this city: the vampires, the revenants, the Wolves, others. I’d talked to them with my teeth and my man-made claws. I left nothing but shredded flesh, intestines, and death when I was done with them. But isn’t that the result of talking? I thought it was, and if I thought it was, no one would tell me anything differently or I’d talk to them as well.

They’d all said the same: He could gate like a motherfucker.

Something had happened. I had only to find out what. Not that in the end it mattered. We healed. Against anything that didn’t kill us—we healed. It might take time, but we never failed in that.

We were Auphe.

What didn’t kill us only pissed us the fuck off.

I tossed away the leg of the security guard who had tried to stop me from accessing the rooftop of the building at a safe distance from Caliban’s party. He wasn’t muscular or flabby, the guard, but in between. Succulent and soft, yet not too soft—the perfect consistency. But I was full. The rest could stay on the roof until someone found the leftovers. I sat up and put my sunglasses back on. Night to everyone else, but the lights…it made it day to me. I didn’t like the day. I didn’t like the tedium of lying on rooftops either. I’d relieve the tedium later by slaughtering one or two people…or three or four. With the sudden lack of paien -kind around for the past two days—except for the goats, and even I wouldn’t bother with a putrid, diseased goat—humans were all I had, and they were no challenge. It took more to satisfy.

But soon…soon I’d find out what had made Caliban less of an opponent, less family, and so much less interesting. I had patience though. Thirty years of it. We would see what we would see. He could again be a worthwhile challenge himself, sooner or later.

I needed a challenge, and so…

I would wait.

Awhile.