Doubletake

6

“Nothing for his blood pressure. It’s far too high from Rafferty’s manipulation, but with the blood loss it should be dropping like a rock. If we give it a chance, the combination should stabilize it in a normal range.”

Odd when hearing something like that can be comforting, but it meant one thing: I was home.

It was still dark, but that was fine. I was content to float there awhile. I knew when I opened my eyes that things weren’t going to be as pleasant.

Once we had a healer, Rafferty. He could lay his hands on you and knit flesh back together like magic. Except there was no magic, only monsters. He had a genetic gift, one much better than mine. Then Rafferty had left—for good, I thought. He had family of his own to care for.

There’d also been a Japanese healing spirit who had lived in the city, working as a doctor and teaching premed at Columbia. But a time had come when he’d wanted to return home. And me? I couldn’t go to a hospital, not like Niko. On the outside I was human; on the inside, I was less so. One blood test, one CT scan, and in would swoop the black helicopters, and the government would take me apart. I doubted very seriously that they’d put me back together when they were done.

That left Niko, who, when he found a problem, found a solution…or he took out his sword and beheaded the problem. One of the two. Either way, he got things done.

Which meant that he’d gone to med school—in a way. He had only three months’ notice that O-Kuni-Nushi, better known to his oblivious colleagues as Dr. Ken Nushi, was headed home for several hundred years at least, but Niko was smart, the smartest son of a bitch I knew. He spent every spare moment with Nushi for those months, that big brain of his soaking up every piece of knowledge at maximum speed. Nushi had known the only medical training needed for us was trauma, and that had made it easier. And as a practicing doctor, he had access to plenty of medical supplies and drugs to send our way. What he didn’t have access to—he worked as a general practitioner, not a surgeon—had to be stolen or bought from highly questionable sources.

Seemed right. I was highly questionable myself.

I slitted my eyes and hissed at the spike of pain caused by the light. Almost immediately the level was lowered. “Damn it to hell. Head?” I mumbled, recognizing the symptoms from too many times before. I then vaguely remembered the bounce of my skull off the street when that thing had slammed into me before trapping me with those massive claws. That would be a big yes on the head injury.

“Head, a few burns to your legs, and sliced open like a side of beef. Oh, and Rafferty’s ‘gift’ that keeps on giving.” It was Goodfellow’s jovial rundown.

I opened my eyes wider this time. I felt a little loopy, and that wouldn’t be from Niko knocking me out. “I feel…weird. Kind of…happy? Is this happy? I think I like it.”

I heard Niko’s snort, and his face appeared above me. “Deep sedation, IV. I had to stitch you up, and not just skin, but layers of muscle. When we managed to get that thing off of you I could see your ribs. I could see bone. When I didn’t see the blood.” His lips tightened before I saw him tuck the image away. “You’ll be useless for weeks. Not that you aren’t perpetually useless to begin with,” he added.

“Love you too, big brother.” I grinned and that hurt too. “Ow, Jesus.”

“You also have a mild burn to your face from the first explosive round you fired. Fortunately that one knocked the automaton back far enough that the flash from the other rounds didn’t reach you. Although if it had happened, I’m certain Goodfellow would be the first in line with the barbecue sauce.”

“You engage in one bonding incident of cannibalism to save your life from a pissed-off pack of natives and you never live it down,” Robin muttered.

Niko ignored the sulking as he chose a syringe from the metal table beside him, pulled off the plastic cap, and slid the needle into the port to the IV in the back of my hand. “This should help. Not that you need it for your face. It could pass as a sunburn, but your incisions over your ribs and the one on the back of your head are going to wake up and let you know they are there soon enough.”

Suddenly I wasn’t feeling quite as happy anymore. I looked around, doing my best not to turn my head and irritate the injury there any sooner than I had to. I was in Nik’s room. All the more intensive medical care was done there. God knew it was as antiseptic as any operating room. I had bandages that ran the width of my sides, three on the right and one on the left. A blood-pressure cuff around my right arm. There were IVs, one in my right hand and one in the crook of my left arm. Clear fluids on one side and a bag of blood on the other. You couldn’t find half-human, half-Auphe blood, but Nushi had assured Niko that the Auphe in my system could tolerate any type of blood: A, B, AB, O. Probably cow blood if it came to it, and that wasn’t a joke. Nushi didn’t joke about medical matters, Nik had said.

Anesthesia, surgery, blood—it was the first test of Niko’s training, not the basic first aid we’d picked up along the way. I didn’t think he cared for it too much. I knew the feeling. I’d sat at the side of his hospital bed once, helpless to do anything. Which was worse? Knowing there wasn’t a damn thing you could do for your brother or knowing you were the only one who could?

That was an easy question to answer: They both sucked equally.

Niko’s scrubs—those we could buy legally, although that wasn’t as much fun—were stained liberally with blood. He didn’t bother with a surgical cap or mask. With my immune system, a stray hair or flu germ wasn’t going to be a blip on the radar. He did use gloves, though, if only to keep the blood off his hands. The gloves had their work cut out for them this time, I saw, as he peeled them off and tossed them in the garbage can that had to be at his feet even if I couldn’t lift my head from the pillow to see it. Niko would sooner commit seppuku than toss garbage on the floor.

“Doctor, samurai, weapons expert, teacher, historian, barkeep-slash–puck boy toy, monster killer. You’re this generation’s Buckaroo Banzai,” Robin drawled. He was dressed in bloody scrubs and stripping off gloves as well. A desperately quick surgery required someone to hand over the instruments, hang more fluids, maybe wipe up the floor so you didn’t slip in the blood. No one in the room had had much of a good time, except the unconscious guy. But my body would make sure I paid for that later.

I knew Niko didn’t care for the doctor part of Robin’s list, and that more than anything made me change the subject. “Did you say that thing was an auto-something? Jesus, if it was a Transformer, I wish you would’ve just let me go. I don’t want to live in a world where those actually exist.” Things were getting blurry and soft around the edges. The painkillers kicking in. Unfortunately the pain had jumped on the track and was neck and neck with the drugs. I hung in there. I’d hurt worse in my life, more times than I could count. I’d most likely hurt sometime worse in the future. It was the way things were.

“Automaton,” Niko corrected as he pulled a heated blanket over me. That was another way to know I was genuinely conscious…Niko correcting me. The warmth of the blanket banished an icy chill I hadn’t been aware of until then and had me shutting my eyes, interest in my question instantly gone.

But Goodfellow always had a way of getting anyone’s attention, anytime, anywhere, any way. I heard his cheerful comment close to my ear: “You know what surgery tends to include?” The next word went from cheerful to wickedly gleeful. “Catheters.”

I opened my eyes and glared first at him, then at Niko. “You didn’t let him”—I waved a hand at the general area—“play around down there. Tell me you didn’t. Niko, I will kick your ass so damn far it’ll rotate around the earth like a fucking defense satellite.”

He shrugged. “It’s a simple procedure, especially for someone like Goodfellow, with so much experience in that area. I could talk him through it while I did my best to keep you from bleeding to death, which you almost did.” His impassive gaze took me in. “Do you have anything further to say about the situation?”

No, I didn’t. That shut me up as Goodfellow smirked, stripped off his bloody scrub top, and headed for the bedroom door. “I’m going to change while you give him the history lesson, Niko.”

“Robin said that from the look of the metal and the description I gave him, the creature was an automaton, specifically a Janus automaton, as it had two faces. It’s a metallic, virtually living machine made by the Greek god”—or whatever was pretending to be a god—“Hephaestus. Robin hadn’t heard of this particular one, but he said Hephaestus made so many or bought them and passed them off as his own that our mythology doesn’t know one-fifth of what he created.” The automatic whine of the blood-pressure cuff inflating again had Niko’s eyes fixed on the glowing numbers.

I didn’t care to look. Either it was so high it killed me, thanks to Rafferty, or it was low enough that I lived. Nothing I could do about it. The warmth and the pain meds finally taking over had me wanting to drift away slowly again, but I resisted it for the moment. “How do we stop it?”

Niko was frowning as he reached for another syringe and injected that into my IV as well. “Apparently we don’t. None of our weapons will be effective against it—it’s an ancient technology that outreaches ours today. You need to know the correct phrases—a long-dead language, I’m assuming—to turn it off. Goodfellow doesn’t know them. He said every automaton has different command codes, I suppose you’d call them in this time. How it was activated is a mystery, the mystery being some Vayash traitor did, at least, know that phrase. That means we avoid it if possible until you’re well enough to send it to Tumulus. I am guessing that’s where you were attempting to send it.”

“No, Nik, to Coney Island for a roller-coaster ride and a giant goddamn pretzel.” I tried to snort sarcastically. I wasn’t too successful except for the trickle of blood I felt start running from my nose over my lip. Niko took a washcloth and wiped it away.

“Stop thinking, or what passes for your version of thinking, and go to sleep. Second gates aren’t supposed to kill you, but you tried too hard and Rafferty’s work is too effective. I can’t get your blood pressure down yet. So for the love of Buddha, sleep…please.”

He didn’t say “please,” my brother, not often. He was polite and honorable—when he wasn’t forced to kill you, given—but somehow he avoided the word as if your behavior should be equally polite and therefore no “please”s required.

When he did say it…I obeyed. I was about to close my eyes when he whipped his head around and soundlessly put a hand on the unsheathed katana on the low dresser behind him. He was listening. I didn’t hear anything except dripping IVs, the low beep of a blood-pressure machine, and a narcotic ringing in my ears, but if Niko heard something, it was there.

I started to sit up, but realized before I did that that was the worst thing I could do. Monster slayer? I couldn’t slay a hamster right now. The only thing I would do was get in Niko’s way. He stood, not frozen, but waiting. What he waited for stepped into view out of the darkness of the hall. The only light on in the place was in this room, and it was a low light in deference to my concussion at that. It didn’t matter. I recognized him all the same.

Kalakos.

He had outrun the boggles. Damn that streak of humanity in me. At the moment I didn’t regret anything more than not dropping him directly into their pit. Mama Boggle would’ve solved this problem for us with one bite of her jaws. Niko’s father scanned the bedroom. He didn’t seem surprised by what he saw. “You heard me pick the lock,” he said to Niko. “I suspected you kept it slightly rusty for a reason. You are like me. No matter what we do, you and I, we will always have our reasons.”

I saw Robin in the murk behind him. Kalakos didn’t hear him. As long as he had lived or guessed he’d lived, no one would hear Goodfellow if he didn’t want to be heard. He had a sword as well, not a katana, more crusader style, but lighter-weight. It was lined up directly at Kalakos’s back as the puck took several silent steps closer.

Niko pointed his katana. “Leave,” he ordered flatly. “Now.” I was vulnerable, embarrassing as that was, and around an unknown variable. He didn’t like it.

He didn’t like it to the point of being on the verge of burying steel in flesh without a thought.

But that bastard didn’t see that as I did. Kalakos’s eyes showed no fear, but they did show resignation. “I told you that the burden is one all Vayash are responsible for recovering.”

“We have nothing to do with your burden or the Vayash.” Kalakos didn’t know Nik, had never bothered to know him, but I knew him. I knew that while he rarely lost control, when he did…it was one goddamn thing to see. And he was standing on the edge. Teetering.

The black eyes focused on me, on the bandages, the medical equipment, the dried blood that still covered Nik’s scrubs.

Just…about…now.

“I think it seems that you do.”

That was that.

“That is the burden? That is the duty? It did this to my brother? When you said it could sense Vayash, you meant that literally? Sense us by our blood?” Niko’s knuckles went white under his olive skin. “And you wanted us to help you fight it. Did you lead it here?”

The point of Goodfellow’s sword came to rest against flesh. I could see that in the tightening of the skin around Kalakos’s mouth. Sandwiched between two blades, he kept his hands carefully away from his body. It was a smart move.

“I told you that it smells Vayash like a wolf smells a sheep. You chose not to listen. And I did not bring it. It came of its own—”

Niko didn’t listen to the rest. His hand wrapped around the grip of the katana slammed into his father’s face with brutal force, knocking him down and out. While Kalakos lay unconscious on the floor, Niko spit on him. I didn’t think I’d seen Niko do something more unlike himself or had seen him as furious, but then, as Kalakos had said, he and my brother always had their reasons. This was history repeating itself. “This is what the Vayash gave us when we came to you,” Niko said coldly. “And this is what you get in return, you bastard. You and your burden.”

Kalakos’s getting his ass kicked in a truly righteous way for a truly righteous reason made me feel better than all the narcotics in the room. Niko had buried this for his entire life, and it was time that he had a chance to get it out and deal with it. To “emote.” It was a fancy word for a beat-down, “emote,” but that only made me enjoy it more. I had only one regret.

“Goodfellow, kick him in the ribs for me, would you?” I said. The words were barely understandable. I was going down as fast as Kalakos had, but barely was good enough. As my eyes closed, I heard the meaty thud of Robin’s shoe against flesh. It was a good sound to take me into sleep. I probably gave a smile as I went.

One dark and satisfied smile.

“Niko, there is a man in your garbage Dumpster outside. I can see his legs showing from beneath the lid.” There was silence, but the scent of heather. I pictured Promise brushing a kiss across my brother’s lips. “It is not quite what I would call being inconspicuous.”

“In this situation I do not much care about being conspicuous or not.” There was the sound of the blood-pressure cuff inflating and the tightened pressure on my arms. After several seconds, Niko exhaled. “Finally. Normal.” That was good news. My brain wasn’t going to explode. I didn’t use it much, but it was nice to know. “As for that worthless garbage masquerading as a human being, if the police show up, I’m quite certain he’ll wake up and talk his way out of his mess, because it’s not and never will be our mess.”

Huh. All that emoting and ass kicking hadn’t seemed to bring Nik much closure. I knew about closure, only I tended to laugh a little maniacally when I heard the word. No one knew better than I did that closure was a fairy tale, and expecting Niko to embrace it in a single day wasn’t doing him much service.

I opened my eyes to see Promise with her arms wrapped around Niko as he sat in the chair beside the bed. She was resting her pale cheek—like me, vamps weren’t much for tans—against his. Her hair was all brown again, the wide blond stripes gone. I coughed and said hoarsely, “No more…tiger? I liked the tiger look.”

“It was very high-maintenance. Much like you, Cal.” She reached over Niko’s shoulder to stroke a gentle hand down my blanket-covered leg. “What have you done to yourself now?” There was nothing but sympathy in her voice, but Niko’s face tensed all the same.

“He didn’t do anything to himself.” He stood up and walked away from the circle of her arms. Standing at the foot of my bed now, he tugged the blanket down a few inches to cover my bare feet. I was a restless sleeper, drugged or not. As for sleep in general, the effects of the lack of it that lined his face were more apparent as he let go of the cloth and folded his arms, brooding. He didn’t look at her or me, only inside himself. He’d changed from scrubs into a black shirt and black jeans. “My…The man who fathered me is responsible for this. Cal almost…” He shut his mouth tightly before relaxing slightly. “Kalakos did this. He is the one in the Dumpster and he is exceedingly lucky that he will eventually wake up. I gave several hours’ consideration last night to whether I would allow that to happen or not.” Nik must have changed his mind about Kalakos’s bringing the Janus automaton here intentionally as opposed to following it or there would’ve been no consideration and no waking up for his father again.

I cared less about intentions and more about the results, especially when they happened to Niko or me. I would’ve had no problem killing the worthless bastard if Niko wanted to drag his unconscious body back inside, and I wouldn’t need to consider it for hours or even seconds. All I’d need was someone to fetch me one of my guns. But this wasn’t about me or the fact that I’d almost been butchered like a pig at the slaughterhouse. Oddly, my human and Auphe sides both agreed on this issue. The first thought was that Niko needed to take care of this himself to come to terms with an abandoned, fatherless life. The second…

Unconscious. Human. Worthless. Boring. The dark stretched within me and yawned.

What could I say? They were both right.

But Kalakos would wake up again, and if Niko decided he’d made a bad call, yet hesitated—very doubtful, but if he did—I had a feeling my opinion of what I would do would change, but the agreement within me wouldn’t. After all, brothers helped each other out. Besides, worthless and boring or not, it beat TV.

TV…Nik should get a TV in his room instead of all those boring books.

TV would be good now.

Where was the remote…?

Niko gripped my leg lightly. I’d almost dozed off again. “We’ll have to move you. Soon. Before that thing finds us again.”

I yawned. “I know.”

“It’ll be painful, medicated or not,” he warned.

“Your cooking is painful. Moving I’ll survive,” I assured him.

“Then you can come to my home and I’ll have the housekeeper make you a completely nonvegan lunch and dinner.” Promise smoothed my blankets again, but her eyes were on Niko. “If your father is genuinely to blame for what happened to Caliban, then I know better than to think you would let him live.”

“It’s complicated,” Nik replied with ten times his usual understatement, “and I am sorry, Promise, but Kalakos is not a subject I wish to discuss, not now.”

Then came the knock at the door, and “complicated” was ready to talk to Niko whether he was ready or not. “Maybe the third time’s the charm,” I said. “Promise, could you get me a gun from under my bed?” I must have been due a dose of pain meds soon, because the pain was growing sharp, but being clearheaded and pissed off pushed it down and made me more than capable of handling a firearm or two. “Or two guns. Yeah, two would be good.”

She took a look at me, the guy barely able to move and pissing through a catheter—Jesus, I hoped she didn’t know that—and shook her head. “Boys with their toys…and their grudges.” Niko was already gone, heading toward the door with katana in hand. Promise left as well, but returned with my SIG Sauer and one of my backup Desert Eagles. Chrome instead of the matte black I usually went with, but I’d discovered over the years that color didn’t matter. They’d both put a bullet in you with equal effectiveness. I didn’t hide them under the covers. I let them rest in sight above the blankets with my fingers curled around the triggers. I wasn’t afraid of Kalakos, although he’d damned well better be afraid of me.

I’d have offered one to Promise, but Promise had her own weapons—natural and man-made. She was as lethal as either of my guns. “He knew about Niko before he was born,” I said quietly, hardly above a murmur. “He didn’t come for him. He didn’t take him from Sophia. He didn’t save him. The only time Niko has seen him is now…when Kalakos needs something from him. Remember that.”

“I will,” Promise, the violet of her eyes swirling with black, said, and I saw delicate fangs lower and lock into place as she did.

“I swear it to you, Niko. I tried to warn you, but leave that behind us. I can help him. It will be back. It is only semiaware; yet that is enough for it to know it hates its captors. The Vayash. Any Vayash, and it will not care if you deny the clan. It will smell the Vayash in your blood.”

Kalakos, sounding like Niko, but off just enough for me to make the distinction.

“As if I’d trust him with you. We are moving. It will not find us.” That was Niko, but not one I was used to hearing. There was the fury, buried but clawing its way free. Not forgotten, not forgiving.

“When Janus returns from wherever it was sent, it will find you eventually, but will your brother be healed enough to fight? Or still in that bed, able only to die?”

That ass. Granted, Janus had taken me down when the worst I’d had was a baby kishi bite on my leg, but still…That ass. My fondest hope was that I did have the time to heal to show Kalakos what I could do given free rein. I didn’t think Niko would silently hold me back this time.

Unfortunately, Kalakos had offered the only thing that would have Niko letting him in the house, much less not slicing him open for an intestine-fest on the floor. There was a long pause…Niko thinking, then: “To you, I am Leandros, not Niko. Better yet, to you, I am nothing—the same as I’ve always been. To you, I have no name at all. You are too without value to speak them.”

He meant it. Niko didn’t say anything he didn’t mean. That didn’t change the fact that seconds later he was in my room with Kalakos because he was that desperate. Grasping at straws. I’d need weeks to heal, if not a month on the ribs. If Janus came back anytime sooner than that, which was a good possibility, as I had no idea where I had sent him except that it hadn’t been Tumulus, it would take it less than a second to end me. How many moves, and how often would be enough? How quickly could it find us?

“What do you have that you think can fix this?” Niko demanded, jerking his head in my direction. “Your duty, your burden, it all but ripped Cal apart.” And Nik had put me back together, but he couldn’t force me to mend any faster than I normally did. “Why do you imagine you can heal him?”

Kalakos looked somewhat the worse for wear since last night. He’d straightened his clothes, his hair remained in a tight ponytail, but his face was covered with dried blood and his nose was obviously broken. Nik’s nose. Once proud, now bent to one side. There were also bruises covering one cheek, his right jaw, and half his forehead. One punch had done that. He was lucky. Niko could’ve killed him with that one punch, easily.

He reached into the depths of a coat similar to many my brother had. The only people who wore coats like that in the summer were people who carried swords or were flashers. With the way things were going, the son of a bitch was a flasher with a sword. He retrieved a soft cloth bag and from that he pulled a round iron box about the size of an orange. “This contains something old, very old. An ointment made by the most powerful healer who ever lived.” He didn’t smile. If he had, with what he said next, I was pretty sure Niko would’ve taken that second punch to kill him then and there. “The rumors do pass among the clans. I assume you know of Suyolak.”

As we were the ones to destroy him, yeah, we knew Suyolak, the Plague of the World, born Rom and died a monster. Knowing him hadn’t been the best experience. People had died. We had almost died. The world itself had almost died. Suyolak was the original Grim Reaper…an antihealer who lived only to slaughter. I didn’t see a damn thing that dead bastard could do for me.

“Do you want to die?” Niko demanded, quiet and remote. “If so, return to the main area. There’s more room there for me to work.”

Kalakos exhaled, eyes shrouded—troubled? Good. He should be. “You are as I was at your age. You fight for your brother while I fought for myself. You fight for better reasons.” He lifted the lid from the box, scooped a small dab of dark green salve from within, and rubbed it on his face. In a rewind of time, the bruises faded, the nose straightened, although he winced as it did so, until all that remained was an untouched face and a crust of dried blood that he scrubbed off with one wipe of his hand. “Suyolak was born a healer of the Sarzo Clan. He was a healer for many years before he walked into the shadows. He made this before he turned. As far as I know, it is the last. I think there is enough to heal your brother.” He offered the box to Niko. “It is yours. The very least I can do.”

Niko accepted the box before searching Kalakos’s now-restored face—every inch of it—then passed it to Promise. “I have heard of such things,” she said, careful not to touch the contents. “I feel nothing inimical from it. I would touch it but I don’t want to waste any. There is little left, and Cal…”

Cal was fucked-up five ways to Sunday. If it worked on a half human, half Auphe…if it wasn’t a trick, I’d need a gallon of it, rather than a small box. But if it did work, Promise was right to be cautious. I’d need every speck of it I could get.

“Cal?”

When Niko said my name, Promise waited until I released the grip on my Eagle; then she handed the box to me. I took a whiff. I remembered too goddamn well how Suyolak had smelled—the one who’d Kalakos had so poetically said “walked in shadows.” I’d know a single molecule of his graveyard stench anywhere. There was none of it in what was cradled in the iron box. Iron was what had kept the ointment viscous rather than hundred-year-old dried flakes. Iron blocked the escape of psychic emanations and that’s what healing was. Not magic, but a genetic psychic talent.

Our Suyolak wasn’t in this. It smelled green, fresh, with a hint of mint and pine. “It’s safe,” I confirmed. “Our pile of dust had nothing to do with this.”

“If this doesn’t work, don’t bother running. You’ll die either way, but it’s been some time since I dismembered anyone alive. It takes a while, time I’m willing to spare.” Niko had done before what he claimed, but only with monsters and only the extremely horrific ones, but Kalakos didn’t know that. “Or I’ll let Promise have you. She doesn’t drink blood anymore, but has decapitated those who earned it a time or two since I’ve known her.” Now, that was true. I did enjoy watching Promise at work.

Kalakos didn’t appear worried. “It will.”

Niko moved to the other side of my bed and began to pull down the blanket to reveal my ribs.

“Niko, wait.” With Promise watching Kalakos, I felt safe in letting the SIG rest on the covers as well. I tapped my head lightly, and that alone had my vision and the pain doubling. “This is the only weapon we have right now. Wherever I managed to send Terminator deluxe”—and I hadn’t remembered yet—“when it gets back, Tumulus and me, it’s all we have.”

He nodded, then shook his head as he took the box from my other hand. The furrows over my ribs that had torn me open had been ugly, had to have been, and I could’ve bled out from them. Had almost bled out from them, as I still had a fresh bag of blood hanging from the IV pole this morning. It was why he hesitated. “If you can’t run, if you can barely move and it catches you, you won’t have time to build a gate.”

“Nik.” My lips quirked. “I was as twitchy as Goodfellow in a roomful of polyester suits last night, thanks to the puck grope-a-thon. If there was ever a time I could run like a bat out of hell, it was then. It still caught me.”

He frowned. “You know how I feel about your using logic. Turning my own weapon against me. You might as well steal my katana and stab me in the heart.” Through the bitching, which was more than likely to distract me from the pain of his tilting my head forward, he took a tiny amount of the balm on a fingertip and applied it to the cut on the back of my head. From the tracing of his finger it was a good four inches long. I felt an instant tingle and warmth and then an annoying pinch. “Hey, ouch.”

“Shit.” That was Niko cursing yet again. He’d cursed more in the past day and a half than in most of his life. He moved to the supply cabinet against the wall, flung open a drawer, and was back in an instant while stripping open a package. He went to work on the incision with hand flying.

“Niko, what are you doing and—Ow…what the hell? This isn’t the kind of healing Rafferty did.” I had my hand on the Eagle, ready to pick it up and nail Kalakos where he stood.

“It’s the staples I had to use to close the cut. You’re healing around them.”

And now he was pulling them out of completely healed flesh, which stung, but that faded too as the ointment finished the job. “Aren’t you going to complain that I should’ve thought of that first?” he asked with the last staple removed, his hand mussing the back of my hair to hide the memory of it.

“I’m not that much of an asshole.” Of course I was. “Does it make you feel better that I did at least think it?”

I could see the smile behind his somber mask. “In fact, it does.”

Promise and Kalakos waited in the living area while, behind his closed bedroom door, Niko took care of the rest. Luckily the stitches holding my muscles back together were dissolvable, and Suyolak’s balm sailed over them. Although the amount in the box had seemed small, a little went a long way and then some. There was enough left for the burns and kishi bite on my leg. After that, I took back the box and scraped a finger inside, gathering just enough left to film the skin. Then I popped the finger in my mouth, the same as a kid with cake batter, and sucked it off.

Niko eyed me warily. “I don’t think that’s meant for internal ingestion. What are you doing?”

“An experiment. You never know until you try.” I sat up, gloriously pain-free, and added, “Now, take out the IVs, tell me how to get this damn catheter out, then give me and Cal Junior some privacy. Knowing Goodfellow, he took a picture with his phone and Junior’s an Internet star by now.”

Niko coughed once before saying gravely, “Yes, a star. I’m sure.” Then he grasped my arm and gripped hard. “I saw you, and I…” He didn’t have to say it. I knew what he’d thought.

“I’m never dead.” I grinned reassuringly. “Heaven doesn’t exist, and hell has barricaded the door. I’m stuck here.”

“Perhaps, but sometimes you do a convincing imitation.” His grip tightened and he left me and Cal Junior with a list of instructions and a syringe—thank God the kind without a needle. I read through the instructions twice and sighed. My damn dick was always getting me into trouble, and never the right kind.

Simple enough that it took only seconds. I then thought about a shower, but I was clean and smelled of soap, and Suyolak’s ointment had been absorbed into my body with no lingering trace of touch or scent. The soap meant I’d been given a sponge bath during my narcotic sleep, ridding me of blood and betadine. I’d have been embarrassed, but then Niko would remind me of how he changed my diapers when I was a baby. The last time he said that, I’d considered beating him to death with a box of Pampers.

Best to let it go this time.

I dressed in a pair of Niko’s sweats rather than moving naked to my room next door, and thought about how Kalakos seemed to be telling the truth, how he might have saved my life, how, from what he said, he was trying to restore honor to his clan and keep Janus from slaughtering indiscriminately. The only problem I could find with him was that he’d abandoned his son. Could you kill someone for that alone, when compared to all the rest? When all was said and done, the threat defeated, could you? I picked up my Eagle, one in the pipe as always, and opened the door.

I could.

The clang of metal against metal was audible long before I walked down the hall. Niko and I practiced most often with wood. He didn’t want to accidentally cut off something essential I might plan on using later. But this wasn’t practice; this was something else entirely. I wasn’t worried. If Niko needed help against Kalakos, he’d let me know, but as that was unlikely, I decided I was hungry. A good sign. I laid my gun on the countertop, grabbed some cold, petrified pizza out of the fridge, hoisted a hip up on the counter, and watched the show. “What’s going on?” I took another bite. “I thought we were leaving. Why doesn’t Niko just take his head, shout, ‘There can be only one,’ and get this over with?”

“They are trying to prove something first. Who is the best? Niko will let him live only because he made you whole again, but your brother requires working out a good deal of frustration regardless.” She tapped a light lavender nail to her softly rounded chin. “Hundreds of years and the male psyche still escapes me.”

I lifted my head and caught the scent of musk and forest. “Wonderful. Chester the Molester is here,” I announced glumly.

The door opened and no one had heard Goodfellow pick the lock. Kalakos didn’t know who he was competing with when it came to breaking and entering, and that was a fact. Goodfellow did have a key, but he felt that was boring. Tricksters needed to keep up their skills. He picked pockets too. The used-car-salesman cover was a self-explanatory con of pure evil. “Lazarus has arisen!” he announced at the sight of me. “Not to mention the rest of you appears much improved as well. And I heard your highly inflammatory statement.” He put his lock picks away and leaned a wet umbrella against the wall. Had to protect that expensive suit. “You were dying. You’re my friend. How can you accuse me of taking advantage?” He sat on the couch beside Promise. “Besides, I can’t find a picture of a small enough Santa hat to Photoshop on it for my yearly winter solstice cards. Christmas, to you heathens.”

I began to wing what was left of the rock-hard pizza at his head when he folded his arms, leaned back against the armrest, and stretched out, while propping his legs across Promise’s lap. “Never mind. I’ll torture you later.” He glanced at the peek of Promise’s fangs over her lower lip. “Greetings, Elvira. Is that an overbite or are you just happy to see me?” He didn’t wait for an answer or for her to break his neck, the second being more likely. “Now, this is exceedingly more engaging. Hot, sweaty men in battle. Thank Zeus that Ishiah doesn’t mind my looking.”

Promise gave his legs the same regard she would have if a giant gelatinous snail had flopped across her lap, but inhaled deeply and turned her attention back to the fight. For once in their lives she and Robin agreed on something. “The only way one such as you could not look is if your eyes were plucked from their sockets.” She tapped a painted nail against his chest, but he was beyond threats, his brain completely shut down. I could smell the waves of whatever was the puck equivalent of testosterone rising. He was practically one of those deodorizers they hang around car rearview mirrors.

Scent: horny.

Shape: I wasn’t going there.

I went back to watching the fight myself. They were on the workout mats in the gym area. Barefoot, shirtless, and soaked with sweat, both were matched in number of scars, although they were differently shaped and located. Both were also impeccably good with swords—Niko with his katana and Kalakos with what I thought was a Polish saber. The blade was long and curved, more so than a katana, the grip centuries-old wood. A karabela. It meant “dark curse.” When I was a kid, Niko hadn’t been able to get me to remember the periodic table for love or money, but weapons…those I didn’t often forget.

It had a few inches reach on the katana, but I had faith in my heart for my brother. You know what beat faith? A Desert Eagle in the hand that I wasn’t using to eat pizza. If Niko stumbled…I didn’t think he would—not my brother. No. But if he did, we’d have to pay the cleaning lady fifty extra bucks to scrub Kalakos’s brain off the wall.

Money well spent.

I finished the pizza as Kalakos spoke, barely breathing hard from the exertion. “I did desert you. I did know Sophia was…as she was. But I hunt clan criminals and return them for punishment, or deliver that punishment if the crime is grave enough.”

Niko didn’t bother to reply. The fight went on. I hadn’t seen any human in my life who came close to my brother. Blades, bare-handed, the occasional gun he had little respect for—no one was as good. Neither was Kalakos, but was near enough that I didn’t like it. You can be the best in the world, but everyone stumbles; everyone makes that one mistake…humans and non. I had, more than once. The fact that Kalakos was good enough to take advantage of that if Niko did…

No, I didn’t fucking care for it at all.

“You’re one of the best I’ve fought,” Niko said. “It’s a shame.”

He blocked another of Kalakos’s blows before the Polish saber whipped under the katana and slammed the Japanese blade upward toward Niko’s face; then metal circled metal as the karabela’s point plunged toward Nik’s neck. That was when Niko kicked his father in the stomach, staggering the older man back a few feet.

He then blocked the hand gripping the saber, slamming fist against fist, started to sweep his leg, then abruptly swept the other, taking Kalakos off guard and throwing him down to the mat. “Elegant move. Rare. I’ve seen it used only once before at that short distance.” Yeah, when he practiced it on me. The karabela didn’t bother to come up to block the katana that sliced toward the man’s throat.

Black met stony gray. “Not only did I hunt Rom, but I hunt the unclean, as you do when they threaten the clans. A child could not survive that life.”

“A child survived worse. A hundred times worse. Your failure has nothing to do with me.” Niko lifted his katana and walked away. But before he did, he said, “If you had learned in the beginning to fight for family instead of money, you would be even a better fighter and less of a dishonorable bastard than you are now.” He was right. Kalakos wouldn’t chase criminals and monsters for free. We didn’t either…if the client could afford us. If they couldn’t, Niko may as well have been Sonny and Cher’s lesser-known child, Pro Bono. At least fifty percent of our work didn’t earn us a dime, which was fine. Protecting others was a reward worth more than money. I was lucky that Niko had taught me that.

Killing is the true payment. Killing is the best part.

I gave an internal shrug. It didn’t matter what the darkest part of me thought. When the goals were the same, it…no, not it…I could think whatever I wanted. I was who I was. I didn’t need to change that control or the improved me with the acid erosion of denial.

Know thyself…and then know that your brother knows better than you.

At a stack of neatly folded towels on a shelf near the paper targets hung on the wall, Nik propped up his katana for cleaning when he was done with himself. Wiping the sweat from his chest, arms, and back, he added remotely, “You healed Cal. That allows you and only you a week to recover Janus. Then he becomes someone else’s problem and not ours. The Vayash will have to send others to do what you could not.”

He stood, no better off than Niko, but not much worse either. He might have sweated a little more, breathed a little harder, but the difference was small. I liked that less and less. Niko was younger and more motivated, but Kalakos would have picked up tricks along the longer years to stay alive doing what he did. The dirtiest of tricks. My kind of tricks, but I wouldn’t turn them against my brother. Would he?

Kalakos started toward Niko, refusing to give up. It was a good thing for him that he left his saber behind. “There is no one else who can—”

I gave a low whisper of a hiss before slicing a hand across my throat, and he stopped talking immediately. That smell, the trace of rotten eggs…sulfur. I looked up at the metal ceiling far above. “Shit. Niko, now!” He didn’t question. He propelled himself across the room, lunged, and landed on top of Robin and Promise, which was a Goodfellow wet dream come true, and then I threw myself off the counter onto Nik. As I landed on his back, there was the tearing of metal and the shattering of our floor as Janus came to visit.

Suyolak’s medicine had healed me, but Rafferty’s rewiring was still in place. That meant I couldn’t make a gate as fast as my first one yesterday—it took me three days to recover fully—but it was faster than it normally would’ve been. Too bad it wasn’t fast enough.

Janus’s two-faced head was swiveling, its one claw missing. It was checking the soon-to-be battlefield, slower and more cautious this time. It then moved, deciding it had all enemies in sight, and was almost on us when Kalakos threw himself in front of it. He slid a sword into one of the glowing red seams in its chest. It wasn’t the saber. This was a Greek sword, true as any ancient warrior charging Troy had held—a xiphos made of the same dark metal of the automaton. Kalakos slammed his feet against Janus’s abdomen and pushed hard, ending up half on the couch. Janus jerked and staggered back a single step, the floor cracking beneath his feet again. It was for only a second or two, but that was all I needed.

In those seconds we were as much history as Janus himself.