Madhouse

15

The walk from forgotten to abandoned and maintenance tunnels, then to the new construction took a while, and Delilah had peeled off after her Wolves long before that point. Without my jacket to hide it, I handed off my holster to Niko to conceal in the cello case. I tucked my gun in the back waistband of my jeans and covered it up with my sweatshirt before we hit the street level. Then minutes later it was back underground to hit the 6 train home. We had just stopped to stand on the platform, ignoring the sideways glances at our soaked clothing, when I heard it.

It wasn't loud, the bang. Barely audible over the train that roared out. A small sound, a stumble, and then Robin was falling face-first on the floor. It looked as if he had tripped. Only now, instead of bitching and groaning about scrapes and bruises, he was unmoving.

God.

I could tell that his torso wasn't moving because he wasn't breathing and he wasn't talking. You don't breathe, you don't talk. Goodfellow—with no words? Not a single one? I believed in monsters, I believed in the grimmest of fairy tales, but I couldn't believe that.

Strange that I wasn't breathing either, but I was still alive, could still feel the ragged pump of my heart, the acid burn in my lungs. And when I raised my eyes from that unmoving back to stare at Niko, I could still see. If I could do all those things without breathing, why couldn't Robin?

Niko's face was completely blank and devoid of anything…killing machines don't need emotions to get the job done. "Left," he said with a voice as empty as he turned and moved in that direction.

"Right." My face wasn't empty. It was full of bad things, hidden things that I hadn't let myself feel since George was taken, Niko almost sacrificed. They'd been shoved down, smothered, dismissed, but they were still there. They'd been waiting for their chance, and here it was.

With speaking came oxygen and with that came the ability to drive my body to the right through the mass of people. Some had picked up on the faint sound of the shot and run, but most hadn't caught it and were hovering around Robin. Maybe it was his heart, maybe drugs, maybe goddamn mutated pigeon flu … the muttering and whispering swelled. I drove through the vultures with lowered shoulders and vicious elbows as I went right.

Niko had already gone in the opposite direction. I thought I heard Promise call from behind me as she bent protectively over Robin's body, but it was lost in the sound of the crowd, the rush of the train, and the blood raging in my ears. I ran on. He wasn't getting away, the murderer who had done this. Sawney had, but he wouldn't. It didn't matter that I hadn't seen who had pulled the trigger; I would recognize him when I saw him. I would know him.

I tackled a cop moving toward me with wary eyes and steely intent, rode him to the ground, choked him out, and kept going. That the bastard assassin was human wouldn't save him.

And he was human.

I saw him—walking a little faster than those around him. As I got closer I could see and smell the human in the tiny beads of sweat winding down the back of his neck from his hairline. He didn't hear me behind him. It's almost impossible to run silently across concrete and tile, sneakers or not, but with people milling and stomping about like cattle, I had the perfect auditory camouflage. Perfect, yet it failed me. Although the killer didn't hear me behind him, he looked over his shoulder anyway. Professionals don't look and they don't sweat. Amateurs hold the patent on that. They also run instead of taking the offensive, as my amateur did. He bolted the moment his eyes caught mine. Not used to killing. Too bad for him I was.

Let the bastard run. Let him run all goddamn night. At the end of it, he would still be dead. A sirrush, Hameh birds, this son of a bitch—they were all the same. Monsters. I couldn't get rid of my gene, but that didn't mean I gave a shit if his were one hundred percent normal. For what he'd done…

He was dead.

I almost pulled out the Eagle, but that was bound to attract its fair share of attention from at least some of the commuters. As it was now, they were only clearing a path for us as we ran. The dead man, so goddamn dead, snatched another look over his shoulder, shoved a woman who hadn't meandered out of his way quickly enough, and then vaulted her when she fell to her hands and knees. He hadn't taken out his gun either, which led me to believe he'd already dumped it. He didn't want to be caught by the cops with a weapon, now, did he?

He should be that lucky.

The next time he looked for me I was nearly on top of him. Barely three feet away I could smell the fear coming off of him. I could also smell determination and resolve or maybe I was seeing it in his dark eyes. I was so focused on him, so ferociously aware, that I couldn't tell where one of my senses began and the other ended. The same went for my sanity and something a little less than. He'd taken my friend. He had taken the first person I'd learned to trust aside from my brother.

Months ago I'd been on the edge of losing it utterly when I'd thought George and Niko were gone for good. Robin had told me then that the frozen control I'd used simply to be able to function would come back to bite me in the ass. Told me that when you bury emotions like that, you're only pissing them off … making them stronger, because you're burying them alive. They don't like that, and one day they'll make sure that you don't like it either. He'd been right. But against the odds and my own screwed-up psyche, I had found George and Niko.

I'd never find Robin again.

But I'd found his killer. Right here. Right now. And restraint and composure, they were just words to me. Meaningless sounds, worthless concepts.

I've felt savage rage. What I felt now was beyond that. When he jumped down to the tracks and took off down the tunnel, I was with him. On him. I saw only him, felt only him when I tackled him. I didn't feel the thud of the ground rising to meet us, him twisting beneath me or the fists that hammered my ribs. I didn't feel the gun that I had in my hand either, but I know he did. The matte black steel dug into the flesh under his chin until a small rivulet of blood welled around the gunsight and wound down to pool in the hollow of his throat. And because I could see only him, I could see the rapid pulse beating beneath the red with startling clarity. There was the blood rich with copper, sweat sour with dread, and breath heated and harsh.

"What you do to me doesn't matter. My task is done," he panted. Somehow, outside of his fear, the bastard had found satisfaction. "The betrayer is dead."

I should've pulled the trigger. The clean jerk of it, the kick of the recoil, I wanted that. But I also wanted something else. "Are you the only one I get to kill?" I asked, the question leaden and guttural in my throat. I jammed the gun barrel harder into his neck until he gagged against the pressure. "Are you? Or is there someone else? Die hard and alone or easy and with company. Which is it going to be, you son of a bitch?"

He spat in my face, contorted his body, and shoved me off in a move that I'd not seen before, not even from Niko. I staggered as he lunged upward, but I managed to stay on my feet as I aimed the Eagle at his chest from six feet away. "No, not yet," I said more to myself than to him. "Not that easy for you." I lowered the muzzle to point at his knee. If I fired, he'd be an instant amputee, but he'd tell me whether he was in this alone. That was worth a leg to find out. He was dead anyway. He could bunny-hop his way through the Gates of Hell, for all I cared, and think of me while he did it.

"You can't make me tell you anything." He was a study in contradiction. Afraid, but proud. A murderer, but so fucking naïve.

"Think again, asshole." I gave a feral grin. "I can make you do anything. Anything. All I need is time." I pulled the trigger, and it felt as good as I knew it would. "You don't have anywhere you need to be, right?" I finished as the echoing boom of the round faded away.

His scream was slower to wane. He should've been grateful. He still had his leg. I'd used my left hand to throw my combat knife. I wasn't as good with my left as my right, but I was good enough and good enough was all it took. Half the blade buried itself in his thigh. The gunshot and crater in the far wall a few inches over had been for emphasis; there's nothing quite like an explosive round for highlighting the six inches of steel in your body. There's nothing quite like it for emphasizing any damn thing you can think of.

The cops would be coming but good luck getting through the panicked crowd that that explosion would have milling like wild animals. It would take a while and a while was longer than I needed. We were far down the tunnel and I was motivated. Very motivated.

I watched as he fell to his knees, his hands finding and locking on to the rubber handle. Looking up at me, he swallowed the last of his harsh cry and his mouth worked soundlessly before he mumbled something too slurred to understand.

"Ican't make you tell me anything, is that what you said?" I stepped forward, put my hand over his tightly clenched ones. "It's serrated, so very sorry about that. But don't worry. It'll be just like pulling off a Band-Aid." I leaned in and offered a mockery of sympathy. "I'm happy to do it for you. But if I were you, I'd try not to look at what comes out with it."

"My task is done," he repeated, my words ignored. The fear was gone; there was nothing to smell but the remnants of it now. "I will be remembered."

The tracks beneath us began to vibrate, followed by a brilliant light cutting through the shadows. Piss-poor timing—I lived for it. Or, rather, it lived for me.

"I will be honored." He managed to get to his feet and stepped back, using an untapped and desperate energy to pull his hands and the hilt from my grip. He took two more steps, looked down and back, then took that one last step. He rested his left foot on the third rail without hesitation. Immediately, his body arched before snapping back so rigidly upright and with a force so anatomically impossible that I thought I heard his back break. I also smelled the cooking of flesh and the stench of burning hair, but only for a second. I flung myself back against the wall as the train took him. After that there was only the sharp scent of ozone, empty space, and a hundred wildly raging emotions with nowhere to go.

I slid down against the concrete wall until I was sitting, the gun still in my hand. He'd beaten me to it. The bastard had gone out his own way and without telling me a damn thing.

"Shit." I pulled up my knees and rested my forehead on them. "Sorry," I rasped roughly, "so goddamn sorry." The curse was for me, the rest for Robin.

"Did you kill him?"

Niko would've quickly realized that he'd assigned himself the wrong direction when the milling of the crowds and the yelling and screams started from the opposite end. My end. He'd caught up with me, but not in time.

"No." I straightened and leaned my head back. "A million volts and a train beat me to it."

"Dead is dead," he said with a dark satisfaction as he held down a hand to me. "And that, little brother, is quite thoroughly dead."

I shook my head and didn't take the offered hand. He was right. Dead was dead, but it wasn't enough. "Robin's gone." I looked blindly at the smoking rail. "That stupid, horny piece of shit is …" I dropped the gun beside me and rubbed hard at my forehead with the heels of one hand. I couldn't say the word. I picked the Eagle back up, threw it across the tunnel with as much force as I could muster, and didn't bother to care when nothing blew up from the careless tantrum. "In the back. Jesus, he got it in the goddamn back. He's supposed to be better than that. Smarter than that."

"He told us so often enough, didn't he?" Nik sat beside me. To keep it out of his eyes, he'd drawn the top half of his jaw-length hair back tightly and secured it just below the crown with a black rubber band. But without the weight of his braid to pull the rest of it straight, the damp bottom half that fell free had dried with a subtle wave where he had pushed it back behind his ears. That wave must've been there for months now, and I hadn't noticed. It seemed important, my blindness; it seemed almost momentous, because Niko was my brother. My brother, and I hadn't noticed. I couldn't begin to grasp the things I'd not taken the time to notice about Robin.

"Yeah," I said raggedly. "He did. Smarter than Socrates, quicker than Hermes …"

"With the stamina of Hercules and Priapus combined," the familiar voice croaked from several feet away. From the gloom, Robin appeared. He was leaning heavily on Promise, but he was moving under his own power. Moving, breathing, bragging…he was alive. The son of a bitch was alive. All those roiling emotions tearing through me finally had an outlet, and until I reached Goodfellow I had no idea if they would result in violence or something worse.

It was the something worse.

I'd jumped to my feet and moved in to push him hard. Then I grabbed a handful of his shirt to pull him back and shake him, and finally, growling as loudly as any wolf, I wrapped an arm around his neck and squeezed until his face began to turn vaguely purple.

Yeah, I hugged him. It didn't get any worse than that, did it?

Shoving him back again before he had time to blink in surprise, I demanded harshly, "Why aren't you dead?"

"At this rate, I soon will be." He raised a hand between us, wary at any further welcome. "I can tell you are overcome with relief at the reunion, Caliban, but, please, don't strain any hitherto unused emotional muscles on my behalf. I'm not sure my neck can stand it." Matted brown hair stuck to his sweaty forehead as he leaned back with a wince to give more weight to Promise's supportive arm. "And I'm not dead because of Boggle." His pale face became a little more animated beneath the discomfort. "Also because of that bastard Darkling. Wouldn't he have loved to know that, that wretched wad of lizard mucous?"

"I think this would be better explained in a location where our chances of being arrested"—Niko rested a hand on my shoulder—"and dissected are a little less." The hand gripped and then pointed. "Gun. Only rude little boys leave their toys lying about."

And I wouldn't want to be rude, would I? Or dissected. I walked over, avoiding the third rail that still sizzled with leather and flesh, and recovered the weapon with fingers that felt oddly clumsy. Hard fight, long night, friends dying and rising again, that sort of thing played hell on a person's nervous system. Understanding that didn't stop me from cursing my numb fingers, the suddenly much heavier than normal Eagle, and Lazarus frigging Goodfellow. After tucking the gun in my jeans, I pulled off my shirt, turned it inside out, and put it back on. I'd gone from a dark-haired maniac in a black shirt, to just an average guy in a red one. The difference was enough to fool any nonprofessional eye, and here was hoping that cop I took out was still unconscious.

We did make it out, blending into the panicked while taking turns helping Robin along. This time, we shelled out the bucks for a cab and headed to Promise's penthouse at Park Avenue and Sixtieth to recuperate. Promise had offered. I was beginning to think she was fonder of Robin than she let on. They were both long-lived, although he was much older by far. They had a common bond that Niko and I couldn't be part of. Actually, the jury was still out on whether I had inherited the Auphe longevity. It could stay out as long as it wanted. I wasn't outliving Niko; I wasn't outliving my only true family, not by hundreds or thousands of years. No. Just…no.

By the time we climbed out of the taxi and were ushered into the building by an imposing, silver-haired doorman with an equally imposing sweep of mustache in pure white, Goodfellow's cursing had grown louder, but his movements came with more ease. A bruised or cracked rib, that was what he'd managed to escape death with—a dark purple splotch on the left of his back…precisely over where his heart would be.

The key to his survival had been the memories of our boggle, which had been triggered by his mate, and by Darkling. Darkling, at one with my body and my mind, had set up an ambush in Central Park. While Boggle had attacked Goodfellow, Darkling…I … we had shot Niko. Point-blank range. I leaned toward guns. Knives were okay, but guns were the top of my comfort level, and Niko hadn't forgotten that. When I'd been taken by Darkling, my brother had worn a bulletproof vest in anticipation of just such an event. It had saved his life.

Robin knew that he was an assassination target of two attempts already. When we'd told him we were bringing in another boggle, it had brought the fight of the past year to mind. While Niko had expected the gun then, Goodfellow hadn't. Darkling wasn't human; he would have no particular attachment to a gun. Nonhumans rarely did. That type of thinking would've gotten Robin killed if he'd been in Nik's place. As lessons went, it had made an impression on the puck.

Hameh birds, a sirrush … a man with a gun was a long way from creatures such as those. Long way, long odds. But pucks, gamblers to the last one, knew all about odds and they knew their payoffs. I'd wondered how someone as long-lived as him had gone down so easily. Now I knew. He hadn't. After the Hameh, he'd bought a bulletproof vest and started wearing it under his finely woven fall sweaters. The damned things probably matched, cashmere and Kevlar.

Reclining on overstuffed pillows and a sage green silk cover, Robin was lounging in Promise's guest room with a distinctly superior smirk on his pointed face. Look at me. Look how clever. The breadth and reach of my intelligence are so unfathomable to the average brain that I must appear godlike to you lesser mortals. Whether it was only in my head that I heard it or he'd actually said it aloud, it didn't matter. My hand was already closing around something on the dresser to toss at him. Gilded French vase, crystal decanter, statue of Venus, I didn't look. I didn't care. I hefted it and cocked my arm back as if I were trying out for the majors when Niko took me by the scruff of my shirt and began to hustle me out of the bedroom.

"He really doesn't deal with the unexpected well, does he?" Robin commented as if I and my makeshift weapon weren't there. Rolling onto his stomach, he hissed at the cold as Promise, who didn't look particularly pleased to be playing nurse, placed an ice pack over the spreading bruise. Fondness only went so far. Seeing a half-naked Goodfellow was apparently the outer limits of that affection. "In his world there are no good surprises and all piñatas are filled with evil-tempered tarantulas and poison-spitting snakes." I heard the clucking of his tongue before he rested his face in the pillows for a muffled finish. "We do need to work on that attitude or he'll never be able to enjoy the true…"

I didn't hear anything further as the bedroom receded behind us. Promise's home had soft and gloriously woven rugs, draperies, and tapestries on the wall that all worked to soak up noise like a sponge. I looked at what was in my hand as Niko kept marching me along. A candelabra, silver and gold. It would've made a nice dent in that curly head. "He deserves it," I said, knuckles whitening as my grip tightened.

"Why?" At the end of the hall, we went down the winding stairs as the metal was deftly worked from my clenched hand. "Why does he deserve it? For being a self-righteous ass, which is nothing new, or"—he put the candelabra on the nearest table— "for scaring you?"

"I have Sawney and the Auphe to scare the shit out of me," I dismissed stiffly. "Goodfellow doesn't come close to making that list." After depriving me of my expensive puck swatter, Nik released me, and I promptly began to prowl the living room in ever-widening circles. I plunked the keys of an ivory-colored small piano, glanced at several pictures in simple polished silver frames, and kept walking.

"There is more than one type of fear, little brother. You had a not so healthy taste of that with Georgina and me, and you did your best to forget about it." His gaze drilled into mine, letting me know what he had thought and still did think of that idea. Very damn little. "To push it down where you wouldn't have to look at it, to think about it." He leaned against the wall as I shifted my wary glance away from him to the floor and kept pacing. "Or to deal with it."

I had exactly zero desire to talk about this, but I knew the difference that would make. When I passed the piano this time, I slammed a fist down instead of a few fingers. The discordant crash didn't make me feel any better, but it did make me feel like I had company in my chaos. "I deal," I gritted. "I deal just fine."

"Yes, you're dealing. You're dealing a path of destruction through a home that Promise is quite fond of." Fingers tapped lightly against folded arms as he led into what he'd said before, more than once, although he hadn't said it as often as I'd expected him to. He knew better than I that I wasn't ready to hear it. Not then. "Cal, Robin is alive. Georgina and I are alive. That is what's important—what did happen, not what could've happened."

What did happen, not what could have. Yeah, it was all very Tao and accepting and all that. But, Zen crap aside, it could easily have gone the other way. Over the past year and a half we'd been lucky so many times. That luck, sooner rather than later, would have to run out. The law of averages wasn't going to be our bitch forever.

I touched a finger to the cool keys again, this time tentatively, and then I sat down to play. It wasn't pretty music. It wasn't ugly either. Yet, in a way, it was both. It was alien—that was the best description. Dissonant and illogically strung together, wild note to wilder yet, but it hung together somehow. A symphony from swamps and caves, jeweled bones and forgotten dungeons, living tombs and empty graves—the Darkling places. He had been related to the banshees, a male version whose history had never been recorded, whose true name along with the rest of his gender was lost in time. But like his female cousins, he liked music, and he liked to sing.

On the other hand, despite inheriting our mother's honey and rum voice, I couldn't play or sing a note. That hadn't stopped Darkling from leaving me a present. Unwelcome, unwanted, and unknown up until now. It didn't matter. He was dead, chopped to the finest of pieces. I'd done the chopping. I knew for a fact he was gone.

But the reflection came before I could stop it, at least when he'd been in me, no matter who left, I wasn't ever alone. Schizo as hell, but not alone. It was a thought that left me so repulsed and exposed that I veered away from it instantly. Folding arms on the top of the piano, I rested my chin on them. "I'm used to having all my eggs in one basket." That would be Niko. One steel-shelled egg, one unbreakable basket. God, I hoped.

It was an obscure statement and coming after an exhibition of a freakish musical talent I shouldn't have had, you had to give Niko credit for catching on to it. "The more eggs you have, the more likely one is to break."

"Poached. Scrambled. Pureed in a blender for an over-the-hill boxer. Whatever." I extended an arm and touched the corner of the nearest frame. Promise and a dark-haired little girl, both colored sepia and dressed in clothes from at least a hundred years ago. For the things that I did know of Robin and Promise, there were thousands upon thousands of things that I didn't and might never have the chance to learn.

"I'm not good at this shit, Cyrano. I'm not good at caring, and I'm sure as hell not good at all the crap that conies with it." I looked up at the ceiling, eggshell with a hint of rose. It reminded me of the inner curve of a shell scoured clean by salt water. Full of dawn's purity and glow. "He made me like him, the son of a bitch. And I don't like…didn't like anyone but you. But Goodfellow made me like him and then he goes and proves he's mortal after all. It sucks. It just goddamn sucks." I pushed away from the baby grand and stood. "I'm hungry. You hungry? Want a sandwich? Great. Sandwiches coming up."

"I think you need to avoid sharp objects for a while," Niko ordered as he moved away from the wall. "I would hate for you to ram a butcher's knife in Goodfellow's leg in the hopes he wouldn't force you to like him anymore. Although the aborted attempt to brain him with a candelabra might already have him tipped off to your cunning plan."

"I am so screwed." I sat back down, this time on the floor. Dirty red shirt, damp jeans, and black sneakers, I was a definite test to the stain-repelling skills of the oyster gray, violet, and ebony rug beneath me. "Why do I like him?" I muttered, more to myself than to Nik. "Promise … I have to like her. I get that. She's yours. You're hers. It's a package deal. George …" I shut my mouth. There was no way to continue that sentence without regret, not a single one.

"We should've left New York. Even after Darkling was dead and we thought the Auphe were, we should've kept moving." I exhaled heavily as I sheathed fingers in my hair and said by rote, "You don't get attached, you never tell anyone your real name, and you always leave. Those were the rules." You always leave being the most important of them.

Niko sat across from me on the floor. His legs were folded in a style that made mine ache just to see it. He loosely rested his hands on his knees. His wrists were banded with what looked like a double row of Tibetan meditation beads, except these were made of steel and would deflect the blow of nearly any blade easily. "I know," he said. "I made those rules." The corners of his mouth deepened downward briefly. "And Sophia thought I scorned the old ways."

Sophia didn't have much room to talk. She'd broken ties with her clan when she'd run off, and they'd done the same to her years later when they found out what perverse bargain she'd made with the Auphe. As for the "old ways," she had never purposely taught us a thing, not once Niko had refused to be part of her scams. As young as the age of six, Nik already had an unwavering moral compass; he was a regular Dalai Lama of the trailer park. Whether we were involved or not, though, it didn't matter— the lessons were still there for the taking. She'd run a fortune-telling con at the kitchen table while we watched cartoons four feet away. At night she'd run a different kind of con and the walls were much thinner than four feet.

"Her rules, your rules." I shook my head. "I don't care. We should've lived by them. I should've. You wanted to leave. I was the one who said we should stay in New York." I frowned at him. "Usually when I'm an idiot, you don't listen to me."

"If that were true, I would be selectively deaf every hour out of the day," he stated, hitting my knee with a not-quite-painful flick of his finger. "Besides, you were right. We thought the enemy destroyed and we had made a life here. Granted it was a life of only a few months and we both broke the rules in doing so, but it was still a life. We had an ally and friend in Robin. We had the potential for more in Promise and Georgina. Why give that up for no reason at all?"

"Sanity is a reason," I countered, scraping a bruised knuckle along the silken fibers of the rug. "Pretty good one too."

We should've known better. Seeing their destruction with our own eyes aside, we still should've known better. The Auphe were still out there, and they wouldn't stay hidden forever. Then there was Robin. Someone wanted him dead, and that was probably a fairly frequent event. Jesus. As for Sawney…we'd made him our problem and it was possible he could take one or more of us out. I'd managed to survive the uncertainty of George's and Nik's disappearance months ago. Managed, as in, just goddamn barely, and only by becoming the coldest son of a bitch that I could be.

Deal?

What a lie. After sitting, pacing, sitting again, and thinking of other things to bash over Robin's head while he slept, I obviously wasn't dealing.

"I have to get out of here for a while." I got up more quickly from the couch than I should have, my body groaning from multiple revenant blows.

"It's four a.m.," Niko pointed out, unmoving. "Where will you…ah." He gave an approving nod. "An excellent idea, if she cooperates. If she will 'look.'"

"Yeah." I started toward the door. "That's a big if." But if I had my way, she wouldn't get away with not looking.

Not this time.