Moonshine

Chapter 20

Bodies littered the cracked sidewalk in front of the building. Vodyanoi, revenants—there were at least twelve of them. It wouldn't have been enough to overcome my brother. But in the midst of the bodies there was the spore of something that had been. Slim and silver, another poniard lay. By the gross, I thought numbly. He bought them by the gross. It didn't lie there alone; Niko's sword was beside it. Both were bloodied. And both were what it took to split me in half.

I'd held it together, mostly, this past week. I'd found a place within me to hide, carved out a craven sanctuary. I was stunned at how quickly that sanctuary crumbled, and I was almost immolated by what swelled free of it. Fear, red and raw. Hatred, black and suffocating. And over it all, fury—white-hot and blinding.

Blood sacrifice.

That's what Hob had said when I'd been more concerned with trying to kill him than paying attention to his cryptically poisonous words. And now Niko was gone. He wasn't lying wounded or dead by his sword. Hob, who wouldn't lift a finger himself to do anything that he didn't absolutely have to, had taken him. Hob, who needed a sacrifice. I'd tried to guard Niko from the Auphe when something else wanted him as badly. This was what Abelia-Roo had kept from us, out of pure, malicious spite. We'd sensed the crone was holding back something about the Calabassa. We should've guessed. We should've goddamn known. The world is about sacrifice, our world even more so. For the crown to take, someone would have to give. It would grant George's gift to Hob, and it would take Niko's life in return. The Rom and the Bassa had been allies, according to Abbagor… their lives intertwined. It took the blood of one to make the device of the other work. Elegant, logical…

And not going to happen.

I couldn't hear anymore, or perhaps there was nothing to hear. Velvety silence surrounded me as I bent down and reverently cradled Niko's sword. It was his katana, modern but with the heart of the ancient implicit in its spare form. He would've said he didn't favor one weapon over the other, that they were tools to be respected and admired… nothing more. That's what he would've said, but I knew better. He did play favorites with his edged family and this one was his pride and joy. It wasn't made in the old way—no one did that these days—but it was as close as you could come. He loved that damn sword, and guess what? He was getting it back.

At the hesitant touch on my shoulder, the hilt found its way into my hand and I whirled, surrounded by a halo of silver steel. There were flashes, disjointed and vague. Brown, green. Fox face and mobile mouth. To carve all that from the face of the earth wasn't a decision I made. It simply happened. The sword flew and I followed.

"Cal, don't!"

The words beat at the layer of pulsing rage that cocooned me. Sound had come back. It faded in and out, but it was there. Real. The sight that was before me was real too—as little as my anger wanted it to be. Robin, not Hob, was on his knees in front of me. He was panting with exertion as his white-knuckled fists gripped his own sword and kept Niko's blade from his neck by bare millimeters.

"Don't," he repeated between clenched teeth. "Don't make me hurt you. Please, don't make me."

I didn't delude myself into thinking it was only talk. Goodfellow very probably could hurt me. He predated swords; he'd had a lot longer to practice with them than I had. Not that it mattered. I didn't want to hurt him any more than he wanted to hurt me. I saw what my rage was slow to recognize; it was Robin. It was my friend. Not the monster who'd taken Niko.

Not Hob.

I let the tip of the katana fall toward the ground. My hands shook and cramped from the anger that had no outlet. "Nik's gone." If I hadn't felt my mouth move, I wouldn't have recognized the thick, choked words as mine.

"I know." Robin let gravity take his own blade and sat back to rest on his heels. Head down, he passed a hand over his face. "I know."

"Where would he take him?" The twitch of one of the downed revenants was visible from the corner of my eye. I swiveled, gave a vicious swing of the sword, and turned back before the brown blood had time to drip from the blade. "Where?"

"I don't know. I haven't a goddamn inkling." In a sudden explosion of frustration, he threw his sword against the asphalt. "He was supposed to be dead. Why couldn't he stay dead?" he said savagely before looking up at me. "And why Niko? Why not take just the crown? He already has a hostage. What would he need with another?"

"For the Rom blood." My mouth twisted. "For the damn Bassa, who made sure there was a price to be paid for what you took." I had the key in me as well, so why hadn't Hob taken me instead? He might know who was dogging my steps lately and not want the added distraction of vengeance-crazed Auphe dropping in on the ceremony. Or maybe the Auphe gene in me was so strong it tainted all the rest, made the Rom half of me unrecognizable to the Calabassa. It would be a chance that a scheming son of a bitch like the puck wouldn't want to take.

"Niko?"

Promise had moved up silently behind us. "Hob took Niko? No." She shook her head in denial. "He couldn't overcome Niko. No one could." Then her gaze touched the katana in my hand and pansy-colored eyes turned velvety black, even the whites swallowed whole by the dark cloud. "The first of your kind, Robin, but he will not live long enough to be the last. I'll kill him myself."

"Get in line." I started back toward the club. I didn't expect to find clues or hints to Hob's location, no bullshit like that. Hob wouldn't be anywhere close to that stupid. But there was something in the building that would help. Had to help, because it was our only shot. I quickly grabbed what I needed and hauled it back outside.

Stopping by the pile of Niko's attackers, I gave Flay's fur-covered arm a hard shake. "Niko," I snapped. "Find him."

When his cub had been taken, Flay had come home to discover shattered furniture, blood, and Slay's dead grandmother broken on the floor. The kidnapper's scent turned out to be that of Caleb, but the wolf wasn't able to determine that at first. Too many changes of cars were made; too many hours had passed. He lost the trail. He hadn't been able to find his son. But while the trail had been old then, and degraded, it was fresh now.

"Find him." I shook him again.

Slay, resting against his father's shoulder, growled. It was a wholly lupine sound emitting from wholly human lips. With clawed hand cupping the ginger head tenderly, Flay made a wordless soothing sound before wrinkling his upper lip at me to reveal red-stained teeth. "You find mine." He put his blunt muzzle up and drew in great draughts of air. "I find yours." There was one more sampling, and then he ran. Slinging the boy to sit up on his neck, he went down on all fours and became the wind.

Goodfellow ran for our transportation while Promise and I followed Flay on foot. Three blocks away the van caught up with us. It slowed and we both climbed in while it was still moving. Robin then careened us around a corner and up onto the curb to take out a newspaper box, and kept going. He wasn't the only one scorning the streets. Flay and his passenger didn't stick to them either. Alleys, vacant lots—it was all fair game. We managed to keep him in view, flickerings of phantom white our guide.

There were other flickerings… red and yellow ones ringing my vision. The rage wouldn't die, wouldn't subside. The fear was side by side with it. It wouldn't let me take a breath without squeezing my lungs with acid-coated fingers. Without Nik, I was nothing. Living life to prove your genes wrong wasn't worth doing. Living life to be the reflection of who your brother thought you were, thought you could be, that was worth it. That made the price of existence not quite so steep.

"Won't Hob suspect we'll use Flay to follow him?"

Robin addressed Promise's question with a logic that proved familiarity breeds contempt. "I strongly doubt it. He'll assume Flay has what he's come for and will move on. Hob doesn't understand the concept of loyalty. He especially wouldn't apply it to one who runs with the Kin. Arrogance, it's the downfall for my race. For every last thrice-damned one of us."

I had something else planned for Hob's downfall. The metal glimmered across my lap with the coldest of comforts. Goodfellow went on. "He wants George's ability so he can rise to power again. With it, he could blackmail anyone, manipulate everyone … be what he once was. It's not as it was in the old days. The brightest, the most respected, even the most cunning, they don't always win anymore. He needs an edge if he wants to play in these politically unenlightened times." If it had been any other situation, he would've waxed poetic about the time when all you needed was a toga and an in with the Roman army. But it wasn't any other situation. It was this one.

This one.

"Drive faster," I ordered gutturally. It whirled in me, the rage, bright and furious. An emotion so intense that it was nearly an entity all its own. Aware… plotting. When your subconscious has a mind of its own, things happen. They fucking do indeed.

"I can't. This is as fast…" The words trailed away as Goodfellow checked my reflection in the rearview mirror. His shoulders twitched and he hissed, "Not the time. So very not the time."

The shadows swirled out of Promise's eyes as she turned and looked behind me. "No. Not now. Not now." As I gazed back at her implacably, she said with a worry strained to near desperation, "You're doing it again, Caliban."

Like I didn't know. As if I didn't feel the turn and suck of the gateway behind me. It was small, no larger than the size of my hand. I didn't have to see it to know that either. It was mine and I knew it, inside and out. The shifts and eddies of it, the ferocious bite. It was an attack dog, only mildly loyal and completely untrained. I had a choke chain on it for now, but the leash was slipping through my fingers so fast I could feel the burn.

"Where does it go?" Robin asked with a desperation that mirrored that of Promise.

I smiled.

"Ah, gods," he breathed, "what are we going to do?"

The smile grew and I bared my teeth in a death's-head grin that would've done any Auphe proud. "Drive faster."

He did. At one point he nearly ran down our wolf. I heard the yip and snarl of surprise through the metal walls of the van. It didn't restrain Goodfellow's driving. The gate was traveling with us… with me… and that concerned him more than a close call with Flay's hairy ass. Fifteen more minutes passed and I wondered in the back of my mind, the only portion that still had the smallest grip on rational thought, how long the wolf could keep up the brutal pace. He was lupine, but even a wolf couldn't run forever. Fortunately, he didn't have to. We stopped at a church, old but lovingly maintained.

"A house of God. Appropriate," Goodfellow murmured. "He always considered himself one of the first."

He'd killed the lights a block down when he'd seen Flay begin to slow. The van rolled quietly to a stop and the panting wolf flowed inside to deposit a grinning three-year-old into a seat. "Again!" Slay demanded, bouncing on the cushion. "Again!" Someone, at least, had enjoyed the headlong rush.

Flay's eyes widened to show the whites as he saw the now cantaloupe-sized whirlpool of gray light behind me and he put himself between it and his son. "Inside church. Puck, brother, girl. Others."

"What others?" Promise had discarded her cloak and stepped out as a singular figure of black silk and cold steel.

"Same. Revenant. Vodyanoi. Many." He shifted uneasily on splayed feet as I passed him on my way to the street. The gateway followed me, a luminous shadow. "I not go."

I hadn't expected him to. He had his family to protect now. He had his life back, and I hadn't anticipated his risking it again. I nodded in acknowledgment. "Keep the engine running. Just in case."

Unease and impatience twisted his face as his features slid into something closer to human, but he nodded. "Fifteen minutes. Then we go."

It was a fair offer and I took it. I turned and headed toward the church, making no effort to hide. How the hell could you begin to hide a rip in reality itself as it trailed behind you? And it was still there. Hungry, impatient, and growing inch by slow inch no matter how I tried to rein in the process. It was pulling at me harder now, every minute. I didn't have much longer. "Heel," I murmured under my breath. "That's a good boy."

Robin came up beside me, giving me a little more personal space than usual. "I say we forget splitting up," he suggested. "It didn't precisely net us many gains last time. Let's go in the front, the three of us, and take whatever comes. It would be the last thing Hob expects. Brute force over cunning."

"I don't have a problem with that." I'd taken out the Eagle as we walked. Reaching the bottom of the church stairs, I aimed at the front set of double doors and fired… all ten rounds. It was impressive, to say the least. Sheer destruction, how can that not do a vengeful heart good? Running up the stairs through the sharply acrid smell and smoke, I kicked aside what remained of the doors and entered the church. I didn't wait to see if Goodfellow and Promise were behind me. Truthfully, it wouldn't have mattered either way.

I holstered the gun and concentrated on the weapon in my other hand, Niko's katana. It knew me. Inanimate object or not, it knew me. I swung it double-handed and sliced through the neck of the first revenant with quicksilver ease. Another loathsome jumble of spidery arms and legs began to leap for me only to reverse and tumble away at the sight of the gateway at my back. "Auphe," it hissed, crouching on its haunches.

"Yeah," I snarled. "Auphe. Tell all your little friends."

It recoiled and scuttled away. Too bad I hadn't been hauling my badge of dishonor around at the club. It could've saved me some work. Several more revenants plunged from between the pews and followed the first. The only illumination was candlelight and it dappled the wet flesh as they rippled out of sight. The vodyanoi weren't so easily impressed. They dealt very little with the dry world, rarely creeping from their rivers. They had knowledge of the Auphe, but to them it was mostly rumors. Legends. It wasn't an intimate acquaintance.

Not yet.

They didn't have the spidery motion of the revenants. The vodyanoi flowed like the water that had whelped them. They weren't fast, but there were enough of them that it didn't matter. And like their lost and unlamented cousin, they were armed. Some with identical machetes, some swords… anything with an edge. Their crudely formed fingers were too large to fit in the trigger guard of a gun.

"What a shame you wasted all your explosive rounds knocking on the door," Goodfellow gritted at my elbow.

"I didn't." I pulled out the gun and shoved it into his hand, and then followed it with a box of ammunition. "It's sighted for me. Aim a few inches high." Whirling, I sheathed Niko's sword in a tiny black eye. The vodyanoi bubbled a cry of agony, a thin, mucous scream. I withdrew the blade and hit the heavy rubber of its chest with my shoulder. It fell onto its back, where it thrashed wildly. Promise followed my example and sent the one behind it down with a quarrel through an inky orb. And then the one to the left and the one to the right. Her face a tight ivory mask, she was a cold wind of destruction sweeping through the place. And when she ran out of quarrels, she used her hands to pierce their eyes, and her teeth to peel their thick flesh down to bone. An enraged vampire isn't something anyone would want to face, not even a vodyanoi.

I didn't stick around to see how the rest of the battle went. I didn't have the time, and Niko and George didn't have it either. There was no up in the church other than a vaulted ceiling and the jigsaw puzzle of darkened stained-glass windows. That left down. I ran through the milling vodyanoi, dodging and parrying blades. I heard another of the shrill screams in my wake and turned to see one seal-blubber arm sliced off cleanly at the elbow. The stump was pumping blood, but the amputated section was gone. The gateway, it had passed through the vodyanoi and gobbled the creature's arm as it went.

It was bigger. Almost big enough for what I heard whispering on the other side. Yeah, running out of time—on all fronts.

I found the stairs to the basement and was forced to sacrifice speed for stealth. If he heard me coming, Hob would be sure to rush through whatever twisted ceremony he was conducting. Or he might escape as he had done before. Couldn't have that, the rage murmured in the back of my thoughts. Couldn't have that at all. My quiet care was successful. He didn't hear me.

I spotted George first. Her hands and feet tied, she was propped up against the wall. Her beautiful hair was gone, leaving a close cap of tight red waves. It made her eyes look impossibly large, like those of a child. There was a cut on her upper arm, six inches long and scabbed over. It was where he had cut her. Him or Caleb—they might as well have been the same. While I'd been on the phone, they had cut her to give me a dose of encouragement. God.

She saw me before Hob did. Not because she heard me or glimpsed me in the shadows. She saw me because she knew I would be there. Her eyes were trained on the spot before I appeared. Luminous and calm, waiting and knowing.

Then I saw Niko. I should've seen him first. I think… I think I didn't want to. He was in chains, suspended from an overhead beam, half-nude. His skin was more red than olive. The bastard had sliced him up like a Christmas goose. A circle nearly eight inches in diameter had been cut into his chest. A representation of the Calabassa, it ran with blood. My brother ran with blood.

The whispering behind me was louder now. I could feel a numbing cold flowing from behind like an arctic tide. I had minutes, maybe less.

My teeth bit savagely at my lower lip until I could taste the salt. He was bloody, but he wasn't d—wasn't gone. The wound, although gory, wasn't fatal. But from the contemplative expression on Hob's face, it was only the beginning. He stood before Niko, tapping the point of one of those goddamn poniards against his chin.

"This is the only symbol required by the Calabassa before sacrifice," he said mockingly, "but I've always said going the extra mile never hurts." He leaned closer and touched a finger to the blood winding its way down Niko's abdomen. "I misspoke. It doesn't hurt me. You, my filthy, inbred Rom trash, are a different story."

If he was standing that close to Niko, there had to be… yes, I saw it. My brother's feet were chained as well, with the chain fastened securely to the floor. It was the only reason the puck's head was still attached to his shoulders. Nik lifted his head and said flatly, "You breed with yourself, goat. I believe you have the corner on inbreeding."

"Who else would be worthy?" Hob had plainly learned to keep his temper over the innumerable years. He rubbed the blood between his thumb and forefinger, then touched the circlet of metal resting on his head. The Calabassa pulsed with light, white and hot, once, then subsided. The illumination had passed through Hob as well. He had glowed, as if he were glass and lit from within. "Ah, apparently it likes the way you taste. How fortuitous." He flipped the blade in his other hand up into the air. "And when it's had its fill of you, I'll be ready for the sighted one." His gaze slid toward George and her eyes were already on his in anticipation. Satisfied, he turned back and flipped the poniard one last time.

I cut him in midspin.

He saw me. Too late for him and too early for me.

He slithered to one side and my blade penetrated flesh only to bounce off a collarbone. Hob melted away with a speed that fooled the eye. But I followed with a desperate speed of my own. I couldn't protect both Niko and George unless I stayed with Hob, on Hob. He ignored the blood that stained an unbuttoned white linen shirt as fine as anything Goodfellow owned, and spread his hands in welcome. The poniard was a glittering punctuation. "Ah, the freak show can commence. The star performer is here. And he's learned a shiny new trick."

The gateway was now centered in the room. It no longer trailed after me, but I could feel it turn with my every movement—a sunflower to the sun. Or more aptly a flytrap to meat. "Not so new," I said with a false stretch of smile. "Not anymore."

"You won't swing it wide, that gate," he countered scornfully. "I hear them, you know, your true family." He tilted his head as if listening. "They're waiting and not very patiently. They would destroy everyone in this room. Everyone."

Like Robin, he was a talker. Talk. Talk. The fury in me didn't want to talk. It wanted to kill. Luckily enough, that's what I wanted as well. I lunged at him as he was explaining what I would or wouldn't do. He was better than I was; I knew that. He'd taken Niko. That made him just about better than anyone on the planet. But there are things that can give you an edge in a fight, things that can at least get you into the game. One of those—the best one, in fact—was no fear of death.

I didn't want to die, but if I couldn't save Niko and George, I was dead anyway. If I saved them, I could go without complaint. And pure, unadulterated rage helps in that, blurring the survival instinct. It can make you sloppy, but it can also help in certain situations.

The ones where you don't care if you walk away top the list.

Hob caught the katana on his Spanish blade, twisted his wrist so that I would hit the point of the poniard if I didn't pull back. I didn't. The punch of metal tore through my hip, lodging in bone. I think it hurt. It must've hurt. I didn't feel a thing. I did a half turn, ripping the dagger from his hand. I then sliced him across the chest with Niko's sword. He was still too quick for it to be fatal, but it staggered him enough that he retreated several feet. I used my left hand to yank the poniard from my flesh and bone. "Lose something?" I said with false sympathy.

"I have more, freak," he hissed, his hand disappearing in his shirt to appear with another. "I always have more."

The primeval-forest eyes, the tangled brown curls, the pale olive skin—he was a force of nature… deadly but stunning. You could see in him that he might well be the first. You could sense the age and the cold-blooded apathy that comes from knowing all things pass. All things but you.

This time he brought the fight to me. I blocked the one aimed at my heart, barely, and the one at my neck, although I felt the tug of a nasty slice. Still no pain… liquid adrenaline had taken the place of blood in my veins and it blocked everything but the burn of single-minded purpose. I pressed in close to him as I blocked the return slash. This close the sword was no good, but I had the dagger in my other hand and I rammed it into his thigh. I received something in return. I knew I would. He was too skilled… It was too bad for him that he valued his life so much. It was really holding him back.

This time I felt the pain as a blade sliced through my side, opening a gaping gash. "I can do this as long as it takes," he murmured with infinite boredom by my ear. "Piece by piece, strip by strip, I'll have you down to dripping bones, and when I'm done draining your gifted girl, I'll beat her to death with what's left of you."

Under his detachment, I heard something. A sliver of agony, the smallest taste of fear, it was there. "Before that, I'll throw it open." I twisted the knife in his thigh and watched the cords in his neck stand out in pain. "If we're going to die anyway, I'm taking you with us, you son of a bitch. I'll even tell them you're Goodfellow. They really have a hard-on for him."

Abruptly, he pushed me away hard and I stumbled backward. He followed me and took me to the ground. Pressing the poniard against my neck until my head was hyperextended back, he wiped the blood from my neck and raised his crimson hand high. Nothing happened. The Calabassa remained dull. "See, freak? Do you see? The crown turns away from your polluted blood. How does it feel to have proof you are the monster you always thought you were?"

He'd known Freud too, I guessed. And maybe at any other time it would've hit me hard. Right now, it was just more meaningless blather from an asshole that was making himself too damn hard to kill. Fortunately for me, I wasn't going to do the killing. Not personally. "I lied." As I grinned with teeth tasting of my own blood, he leaned harder with the blade and I could feel more warmth well across my skin. "You're right. I wouldn't let them through." A faint shimmer of uncertainty crossed a face that had known nothing but triumph its entire long life. "But we can go to them."

The blade pressed deeper for one brief moment before George's blow nearly took his head off. He'd underestimated us, the Hob. Underestimated us all. I saw the six-foot-tall candlestick in her hands as she swung. Her wrists were raw and weeping where she'd torn free of the ropes. She must've worked for hours upon hours, but why not? She knew we were coming.

The knife had flown from my throat and I was up and moving. Hob was on his knees, already recovering from the shocking wound that soaked his brown hair scarlet. But recovering wasn't recovered and I took my chance. I hit him, wrapping my arms around him, just as he staggered to his feet. Face-to-face. Old monster to new. Off-balance for that split second, he wavered under me, then fell.

Through the door to hell.

Taking me with him.

I expected it. It was a price, a high one, but it was one I was willing to pay. I imagined they called after me, Niko and George, but I didn't hear them. It was just as well. I didn't want them to hear me either. Niko had heard me scream one too many times in his life.

Hob screamed too. In that place of tomb stench, frozen air, and a sky that pulsed like a cancer. Where the whispers punctured eardrums and the molten eyes swallowed you whole. Where talons touched and caressed as intimately as murder. He screamed and screamed. On and on, it seemed like forever, but it couldn't have been. It couldn't have been more than one scream really or a small part of one. Because then he was there and I was here and the gateway was gone. I was on the floor of the church basement with Promise's hands locked in my hair and Robin's clutching my clothes. They'd pulled me back. As I was closing the rip, they yanked me back through.

"You did it on purpose." Goodfellow's voice was both awed and horrified. "You opened the door to Tumulus for the sole intention of pushing him through." He held me up in a sitting position, but his eyes were locked on the empty air where the gateway had hung.

The air here was thicker and it took me a moment to reply. "I'm learning," I finally said with bone-deep weariness. And I was learning. Fast. Motivation was one hell of a teacher. "Nik?"

"I have him." Promise's hands disappeared.

George's took their place. She tackled me every bit as wildly as I had Hob, but with much kinder intentions. Her hands threaded into my hair, then clasped behind my back as she squeezed me with a strength you would never suspect her small frame held. Robin, who had been supporting me, melted away and she rocked with me. "He was wrong," she said fiercely, smudged and dirty face determined as I'd ever seen it. And then she kissed me. There were no words for what it was like, the living poetry of it. Time changed with it too, as it had with the gate to Tumulus. But this change was far for the better. When it was done, her hands framed my face and her voice, while soft, was every bit as determined as before. "You're not a freak, Caliban. You're a light, do you hear me? A light in the darkness."

Over two weeks she'd been his prisoner. Over two weeks gone from her family, gone from those who loved her, and this was what she had to say. It was beyond humbling. I buried my face in the silk of her neck and struggled to breathe air suddenly heavy and choking. And for the first time I held her. Arms tight around a warmth I'd thought impossible for me. For the first time…

And the last.