Moonshine

Chapter 3

College, he just wouldn't stop with it.

We'd gone on the run just after Niko's freshman year, which had put a decisive end to higher education for my brother. If things had been reversed, it wouldn't have mattered much to me. I might have gone to college, yeah. But I would've been one of the usual students, average, the lowest common denominator. Skipped a lot of classes, drunk a lot of beer. Graduated with a degree in marketing and absolutely no prospects for a job. Don't get me wrong. It would've been fun, college. Hell, yes. But it wasn't something I would have really ached over the loss of.

Niko did. He never said a word to me or indicated it in any way, but he did. So when the whole mess was over and we could lead a life, while not exactly normal, certainly a whole helluva lot more stable, I was glad he decided to go back to school. He was only twenty-two, even if he acted fifty. It wasn't as if life had passed him by or anything. It would've been pretty pointless for him to take sophomore-level classes, though. While we'd fled for our lives he'd kept his studies up while homeschooling me. Imminent death and destruction were no excuse for a wasted mind, he would say. Really, he would actually say that.

Can you believe it? Now with the help of a little creative paperwork he was taking grad-student classes at NYU. Robin had presented him with a fake degree from a university in Athens where the puck had an old acquaintance who still got a kick out of teaching, despite hemlock rumors to the contrary. Niko was now well on his way to a master's in history. Considering his love of old weapons and his archaic sense of honor, it was a good fit. Niko was smart as hell; brilliant was probably a better word. He needed to learn, to test his mind, to constantly strive. It was exhausting to watch.

I, on the other hand, was happy enough to just lounge on the couch and watch bad TV. I didn't want to take classes or go to college. We had our business up and staggering. It wasn't as if I needed letters behind my name or a piece of paper stuck up on the wall. That made perfect sense to me, but Niko wouldn't let it go.

Yeah, perfect sense… and a bit of a lie too, which was how I usually operated when it came to the twisty inner workings of my own mind. True, I didn't see a need for school, but that wasn't the only reason I didn't want to go. I'd come to terms with what… no… who I was. I wasn't a monster, my occasional melodramatic wailings aside. But neither was I human, not completely. Not quite a man and not exactly a monster. College, classes, dating—it all seemed a little like trying to make me into a "real live boy." And that wasn't so much pointless as it was tempting fate. That I'd survived the Auphe was miraculous… damn near unbelievable. Now was the time for being grateful and keeping my head down. Poking a stick in the eye of fate wasn't on the agenda.

I'd been swatted enough in my life, thanks so much. I was ready for the easy ride, the coasting. And damned if I wasn't due.

I was also due at a certain soda shop in a few hours. So I might as well take a shower and do a load of laundry to kill some time first. I didn't want to be too early. I was no Goodfellow, not on my best day, but I did have some reputation to protect. Okay, realistically, I didn't. But the plan itself was still sound, and I did know how to appreciate a good plan.

Two and a half hours—and three wasted trips downstairs looking for a free washer—later I had dragged a full bag of clean if newly pink clothes back to the apartment. I then grabbed the M15 bus to Pier 17 and the Fulton Fish Market and there I was, hammering futilely on the security gate over the storefront. "Geezer," I called out in exasperation for the second time. "Let me in already."

"Cal." The laughing disapproval came from behind. "How nice is that? Mr. Geever would be hurt if he heard that."

"But he never does, does he?" I grunted with one last rattling bang on the metal. "He's deaf as a post." I'd smelled her coming. Honey and oatmeal soap, the orange and clove shampoo, and underneath it all was the scent of Georgina. Sunlight. Don't ask me how someone can smell like sunlight. I don't know. It was corny and trite and simple truth. Luckily for me she also smelled of shockingly mundane toothpaste, minty and completely ordinary. It let me keep at least one foot on solid ground—at least that's what I stubbornly told myself.

Turning, I looked down at George. Granted it was only by a few inches; I was of average height at best. She stood wearing a white dress that fell to her ankles. Simple cotton and sleeveless, it glowed against the amber of her skin. Most girls her age were wearing jeans that settled precariously below hip bones and tiny tops so skimpy they showed as much skin as a bathing suit. Not that that was a bad thing in my book. I was a twenty-year-old horny guy; tight jeans and lots of skin were a God-given constitutional right as I saw it. But when it came to George, she was more than a girl three weeks past her high school graduation. She was a seer and a prophet.

I'd known her for almost three years now. When Niko and I had first come to the city we'd stumbled into her, a fifteen-year-old miracle, by accident. At least I thought it was accidental. George probably had a different opinion on the matter. The universe moved in ways that were frequently heartbreaking and for the most part unchangeable, but always for a grander purpose. At least it did in her eyes. And she'd kept believing that, although she'd lost her father to AIDS and her uncle to death at the hands of the Auphe. Despite it all she kept the faith that things were as they should be. I wished I had a tiny fraction of her belief in the greater good, no matter how cynically I discounted it.

She had her mass of copper curls pulled up in a ponytail at the crown of her head, an uncontrollable red-gold halo in the morning light. Many races mixed in her dark brown eyes, round face, and full lips. The freckles kept her from being classically beautiful and made her more than beautiful. They made her real… touchable.

For some people.

I unconsciously mimicked her posture, folding my arms and tucking my hands out of sight. "So, Freckle Queen, what's the story? I thought Geezer wanted me to watch the place for him today."

She opened a hand and dangled a set of silver keys before my eyes. "He decided to go visit his sister early. I told him I'd meet you and help you open up the shop."

The look on her face was pure innocence and my mental alarm kicked into high gear. Niko and Promise might be lost in a mist of uncertainty, but George knew she was my girl. She knew it though I'd never told her or given her the slightest inclination I thought of her as anything other than a younger sister. In fact I spent the majority of my time keeping her at arm's length. It wasn't a safe distance, but it was the best I could do. As I watched the glitter of the keys reflected in her dark eyes, I had the sudden feeling that the best I could do just wasn't going to cut it.

Silently, I held out a hand for the keys. She dropped them in my hand and I went to work unlocking the security gate. The warmth of her at my back could've been mistaken for the heat of a tropical sun if I hadn't known better. Knowing better… it was no goddamn fun. "You holding court today?" I asked, clearing my throat. I already knew the answer to the question; it was just something to say. Something to break what I would swear was a doubling of atmospheric pressure.

"Don't I always?" The touch of her hand resting lightly against my arm had me jumping in spite of myself. "There's a little girl," she said softly, her lashes dropping to screen her eyes. "She's in her pajamas holding a teddy bear. They're red, the both of them. All over red."

I jerked my arm away and said sharply, "Don't."

"I'm sorry," she apologized instantly. "God, I am so sorry. I didn't mean to, Cal. I swear."

George didn't "read" people without permission. It was an invasion of privacy, and no one knew that better than she did. The fact that she had read me unconsciously said very clearly that my oh-so-vaunted arm's-length distance wasn't worth a damn to either of us.

I shoved the gate up, scraping the metal across the abrasion I'd gained in climbing the Ferris wheel the night before. The momentary sliver of pain grounded me. It was no big deal. As long as that was all she'd seen, it would be okay. I fumbled with the keys and jammed them one by one into the lock of the door. George, no doubt knowing which was the right one, stayed silent behind me until I opened the door and stepped through.

She followed after me. "Honestly, Cal, I would never—" she started.

"It's okay," I cut her off. "I know you wouldn't look without asking." It was the first time George had read me… short moment though it was. I was very careful about that. When we needed help or guidance, it was Niko she read. What she had learned about me through him, I didn't know and I didn't ask. What I did know was that I was no goody bag to be rummaging through. There were bad things in me, things no one should have to see. Hell, I didn't even know if George was aware I wasn't fully human. Some days I told myself she had to know. She'd had to have picked up on that while reading Niko. She had known her uncle was destined to die at the hands of the Auphe; how could she not know what that made me? But other days… I wasn't so sure.

Moving behind the counter, I checked the temperature on the freezer, fed the slushy machine with ice, and then quickly began to stock the ice-cream bins under the glass counter. The place had once been a drugstore with a soda counter, long before I'd been born. Now it was a soda counter with a lot of empty space and a lonely magazine rack. Mr. Geever kept the place running solely by virtue of George's calling. She sat in the shop for several hours a day and helped those that came. And come in large numbers they did. While she didn't take any money for her services, she always gently urged each person to buy an ice cream from the Geezer. It kept the old guy in false teeth and stool softeners with a little left over for trips to see his equally ancient sister.

"Cal." Funny how a voice of cinnamon velvet could be so utterly implacable.

It was a familiar tone. Horrifyingly familiar. "Niko been giving you lessons?" I grumbled to myself, and then, relenting, I looked up.

An unwavering gaze faced me. "What could I see that would be so bad?" she asked with a shot-to-the-heart honesty.

What a question… and one with too many not-so-nice answers. "Dead little girls for one," I said flatly.

Her lips tightened, but she didn't back down. "If you're thinking that's a first for me, you're wrong."

Not much of a surprise. I had one helluva track record with being wrong. "Then why would you want to see any more?" Along with being wrong, I also had a record of digging in my heels. Laying out the last gallon of chocolate, I reached automatically for the spray bottle of disinfectant and the slightly grungy towel beneath the counter and began to wipe off the glass.

"Caliban," she sighed, and bent her head to blow lightly on the surface of the icy glass.

Not so long ago I hadn't been comfortable with my full name. It brought up some conflicted emotions, to say the least. With a dark twist of humor, Sophia had named me for a slouching man-beast of Shakespearean fame. In my snarky and sullen teenage years I'd made a stand and demanded to be called Caliban and nothing else… not Cal, not anything that might let me forget what I was. I was certain I was a monster and I was determined to wear the label. Niko ignored me as he always did when he felt it was in my best interest. Even now he called me only Cal.

Lately, though, I'd gotten sort of used to the occasional "Caliban." Promise, George, and Robin, they didn't realize the emotions it carried with it and would use it now and again. And when George called me that… hell, the emotions became all new ones. Good ones, if I could let myself admit it.

But they disappeared almost immediately when I saw what her finger was sketching with quick strokes on the frosted glass. She'd drawn on the glass once before like that, but what she'd done then had been much more innocuous than what flowed from her now. Only a few lines, but the face jumped out at me as if it were alive. Pointed ears, streaming hair, a thousand metal teeth. Auphe. How did it go? Say the devil's name and he'll appear? It probably was the same for doodling his driver license's photo. Extinct or not, I didn't want to take the chance. Instantly, I reached over with the rag and wiped it away. She rested her hand on mine before I could pull it back. "That's not you, Cal. It never could be."

I guess that answered my question on how much she knew, I thought numbly. "It is me, George," I countered grimly. "Part of me anyway." The bell tinkled and I looked past her. "Looks like your first disciple is here. Better go show them the light." Carefully I slid my hand from beneath hers and turned my attention to unlocking the cash register.

It was part of me and I could never let myself forget it. Hey, almost destroying the world… it's kind of hard to gloss over. And it had been close. Really, really close. That was what the Auphe had wanted me for, from my very birth. I was part of an experiment in breeding, born and bred for destruction. It seemed the Auphe needed a very special type of creature to further their goal. And that goal was nothing short of wiping out this world and replacing it with another. The Auphe traveled via holes ripped in the fabric of space itself. Gates, doors, whatever you called them, they could slice one into the air, step through, and be someplace far away when they arrived on the other side. Now, if only they could form a rip not just through space but through time as well. The few of them that were left could go back to a prehistoric time when they, not the dinosaurs, ruled the earth. Armed with twenty-twenty hindsight, they could wipe out humans before we even got started. And with my involuntary help, they almost had.

Yeah, that kind of thing made it hard to forget just what you were.

"Stubborn." It wasn't said under her breath; it wasn't even a whisper. And it was accompanied by the sharp sound of her heel hitting the floor as she turned on it and whirled away. Georgie in a temper—there was a first, and despite the unsettling turn to the situation I felt my lips twitch. Then the half-born smile faded. She knew. She knew and she didn't seem to care. What that might mean to me I couldn't even begin to wrap my mind around.

Several hours later Mr. Geever returned early from his sister's and I made my escape, giving George a hasty and stiffly casual wave. She was sitting at a small table in the corner with one of a never-ending stream of petitioners, but that didn't slow my pace any. By the time I hit the door I was going at a clip quick enough to have the bells jangling frantically overhead. I'd spent a good period of my life running. Why change my ways now? As defense mechanisms went, I had this one down pat.

The rest of the day was spent very carefully not thinking about what had happened that morning. I did the dishes, put up clothes, even scrubbed the tub… things I rarely if ever got off my lazy ass to do. By the time Niko came home, I was so desperate for a distraction that I said something that literally stopped him in his tracks.

"Hey," I said the moment he opened the door. "Good day? Learn a lot? Wanna spar?"

He stood still in the doorway with keys dangling from his hand to regard me with bemusement. "Wrong apartment or pod person. I'm not quite sure where to place my bet."

"Yeah, yeah, smart-ass." I was sitting on the coffee table, and I crossed one ankle over the other. "When you're loaded with natural talent, you don't have to practice. I'm just making an exception to help you out." Never mind that last time he'd wiped the floor with my butt and then for an encore did it again, this time using the ceiling.

"You are quite the philanthropist." Shutting the door behind him, he moved closer and with folded arms looked down at me for a long moment, seeing probably more than I wanted him to. "Bare hands or blades?" he asked finally. "It's the humiliation of your choice."

I chose bare hands. I was many things, but stupid I was not. That's not to say I wouldn't get my ass kicked. If history was any indication, chances were high that I would. But nothing stung quite like the slap of the broad side of a blade, even the wooden ones Niko kept for practice. We could've gone to the gym or Niko's old dojo, but the few times we had we'd attracted too much attention. Crowds at the gym were split between chanting for blood and calling 911, and the dojo was thick with disapproval over our technique. Mine was nonexistent and Niko's was a mixture of many methods. We didn't fight by certain rules; we fought to live. It wasn't always pretty, but it was effective.

Now we fought either in the apartment—and didn't our neighbors love that?—or in more secluded areas of Central Park. Washington Square Park was closer, but there weren't too many private areas there and cops tended to frown on sword waving in public. This time we chose the apartment. Pushing the furniture against the walls, we cleared the center of the room. I gave the couch one last shove and straightened. His back half-turned to me, Niko had lifted his hands automatically to pull back his hair out of the way into a ponytail… hair that was no longer there. As his self-exasperated exhalation reached my ears, I was already taking him down. My foot hit the small of his back, knocking him several feet through the air and onto the floor. I would've landed on my stomach and probably promptly barfed up my lunch. Niko, of course, alighted catlike on his hands and knees. Looking over his shoulder, he offered, looking pleased, "Devious and without compunction. Nicely done indeed." The fact that he'd deliberately given me the opening didn't change his appreciation of my performance.

Then he was up and on me as inexorable as the tide. Lashing out, one blow from the heel of his hand hit my chest and knocked me backward. Despite our precautions, I took out a lamp. Hula skirt and generous hips shattered beneath me to gyrate no more. It was my favorite lamp, one I'd picked up at a secondhand store in the Village. "You did that on purpose, you son of a bitch." I glared.

"It's conceivable," Niko admitted mockingly and without remorse. The bastard had never shared my taste for the classier things in life. He didn't wait for me to get back to my feet; he only kept coming. Just like real life.

I aimed a blow at his knee, hoping to crumple his leg beneath him, but he knocked my foot aside before it reached its target. I lunged past him only to receive a roundhouse kick to my hip that had me flying through the air… and not with the greatest of ease. The wall broke the first part of my fall and the couch finished up the job. It was a familiar feeling, the give of the cushions under my back. It was where I usually ended up during our practice sessions. And that had given me an idea the last time it had happened. Normally I came up with a groan and mumbled curse. This time I came up with a shotgun. Tucked behind the cushions for a week now, awaiting the perfect moment.

This moment.

Swinging the muzzle his way, I pulled the trigger on the first barrel and then the second. Click. Click. Snarling, I said, "Bang, bang, Professor. Your ass is grass."

He blinked at me and then the corners of his mouth curled slightly, for him a wide smile. Placing a hand to his chest, he then held it up to show imaginary blood. "You got me."

"First time ever." I grinned, dropping the weapon's muzzle toward the floor. "Is there some sort of prize? Weekend in Maui? Year's supply of veggie burgers?"

"I can now let you out without a leash." He sat on the couch. "Trust me, that's prize enough."

I sat beside him and laid the gun on the floor. "Kind of weird… pointing a gun at you again." When Darkling had taken me over, I'd done my level best to kill Niko… our level best, rather. It had gone down in Central Park. I'd been armed with a gun and a boggle, Niko with a sword and a happy little surprise. It wasn't precisely a fair fight, and I'd still lost. Best loss of my life.

"I know." His hand tugged at the dark tail of hair gathered at the nape of my neck. There was a comfortable silence for a few minutes and then he asked quietly, "You want to talk about it?"

Only a brother would know he wasn't referring to the time that the only thing that saved him from a bullet from my gun had been a pricey piece of body armor. No, Niko was all too aware that there was something else on my mind that had prompted my request for a workout. I hesitated, then groaned, "George."

His lips twitched. "My little boy, all grown-up."

"I knew I should've kept my mouth shut," I griped, leaning back into a boneless slouch.

Sobering, he tilted his head toward me. "She's been chasing you for nearly a year now, Cal, and she's as stubborn as you. You know what that means, don't you?"

"What?" I asked with more dread than curiosity.

"That sooner or later she's going to catch you." Gray eyes lit with amusement, he went on. "And would that be so terrible?"

Yeah, it would, but Niko wouldn't be able to see that, no more than George herself could. My brother wanted things to work out for me; he wanted that so damn bad. One of the most aware people in the world teamed with a psychic, and both of them were blind as bats. Utterly. But did I call him on it? No. My day was already ruined; I had no desire to trash his too. I shook my head noncommittally and changed the subject. "We have time for supper before we meet Rover. You want to grab a pizza?"

"The meeting's tonight?"

"Yeah, Promise left a message on the machine. Seven at the accountant's office." I gave the word the sarcastic emphasis it deserved. "Apparently Cerberus treats the 'business' like an actual business. Go figure. Are we sure we want to get into the middle of some Kin mess? Whether it's self-defense on his part or not, he is still Kin. He's still a crook. I can live with it, but I know you, Nik. You like things a little more black-and-white."

"I'm that predictable, then?" Not offended, he slapped my shoulder lightly and then got to his feet. "At the very least, we can hear his flunky out. If we find his rival isn't planning anything nefarious, then we prevent a possible war within the Kin. That can only be to the good."

"If you say so," I said skeptically. Leg-humping, crotch-sniffing mutts with a license to steal—it was a strain to see the good there. But as long as we were paid, it didn't make much difference to me what the fleabags did to each other. "Pizza?" I repeated hopefully. "It's the least you could do for breaking the almighty hula lamp."

"The least I can do. Really?" Dark blond eyebrows lifted. "How very wrong you are."