Roadkill

12

We hadn’t been back on the Lincoln for even thirty measly miles when we saw it. A black truck. The black truck. I didn’t need the ring of my cell phone from Abelia-Roo still following us in the pink RV of the queen of con artists to tell me that. I could smell the graveyard must creeping in despite the air-conditioning. So could Catcher. And Rafferty? I imagined he could smell and sense Suyolak. Half a mile behind him… it… and where were my explosive rounds when I needed them?

It wasn’t a semi, but it was big enough to haul a coffin or two and more than several minions… ex-minions. Minions usually always ended up as ex, deceased, or late and not necessarily great. These guys had gotten their pink slip with a nice side order of cholera, and while that didn’t taste as bad as hominy or the dreaded brussels sprout, it still couldn’t have gone down too well. Read a fucking comic, for God’s sake. Watch a superhero movie and you’d know that when your boss is powerful enough and motivated enough to destroy the world, you’d have to wonder: what good are you to him in the long run? Pensions are going to be scarce.

“It’s him,” Rafferty and I said, not exactly in harmony, but it was as close as echoes came.

“Pull up beside him,” Niko ordered.

Robin gave him one of those incredulous glances that he was so good at. “On the Lincoln? Are you going to jump across and cling to the metal door like a ninja refrigerator magnet? Or is Cal going to shoot the driver? Neither of which, I’m sure, will draw any attention of the cars around us.” He shook his head. “Blonds. They do try, but…” He tapped a finger against his temple.

Niko leaned closer to Robin, something the puck would’ve normally liked, and bit off one arctic word at a time. “Pull… up… beside… him.” My brother wasn’t happy about Suyolak and was worried about me-not that he should’ve been, and he was not in the mood for making things more difficult than they had to be. If shooting the truck driver on the Lincoln was our best opportunity, he’d take it.

“Fine, fine. Hold your no doubt pristinely organic urine.” Robin moved into the fast lane and the car up next to the truck. The windows were tinted in the cab, not as black as the paint job, but enough that I couldn’t make out who was driving or inside of the cab, especially as I was on the far side of a wolf and healer. While I would’ve liked to have seen the inside so I could’ve made a little hop in there, I didn’t need to see the driver. It was a man, a stupid and desperate man, and it didn’t matter what he looked like or what his name was or even why he was doing this. It only mattered we took him out before he let loose something that could potentially eradicate life on the planet and, worse yet, do it just for shits and giggles.

“I smell something else,” Rafferty said as he studied the truck through his window.

“Me too,” I responded. It was sharp and musky, mixed with old and new blood. It was the scent of an animal, only much stronger, and not one I’d ever come across. “But I don’t have a damn clue what it is.”

Catcher was growling softly, but that was his only comment, which meant he didn’t know either. “All right then. Suyolak’s picked up some new friends. He, like me, is a popular guy,” Goodfellow said as he kept pace with the truck as it began to speed up. “Are we going to ride along until he invites us to a playdate with him and his entire tea party? Or are we going to do something productive?”

“All my plans are productive,” Nik said, holding a hand over the seat. “Cal, your SIG Sauer.”

That was the backup I’d been wearing when the other car had gotten torched. Niko was in the passenger seat. He had the better shot. “Why not the Desert Eagle?” I asked as I passed over the pistol-a 9mm SIG Sauer 226 X-Five tactical model-double action. I hadn’t quite gotten a hard-on reading the description in the gun catalogue, but it’d been close. It was a great gun-accurate and good for those who shoot to kill, not just shoot to play.

“Because I didn’t feel the need to spend a good chunk of my teen years measuring my penis. I prefer accuracy over size.” He accepted the grip of the gun. “Although I do have both.”

“Brag, brag, brag. Just shoot the son of a bitch.” But he hadn’t waited for my encouragement. He’d already aimed through the glass, not taking the time to roll down the window. But Suyolak’s driver, the Seattle professor-I’d seen the license plate for verification-must’ve yanked the wheel and the truck was off on an exit that was too damn convenient to be true, so much so that not only the world had to be against us, but the universe as well.

Goodfellow veered across the lane, cutting off Abelia’s RV, which spun in a quick one-eighty and ended up off the road. I saw a shaking fist out one window, so I wasn’t too worried. Then again it could’ve rolled over and tossed her through the air like a hundred- year-old Frisbee and I wouldn’t have been wasting an iota of concern. We made the exit and that was the important thing.

The town was something- ville, something-burg. I didn’t catch the full name and that was fine. All these little towns were beginning to blur together into one big four-way stop-ville-like when we were kids. From town to town, school to school, liquor store to liquor store, and eventually jail to jail. Bribing a bum old enough to post bond on your mother was always a fun time. The stars, the clean air when we weren’t driving through clouds of pollen, the green, the quiet… It was missed, but as for the rest, I appreciated New York with new eyes. There were no Sophia memories there. There were Auphe memories, but also ones of victory over the Auphe. It was home and I was more than ready to kick this guy’s ass and get back there.

“Never send a samurai to do a street punk’s job,” I grumbled, slamming into the door as Robin treated the exit like a snowless slalom and he was shooting for the Olympics. “Don’t lose them.”

“Lose them? I was a charioteer in Ben-Hur. A car is nothing compared to four recently gelded and consequently highly pissy horses.” He maneuvered around a slow-chugging Toyota and a slightly faster-moving, rusted-out pickup truck with a ruthless speed that would’ve had a New York cabbie bawling like a baby. The black truck missed them both as well. Maybe it wasn’t a Seattle professor, but Charlton Heston behind the wheel.

It was not the best moment to pass the sheriff, but pass him we did. He was going in the opposite direction as we followed the truck at high speed. The department car slammed on its brakes, turned, and was after us for about fifteen seconds. Then it slowed, slowed further, and gradually veered off the road. He might not have shot the sheriff, but Suyolak had done something to him, and to the deputy too if he was with him-something probably permanent and considerably worse than what was in the song. And again I wondered-if he could do that with weak coffin seals, what would he be able to do if he did get out of that coffin?

I didn’t want to put it to the test, with Rafferty on our side or not.

“Shoot the tires,” I suggested.

“No.” Nik had checked the SIG to make sure one was in the pipe. Where was the trust? “Let’s see where he goes. Hopefully it will be someplace a little less conspicuous and less lethal to the local bystanders.” It truly was another four-way stop-ville as I said, but there were two gas stations and a tiny pizza place, or what passed for pizza in Utah. There were people-only a handful, but it was a handful that didn’t have to die because of Suyolak if we confronted him and whatever else was in that truck farther out.

“The salt of the earth, these people,” Robin said with a cheer that made me wonder how many times in his long life he’d chased after death with a smile and an immaculate wardrobe. “Ever made love to a Utah woman? Or man? They actually do taste like salt. I don’t know if it’s the salt flats or the air, but they’re like the very best potato chips. You can’t eat just one.”

“Does he ever shut up? Damn it, ever?” Rafferty looked close to desperate behind Niko’s seat.

“Whatever. You’ve spent two days with him. Try the past three years of your life. Or is it four? It’s too traumatizing to remember.” I hit the door again as we turned right. “And maybe you should concentrate on why Suyolak isn’t trying to do to us what he did to the cops back there.”

“He is.” Rafferty’s face was drawn now that I bothered to take the time to notice, his knuckles white where he clenched the seat beneath him to stay upright during the rough ride. “Just consider me your force field of cold, flu, and goddamn plague repellant and try not to distract me.” He closed his eyes, the better to concentrate, I hoped. I didn’t have a desire to have my body try to drown itself again. “Particularly you, Goodfellow.”

Robin had already opened his mouth for another comment. I didn’t have to see him to know that. I only had to know him. He kept quiet, though. I didn’t know what diseases pucks could catch, if any, and I knew they were resistant to poison, but he had a heart the same as the rest of us. And it could stop the same as the rest of ours. He could lose his life. The following silence was a sign of the high premium he put on that life. He might be a trickster, but he was up- front with his priorities and

I respected that.

I respected his driving even more as we took another turn. I didn’t think we took it on two wheels, but there was no way we took it on all four. I knew it the same as I knew Rafferty was keeping Suyolak from inserting invisible fingers into our brains, our blood, our bones, and contaminating them with his touch. I wouldn’t call it faith; I’d call it fact, the fact that we were still alive. That made Goodfellow one helluva driver and Rafferty one helluva healer. It also made me tired of sitting on the sideline. That’s not who I was, not what I did.

So instead I took a chance, one stupid, reckless chance. It was also one I was lucky to survive, but I didn’t care. I didn’t think “lucky” at the time, because it was what I was supposed to do, and who I was supposed to be, and it felt so damn good that I couldn’t have not done it if I’d tried.

Being unable to not do something is a bad sign that should make you think, and think hard, but I didn’t. Not then.

Because I was free.

I couldn’t make a gate inside the car, but I could build it around myself, and I did. Between one breath and the next, I was on the hood of the truck. I snared one hand on the rim of the windshield wiper well and pulled the Eagle with the other. I felt exhilaration as the wind hit me, as I saw a glimpse of a pale face and silver hair behind the glass, and most of all as I started to pull the trigger. The feeling didn’t disappear as the truck slid in a circle to leave the road, and I slid myself. I lost my grip and flew through the air. It could’ve been nasty, that fall.

Jack and Jill went up the hill… Weren’t things broken when they came back down?

But I wasn’t Jack. I wasn’t going to break. The truck had braked next to a creek bank, the creek rocky and ten feet down. I tumbled through the air toward it and into the second gate I’d made in three seconds. Passing through, I came out on the other side standing in knee-high water. I was about to go through the third gate and back up when the fight came to me.

There was a willow-type tree lining the banks of a creek, many of them, but they were wispy like feathers and didn’t block much of my view. I saw the back of the truck burst open, but it wasn’t Suyolak who came out. He must’ve been still trapped in the coffin-one for the home team. The driver, being sapped of life, was still enough of an expert in folklore to know Suyolak could have the cure for his wife, but he could also be the death of the husband if he escaped before the truck made it home. He hadn’t opened the coffin. How he planned to negotiate with Suyolak and depend on the bastard to keep his word was his business. Or an impossible dream, because we weren’t going to let it happen, no matter the flood of night that poured out of the truck when the doors opened.

I still didn’t know what they were. They were as big as werewolves and somewhat similarly shaped, but sharper, leaner, with muzzles as pointed as the end of a sword. They were like foxes… if foxes were bigger than Great Danes, black as crows plucking at the eyes of a dead man, and their own eyes-gray. They were gray like mine and Niko’s, only paler, but I wasn’t in the mood to claim them as kissing cousins.

They slithered out of the truck in waves. I didn’t know how many of them managed to fit in there, but they were emaciated, as if they’d run a long way. The truck started moving again while they were still coming out, its tires spinning, churning dirt and grass. It was out of sight in seconds, the same amount of time it took for the creatures, a tsunami of shadows, to cover Niko’s replacement car. Several split off from the pack to come for me, vaulting through the trees and down the embankment with a speed that said they weren’t only starved; they were ravenous.

Goddamn, this was going to be fun.

They were almost beautiful in their own way. A lot of things that could kill you were. It didn’t stop me from shooting the first two in the head, then ripping space and appearing behind them to shoot two more. The four remaining ones hit the water, turned, and leaped back toward me. They weren’t cowed by the deaths of three of their own or the one still thrashing in its death throes. They came for me so quickly that I didn’t see the surface of the water ripple under their paws. Their bones showed under their black coats, but it didn’t mean they were weak. Water didn’t curve under them and my eyes could barely follow them-hardly frail; the opposite in fact. Did that make it less fun? Hell, no.

It made it better.

“Come and get me,” I said, and traveled again, a fraction of a second before they would’ve reached me. This time when I appeared I was on the other side of Nik’s new car, firing as soon as the world materialized out of silver light. I killed two and injured one, and it was easy. It was so easy that I couldn’t believe I hadn’t been doing this every time I came across a bad guy or a creature that wanted to eat me. I couldn’t believe I hadn’t been doing it every damn day just for the on-top-of-the-world, king-of-the-goddamn-universe feeling. It was good-so good, it was simple, and it was effective. It hadn’t always been, but it was now and not using it would be practically criminal.

Two more ebony heads turned in unison away from the car and toward me, their eyes reflecting me… a distorted, twisted image of me, at least. Or maybe it was a true one… and that didn’t bother me either. Both of them gave a yowl so high-pitched it could’ve been responsible for the shattering of the back window behind them, but it wasn’t. Catcher got credit for that as he sailed through the glass. He landed on one of them, rode it to the ground, and snapped its neck with his massive jaws. He might have liked beach bunny calendars, playing hangman, and sticking a cold wet nose in your ear just as you fell asleep to see you jump out of your skin, but Catcher was also a Wolf-a born predator, and genes would tell. They always did.

Surprising how easy it was to forget that.

Another Wolf, red like Catcher but a shade lighter, followed him out the window and took down the other… whatever it was. It was the first time I’d seen Rafferty in wolf form. On the other side of the car, yet another Wolf, Delilah, had joined the party. I’d thought I’d heard her motorcycle. The driver’s side of the car opened and Robin climbed out with sword in hand. “Ördögs. Usually found in Hungary.” He ducked with alacrity, gutting the one that sailed over his head.

“But found occasionally these days in certain mountainous regions of the United States. Migration. Immigration. Whatever you wish to call it,” Niko finished, at my side so swiftly that I wasn’t sure if he’d come after Robin or around the car-probably around. There was already blood on his sword. He’d disdained my borrowed gun for close combat. “They have a kinship with the Rom, at least the Rom who walk the darker paths-like Suyolak. They definitely don’t have a connection with healers. Suyolak must’ve called for them, gathered them up when they caught up to him.” He swiveled and let gravity impale one on his katana. “And they came a long way, considering how malnourished they are.”

“Run.” The word was garbled, almost too mangled to understand. It came from atop the car where one Ördög crouched, teeth bared. It had only four of them, like the upper and lower fangs of a cobra-curving and longer than my hand. “He promised feast that never ends. Death that never stops. We run. No sleep. No eat.” Its eyes focused on Niko and me. “Eat now.”

In our world, it was sometimes hard to tell who was good and who was bad, and wasn’t it a matter of perspective anyway? Either way, good or bad, right or wrong, it was always easy to tell who was hungry. Hungry was always the wrong side, and when they spoke up to yell you they were hungry and going to eat you, it made it even easier to spot them.

I could’ve dived to one side or tried for a shot before the chatty one jumped from the roof. The Ördög was less than six feet away… but where was the entertainment in that? Niko’s hand locked on to my shoulder almost before I had a chance to finish the thought. “ Cal,” he said, his voice absolute. He didn’t add “don’t,” because he knew I would listen to him. I always did. He was my brother. He’d protected me my whole life. He was one of the best fighters, if not the very best, that I’d ever seen and the best stragetician. He…

Shit. It didn’t matter if he was the best. It didn’t matter that he was my brother.

For the first time ever, I didn’t listen.

Don’t get me wrong. I’d on occasion deliberately not done what he thought, and strongly emphasized, was best, but I’d always weighed the pros and cons. In those cases I’d known I probably wasn’t doing the safe thing but the necessary thing. And although I’d done those things, I’d listened to him first. Not this time. This time I wasn’t listening to my gut either. I was listening to the need. It was talking louder than Nik and louder than the rest of me.

I brushed his hand off and traveled on top of the car, the gray light dappling the air around me, inches from the Ördög’s muzzle. “Boo,” I said with soft cheer. “Here’s the gravy train.” As much as I loved my guns, I didn’t use the Eagle this time. I jumped it at the same time it jumped me. We rolled off the car and hit the ground hard, me on the bottom and the Ördög on top of me with its teeth snapping at my throat. I laughed. It only kept getting more and more entertaining… more like a game. “Bad dog,” I whispered with a smile. Then I put my hand on its throat, called a gate around it, and passed my glowing hand through flesh and bone. Instantly dead, the light, almost silver eyes darkened to a gray the same as mine. I used my knee to fling the body off. The head, however, landed on my chest and that reflection I’d seen of myself earlier, I saw again in the mirror-shine that began to dull with every passing second. I saw my face, Auphe pale since birth with Sophia’s eyes, except for a spark of red in them. I blinked and it was gone; only the fog of death remained in the Ördög’s gaze.

I’d imagined it, because… because there was no other explanation. I didn’t see it. It wasn’t there and nothing was ruining the high I had going on. I jumped to my feet, my hand covered with Ördög blood. It was red, darker than human blood, but close. I’d seen enough of both or maybe I hadn’t. The feel of it, slippery and warm against my skin… it was nice. It was more than nice. I looked for more Ördögs to kill. They were hungry, but so was I. It was a different kind of hunger-a hunger for more battle, more traveling, more killing, but justified killing. Self-defense. Defense of others. Whatever. Another wave of euphoria passed through me, and concepts like justification disintegrated beneath it. I only wanted more targets, more traveling, more of this sensation, and I didn’t care how I got it.

But there were no more. Niko, Robin, the cousins, and Delilah had taken the rest of them. Black bodies littered the grass and dotted the water of the creek below, but it wasn’t right; it wasn’t enough. Then I saw her, frozen on the other side of the creek-a doe, wide black eyes surrounded by a ring of white. Mule deer, white-tail; I didn’t know which was in Utah. Nik would know. Nik always…

That thought disappeared as the muscles under the tan hide bunched, and the deer swiveled to bound away. She shouldn’t have done that. No. She shouldn’t have tried to run. They should never run.

You chase what runs.

It was the rule, the law, the way life was.

You chase what runs. You catch what runs. You kill what runs.

Always.

It wasn’t too clear after that. There were flashes of light, tears in reality, and there was food. Warm food that slid down my throat to heat my stomach. There was company: a red male wolf on one side of me, teeth ripping at a white and tan neck; a white female wolf on the other side, muzzle deep in a tan belly. She lifted her head and grinned at me, her white fur stained red up to her amber eyes. Good. All good. Friends and food, and maybe later those friends could become food. Why should there be a difference between the two?

Fun. It was all fun. Anything I wanted to do, everything I wanted to do, and no one could stop this feeling.

No one could stop me.

“ Cal.”

I turned to look over my shoulder at the more-than-familiar voice and reality smacked me in the face-that and a hard fist. It took it all away: the dark joy, the kick-ass fun, the utter invincibility…

Consciousness.

There was movement, a subtle rocking. Cool air. The smell of old plastic, old carpet, old foam. There were also wolves, a human, something green and fresh like a forest… a puck. All familiar; it was comforting, like all my naps, and I wallowed in it, which was also something I did with most of my naps.

“Hades damn us all. There’s a five-car pileup ahead. It’ll be hours before we make it past that. Suyolak’s version of an orgy. Death and destruction. He’s no doubt postcoital as we speak.”

Goodfellow. No way that was anyone but Goodfellow… wishing he were postcoital, I was sure, in a hazy way, only in the more traditional sense. No death and destruction for him there. Not like Suyolak. It was the last that had me clenching my fingers into fists, shaking my head, and trying to open my eyes.

“He’s waking up.” And Rafferty. That was Rafferty. He didn’t sound too happy.

“It’s about time. It’s been nearly an hour. I didn’t hit him hard enough for that. You could’ve woken him.” Nik… he sounded even less happy.

“I could’ve, but I damn well can guarantee you wouldn’t have liked it. Cal trying to gut us like he did that deer. Trust me, the quiet time did him some good. Now he is Cal again… mostly. A half hour ago he’d have been an Auphe trying to chew through your face.”

“Shut the fuck up.” Every word was a separate dagger of ice. If Nik cut the air with those words, it wouldn’t have surprised me.

It was hard, waking up. Harder than waking up from most naps, but what I was hearing kept me trying. Pushing. Not for me; for Nik. To be there for my brother. What Rafferty said about me didn’t mean anything. I didn’t feel it, but I felt my brother’s anger, and if Niko was angry and allowing it to show, then the situation was bad-definitely bad enough to cut through the fuzziness that surrounded me.

I managed to crack my eyelids and saw a slice of dark blond hair. Niko. That was normal, seeing him when I opened my eyes. He was the one who usually kicked my butt out of bed when I was slacking, which was almost always. Most mornings he was the first thing I saw, or I would feel him firmly rapping the top of my head with my ringing alarm clock.

Then I noticed the hand on my shoulder and the one on my leg, just above my knee. The pressure on my shoulder I recognized-I’d felt it all my life. The weight on my leg I didn’t. Or maybe I did-a distant memory of that same hand burning against a bleeding gash in my abdomen. Years ago. The hand wasn’t burning now, but I could still feel the power in it. Rafferty.

“ Cal, are you awake?”

I managed to open my eyes nearly all the way. “Nik?”

I saw his face then, not just a slash of hair. I saw the somber scrutiny, the tense line of his jaw. “It’s me. You’re safe, Cal. I swear it.” I hadn’t thought I wasn’t, but if I had, I would’ve believed him. Nik never lied to me. But he didn’t look himself: calm… in control. The anger I’d heard was gone, but the longer he met my eyes, the more bleak his own looked. He looked grim and a little lost, and that wasn’t him. It simply wasn’t and why would he…

What had Rafferty said again? About my waking up… Auphe?

Then I remembered-all of it. Remembered it and felt it. The truck, the traveling, the Ördögs, the poor goddamn deer. I’d killed it or helped kill it and I’d eaten part of it. I could still feel the heaviness of it in my stomach. I should’ve been nauseated, but I wasn’t. I should’ve gagged and been sick, but my body wanted it-the raw meat-and it wasn’t going to let it go. I swallowed hard. No wonder Niko looked like he did. No wonder he reassured me I was safe.

But was he? Was anyone around me?

“I fucked up,” I said hoarsely.

“You fucked up,” my brother confirmed, his own voice impassive-not accusing, but not letting me off the hook either. Trusting in my word earlier hadn’t worked out for either of us, but his hand on my shoulder gripped harder. Whatever I’d done, we were family, and for Niko, that would never change.

I was leaning against his chest, my legs bent at the knees with my lower legs behind the driver’s seat and in the floorboards. And the hand on my leg was Rafferty’s. It wasn’t moral support either. If I tried to leave-to travel-Rafferty would stop me, temporarily or permanently. I wouldn’t want to guess which call he’d make, although, if he were smart, he’d pick the second choice, which I suppose told me the answer after all.

Because Rafferty was smart.

I tried to sit up. I could see now that I was in the backseat of the car with Niko and Rafferty. Goodfellow was still driving or, more accurately, sitting behind the wheel of a parked car. He’d been trying to catch up to the truck, but thanks to the wreck and Suyolak who had caused it, that wasn’t going to happen. Catcher was curled up asleep in the passenger seat. He was knocked out, the same as I’d been knocked out, but a little more gently, by a healer, not a fist-or then again, maybe not. He might only be sleeping off a full belly. It didn’t have to be one of his episodes. He could’ve smelled the blood when I hit the deer and joined in. The hunt and the kill was a natural thing to Wolves, the most natural of things.

Knocked-out or sleeping, he looked better than I felt. I rubbed my jaw. It didn’t feel broken, but it definitely was bruised. “I’m sorry,” Niko said. “Rafferty was occupied.” Joining the deer buffet or putting out Catcher, one of the two. I didn’t ask. “And I didn’t have time to spare with your ability to disappear whenever you wish.”

It was stated plainly; again, not an accusation, but I winced anyway. Salome, who hadn’t shown up in the fight… coughing up a resin ball instead most likely… was on the dash, soaking up the sun. She lifted her head, stared at me, and hissed. A mummy cat that killed anything that moved didn’t like the looks of me. That couldn’t be the best of things.

I narrowed my eyes at her and she flashed under the passenger seat, fast as a water moccasin in muddy water. Then I caught sight of myself in the rearview mirror. No wonder Niko was so somber when looking into what should’ve been a reflection of his own eyes but wasn’t. Instead, I saw red in the mirror-in the irises of my eyes, minute flecks of molten lava in the gray. Auphe eyes were that color red-had been that color.

And were still that color.

Because I was still here, wasn’t I? I was still goddamn here. What Suyolak had threatened to do to me, I’d done to myself.

Niko’s hand hadn’t left my shoulder. “Can you turn it off, Rafferty? The traveling? It’s what’s done this.” He didn’t ask me, either because he didn’t think I was in my right mind-and he could’ve been correct-or because I was so frozen that I couldn’t ask for myself. The why of it didn’t matter. He asked. He wasn’t wrong either.

Before the traveling had gotten so easy, before it made me feel so damn good, I’d been myself. Being me had never been worth any prizes, but I hadn’t been killing animals and eating their raw meat and considering rather happily doing the same to my fellow road-trippers.

I hadn’t been in my right mind for a while now and never noticed. Or worse yet, I had noticed, but I’d liked it too much to wonder why life had gotten so much better, things so much easier.

I’d seen those people before, all my life, the jackasses. Everyone had seen them walking around, wearing those idiotic T-shirts-I’M WITH STUPID with an arrow pointed sideways. If life issued those routinely when needed, Rafferty and Niko would both be wearing I’M WITH SCREWED with the arrows pointed directly at me.

Really, really so damn screwed and it was my fault, all of it.

Rafferty didn’t close his eyes as I’d seen him do once or twice when concentrating on a patient. He’d had plenty of time to examine my inner workings while I was out. “No.”

“You’re absolutely sure?” Niko persisted, his calm still seeping away bit by bit, and Suyolak wasn’t responsible this time. I was.

“The only way to turn it off is to turn Cal off, and I don’t think you want that.” Rafferty’s hand was warm now, close to uncomfortably so.

Niko’s grip tightened yet again, the joint creaking under it. “It’s in his genes,” the healer continued. “And the thing about Auphe genes? They’re dominant over human genes. Hell, no matter what they’d managed to breed with, they would’ve been dominant. They were the first sentient creatures on this world. The first, and, in a way, the best-at least at what they did: kill. Up until now you said Cal had traveled rarely and with side effects: vomiting, dizziness, bleeding. But then it had gotten easier, right? That means the Auphe part of Cal ’s genes that had been dormant became active. And there’s more Auphe in Cal than just traveling.” He moved his gaze from Niko to me. “You might look human on the outside, Cal -mostly-but on the inside, that’s not the case. In your blood, in your genes, you’re something new and something old, and something completely unlike anything on this earth. Your traveling did that. It was a biological initiative… or for you, a trap. The more you traveled, the more serotonin your brain released, and the better you felt-a feel-good loop. A happy pill a hundred times better than any pharmacy could dole out. And now here you are.” His hand wasn’t letting me go.

Niko had said that back at the beginning of this… at Abelia’s RV, when I’d opened a gate. When I’d said I could control it-control myself. When he’d also said I was an adult with adult consequences.

And here I was, Rafferty had said.

Here I was, all right, and it was a place way beyond meditation’s ability to help, although Niko had done his best there. If I’d done it more often, been better at it, it might have worked. Then again, from the way Rafferty talked, it was all a matter of time. It had been since I’d been made. Each time I thought I was free of the Auphe, they came back closer than ever. Being one was as close as it came: not half, not part, but a card-carrying last member of a dead race. I wasn’t going to go through this again. I wasn’t going to agonize over it. I was through with bullshit. I knew what I was; I’d known all along despite a crapload of denial. It was time to pay the piper and no damn whining when I did.

Time to face those adult consequences.

I’d gotten upright with Nik’s grip on my shoulder and the other hand helping me. I didn’t try to move my legs. I didn’t know how Rafferty would take that. My shoulder was now against my brother’s and I felt him tense when I said it-without shame, without rejection, with nothing but acceptance of the alcoholic reaching rock bottom. “I’m Auphe. I’m not human. Not part-time. Not even on the fucking weekends. I’m Auphe.”

“No,” Nik refuted with instant sharpness, as he always had. He never gave up, but this time was different. He was going to have to, for both of us.

“No,” Rafferty echoed, still focused on me. “You’re not Auphe. But you’re right, you’re not human either and thinking you are while using powers that aren’t is only going to get you dead or someone else dead. Maybe a lot of someones. All the wishing in the world isn’t going to change that, and I can’t turn off the Auphe part of your genes.” He’d said earlier that he’d never manipulate genes again after what he’d done to Catcher. I didn’t blame him. I could end up a lot worse than Catcher with the possibilities riding in my genetics. “I can’t turn off the powers that go with them either,” he went on, “but I can make it very unpleasant for you to use them. I can take the feel-good away, and you might, no promises, but you might stay where you are now. The Auphe in you won’t progress. Or,” he finished matter- of-factly, “I can end your life now. Your choice. But I won’t let another possible Auphe, the last Auphe, loose on the world. Suyolak can’t make you all Auphe like he threatened, but he doesn’t have to. There’s enough potential in you to be walking, talking murder incarnate without any of his help.”

Rafferty was right and it absolutely did not matter. He might as well have been talking to the wind. Niko had kept my SIG while I was unconscious. The three of us in the back of the car, me between them, it made blades awkward, although not impossible for my brother. Nothing regarding a blade was impossible for him, but this statement was for me and he used my weapon for it. He had the muzzle of the automatic pressed hard against Rafferty’s forehead with an inescapable speed. Caesar, Genghis, Attila, Alexander… I’d said it before: They all fell in Niko’s shadow.

“The only life ending will be yours,” he said flatly.

He had what looked like three pounds of pressure on a trigger that took a little less than four. Rafferty could kill him, stop his heart, explode a vessel in his brain, but the death spasm would take the healer along for the ride-all over an Auphe. A healer wasn’t dying because of that. And there was no damn way my brother was dying because of me.

I put my hand on Nik’s wrist and squeezed. He didn’t look at me and I didn’t expect him to. In battle, you kept your eyes on the enemy. I only had to get him to see that Rafferty wasn’t the enemy. “It’s okay, Cyrano. Adult consequences, remember? I’ll let him fix me.”

Fix me…

He couldn’t fix me, though, could he? He could only cripple me-the bastard who imagined I needed fixing at all. I’d accepted who I was, hadn’t I?

Maybe I even liked who I was. I did like being able at work to scan the bar and make someone hate me or fear me with a single look. Wasn’t that better than being ashamed as I had been in the past? Wasn’t having others fear me better than fearing myself? Rafferty wanted to take the feel-good away. The feel-good was called that for a reason. It was the rush that made life better… more than better. Made it what people wished for when they were kids: perfect, everything you wanted, everything you needed, and you were ruler of it all. King of the mountain. King of all the mountains and everything that lay between them. Nothing could touch that feeling. No one could take it away either-not if you didn’t let them.

Not if you killed them first.

Ripped them apart. Eviscerated them and spread their guts for all to see.

Wouldn’t that be something? Wouldn’t that be better than the fanciest of paintings?

I could kill them all, saving my brother for last, to show him all the training in the world couldn’t beat what you were born with. Even Niko couldn’t kill me if he couldn’t catch me, and no one could catch me when I started traveling. I could open a gate and come out behind him or above him and put a bullet in his head. It would be easy. I could see it: the head that had shared the same pillow with me when I was five; the bullet hitting, the blood staining his blond hair. I could see… I could see…

The head that had shared my pillow then, to watch over me, because he knew before I did that monsters existed.

Monsters like me.

God. Rock bottom, I’d thought before.

This was rock bottom: thinking, relishing accomplishing what I’d die to prevent anyone else from doing to my brother. And if that anyone else also happened to be me, that was fine. I would die first. Fucking die.

“Now,” I said in a voice not mine, not remotely close, “Nik, let him do it now.” Or someone in this car would die. I only hoped it would be the right person. Rafferty would be reading my intent to vanish, because part of me was fighting hard to run, the part of me that had to be tamed so I could live. If it won, it would also lose. I hoped to God Rafferty made sure of that. But then Rafferty and Niko would follow me within a fraction of a second, Nik’s finger still tense on the trigger.

“Now,” I repeated, although it was so goddamn difficult to say.

Why was the sane option unbelievably hard to hold on to?

Then again, who wielded the almighty right to define sane?

Them? The weak? Why not me?

“Hurry the fuck up.” Not only was it not my voice; it was not a human voice at all.

Niko slowly let the gun fall while Rafferty put that scorching hand on my head and I learned what brain surgery without anesthesia was all about. Later Nik told me the brain actually can’t feel pain, only the nerves and muscles around it. I took it on faith that that was true for human brains, but for a part- Auphe brain, some Mayo Clinic geek needed to do some serious research in that area, because there was pain. There was more than pain. I could feel Rafferty in there, a thousand scalpels slicing every cell, a hundred, a thousand, a million times. It was pain beyond vision or breath, beyond hope of an end to it, beyond hope of anything but an eternal hell of agony. I wished that same million times that he’d killed me instead. It was never answered except that each time I made that wish, I felt another piece of me slashed open. It was minutes, in reality, I guessed, but it felt like years-thousands and thousands of years.

That made it easy to understand that when I could see again, I saw my hands around the healer’s throat doing my best to strangle the life out of him. My best was good. If I hadn’t been weak from that pain, I’d have succeeded. Rafferty wasn’t doing anything to stop me. Niko reached past me to peel my fingers from the purpling flesh.

“Sorry,” Rafferty apologized, massaging his throat. “You said hurry and I needed to. If I’d had more time, I wouldn’t have let you feel that. But you were-” He coughed harshly and substituted a rough hand movement aiming toward the sky. He was right. I’d been more than halfway gone in intent and a second away from the deed.

My head still throbbed without mercy and I methodically pounded it against the front bench seat. It was that kind of pain, the sort that makes you want to knock yourself out to escape it. Hitting rock bottom, acceptance of your addiction; officially those two concepts sucked. Doing the right thing also sucked. I might think differently later, when this passed, but at the moment I wasn’t counting on it. Niko’s hand rested on my back and that should’ve made it better. He was Nik again, my brother-not just one more victim in the crosshairs.

I hit my head harder. This time I wanted the pain. I deserved it. Having that thought about the only family I had, the only one who’d given a damn about me for most of my life, I deserved pain. Being crazy was no excuse. Going Auphe was no excuse. There was no goddamn excuse for it. It was Nik.

Rafferty should’ve killed me.

But he hadn’t, and I had to deal. Niko had done everything possible to save me. I’d let him down once-shit, more times than I could count. But right now, I was going to step up to the plate. Be a fucking man, even if genetically I didn’t come close. I heard Robin move in the front seat to lay one on the back of my neck. It felt like ice through my sweat-soaked hair. My chest hurt too, my heart beating so fast I was surprised it hadn’t torn its way through my chest. Yeah, good old rock bottom. Wasn’t one of the twelve steps to recovery accepting a higher power? I didn’t believe in a higher power. I wished I did so I could hope one day to kick its ass for this.

“It’s all right, kid. It’ll pass.” He was probably guessing, but I appreciated Goodfellow’s effort. He’d been my friend for a while now, as hard as it had been to admit I could have friends-that I could trust someone besides my brother. But Robin was a friend, and a friend would lie to you when the truth wasn’t worth hearing.

“This is it,” Rafferty said quietly, words raw from a throat he felt didn’t deserve to be healed, else he would’ve done it. No bedside manner, but he’d been better off with a great bedside manner and a little less conscience. “It’s called serotonin syndrome. A little serotonin makes you feel good-like you did before-but a whole lot of it will kill you. Every time you travel, this is what you get-a shitload of serotonin your body isn’t meant to handle. The headache is from your blood pressure skyrocketing. A human might stroke out, but your human-Auphe brain can take it. The chest pain is from the tachycardia, your heart working triple time. Your body temperature will go up too, hundred two, hundred three. That’s from one jump. You make another one, you get another serotonin dump, and the blood pressure goes even higher, which your brain may not be able to handle. Your heart beats faster; your temperature goes up to one oh four or six. All of that has a good chance of killing you. A third jump…” He stopped before completing that sentence. Complete it he did though, sounding anything but proud. “A third jump means no more Cal.”

And that meant no more Auphe.

Okay then-problem solved. I couldn’t travel enough again to remotely think black and bloody Auphe thoughts about killing my brother. I’d die first, and that was fucking peachy by me. I stopped beating my head against the seat, though, and suffered through the headache. Goodfellow’s hand disappeared from my neck and I heard the gurgle of water. A moment later a bottle of water was slowly poured over my head and neck. It felt good, better than good, as my skin cooled beneath it. Taking a breath and shoving the pain down, I straightened, and what did I face?

The mirror again.

Things hadn’t changed. No, that wasn’t entirely true. The gray was still shot here and there with dark scarlet. The tiny flecks weren’t the blazing fire glow of Auphe eyes, though, but they didn’t belong in your ordinary human eyes either. Yeah, this was good. Before, there were some that could smell the monster on me. Now everyone in the supernatural world could see it. “What the hell,” I muttered, wringing my hair out as I eased back against the seat behind me. I covered my eyes with my other hand. “Great opportunity to get a few pairs of dark sunglasses. Expensive. People will think I work for the government or the Sunglass Hut.” I felt in my jacket pocket for my old pair. Nothing. Naturally. No sunglasses. No cheerful Cal. No anything. Auphe blood had made me a happy guy for a while, a short while, but it had felt nice. I should’ve known that was way too good to be true. No nice for Cal Leandros. It didn’t mean I didn’t miss the feeling-lie that it had been. But it didn’t mean I was going to let myself dwell on it either.

Dwelling on what I’d thought about doing to Nik was a different story. Getting me to open another gate was going to take one goddamn compelling reason or an act of God, and since I didn’t believe in the latter…

It wasn’t worth the risk, a Rafferty-engineered bomb in my brain or not.

“No bother, Niko,” Robin said. “I have several.” Before my brother could pass me his, I felt a pair folded into my hand. “Not quite a thousand dollars, so bang them up all you wish. I probably have twenty in my glove compartment.”

I slipped them on before opening my eyes. “I’m sorry.” The apology was for Niko. He’d trusted me and I’d blown it. Massively. Or my genes had. It didn’t matter where the blame fell. It served me right that now I could see what I’d done each time I looked in a mirror. I used to have a mirror phobia not that long ago-with good reason. I wasn’t going to let myself get away with that this time. No, this time and from now on I faced all that potential Rafferty had labeled me with.

Something new, something old, and something entirely unlike anything on this earth, Rafferty had said.

That wasn’t a lonely feeling. Not at all.