Slashback

13

Cal

Present Day

Pieces of eight.

I’d wanted to be a pirate when I was a kid—after cowboy and before race car driver. I would rather have told a story about that kind of pieces of eight than the one I did have to tell. Eight men—eight pieces in a game—eight possible pawns.

I told Niko about the other men by the Ninth Circle, members of the same prayer circle as the ones in East River Park, and I told him exactly what I’d done with them—how I’d sent them away, how I’d brought them back. I was honest though—about how near a thing it had been to leaving them gone for good. All he had to say was we’d had this discussion and while unfortunately it had been after the fact, he wasn’t going to insult me by repeating the lecture. He also said that while I had done it, I’d also fixed it. I should give myself credit for that. I’d overcome a bad impulse when it would’ve been easier not to. He was proud.

Back in the recliner resting my ribs and my growing hangover, I thought about replying that he always enjoyed both insulting me and lecturing me, but I didn’t. I didn’t want to turn that pride into a smack to the back of my head. And he could be right. At the park I had asked Nik what the right thing to do was. I was trying. That I was trying less for my sake or the world’s sake and more for my brother’s sake, that didn’t matter. I was trying and the reason I chose to try was Niko. That counted. To me.

Considering Niko brought me a Mountain Dew to keep me from getting it myself and forcing me into another swipe at the codeine, which he would promptly confiscate as it didn’t mix well with alcohol, made me think it counted to him too. My boss, Ishiah—they didn’t come too much holier-than-thou than him—had once told me Niko was a good man, among the best of men, but his fatal flaw was that he’d burn down the world to save me.

That he was the sole reason that I wouldn’t burn down the world said something . . . we were the flip side of a coin. That kind of balance was something the Buddha-loving badass that was my brother could understand. It didn’t matter what you’d rather have or that things would be easier another way—the world was about balance. I didn’t give a crap about Buddha and yet I knew that.

Nik disappeared down the hall and returned without his coat. He shrugged out of the harness that held his katana and placed it on the kitchen counter. Normally he would’ve left it in the bedroom with his duster, but with Jack popping in and out, he’d want his preferred blade close. He had more than enough practice and nonpractice blades in the gym area, but your favorite was your favorite. If you were going to be prepared, you may as well be prepared with the best.

“Goodfellow should be here by now,” I grumped, “with my pizza.” We’d called him to come talk about this new development, if it was one. I knew coincidences were rare, but I wasn’t looking forward to admitting I’d been jumped by a bunch of homeless men in white who wanted me to pray to Heaven while they killed me and I’d casually chalked it up to that Cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs New York experience every tourist campaign told you didn’t exist.

I would have stuck to coincidence, too, if it hadn’t been for the second attack. Jack working with his prey didn’t make sense and I wasn’t sure I believed that’s what was happening here. Didn’t believe one hundred percent, which was important. I wasn’t a gambling man. It was ridiculous to pin a theory on Niko’s estimated eighty-nine percent. He was throwing numbers around and if I had to hear one more time how he scored first in his college statistics class . . .

“I have arrived.” The door was wide, soundlessly picked and opened as always. “Where are the flower petals beneath my feet? Where are the virgins to feed me honey and grapes? At the very least where is my theme song? Some Barry White would be astoundingly appropriate.” The puck was grinning cheerfully, haloed by the weak sunlight. Ten hours away from Jack had either done him good or . . . shit, he’d gotten laid too.

Goddamn it, I remembered those days. I had to get back out there. Unfortunately the Auphe weren’t popular with paien just for a chat. Screwing was almost always a no go. Humans were completely out of the question. I couldn’t risk getting someone pregnant. I couldn’t risk making another Auphe mix-breed like me.

“Where’s my pizza?” I demanded flatly.

“I brought you pancakes the other morning. Once a year is my limit for taking pity on the celibate.” He clapped his hands together and kicked the door shut behind him. “What’s the lead on Jack? The sooner we put him down like a pack of plague-ridden squirrels, wretched rodents, the sooner I can stop babysitting you two and get back to the debauchery that is my life.”

“Monogamous debauchery?” I tapped fingers on the arm of the recliner. “Is that possible? And what about Ish stealing all your cards from the bad old days of whoring, whoring, and a little more whoring?”

“He made that all better. Kissed it better, isn’t that the saying?” The grin was all debauchery now, monogamous or not. “Would you like to know where he kissed it?”

“Nik,” I said desperately, “how about you fill him in on my massive fuckup.” Forget the hundred percent bar. I would own that fuckup, propose to that fuckup, and marry that fuckup if it would stop Goodfellow.

Niko, whose face was more impassive than usual, meaning his hangover was epic, was leaning against the wall while Goodfellow sprawled on the couch. I didn’t blame him. The wall looked safer. “We already told you about Jack’s victims being what he could consider wicked.”

“Not that that explains why Jack first went after Niko and kept on him once he dumped me like bad chicken salad,” I interjected.

“You have much in common with bad chicken salad. I’d not thought of that. Nausea inducing, occasionally deadly. A smell that is decidedly off . . .”

“Hey!” I protested. “I shower every day. Ask Nik. He keeps trying to charge me for that Amish soap of his I steal.”

Robin waved it off, having accomplished his goal of pissing me off for the day. “Back to Jack. It is still true about Niko. He shouldn’t be wicked in Jack’s eyes,” Robin mused. “Wholesome and noble as a nun knitting socks for orphans, that is your brother. He is a warrior but not a murderer.”

“Then there is the fact we have now run into two groups of humans. They’re obviously homeless, but they dress in white sweatshirts, don’t drink or do drugs, but they are very insistent that we pray to Heaven and God and they have large knives to force the issue,” Niko went on. “It seems unlikely Jack who is concerned with the wicked and these humans who are concerned with sending souls to Heaven would appear at the same time and not in some way be connected.”

“And once again, they don’t give a damn about me, just Niko,” I said. “How would they know I wasn’t human unless Jack told them? They called me a Godless creature, which I’m guessing means paien and especially Auphe aren’t welcome into their Heaven.”

They had been concerned about my soul at first and were now concerned about Niko’s. They wanted to save his soul for Heaven—just like Jack wanted to save the skin of the wicked. But Niko wasn’t wicked, not immoral, not . . .

Sinful.

“Shit,” I said. “A sinner. That son of a bitch Jack thinks he’s saving sinners. He kept saying saving and I thought he meant it as in saving the skin of the wicked as trophies. He didn’t. He meant save as in save us from our sins. Save our . . . what? Souls?”

Did it matter? There were a thousand types of crazy. Religious crazy was one pretzel in a jumbo-sized bag of them. How or why it got Jack’s rocks off was irrelevant to the fact that it did and what he would do to make it happen.

“It would explain why he kills by skinning,” Robin said with an uneasy edge. There was something peculiar in his voice, swimming in the depths. Something more than what we were now guessing. “‘And the priest who offers any man’s burnt offering, that priest shall have for himself the skin of the burnt offering which he has offered.’ Leviticus 7:7–9.”

I wasn’t surprised the puck knew his Bible. If there was a commandment he hadn’t broken, he’d take it as a personal challenge. As he’d once said, Christians love to take the sin out of “sinsational.”

“Jack bases his pathology in religion—many do. He even has followers who want to be his apprentices. It’s not that uncommon for religious cult figures. You led your own religion in the past not to forget,” Niko pointed out to Goodfellow, “but that doesn’t explain why he has zeroed in on us to begin with.”

Nik was right—why Jack had fixed on us was still up in the air. The big question. How had we come on his radar?

“I’m bringing Ishiah in on this. He might be able to contribute . . . something.” Robin had his phone out and was sending a text, the uneasy air about him thickening with every moment that passed. “And truly you are the unluckiest bastards I’ve ever come to know. First the Auphe race and what they did to you, the fact your career has you testicles deep in the worst predators in the city on a near daily basis, and then comes the serial killers. This is your second now in your mayfly-short human lives. That should be unheard of.”

“What’s Ish going to know? And actually this is the third,” I corrected without much thinking about it. I should have. I should have thought about it with extreme and excruciating care.

Niko turned the color of mud under his dark skin and I gave my tongue a savage punishing bite. We didn’t talk about it. I wouldn’t put him through that again, not in word or thought. I knew better.

However, I didn’t get the reaction I expected. His hands were suddenly on my shoulders, shaking me hard in the recliner, harder than he ever would have with my cracked ribs, control of his own strength abruptly gone. “In Connecticut, in New London, what was his real name? His last name? I never knew. I didn’t find out afterward. I didn’t try. I didn’t want to know. Cal, what was it?”

At eleven there wouldn’t be much reason I would’ve known. Kids aren’t interested in things like that and after all of it, as Nik said, after all that happened I didn’t want to know. But I had also been an eleven-year-old period. Niko had idealized me, as good big brothers do, in a way that blurred certain memories now and certain knowledge then.

At eleven, I stole shit like a motherfucker.

He never knew. It was only little things. Candy, loose change, skateboards, and just once a porno magazine from our serial-killing next-door neighbor. I’d taken it from his mailbox, scanned it, and trashed it far from home one day before Niko had gotten back from work. This was before I guessed about the killings, but I remembered his name from the address label on the cover—after what had happened, after the basement, the bodies, the attic . . . Jesus Christ, after the attic, as much as I wanted to, tried to, how could I forget?

“Hammersmith,” I said, throat oddly dry from such a blood-soaked past. “James Hammersmith.” Junior. Junior Hammersmith.

Junior who liked to kill drug dealers, thieves, and prostitutes the same as Jack.

Both with no tolerance for wickedness or sinners in any form.

Robin was staring at us, paused in midtext. “Spring-heeled Jack murdered several in Hammersmith, England. It was one of his favorite hunting grounds. What happened? Who is this James H—”

Niko cut him off with a fierce ruthlessness I could feel in the grip that remained on my shoulders, his fingers biting down to press on bone. I don’t think he was seeing me anymore. “His worshipper. His murdering bastard of an apprentice.” Like the men in the park who were waiting to become just that. “Junior who said his master liked to watch from above when lightning was in the sky. Junior who liked to sign his work just like Jack.”

He was right. It was the only explanation. That’s why Jack wanted us—for what we’d done to his apprentice. And while Nik had never told me twelve years ago that slice on my chest was Junior’s start to “signing” me with a J for Junior or for his Jack, I had noticed the similarity in the slashes from Jack’s first attack on me in my bedroom. But in our lives a slash is a slash and very easy to come by. The only reason I’d noticed is that they were both especially neat and straight, but out of as many as I’d had, nothing to get excited about. There wouldn’t have been reason then for Nik to make the connection, not with that single clue, particularly not when we’d both done our best together and separately to bury those memories of Junior.

Jack drifted from town to town, city to city, country to country. When he came to New York, we were just lucky enough he hadn’t forgotten Junior or us. Ain’t it the fucking way?

Peeling his fingers off of me, Niko took one breath, another, and then was in the gym destroying everything in his path. Weapons were thrown with savage force to shatter at the wall. The mat was being cut to ribbons.

I scrambled out of the chair, fuck the ribs, and pushed Goodfellow back when he would’ve followed. I’d seen Nik lose his shit only one other time. That had been bad. There weren’t words for the level of bad that had been. But that had been internal with his lethal control intact on the outside to leave him somewhat functional—to leave the world itself somewhat functional. This . . . this was not functional. Not for Nik.

This was not Nik at all—not the Nik of now.

“What is wrong with him? He’s gone mad. But Niko isn’t mad. Niko is, malaka, the sanest of us all.” Goodfellow sounded shocked. He’d seen only Niko’s meticulously controlled outer shell. He didn’t know what was under it. No one knew: not the puck, not Promise. No one but me and having lived through it with him, I wished neither of us had to know.

It could be a flashback, a genuine one. It could be finally dealing with what he hadn’t let himself process then. I didn’t know which, but it didn’t matter. Getting Niko back from this was the important thing. I’d swear to anyone I hadn’t read a psychology book in my life, but I had. I’d read a fuck ton of them as a teenager when I’d finally comprehended Nik’s unforgiving life in a way that I couldn’t at eleven. Even a few years older I couldn’t protect him like he protected me, but at least I could understand him and what he was doing to himself for me. I read Nik’s books when he was at work or school, when he couldn’t see me. I’d read them for precisely this. I didn’t know it would come, but I didn’t know that it wouldn’t either.

Now I knew.

No matter how deep you bury things, they always dig their way to the surface, more malignant and rotten than when you’d shoved them under in the beginning. No one would guess it and I wished I could deny it, but on the inside, Niko was every bit as fractured and fucked-up as I was. The leash on his issues was sturdier than mine, but eventually every leash breaks.

Sooner or later in this world, everything breaks.

Everyone breaks.

“Do you know how old Niko was when he first killed for me?” I hissed in the puck’s ear as I shoved him farther back out of range as a sharp sai flew over our heads. “Fifteen. He was fifteen when he killed Jack’s homicidal buddy. Why do you think he is the way he is? All Zen and so fucking bottled up? It’s because he’s a time bomb. He killed a man to save my life when he was fifteen, lived through dragging my ass back to sanity after two years in Auphe Hell, ran with me to escape the sons of bitches, and lost me again. And then again and fucking again. You don’t know what’s inside him and what he’s had to do to stay sane.” To watch out for me, but not lose it so much that everyone he sees is a threat? To know that it’s not necessary to bury his katana in everyone who walks within a block of me although that’s exactly what his instincts and our history told him he should do?

Of all of it, what had happened when he was fifteen with Junior, it had been the worst. Over the Auphe stealing me away, it had been the worst, because I’d warned Nik about Junior and he hadn’t believed me. He wouldn’t forgive himself for that and I couldn’t get him over it as we didn’t talk about that time. We both thought we had our reasons.

I would simply have to make sure mine didn’t come to light, but Niko’s . . . it was time for them to see the light of day. No more hiding for him. It had turned cancerous, poisonous, and it had to be cut away before he could heal.

Because this? What was happening now? This was as far from recovery as you could get.

Nik was now chopping viciously at the pummel horse with a sword. I couldn’t remember the god-awful jokes Robin had told when he’d first seen that piece of equipment, not with the raw snarl on Niko’s face. I knew what he was seeing and it wasn’t a piece of gym equipment. It was Junior. Given the opportunity Nik would kill Junior a hundred more times and it would still not be enough.

He’d left a part of himself in that attic he had not gotten back and now he was back there, losing more of himself. That was not fucking acceptable.

“Stay here.” I shoved Robin down on the floor between the couch and the table. “I don’t think he’ll know who you are.” He would know who I was. I didn’t question that, not as I sprang up from my crouch, ran across the floor, and tackled him from the side as he sliced a blade into a punching bag. I knew he saw me coming. I knew he was armed. I knew he was out of his mind.

And I knew he wouldn’t hurt me.

This brutality was aimed at himself, along with a stark self-blame that had his control so abruptly shattered. He held on to the sword like it was his only lifeline as we lay on our sides where I’d taken us down on the mat. “It’s me, Nik. It’s Cal. It’s Cal, big brother. Junior’s gone. He’s been gone a long time. It’s just us.” For a second, I thought I was wrong. I thought he didn’t know me, but then he turned his head back toward me and I saw the recognition, the blood from twelve years ago spilling behind his eyes. With the blood came sanity, although I couldn’t be certain he was happy to have it back. He dropped the sword and rolled over to wrap his arms around me, hurting too much to know how tightly he was holding on. He had to hold on, because he was lost. Nik, my brother—the man I’d thought of just days ago as fixed and unmoving as the North Star, was lost. He rested his forehead against mine and whispered one word for me alone. “Sorry.”

Fifteen. He’d been fifteen damn years old. A kid. As if any of it could’ve been his fault.

I lifted my hand to grasp his trailing braid and gave it a hard tug, that reassuring weight he was used to. He was sorry and I didn’t know that there was much that I could say that would change his mind about anything. I said something else instead. “We’re the reason Junior’s dead. You’re right, that’s Jack’s problem with our asses.” I said it, because Nik needed it. The problem spelled out for him. That’s how he managed to survive, to be able to take step after step, pretty much our entire lives, by fixing problems.

Goodfellow’s voice was strained behind us. “Now that we know Jack’s issue with you, we need to discuss something else.” I lifted my head to see him standing now, only several feet from us with Ishiah behind him. Ishiah’s wings were wrapped around Robin. To protect. To comfort. Both maybe? From their expression something bad was coming.

Could there possibly be worse than this?

“We need to talk about angels,” Ishiah said.

Jack the storm spirit with wings who saved sinners, knew his Bible, raised the dead, had worshippers, and called humans his Flock. Goodfellow had been gathering the information and it had hit critical mass with “sinners,” hoodie-clad praying followers, and the sacrificial skins. Enter Ishiah stage right. I shouldn’t have been at all surprised by what my boss and Robin told us.

It didn’t change the fact that I was.

“Let me get this straight: for six or seven years now you both, and everyone who works in the bar, have been lying to Nik and me about angels not existing. Is that right?” Hearing the words, I was still having trouble believing it.

I sat on the mat beside Niko, leaning against him. My ribs were screaming from the exertion, but they weren’t my concern at the moment. I’d white-knuckled my way through worse. Nik needed me there and visibly alive rather than stumbling around the kitchen looking for pain pills. I could’ve tried to pull him with me, but from the set to his shoulders, moving wasn’t part of his plan. Breathing was barely part of it. I wasn’t the only one white-knuckling it, but while I’d gone through worse than cracked ribs, Niko hadn’t gone through worse than this. Out of the corner of my eye I could almost see a short blond ponytail instead of a long braid, see a smaller frame, see eyes and a face that hadn’t yet mastered the art of hiding emotion that could be used against him.

Niko looked much younger than twenty-seven right now. Younger and older and the misery and recriminations of twelve years ago so plain on his face that I glared at Goodfellow and Ishiah each time they started to glance at him. This was private and they had to be here, but they didn’t have to see this. He’d recover . . . and he would recover . . . at his own pace. He didn’t need them watching him like a lab experiment while he did it. Sympathy would make him feel only . . . lesser. Niko had stood firmly on his own two feet mentally before he could do it physically. He wouldn’t be grateful to know someone saw him stumble.

“That whole ‘peris are the seed behind the myth that became angels,’ that was all bullshit?” I went on. I’d thought Robin lied as tricksters do, but that he’d never lied to us, nothing big at any rate. Well, he had and it was huge.

“It’s only half a lie really.” Robin was back on the couch with Ishiah. “Peris aren’t angels . . . anymore. Peris are retired angels with most of their heavenly powers stripped away. They’re expatriates if you will. They’ve gone native. Earth is their home, not Heaven. So when you asked me if that first peri you saw was an angel I wasn’t technically lying.”

“You’re a trickster. Jesus, take credit for it already, gloat, and go on. I’m used to watching your other victims be mortified. Why should I be any different?” And the other paien hadn’t told me there were angels in addition to peris or where peris came from because I’d never asked. They assumed I knew. They knew, everyone knew. Why would they think anything else when it came to me?

“It’s not like that,” Robin protested, leaning forward to rest his elbows on his knees. “Although six years is a good record, and the fact you didn’t even try to find out from anyone else because you found me that trustworthy while knowing I’m a trickster, that is rather priceless—” An elbow, and a sharp one if his wince was anything to go by, hit him in the ribs. “But that’s neither here nor there. I didn’t lie to simply amuse myself. Think, Cal. Think how young you were when you came to New York, the kid who thought he was a monster, the worst one in the world next to the Auphe. Your self-loathing was epic. Your angst astronomical. The whole emo-thing . . . well, it was a cultural trend and I won’t go there. But if I’d told you that angels did exist, then you would’ve wanted to know about Heaven and then you would’ve asked about Hell. I knew precisely what you would think after that.”

He was on the money, no doubt. Six years ago I’d have known there was a Hell. I’d have also known I was destined for it—no way out. “You’re right.” I leaned harder against Nik who hadn’t said a word about any of this. I was beginning to worry. Shit, I was already worried. “I’d have thought I was on the Hell-express for sure.”

“And now?” he asked, the curiosity plain in the inquisitive tilt of his head.

I gave him a black smile. “Hell? Let them lock the doors. They couldn’t fucking survive my ass.”

“Out of curiosity, where do paien go as apparently you’re here to tell us Jack is an angel gone rogue and he cares nothing about paien souls?” It was Nik and better yet it was Nik with a pertinent Nik-style question and an instinctual leap that would be spooky if true. What the hell was I thinking: sinners, Bible, wicked, whores and thieves, raising the dead, judgmental ass—Jack was an angel all right.

“There are hundreds of paien heavens, fewer hells though—we’re not quite so condemning. For every paien race there is at least one heaven if not ten or twelve. Anything you can imagine is out there.”

I didn’t ask Goodfellow about Auphe Heaven and Hell. I imagined they were one and the same. If all you know is murder and torture, then you can’t comprehend wrong and if you can’t imagine wrong, you can’t conceive of a punishment for it. That didn’t mean I wanted to go to wherever dead Auphe went. Whatever they considered Heaven, I knew I’d consider Hell five times over. For the time being I let that go and waited on the Jack-the-angel question.

Ishiah’s wings had disappeared once he’d sat down, but now, as they always did when he was annoyed, pissed, unsettled, conflicted—you name it—they’d reappeared. “Once Robin found out from you about the human followers mentioning praying and Heaven and put that together with Jack teleporting and raising the dead, he knew it had to be an angel, a particular angel. Pyriel. He’s one of the angels responsible for examining the souls for purity in Heaven. He’s also one of the very few angels and the only one missing that is entrusted with the power to raise the dead.”

“That fits Jack. Judging all over the place and a fan of zombies, but what do you mean missing? Doesn’t someone keep track of that? Like, I don’t know, God?” I asked with caustic disbelief. Was heavenly bureaucracy truly that bad? Angels disappeared in the paperwork of it all?

“Pyriel has been missing almost five hundred years,” Ishiah said. “The other angels are aware and have searched for him.” Now the wings spread and I wondered how I’d ever doubted warriors of Heaven walked among us. “God is always present but does not interfere.”

“Does not interfere? What do you mean doesn’t interfere? You’ve got a psycho angel frigging skinning people for at least two hundred years. I think the time for interfering has long since come and gone and circled back to do a victory lap. What the hell?”

“God . . . does . . . not . . . interfere,” Ishiah said in a tone as frozen as his eyes.

Goodfellow leaned back again, this time with feathers draping over his hair. “Let it go. It’s a story for another time, one when peris aren’t around.”

“Don’t you mean angels?” Niko substituted.

“No. There are no angels in New York City. They were banned over fifty years ago when a fight between them and some demons managed to get way out of control. Humans were running about screaming about Armageddon. It was a disaster. From that time on paiens have banned angels and demons from New York. If you come from Above or Below and show your face here, we paiens will work as one to rip it off of you. Only peris are allowed as they gave up their powers and transferred their allegiance to Earth not Heaven.”

“Except for this Pyriel. Except for Jack.” Niko didn’t sound interested, but he didn’t sound lost either. That was an improvement. Something this bizarre had to take his mind off the past—although Jack had in some part been involved with our past. I didn’t think he’d been there the night Junior died. Junior said his master liked to watch. I remembered that through a chloroform haze, but I didn’t think Jack had been watching or we might not be sitting here worrying about his angelic ass now.

“That’s right. If Jack is this Pyriel and paiens stomp trespassing angels like cockroaches, why is he here? Why do none of you even know he’s an angel?”

Robin shook his head, got to his feet, and brought me back a Mountain Dew to replace the one that spilled when Niko had grabbed me in the recliner. “Caffeine for your failing brain cells. You saw him. Did he look like an angel? Not that angels look like Ishiah, not all of the time—only when interacting with humans. But regardless, they don’t look anything like Jack. Whatever he was, Pyriel isn’t an angel any longer. Something has twisted him, mutated him. We keep thinking Jack is a storm spirit from the mist and the electrical activity. My best guess is that Pyriel was injured long ago and a storm spirit latched on to him when he was incapable of fighting it off. Some storm spirits aren’t very bright, but they can be powerful parasites. Pyriel is now Jack and Jack is both less and more than an angel. Angels actually aren’t that difficult to kill if you’re quick with a shotgun.”

“Is that information you felt necessary to share?” Ishiah demanded.

“Cal has already used a submachine gun on Jack. A shotgun is but a tinker toy to him,” Robin retorted. “It’s rather pointless anyway. As I said, we’ve tried that route on Jack. It was useless. The storm spirit, if it is one, surrounding him could stop the bullets from penetrating with wind, ice, who knows what else. What customarily works against angels isn’t going to work with Jack, it seems.”

Nik took my Mountain Dew and swallowed several times from the can. I think he had been fifteen the last time he’d had caffeine. He’d always been serious about martial arts thanks to the Grend—the Auphe outside our windows, but Junior had been the tipping point to devoting every aspect of his life to being the best fighter he could and that included nutrition. It was a good thing that rice was cheap. It was a long time before he could afford a variety of health food. Without rice he might have starved himself to death back then, the stubborn bastard.

I snatched my Mountain Dew back and said under my breath, “Okay, Nik, you’re really beginning to freak me out.”

He ran a less than reassuring hand over my hair. It wasn’t the lightly stinging swat-and-tangle I usually received. It was the smoothing and affectionate motion you used on a child, that he’d used on an eleven-year-old me. He couldn’t pull himself out of the past and if I wanted to kill Jack for anything, it was for that.

“Can the parasite be killed,” Nik asked, “leaving Pyriel behind to be dealt with using one of Cal’s guns?”

“If the storm spirit can be killed, we might be able to save Pyriel.” Ishiah put his wings away again. It was like a Vegas magician’s trick that never got old.

“Yeah, saving Pyriel isn’t at the top of my list of priorities,” I said. “It doesn’t even make the cut for second callback.” I drank the rest of the Mountain Dew, if only to save Niko from himself.

“He could be an innocent in this, a victim.” Ishiah folded his arms, but I don’t think he believed Pyriel could be brought back to what he was. I know he didn’t believe I gave a shit one way or the other. If he did, his skills at reading facial expressions were sorely lacking. I couldn’t see my own face, but if there was compassion and hope on it, I wasn’t feeling it.

“And a rabid wolf is a victim too, but it still has to be put down.” I tossed my empty can across the floor, if only to see what Nik would say or do.

He heaved himself to his feet, picked it up, and went to the kitchen to throw it in the garbage. It was the same as when I was a kid, before he’d limited my mess to my bedroom. He’d cut me a good deal of slack then and I’d needed it. But then I’d grown up and I’d needed boundaries and discipline more if I was going to survive. I needed Niko to remember that and remember himself. A fifteen-year-old, emotionally and guilt-wise, wasn’t going to be able to handle Jack. Nik had to know that I could more than take care of myself now. If he didn’t know that, he wouldn’t watch his own back and Jack . . . Jack would take advantage. Jack would kill him in a heartbeat.

Goodfellow had moved to squat in front of me while Nik was in the kitchen. “Why is he like this?” he whispered fast and low. “I understand that coping with a murderer and having to kill at fifteen would be traumatizing, but this is Niko—and this is not right.”

I wrapped a careful arm around my ribs and dropped my chin on my chest, closing my eyes. Christ it hurt like a mother. “Sorry, Goodfellow, but it’s none of your business.” He was risking his life going up against Jack when he could easily walk away, knowing Jack would leave him alone. Normally that would deserve answers, but not this time.

“Cal told me about Junior and I didn’t believe him,” Niko said quietly. I jerked my head up and opened my eyes to see him standing behind Goodfellow. “I only had to do one thing: believe my brother. But I didn’t and because of that he almost died. I might as well have held the knife instead of Junior.” That wasn’t true. It wasn’t, but before I could say so, he went on, relentless. “We don’t talk about it. We never have. I was too much of a coward then to believe and too much of a coward after to relive it. To answer your question: that is why I’m like this. Twelve years of cowardice have come home to roost.”

“Nik, shut the hell up. You know that’s not right. I was a delinquent eleven-year-old kid. No one would’ve believed . . .” But it was too late. He’d already picked up his katana, turned, and disappeared down the hall into his room, shutting the door softly behind him. I would’ve preferred he slammed it. Anger was easier to deal with than blame.

“Shit.” Exhaling painfully, I avoided looking at Robin as I didn’t want to see whatever well-meaning emotion was aimed in my direction. Sometimes the smallest amount of empathy can break you if you let it. I kept my eyes fixed on the far wall and asked, “Can you get me up? I think I went from a cracked rib to a broken one when I tackled Nik.” If it was broken, and it felt that way, it was a simple break. I could breathe, somewhat, and I wasn’t coughing up blood, which meant there wasn’t a shard of bone embedded in my lung. No big deal. People walked around with a broken rib all the time—it just wasn’t much fun.

An arm looped around my back and under my free arm to help me once I got my legs under me. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have asked.”

I made the shrug evident in my words as I damn well wasn’t going to move my shoulders to make it. “He’s always thought it. Maybe it’s better that he said it. Keeping it inside obviously wasn’t helping, not with Jack in the picture.”

“Humans, they take things so to heart. It is one of their truest—”

I cut off Ishiah without a second thought. “Just shut up with the crap about the human heart, you asshole. If your kind had actually done something about their MIA angel instead of looking under a rock or two and then giving up, none of this would have happened. Jack wouldn’t have happened. Junior wouldn’t have happened and Nik wouldn’t be blaming himself for your mistake.”

Ishiah was my boss and a former warrior of Heaven, but right then that didn’t mean a thing to me. Considering all the smiting done in the Bible by his kind, I had my doubts that messing up one human’s faith in himself would mean much to him. It meant the world to me though and left me in no mood for some failed pigeon’s philosophy about man.

“I was only going to say it is one of the most noble things about them, to hold themselves accountable beyond any expectation I could have,” he finished somberly. “I’m sorry for what was done to you and Niko. I know that means nothing now, the damage is done, but I am sorry.”

Making my way to the kitchen to fish in the drawer for the bottle of codeine, I let the anger run out of me. It wasn’t Ishiah’s fault. It wasn’t Heaven’s fault if I was forced to be truthful. It was Junior’s fault and he was beyond reach. It was Jack’s fault and until we discovered how to kill him he was beyond reach too. I swallowed two pills, chased them with a glass of water and said, “I need to talk to Nik. I’ll be back in a minute.”

I made it down the hall at a speed an octogenarian with a walker would’ve mocked and knocked lightly on Nik’s door—something I’d never done. When you’ve spent nearly every day of your life together, aside from that first year Nik was at college, privacy was a nonsense word. It didn’t mean a thing. There were the puberty years, but that’s what bathroom locks were for.

I had knocked, but I didn’t wait for an invitation. That would be too far out of the ordinary and Nik needed ordinary now more than ever. He was sitting on the side of his bed oiling his katana. If positions had been reversed I’d have been under the bed sucking my thumb like an infant, but that’s why Nik was Nik. He did what no one else could and then he blamed himself for not doing the impossible.

“Hey, Cyrano.” I propped myself against his dresser to face him. I was afraid if I sat on the bed, I wouldn’t get back up . . . at least not with anything approaching grace. My ribs were the last thing Nik needed added to his plate. “Are you really going to make me be the emotionally stable one in the room? I’m not good at it. You know that.”

He raised his eyes and what I saw in them . . . Jesus, I felt like shit. He’d been the emotionally stable one our entire lives, not a single day off. My even joking about it was a crappy thing to do. “You know what? I’m a dick. You be as unstable as you need to be. If you need to kick someone’s ass to feel better, I’ll go hold Robin back so you can put the beat-down on Ishiah. He doesn’t pay me worth a damn anyway. He deserves it.”

I thought I saw a spark of amusement but it disappeared too quickly for me to be sure. He looked back down and continued to tend to the blade. “Nik, come on. So what if you didn’t believe me or want to believe me twelve frigging years ago? You were a kid. Hell, you were a kid raising a kid, dealing with Sophia, living in a world of monsters because of me. I don’t know how you weren’t a drooling mess or why you didn’t just take off. Anyone else would have. No one and I mean no one could’ve done what you did. No one could’ve kept me alive this long or would’ve even tempted to try. You gave up your life for me and you could’ve had a life. The best life.” He could have. That’s what made me want to put my fist through a wall.

“You’re the fucking smartest man I know,” I continued. “You could be a college professor, married, have two point five kids and a picket fence. Or you could’ve been the world’s top mercenary living on a private island. You could have done anything and you gave it up for me. Now you’re blaming yourself . . . no, you’re blaming a fifteen-year-old kid who was doing it all for stumbling once when the weight went from overwhelming to impossible. How can you blame that kid when you won’t blame me, an adult, for doing things I know aren’t right and refusing to believe in the consequences? If you’re going to be like Jack and judge someone, judge me. I do know better, but it doesn’t stop me. You’re the one who does that. I’ve screwed up so many times and you’ve never thrown one of them back in my face. Treat my brother the same way. We’re a package deal.”

Moving carefully, I nudged his foot with mine. “That fifteen-year-old kid was my hero and no one, not even you, gets to say shit about him, all right? He was a hero and there is nothing he did or didn’t do that will ever change that.”

This time I saw it, not amusement, but the tension. It drained out of him and this time when he looked up, I saw Nik. My brother, not the torn up, despairing kid from twelve years ago. “Is this what I get for not letting you wallow in the past, moaning about what an abomination you were?”

“I was fond of that word, wasn’t I?” I tilted my head down, letting the hair fall over my eyes so that I could stare through the veil with menace and malice. “Boogety.”

The corners of his mouth quirked. “Yes. Terrifying.”

“Damn straight.” I grinned. “Now stop picking on that kid. I loved him. He meant the world to me and he never let me down—I don’t care what you or he says about that. Got it?”

“I believe I have it.” It was solemn and sincere.

“Good. No more wallowing. If I don’t get to, neither do you. Now get back out there and help us come up with a way to kick Jack’s ass. I’m working with a horny goat and feather duster. I don’t have much confidence in.” Not true of course. I had a helluva lot of confidence in Goodfellow and a moderate amount in Ishiah, but nothing like I had in Nik.

“Give me a moment and I’ll be there,” he promised. “I’m not looking forward to it after what they saw me do.”

“Hate to tell you, Nik, but they already knew you were human. Granted this is the first time they saw actual proof, but they knew.”

He looked down his long nose and snorted. “Go. I’ll be right there. I’d say do something annoying to distract them from my entrance, but that’s a given.”

“Ass,” I said fondly. “Three minutes or I’ll tell them about the time you stared at my teacher’s breasts. The one that was a stripper? Remember her and how you—”

“Out.” He pointed, but he was almost smiling now.

I levered myself off the dresser and closed the door behind me, moving as if it didn’t feel as if my ribs were made of ground glass. I was proud of that.

Back in the main room, I asked Ishiah and Robin, “Jack . . . what do we do now? How do we figure out how to kill him? How do we even find him? Does knowing he was an angel help us at all?”

Ishiah, looking less like an angel with his wings tucked off wherever and dressed in a faded blue shirt and jeans, was already on his feet and had been long enough to start pacing. My question stopped him. “It does,” he said abruptly. “Of course it does. How could I be so blind? Churches.” He swiveled to face me. “He’s trying to save sinners if in a very macabre and twisted manner. He’s gathering followers. He still believes in prayer and souls. He would be most at home in a church. Abandoned ones most likely or we’d have heard about congregations going missing.”

That was good. That was goddamn excellent. There couldn’t be that many abandoned churches in New York. With real estate at a premium they wouldn’t be empty long before they were turned into a trendy pizza place with stained glass windows of the Virgin Mary.

I was at Nik’s door fast this time and I didn’t think that was possible. Opening it, I said, “Nik, we know where to look for Jack. Grab your sword.”

He didn’t have to, and he didn’t have to look for Jack. Jack had found him instead. Nik was gone.

The room was empty.