Downfall

by Rob Thurman

  “You can always run?” As that would be one less body for me to clean up, and with the day I’d had, it would be worth it.

  She didn’t run. She retracted her claws, the fingernail polish a little worse for wear, tucked her gun in her boot, and then turned her back on me and walked away. Damn, she had balls. I hadn’t minded and not only over the cleaning-up issue. It was Delilah I wanted dead, not the other female Wolves she’d gathered to her. If anything, I applauded them. The Kin refused female Alphas, refused those of the All Wolf cult. The Lupas deserved to rule. If you weren’t the unbeatable killer Delilah was, the males would have the female Wolves in strip clubs or worse. They’d been disgusted by the All Wolf, considering them the lowest of the low. They deserved what the female Wolves gave them. I hoped it was nasty and inventive. Knowing Delilah, it would be.

  I hadn’t thought twice about that.

  * * *

  I didn’t bother reliving the fight a second time. It hadn’t been worth reliving the first.

  “Delilah didn’t waste any time sending a few messengers over in case I did miss the Howl. Messengers, assassins, whatever. I don’t think she was that serious, though, only sending three. This is most likely revenge for the fact that the birthday present I gave her when we were screwing was a bag of doggy chews.” I nudged the body curled in the Hefty bag on the floor. “We need more garbage bags. Extraduty. I had to double-bag these.”

  “You think?” Niko hung up his long leather coat with care on the wall-mount hook. His holster that was made to hold his katana along his back, under that coat, and out of sight he leaned against the wall. He slept with the katana under the bed. I didn’t judge. I slept with a gun under my pillow and a knife under my mattress. And I had, at least with the knife, since I’d been ten years old.

  “Think? About the revenge for the doggy chews or the garbage bags?”

  “You should’ve killed her, you know,” he said, shaking his head at the garbage bags of dead Wolf. “Or let me. We all knew about her ruthlessness and her ambition. We all knew this day would come when the Kin would bow before her.”

  I was actually rather proud of her for that. The Kin did not accept female Alphas and they did not accept All Wolf Alphas. Delilah was as female as they came and I didn’t regret all the times she’d proved that to me. I didn’t know why people, even the Kin, forget the female of any species is the most dangerous. They are treacherous and fearless and won’t hesitate for a second to do what has to be done. Rules are for the weak in their eyes.

  Delilah was also All Wolf, the speciest movement that worked to prove that werewolves needed to drop the “were,” lose the ability to shift to human, and go back to what they’d been before evolution took that “looking like humans part of the time will fool them and let us catch and eat them faster” branch. All Wolf rejected evolution’s logic there. They wanted to be all wolf, all the time, no human taint. All Wolves only bred with other All Wolves to up the wolf genetic quotient every time. The results were werewolves that mostly couldn’t shift all the way to human. They were stuck halfway between human and wolf when they moved among people, with furry ears, gold eyes, sharp teeth, all usually concealed by hoodies. They didn’t mind. They had a goal, and in another hundred, five hundred, a thousand years, they’d get there. But for now, what Delilah had done. . . .

  Un-fucking-precedented.

  A female All Wolf Kin Alpha, along with the enormous number of all-female All Wolves she’d spared when taking out a random pack. It was very Amazonian, and if I’d watched Xena when I was a little kid, which I didn’t—fuck you very much—I’d think that was pretty goddamn hot.

  “I should’ve killed her sooner,” I agreed. I’d had at least two wide-open opportunities and every intention of doing it. She’d betrayed me, after all, and while I was used to that, no big deal really, she’d betrayed my brother and my friends, and that shit didn’t fly. “I wish I’d killed her.” And I did. For all that she fascinated me—that was nothing compared to protecting my own. “But something always came up. I hesitated the first time, for fucking old times’ sake, I guess.” I grinned. “Literally. With the fucking, in case you missed that.”

  Nik, long dark blond braid swaying with the movement, swatted me on the back of the head as he walked by to the kitchen. “Yes, I believe I did ‘get that,’ foulmouthed brat.”

  “And the second time we were fighting something bigger and badder than her and we needed her help.” I stood from my crouch and gave one bag a solid kick. It stayed whole. God bless duct tape. “But now? Puppy love is over. I’d take her out in a second, if . . .” I was fighting the urge not to. As much as I told myself I would take her out for what she’d tried to do to my family, that nothing and no one could stop me, I was lying to myself.

  I couldn’t. Not now. I’d waited too long.

  Investigating a covered plate he’d pulled from the oven set at low heat, Nik caught my gaze. His eyes were the same gray as mine—minus the irregular come-and- go streaks of Auphe red—and I couldn’t wait for that conversation. I’d started physically, fucking physically turning into one of the worst monsters that ever lived. Homicidal insanity couldn’t be far behind. How was your day?

  “You would?” He was testing me. He had been my entire life.

  “You know I would and I should have already, back then, screw her help.” I folded my arms and leaned against the back of the couch, my sweatpants and T-shirt threadbare and my mind almost equally so after what I’d seen in the mirror.

  “And I know you caught my ‘if.’ It’s too late,” I added. “Delilah is more than the Kin Alpha. She’s the leader of the All Wolf movement, and the Lupa rebellion.” Lupas were what wolves had come to call the all-female packs. “If I kill her, all her brainwashed flunkies will hunt us down. And from the howl”—which had covered the entirety of New York City and much farther—“there are more of them than even we could possibly handle.” She must’ve been recruiting on the sly from Kin packs in other major cities. Delilah was buckets of crazy, but she was astounding when it came to strategy.

  Niko reached under the bar and pulled a stool to the kitchen side so he could sit and face me. “That’s true. There are too many, but I’m surprised you thought of the consequences to that extent.” He pointed a fork at the bagged Big Bad Wolves surrounding me. “Especially as she sent you a personal message.” He looked down at his uncovered plate and gave a curious sniff. Niko was only human—“only” meaning “the most dangerous human alive,” a human who had, per a mouthy puck, lived a thousand lives, all of them as warriors, one of them as Achilles himself. And wasn’t that strange? Niko was not only reincarnated from Achilles, but he was also descended from him. He was descended from himself. It made my head hurt thinking about it.

  The result was worth it, though. My brother was a born fighting machine. But that didn’t matter when it came to casseroles. Although Niko had somehow carried lifetimes of fighting, experience compounded into one of the more lethal and deadly men around in this particular existence, his nose was still a plain human nose. Larger than average, yeah, but that didn’t mean it worked any better.

  “Consider it an early breakfast or a late night snack, whichever, but it’s a breakfast casserole,” I explained. Once I heard the Howl, I’d known he’d be home fairly quickly to keep the wolf from our door, so to speak. “One half is Spanish with tomatoes, free-range eggs, chilies, and the usual. The other half, since you’ve been swinging back and forth between vegetarian and vegan lately, is a lot of tofu and soy masquerading as cheese, meat, eggs, and so on.” Killing Wolves and cooking all within an hour, was I talented or what?

  Nonplussed, Niko glanced warily at me and took two bites, one of each side. “It’s . . . good.”

  I should’ve been insulted, but, hell, I’d been known to set Pop-Tarts on fire and not the kind of combustion that a fire extinguisher can put out, but full-on NYFD aiming hoses, fir
emen staggering out covered in blackened soot, and all looking at me horrified as if I’d walked out of the pages of a Stephen King book. I wasn’t a fire starter. I was forgetful, and timers weren’t worth my attention or they confused me. Whatever. Suck my dick.

  “Now tell me who actually made this.” Nik took another bite, a large one, and I counted the whole attempt as a success.

  “I did. I took lessons.” I ducked my head, half-embarrassed, and stared down at garbage bag number one—the brown, green-eyed Wolf, would’ve been great at frontal assault, but with a gun jammed in your face, great becomes useless. She was the one with the enormous claws and stuck that way thanks to the All Wolf interbreeding. I’d idly wondered at the time how she opened pickle jars with paws and claws instead of hands.

  Considering what I’d seen in the bathroom mirror, I should’ve asked her.

  I cleared my throat and continued. “Lucy . . . Lucienne, she’s a chef . . . next door taught me how a couple weeks ago. I thought it’d mean more to you if I was the one who cooked it.” It had taken a week and a half exactly to get right, but I’d known for weeks, hadn’t I? I’d felt it coming. The darkness that was a tsunami aimed at Nik and me, the wave twenty stories high. It brought death. It brought the end.

  I didn’t know how I was aware that our time or at least mine in this life was coming to an end. I had no idea why I could feel it or be this convinced, but I could. It felt like déjà vu.

  I’d had no real visible sign or hint this was all coming—the Lupa Wolves ascending over the city—I’d completely missed it despite the fact that Delilah’s fondest birthday wish was my guts on a platter. That my Auphe side was becoming external and would inevitably drag the inner core of me to match, I’d only noticed tonight. I’d always known in the past that Grimm, with a bowl of popcorn, would show up eventually whenever it did happen to catch my physical side show. Whenever I turned, he would try to turn me, then full Auphe, again, either to his side or an even more ruthless side, my side. I hadn’t, however, known that time was now. I hadn’t known specifically any of this until now, thanks to one silver hair. I wasn’t shocked at my obliviousness; I wasn’t that observant unless something was currently chewing through my abdomen to get to the tasty parts.

  The only thing that I had noticed was that Goodfellow had been giving me some extremely pointed and intense stares when I wasn’t looking . . . and when I was. That was more terrifying than the Grim Reaper himself knocking at my door. Not counting that weirdness—and I tried very hard not to—I’d not seen anything, but I’d felt something in my gut all the same. Deep within, my subconscious, home to the more Auphe pieces of me, might have noticed something my conscious hadn’t. The silver hadn’t shown up in my hair yet, but my Auphe genes felt it coming. Noticed enough to give me a warning.

  Playtime is over.

  The Auphe in me celebrated its true self taking over, and it mourned I was determined to stop it with my death being a Black Friday Sale deal with appeal. As the Auphe in me was the main problem, it could take its woe and suck it up.

  The only bright spot in this was that when I died, I was dragging that part of me kicking and screaming with me. The Auphe died with me. Grimm would be around, but he was still half with no grasp of what a true Auphe was. I could screw him and screw the Auphe in me. With that somewhat happily vengeful thought, I moved away from the couch and propped elbows on the breakfast bar and watched my brother eat. Besides, “over” was a relative term. The feeling of dread didn’t come with a convenient timer to help me out. I did have to die—the mirror couldn’t be denied—but who knew how long I had? It could be weeks, months, maybe if I was lucky even a year, depending on how long I could keep control. I might have to go the hoodie route myself depending on how quickly my hair and eyes changed, but if a Wolf whose hands were stuck in mutated paws that couldn’t open pickle jars could pull it off, so could I.

  I couldn’t depend on luck, though. I’d learned that before my ABCs. That meant that I needed to do all I could for Nik before it was too late. I couldn’t convince him my end wasn’t his. That had been certain since the days when my first word had been his name and my first wobbling toddler steps had been toward him, not toward the woman who had sold her womb and had despised what had slid out of it.

  If I couldn’t convince him to let me go alone—and I knew that was nonnegotiable in all the ways that there were ways—then I could make sure his last days were the best I could make them. Voilà . . . breakfast, which was much more difficult than simply killing something for him. I knew he’d appreciate that the effort of the first far exceeded the effort of the latter.

  “Lucy taught me to make it. I had to pay her, singed my damn fingers over and over. And the wretched, evil tofu. Just looking at that crap made me want to . . .” I shut up. This was a present. A gift, and you didn’t ruin one of those by bitching. “Anyway, she’s a helluva lot meaner than you. I had to learn fast if I wanted to keep my fingers. So it had better be the best breakfast casserole you’ve ever had.”

  “It is. I so solemnly swear.” This time he pointed the fork with a piece of red and yellow dripping goo at my forehead and the now-cleaned shallow gash. “Don’t tell me you’re docked another week’s pay or we may have to live off your casserole for the next two weeks.” Then his lips curved wickedly as his eyes narrowed slightly. “Hmm. I’m glad you’re not vain, baby brother. It looks like you’re going gray already.”

  Shit. I grabbed a handful of hair on each side of my head and pulled them forward. There it was, on the right this time. Another single silver strand that I knew hadn’t been there two hours ago when I shattered the bathroom mirror. So much for waiting until after Nik’s meal to break the news. After a quick jerk and a sharp pain, I placed the white hair between us on the sand-colored countertop. Blood smudged the root the same as it had with the first one. Wasn’t that the Auphe all over? You couldn’t even rip a handful of their hair free without a battle to the bloody death.

  Niko frowned at the strand before running his finger over it lightly, promptly losing most of the Greek-Rom olive tint to his skin. I didn’t blame him. I knew what he had felt—the unnatural bite and scrape of unseen barbs. If I hadn’t been born already Auphe-pale, I’d have lost a little color too.

  “Cal?”

  “I know.” Shrugging, I sat down heavily on a stool of my own. I dropped a more or less triangular-shaped piece of mirror I’d retrieved from the bathroom floor onto the counter. You only figure out you’re going to need a mirror after you’ve broken the only one you own. I added, “I first saw it at work a few hours ago. I had some red in my eyes too.” I smirked a little, because, hell, at this point, why not? “You know, the kind that Visine doesn’t get out? A few flecks in each iris, but they disappeared once my enormous initial freak-out faded.”

  I pushed the fragment of mirror, facedown, to and fro. “It’s okay, Cyrano,” I assured him earnestly. As earnest as I could be. It wasn’t an emotion I used often, but I needed it now. “Auphe genes always win. We’ve known that forever now, right?”

  Not forever as other people would think it, but for a few years. And in our life a few years was practically forever.

  My brother stared at me blankly, the lines of his shoulders and jaw as tense as I’d ever seen them. I should’ve kept my mouth shut, I thought with vicious recrimination. I should’ve lied for all that we rarely ever lied to each other. Hadn’t since we were kids, but he shouldn’t have to hear this. He shouldn’t have to know. Wasn’t it enough that I did? Then again, he was going to see it, see me change sooner or later, and how to explain that away? Sometimes there are no options. That should’ve made me feel better.

  It didn’t.

  Nik stayed frozen that way for one excruciatingly long moment, long enough for my gut to roil in a riptide of rage and grief for him. It wasn’t fair and it wasn’t right, for all that we had known it was coming someday. Like the world itself
—it wasn’t fair. Nik who thought he could fix anything for his brother, but he knew this . . . no one could fix this. He shouldn’t blame himself for not doing the impossible. It wasn’t . . . it wasn’t . . . My inner fury faded somewhat as I saw it. I saw him. I saw all the tension in him melt away as if it had never been. In an instant, he went from stone to as relaxed as he’d been minutes before. Eyes warm, he gave me a rueful smile that said that life was no different now than it had been yesterday or the day before—and it wasn’t.

  My brother, he knew everything. And he knew this too. He knew how it was and how it’d always been. Our whole lives had been lived as if each day were our last.

  This was the same.

  It didn’t mean he’d give up; Nik didn’t have that in him. But he wouldn’t insist on carrying the weight alone like he once would have, and he wouldn’t let it break him. We’d both learned our lesson there.

  He continued with his breakfast, ordering casually, “Stop pulling them out. You’ll end up bald. Not to mention that it’s unsanitary, especially when I’m trying to eat.” Unsanitary. Not the end of us or possibly the end of the world. It was unsanitary. Of course it was.

  “There is some good news. I’m not rabid on the inside. I feel more like I did years ago. If I had to look like an Auphe on the outside but get to stay human on the inside, it’d be worth it. Face it, neither one of us knows exactly what’ll happen. But anything is better than unsanitary, right?” I wiped a hand across my mouth and nose to cover my amused and relieved snort.

  Niko disregarded all sanitary issues as he went on after me without pause. “Tomorrow . . . today rather . . . we have to check out the new drug.” The drug, epinephrine, was Niko’s idea based on my reactions in the past and was meant to return me to a somewhat more Auphe state, in a way. It was ironic, but in our lives more than somewhat necessary and an Auphe talent that was as useful as deadly. We were concentrating on useful, but I’d rather think about it later, as I had plenty to think about now. More than enough. I’d consider the pros and cons of it for the tenth time when I used it, and that was hours yet. Sleep came first.