Hidden Things

by Doyce Testerman

  Vikous frowned, his eyes first scanning her face, then growing unfocused, as if searching within for some dark thing they could not find. “I don’t . . .” His eyes returned to Calliope. “That’s not possible.”

  “Get that bitch up and let’s go, cousin.” Walker was suddenly looming over them, the V’s of his face pulled down and bitter. “I’m not going to—”

  To Calliope’s shock-addled perception, it seemed as if Vikous flickered—one moment, kneeling over her, the next, standing—motion compressed between two heartbeats, effortless as a hummingbird’s wing beat. But the sound that echoed through the cavern as Vikous’s hand shot out and clamped around Walker’s throat—like a baseball bat swung into a side of beef—conveyed violent momentum. Walker’s feet swung away from the floor as he dangled from Vikous’s outstretched arm.

  “What’r you doing?” Walker choked out, his hands scrabbling at Vikous’s arm.

  “Whatever I like, apparently.” Vikous’s lips drew back and back into something that could never be called a smile. His arm swung in an arc, and Walker flew across the cavern. Calliope didn’t hear him land, but the goblins all made an impressed noise.

  Vikous’s face loomed over hers again and she was floating in the air, held aloft by his arms. Her shoulder was starting to hurt, but none of his movements seemed to jar her.

  Solid, she thought, he’s solid.

  She tried to smile her thanks up at him, but when she saw his expression, the movement died on her lips.

  Whatever Vikous was feeling at that moment, Calliope was absolutely sure it wasn’t gratitude.

  There were rules.

  Vikous slipped through the goblin tunnels like fear in the veins of a coward: unstoppable, and bound to break out onto the surface before long.

  There were very set rules for all the Hidden Things.

  The king’s minions scoured their lair for him, but they were creatures of darkness, dependent on scent and sound to track their prey, and he was what he was; the tunnels filled with the scents of roasting peanuts and stale cotton candy; cheap, tinkling organ music echoed from the walls.

  Respect the Songs of Power. No blasphemy. All Oaths to be honored.

  Vikous scowled, glancing down at the woman cradled in his arms.

  She knew. It was right in her eyes. The thought filled him with a kind of sick rage.

  “Oy! Who goes there?”

  One. They only put one on the exit.

  Vikous smiled, the corners of his mouth stretching back and back and back as his jaw opened.

  Too wide.

  Too many teeth.

  The goblin’s screams alerted its brethren, but by then it was far too late.

  Morning sun pushed in through the curtains of a motel room. Calliope blinked grit from her eyes and tried to focus. She shifted slightly and agony speared through her right side. The pained hiss of air through her teeth drew movement out of the shadows in the corner of the room. Straining, gritting her teeth, Calliope could raise her head and make out Vikous’s hunched form leaning forward in a chair. His hood was raised.

  “How are you feeling?” he said.

  Calliope settled back into the pillow, trying not to jostle anything too hard. “I . . .” She tried to take a deeper breath, thought better of it. Her entire right side felt stiff and constricted. “I’m awake and I hurt like hell.”

  “Good.” He stood up and walked over to the side of the bed so that she could see him without moving. With the window behind him, he was little more than a silhouette. “I’ve figured out a plan.”

  Calliope grimace-smiled. “Sounds good,” she said. “Let’s hear it.”

  A pause, then: “Once we get some food into you, you’re going to tell me what happened back in that diner the first night.”

  Time seemed to slow down for Calliope. “Why—” She licked her lips to buy time. “I mean, what’s important about the diner? You were there with me the whole time.”

  “Was I?” Vikous said. He hadn’t moved.

  Calliope ignored the question. “What’s that got to do with Walker? Do you think he’s been following us since then?” She frowned, trying desperately to turn the conversation while keeping her face calm. “He couldn’t have been, could he?”

  Vikous shook his head, moving the hood only slightly. “He didn’t catch up to us then.”

  “Then what—”

  “I’ve been thinking about it.” Vikous moved away from the bed and wandered, first to the door, then across the room. “Playing everything back. There are things that linger, like a headache; where you can have it on you for so long that you don’t even know it’s there anymore. It still hurts, but that’s just background noise.” Reaching the far side of the room, he turned and started back in the other direction, not looking at Calliope. “It becomes part of how you feel all the time until you don’t even think about it, you just suffer, and when it’s gone, sometimes you don’t even realize it immediately.” He reached the door of the motel room and turned back again. “You maybe know something’s different, but it was so much a part of you that until someone asks you ‘How’s the headache?’ you don’t realize you don’t have one anymore.” He turned to look down at Calliope. “I had something like that, something I’ve been carrying around for a long time.” He shook his head and looked away. “It’s gone now. I didn’t know it until you told me I didn’t have to listen to Walker and I realized you were right.”

  In the shadowed gloom of the room, Calliope couldn’t read Vikous. “That’s . . . that’s good, right?”

  Vikous’s voice was flat. “In the world I live in, oaths means something, Calliope. As far as I know, nothing could have broken the hold that oath had on me.” He was holding himself completely still, as though he was afraid of what he might do if he moved. “I’ve thought it through—the binding went away the night we were at that motel and the diner afterward.” Vikous’s head shifted slightly; Calliope could feel, if not see, his eyes on her. “Something happened there, and I think you know what it was.”

  From her pillow, Calliope stared up at Vikous. “I don’t . . . believe that,” she said.

  She could hear herself breathing, but not Vikous, and it startled her when he spoke. “Excuse me?” he said.

  “The oath. Things don’t have to bind you if you don’t let them. Words are just”—she started to gesture the way Gerschon might have, but a flare of pain from her right side made her think better of it—“words.”

  Vikous did gesture, the motion of his arm short and sharp. “Those are the sort of rules your kind live by.”

  “My kind?” Calliope forced herself a few inches closer to sitting position, hissing through the pain. “I thought we were on the same side. I’ve got a kind now?”

  “Humans,” Vikous said, his voice grating and thin. “You walk in wherever you want, changing things to suit whatever it is that you think is true.” His hand twitched. “You twist everything until it fits whatever flat little image you have in your head.” He leaned in toward Calliope. “It’s either arrogance or stupidity,” he said in the silence of the room, just over the sound of her breathing, “and either way you manage to kill off everything that doesn’t fit. Tear it out and throw it away, whether it mattered or not. What did you do to me?” Vikous’s voice nearly choked off in his own throat and he leaned in close over the bed.

  “I didn’t do anything. I don’t know how to do anything.” The pain in Calliope’s shoulder and side pushed up and out with each deep breath. Vikous’s face was inches from hers; his breath, almost like lemons and probably the only part of him that never smelled bad, puffed in her face with each panting breath.

  “You don’t need to know how,” he said in a whisper. “You never have; none of you ever have, but somehow something happened, and you were there, so tell me what you did.”

  “You died!” Calliope yelled, pressing upward as tears ran down her face against any will or desire of hers, brought on by the bright white pain that was reaching up
from her shoulder and scrabbling at her mind. “You died, you fucking sociopath, and I made them bring you back and I wasn’t supposed to tell you about it so I probably just blew one of the all-important rules that you nut-bags follow, and screwed everything up.” Her face was bare centimeters from Vikous’s; she could see herself reflected clearly in his flat black eyes, saw the bandages on her shoulder, saw the pain in her face, and the fear.

  Vikous must have seen it as well. He blinked, pulling back a few inches, then reached out and lowered her down to the pillows.

  It still hurt, hurt worse than anything she could think of that had ever happened to her, and she hated crying in front of anyone, especially—right at that moment—Vikous, but when she was finally lying back down, she couldn’t help but smile in relief through the tears. He turned away.

  “I shouldn’t have gotten you worked up,” he said, still facing the doorway.

  “It’s all right,” she said.

  Silence dropped down into the room, leaving only the echoes of the things she’d told him. Calliope didn’t move until Vikous turned and sat down on the corner of the bed. He didn’t look at her.

  “What . . .” He cleared his throat. “Who did you . . . who was there?”

  “Faegos,” Calliope said, all reluctance gone out of her with her outburst. “Some taller guy who never spoke—”

  “Kopro.” Vikous inhaled through his nose and glanced up at the ceiling. “Actually, they’re the same person, sort of. Shit-eater.”

  Calliope stared at him, surprised by the profanity. “Wow. You don’t like him.”

  Vikous looked back at her. “No, that’s . . . well, no, I don’t, but that’s not what I meant—that’s what his name means, Koprophagos.”

  “Shit-eater? And the two of them are really one person?”

  “Close enough.” Vikous shook his head. “He’s . . . very old. It’s complicated.” His eyes narrowed. “What did he want?”

  Calliope carefully did not shrug. “He wanted me to promise him something I didn’t have that he thought I might find later. He said he could bring Josh back to life in trade.”

  Vikous’s eyes were steady on hers. “Did you say yes?”

  Calliope looked away. “I told him it would be okay.” Her eyes went back to Vikous. “I didn’t know what he was talking about, and I still don’t think I’ll ever—”

  “Did you,” Vikous said, each word measured out. “Tell him. Yes?”

  Calliope frowned. “Yes.” Vikous sagged within his coat. She thought for a moment, then shook her head. “No. I don’t—Maybe?” Vikous continued to watch her face, and Calliope shifted her weight. “It was days ago. I don’t remember, but I don’t—”

  “It’s—” Vikous cut off before the words could build to a shout. “It’s sort of important.”

  Calliope glared. “I can’t remember.”

  “Okay,” he relented. “We’ll burn that bridge when we come to it. What did—” He frowned. “How did you make him . . .” He gestured to himself.

  “I made him prove he could do it,” Calliope said.

  Vikous stared at her, his too-wide mouth gaping just a bit. “I would have paid many jelly packets to have seen that,” he finally said.

  Calliope smiled, already beginning to tire. “So . . . that did it? Fixed your oath?”

  Vikous’s gaze seemed to turn inward, contemplating as he blew out a breath. “Well, yeah.” He scratched at his green-spiked head with a gloved hand. “I suppose being dead pretty much voids the agreement. Never thought of trying that . . .” He made a face, annoyance mixed with amusement. “Of course, if I’d done it on purpose, it would have broken the oath, which I couldn’t do, so . . .”

  Calliope quirked an eyebrow. “Your life is complicated.” Vikous snorted, pushing himself back to a standing position. “Is it . . .” Calliope started. Stopped. Vikous looked down at her. “Are you all right with it?”

  He thought for a moment and nodded. “Not exactly the way I would have wanted to go out, but yeah. It’s weird, even for me, but it’s all right.” He shrugged. “Nothing I can do about it now, anyway.”

  Calliope watched his face. “You were very brave,” she said, then looked away when his eyes met hers. “When it happened.”

  Vikous blinked. “Umm . . . thanks, I guess.” A small smile. “Now I wish I could remember it.”

  “No,” Calliope said. “You don’t.”

  Vikous turned back to her, then nodded. “Heh. Fair enough.” He glanced around the room. “Well, the goblins are out of the picture now; they already made a deal with Walker and even if they hadn’t, we can’t get back in there till a moon has gone by, so I figure you’ll have to rest up and we’ll do it the old-fash—”

  “CALLIOPE JENKINS, THIS IS THE POLICE.” The sound echoed through the room from the front parking lot of the motel. Vikous let out a growl that was the closest Calliope had ever heard him get to cursing and moved to peer through a break in the curtain. “WE HAVE THE BUILDING SURROUNDED. YOU ARE TO DISARM AND EXIT THE BUILDING IMMEDIATELY, SURRENDERING TO THE CUSTODY OF FEDERAL AGENTS ON-SITE.”

  “Federal—” Calliope began, then grimaced. “Cripes, didn’t you kill that son of a bitch?”

  “I didn’t have time, you were bleeding all over the place,” Vikous said. He turned back from the door and the covered window, assessing Calliope. “Can you stand up?”

  “Can you get us out of here?”

  “Maybe,” Vikous answered. His eyes became distant for a moment and he smiled, though it wasn’t pleasant. “Yeah, I can.”

  Calliope pushed at the covers with her left arm. “Then I can stand up.”

  It wasn’t as easy, Calliope realized, as it sounded. She’d taken the bullet just about halfway between her breastbone and the point of her right shoulder. The exit wound was clean and nothing major had been destroyed, but it was still a bullet that she had taken at close range less than twenty-four hours ago; it would be months—if ever—before she completely recovered. Her right arm was immobilized and someone—Vikous, obviously—had pulled a T-shirt on over the whole mess—something she was profoundly glad she hadn’t been awake for. She was wearing a pair of jeans, unfastened. When she checked the floor for socks and shoes, the room tilted and suddenly Vikous was standing next to her, looking tense.

  Calliope managed to smile. “Need a little help, I think.” Vikous nodded, had her sit down on the edge of the bed, and got to work. It took several minutes, during which Calliope had to tell the cops that they were coming out but had to get some clothes on first. It hurt to shout. Vikous arranged her leather coat around her as best as possible and stuffed a sweater down the front before zipping it up.

  He looked around the room, nodded to himself, and extended his hand to Calliope, who took it and stood. The room tried to tip again, but she was prepared this time and got herself under control after a few seconds. She nodded and they moved for the door.

  “When we get out there, raise your hand and don’t say anything. Don’t be threatening. I’ll do what needs doing.”

  Calliope eyed him. “You’re not going to try anything stupid, are you? I don’t want to get shot again.”

  Vikous grinned in a thoroughly unsettling fashion. “We’ll see.” He pulled open the door, moved Calliope into the open, and turned to pull the door closed.

  “PUT YOUR HANDS IN THE AIR!”

  Calliope raised the arm she could and squinted into the afternoon sunlight. Unlike the movies, the police hadn’t done anything stupid like parking their vehicles in a perfect half circle around the door. The closest uniform was down at the corner of the building. He had a rifle trained on her and was peering down the barrel from within a very solid-looking riot helmet. As far as she could see, no one else was within thirty yards. The other cops were using cover to their best advantage, blocking exits from the area but in no way putting themselves in danger. The guy calling out orders was all the way across the parking lot and hunkered down behind a vehicle. Calliope thou
ght Detective Johnson would have been impressed with the setup.

  Speaking of setup . . . Walker stood right next to the detective using the vehicle-mounted amplifier.

  Behind Calliope, Vikous was doing something with the door.

  “TURN AWAY FROM THE DOOR, DROP YOUR POSSESSIONS, AND PUT YOUR HANDS IN THE AIR.”

  “I think they’re talking to you,” Calliope muttered out of the side of her mouth. “Sorry, Officer,” she called out, noting with something between amusement and scorn that several of the cops twitched at the sound of her voice. “Some jack-off shot me yesterday—I’ve only got the one arm to raise.” She moved enough to make her empty right coat sleeve sway to illustrate, wincing as she did so.

  “MOVE TO THE GROUND. OFFICERS ARE MOVING IN.” There was a flurry of motion and raised voices behind the vehicle, barely audible from across the parking lot, then the bullhorn clicked again. “STEP AWAY FROM THE DOOR OR WE WILL FIRE.” Calliope heard the jingle of a key behind her and Vikous gasping for breath.

  “What are you doing?” She turned halfway around. “They’re going to shoot us.” She could hear boots scuffing on the pavement as pairs of police clad in full riot gear began to move in.

  “I dunno,” Vikous said, grinning at the door latch as he rotated the old motel key. Sweat poured down his face. “It’s kinda liberating to know you’ve already died once.”

  Calliope tried to grin back. “That’s great for you, but I haven’t.”

  His black eyes, bright in the afternoon light, turned to Calliope and the grin stretched farther. “Hang on, I want to try something.” He snaked an arm low around Calliope’s waist and swung her into his arms like a parent with a sleepy child, then kicked open the motel door and stepped back into the room they had just left.

  Calliope just had time to realize that there wasn’t anything where the room should have been before Vikous stepped over the threshold. The sounds of shouting policemen—all sound, in fact—cut off as the door snicked shut behind them and vanished.