by Rob Thurman
With the hundreds of crates, it was close quarters for my gun and I drew my knife. It wasn't a sword, but at twelve jagged inches it was close enough. "Is the flashlight just a special effect," I asked Robin, "or do the lights work down here?"
"In this section, no. Wahanket disables them on a routine basis." Goodfellow had placed the flashlight on a dust-coated, empty display case and cautiously stepped away from it to keep from giving away his position in the darkness. Niko moved several steps in the other direction, and using his free hand on the top edge, vaulted onto a five-foot-tall crate.
And he immediately came crashing back down under several hundred pounds of scales and surging muscle. For one brief second, I saw the snapping of dinosaur-sized jaws, the flare of orange eyes in the glow of the stationary flashlight. I saw a yellowed ivory grin.
Then reality slid into place, and I slid with it, sinking my blade into the eye of the writhing monstrosity on top of Niko. Not a dinosaur—hell, the Met didn't even have dinosaurs—but something just as horrific in its own right. It was a serpent, the size of a man and half again as long, with the powerful legs and feet of a jungle cat. The inky black of its underbelly was spotted with the palest finger smudges of gold, and it blended into the darkness so efficiently that once it flowed off Niko, it disappeared instantly. But first, there was the grate of its bony eye socket against my knife as it ripped its massive head off the blade, the twist of a heavy tail that slammed me against a crate several feet away, and a steam-whistle screech that had my ears ringing.
"Caliban?"
I could see only the faintest smear above me, a pale oval to go with Robin's distant call of my name. I blinked. It didn't improve things any. If anything, it made things worse. Orange, black, gold—a hurricane rush, and then the oval and the voice were gone. It was just me and the darkness. Shit. I tried rolling over. Once, twice, three times was the charm. Three times was also a faceful of floor, but it was still progress. I managed to get my hands under me and push up. I was halfway there when a hand under my arm boosted me the rest of the way.
Nik. I steadied myself with a hand on his shoulder, then pulled it back when I felt the wet warmth. "Shit. You okay?"
"It's not mine. Have some faith, little brother." He'd vanished under something that could've been a baby T. Rex, showed up dripping with blood, and I was supposed to have faith. I looked at my hand briefly before wiping it on my jeans. It was hard to tell with only the reflected glow of the flashlight, but the liquid on my skin looked pale gold, not red. That, more than Niko's denial, halted the twist in my gut.
"Where's Robin?" My knife was at the base of the crate I'd impacted and I moved to retrieve it.
"I think it took him." He was already moving, following spatters of the monster's blood, and I came up hard on his heels. We were silent from that moment on. It would probably hear us coming nonetheless, but we didn't have to make it easy for it … because we would find it. We would get Goodfellow back. This was nothing compared to the shit we'd all gone through together. A big lizard—a pissed-off giant gecko. So what? Hell, Robin would make a belt out of it by the time we caught up.
Boxes and boxes, a labyrinth of them every which way I turned. I clipped several as we ran. We'd left the flashlight behind. It would give us away quicker than my nose would. There was some light now— small emergency lights up in the corner juncture of ceiling and wall. Hank hadn't gotten to these yet, but they were dim enough to do more harm than good. They created impenetrable pits of black shadow that looked as thick and sticky as tar and just as capable of sucking us into suffocating depths. They'd make good places for a serpent to hide and wait for its next meal to wander by.
Or to leave what was left of its last one.
I saw his sword then, lying on the floor half in and half out of the shadow. Robin didn't treat his weapons with the reverence Niko did, but neither did he discard them carelessly like trash. "Niko?" I said grimly.
"I see it." He disappeared into the blackness to investigate, and I kept following the blood. As I passed a stagecoach, fake trees, and a massive stuffed bear, the spatters turned into an unbroken trail.
"Follow the Yellow Brick Road," I muttered as I careened around a corner into the next room, slipped, and nearly fell in a lake of lizard fluid. It stretched almost seven feet across and was still flowing sluggishly from the belly of the serpent. Minute tremors ran under the scaled hide, but it lay on its side with its mouth open and unmoving. The remaining eye stared at nothing as a putrid stench began to seep from the hundreds of slices that bisected the stomach.
There were leaves in the blood, courtesy of the fake trees stored nearby. A bright and artificial green, they floated serenely on the golden surface. It was a bizarrely peaceful and strangely beautiful scene, and I hovered warily on the edge of it. "Robin?" The serpent was still alive…dying, yeah, but there was life in it yet. And it only took an ounce of life to make a ton of murderous purpose capable of impossible vengeance. No one likes to go out alone, not even snakes. "Goodfellow?" He was there somewhere. Had to be. What could possibly kill that smug, vain, irritating son of a bitch? "Robin, where the fuck are—"
"Here."
He slipped out of the night forest of fake trees to my right. Like Niko, he was covered in blood that wasn't his own. It stained his expensive clothes, slicked the equally expensive haircut, and coated the blade he carried. He'd lost the one, but he had others—which was why he'd lived so long and why he was still here right now. "Christ." I scowled instantly, shoving the relief down. "I thought your worthless ass was a footnote. Ancient history."
"From a sirrush?" He sluiced a handful of yellow fluid from his face and slung it to the floor. If that hand shook, he would claim it was from exertion. Considering how many slashes had been needed to take down the lizard, it might even be the truth. "Do you mock me? On my best day, I could take on an entire nest of them and barely work up a sweat. I might even have time to squeeze in a margarita and massage, happy ending of course."
He was still talking, but I'd stopped listening. It wasn't only monster blood after all. There was red mixed in with the gold. Puck red. "Robin?"
Stopping in midsentence, he met my gaze and followed it to the red staining his shirt and pants. "Ah. Yes." His sword dropped from his hand as he swayed slightly. "Not exactly as gentle as a cat with her kitten, was it?"
It had carried him away, either in a clawed grip or in its massive mouth. Definitely not gentle. I didn't carry the first aid supplies Niko did, and I wasn't as good with them either. I took Goodfellow's arm to keep him upright and turned my head to call for my brother. I didn't get the opportunity.
Impossible vengeance, and here it came.
Goodfellow had called it a sirrush. That sounded like something that could fly. This one didn't have wings, so in reality it couldn't. But it soared through the air regardless. With the same grace and power as a spring-propelled cougar, it catapulted toward us. I only had the time to get the impression of a kaleidoscope of teeth, claws, and scales before it was on us. The wounded can be dangerous—the dying can be almost invincible. There was no time for a blade. No time for a gun. There was time for only one thing.
I built the gateway. In the past, I'd created them several feet away…made for walking through. This one I built around us. I'd never done that before. I'd barely built a handful of gates in my life, and trying something new wasn't the brightest thing to do. It was the boldest, though, and bold was all that could save us now. Gray light outlined us, a tarnished and tainted silver glimmer. I felt the turn in my stomach, the burn at the base of my skull, the twist of reality, and then we were one room back. Behind Niko. And ahead of him came the sound of the sirrush slamming into the wall where we had been standing a fraction of a second ago.
"Skata," Robin gurgled at my side before he hit the floor. I would've held him up, if I could've stayed up myself. As the gateway popped out of existence, I went down as well. While Goodfellow fell flat, I managed to stop my descent at my kne
es. My head was a tight ball of agony and my face felt warm and wet. I swiped at it and came away with a blood-coated hand. I'd learned some control over the traveling several months ago when facing down George's and Niko's kidnapper, but I hadn't made a gate since. It didn't come as easily as I remembered…not that it had been easy before, but it hadn't hurt. It had nauseated and terrified but it hadn't hurt. It hurt now.
I felt the warmth at my ears too. From nose and ears, I was apparently a faucet and that couldn't be good. "Cal." I looked up from my dripping hand to see Niko's face before mine. It was a little blurry— not quite double vision, but almost. The sirrush was blurry as well…blurry, enraged, and coming toward us. A little more slowly now, but still coming.
Niko heard it before I had a chance to open my mouth to warn him. Flashing a hand under my jacket, he pulled my gun, whirled, and fired. Two shots careened off the skull, but seven more went through the remaining eye with exquisite precision. Niko wasn't particularly fond of guns—he felt they lacked grace and technique—but that didn't mean he wasn't good with one. If it could kill, Niko knew how to use it and use it well. The sirrush went down when the bullets hit, and this time it stayed down.
My weapon was reholstered smoothly, and Niko continued calmly. "You're a mess."
There was no arguing with that. "Yeah," I verified, and wiped at my face again, this time using my sleeve. Leather wasn't good at sopping up blood and I could feel it smear things to a much worse degree. "Robin's worse." A sick groan from the floor confirmed it.
"Don't do that again." The puck curled on his side and gave a nasty dry heave. Apparently, it was less his wounds and more a profound case of motion sickness. "Don't ever, ever do that again."
"Right. Being eaten would've been better. What was I thinking?" My knees decided enough was enough and I sat hard on my ass. Dropping my head in my hands, I clenched my fingers at my temples and aimed a muffled query at Niko. "Tylenol? Aspirin? Morphine?"
"Head?" I felt his fingers below my ears, checking the flow of blood. I didn't nod. I couldn't begin to imagine what that would feel like, but it wouldn't be pleasant. Luckily, Niko didn't need the confirmation. While one hand rested lightly on the back of my neck, he used the other to pull out his cell phone. Within seconds he was informing Sangrida Odinsdóttir that she had a dead sirrush in her basement as well as two wounded warriors and he would appreciate whatever help she could offer that fell short of a trip to Valhalla.
A half hour later we were back at Niko's and my apartment courtesy of Sangrida's private car. By that time, Goodfellow could walk, more or less, and I'd stopped bleeding. The headache hadn't eased any, though, and I let Niko lead me along as I covered my eyes with my hand. The thin glow of the hallway light was suddenly a hundred times worse than staring directly at the sun, and it felt like molten lava pouring directly into my eyes to fry my brain with laser thoroughness.
Inside our place, Niko steered me to the couch, pulled the blinds, and turned off the lights. "I'll dress Robin's wounds in my bedroom. Rest."
As a sign of how truly miserable he felt, Goodfellow didn't have a word, rapaciously sexual or otherwise, to say about being in Niko's bedroom. Fifteen minutes later Nik was back to settle onto the couch beside me. I'd slid and slouched down enough that my head rested against the back of the sofa and my legs sprawled wide. "Robin?" I asked, turning my head cautiously to look at him.
"It wasn't as bad as it appeared at first glance. Several penetrating claw wounds to his arms and legs, but they're fairly clean. No ripping. I believe traveling with you through your gateway affected him more. Pucks don't take well to it is my guess." He handed me a wet washcloth for my face. I'd cleaned it up as best I could in the car using the front of my shirt…just enough to get me into our building without people stopping to donate money to the axe-maniac survivor fund.
"Probably no one does." I scrubbed at my face, careful not to jostle my head too much. If it weren't for my Auphe half, the nausea I felt when opening and traveling through the gate would be a helluva lot more debilitating. "No one normal."
Niko frowned, a slight downturn of tightened lips. "You know better." He'd spent a lifetime, mine at least, telling me that I was normal, that I wasn't Auphe, wasn't a monster. Though he could save my life, my sanity, and everything in between, it was the one thing he couldn't fix, couldn't change. But I'd finally come to realize that as long as I could remain who I was, I could survive what I was. It was only bad genes. Alcoholism gene, cancer gene, monster gene, choose your poison and work around it. Thanks to Niko, I was doing that. And when I faltered in that belief, he was there to kick my butt back on the path.
I dropped the washcloth on my leg. In the past opening a gate would drain me, exhaust me. Goodfellow had once said that he thought that would pass with practice. He was right. I was tired, damn tired, but not like I had been in the past. But the headache…shit. What the hell was with that? And the blood? The last time I'd used the ability months ago, I'd opened a gate and kept it open for nearly a half hour. Maybe a full-blooded Auphe could do that with ease, but I didn't think so. Ripping a hole in the world or between worlds—it wasn't something meant to be long-term. "I think I broke something." I grimaced, massaging my forehead with the heel of my hand.
Niko picked up the cloth and pulled my hand back down to fold my fingers around the damp material. Steering it to the area on my jaw by my ear, he released me and agreed, "I think you may have." He waited until I'd wiped at my skin again for a few seconds, then took the bloody cloth from me and put it aside. "Or strained it. How is the headache? Improved any?"
We'd thrown some Tylenol at it. We may as well have thrown it down the toilet and flushed. "It'll pass," I evaded. "On the plus side, I can still hear." Through the open door in the hall came a nasal snore more suited to a constipated moose than a puck. "But on the downside, I can still hear."
"You didn't rupture your eardrums, then. Do they still hurt as well?"
"Let's write off the entire area above the neck. It'll save some time." I knew what he was thinking. CAT scans, MRIs, all the things that weren't possible for me. Our mother, Sophia, had never been one for doctors or anything that cost money. We got our shots at whatever local clinic we were living near at the time, but only because the schools demanded it. If I got hurt or Niko got sick, we toughed it out. And when we were older, Niko and I had come to the realization that hospitals…any place with imaging equipment, any place that would want blood tests…were out. I was human on the outside, but it might not be the same on the inside. We'd eventually met a healer and when he'd found out the truth about me, he'd confirmed it. I was different. Subtly, but noticeably different. I didn't ask how. I didn't want to know.
The bottom line was, no hospitals for me. And as our healer hadn't answered his phone in a while, we had to make do. This was another make-do situation.
"No more gates, Cal," Niko said uncompromisingly. "None."
"Maybe if I give it a few months," I hedged. I didn't like opening them. It only reminded me of a part of myself I'd sooner forget. But there was no denying that if you had your back to a wall with a giant serpent leaping at you, it came in handy.
"It's been several months already." He stood and headed into the kitchen. "Next time it might be your brain that comes out of your ears. I'd like to avoid that." Returning, he handed me a soft pack from the freezer. "Although it would be proof there was something in your skull besides laziness and inept swordsmanship skills."
With the pack covering my eyes and the cold seeping through, I relaxed minutely. "You forgot my blinding charisma and stunning popularity."
This time he didn't play along. "No more gates, Cal. I mean it."
I gave in for the moment, peering out from under the pack at him, but I had a feeling I was making a promise I couldn't keep. More honestly, didn't intend to keep. "Okay. No more gates." I'd survived nearly my whole life without them, but there was no denying that an emergency exit like that could save my life. Something to think
about…maybe later when Nik wasn't studying me so suspiciously. Sliding down another few inches, I pulled the pack back in place and waited for the cold to kick in and lessen the headache. "Robin said it was a sirrush, whatever the hell that is. So, what was it doing in the basement trying to eat us? Do you think Wahanket sent it after us? That'd be about par for the fucking course with Goodfellow's buddies."
"I asked him while dressing the puncture wounds. He said no, that it wasn't Wahanket's 'style.' "
"But did the wizened son of a bitch know it was there?" I pressed.
"That, Robin said, would be entirely his style," Niko said sardonically. "And a sirrush is a Babylonian creature—part snake, part cat. Why it was hunting in the basement of the Met is anyone's guess."
"Everyone makes it to the Big Apple sooner or later, huh? See the sights." The cold was beginning to work, easing the pain somewhat, and I yawned. "The Valkyrie going to pay us for the extermination on the side?"
"I've always enjoyed your sunny optimism, little brother."
I was glad someone did.
5
As much as I hated kidnapping cases, I wasn't a whole lot fonder of the extermination ones, but work was work, and money was money. And truthfully, extermination came up about as often as kidnapping did. Where's the cool factor in that? No-damn-where. We'd also done babysitting, and babysitting something that can eat you if you try to give it a timeout makes exterminating a fun gig by comparison. Usually. Mostly. On the whole.
Other times you just get screwed.
And that morning we ended up so very, very screwed. After three hours out on Staten Island, we'd taken the ferry back to Manhattan and made our way home with clothes singed and hair covered in bird shit all courtesy of an Aitvaras, otherwise known as a demonic chicken from hell. A fire-breathing, crap-slinging half rooster, half serpent that weighed all of sixty pounds had nearly served our asses to us on a silver platter. It'd also burned down one-third of the house of our less than completely satisfied client. And a less than completely satisfied gargoyle isn't a pretty sight. A satisfied one isn't either for that matter, but they hawk up less granite-sprinkled phlegm when paying the bill.