by Rob Thurman
"Soft and sweet, your flesh, traveler." The cold tongue lapped blood from the wound. "Sweet and spiced with madness." He laughed then. It wasn't dark or deranged, deep or demonic. It was happy as a child with ice cream, and that was worse. So much fucking worse.
If ever there were a time for a gate, promise or not, this was it. But even if I could have managed one the size I needed, and I had head-splitting doubts that I could, Sawney would only have gone with me. Eat me here, eat me somewhere else, I didn't know the difference. I did know panic, though. Sheer, kick-in-the-gut panic, and I used it. I twisted the fear into energy and momentum and I tried again to throw the bastard off. This time, I did it. I didn't take the time to get to my feet. It was time I didn't have. I got to all fours and scrambled backward with all the speed I could muster. When you can smell your blood on someone's breath, that's pretty damn fast.
He was fast too. Faster than I was. Faster than anyone I'd seen. He was ten feet away and he was directly in front of me, yanking me up with a hand on my throat. Up, not to my feet—my feet weren't touching the floor and neither were his. We hung in the air, the goddamn air, three feet of empty space beneath us. He had two smiles now, one sheened with my blood and one the gleam of metal. It was the scythe from the museum. Sangrida had taken good care of it. It was as capable now of carving human flesh as it had been six hundred years ago. I'd seen that in Sawney's recent victims and I was about to feel it as well.
"Traveler, abide with me." Red light blazed to bloody suns. "Abide in me. Special boy with the special taste. The taste of madness, the taste of me." The cheer, the horrifically affectionate cheer, was the silken touch of a spider's fatal web, and I wished he would shut the hell up. I wished I weren't so sure it was Auphe madness he was tasting in me. I also wished I had brought my Desert Eagle with the explosive rounds. Wish in one hand and shit in the other and hope you aren't facing Sawney fucking Beane when you do it.
I was reaching for another blade, knowing it probably wouldn't do any good, but doing it anyway. Because you don't give up and you don't give in. Niko taught me that. If they're going to take you down, you make them pay. It was good advice. I'd been taken down before; I'd always made them sorry as hell. This bastard wasn't going to be any different.
And I wasn't a boy—special or otherwise. I wasn't a lost little girl or terrified pregnant woman either. When he sliced me up with his scythe, piece by piece, I would take the same from him. It might not kill him and it might not even hurt him, but I would take it anyway. I damn sure gave it my best shot. My knife punched through cloth that felt like flesh…could have been flesh for all I knew. This thing had come back from bone and ash. He remade himself; who knew the limits to that remaking? The blade slid into flesh, scraped bone, and kept going. This time I twisted it, viciously and with all the force I could manage. And he let me. Guests go first, right? It's when you're the guest and dinner all in one that you run into trouble.
I twisted again. The bastard was cold, like ice, and I could feel cold creeping up the metal to the hilt and into my hand. My knuckles cramped, but I wrenched the blade one last time. Sawney's patience had run out, however, and so had that of his scythe. It flashed toward me. They were like those paintings—Sawney and the scythe—the ones from the museum, the abstract kind. A metallic glitter of iron, scarlet light, a jet gloss of flesh, all fogged by thick darkness—a jumbled bit of art in motion as the scythe slashed. I couldn't see the whole, but it could see me.
Too bad it didn't see Nik.
The blade of the scythe missed my stomach by millimeters. It tore through my leather jacket as if it were no more substantial than an illusion as Niko hit Sawney from the side and carried him away from me. The icy clamp peeled from my throat and I fell. Landing in a crouch, I coughed against the air that had curdled in my frozen throat. Niko and Sawney had landed ten feet away: Niko on his feet and Sawney on his back with a sword pinning him to a wooden pallet. Dead center through his gut … or what I guessed to be his gut. The sword blade disappeared into the darkness that was Sawney, but Nik didn't stop there. His hand a blur of motion, he slammed a dagger into the Redcap's neck to pin him further. Then, because he was loaded for bear, he drew his second big blade. He'd seen how much effect my gun and my knife had had, but he swung the machete anyway. When I saw where he aimed, I knew what he was thinking. If you can't kill it …
Disassemble it.
My brother in action; it was something to see. When he lifted his blade, he had the grace and elegance of Lancelot on the field of honor, and when he brought it down, he had the efficiency of the family butcher down the street. The metal bit through the shoulder joint of the arm that controlled the scythe and then Nik kicked it away. Not the weapon— the entire arm. Yeah, safe to say that when Niko disarmed someone, he didn't fuck around. Proof positive was in the next blow. He'd seen how quick Sawney was with that scythe, and he'd taken care of that first. Now the second step was to end it. Sawney's head was the next thing to be kicked across the floor or it should've been, but things were never that easy.
Before Nik could take that next blow, Sawney exploded upward into the air above us, suddenly upright and with his feet at least three feet above the floor. The surge tossed Niko backward with the force of a vicious, storm-driven wave. Impaled by a sword and dagger, the legend hung suspended. Hung and gurgled. It was only when he pulled the dagger from his throat that I recognized the gurgle for what it was. Laughter.
I lunged at him as his hand, the one he had left, moved to the hilt of Niko's sword to pull it free. I reached him as the blade came loose and the wooden pallet clattered to the floor. "Pretty." Sawney held the sword high. "A fetching blade. Bonny. Bonnybonnybonny." The laughter ratcheted higher and higher into the crazed cackle of a hyena—bloody-mouthed, full-bellied, and happy. Two of a kind, because Sawney was that, through and through. When I jumped up and hit him, the laughter didn't stop. It kept on and on, all I could hear.
My tackle didn't move him, not an inch. How he managed to float there, I didn't know. Or care. I just wanted him dead, down, or both. With my arms wrapped around his torso, he and I hung suspended in the air, like flies in amber…until Niko joined us. He didn't add the weight of his body, though. He was smarter there than I had been. He used a more effective weight, that of a baseball bat. At least that's what it felt like, even from the other side of it. A massive blow was slammed across Sawney's back. It did what I hadn't. We tumbled through the air and hit the front of the van, the hood, and then the windshield. It cracked underneath us, but held—just barely. I grabbed for the sword in Sawney's hand, but he was already gone, disappearing upward into the darkness. Niko was in his place almost instantly, a black metal rod in his hand. Telescoping and two feet long, it wasn't a baseball bat. It was an illegal version of a police baton and a helluva lot more vicious than your average Louisville Slugger.
"New toy?" I asked hoarsely.
"I like to treat myself once in a while." He held out a hand and pulled me out of the hollow my impact had formed in the safety glass. I made it to my knees, considered trying for my feet, and decided against it. Bracing myself on the hood of the van, I looked up and saw nothing. Not a damn thing.
"Shit." I had his smell now, up close and personal. Ice, bone, and insanity. I hadn't known the latter had a specific scent. It did. "He's gone." It was true. The taint in the air had faded a fraction, from present to past.
"I'm not surprised." Nik slipped off the hood and away to return seconds later. "He took his arm and scythe with him."
"So much for souvenirs." My chest was beginning to hurt, the cotton wool ache migrating to a raw acid sear. It burned so savagely that I didn't want to look at the damage Sawney had left behind. Setting my teeth against the pain, I eased my way from the hood down to the floor. It wasn't graceful, but it wasn't a drunken stumble either. It didn't matter; Niko spotted the hesitation immediately.
He didn't waste time asking if I was hurt; he went straight to the heart of the matter. "Where?"
"He …" I gave a reluctant dark laugh as I laid the flat of my hand on my chest. It was too strange, too goddamn weird. And terrifying. It made it hard to find the words and harder to put them out there. "Jesus. He ate me."
Niko didn't laugh in turn. He didn't see the humor, dark or otherwise. Truthfully neither did I. With a pen flashlight from his pocket for the examination, he pushed aside my hand and spread my jacket. He didn't have to lift my shirt. I guessed the hole in it matched the one in me. Straight-shot viewing. For him … I didn't bother to look, not yet. Nik's face, calm, became even more so. It wasn't a good sign. "I suppose I get to be the pretty one now," he said lightly. Minutes later, I had a thick bulk of gauze taped to my upper chest. There wasn't much blood soaking through and that didn't necessarily seem a positive. And when Niko's hand fastened onto the back of my jacket to urge me into a walk, that didn't seem like one either.
"I'm okay," I insisted. I was. It hurt like hell, but I was all right. I certainly could walk. One foot in front of the other—it's not that difficult.
"I know," he said agreeably. Far too agreeably, and he didn't let go as we walked outside and hailed a cab.
"You lost your sword." He'd lost it only once before … to Hob. Hob the kidnapper. Hob the megalomaniac. Hob the shit-head. It wasn't a good memory. The homicidal puck had nearly killed Nik, and I'd used Nik's sword to return the favor. "You lost your sword," I said again, oddly shook-up over it. More than I should've been. After all, Sawney wasn't Hob and Niko was right here.
"I'll get it back or I'll get a new one. It doesn't matter." His grip on me tightened as my legs went a little rubbery…developed a mind of their own. Yet one more thing to add to the "not good" list.
"You know," I said with a sudden dawning of truth, "Mr. Goldstein would've kicked Lancelot's ass."
"The butcher?" He gave it the solemn consideration it deserved. "I believe you're right." Damn straight I was, but there was no denying I had a new empathy for the cows that Mr. Goldstein chopped into steaks and rump roasts.
Being the cow wasn't much fun.
8
We made it home in record time for New York traffic, which was nice. I liked home. Home was good. Sawney wasn't there and massive painkillers were. It was a win-win.
"We need a healer. Now."
"Yes, I know we need a healer, Niko," Goodfellow said with a strained patience. "But we don't have one."
We'd had a healer. Rafferty Jeftichew. He'd saved my life once upon a time. Twice upon a time actually. But he'd disappeared in the past month. Closed up his house and vanished. When your healer took off, it was bad news, especially if you didn't know if your insides matched your human outsides. And a hospital would know, Rafferty had told us, either from imaging or blood work.
"A doctor, then." It was said with determination although Niko knew better…knew it wasn't possible.
"And what?" Robin shot back. "Tell them Caliban was attacked by a small bear in the park or perhaps a large homeless man with a voracious appetite and a taste for the other white meat?"
I opened my eyes. "It's not that bad."
Goodfellow stared at me incredulously while Niko pointed out, "You haven't looked at it yet, Cal." His mouth tightened. "Reserve judgment."
"Ignorance is bliss." I closed my eyes again and let the fuzz of codeine carry me along as the discussion went on without me. After the cab had dropped us off, we still had to get up to the apartment. I almost hadn't made it. Once he'd half carried me upstairs, Niko had called in reinforcements and then turned to cleaning my wound. Or attempting to. It didn't sound as if it had gone well. When Robin had arrived, there had been talk of possible muscle damage, surgery, skin grafts. All impossible for me. While the discussion went on, I lay in bed and drifted; there wasn't much else to do. I suggested once that Robin and Nik help themselves to a few pain pills too. It really took the urgency out of things. They didn't take me up on it. Their loss.
"He can't heal like this," Niko declared emphatically. "Infection alone would kill him. We'll get a doctor, a surgeon if necessary."
"And by 'get' you mean…?" Robin asked dubiously.
"You know what I mean," Niko said flatly.
That cut through the happy-pill hoedown. "Jesus, Nik." This time I struggled to sit up. The pain swelled for several excruciating moments, then receded as I made it upright and stopped moving. I sucked in a breath and held it until I could speak without a ragged edge shaking my voice. "You can't kidnap a doctor. That's the kind of trouble we can't deal with." Monster trouble, yeah. That we could do. Human trouble was to be avoided at all cost. At best, we'd have to leave New York. We had lives here. Niko and Promise had a life. I wasn't going to cost them that.
"It's trouble I'll deal with. Lie back down." It was said in a tone that brooked no argument. I argued anyway—go figure.
"No way." It was cold. Our landlord wasn't above skimping on the heat. What landlord was? I grabbed a handful of blanket and pulled it up toward the large bandage on my bare chest. Or rather I tried. My left arm was weak, functional but only barely. They'd said it and I hadn't listened. Muscle damage. Nik's eyes darkened as he watched my slow progress. "No goddamn way," I repeated stubbornly as I finally got the blanket up. "Loman, you have to know a doctor. One who'd keep his mouth shut. You know everyone, right?" The codeine helped with the discomfort, but it didn't do anything for the weariness, the bone-deep exhaustion. I slumped back against the headboard despite myself, taking the blanket with me.
"One would think." He was still pale from his own wounds, but he looked better than he had. The poison was passing out of his system. That was some good news anyway. "I met Hippocrates once. I wouldn't have let him treat a pig. Cross-eyed, fond of the bottle, and desperately searching for a cure for his own personal crotch rot." That breezy, cocky smile he was so very good at faded. "I'm sorry."
Knuckles rested on my forehead and then my jaw. "Give him more Tylenol in an hour." Niko's hand was as icy as the room, as icy as I felt. It didn't take a genius to know that meant I was running a pretty good fever. And codeine, as helpful as it was in other areas, wasn't going to bring it down. "I'll be back," he went on, unbending in his goal. It was easy to translate. Niko was going someplace where he could snatch a doctor. Hospital, probably. And that would be the beginning of the end.
I'd done the same for him once. I'd struggled against that same damn dilemma. Although at the time, I doubt I knew dilemma was even a word. I'd been seven and Niko eleven, back before the Auphe had snatched me and I'd lost two years in their dimension while only two days had passed in ours.
I didn't get sick much when I was a kid…only once in my life that I remembered and it had been Niko who'd taken care of me. I'd have died long before Sophia ever noticed I was ill. Bourbon and whiskey are great for glossing over the annoying events of a parent's daily life. When Niko got sick, it wasn't any different.
What started out as a cold became bronchitis and finally pneumonia. With that came the dilemma. We didn't have insurance, and we didn't have a mother willing to take Nik to the doctor. If you show up at the doctor sick as a dog and without a parent, they notice. They notice enough to get Social Services involved. Maybe foster care would've been better than what we had. It couldn't have been much worse, but there were no guarantees they wouldn't split us up. Niko was old enough to know that and he made sure I knew it too.
We weren't going to be split up. Period.
But when you're seven and the brother who's your whole damn world is too sick to get out of bed, you have to do something. Anything. I was too young for kidnapping, but there were other things I could do. We lived in a trailer park then and we had a few elderly neighbors. Old people had medicine, lots of it. But those same old people hated to leave their trailers. Hated it like poison. I'd wanted Nik to tell me what to do, but he was so desperately sick and even more stubborn. He didn't want me doing anything stupid. At seven years old, that was about all I could do.
Old people make an excepti
on about leaving their homes when there's a fire. I'd torched an empty trailer two rows over with Sophia's lighter and a half-empty bottle of Old Crow. When everyone had run or hobbled over to watch the bonfire, I'd raided medicine cabinets. I wouldn't have known an antibiotic from blood pressure medicine, so I'd taken it all. Shoved bottle after bottle in my backpack, and after hitting four trailers, I'd run home to pour them in Niko's lap. They had cascaded down onto the blanket, bright and shining plastic reams of them.
"Which one?" I'd demanded desperately. "Which me?"
It had worked out then. I didn't have faith that the same would hold true now.
I made a grab for his arm, using my right hand this time. Between the drugs and the fever, it still wasn't much of an attempt. I missed. Promise didn't. She'd entered the room as quietly as she entered all rooms. Laying a hand on his arm, she slid it down to curl around his own hand. "I've brought assistance." She released Niko to move closer and rest a hand on the blankets over my leg. "She's not a doctor, but she can help." Glancing over her shoulder, she called, "Delilah?"
She appeared in the doorway. Flay's sister. I could see the resemblance instantly, although they were more different than alike. She was of better breeding, which would make her Flay's half sister. Flay could barely manage a half-human form. He was plainly a werewolf for anyone who had the eyes and the intelligence to look. With Delilah you would never know. She also had a hint of Asian features in her almond-shaped amber eyes. Where Flay had albino white hair, hers was silver-blond, very nearly as pale. It was pulled into a high ponytail at the crown of her head and hung ruler straight to midback. A stylized necklace was tattooed choker-style around her neck. The jewels set in Celtic swirls were eyes, wolf, all of them. Gold, red, green, brown, pumpkin orange…and the softer amber of her own eyes. An unbelievably talented artist had imbued them with emotion. Some were full of laughter, some curiosity, some hunger, all of them astonishingly real.