Slashback

by Rob Thurman

  “It’s not your breath.” Nik stood, unsteady but only if you knew to look for it. He reached down and pulled me up. “You use that idiotic kid’s toothpaste. Your breath smells like mint-chocolate . . . and onion chili-cheese dogs with mustard . . . and Mountain Dew. All right, it might be your breath. But more likely it’s that we have tended to kill their friends or relatives—and perhaps neighbors, pets, babysitters in the past.”

  “They hold grudges . . . like bitchy little girls.” I swayed but managed to stay upright.

  “They hold grudges like murderous creatures who would eat us on the best of days.” Niko raised a hand as if he was going to try to wipe away some of the goo that covered me, but then pulled his hand back. “You are a lost cause.” Then he slid behind me, put a boot in my ass, and shoved me headfirst into the river.

  Sputtering, I climbed back out of the water. “I don’t like you drunk. You do hurtful things you can’t take back. PSA from me to you.” I was clean of slime, but not necessarily smelling much better. The East River wasn’t a mountain spring, although the mob—the human mob—had stopped dumping bodies there years ago.

  “I would’ve done that sober,” Nik said placidly.

  “True. You suck.” I shook water off in the tried-and-true dog method and managed to splatter him in the process.

  “So you have told me many times. Many, many, many . . . enough that I am considering buying duct tape for your mouth . . . times.”

  “You would be the one person, Nik, who doesn’t change at all when drunk.” I snorted and flung off more water. “I was hoping you’d loosen up and do some crazy shit. Crazy for you anyway—like try to trim Ishiah’s wings into those creepy topiary shapes from The Shining if he was around. Or whip up some soy piña coladas—but, you know, manly piña coladas, then sit on me and force me to watch a Kung Fu marathon. But, nope. You’re the same.”

  “And you excel at pointing out the obvious. Let’s go. We learned nothing we didn’t already know, that he might be a storm spirit, but no one knows for certain. I’m annoyed. Plus I imagine I’m going to have a hangover. I’d rather have it in my bed than facedown on the grass.”

  That I agreed with. It wouldn’t do to leave the vodka bottles for whoever wanted to risk the vyodanoi slime for them. The homeless wouldn’t be a problem. Some overly curious biologist who’d never seen slime of that particular consistency and color before so let’s get that puppy under a microscope would be. I picked up a bottle in each hand and we turned to start slogging home through the park. The sky was now the color of snow melting into a sewer drain. It didn’t bode well for blue skies and a sunny day. That was good. Sunny days were hell on a hangover.

  Minutes later Niko took my arm. “Stop.”

  I knew that tone even in this state. I dropped the vodka and had a hand inside my jacket and resting on the butt of my Desert Eagle almost before the bottles hit the ground. There was a time I wouldn’t have carried something in both hands; I always kept a hand free. When I was a little more human, a little less Auphe, and a lot less arrogant.

  Maybe a little less drunk too.

  My eyes narrowed. Not against the sun, which was practically nonexistent, but against two pieces of knowledge. The first being the uneasy fact I was going to have to come clean with Nik about what had happened at the Ninth Circle. The second being that I might have fucked up. It wasn’t guaranteed, but it was enough to cut through the haze of alcohol blurring my vision with a spike of adrenaline. What were the odds of a paien obsessed with punishing the wicked and a bunch of humans talking about prayer and Heaven with knives in their hands and death in their hearts?

  I’d sent eight of them out of this world three nights ago, if only temporarily, and now here were ten more to replace them. That made me question that “temporarily” issue with the others. They were the same as the others. Once-white hoodies, the smell of homelessness but not the smell of drugs or alcohol, fairly young, and each one with a knife that glittered as brightly as the judgment in their eyes.

  They stood between us and the edge of the park and how did they know that’s where we’d be? A storm spirit that could appear and disappear at will would be good at following its targets, high enough not to be seen or smelled. Shit. I had fucked up. No way around it. But why would Jack have a human posse at his heels when a human was only another wicked scrap of flesh to be squirreled away and drooled over later? If there was logic in that, I wasn’t seeing it.

  One of the men, this one with dirty brown dreads, stepped closer. “Have you prayed? Have you prayed to Heaven to be lifted up?” He was staring at Niko, who had set his feet and looked much steadier than he had moments ago—definitely mind over matter. The man’s question as earnest as it could be when framed by psychotic eyes and a knife.

  Luckily there was no one in this part of the park this early—barely dawn. “What about me?” I drawled. “Isn’t Heaven concerned about me?” . . . anymore.

  That brought the attention of ten pair of eyes to me. The leader of this Eat, Pray, Kill club answered. “Heaven cannot hear your prayers, Godless creature. You are a blot on the earth.”

  Apparently once Jack had found out about the Auphe in me he had spread the good word. Heaven didn’t want me, loathed my very existence, and I’d thought it had sucked to be picked last at dodgeball.

  They were connected all right. Yep, I’d fucked up. Fucked up bad.

  Now they were moving toward us. It seemed they’d happily stab Niko and sing a hymn or two as his soul was lifted up unto Heaven, but they’d also just as happily kill me and where my soul went, they didn’t give a crap. As I wasn’t sure I had a soul or that souls existed at all, I didn’t much give a crap myself, but I would like to stay alive—screw the philosophical debate.

  I pulled the Eagle and aimed it at the one in front. My hand wasn’t as steady as I’d like, but at least I didn’t have double vision. “Okay, Nik, time for a little guidance. They’re killers, but they could be insane so technically it might not be their fault. This is one of those gray areas where someone with a better handle on morality should call the shots. My decision might be extreme.” I’d already proven that once before. “Do we kill them or not?”

  I personally thought that if they were crazy, it wasn’t a kind of crazy you could fix. It was a kind of crazy they had chosen. They’d picked up knives instead of pamphlets. If they had chosen Jack on top of the rest of it, hell, there was no pill for that. Also, I didn’t like being stabbed. It was one of my least favorite injuries. Avoiding that would be good.

  “No killing.” Niko had his sword out. “Even impaired, you’re more than good enough to take them down without necessarily killing all of them.”

  It wasn’t what I wanted to hear, but it was what I expected. Unless one of them got very lucky there was still more than enough distance to do as Nik wanted. The same hadn’t necessarily been true at the Ninth Circle, but, then again, whose fault had that been?

  “You will not touch us. We are sanctified, soon to be apprentices. You took once, but you will not be allowed to take again,” said the one still striding toward us.

  Yeah . . . that sounded good. But he was wrong. The crazies usually are. I liked that dependable quality in them.

  I started firing. I was a good shot. I practiced daily and had since I was sixteen. That made a thigh shot easy enough and hopefully shatter the bone. They might walk after that, but they wouldn’t ever run again, with or without a knife. If I hadn’t been trading shots of vodka with Boris, I would’ve done that. But it was too risky now. If a single shot went astray, went past one of them, someone two blocks away could die while talking on their cell phone. Not good. I aimed for the good old center mass as they taught you first day on the gun range. The first three fell before the others realized what was happening and dissolved into a small charging mob. They had guts, crazy or not, and if Niko had thought they were more of a threat their guts would’ve been on the grass. As it was, he had ample time to flank them and hamstring fo
ur of them. That left one turning on him and two still coming at me. I shot them both in the stomach. Depending on the speed of the ambulances and the skill of the surgeons, some of them could survive. I’d made the effort. It was the best I could do.

  Niko had grabbed the hair of one he’d put down either about to ask what cult he belonged to or to give him tips on how to better grip his knife while attacking, but the scream of approaching sirens put an end to that. I grabbed one of the bottles of vodka and tossed it to him and carried the last myself as we ran. I’d never been fingerprinted. Nothing would show up, but neither did I want my fingerprints on file as unknown assailant in a homeless Hibachi practice gone horribly wrong.

  We were halfway home when Niko finally said what I wasn’t jumping to volunteer. “I don’t think that was any sort of coincidence, do you?”

  I thought about opening the vodka, thought long and hard never mind my head was already aching, before admitting, “I think it’s the second noncoincidence to happen to me this week.”

  12

  Niko

  Twelve Years Ago

  Coincidence, I wasn’t a big believer . . . philosophically or practically.

  The books I’d started reading on men and women throughout history and their thoughts on the universe, the ones I was drawn to the most told me coincidence was my mind glimpsing a truth I didn’t understand.

  There were more coincidences around Junior than I cared for.

  But a serial killer next door—it would be ridiculous overkill on the universe’s part with all the rest we had in our lives. How could someone believe that? What I meant, of course, was how could I believe that?

  I decided what I found in the library at the end of the day would make up my mind for me. If I found something about a missing prostitute, unlikely, Cal and I would leave. If I found nothing, I’d tell Cal he was wrong, to stay out of Junior’s backyard, and we’d get on with our lives—as weird and strange as those lives were.

  The decision should’ve made me feel better, but the back of my neck itched as I continued with the test on my desk. Miss Holcomb, the psychology teacher, hovered over my shoulder watching for a few minutes although I always scored As and never needed help. Some teachers took their jobs very seriously and sometimes . . . I sighed and finished up.

  With each period and through lunch the itch grew worse until finally it was sixth period and time for study hall and the library. I liked school. I always had. I liked any and all subjects. I liked reading ahead as the classes were too slow. That didn’t change when I skipped a grade. But while I liked schools I was obsessed with libraries. I could spend an entire day in a real library. I’d not been to a school with what I considered a genuine library yet, but some towns we lived in were college towns and college libraries were amazing enough that I thought living in one would be better than any place else I could imagine. Cal thought I was crazy. He, naturally, wanted to live in the volcano lair of a supervillain. He considered superheroes too mopey and whiny with highly substandard costumes. He was so heated on the subject that when I pictured myself in college in a few years and Cal living with me, the mental image was always in a volcano with black capes everywhere and thousands of bookshelves, before the image morphed into your average student apartment.

  Considering once Cal made up his mind, thus it was written and so it would be, I should give serious thought to either making certain the college of my choice was far from a volcano or finding lava-proof shelves.

  This school, the Hermann T. Jeffries High School, didn’t have the worst library I’d seen, but it didn’t have the best either. Normally that would’ve bothered me as I spent study hour there, but today all I was interested in was the computer. The one single, solitary, slow enough ancient Egyptians could’ve carved the information I wanted in hieroglyphs into a pyramid inner chamber wall before it booted up computer.

  “Niko, are you waiting for . . . Oh my God. I’m so sorry. I’m just checking my e-mail. I know you probably want to really work. You’re completely smart. I get that. You need it more than I do.” The girl stood up and spilled the contents of her backpack on the floor. “Oh my God,” she repeated. “Oh my God. Shit. Oh my God. I know you don’t say things like that. At least I never hear you. I’m sorry. Are you religious? Did I offend you?”

  That was Avery. She wasn’t in any of my classes, but she spent sixth period in the library too, more because she didn’t have anything better to do than a love for books. She didn’t wear makeup and was neither pretty nor plain, although she had autumn-gold eyes and dark brown hair that was thick and hung in long natural waves. She wasn’t smart and she wasn’t stupid; she was a nice average girl who didn’t realize that average can sometimes be the best thing to be. There was nothing wrong with walking the middle path, being neither the high nor the low. I liked being smart, but I knew it was an accident of birth, a genetic gift. It wasn’t encouragement on the home front. I enjoyed the escape that books and tailoring my future that intelligence let me have. The downside of being smart was realizing how hard it would be to get that future and the truly desperate need for escape I had.

  I saw too much.

  Cal was smart and Cal saw the things I did, but he reacted differently and saw what I saw in a way unlike mine. My intelligence had me clawing at anything and everything to get us free. Jobs, education, plan after plan. Cal’s intelligence had him seeing the only way out as patience. He was like a wild panther in the zoo, still as a stone, eyes unblinking, never sleeping, waiting for the one day someone got sloppy with that cage door and then it would all be over.

  I didn’t know which way was the best, the least painful, but I did know at times I wished I was average, normal . . . even if that meant only I was somewhat less smart. I didn’t like seeing too much, as necessary as it was.

  Bending down, I helped a self-conscious, bright red Avery gather up her books, papers, a handful of discarded costume jewelry. “No, I’m not religious. My little brother curses worse than you. Don’t worry about it.”

  “Good. Great!” She took everything from my hands and stuffed it, Cal-style, back in her backpack. “The last thing I’d want to do is embarrass myself in front of you. You’re”—her blush intensified and she swallowed—“you know.”

  Avery also liked me. I thought it was another reason she spent her study period in the library. I liked her too. I wasn’t the kind of snob that thought I was too smart for certain people. With my life, I appreciated, wanted normal. Average and nice was better than brilliant and beautiful in my mind.

  But I also remembered what Cal had said, that we couldn’t have a normal life. That meant we couldn’t have normal people around us . . . any people when it came down to it. He’d been right for now. I hoped I was right when I said the future would be better, that then we could have a normal life—normal for us at least.

  Now though . . . now I couldn’t do anything about Avery liking me. When she finished zipping up her bag, I gave her the smile—it was a practiced one. It said you’re a nice person but you’re not for me. Friends? You could read a lot into that smile. He has a girlfriend at another school, he’s gay, he actually is screwing Miss Holcomb. It usually worked and as Avery gave me a wobbly but not a terribly upset smile back, I hoped it had worked again.

  When she was gone, I sat down at the computer, the itch now claws digging into my neck, and started searching the online news for New London. I wouldn’t find anything. There was no chance, I told the claws clamping tight. If Junior had taken that hooker and that was very unlikely, it wouldn’t be in the paper yet. Prostitutes disappeared all the time. Often they never make the news, vanished or not.

  Unless you happened to be the daughter of a cop. Doctor, lawyer, cop—it didn’t matter how high your parents were, drugs could take you to the lowest of places. Marcia Dawn Liese had known that. It was hard to recognize her with blond hair, a cheerleader uniform, and pom-poms from a two-year-old picture compared to the Goth wig and little else she’d been wearing
when Junior had pulled up in his truck, but it was her. I remembered that distinctive mole at the corner of her mouth. Marcia had been missing at least twenty-four hours if not longer and that put her disappearance close enough to her interaction with Junior that I could’ve set my watch. The claws left my neck and now were ripping their way through my stomach.

  Our neighbor is a serial killer.

  He smells like blood.

  Like roadkill.

  The basement is full of bodies.

  Cal had told me and I hadn’t believed him . . . because I hadn’t wanted to believe him. My life was an abusive mother and a little brother who wasn’t completely human and the monsters who watched him. I didn’t know what to do. Every day I straightened things, I kept schedules, I made rules, and it was all to cover up to Cal and to myself that I didn’t know what to do.

  I had known I couldn’t handle anything more. A serial killer? That was insane and I wouldn’t have cared what Cal had said; it absolutely was not an option. I couldn’t believe it, as I couldn’t deal with it.

  That was the joke—because now it was dealing with me and that was much worse than anything I could’ve imagined. Junior right next door. Cal’s school getting out a half hour before mine. I was already running for the door. It would be all right. Junior didn’t know. He hadn’t seen us follow him. He hadn’t seen me in the hospital. He was a killer—I tasted vomit in my mouth—but he wasn’t smart. I’d looked into his eyes. He was dull and slow. He didn’t have any idea we suspected him . . . Cal had suspected him.

  I’d go home, get Cal, and we’d leave. Like we should’ve done from the start . . . but hadn’t as I was too much of a coward to believe my little brother.