by Rob Thurman
4
“I don’t want to go back to New York,” I repeated, spearing a sausage patty with my fork. A patty to go with my petty, and I was feeling petty.
Goodfellow had one eye on that very same fork, smart of him, and one on the waitress with more breasts than she, God, and her bra knew what to do with. “I am sorry,” he told her, “but despite your wealth of exquisite mammary tissue, I am in a monogamous relationship. Disappointing for you, I know, but I have faith that after a grieving process, you’ll learn to live again.”
“I heard you the first time,” Niko snapped at me before going after Goodfellow, “and, Robin, let the woman refill your orange juice and get on with her day, as bereaved as she is over your unavailable status, all right?” He began to whip his granola and yogurt into more of a froth than was called for. The Zen Niko was having issues. I was one of those issues. “Why, Cal, do you not want to go home?”
I chewed the sausage and swallowed, using some of my own orange juice to chase it down. “I was attacked by giant spiders, I’ve lost my memory, I carried more weapons than the Deathstar, and I woke up on a beach a few minutes before I would’ve drowned. If that’s what I do in New York, why would I want to go back? I worked four days at a diner and no one tried to kill me once. The money wasn’t great, but, again, no one tried to kill me. If I’m some kind of monster exterminator, I have to think there’s a better way to make money. And you still haven’t explained why I was fighting the spiders, who for, did I get paid, and what was I doing in South Carolina if I live in New York.” I took a bite of my waffles and said, muffled, around the mouthful, “Or if you’re keeping watch at night for me or for something else. Don’t think I forgot about that because you sicced Mr. Monogamy on me.”
Niko put his spoon down with a sigh. “We, not just you, are working for a coalition of the preternatural in New York. Something is sending the Nepenthe spiders to kidnap werewolves, vampires, revenants, lamia, succubi, incubi, on and on—anything nonhuman. Sometimes their bodies are found, sometimes not, but none are ever seen alive again. We were hired to stop the creature behind this.”
“God, not creature. Well, goddess. Ammut,” Robin said cheerfully, slicing his ham to small pieces. “She’s supposedly an Egyptian goddess, which, of course, I, personally, figured out from the Nepenthe spiders. I was in Egypt hanging at the court of Ramses for a while. That obelisk he built, let’s just say I personally might be the reason he was obsessed with large phallic objects. But I digress. The spiders are from Egypt, originally birthed before the time of the pyramids. Their venom, greatly diluted, can bring forgetfulness to the sorrowful. It was called the nepenthe elixir—psychotherapy for the pharaohs. It was all the rage for the royalty who could afford to lose several servants to catch one of the spiders. However, a direct bite will make an animal or human forget how to run, to stand, to move, to think, to breathe even, making them easy prey. Snap, snap and all the baby spiders have dinner that night. Very efficient.”
Goddess? We were after a goddess?
The next bite of waffle on my fork slowly slid off to splat in a pool of syrup on the plate. “What … the … fuck?” I said with what I classified as extraordinary calm before throwing that calm out the window and trying to stab Goodfellow with the fork—again.
Niko dragged me backward out of the diner, which was across the street from the motel, with his arm in a chokehold around my neck. Goodfellow followed, though, with enough lag that I was guessing he paid the check. I stumbled purposely as he came through the doors, felt the hold on my throat ease slightly—brotherly love turned out to be a great weakness—flipped Niko over my shoulder, and went after Goodfellow again. Who needed guns and knives—forks were my new weapon of choice.
As I hit Goodfellow, he twisted in a move I’d swear no one, unless they had Silly Putty for bones, could accomplish, and I somersaulted over his hip to land flat on my back. My head bounced on the asphalt in a manner I didn’t at all enjoy. Hissing in pain, I blinked against the double vision to bring into focus the two faces peering down at me. One was concerned and one puzzled.
“Was it something I said?” Goodfellow questioned, all innocence. He tilted his head toward Niko. “It could’ve been you. Vampires, werewolves, revenants, yadda yadda. Perhaps you blew a circuit in his view of a two-monster world: spiders and the magnificence that are pucks in all our glory.”
Right then I hated them both equally enough that Goodfellow had a good argument in the blame department. No, not Goodfellow. Puck. He was a puck. He didn’t deserve a name, the annoying shit. “You.” I pointed at Niko with the fork. At least, I attempted to point at him. Things were still a little blurry. As much as I wanted to hold the two of them responsible for that, I knew better. This was my fault. I’d let myself forget one basic fact, the very first fact I knew about myself—the one that nobody, not even Miss Terrwyn, had to tell me. “We have a last name? Same last name? Fuck it. Who cares? What’s your last name?”
“Leandros of the Vayash Clan. Our last name is Leandros.” He reached down, slid his hands under my shoulders, and sat me up.
“Whatever.” I closed my eyes and let the world stop whirling. “You, puck. Go back and get my food. I’m still starving.” I wasn’t, not anymore, but it was a matter of principle. “Leandros, get me back to the motel so I can throw up.”
“Are you dizzy? Nauseated? You could have a concussion.” The last possibility sounded accusatory, and Goodfellow countered in the same tone.
“He tried to stab me with a fork, Niko. For the third time, I might add. He is as my own family, and I’m willing to take one for the team, but taking syrup-coated metal like a spear through my throat is a lot to ask for.” I felt a hand gingerly pat the top of my head. “I’m sorry, kid. I’d have steered you toward the waitress’s bountiful bosom if she’d been out here. Oh, here she comes now … with the manager … who’s calling the police. Skata, it’s always something. Take him back to the room, Niko, and I’ll clear this up here.”
Just that quickly I was on my feet and across the road before I was able to get my eyes open. Then we were in the room, and I was sitting on one of the beds. Vampires, werewolves, other crap, gods. Gods. Goodfellow was on the money. I wanted the world back where and when I thought spiders and pucks were all I knew. Although I had known when I’d woken up in the Landing that the world was full of monsters, not only spiders, I simply didn’t have names to put to them and proof that I was right. I’d let myself think in those four normal days that I might just be a little crazy, because crazy was better than a world made of nightmares.
“Are you all right?”
I stopped rubbing the small lump on the back of my head and looked up at Niko. No. Leandros. Leandros was easier right now. There was too much to absorb and I needed some distance to do that. I needed to be able to breathe and to think. “I just found out that the world is one big frigging horror movie. I might need at least thirty seconds to process that, okay?”
“I can understand that,” he said slowly. “But you do need to know that being a vampire or a Wolf,”—as werewolves apparently preferred to be called. Good for them—”or a puck or a peri or any other number of things, doesn’t necessarily mean they are monsters. The majority are like people. Some are good; some are not. And some …” He let the rest of the sentence trail away.
“And some are?” I prompted.
He exhaled and sat beside me. “And some are monsters with no thought other than killing and no more soul than lies in the bullet of a gun. That doesn’t make the world a horror movie. It merely makes it like it already is, only with a few more layers that ordinary people will never see.”
“Just lucky ones like us,” I said grimly. “Whoopee.”
The puck came through the door then with my food in a Styrofoam container. “I paid off the manager, but I’d advise we leave as soon as possible. You, Junior, now owe me an extra three hundred on top of the damage to my pants.”
“Okay, I have to hurl.” No
t from the bill or his obsession with his pants, but from the smell of the food. It looked as though I’d bought myself a slight concussion after all. I made it to the bathroom, slammed the door behind me, and vomited into the toilet. It wasn’t much. I’d had but half of my lunch, no supper yesterday, and not much of breakfast today before having my world—and my stomach—turned inside out.
I had straightened and grabbed the towel to wipe my mouth when the window about five feet up the wall exploded. It was frosted glass for privacy and fair sized, about two feet by two feet. It was the perfect size for the Nepenthe spider that came barging in. Double pincers in simian jaws were opening and closing rapidly, eight black legs were supporting it on the wall and reaching for me, six eyes were fixed on me as its bulbous body finished sliding through the window. It was the size of a big dog, exactly the same size as the German shepherd across from the Oleander Diner that had fled at the sight of me, leaving piss in its wake. The spider’s eyes were the same color as that piss, bright, cheer, middle-of-the-daisy yellow.
I jammed the waffle fork that I still had in my hand right in the middle of all six of those eyes. “Hello, Sunshine.”
Here was the fact I’d let myself forget across the street minutes ago—what I was. I hadn’t been completely serious with my attack on Goodfellow. I was serious now. I kept my arm up and barely out of reach of the pincers as the spider thrashed and screamed. I didn’t know spiders could scream, but this kind was doing a damn good job of it. I pushed the fork in farther until the heel of my hand hit eye and flesh before I rotated the metal, scrambling whatever it was using for a brain. Behind me the door flew open as the spider screeched one last time, twitched violently, and then went seventy-five pounds of dead on the floor. I let go of the remaining five inches of metal and wiped eye goo off my hand and onto my jeans.
“You … You killed a Nepenthe spider with a fork?” Goodfellow said in a strangled croak over my shoulder.
“Yeah.” I snorted and returned to flushing the toilet. I wanted to be a tidy killer for the maid’s sake. “Now imagine what I could’ve done to you at breakfast if I’d really tried.” I gave him a dark grin and added, “Sunshine.”
Goodfellow was less talkative—say “Hallelujah”—as we once again climbed into the car and headed north. Despite what I said about not wanting to go back to New York, I didn’t see I had much choice with spiders either following the two of them or following me. I was guessing me. I’d racked up five to my name so far, and if that didn’t make me the most popular target for the eight-legged crowd, I didn’t know what did. I could try to bail anytime I wanted before we reached the city, but I’d have to start carrying forks by the bucketful if I did.
Speaking of which, I watched as the puck picked up from the floor a clear plastic Baggie containing a plastic fork and knife typical of fast-food “silverware” and then cracked open the car window enough to shove it out.
“That’s called littering,” I commented with the smirk of a mean-spirited ten-year-old bully, which was very close to how I felt. Not pretty, but honest. I wasn’t a bad guy, repeat-repeat, if a damn good monster killer, but I had a headache. I’d been kidnapped—sort of. I was finding out about a weird and creepy world, and I had a job that no one with an ounce of self-preservation would want, where the customers were as freaky as your targets, and you could bet your ass no one tipped—or gave you a free shirt. Being an okay guy was different from being a hero. How long did monster-fighting heroes live in this shadowed world?
“Littering or self-survival,” Leandros added. “Cal, behave and tell Robin you won’t kill him with a fork if he drops his guard.”
Behave? Leandros could claim to be my older brother all he wanted, but I didn’t ever see a moment in the future where his telling me to behave would have any impact on what I did. If that was the brother I had been before, well, best plant a cross in the dirt, because that brother was dead and dust. I was my own man. “No,” I replied, amiably enough. There was no need to be too rotten. I’d already proved my point with the spider. They’d scooped me up like a toddler out of a playpen at Nevah’s Landing, but I knew what I was dealing with now. So did they.
“No?”
“You sound like the Grand Canyon. Every time I say something you don’t want to hear, you repeat it right back. It’s rather unninja of you. Do you get a ninja silence-in-crisis merit badge taken away for that? Do they slice it off with a shuriken from a hundred feet away?” I was wearing one of Leandros’s shirts, black—which led to all the ninja bashing. “And that’s right. I said no. I will collect as many forks as I can and the puckster here will never know when one is headed for his monogamy-loving ass. I don’t know you. Either of you, and all the talk in the world isn’t going to change that.” I leaned back against the seat to watch the scenery pass. “Since I don’t know you, I don’t know what you might do. And since I don’t know that, I don’t know how I’ll react. That’s just honesty. I’m good with forks, but I’m not psychic.”
There was an immediate stinging flick to my ear, not to my head, which was sporting an asphalt headache. He was that considerate at least. “Ow! Shit.” I cupped the ear that burned like fire. He was as bad as Miss Terrwyn had been with a swat.
“Now you know what I, personally, will do if you don’t show respect for your elders.” This time I had seen him move, but he was quick, this brother of mine—cheetah double take quick. “As for Robin, he may just forget about his newly found monogamy and show you a rerun of what you’ve forgotten. He comes by his reputation honestly, from what you told me.”
Jesus. An event I couldn’t remember, but I was doomed to hear about it on a daily basis. “You play dirty.” I sulked, dropping my hand.
“Yes, I do. You taught me how.” Leandros kept driving, seemingly unperturbed at the thought of any reprisal from me. “Since you don’t know us, we’ll tell you anything and everything you want until your memory comes back.”
“Great,” I interrupted before he could say anything further. “I have a shitload of questions for you.” Now that I’d found out about the number of nasties in the world, a list so long, the rain forest would have to be entirely razed to make the paper for it, I could focus on more personal questions. “The puck said one of those spider bites would make someone forget everything, forget how to move, how to fucking breathe.” Jesus. “Even if none of them was left alive to eat me, why didn’t I suffocate on that beach?”
Goodfellow answered that one without thinking twice, which meant he had thought twice or more than twice. The henhouse, I reminded myself. Always remember the henhouse and the fox with a mouthful of feathers. “The only thing I can think is the spider bit something or someone else before you. Like a rattlesnake, it didn’t have a full dose of venom—you received enough that you lost part of your memory, but you kept everything else. You managed to get the ancient pharaoh Prozac, only double or triple the amount. You didn’t forget a recent sorrow. You forgot your entire life. But it does wear off. Have faith.” It was a very smooth explanation, but before I had a chance to comment on how smooth, he’d already changed subjects. “Also, have faith that if you do kill me with a fork, someone will avenge me. Someone with wings, a sword, and a temper to drown the world in fire instead of water.”
“Robin,” Leandros warned.
“What? I’m simply saying. He wanted information. I want to make sure he has the entire picture,” the puck defended himself. He went on to give me more information, not waiting for me to ask for it. Niko and I were brothers. Niko was full Rom with a handful of centuriesold North Greek thrown in, which explained the blond hair. I was half Rom, half gadje—a combination frowned on by the gypsy clans, but not by our mother who had taken off on her own when she was a teenager. She had no prejudices when it came to bed partners, gypsy or non. He put that very carefully. He did not say Sophia didn’t care whom she screwed, but as he went on to say that Niko and I had no other family, that neither of us knew who our father was, it was easy to connect t
he dots. Mom got around—and around and around and around. That was a good reason that Niko wasn’t telling me this himself. Who would want to tell his brother that his mom was a slut?
Mom was also dead. She’d died in a fire, the result of bad trailer wiring. I waited to feel something on hearing that. Fine, she never met a mattress she didn’t like, but she’d been my mom. She could’ve had good qualities. She could’ve made cupcakes for my birthday or played with me on a beach that wasn’t freezing. There are worse things than liking to screw around. I had to feel something knowing she was dead, knowing she’d burned to death. Goodfellow hadn’t said that; she could’ve died of smoke inhalation, but I knew better. I didn’t remember, but I knew.
She’d burned.
But I felt … nothing. There was nothing but a bitter taste in the back of my throat. I gave up. Why would I want to remember something that horrible if I didn’t have to? I shrugged for Goodfellow to go on. He did, winding it up quickly. She’d died, leaving Niko and me on our own when we were in our teens. We traveled a lot before and after her death, ran into some monsters eventually, and had our eyes opened in a big way. We ended up in New York, met Goodfellow, started a business, and here we were.
For someone who didn’t know how to shut up, he was succinct as a one-line fortune cookie when he wanted to be. “That’s it?” I demanded. “I grew up, ran around, saw some monsters, came to New York, and am now part of the Leandros Brothers and Monogamy Boy Monster Killers Incorporated?”