Blackout can-6

by Rob Thurman

  But that didn’t mean I wasn’t going to try. I let the Eagle go with the fuzzy, blood-drenched thought that all monsters were bad and why had I let anyone tell me different, and I went for the Glock with a hand now too weak to grasp anything, but trying … goddamn it, still trying. I expected to fail with my last semicoherent thought and I did. I expected to die, but I didn’t. Not thanks to Ammut or the first or second mouthful of water I finally couldn’t help but inhale and choke on. Nope, that was not how I went.

  Instead, the world blew up.

  Blue skies, pirate ships, flying children; they were there again as I woke up, soaked in freezing cold water—almost drowning brought them back every time. Only this time I didn’t think I’d almost drowned. “Almost” was kicked out of that sentence. There was a hand on my forehead tilting my head back, a mouth pressed hard against mine, air blown in inflating my chest, and I didn’t know what it meant—not quite. I couldn’t breathe—so wasn’t I dead? Hazy, sluggish thoughts, but logical. Dead and logical, that took talent.

  There went another pirate ship sailing overhead, backlit by stars where there were no stars.

  And didn’t I hear a waterfall?

  “Cal, you son of a bitch. I’ve had enough this week. Do you hear me? Goddamn enough.”

  More air was blown into my lungs, but they didn’t have any idea what to do with it. Lazy damn lungs. The ship disappeared, the sound of the cascading water faded away and panic set in. Jesus, I couldn’t breathe; I couldn’t move; I couldn’t goddamn breathe… .

  It did turn out that I could vomit. And I did so profusely, all over the front of the shadowed figure I saw bending over me as I opened my eyes. Efficient hands rolled me on my side where I kept emptying my stomach and lungs of canal water. It went on for what seemed a year or so—and not the best of years, although it couldn’t have been more than a few minutes. As oxygen took the place of water, I dragged in breaths between the heaving and began to think a little more clearly. As in, what the fuck happened?

  Was that CPR?

  Was that Goodfellow giving me CPR? Please God no. It’d been a rough day already. Mouth to mouth from the puck would never be lived down.

  The same hands were slapping my back firmly, only making me barf more. I appreciated the effort. Puking wasn’t great, but I didn’t want any of that putrid, tainted water left in me, not a damn drop of it. I didn’t know how chemicals could taste like death, but they did. I doubled up, knees to chest, and went from vomiting to coughing, which hurt worse.

  “Cal? Can you hear me? Damn it, little brother, can you hear me?”

  Actually, I could barely hear the words. The pounding in my ears underwater had gone to a ringing so loud that I was surprised I heard anything at all. I kept coughing and slanted my eyes up to see a blurry Leandros kneeling over me, hands keeping me on my side. On his shirt, coat, and braid, he was wearing the chili dog I’d eaten at the bar since he’d starved me at his tofu diner, and I was dimly pleased I’d found the time to sneak it in.

  “What?” I coughed again, vomited again, then glared at him. “What … you … do?”

  He held up something I recognized—a grenade with a smirking smiley face on it. This one was red with devil horns. Have a not so nice day! That would explain the ringing in my ears. “I borrowed a few from you. Inelegant but effective.” It disappeared and a hand wiped at my mouth as I kept coughing. Good for him. I was too weak to do it myself and he deserved more puke. “She had you. Ammut. I could see the wake where she was pulling you through the water, too fast for me to stop her. I threw a grenade in front of her. It was the only thing left to do.” He sounded apologetic, despite the fact I’d driven him to more cursing. The man didn’t swear much, I’d noticed, even in situations when he should’ve been whipping them out nonstop. Swearing or not, he should sound sorry. Damn, damn sorry. Boggles, homicidal Wolves, dead clients, Ammut nearly drowning me, and my brother blowing me up to finish the job. As workdays went, not a good beginning.

  “I almost lost you. Again.” He was blurry, yeah, and his voice faint, but I heard. He meant what he said. The blame was as solid as the concrete beneath me and as dark as the water he’d pulled me from—and it was aimed in one direction. “Ammut. This fucking bitch is going to be sorry the universe ever spit her into existence.”

  The f-bomb. Now we were cooking. Forget the other cursing, this was serious language from an equally seriously upset, vengeance-bound brother … who had almost lost me twice in a week. He did deserve more than barf. Any brother who’d gone through that would. I was getting back the finer movements of my arms and legs, and I managed to lift my hand to snag it in his coat. “Leandros …” I coughed spastically, grabbed what air I could, then tried for the most annoyed, pissy little-brother-worthy expression I could manage. As I didn’t remember what that looked like, I hoped I got it right.

  He bent closer to catch my hoarse words. “I’m here, Cal.”

  Sucker.

  “Worst … fucking … first … day … ever.” Then I threw up on him again.

  As punctuation went, it was perfect.

  7

  “What do I do for fun?”

  This time it was me waking Leandros up too damn early in the morning. Not that I hadn’t already woken him up walking into his room in socked feet. I didn’t hear any noise of my own making, but while I’d heard a killer she-Wolf above, I was learning my brother heard almost everything. If a squirrel burped in Central Park, this guy heard it half a city away. He was sleeping on his stomach, one arm hidden under the covers.

  My well-intentioned last puke by the canal hadn’t distracted him from thoughts of lost brothers as much as I’d hoped. He’d had a long night, what with checking on me every hour to make sure I didn’t die of secondary drowning. I’d asked what that was and he told me if I did die of it, then he’d tell me. Until then it wasn’t pertinent knowledge for me and might interfere with my sleep. Considering we’d run—I’d staggered—to get away before the cops arrived to investigate an explosion and it had been the longest day of my life, I did need the sleep. Unfortunately, the grenade hadn’t injured Ammut as we didn’t spot any unrecognizable chunks of whatever she looked like floating in the water. If we had, I’d have slept a lot sounder.

  Good thing I hadn’t.

  “Betcha have a sword under your mattress and you sleep holding on to the hilt.” I grinned as an eye slitted at me, fully aware. “That’s what I would do if I were a sword guy.” But a pillow and a gun were what helped me sleep at night. Warm milk didn’t cut it in this business.

  “You’re extremely observant of people’s behavior and the general area around you or you’re remembering more.” He sat up and laid the sword on the bed as he swung his legs to the ground. He wore black cotton pajama pants but was bare chested. He had a scar there that wasn’t as deep and ugly as mine. It was plenty odd, though—a round circle of silvery scar tissue as big as a dinner plate as if someone had drawn a giant O on his chest. I guessed they had, only they’d used a knife instead of a crayon to do it. “How are you feeling? Any more coughing?”

  “No more coughing and no more remembering, but things are more … eh … deja vu-ish.” His room was as clean, feng shui-ed out the ass, painted in a calm, serene silver green with not a single dust mote daring to rear its fuzzy head. Same as yesterday and the day before. He had a low bed and an equally low and discreet dresser. No mirror, though. There was one mirror in the place—in the bathroom, and it was a small one with a towel rolled up and propped on top of it. The towel was to wipe off the mirror if the shower steamed it up or to cover up the mirror for no good reason at all, which I did before I went to bed last night after showering twice to sluice the canal taint off me.

  Leandros hadn’t mentioned the mirror; I followed right along in his nonverbal footsteps. I didn’t like monsters and I wasn’t that fond of mirrors. I’d work on the monster thing first. I imagined the mirror thing, if I brought it up, would only embarrass me or make me look like a pho
bia-ridden nut job—maybe both. All humiliation in its own time.

  “You didn’t answer my question,” I pointed out. “What do I do for fun?”

  “Why are you up so early?” he countered. “One of the primary extracurricular activities of your life is sleeping, not to mention running, fighting boggles, Wolves, and doing your best to die yesterday. I’d expect you to sleep extra late today.”

  Oh, as if it were my fault, almost dying. That made me enjoy what was coming next all the more.

  “Eh, there was this thing.”

  Yeah, there had been this thing all right, and it was getting more and more annoying.

  “And I was hungry anyway. Ate some cereal. Knew we had some shit to do early and then I thought, hey, what’s a guy like me—when I don’t have amnesia—do for fun? I’m curious,” I said, then added, “Wouldn’t you be?”

  He took the ponytail holder out of his hair, then pulled it back again, straightening the sleep fuzz. “I work as a TA teaching history at NYU part-time and part-time at a dojo as an instructor. I train you so that you can fight off a toddler should one escape the local preschool. I meditate. Read. Research. Spend time with Promise.”

  That was all fascinating. The life of Niko Leandros, multitasking modern samurai. He was stalling. If this guy valued perfection, and he did, he valued it in all things, including excruciatingly accurate (and long) answers to easy questions. That made me wonder why he’d stall at all, much less over such a simple question. “But I’m not you,” I said, boosting myself up to sit on one end of the dresser. “What do I do?” Slouching, elbow on knee and chin resting in hand, I waited for the answer.

  He watched the impatient swing of my foot, or the dirty bottom thereof invading his oasis of sterile tranquility. “You like to … hmm … watch TV.” He paused. “You enjoy browsing gun shops, although of course we obtain our weapons in a less legal fashion. You like your job at the bar.” There was a longer pause before he said triumphantly, “Ah, sometimes you like to read.”

  He grabbed on to that one as if it were a life preserver. Brothers who worked together, lived together, weren’t at each other’s throat, but that didn’t necessarily mean we were close. Then again, there was that lie-down-and-die-for-me attitude he’d been spouting on the drive from South Carolina. Willing to spend his life looking for me, willing to die for me, but as for knowing what I did in my spare time, he was drawing a blank. Lots of people needed their personal space? Right? That was normal, especially as we did work and live together. He could not have a clue as to what I got up to on my own time.

  Yeah. I wasn’t buying it.

  “I read. What? Porn?” I was a guy. Sue me if the important literary works rose to the top.

  “Mostly, but the occasional book that has a paragraph or two to give the porn context isn’t completely out of the question.” The end of his katana smacked against my foot smartly. It stung, but it was a baby tap compared to what the weapon could’ve done and I stopped swinging the clearly irritating foot. “You like to shoot.”

  As if the world’s largest weapon store shoved under my bed hadn’t told me that much. That and how very quick I’d been to kill the Wolf outside the bar last night. I wasn’t quite right with that yet, and I didn’t know when I would be.

  I could’ve shot to wound—why didn’t I? A good guy would have, but it was a surprise, quick, and over before my thoughts caught up to my trigger finger. If I’d had time to think, I would’ve shot to hurt, not kill. I knew it. Good guys don’t kill if they don’t have to … now that I was slowly accepting monsters as people, sort of.

  Lies. You’re lying to yourself. You know what monsters are.

  I returned to the conversation, leaving uncomfortable thoughts behind. “Shooting. Gotcha. One-track-mind me. Porn. Guns. Sleeping with chicks who want to kill me. Nothing else? No, I don’t know, movies? Bars and not just to work in, but to do more interesting things, such as get laid by someone who doesn’t want to kill me? Sports? Parties?”

  Leandros jumped on the last item quickly enough that it smacked of desperation. “Parties. Yes. You went to a … You like parties.” He stood, moved to the dresser, and opened the bottom drawer farthest from me and my unclean, heathen foot. “Here.” He handed me a photo, computer printed but on glossy paper, the extra white neatly trimmed away. It was headed for framing one day. A w w w, wasn’t that sweet?

  I stared at it and raised my eyebrows at him. “A party? What kind of party?”

  “Halloween. Ishiah hosted it at the Ninth Circle. Whatever you must say about the preternatural, they do like their celebrations. Pagan creatures did invent them, after all.”

  Looking back at the picture again, I saw Leandros, dressed in, as I’d only seen since he found me, black and gray, including his weapon-concealing duster. Promise was made up as something fancy from the days when men wore tights and enjoyed it. It was a wonder there was a nonovercooked sperm in those days. I had no idea how the human race had survived. Ishiah was dressed normally as Niko had been, but with his wings out. Goodfellow stood behind the bar. I could see him only from the waist up. He was bare chested. “What’s the puck dressed up as?”

  There was a sigh and the sound of the drawer shutting. “He thought it would be entertaining to have his costume complement Ishiah’s. Ishiah went as an angel and Goodfellow went as”—you can’t hear eyes roll, but you can imagine that you can—”the Baby Jesus.”

  I grimaced. “That means he’s wearing a diaper… .” I didn’t get to finish.

  “Preswaddled.”

  Preswaddled. That meant he was naked behind that bar. Holy shit, why did he ever bitch about me ruining his clothes when from his talk and the illustrations to go with them he rarely fucking wore any? I moved my eyes quickly to the last one left: me. I was wearing a T-shirt, jeans, two guns in a dual shoulder holster, and had a black apron tied around my waist. I was working, not partying. And my costume? The T-shirt said it all: This is my costume. Now fuck off.

  That, as festive as my EAT ME T-shirt had been, didn’t tell the whole story. My hair, half of which was now gone, was in a shoulder-length ponytail, and my expression—it wasn’t an expression. It was a lack of one. It was the same as the expression on the panthers you see in the zoo. They weren’t hungry. And they didn’t give one good goddamn shit about you one way or the other, but if you stuck your arm between the bars, they would rip it off in a second. Why? That was what panthers did, hungry or not. My eyes … They were not the eyes of a not-so-bad guy or a good brother. I’d say they belonged to a very motherfucking bad guy indeed. I’d semi-avoided mirrors since I’d woken up on the beach, but I knew I hadn’t seen that face or those eyes since I’d been spitting salt water.

  I’d thought I was badass.

  Mama Boggle knew she was badass.

  I didn’t think either one of us wanted to meet that guy in the picture.

  I tried not to assume. It could’ve been a bad day. A Wolf could’ve marked my sneakers as his territory … while I was wearing them. That werewolf chick Delilah could’ve jumped me, put a collar and leash on me, and tied me to the nearest fire hydrant. Goodfellow might’ve trapped me in a corner and told me more stories that Hustler itself wouldn’t touch with a ten-foot pole, which I’m positive he’d claim to be hauling around in his pants—when he wore any. There were tons of reasons I could’ve been in a bad mood—so catastrophically pissed that the black ice behind my eyes alone would have serial killers writing me love letters from prison instead of vice versa.

  Or there was the truth: This guy shot Wolves in the head and didn’t once consider only wounding them.

  “Yeah, I’m the life of the party all right. I’m surprised balloons don’t pop out of my ass and streamers fall wherever I go.” I shoved the photo back at him, then thought belatedly about asking what his costume was. I didn’t bother. I knew. Lived with that guy in the picture. Worked with him. Willing to sacrifice his life to find him. Martyr-in-the-making—that was his costume and his real
ity.

  “This is really me? This is the guy you’re waiting to wake up in a few days? He … I … We look like a nuclear bomb with a timer clicking over zero and fast into the negative numbers. And you want him back?” Look at him… . Look at me, I finished silently. If I saw him in a well-lit alley, I’d run like hell. If I saw him in a dark alley, I’d piss myself.

  “You are him. Sometimes you have a bad day, but we have a shared history. You have a reason for an occasional bad day, and I have a reason to miss you with your memories. You know me just as I know you.” I could understand that.

  Context, he’d said before. I gave him context to his world. I knew that because nothing gave me context to mine right now. “I am who I am because of you,” he added. “You were the making of me and that’s a good thing. I miss you knowing that, knowing what I know, our whole life, good and bad.” He accepted the picture and laid it carefully on top of the dresser.

  “Leandros … Niko, you might want to take a closer look at that picture and buy a cattle prod for when I’m all the way back, because that guy is not happy and that guy is not right. I don’t want to be that guy. I really don’t. But, hey, just my opinion … of myself. Since you told me our mom didn’t remember him, maybe my dad was Ted Bundy. Charles Manson on a furlough. Genetics and memories are weird stuff. Take what you want from it all and think hard about getting that cattle prod.”

  I didn’t look for his reaction, because I didn’t want to see it. Truth is truth, but sometimes it hurts. Realistically, most of the time it hurt. Instead, I moved on. I had other business, and I preferred not thinking about what I might be under the amnesia, who the real me was.

  But how could I not be the real me, amnesia or not? With the same personality formed by genetics and memories, “weird stuff” that they were. I didn’t recall those memories, but they’d already molded my brain and personality. Losing them wouldn’t make me someone else. I couldn’t be that different from the me in the picture, right?