by Rob Thurman
“Cal.” He said my name as if he wanted to say that it was all right, but he knew it wasn’t all right. He was the big brother, though, and he couldn’t not say anything even when there was nothing to say. I didn’t look up from scrubbing the letters away, paying attention only to the letters and not to the broken glass. When I cut myself, he found more words to say. “Cal. Stop. Now.”
“Why? Because a little of my blood is worse than a bunch of hearts lying around the place?” Eight people—maybe nine if I found one under my pillow—were dead because of us. People. Kids. Fucking kids. All right. I was losing my shit after all—a little. I was entitled. You couldn’t ignore that much death when it was your fault.
The short sliver of recall that had flashed through was something I felt even more. “I remembered something.” I exhaled, then mumbled as I wiped. “A little. I was in a park. Central Park, I think. There were spiders and I remember a woman’s voice telling me to give them to her. Give them to her. I have no idea what she was talking about, what she looked like, or how I managed to get away from twenty-some damn Nepenthe spiders. I’m good, but a Chuck Norris Samuel Jackson fucking parfait of kick-ass isn’t that good.” I threw the soaked paper towels over the counter into the sink. Shit. The only way I’d know the word parfait was Goodfellow. I’d have to thank him for that later with my foot up his ass. Hopefully he’d be wearing pants by then.
“If I remember that, if that happened, I don’t see me surviving it, but since I somehow did, I don’t see me not telling you about it before I took off on my priestess-hunting sabbatical down south.”
He took another mass of paper towels I’d snatched up but hadn’t needed in my scrubbing fest. Folding them into a neat square, he offered them to me. “Your hand is bleeding.” I pressed the white to the oozing glass cut and watched it turn red. “And perhaps I thought you were safer on a wild-goose chase in South Carolina after some fictional priestess until we found out what Ammut wanted so badly from you, because you didn’t know then either. ‘Give them to me’ means nothing, to you—to any of us.”
“And off I went, but spiders followed me. Turned out I wasn’t that safe after all?” The cut didn’t hurt. The deep ones never did at first. “I was bitten looking for something that didn’t exist, lost my memories, and it still took you four days to find me in Nevah’s Landing where I happened to wander because my subconscious remembered the good old days when we were kids and Peter Pan was around? And that’s me believing I would’ve even gone to begin with. What about the twenty spiders and an Egyptian fake goddess? How’d I get away from them? Fucking fly?” I let the bloodstained towel fall to the ground. “That’s the worst bullshit I have ever heard and I don’t need a memory to know that. It’s not even a lie. Jesus, it’s barely half a lie and zero explanation. Didn’t we grow up on the run with our mom moving from mark to mark? That’s what you and Goodfellow said. Well, you, Leandros, didn’t learn a damn thing from her.”
“I can lie.” He didn’t sound defensive at the accusation, only at the use of our last name instead of Niko.
“You can lie? Just not to me then.” When it was me, he clearly sucked at it. If you thought about it, that made him a good brother. I didn’t feel like a good anything right now. “I cleaned up the spiders last night; you can handle this mess.”
I took a last glimpse of the small, pathetic piece of meat on the counter and for a flicker of time it was much worse than the death of a blackbird. What is a miracle inside a person is nothing but a gravestone of flesh on the outside.
“The bitch gave up her snack just to send us a message.” Which we didn’t understand. Eight wasted lives to tell us nothing. “I say it again, you people need to look into e-mail.”
I slammed my bedroom door behind me, lay on my bed, and started emptying my jacket of knives, throwing them at the wall. It already had “Screw you” spelled out. I would see if I could add to that. Niko didn’t follow me. Wise man—crappy liar, but a wise man. After a few hours, I decided grown men didn’t sulk in their bedrooms. It was almost two a.m. when I headed out of our place on my own—because I needed it, to be on my own. To find not an Egyptian monster, but to find more of myself as Niko was doing his best to keep the old Cal buried … while mourning him with every halfhearted swat and god-awful excuse of a lie, every hour of sleep lost. He wasn’t the only one with good hearing. I heard him up half the night. He was practicing; trying to find a restful mind in an exhausted body—as he was doing now. He was in the gym area in sweats and bare feet. “Use protection” and “Did you brush your teeth?” were his only words in response to my noninvitation when I passed him as he slammed a roundhouse kick into one of the heavy bags.
God, what a fucking bad liar. “Sucked” wasn’t close to the word.
It should be a good thing, seeing easily through the man who wanted to be … who was my brother. It wasn’t. It only made me wonder why he was lying at all. Okay, he thought I was happier this way, and that damn Halloween picture proved him right. I hated to say it, but it was true.
But never mind the picture and my truth; it was the way he was lying. It was weird, as if no lie could explain away our rotten childhood. There were plenty of kids with crappy childhoods. Big deal. Why try so hard to lie and explain something that was almost normal these days?
But no one needed to explain why he followed me when I hit the street. I had a tattoo, the words of which Niko had told me meant “brothers-in-arms” in Latin—could you believe it? I was surprised I wasn’t a parasitic twin in a pouch under his armpit that he patted on the head and fed chocolate pudding—we were that close. Let me loose alone on the town by myself, target of spiders and high-class heart-eating bitches? No way would he let that happen. He couldn’t lie to me, but he could follow me without my seeing him. Somehow, I still knew he was behind me. I didn’t have to see him or smell him. It was pure gut knowledge, no malfunctioning brain cells required.
Always his brother’s keeper.
I hesitated two blocks away, deciding where to go, and headed for St. Mark’s to catch the six o’clock train while consciously not looking over my shoulder for my brother. Why ruin it for him? Niko didn’t have a matching tattoo that I knew of, pussy, but if he had one at all, I was sure it would say Massively Overprotective Brother from Kick-Ass Hell. I doubted they could put that in Latin, but that was what it would say, punctuated with a ninja star or two crossed soybeans, depending on his mood, and announcing his mission to the world.
He had changed my diapers, after all.
That made up my mind for me. No more hesitation. Alcohol—I needed alcohol. Niko could follow me all he wanted and drag my unconscious body home if it came to that. Then he could be the massively overprotective brother who dodged drunken vomit—less martial and heroic when phrased in a tattoo, but I didn’t mind.
I went to the Ninth Circle, thanks to three things. I knew how to get there since I’d already been given the tour of my old life and that hadn’t fallen into one of the black holes of consciousness that riddled yesterday. I knew someone I wanted to talk to would be there. And, a given, there was a huge amount of alcohol. It wasn’t long before I was on what felt like the wrong side of the bar, beer with a whiskey back before me.
“You usually don’t drink the more embalming of the alcohols. You most often stay with beer.”
Goodfellow, not the one I wanted to talk to, had sat down next to me. I did the shot of whiskey. “And why’s that?” I asked.
“Your mother was a raving alcoholic. Raving in most things from what I gather, but alcohol being one of her primary obsessions.” His own glass was flanked by two bottles of wine. I’d seen his tolerance. Alcoholism would be a problem for him only if someone started giving him entire barrels of the stuff. “As a result, you and Niko rarely drink. Tempting the fate of bad genes isn’t always a good idea.” He considered his glass for a moment, then touched it to mine. “But then sometimes fate is fate and one learns to live with it if not embrace it. If you don’t re
member anything at all in the wilds of your amnesia, Caliban, remember that. Remember it well.”
Now there was the best kind of lie, one that wasn’t a lie at all. He’d told me something, something important, but I didn’t have enough of my past yet to know what it was. “A raving alcoholic, huh?” He wasn’t pulling any punches.
“Very much so. Verbally abusive, emotionally abusive, especially towards you, which would explain Niko being as much of a guardian in addition to brother when it involves you. Sophia had quite the pitching arm as well when it came to bottles and glasses.” He poured himself a third glass. “She was also a thief, a liar, and a whore—three qualities I usually favor, but in her case, combined with the maternal instinct of a wolf spider, she gives the rest of us liars and thieves a bad name. As for whoring, I’ve often been offered money for my brilliant performances, but I never took it.” He grinned and poured a second glass. “But it’s good to know I have a career to fall back on if the thieving and lying fail me one day.”
“Except …” The prompt had a threatening tone.
Goodfellow handed the second glass to Ishiah, who’d drifted up, no wings or feathers this time. “If it’s for money, it’s not cheating. It’s a righteous occupation of long standing. If one dies penniless in a ditch, monogamy becomes difficult … or far more easy, depending on your outlook.”
At Ishiah’s outlook, a fierce glower, the puck sighed. “Just remember the Good Samaritan story from that book you’re so very fond of. Picking someone who’s been mugged out of a ditch and carrying them home to oil them up? I know they were big on oiling people in those days, feet and all, but when you’ve been beaten and mugged, oil isn’t what you’re looking for. Trust me, there’s more to that story than anyone knows.” Ishiah’s glower went to nova-heat proportions. “Fine. Fine. I’ll wander off to a table then. Wave when you’re done discussing things of great import, and I’ll be back with something of far greater import in my pants. Dusty and unused for almost five hours now. Ah, sirens at table six. Perhaps they can sing sad lamentations of a warrior retired from battle.”
When he was gone and handing out his monogamy cards to the sirens, beautiful women with a green tint to their skin, Ishiah picked up the wineglass and drained it. After the two swallows that it took, I asked him, “Why? Man to bird, why? Why Goodfellow? Are you that hard up to be laid? How does he ever stop talking long enough to actually screw anyone?”
He instantly fisted my hair and smacked my face against the bar. He was nice enough not to do it hard enough to break my nose, and I was nice enough not to pull the trigger on the gun I had shoved against his throat.
“Show him the respect he deserves. He is your closest friend. He knows you.” That had to be true, because Goodfellow wasn’t rushing over to break this up. He knew his … mmm … Wingnificant Other wasn’t going to smash my brains out on the bar and that I wasn’t going to shoot him for trying. Niko, lurking somewhere outside the bar, hadn’t come in either … to prevent violence or avenge the fact my beer hadn’t been served to me in a baby bottle. Ishiah wasn’t a threat—or a monster. He was just my sometimes boss.
I straightened, put my gun away, and pushed the hair back so I could see. If it didn’t grow and fast, I was going for a buzz cut. “He knows me. He’s my closest friend. Everyone says so, but how do I know for sure?” Now was a time for facts. Considering the decision I’d made based on a brother’s need and in spite of a picture I, still to this minute, wish I’d never seen, I wanted facts to go with it. That was why I was here. Ishiah knew Cal … and knew me, but as an employer, not a friend. He’d be more likely to tell the truth and not soften the blow.
“What he told you about your mother,” the eavesdropper said, “do you think you told him that? All of that? You and Niko are secretive—anyone raised the way you were would be—so despite Robin’s being your friend, would you have told him that?”
No. Friend or not … no. That kind of past abuse … The rest of it was one thing, but to know two kids, kids I didn’t remember although I was one of them, had lived through that. I wouldn’t be throwing those details around. You shouldn’t be ashamed, but you were. You shouldn’t feel guilty and tainted, but you did. Niko had carefully edged around that information, blurring it, but Goodfellow had given me the real deal and, although I recalled none of what he’d told me happening to Niko or me, I felt it the same as if he’d kicked me in the stomach. It wasn’t a good feeling, which was why Niko hadn’t told me … and why Goodfellow had. Goodfellow was my friend, but he was Niko’s friend too.
Robin knew what Niko was doing to me—for me. After all, he was the supplier, the dealer in the dirty deed, but he also knew what Niko was doing to himself. He wasn’t going to choose between us. He gave me a hint about my past self through the truth about my mother, but the rest was up to me. Niko, unlike me, had walked through that past, whole and unshadowed, but how long would he stay that way if he lost his one anchor? If he lost his real brother?
The choice to claim the past and the old Cal that went with it was one Goodfellow was letting me decide for myself. He didn’t know I’d already made it.
But I still wanted to know it was the right choice.
“Then how did he know?” I asked as I heard a Wolf pass behind me and laugh. It wasn’t a nice laugh, gloating and gleeful with the whisper of sheep behind it. I let it go. It was happening more and more now in the hour I’d been in here. From that, I gathered that pigeons like Ishiah rated above sheep, but Wolves rated above both—in their furry little minds.
“Because it’s what he does. He’s a trickster that has lived longer than I can remember, and I’ve lived a very long time.” There were the wings, not in disturbance this time, though. Spread and lifted high, they made you think of eagles proudly surveying their domain. “I’ve seen man take his first step. Robin has been around long enough to have probably stepped on one of man’s slippery ancestors crawling from the ooze. He can take the smallest fact and spin an entire tapestry from it. But you gave him that one small fact at some time or another and you never would have if he weren’t your friend.”
I was getting so much truth now that I was surprised they didn’t charge extra for it. Abusive whore of a mother. No wonder Niko had to raise me. A horny puck that never shut up as a best friend, but, considering the T-shirt slogans I picked out, it was a wonder I had a friend at all.
I finished my beer and got another from Samyael. Good old Sammy was quick with the beer. “Can I ask you something, boss?”
“‘Boss’?” He took my empty and disposed of it under the bar. He was doing my job tonight. “You usually only call me boss when I have an axe against your neck.”
“An axe, huh? I must call in sick a lot.” I drank half of the second beer. As Goodfellow said, fate was fate; genes were genes. I wasn’t an alcoholic yet or I’d have gone into DTs in the Landing as I hadn’t touched the stuff there. But that didn’t change the fact he was trying to tell me something about who I’d been—he simply wouldn’t do it outright. Ishiah might. “So can I? Ask you something?” He paused, already looking as if he regretted it, but nodded.
“Is Cal a good guy?” Not me, but Cal, because there was still a difference. I didn’t watch his face for the response. I drank some more and waited.
When he finally answered, I accepted the single-word reply with a slight tip of my head in thanks. This time I was the one who had to take a while to think. When I was done, I asked him one more question. “If Niko had to choose between me and a burning orphanage full of big-eyed kids hugging fluffy kittens, which would he choose?” It was facetious as hell, but it got the point across.
Ishiah took the beer from me and drank it himself. “Irish courage … in a way. I picked that up from Robin. What it took you barely months to find out about him, it took me thousands of years. I was such a pretentious ass and full of dangerous, even deadly conviction. I judged him. It was only when I judged myself that I saw the truth. Now I won’t deny any truth.” He re
placed my bottle with two more—one for me and one for him.
“Niko’s flaw—and it is a fatal one—is that if it came down to saving the world or saving you … he would save you.”
Fatal to the world and big-eyed orphans, I could see that, but to me it meant one thing:
How could I do anything less?
I didn’t know if it was my sheepness that offended the Wolves or my singing. But finally the last sounds that had kept them howling and hiding under their tables wasn’t enough to hold one of them back. He was too drunk to care about our Kin agreement or too tone-deaf to appreciate the song. While the rest of the Wolves covered their ears and kicked in agony instead of trying to kill me, this guy had had enough.
One or two or seven or twelve had been giving me the eye—blue, yellow, orange, brown, green, take your pick—and muttering among themselves. The more I drank, the more they muttered and the less their loyalty to the Kin word mattered. Then again, the more I drank, the less putting a bullet in a fuzzy ass bothered me, which made us even. I couldn’t say if that bullet would be lethal or not as my double vision was getting worse. I was matching Goodfellow drink for drink, which made me some sort of superhero with a mutant gene for consuming oceans of alcohol. And with mass quantities of alcohol comes singing.
The puck had started and I had followed. From the startled looks the peris gave me, that was not me, but considering this particular me was probably going away, screw it. I’d party while I was here. As for the singing itself, we weren’t bad. A karaoke machine would’ve helped me with the lyrics if not my kick-ass sheep rep, but I had a good voice, go figure, and of course pucks were great at everything, so said Goodfellow.
But while American Idol might’ve thought we could shoot gold records out our asses, the Wolves didn’t care for the higher notes of the song and “Danny Boy” was not their thing. I thought their pained howling added to the song, which was sad, or so Goodfellow told me. The peris took it in stride. Ishiah had said he’d given up his judgmental ways. That didn’t leave him much room to bitch.