Doubletake can-7

by Rob Thurman

  “Pan happened,” Niko answered flatly. “You didn’t say they might know about Cal, or what they would do if they did.”

  I reached down, jerked the Spanish dagger free from its flesh-and-bone sheath, wiped it on my bar apron, and slid it across the counter to Robin. “‘Wrong. Base. Vile.’” My hair hung forward—still no ponytail for me, thanks to Niko’s father—and I grinned blackly. “‘Impossible wretched thing.’ Practically compliments. He didn’t know me half as well as he thought he did.”

  He took his poniard and put it away. “Pan is…was one of the oldest. If any would recognize your partial heritage, he would be the only one. I should’ve watched him more closely. I apologize.” Swiveling, he took in the crowd and sighed. “Thank Zeus it’s nearly over. I’ve never been at a reunion sober and monogamous. They’re somewhat tedious in this state.” He sounded relieved when he said, “But they are all finally intoxicated enough to suffer through the lottery. We’ll end this now. Again, I am sorry—for what he said and what he tried to do. You know none of it is true, kid.” He turned back to give an insistent and reassuring poke of his finger to my chest before he was gone again into the crowd, handing out coins that were each stamped with a number.

  None of it? No. I didn’t fool myself. Some of it was true—most of it was true, in fact—but we all have our character flaws. You learn to deal with them. I had. I dropped another apron down to cover Pan’s head. That was one dealt with right there: covering up the evidence that was the result of an impossible wretched thing. “It was self-defense,” Niko said, low—not that any of the pucks could hear anything above themselves. “I know except for the scar, hair, and tattoo, he looked exactly like Robin, but he wasn’t. However connected they might be thousands of years ago genetically, he wasn’t Goodfellow. He was nothing like him.”

  He was singing to the choir. I had no qualms about what I’d done. Pan had been an asshole. “No, he wasn’t like Robin,” I agreed without a shred of guilt. He was more like me, although not enough or he might still be alive, but that wouldn’t be something that would ease Niko’s mind to hear, so I didn’t say it. Instead, I rested my chin in my hand and proceeded to watch the lottery. “Wanna take bets on whether or not Robin gets knocked up?”

  He didn’t. But from the outraged howls that all but shook the walls, the numbers of about twenty-five pucks came up. Picked out of a large intricate and ancient bronze bowl, Goodfellow held each duplicate coin up to be seen. As the livid shouts continued, I asked, “Does it make your brain hurt? Seeing so many of them so much alike?”

  “It does. It’s not meant for the human eye to see. Identical twins and triplets are startling, but this? If there were only fifty of them, you could call them pentacontuplets or demihectuplets or, if going by the Latin, quinquagintuplets. But seventy, that curious to search my brain for the term I’m not.” For Niko that indicated a weariness usually unseen in him. An unknown father, the Panic, serving drinks while standing on a dead puck—I think we’d both had our fill of this day.

  But it was over. The pucks were dressing and leaving, some glum at their reproduction duty, other celebrating at dodging the bullet. The lili and lilitu were doing the same with their raincoats. We’d broken up only ten fights in all throughout the night and killed one puck. Taking into account the situation, I realized it could’ve gone much worse. I’d told Nik I needed to get laid, but looking back on the entire reunion, I might go the other way and never need to get laid again.

  Goodfellow joined us to watch them go. “If they avoid their obligation to reproduce, what punishment do they receive?” Niko asked.

  Robin finished off a last glass of scotch. “Oh, we hunt them down and kill them. If they don’t do their duty to keep the race alive, they’re not much good to us. It’s the only puck crime punishable by death. Now that I think about it, it’s the only crime we have at all. The first, last, and single law.”

  “How many times have you lost the lottery and doubled the pleasure, doubled the fun?” I asked with caustic curiosity.

  Robin was equally amused and insulted by the question. “Never. There are tricksters and there are tricksters and then there is me. Losing the lottery isn’t in my future. Now, thank you for the assistance and, as a token of appreciation, I’ll take care of disposing of Pan and calling in three or four cleaning crews for the rest of it—the kind the cops call in to clean up sites of multiple murders, as there aren’t enough mops in the building to handle what’s on that floor.” He set his phone on the bar, ready. “Consider it a tip for Pan. He always was a bastard. Loved watching the lions eating the Christians in the Coliseum. A definite prick, and not the good kind that makes you want to whip out your measuring tape.” He waved a hand. “Go, and, Niko, feel free to keep all the dollar bills they stuffed down your apron.” There were wads of them. All pucks, not only Goodfellow, had a thing for my brother.

  But that was a discussion for, well, not now. I took the opportunity offered and was out the door with Nik on my heels before Goodfellow had a chance to change his mind, which he frequently did when it came to physical labor. “You are splitting those tips with me, though, right?” I asked Niko as the door slammed behind us.

  “As frequently as I was groped tonight, all for the greater good and continuance of the puck race…no. You don’t get a dime. I’m donating it to the spay-and-neuter program at the local shelter. It seems appropriate.”

  We were still on the block where the Ninth Circle was located—a decidedly nonhuman block. It was rare that one wandered down this way. What they didn’t know, they sensed: Here there be monsters. And with all the other supernatural creatures gone, it was empty as I’d ever seen it. “You are such a greedy bast…shit.”

  I’d seen the glitter of metal and the flicker of movement all at once, leaping straight down from the top of the building we were walking past. I threw myself to one side, Nik to the other, and it landed directly between us. The concrete of the street cracked into pieces beneath it.

  The force and the weight to cause that…I was already unloading my Desert Eagle’s normal hollow-points to replace them with explosive rounds especially made for my gun and especially made for this situation. I landed on my hip just as I jammed the new clip home and then was I loaded but locked? Hell, no. I was ready to fire. It had taken barely a second, and I thought that would give me time to get a good aim on what was pissed off that it hadn’t been invited to the party.

  I was wrong. A second wasn’t long enough. It was already lunging through the air and about to drop on top of me. All I still saw was the sheen of metal, but, frankly, I didn’t care what it was made of except for what I could best use against it. I rolled flat on my back, aimed the Eagle straight up, and emptied the clip, all eight rounds. I closed my eyes. At that close proximity, I had no desire to be blinded by the small explosions. The only way I knew it had worked was that nothing landed on me to squash me to a thin paste on the concrete.

  My face was burned; I could feel the hot, tight pain of it, but that fell into the column of “shit that can wait.” I opened my eyes, sat up, and saw it, for the first time, really saw it as it stood. It was shaped like a man, more or less, but it was metal, and not any kind I’d seen. There were scales shaped like the head of a spear but at least two feet long and one foot wide, and they looked to be encrusted with dried blood, and in the thin cracks between the metal plates there was a red-hot substance that I’d swear was lava. There was the faintest smell of sulfur to it, but the smell of old blood was stronger. It stood nine feet tall at least, giving a boggle a run for its money. The majority of it was black metal with a face accented with what looked like dark tarnished iron, but wasn’t. That would have been affected by the explosive rounds to some extent, but it hadn’t been. Although at least it had been blown backward before it hit me, I didn’t see a single dent in its chest or face—only a superficial blackening of the metal. There was a type of metal cowl surrounding its head like a helmet, eyes of the same lava that ran throug
h it, and a snarl of metal lips that showed the tips of pointed black fangs.

  Its claws—and that’s all it had, claws, no hands—were huge even in comparison to its size, each one at least two feet long, four of them at the end of each wrist.

  It looked like your worst nightmare had taken a Terminator, said, “Oh yeah, we can do a hundred times better than that,” and combined it with a demon from the deepest pit of hell. But I didn’t believe in hell and that made this simply one more monster to put down. One more notch on the bedpost, because I damn sure killed more often than I got laid.

  “Nik!” He was on the other side of it. I ejected the empty clip, slammed in a new one, racked the slide, then added one more round. I tossed him the Eagle. “Eight rounds. Seven in the clip, one in the pipe.” Niko caught it and was already firing.

  He was a master with the sword and I’d rarely seen him need to use a gun, but this was going to be one of those rare occasions. His blades would only shatter against the unknown metal of this thing.

  Ignoring the explosions from behind it, the creature swiveled its head completely around, the metal moving as smoothly as flesh, but the sound it made—the motion as scale hit scale—was the sound of human bones being crushed. Two faces. It could watch its front and back all at once. Fan-fucking-tastic. This face wasn’t snarling. It was grinning, the metal lips stretched wide and every ebony fang showing. They were as oversized as its claws, and the stench of ancient blood on them was overpowering. I preferred it when it wasn’t quite as happy. But my preferences didn’t matter right then.

  I didn’t think the Eagle would do Niko any more good than it had done me; nor would my Glock I already had yanked from my double holster, but I had other weapons. Right now, I had only one I could think of that would work. If we’d had more time to think, maybe we could come up with something else, but we didn’t have time.

  Or the need.

  Our weapons hadn’t worked, but I had one that lived in me and it never failed.

  I’d gated Niko’s father to Central Park. I could gate anyone or anything to anyplace I’d been or could see from where I stood. Twice within a day, at any rate. I could put this thing in the ocean, but I had a feeling that wouldn’t stop it. It might give it a long, wet walk to get to land again, but I couldn’t know if water would bother it—not when explosive rounds didn’t. That left only one place I could send it and be sure it wouldn’t come back. Tumulus. The reason I didn’t believe in hell, because that was the true hell. The Auphe home away from home—another dimension, another world, a place out of sync with ours—I didn’t know or care.

  I did know only Auphe—or the half Auphe that was me—could travel there or back. If I stuck this thing in Tumulus, we’d never see its metal ass again. Or I could open a gate inside it, but the implosion combined with the explosion—gates were tricky that way—it would send metal shards flying in a shrapnel storm neither Nik or I would survive.

  Tumulus it was.

  It took less than a fraction of a moment for all that to run through my head, and that fraction proved why I sucked so badly at math. It was on me faster than I’d seen any creature move—and I’d seen the best of the worst. It was too fast to build a gate around it. Too fast for me to build a gate in front of it. Too fast for me to gate myself the hell out of the way.

  It crouched on all fours; then it hit me…it or a Mack truck, I wasn’t sure, but I was positive that I was held down by metal claws that encompassed my chest. They were as long as I’d guessed. I couldn’t see them, but I could gauge their length by how far I could feel them penetrate my chest wall, scraping on the outside of my right and left rib cage, pinning me to the street—jammed into the concrete itself. I felt the burn of the metal as it touched my legs. It was as hot as the burner on a stove. The eyes that contained killing magma moved closer until I was certain the molten rock would cascade over me, frying me to an outline of death and charcoal on the street.

  Its mouth opened. I could see the red at the back of its throat, but I thought the teeth would get me first. Having your face chewed off or having it melted to slag and ash. Put that down as a choice I was glad I didn’t have to make. Neither seemed a time worth having. I lifted my arm and rammed the Glock into its gaping mouth and emptied the clip. Nothing happened except a good gun began to melt in my hand. I threw it to one side before my hand went with it. The last of the Eagle’s explosive rounds hit it from behind, but this time it was ready. It didn’t move, not an inch. Its mouth, the furnace of heat and metal, moved closer.

  Checkout time, and me with no luggage.

  I wanted to say something.

  I knew this one was it. In our business, it was just a waiting game. When it took me down, my head had slammed against the concrete enough to scramble my brain thoroughly enough that I couldn’t gate out. I’d used a gate once today. A second one in one day was doable, usually, but much harder and took a concentration and an effort that a cracked skull wasn’t giving me.

  Yeah, this one was it.

  I heard more explosive rounds being fired and then the sound of running. Nik. Running toward death when anyone else would’ve run in the other direction. The head facing mine arrowed closer—curious or toying with me, I didn’t know. Or care. I was the mouse; it was the cat. Wondering was pointless.

  Hadn’t I wanted to say something?

  Did it matter?

  Yeah. It did. Hell, yes. If I was going to die, it mattered. I was going out foulmouthed and spitting blood in the face of my enemy. That’s who I was. What I was. I’d die, but I wouldn’t die screaming. I’d die cursing, and screw life. What had it ever once done for me?

  “Swear…not…Sarah Connor, you piece…of shit,” I gasped. The weight of the claws was incredible and made breathing almost impossible. “Nothing against Skynet…if…gets more TV channels…all for it, you metal…ass…hole.”

  Niko came out of the semidarkness and threw himself on top of the metal mass of claws that held me down. “Gate us out of here,” he said fiercely. “Goddamn it, Cal, if there was ever a time to break the rules, it’s now. Gate!”

  But I couldn’t.

  “Run.” I pushed at him with more strength than I should’ve had, impaled and pinned. “Nik, run. Can’t gate.” Or I would’ve gated that windup tin toy from hell far from here. I’d tried. My brain wouldn’t cooperate, but it didn’t mean I hadn’t tried, wasn’t still trying. I could feel the blood pouring from my nose, the headache even more crushing than the one I had from hitting the street. The sacrifices of making a second gate so soon from the first were bad, but I’d done it before. Not this time—I pulled all of myself into the effort and nothing happened.

  “Nik, run,” I repeated desperately.

  He looked at me with a battlefield, hitching-a-ride-to-Valhalla flash of teeth, unmoving as the head rushed down, jaws gaping, aimed at him. “You’re such a fucking idiot, little brother.”

  It was only Nik who could make me laugh, tasting the salt of blood for the single breath before we died. Nik whose father hadn’t saved him and now neither could I.

  Fuck, why couldn’t I do it? If not for me, then for him. Just one goddamn gate.

  Why…

  And it was gone. Every molecule of metal except the claws still pinning me to the street and an inch or two of metal arm above Niko’s back. The gray pulse and black swirl of the gate had appeared, gobbled up the murder machine, and then disappeared before I was sure I’d seen it…or done it.

  Niko sat up. I could see the smoke wisping up from his back where drops of the lava or whatever the hell it was had dripped onto him and were eating through his shirt and skin next. “Take off…shirt.” I managed to smack his arm. “You suicidial…moron.”

  He did, but at the same time he used his cell to call Goodfellow for help. “Where’d you send it?” Niko asked. He wasn’t talking to Robin any longer. He was talking to me. I blinked at the question and the time lost—a slice of missing reality. He was now off the phone, shirtless, and run
ning a careful hand over my side and down to the street. From his expression, I knew he could feel the claws beneath my skin. Or maybe they weren’t beneath my skin. That thing had been big; its claws could be equally big, and I didn’t have a lot of spare flesh on me, thanks to Niko’s training regimen. That could be why Niko’s touch didn’t hurt. It wasn’t me he was touching, but the claws that had captured me and burst open flesh as they slid along my ribs. I did feel cold, yet I felt a warmth running beneath me.

  Blood.

  It has a unique, soothing heat that lets you know you might not have bought the farm yet, but the Realtor has the contract in front of you, and the pen is in your hand.

  “Cal, where did you send it?”

  He didn’t look worried, which meant he was. “I don’t know,” I said, and I didn’t. I had no idea where I’d sent it. “I couldn’t gate. I hit my head”—more accurately cracked it open like an egg—“…couldn’t think straight, couldn’t…pull it together.” Not for a gate and not for the faraway Tumulus. “Before, I could…have.” When I could gate with no effort at all, no head wound would’ve stopped me. No wound would have. “Before it would’ve… been easy, but Rafferty broke me.” I said it resentfully, spitefully. But while the dark part of me meant it, the rest of me didn’t, not really. The healer had done what was best at the time, at least what he thought was best, and it had kept me sane long enough for me to find a way to stay that way permanently.

  Yet now I was sane but still broken.

  “Crippled,” Niko murmured. What I’d accidentally said in the bar.

  “Didn’t mean it,” I denied immediately. “That was then. We didn’t know.” Didn’t know there’d be a now when limiting me to two gates with the third one killing me along with the Auphe in me would be more harmful than helpful. At the time gating had brought out the worst in me—the uncontrollable darkness in me. “Rafferty didn’t know…you didn’t know.”

  I could hear Goodfellow’s rapid footsteps coming from the bar. Niko let it go. He didn’t have much choice. We could talk and bond and spill our feelings, but as I’d bleed to death in the street at the same time, I thought the girly shit could wait.