Doubletake can-7

by Rob Thurman

  The ringing began to clear as he helped me out of the black steel coffin with its plush red-cushioned interior, and repeated what he’d said. It wasn’t what I’d thought. “You idiot. A three-legged turtle dying of leprosy could run faster than that.” He gripped a handful of my hair and gave my head the lightest possible of shakes. I had a headache already and he’d know that. “I’m going to run your lazy ass every day until I think there’s a remote hope you could make a preschool track team.”

  “Jesus. Fine. I didn’t get eaten. Doesn’t that count?” I didn’t wait for him to give the inevitable no. “I thought vamps weren’t into the coffins these days?” I asked Goodfellow.

  “The majority of them aren’t, but there’s the old-school. Too old and set in their ways to give them up. And the younger ones who are growing up now. They’re about fifty, the equivalent of a human fifteen-year-old. Some of them are into Voth—vampire Goth. Idiotic, isn’t it?” Goodfellow wasn’t waiting on us. He was leaving through the arch. Many bodies were still twitching and alive. It was a good decision. “Goths derive from death and vampires and now vampires have developed Voth from the human teenagers.”

  “If they’re vampires wouldn’t they already be that way?” I knew I was talking too loudly, but my hearing wasn’t completely back. “Well, not now, but wouldn’t it be more retro than made-up?”

  “Hades, no. Vampires never dressed like that. Capes and black makeup, huge fangs more likely to bite off your own tongue than anyone’s neck, long black nails. That’s no way to blend in with your prey. And if you don’t blend in with your prey, you don’t eat.” We were up the stairs now, Niko smashing the head of one last blood leech under his boot.

  “Which reminds me,” the puck said, “I’m starving. Who’s up for Chinese?”

  15

  Goodfellow had been serious about the Chinese. We had a cab drop us off at Canal Street, right in the middle of Chinatown. It left us standing in front of a small greengrocer with a red-and-green awning as the sky darkened to night. Fruits and vegetables were piled in bins for people on the sidewalk to pick up and examine. An orange and white cat stared at us from inside through the window of the store itself. It knew what cats dragged in and that it would look much better than we did.

  “I don’t cook. Unless they sell corn dogs in there, there’s no food here,” I grumbled.

  A fiftyish small man with slicked-back black hair and a wide grin of white teeth except for one silver one that flashed cheerfully greeted us. “Luō bīn xiansheng, wõ hěn gaoxìng zàicì jiàn dào nīõ. Nín zuò wõmen de róngxìng yuõ nín de guanglín. Nīõ shentīõ haõo ma?”

  The smile disappeared and the brown eyes drooped as he took in our scratches and cuts, and my shirt covered in dried blood. “A, wõ kàn yěxuõ bùshì.”

  “He is asking about my well-being. Something that would’ve been nice to hear from the two of you after I faced a god that hates my guts.” Goodfellow answered the man in Chinese. “Zhè shì yīgè feicháng jiannán de yītian, Liú xiansheng. Wõ shì lái yòng le yīduàn shíjian wõ de fángjian, rúguõ zhè shì nīõ méiyõu bùbiàn.”

  The owner responded in English for politeness’ sake. “Of course, your room is prepared as always, Mr. Fellows. Come inside. Welcome, welcome.” He led us to the door, through the tiny store and the door at the back. We went down the stairs, passed through a room where knockoff designer bags were being produced among giggling and impossibly fast chatter, to another door, more stairs, and finally a subbasement. He took us to the largest room, which still qualified as small, but with expensive, comfortable furniture, a computer, and a TV squeezed into it. “I will have my great-grandmother bring you food, medicine, hot tea.”

  Robin collapsed on the overstuffed couch. “And, Mr. Chen, alcohol, please. A great deal of Baijiu. You know what I like.”

  The man bobbed his head. “Of course. Only the best for our friend and benefactor.”

  “You’re genuinely going to send your great-grandmother down those stairs? You still don’t trust me with your daughters?” Goodfellow drawled.

  “I will help her, and no, Mr. Fellows, I do not trust you with my daughters.” The sad eyes brightened again, the skin wrinkling around them in a laugh. “I also do not trust you with my wife, my grandmother, or my lucky cat that sits in the window to watch for the police.”

  The great-grandmother must’ve mainlined ginseng, because she and the owner were back by the time we had all picked out a place to collapse. She looked a hundred and fifty years old, but her feet moved at the speed of light as she balanced a tray on either hand. “I will ring the buzzer if the police come,” Mr. Chen said. “Haters of capitalism that they swear by, tsk, but I fear there is no way out down here.”

  “You can say that again.” The puck sighed, referring to our situation rather than a lack of a basement door. “Thank you. You are a true friend.”

  Mr. Chen had carried a large box loaded with clothes, bandages, and ointments, as well as a more modern first-aid kit, and balanced on top of all that was a tray with six small ceramic bottles and smaller cups that reminded me of the kind you served sake in, but shaped differently. Goodfellow lifted the tray out and placed it on a low, black lacquered table and started pouring. “That’s a lot of alcohol?” I snorted. “If we had a teddy bear we could have a tea party.”

  “They’ll bring more when we finish,” Robin promised. “Here. Try it. It’s honey fragrance. It will help with the pain until more Tylenol takes effect. Oh, and it’s not like sake. You shoot it. No sipping. Treat it as a shot. It enhances the flavor.”

  I should’ve known by his offering me the first one. But I was tired, hurting, and if this took the edge off, I’d take that. I tossed it back and promptly choked, positive that kindly Mr. Chen had put diesel fuel in that innocent bottle. My throat was liquid lava and for a moment I thought I saw a tunnel and a bright light. “Honey fragrance?” I coughed several times before gasping. “Then their bees must be flying around sipping paint thinner instead of nectar.”

  “But it’s such a small amount.” Robin grinned, pouring one of his own and throwing it down as if it were mother’s milk. “I’ll be sure to tell Chen how disappointed you were. He’s a good host. He’ll hurry with more and stand there until you drink it to make sure all is satisfactory.” He gave up taunting me long enough to point to a small dark alcove in the back of the room. “There’s a shower. It’s not much, but finding underground facilities bearable to use as an emergency bolt-hole isn’t easy. However, I learned a long time ago that it pays to keep them. I’m hoping that in whatever manner Janus senses Vayash, buildings on top of buildings on top of the ground and us beneath it might slow him down.”

  “It’s almost night, when he can travel unseen. We will find out then.” Kalakos rummaged for clothing and claimed the shower first.

  I didn’t mind. I was more hungry than worried about the blood and dirt. I left the alcohol alone and moved to the trays of food. There was rice, several bowls of different soups, dumplings, a dish of poached vegetables I passed to Nik, a hot pot of steaming beef, and on and on. It was less a dinner for four than a buffet for ten. I grabbed a fork and started loading up a plate. As long as it didn’t look like fried chicken feet, I scooped it up.

  “Had your time to think about Grimm?”

  “You couldn’t eat your grass clippings and let it go, could you?” I kept eating but with less appetite.

  “I can listen and graze both,” Nik said, dry as dust, but serious too. I’d had my time to think and come to terms. And the thinking had been done. The terms, they were harder to swallow than Mr. Chen’s alcohol.

  The room was too small for Robin to give us any privacy, making the assumption that he cared about anyone’s privacy. He didn’t. But this time he turned on the TV and kept drinking to give us the illusion of it. That was a first, but we were all having a bitch of a time with relatives these past two days, including one he didn’t want to talk about either. This once he unde
rstood and gave us a break.

  I took another bite of something spicy and loaded with chicken. After swallowing, I used the fork to push the next bite around the small pot. “Grimm has a damn good shot of taking me out anytime he wants—he could gate circles around me and cut me to pieces, but he needs me to build the new race. The Bae.”

  The puck immediately gave up pretending he wasn’t listening. “No. The Bae.”

  I frowned. “‘Succubae’ or ‘succubi’ is plural for ‘succubus.’” And they sounded the same whether spelled different or not.

  “Yes, that was true until copyright law came into effect and I copyrighted the word and/or syllable ‘bi’ used in any remotely sexual way, which includes a succubus. You may call them ‘Bae.’” Pronounced ‘bay.’”

  “You really are a freak, aren’t you?” I considered stabbing him with my fork. It wouldn’t be the first time…or the second. “But whatever, okay. Anything if you’ll go back to watching TV.” I addressed Niko again. “He needs me to build the Bae. And he needs me cooperative.”

  Which the Auphe, when they had tried this same plan over a year ago, hadn’t required. They’d had access to Tumulus, a place that would drive me insane in minutes. Frothing at the mouth or catatonic, I didn’t know, but insane enough that they could’ve either used my crazed rage or a catatonic body, posable and reactive as any other male body—but without anyone home in there.

  Grimm, an assumed failure, hadn’t been taken to Tumulus. He didn’t know the way. He couldn’t get there. And if he could, he wouldn’t have known its effect on me. He probably didn’t know I’d spent two years there at the mercy of the Auphe while being trained for the big day—gating them back far enough in time to wipe out the human race.

  So that was out.

  No insanity equals no involuntary cooperation.

  “And since the succu bae aren’t willing and I’m not willing—it ain’t happening. I don’t think he’ll try to hurt you or Promise, Robin, or Ishiah. He’s been watching me since I put down the other half-breeds in Nevah’s Landing. He knows there’s no way in hell he’d get me on his side if he did anything to you. I don’t know how many succubae he has or how many Bae offspring, but replacing the Auphe as top ruling race on the planet is going to take a long time. He can’t hold you all hostage while I help him knock up”—I let go of the fork and said it for what it really was—“while I rape succubae for a few hundred years or so.” Assuming I inherited the Auphe longevity. “Robin, Ish, and Promise would still be around, but you’d be…gone. It’s not smart or efficient and Grimm is both.”

  “You think he is that much more of a threat than the Auphe? They deserved their place at the top of the evolutionary ladder when it came to predators. We were lucky, very lucky to beat them. That and you were incredibly stubborn, as usual.” Niko tapped my plate and bowl with his fork. I might not feel like eating but I couldn’t fight if I didn’t fuel the machine.

  “The Auphe were cunning. Grimm is smart. He has a goddamn degree. What kind of Auphe gets a goddamn degree?” I ate some more. “The Auphe had no problem dying for their cause, bringing the good old days of murder and mayhem back. Grimm will live for his cause. If he thinks you or I are about to take off his head, he’ll gate and come back to play the game later.”

  “That is troublesome.” Now Niko stopped eating, but he’d nearly finished his meal, depriving me of fork vengeance. “What do you mean by ‘game’?”

  “Trying to kill each other,” I said uncomfortably. This was something new: to Nik and me. It was something I’d not felt with the pure Auphe and probably wouldn’t feel with Grimm if I hadn’t given up part of my humanity months ago to get back all of my memories and to save Nik’s life.

  “I thought you said he needed you alive and cooperative, and trying to kill each other is a game?” he demanded.

  “Yeah.” I speared a piece of chicken and looked at it instead of my brother. He had never looked at me with disappointment, but I didn’t want to see the first time if it came. “It’s the only game Auphe play with one another. I didn’t know before the Nevah’s Landing amnesia-fest.” I heard the rasp of Niko’s hand touching cloth and knew he was touching the tattoo through his shirt. I didn’t regret it, becoming less human and more Auphe. It’d been for Nik. Even without a single Auphe gene in me, I wouldn’t have been much of a human being if Niko hadn’t been around all my life. Mom would’ve needed a dictionary to look up the phrase “good influence.”

  “But now I feel it, felt it when I saw Grimm. I want to kill the bastard because he’s Auphe, a murderer, a monster, because it’s justice, but I also want to…play.”

  “If one of you kills the other, how does that help the son of a bitch’s plan?” Niko asked with an edge of confusion and of that anger he rarely showed…until Kalakos had shown up, which was yet another problem to be handled.

  “If he kills me, I wasn’t good enough to be part of the Second Coming or father the new race. If I kill him, he wouldn’t be good enough either. It’s a test too. Like him siccing Janus on me is a test.” I gave up on the food. I’d eat after I showered. “But mainly it’s a game he hopes we’ll survive long enough to complete his plan.”

  “You can’t think that it’s actually…”

  “Fun?” The grin crawled across my face of its own volition. I tried to hold it back, but I couldn’t. “It is so much fucking fun I can hardly goddamn stand it.”

  And I could see then that while I didn’t regret handing over a slice of my human pie to save Niko’s life, he did. “Shit.” I exhaled. “Ah, shit. I’m sorry. But I couldn’t let you die, Nik. I couldn’t do it.”

  “I know.” He wrapped a rough arm around my neck, squeezed, and bumped his forehead lightly against mine. “I’d have done the same damn thing. It might not be the right thing for the world, but sometimes the world has to take a backseat.”

  He straightened. “You’re not worried as much that Grimm will kill you; you’re worried that he’s…” He searched for the right word, Nik who knew every word, all the time. I think he didn’t want to say it.

  I said it for him. “Contagious. The asshole is contagious.” I’d seen him once now and I was running down the dark road as fast as I could go, and there was no slowing down. I’d tried. Part of me was running, part of me was pushing, and part of me was trying to turn around. That last part was small now, too small to have a chance of holding its own. It was slowing me some, though. All parts of me were stubborn, large or small.

  “I’m less worried about him turning Janus loose on us again than just seeing the bastard.” Ah, the hell with it. If I let this shit stop me from eating, I’d starve to death in a week, because we weren’t solving the Grimm situation that quickly or easily. I pulled the bowl back and went to work.

  “If he finds out you’re limited to three gates—two, actually—that could be much more of a problem.”

  Unworthy and spoiled, crippled and useless.

  I shook my head and smiled at him. A real smile, the kind I saved for the brother who’d raised me and no one else. It was completely human and completely genuine. “He won’t find out,” I lied, because how could I know? But the lie was the best thing I could give Nik. I didn’t want him blaming himself for the gates. If he hadn’t given Rafferty the okay to rewire me, limit me, I might have gone all Auphe by now, reached the bottom of the road a long time ago. Chances were high.

  Besides, Nik was wrong—it wouldn’t be a problem if Grimm found out.

  He’d kill me.

  But Niko was also right. Sometimes with family the world takes a backseat, but sometimes it doesn’t—not when you were the family, the solution, and the problem…problems.

  And when your problems are going full monster and helping create a new race to enslave or slaughter humanity…

  Death solves them all.

  It wouldn’t be long before Janus found us. Tonight, maybe tomorrow night. Grimm’s tests and games were nowhere close to being done. That’s why when K
alakos finished and Niko took his place in the shower, I thought it was time to wrap up the loose ends. We might not have a chance to again if Janus crushed each Vayash like a cockroach. Robin was making his way through the honey-fragrant lighter fluid cup by cup, and how he wasn’t dead or blind by the time he reached the fourth bottle, I didn’t know. There was tolerance and then there was taking to heart that embalming fluid shortage Jackie had told us about. After one last cup, he sprawled on the couch and was out. Not passed out. He was drinking the Chinese version of moonshine, but it’d take a barrel of it to knock him out. He was asleep, tired same as we all were.

  Talk about your long day. Gods, monsters, minefields of metal, and too much ass-kicking to recall.

  I was ready for my shower and a spot on the floor to sleep too, but first there was something I had to do. Kalakos sat on the floor by the low table—there was no room for anything larger. He crossed his legs the same as Niko always did, and helped himself to the leftover food. The bastard resembled Nik so much, they should’ve been brothers, instead of father and son. And he had saved Nik from the Cyclops.

  As little as I cared about Kalakos, I did care about my brother.

  Shit.

  “Do you want to talk to your son?” I demanded abruptly, the last word the painful bite of tinfoil on my tongue.

  “I do,” Kalakos answered simply. He hadn’t taken his first bite yet, and put down his fork.

  “Okay,” I said brusquely. “I talked to Niko when we were driving to Bridgeport.” The real reason I’d insisted on separate cars. “I think I convinced him to talk to you long enough to ask you some questions.”

  “I’m surprised you would do that, with all that has happened. Blood under the bridge, so to speak”—again with the similar quirk of the lips I saw daily from Nik—“but I am grateful.”