by Rob Thurman
“Don’t think this means he thinks of you as his father or a human being, for that matter, although he might give you the benefit of the doubt on the last one. Niko thinks anyone is capable of change. But I’m not Niko. I know who you are. I know what you are.”
I didn’t have to have an Auphe sense of smell to scent my own kind—branded by violence. “All the apologies in the world aren’t going to change that. Even saving his life won’t change it. You’re no different from Sophia.” I smiled and it wasn’t the one I’d given Niko. This was as cold as the inside of a morgue drawer. “Funny, though, considering what you think or say you once thought of me, you’re no different than I am in the very worst of my ways.”
I, on the other hand, was different from him or our mother in the one way that counted. They had nothing in them that wasn’t tainted and completely selfish. I had Niko. I had Robin. I had Promise and Ishiah, not in the same way, but still, a way I refused to let myself believe Kalakos had, wanted, or was capable of. It was too late for him, but I’d let Niko decide for himself, and watch his back while he did.
“So if he does want to ask you something, say if he has any other brothers or sisters out there—because no other relatives would be capable of being the disappointment you are—you’d damn well better answer him. Try to manipulate him, try to get something out of him for the information and he’ll simply walk away. That’s Niko’s way.” I stood and let the blade up my sleeve fall into my hand. I flipped it, a mercury-silver pinwheel, to point at him.
“And after he does I’ll be waiting in the shadows to slit your goddamn throat. That’s my way.”
“Is that the Auphe in you speaking?” Kalakos asked, his mind on me, but his eyes on the knife.
“No, you asshole,” I snapped. “It’s the brother in me.”
I faded off toward the shower as Niko stepped out. He’d have heard the discussion. The room was too small not to. He did deserve to know if he had other brothers or sisters out there, if nothing else. I hope he stuck with the decision I’d dragged out of him in the car. If he did have any siblings, it wouldn’t make him any less my brother. Would I be jealous? Hell, yeah. But I wouldn’t begrudge him human brothers and sisters—the kind that hadn’t once freaked out and killed and eaten a raw deer in the woods.
Then again, maybe one sibling was all he thought he could handle.
I stood in the small bathroom with the door open, leaning against the frame—watching and listening. I’d meant what I’d said to Kalakos. Every word, which meant I wanted to hear every one of his.
Niko had sat on the floor in the spot I’d vacated…the other end of the table. His hair was wet but already braided. He hadn’t put on his shirt yet. He was letting his tattoo speak for him.
As he wasn’t going to start, Kalakos did. “You’re right in what you think about me. But I see you with Caliba…Cal”—he paused and chose his words carefully—“and for all that you suffered and survived with Sophia, the Auphe, protecting your brother, becoming a man almost before you had become a child. I had no such obstacles to approach anything close to that in my life, and I’m a cold man. A man without honor to his own blood, without worth. As were my father and his father—a chain of unfeeling bastards were we all. Had I taken you with me I wonder if you would be who you are today. The fact that I am…that I was such a callous bastard may have been the making of you, Niko. You who are the best man I’ve come to know.”
He linked his fingers, the light sparking off the silver ring he wore on his right hand. “I have no excuse, but I think you wouldn’t be who you are if you had learned from me. You made your own way, a better way. Had I taken you, your brother would’ve been alone with Sophia. I travel always. It was years after his birth before I knew of it. I can guess that you are the better for not being raised in my image, but I know he is the better for being raised by you.”
That was true enough and it had nothing to do with my being better or not. If I hadn’t had Niko, the Auphe plan would’ve worked. I would’ve unmade this world by sending them back. Humans would be scarce and hiding in caves now or extinct, the Auphe would rule, and those were the hard facts.
But when it came to family, facts were meaningless.
Niko stared at him, and if I were sensitive to feelings and auras and all that new age/old age bullshit, I’d say the room got colder. “Amazing how the hindsight of a saint is twenty/twenty and every word a smug explanation of how your being a bastard was the making of me and the saving of Cal.” He stood. “I would’ve liked to have known if I had other brothers, perhaps sisters, but that’s not the one thing that I wanted from you the most. I wanted what you owed me. Two words, and instead you would have me thank you for what you did and what you didn’t do.”
I shadowed out of the bathroom with the knife. Despite my threat, I didn’t think I would get to cut Kalakos’s throat. He had it coming, but Niko wouldn’t like it or let me. He would think it would darken the humanity I had left. I didn’t think so. If anything, as a punishment, it fell short of what his father deserved.
Kalakos took off his ring and placed it in the center of the table. “You’re right. It doesn’t make a difference if it turned out for the best or the worst. What matters is, I was wrong.” He touched the ring with the tip of his finger. “All Vayash men are given one when they become a man. My actions have shown I never became one. I was wrong, and I’m sorry. You don’t abandon your family. For any reason. Even a bastard like me should’ve known that.”
The two words Niko had wanted. Needed.
I’m sorry.
So…
Fine. I wouldn’t try to cut his throat.
Damn it.
Niko didn’t have any other brothers or sisters, I found out after I was done with my shower. I used up the tepid water until it was ice-cold and kept going until my fingers and toes were blue. It took that long to soak off the dried blood from my legs and feet, thanks to Hephaestus and his floor of militarized cheese shredders. I was rubbing antibiotic ointment on my legs and wasn’t bothering with bandages. There weren’t enough in all the first-aid kits and I wouldn’t get pants over that mummy effect.
The door opened without a knock, which only two people would do. Robin—looking to beef up his porn site material—or Niko, who’d seen it all before from the day I popped out of the oven.
“What’s taking so long?” he started with a scowl, then a frown when he took in the sight of my legs and the bloody water still circling the shower drain. “When the Cyclops took me under, you ran for me. From across the room, you ran.”
I tossed him the empty tube of ointment before grabbing a towel to scrub at my dripping hair. “Yeah, I ran. Sort of a given, Nik.”
“Kalakos was closer and he ran carefully, picking his way through the metal. From the looks of you, you did not. You look as if you’ve been…flayed. Damn it, Cal, it wouldn’t kill you to be as careful as him once in a while.”
“No, but it might have killed you, and I keep saying it, but I have never heard you curse this much in your life, much less in two days,” I said, voice muffled by the towel. “Well? Any brothers or sisters?”
“If you’d fallen, you could’ve cut your own throat five times over and no, no siblings but you.”
I peered from under the towel, my lips curving in a wicked smirk. “Did you cry? In relief, I mean. At least one tear?”
“I thanked every major religious figure I could think of. I thanked Goodfellow as well, as he once pretended to be a god. I wanted to cover all the bases.” His face showed nothing but absolute sincerity.
I grinned wider and went back to drying my hair, then dumped the towel in the sink. I avoided the mirror as always and carelessly finger-combed my hair. “Do you think he meant it? That he’s sorry?”
“Probably not, but he made an effort and that may count. Fractionally. I have to think on it.” His lips tightened. “My God, your legs.”
“Looked at yourself lately?” He’d cleaned off the blood from
himself in the car while it was still fresh. It didn’t change the fact that he appeared to have been attacked by five or six tiny dominatrices with small whips. And it wasn’t his legs, although they were now covered with pants, but his arms, his chest, his neck, and a few cuts on his face, from being pulled down through the floor by the Cyclops. I’d seen it in the car and here. We were all sliced and diced, some more than others and some less. Niko and I had the most. Kalakos and Robin the least. Kalakos because he was careful. I swallowed the growl. Robin, in spite of running full-out, because he had a few millennia of practice at dodging sharp objects. I respected the puck’s skill. I didn’t respect Kalakos’s investment in keeping his skin whole.
But whichever half you fell into, the more or the less, the four of us were all injured, Niko had pointed out. “The subject of the first class for blind butchers wouldn’t have fared as badly as we did.” That was a Nik joke. Not the type that are funny because they’re true, but the type that aren’t funny because they’re too true.
“Tired?”
I groaned. “You have no idea.”
Five minutes later he’d kicked Robin off the one couch in the room and had me on it with pillow and blanket before I had half pulled on a Chen-donated pair of cotton pajama pants. Goodfellow complained; I didn’t blame him. The cushions were soft and comfortable. The floor wasn’t going to be either one. But I heard Nik telling him it was time for his shower and first aid assisted by Niko himself.
My brother, he knew how to take one for the team.
“Monogamous or not, I am horrifically wounded and need all the first-aid assistance I can get,” Robin agreed promptly. “Ish would want that. For my health…my best interest. I’m sure of it.”
Ishiah wasn’t on a mission. He’d gone to Vegas to hole up in a hotel room and recover. Or flown farther, to Mexico, where they sell Viagra in barrels, not bottles. Whichever it was, I knew he had sun, and nothing trying to eat his feathered ass. I wished we could say the same.
Knife under my pillow, I slept instantly and hard and dreamed of Grimm. Of living his life shackled and chained. Tortured and craving the taste of raw meat. Dreamed of freedom and traveling a land I didn’t know existed. Learning things I hadn’t suspected, but knew I needed once I saw the world…the real world. I had a nightmare of killing a teacher, but I couldn’t remember what she looked like or what her name was or why she kept talking when she should’ve been dead. I dreamed grim and Grimm, but no more than five or six times.
Maybe seven.
Isn’t that the lucky number?
16
I was swatted awake the next morning by a paper in the face. It was rolled up and I wondered briefly if I’d piddled on the couch. “Up and at ’em, couch thief. Janus came back last night and wiped out about half an acre of Central Park. At least I’d say it’s a reasonable assumption it was Janus, as the unnatural and unseen tornado out of a clear sky makes less sense, but is a weatherman’s wet dream. One drop of rain and they’re on TV yap-yap-yap, counting every drop, predicting the planet-threatening sprinkle but a mere five days away.”
I snatched the paper from Goodfellow’s hand as he kept yap-yap-yapping himself, to find it was in Chinese, which left me out. But there was a picture zoomed in on a circle of trees splintered and flattened. “Shit.” Central Park. “The boggles.” I’d come to the conclusion that Grimm wouldn’t mess with family or friends, but I hadn’t considered enemies. Some enemies can be more useful than friends on occasion. Then there were the kids.…“Jesus,” I groaned, and sat up, every muscle aching.
“You were right. Grimm is intelligent, too intelligent.” Niko was handing me some kind of sticky pastry with a napkin wrapped around it and a cup of coffee. I looked at both blankly for a good minute before I recognized what they were and what to do with them. Morning was not my thing. “He may have gone after something we value but can’t claim as family. It’s a fine line, if it’s one he’s indeed walking.”
I grunted and ate. “Go?”
“Yes, I think we should. The area that was destroyed isn’t close to the boggle pit, but it’s not far enough for comfort either. And there is no other reason for Janus to have been there. We weren’t.”
“Games.” One in which Grimm was several moves ahead of me. Did he think I cared enough about the boggles to come after him? Or that I cared that they were too useful for him to be screwing with? He was outlining the boundaries, dipping a toe in the water to see if Caliban the shark snapped at his leg and pulled him under. He wanted to know how far he could push, yet keep the possibility of my changing teams. Observation had shown him how I felt about family and friends; now he wanted to know how I felt about others.
Did I know myself? You can spend enough time with a monster that would rip off your arm like a turkey leg if you eventually let yourself get used to it. A give and take that goes on for years. Information for pay. Sparring for experience. As long as you’re equally matched and you both can walk away…some were convenient to have around. Like Boggle and her litter.
“I need more coffee,” I mumbled. “Lots more coffee.”
At first I thought the mud pit was empty. To be polite we’d shouted we were coming for a “consultation” with Mama Boggle when we were several hundred feet away in the deepest part of the woods of the park. It wasn’t necessary. She had a nose as good as a Wolf’s, but temperamental was a boggle’s nature. That and predatory, homicidal, and they liked bright, shiny things. Mama Boggle was nine feet of scales, claws, pumpkin orange eyes. She was a humanoid alligator with the backward bite of a shark’s mouth, and a magpie’s attraction to gold and gems. When she was mildly annoyed, she’d uproot full-grown trees and throw them at you. If you were a mugger or a lost jogger, she ate you.
As informants went, she was a good one. If she knew anything and you bought her a bag full of Tiffany’s best, she’d tell you. If she didn’t know anything, she’d ignore you…or go back to throwing trees at you. If she hadn’t had the kids to feed and teach to hunt, she would’ve been more interested in killing us, but keeping her litter in line took a lot of time and energy. They looked just like their mom, but only seven feet tall and not that bright. They’d outgrow it. And when they did, I wasn’t sure what would happen. One boggle in Central Park was survivable. One with a litter of boglets—they were occupied teaching and learning, also doable. But when the boglets became full-grown, I didn’t think Central Park could sustain that many adult boggles. I knew we couldn’t take on that many if worse came to worst.
Unless they stayed on the dim side.
I crouched by the pit and knocked on the edge of the mud. It wasn’t as crusted around the edge, thanks to yesterday’s storm that had finally cleared up around late afternoon. I lifted my hand and wiped the coating of mud on the grass. “Boggle?” I swiveled my head to look up at Nik and the others. “I smell sulfur. Janus. But not strong. Not like it was here. More like the boggles brought the scent back on them.”
“I don’t care for the sound of that. Unless they did us a favor and took Janus apart to keep his bright and sparkly pieces for souvenirs,” Robin said with a yawn as he stood beside me, leaning on his sword. The floor hadn’t been conducive to sleep, he’d said…repeatedly. That was intended to make me feel guilty.
It didn’t.
I was about to knock again when the pit erupted and widely sweeping arms wrapped around Goodfellow and me and dragged us under. So much for the neighborly visit. My last sight was Kalakos holding Niko back, yelling, “It’s too late! You can’t fight that! And there are others…”
I didn’t hear any more about the others as mud filled my ears, nose, but not my mouth. I kept that shut. It was true that enemies could be more useful than friends once in a while, but that didn’t mean you ever forgot what they were. You’d be tempted to…with every interaction you survived, but if you let yourself forget, you’d be delivered from that temptation in a less than biblical way. I’d always known that about Mama Boggle. The first time you dropped
your guard, she’d take you down.
Which is why, when I’d knocked with one hand, I’d been aiming my Glock with the other dead center at the pit. I was firing as soon as her scaled arm started to wrap around me. I couldn’t avoid it—not with her speed—but I could react. Male boggles were bad fucking news, and fast. Female boggles were bigger, stronger, faster, and bad fucking news to the tenth power. They were of the “shoot first, ask questions never” kind if they came after you.
I was emptying the clip as fast as it would go, which, as I’d learned how to convert semiautomatics to full-auto when I was seventeen, I think equaled Mama Boggle’s speed. Goodfellow would be using his sword with all the skill possible in a liquid pool of mud. All in all, we were probably going to die anyway, but she’d feel it when we did.
I like being right, but I also like being wrong. This was one of the times that wrong was my pick of the day. There was a tremendous push and I was out of the mud and back in the air again. Flying through it, but breathing it too. I landed hard against a tree trunk and fell to the ground on my side. Robin was next to me on his stomach, although lucky enough to have missed the tree. Both of us were covered in mud—rank, rank mud that reeked of decomposition.
With the Auphe scenting skills of a predator, I’d had a problem with things like that in the past. When a human came across a whiff of the bloated gaseous dead, it was disgusting. When I did, the same whiff was multiplied by fifty. It was the difference between driving past roadkill and shoving a rancid portion of it up your nose. “Hard to deal with” would be a huge understatement. I was getting more control of it now, though. I went ahead and puked twice. In the old days, I’d have vomited for fifteen minutes at least.
Robin was already on his feet and trying to pull me up as well, but his muddy hand kept sliding off my similarly covered shirt. “I hope you didn’t break your back when you hit the tree, because now is the time for running. And I can’t carry you and outrun a boggle. One or the other, but not both.” He was optimistic. A Kentucky Derby winner couldn’t outrun an adult boggle.