Doubletake

by Rob Thurman

  “Goodfellow, kick him in the ribs for me, would you?” I said. The words were barely understandable. I was going down as fast as Kalakos had, but barely was good enough. As my eyes closed, I heard the meaty thud of Robin’s shoe against flesh. It was a good sound to take me into sleep. I probably gave a smile as I went.

  One dark and satisfied smile.

  “Niko, there is a man in your garbage Dumpster outside. I can see his legs showing from beneath the lid.” There was silence, but the scent of heather. I pictured Promise brushing a kiss across my brother’s lips. “It is not quite what I would call being inconspicuous.”

  “In this situation I do not much care about being conspicuous or not.” There was the sound of the blood-pressure cuff inflating and the tightened pressure on my arms. After several seconds, Niko exhaled. “Finally. Normal.” That was good news. My brain wasn’t going to explode. I didn’t use it much, but it was nice to know. “As for that worthless garbage masquerading as a human being, if the police show up, I’m quite certain he’ll wake up and talk his way out of his mess, because it’s not and never will be our mess.”

  Huh. All that emoting and ass kicking hadn’t seemed to bring Nik much closure. I knew about closure, only I tended to laugh a little maniacally when I heard the word. No one knew better than I did that closure was a fairy tale, and expecting Niko to embrace it in a single day wasn’t doing him much service.

  I opened my eyes to see Promise with her arms wrapped around Niko as he sat in the chair beside the bed. She was resting her pale cheek—like me, vamps weren’t much for tans—against his. Her hair was all brown again, the wide blond stripes gone. I coughed and said hoarsely, “No more…tiger? I liked the tiger look.”

  “It was very high-maintenance. Much like you, Cal.” She reached over Niko’s shoulder to stroke a gentle hand down my blanket-covered leg. “What have you done to yourself now?” There was nothing but sympathy in her voice, but Niko’s face tensed all the same.

  “He didn’t do anything to himself.” He stood up and walked away from the circle of her arms. Standing at the foot of my bed now, he tugged the blanket down a few inches to cover my bare feet. I was a restless sleeper, drugged or not. As for sleep in general, the effects of the lack of it that lined his face were more apparent as he let go of the cloth and folded his arms, brooding. He didn’t look at her or me, only inside himself. He’d changed from scrubs into a black shirt and black jeans. “My…The man who fathered me is responsible for this. Cal almost…” He shut his mouth tightly before relaxing slightly. “Kalakos did this. He is the one in the Dumpster and he is exceedingly lucky that he will eventually wake up. I gave several hours’ consideration last night to whether I would allow that to happen or not.” Nik must have changed his mind about Kalakos’s bringing the Janus automaton here intentionally as opposed to following it or there would’ve been no consideration and no waking up for his father again.

  I cared less about intentions and more about the results, especially when they happened to Niko or me. I would’ve had no problem killing the worthless bastard if Niko wanted to drag his unconscious body back inside, and I wouldn’t need to consider it for hours or even seconds. All I’d need was someone to fetch me one of my guns. But this wasn’t about me or the fact that I’d almost been butchered like a pig at the slaughterhouse. Oddly, my human and Auphe sides both agreed on this issue. The first thought was that Niko needed to take care of this himself to come to terms with an abandoned, fatherless life. The second…

  Unconscious. Human. Worthless. Boring. The dark stretched within me and yawned.

  What could I say? They were both right.

  But Kalakos would wake up again, and if Niko decided he’d made a bad call, yet hesitated—very doubtful, but if he did—I had a feeling my opinion of what I would do would change, but the agreement within me wouldn’t. After all, brothers helped each other out. Besides, worthless and boring or not, it beat TV.

  TV…Nik should get a TV in his room instead of all those boring books.

  TV would be good now.

  Where was the remote…?

  Niko gripped my leg lightly. I’d almost dozed off again. “We’ll have to move you. Soon. Before that thing finds us again.”

  I yawned. “I know.”

  “It’ll be painful, medicated or not,” he warned.

  “Your cooking is painful. Moving I’ll survive,” I assured him.

  “Then you can come to my home and I’ll have the housekeeper make you a completely nonvegan lunch and dinner.” Promise smoothed my blankets again, but her eyes were on Niko. “If your father is genuinely to blame for what happened to Caliban, then I know better than to think you would let him live.”

  “It’s complicated,” Nik replied with ten times his usual understatement, “and I am sorry, Promise, but Kalakos is not a subject I wish to discuss, not now.”

  Then came the knock at the door, and “complicated” was ready to talk to Niko whether he was ready or not. “Maybe the third time’s the charm,” I said. “Promise, could you get me a gun from under my bed?” I must have been due a dose of pain meds soon, because the pain was growing sharp, but being clearheaded and pissed off pushed it down and made me more than capable of handling a firearm or two. “Or two guns. Yeah, two would be good.”

  She took a look at me, the guy barely able to move and pissing through a catheter—Jesus, I hoped she didn’t know that—and shook her head. “Boys with their toys…and their grudges.” Niko was already gone, heading toward the door with katana in hand. Promise left as well, but returned with my SIG Sauer and one of my backup Desert Eagles. Chrome instead of the matte black I usually went with, but I’d discovered over the years that color didn’t matter. They’d both put a bullet in you with equal effectiveness. I didn’t hide them under the covers. I let them rest in sight above the blankets with my fingers curled around the triggers. I wasn’t afraid of Kalakos, although he’d damned well better be afraid of me.

  I’d have offered one to Promise, but Promise had her own weapons—natural and man-made. She was as lethal as either of my guns. “He knew about Niko before he was born,” I said quietly, hardly above a murmur. “He didn’t come for him. He didn’t take him from Sophia. He didn’t save him. The only time Niko has seen him is now…when Kalakos needs something from him. Remember that.”

  “I will,” Promise, the violet of her eyes swirling with black, said, and I saw delicate fangs lower and lock into place as she did.

  “I swear it to you, Niko. I tried to warn you, but leave that behind us. I can help him. It will be back. It is only semiaware; yet that is enough for it to know it hates its captors. The Vayash. Any Vayash, and it will not care if you deny the clan. It will smell the Vayash in your blood.”

  Kalakos, sounding like Niko, but off just enough for me to make the distinction.

  “As if I’d trust him with you. We are moving. It will not find us.” That was Niko, but not one I was used to hearing. There was the fury, buried but clawing its way free. Not forgotten, not forgiving.

  “When Janus returns from wherever it was sent, it will find you eventually, but will your brother be healed enough to fight? Or still in that bed, able only to die?”

  That ass. Granted, Janus had taken me down when the worst I’d had was a baby kishi bite on my leg, but still…That ass. My fondest hope was that I did have the time to heal to show Kalakos what I could do given free rein. I didn’t think Niko would silently hold me back this time.

  Unfortunately, Kalakos had offered the only thing that would have Niko letting him in the house, much less not slicing him open for an intestine-fest on the floor. There was a long pause…Niko thinking, then: “To you, I am Leandros, not Niko. Better yet, to you, I am nothing—the same as I’ve always been. To you, I have no name at all. You are too without value to speak them.”

  He meant it. Niko didn’t say anything he didn’t mean. That didn’t change the fact that seconds later he was in my room with Kalakos because he was
that desperate. Grasping at straws. I’d need weeks to heal, if not a month on the ribs. If Janus came back anytime sooner than that, which was a good possibility, as I had no idea where I had sent him except that it hadn’t been Tumulus, it would take it less than a second to end me. How many moves, and how often would be enough? How quickly could it find us?

  “What do you have that you think can fix this?” Niko demanded, jerking his head in my direction. “Your duty, your burden, it all but ripped Cal apart.” And Nik had put me back together, but he couldn’t force me to mend any faster than I normally did. “Why do you imagine you can heal him?”

  Kalakos looked somewhat the worse for wear since last night. He’d straightened his clothes, his hair remained in a tight ponytail, but his face was covered with dried blood and his nose was obviously broken. Nik’s nose. Once proud, now bent to one side. There were also bruises covering one cheek, his right jaw, and half his forehead. One punch had done that. He was lucky. Niko could’ve killed him with that one punch, easily.

  He reached into the depths of a coat similar to many my brother had. The only people who wore coats like that in the summer were people who carried swords or were flashers. With the way things were going, the son of a bitch was a flasher with a sword. He retrieved a soft cloth bag and from that he pulled a round iron box about the size of an orange. “This contains something old, very old. An ointment made by the most powerful healer who ever lived.” He didn’t smile. If he had, with what he said next, I was pretty sure Niko would’ve taken that second punch to kill him then and there. “The rumors do pass among the clans. I assume you know of Suyolak.”

  As we were the ones to destroy him, yeah, we knew Suyolak, the Plague of the World, born Rom and died a monster. Knowing him hadn’t been the best experience. People had died. We had almost died. The world itself had almost died. Suyolak was the original Grim Reaper…an antihealer who lived only to slaughter. I didn’t see a damn thing that dead bastard could do for me.

  “Do you want to die?” Niko demanded, quiet and remote. “If so, return to the main area. There’s more room there for me to work.”

  Kalakos exhaled, eyes shrouded—troubled? Good. He should be. “You are as I was at your age. You fight for your brother while I fought for myself. You fight for better reasons.” He lifted the lid from the box, scooped a small dab of dark green salve from within, and rubbed it on his face. In a rewind of time, the bruises faded, the nose straightened, although he winced as it did so, until all that remained was an untouched face and a crust of dried blood that he scrubbed off with one wipe of his hand. “Suyolak was born a healer of the Sarzo Clan. He was a healer for many years before he walked into the shadows. He made this before he turned. As far as I know, it is the last. I think there is enough to heal your brother.” He offered the box to Niko. “It is yours. The very least I can do.”

  Niko accepted the box before searching Kalakos’s now-restored face—every inch of it—then passed it to Promise. “I have heard of such things,” she said, careful not to touch the contents. “I feel nothing inimical from it. I would touch it but I don’t want to waste any. There is little left, and Cal…”

  Cal was fucked-up five ways to Sunday. If it worked on a half human, half Auphe…if it wasn’t a trick, I’d need a gallon of it, rather than a small box. But if it did work, Promise was right to be cautious. I’d need every speck of it I could get.

  “Cal?”

  When Niko said my name, Promise waited until I released the grip on my Eagle; then she handed the box to me. I took a whiff. I remembered too goddamn well how Suyolak had smelled—the one who’d Kalakos had so poetically said “walked in shadows.” I’d know a single molecule of his graveyard stench anywhere. There was none of it in what was cradled in the iron box. Iron was what had kept the ointment viscous rather than hundred-year-old dried flakes. Iron blocked the escape of psychic emanations and that’s what healing was. Not magic, but a genetic psychic talent.

  Our Suyolak wasn’t in this. It smelled green, fresh, with a hint of mint and pine. “It’s safe,” I confirmed. “Our pile of dust had nothing to do with this.”

  “If this doesn’t work, don’t bother running. You’ll die either way, but it’s been some time since I dismembered anyone alive. It takes a while, time I’m willing to spare.” Niko had done before what he claimed, but only with monsters and only the extremely horrific ones, but Kalakos didn’t know that. “Or I’ll let Promise have you. She doesn’t drink blood anymore, but has decapitated those who earned it a time or two since I’ve known her.” Now, that was true. I did enjoy watching Promise at work.

  Kalakos didn’t appear worried. “It will.”

  Niko moved to the other side of my bed and began to pull down the blanket to reveal my ribs.

  “Niko, wait.” With Promise watching Kalakos, I felt safe in letting the SIG rest on the covers as well. I tapped my head lightly, and that alone had my vision and the pain doubling. “This is the only weapon we have right now. Wherever I managed to send Terminator deluxe”—and I hadn’t remembered yet—“when it gets back, Tumulus and me, it’s all we have.”

  He nodded, then shook his head as he took the box from my other hand. The furrows over my ribs that had torn me open had been ugly, had to have been, and I could’ve bled out from them. Had almost bled out from them, as I still had a fresh bag of blood hanging from the IV pole this morning. It was why he hesitated. “If you can’t run, if you can barely move and it catches you, you won’t have time to build a gate.”

  “Nik.” My lips quirked. “I was as twitchy as Goodfellow in a roomful of polyester suits last night, thanks to the puck grope-a-thon. If there was ever a time I could run like a bat out of hell, it was then. It still caught me.”

  He frowned. “You know how I feel about your using logic. Turning my own weapon against me. You might as well steal my katana and stab me in the heart.” Through the bitching, which was more than likely to distract me from the pain of his tilting my head forward, he took a tiny amount of the balm on a fingertip and applied it to the cut on the back of my head. From the tracing of his finger it was a good four inches long. I felt an instant tingle and warmth and then an annoying pinch. “Hey, ouch.”

  “Shit.” That was Niko cursing yet again. He’d cursed more in the past day and a half than in most of his life. He moved to the supply cabinet against the wall, flung open a drawer, and was back in an instant while stripping open a package. He went to work on the incision with hand flying.

  “Niko, what are you doing and—Ow…what the hell? This isn’t the kind of healing Rafferty did.” I had my hand on the Eagle, ready to pick it up and nail Kalakos where he stood.

  “It’s the staples I had to use to close the cut. You’re healing around them.”

  And now he was pulling them out of completely healed flesh, which stung, but that faded too as the ointment finished the job. “Aren’t you going to complain that I should’ve thought of that first?” he asked with the last staple removed, his hand mussing the back of my hair to hide the memory of it.

  “I’m not that much of an asshole.” Of course I was. “Does it make you feel better that I did at least think it?”

  I could see the smile behind his somber mask. “In fact, it does.”

  Promise and Kalakos waited in the living area while, behind his closed bedroom door, Niko took care of the rest. Luckily the stitches holding my muscles back together were dissolvable, and Suyolak’s balm sailed over them. Although the amount in the box had seemed small, a little went a long way and then some. There was enough left for the burns and kishi bite on my leg. After that, I took back the box and scraped a finger inside, gathering just enough left to film the skin. Then I popped the finger in my mouth, the same as a kid with cake batter, and sucked it off.

  Niko eyed me warily. “I don’t think that’s meant for internal ingestion. What are you doing?”

  “An experiment. You never know until you try.” I sat up, gloriously pain-free, and added, “
Now, take out the IVs, tell me how to get this damn catheter out, then give me and Cal Junior some privacy. Knowing Goodfellow, he took a picture with his phone and Junior’s an Internet star by now.”

  Niko coughed once before saying gravely, “Yes, a star. I’m sure.” Then he grasped my arm and gripped hard. “I saw you, and I…” He didn’t have to say it. I knew what he’d thought.

  “I’m never dead.” I grinned reassuringly. “Heaven doesn’t exist, and hell has barricaded the door. I’m stuck here.”

  “Perhaps, but sometimes you do a convincing imitation.” His grip tightened and he left me and Cal Junior with a list of instructions and a syringe—thank God the kind without a needle. I read through the instructions twice and sighed. My damn dick was always getting me into trouble, and never the right kind.

  Simple enough that it took only seconds. I then thought about a shower, but I was clean and smelled of soap, and Suyolak’s ointment had been absorbed into my body with no lingering trace of touch or scent. The soap meant I’d been given a sponge bath during my narcotic sleep, ridding me of blood and betadine. I’d have been embarrassed, but then Niko would remind me of how he changed my diapers when I was a baby. The last time he said that, I’d considered beating him to death with a box of Pampers.