by Rob Thurman
“Don’t,” he said firmly.
I turned my head back toward him. “Nik, you heard what—”
“I said don’t,” he overrode me. “It doesn’t matter what it said, Cal. Not to me, and not to Promise or Robin. A few may have survived the warehouse explosion, but they won’t survive for long. They . . .” He stopped, lips pressed tight. Closing his eyes, he massaged his forehead with the heel of his hand. “I’m an idiot. They’re back, aren’t they? They’re truly back. Bastards.”
I extended an arm and hooked it around his neck for a rough squeeze. “Goodfellow says there’s a Greek nudie island he could take us to.”
His eyes opened, and he snorted through his long nose. “And how is that better than the Auphe? Or less dangerous, for that matter?”
I stretched my lips into the closest thing to a grin I could manage. “Good point.” I released him and sat up. “Do you think . . . ?” I hesitated, but then pushed on. “Do you think the Auphe took George?”
“No,” he said with the certainty that let me know he’d already carefully weighed the possibility before dismissing it. “The Auphe are straightforward in their maliciousness. If they had wanted George, they would’ve taken her. Simply, and without the distraction of Caleb and the crown.”
I felt something inside me unclench a little. George in Caleb’s hands was gut-wrenching; George in the hands of the Auphe . . . it was a connection in my brain that I couldn’t even make. “Okay.” I blew out a heavy breath and repeated, “Okay.” I retrieved my blade from under the cushion and watched the sunlight ripple on its surface. “Now tell me, why the hell is that mangy Flay in your bed and not headfirst down the incinerator where he belongs?”
“He wouldn’t fit?” he offered with a raised eyebrow. At my unappreciative growl, Nik stood, stretched, and relented. “He doesn’t know anything useful that he’s aware of. But now that he is persona non grata with the Kin and Caleb, he may be able to advise us on what Caleb’s next step would be. It would only be a guess, but a guess is more than we have now.”
It was smart thinking and good strategy, but in the end, it came to nothing. In seven hours Flay didn’t wake once. Oh, sure, he’d shared his bodily fluids, all of them, with us . . . all over Nik’s bed. But consciousness? Words? No. Promise said she’d seen it before, a self-induced coma that concentrated all a wolf’s resources on healing. Nothing could wake the son of a bitch and don’t think I didn’t try. I did. And with an enthusiasm I didn’t like to think about. Finally, Niko dragged me out to the kitchen and pushed me into a chair. “Drink,” he commanded, depositing a glass in front of me.
Looking at the container of brown liquid dubiously, I said, “Yeah, thanks anyway. What ails me I don’t think your wheatgrass can cure.”
“And torturing an unconscious wolf will?” he retorted.
I felt the burn behind my skin spread to tingle in my mouth. Shame. What had seemed completely justified only minutes ago now seemed far less so under my brother’s gaze. So I did the very least I could do. Taking the glass, I drank. Expecting the usual healthy concoction, I nearly choked on the scorch of whiskey. Considering our mother, it was the last thing I’d expected Niko to slip me, but oddly enough it was just what I needed. One swallow was enough. Hot as my rage, the alcohol burned a path down to my stomach and woke me up. That was the best way to put it. It woke me up, jarring the cycle of fear and hate and letting me step free of it for a moment.
“Let me make myself perfectly clear, Cal.” He put his hands on the table and bent down to fix me with an unwavering look. “I don’t give a damn what you do to Flay. I do, however, give a damn what you do to yourself. All right?” He didn’t give me time to respond. “Now . . .” After removing the still half-full glass to the sink, he sat down opposite me. “Goodfellow called. He’s had an idea.”
Justifiably suspicious of any patented Goodfellow scheme, I asked, “What kind of idea?”
“Abbagor.”
That had been the original Goodfellow extravaganza that had birthed my suspicious nature to begin with. To hear it repeated was the nastiest sort of déjà vu. “You’ve got to be shitting me.” I jerked back in the chair so abruptly I nearly tipped it over. “Jesus. Tell me you’re shitting me.”
“Would that I could,” he said impassively.
“He tried to kill us last time, Nik. You do remember that, right?” I said caustically. I sure as hell did and as memories went, it wasn’t among Christmas Day and the smell of puppy breath for warm and fuzzy. Abbagor was . . . Shit, Abbagor was Abbagor. A mass of living flesh, buried victims, and an appetite for violence and blood that was legendary. He was also a troll, but not like any fairy-tale troll I’d seen in any book. He was not like anything I’d seen ever . . . anywhere. And what he had nearly done to Niko . . . Christ. “He tried to kill us, and he tried pretty damn hard.”
“As Goodfellow reminded me, with considerable condescension, he’ll most likely try to kill us this time as well. But apparently Abbagor knows everything about anything,” he said with distaste. “He is our best chance at tracking down the other crown.”
“The other crown?” I frowned. “You think it still exists?”
“It’s possible. The first survived. Why not the second? I think it at least bears looking into. And the best place to look into it happens to be with Abbagor. He, as he’s proven before, knows something about everything.”
I closed my eyes. Unfortunately it was true. The troll was an information miser. If there was something worth knowing, he knew it. Hell, even if it wasn’t worth knowing, he knew it. “Great. Just . . . great. I don’t suppose you’d do me a favor and hang around topside when we go visit the son of a bitch?”
“Considering the three of us barely walked away last time, I would have to say no,” he said dryly.
What went unsaid was that the previous year we’d been at top form. No wounded arm for me, no Goodfellow limping around like a lame horse. “Wonder where I can get a bazooka on short notice,” I said, grimacing.
“Sufficient unto the day the ass kicking therein.” Nik’s hand landed on my shoulder, then urged me up. “We’ll worry about it later. Facing Abbagor without sleep isn’t wise.”
Facing Abbagor at all wasn’t wise. As a matter of fact, it wasn’t anything less than suicidal. And it didn’t matter a damn. We were backed in a corner; we were drowning. If Abbagor was the only straw within reach, then . . .
We’d just have to grasp it.
14
Abbagor dwelled in a labyrinth of tunnels under the Brooklyn Bridge. Where else would a troll live? How long he’d been there, I didn’t know, but it didn’t really matter. From the housewarming on, he’d made the place his own. It was his hunting ground and play-ground all in one—think about that the next time you haul your butt over to Brooklyn. Night was the worst. It was the time Abbagor ranged the length of the bridge, looking for food . . . looking for pets. Better to be food. If your car stalled there some night late, you’d better keep your ass inside with doors locked and pray. Pray hard.
Not that anyone seemed to be listening.
Behind a shielding abutment rested the door to Abby’s summer, winter, and forever home. Last year when we’d come seeking information about the Auphe, there had been a heavy layer of mud over concrete around the entrance. And the smell . . . I hadn’t hurled, but it’d been a close one. It was better this time, the ground hard and dry at our feet. The grate we had dropped through was back in place and secured with a shiny padlock. I looked down at it and kicked the lock, saying fatalistically, “Maybe it’s a sign.”
“If only.” Robin pulled his wallet out and teased out a small piece of metal. In less than three seconds the lock was history. Goodfellow with a lockpick was faster than I was with a key. “There,” he offered with a healthy dose of self-conceit. “It’s the least I can do.”
I cut him some slack; he wasn’t nearly as smug as he normally would’ve been. Niko and I were going below, but Robin was staying behind. M
y arm and sore ribs were bad enough, but Goodfellow couldn’t run. That crossbow bolt had torn up a good chunk of his leg muscle when we were attacked in that alley. I still wasn’t sure who was behind that, although I had some ideas. It was either another one of Caleb’s happy little tests to prove we were tough enough to take on the Kin or a dark and twisted game of the Auphe. There was no real way of knowing one way or the other, but from the rambling of our attacker, I was betting Caleb. “He said and you came,” the guy had said. “He said . . .” Caleb appeared almost human. He was a “he.” Faced with an Auphe, I doubted two things: that the man would’ve been at all coherent about what the Auphe said, and that he would’ve called an Auphe “he.” Your average human with both feet in the mundane and normal world would’ve gone with “it,” combined with a few throat-tearing screams for punctuation. Besides, when the Auphe subcontracted, they did a whole lot better than a nut job with a crossbow.
Since Robin couldn’t run, a high priority when in Abbagor’s lair, he was sitting this one out up top. Moral support in five-hundred-dollar sunglasses. The lawn chair he had carried from his car had cost considerably less. I watched as he unfolded it and took a seat. Lacing fingers across his stomach, he leaned back and turned his face to the sun. “Comfy?” I inquired caustically.
“Nearly.” He yawned. “Have Abby send up a margarita, would you? Frozen with salt.”
“Yeah, sure,” I snorted. “No problem.” As Niko bent, hooked his fingers in the grate, and tossed it aside, I rubbed at weary eyes. Through my own dark glasses the sun seared my retinas with the pain and brilliance of a laser. I’d slept another night, despite my dismal expectations, but it had left me feeling hungover and a headache throbbed steadily at the base of my skull.
“Ready?” Niko prodded.
I pulled off my glasses, tossed them in Goodfellow’s lap, and grunted, “So where’s that bazooka?”
“You’ve one good arm left, little brother.” Niko crouched on the lip of the opening and scanned the darkness below. “I’m quite sure you can arm-wrestle Abbagor to his death if it comes to that.” With that, he slipped over the edge and disappeared from sight.
I sighed and trudged to the reeking black square. “Have a good nap, Loman.”
He waved me off. “Scream if you need anything.” Unfortunately, if it came to that, there wasn’t a single, solitary thing Robin could do to help us. He knew that as well as we did, and if he wanted to pretend this was going to be a walk in the park, who was I to screw up his sun-worshipping, margarita-chugging psychological defense mechanism? Facing Abbagor was going to suck, no two ways about it, but the helpless waiting, that was no picnic either. We all knew, from past and current experience, that waiting was a special hell all its own.
“Screaming I can do,” I said with grim cheer as I sat on the opening’s edge. “See you later, Goodfellow. Don’t forget the sunblock.” I jumped down, the midcalf-deep muck softening the landing just as it had done the last time. No matter how dry it was above, here it was always wet, always a swamp. And it always stunk to the unseen heavens. The stench of rotting flesh and old blood, the smell of a slave master wallowing in his own filth—it didn’t exactly qualify as aromatherapy. But this time I came prepared. Pulling a small tube from my pocket, I deposited a minute amount of astringent muscle-ache ointment on my upper lip. That opened the sinuses like a fire hose, but it was a much more acceptable smell, one I could deal with.
Niko was waiting on me with folded arms and a curious, tilted head. “Clever.”
“Hey, I watch TV, same as anyone else.” And if ever there was a crime scene, this made the cut. Finishing up, I reached back and retrieved the gun hung on my back. No bazooka, but a Browning semiautomatic shotgun. It probably wouldn’t kill the troll. Could be nothing would. I’d emptied a clip in his skull the last time without much effect. Regardless, investing in a little more stopping power was never a bad thing, and this had more field of fire than the Magnum. I would’ve priced grenade launchers if we hadn’t been headed underground.
I wrapped the leather strap around my arm and set the stock against my hip bone. “Well, fearless leader? Are we ready?”
“And what makes me the leader?” Forgoing the flashlight we’d brought, Niko began to walk, smoothly and unhindered by the mud. The faint glow of luminescent lichen on the walls shed enough light to just see his outline. It was more than we’d had last time. Someone was being awfully welcoming.
“You kicking my ass every time I say different ring any bells?” I slogged. Niko skated across the sticky surface like a water bug on a glassy pond, and I slogged. Preternatural genes didn’t help worth a damn when it came to swimming through slop. Didn’t it figure?
“I’m forced to do it so often I can’t be expected to remember every occasion.” Holding up a hand, he added softly, “Now, quiet.”
“Why? He already knows we’re here.” Before us was a doorway I recognized. Carved through the concrete wall with diamond-sharp talons, it was a gaping eye socket to the troll’s labyrinth. Beyond, maintenance tunnels had been expanded far into the earth and God help the potbellied city worker that stuck his nose through that door. A union card didn’t carry much weight with Abbagor.
“I’m sure he does, but since we want his assistance, try for a minimum of manners.” His sword already in hand, Miss Manners stepped through the doorway.
“You want us to show respect for the evil bastard? Jesus, Nik,” I complained, but my heart wasn’t in it. We’d do what we had to do, for George. If that meant playing nice with this malicious shithead, then that’s what we would do. And if that didn’t work, we could try chopping off pieces of him until he felt a shade more cooperative. Hey, I was flexible.
Subsiding into silence, I followed behind my brother as we retraced our path from last year . . . mentally and physically. I had better memories and not many worse. Niko had very nearly died in this place. No, that wasn’t true. What had almost happened to him was worse than death, far worse. Abbagor killed, true, but he also liked his “pets.” How he made them I couldn’t begin to guess. I wasn’t even sure of the end result; I hadn’t caught more than a glimpse of them, but Niko said they were—God help them—aware. Reduced to bits and pieces, but conscious. And Niko would know. He’d been halfway to becoming one, swallowed whole by the roiling mass of tendrils that formed Abbagor’s massive body. Every time that memory hit me, so did another. An anonymous hand . . . male, with a rose tattoo. It appeared between tentacles to stroke the gray pallid flesh with a reverential motion. Living . . . existing in the prison that was Abbagor, was a horror that was hard to grasp. I didn’t want to and Niko didn’t have to. And here we were, walking right back into his reach. Desperation . . . it could make you do some crazy shit.
Crazy.
Picking up the pace, I shouldered past Niko right as we entered the cavern hollowed out in a masonry tower. Maybe he could all but walk on mud like some sort of bargain-basement messiah, but it hadn’t helped him last time. Abbagor had his own issues with me. If I could keep his attention focused on me, it would give my more mobile brother a better chance. A better chance to fight; if worse came to worst, a better chance to run. I’d take whatever I could get. I would die for George, but give up my brother? It wasn’t a choice I could live with. Wasn’t a choice I would make.
Of course, Niko would tell me it wasn’t mine to make.
“Cal,” he hissed under his breath with annoyance as I passed him, but before he could attempt to snare my arm Abbagor’s voice came through the gloom.
“Auphelingggg.” It was a wet burble, a last breath forced through a mouthful of blood.
I looked up automatically. Last year Abbagor had descended from the three-story-tall ceiling like a bloated spider. Although at our level there was a dim light emanating from the glowing-slime-covered walls, above there was only infinite darkness. I strained my eyes but saw nothing. “I’m flattered as hell, Abby,” I said laconically. “You remember me.”
“I re
member all,” came the clotted gurgle. “And always shall I remember you.” He appeared in the mud at our feet, the slow rise of a methane bubble rising through a fetid swamp. There had to be a drop-off, a pit dug to accommodate his mass. That was new. The muck covering him wouldn’t have hidden us from him. He had no eyes, Abbagor, only shallow indentations in the knotted flesh, but he didn’t need eyes to see better than we could. His back, a twisted terrain of tangled tendrils, surfaced last, preceded by floating arms and a misshapen head. The back of his skull was a mass of shattered bone forming jagged peaks covered by thick skin. I might not have killed him, but I’d messed up his pretty looks. Yippee.
“Where is the little goat?” Freed of the mud, the python mouth formed words mellow and clear as the ringing of the purest crystal. His voice was completely at odds with his hideous appearance and peculiar enough to send an atavistic shiver down my spine.
“Goodfellow had a previous engagement,” Niko said, stepping up to my side. “He sends his apologies.”
“Destined to forever be forsaken,” was the doleful reply. It was accompanied by a sigh as mournful as the sound of crying angels. “That is my fate. My everlasting sorrow.”
He’d said that before . . . that he was forsaken. But then he’d said it about the Auphe. Nearly as ancient as they were, Abbagor had the original love/hate relationship with the Auphe. He loved to hate them. Loved to mutilate . . . to rip limb from limb, whatever he could manage. And to his pleasure, the Auphe were a good match for him. Apparently, Abby had a problem with boredom, and he’d do anything to relieve it. That his own blood was often spilled in the battles didn’t bother him at all. When we’d come to him for information before, he’d attacked in the hopes of provoking the Auphe. He’d known they wanted me badly and would come to retrieve me. But he’d been denied that festive little party and had ended up with a head only a mother could love.