Doubletake (31 page)

It made no difference in the end. It was home. Correction: It was home for two of us. The third, Kalakos, it was
not his home. But until Janus was taken care of, he had no intention of staying in a hotel.

That he was around to
have
intentions or a lack of them, he should’ve been damn thankful. He’d made an attempt to keep Niko from going after Robin and me in Boggle’s pit. He’d said it was too late. We were gone and they had the boglets coming for them. He was doing what he could to save Niko as he’d saved him before from the Cyclops.

He could’ve thought he was doing the right thing. He hadn’t seen Niko grow up, but in the past two days I’d have thought he’d have learned that, hell, no, what he did wasn’t the right thing. When it came to Niko’s manner of thinking, what he’d done was a crime, a sword the punishment, the homicide justifiable, and the justice karmic.

But bottom line to the philosophy of Niko’s morals and what flipped them upside down was simple: Don’t insult his brother, don’t fuck with his brother, and don’t get between him and his brother.

“I was doing what I could to keep him alive. I thought you and the puck were beyond hope. Do you think I was wrong?”

My bedroom was relatively dry, thanks to my habit of keeping my dirty laundry as well as most of my clean laundry on the floor. It was a system. It worked and it had soaked up the water that we splashed through in every other room.

Coming home was necessary and going into my room was a second homecoming. I was able to wear my own clothes after showering off the mud from the park. I’d lucked out and done a load of laundry the morning before Janus had attacked us. I’d dumped half of it on and half off my unmade bed. I wouldn’t have to wear something off the floor that’d have to dry on my body. I put on
my holster and shrugged into my jacket. The first had been ripped to shreds by Janus when he’d attacked me outside the Ninth Circle. But I had backups. The holsters and jackets were the two things I didn’t leave on the floor. I hung them from four hooks I’d jammed into the wall. I had three of each, three holsters and three jackets. The holsters hung on one hook, but each jacket had its own. I used hangers, believe it or not, but I took my jackets seriously.

“Was I wrong?” Kalakos demanded with a sharpness that was a clue to how he went about his business…with impatience that would lead to threats and on to the results of those threats. Then the inevitable boring cleanup of whatever was left. When it came to personality and ethics (too much of one and not enough of the other), he should’ve been my father. He was nothing like Niko.

“I heard you,” I answered. “I’m thinking. Shut up and wait.”

The jacket felt good. Leather, comfortable, and ready to load up. I was me again. A man wasn’t a man without a cool jacket…the coolness factor measured by the fact that while wearing one I could carry enough weapons to make me my own walking WMD.

“Nope. I don’t think you were wrong.” I had thought, but I doubted Kalakos would get it. How do you explain the color red to someone who’s been blind since birth?

I reached under my bed and pulled out a locker. It was army-sized, but waterproof. Opening it, I chose the Desert Eagle I’d taken back from Grimm, Eagle against Eagle, because I had no doubt he had one of his own. I backed it up with my SIG Sauer. “Keeping Nik safe is it. Number one priority for me.” I started shoving clips in my pockets.

“Then you see.” He yanked the tie from his hair and shoved fingers through it in clear frustration. “Then why won’t he? I want my son back. We were making progress and now this.” I felt his eyes on me, questioning. I didn’t meet them. He’d been gone twenty-six years. That was too late for wanting big-eyed fucking tearful reassurance from me. “If it had been you I’d have held back,” Kalakos pushed, “with Niko already beyond reach and gone, you would’ve understood.”

When I’d moved the locker from under my bed, I’d turned it and myself to the side to keep Kalakos in the periphery of my vision from where he stood in the doorway. Force of habit with any stranger…and the majority of those I knew. I trusted my back to four…eh, two people. That was it. “Oh yeah, I’d understand,” I said without emotion. “If you’d tried to hold me back from getting to Nik, no matter what the odds, I’d understand you’d be breathing through a bullet hole in your throat.”

From the locker, I picked three knives: serrated combat, two throwing blades, and left room for the xiphos. A small sword, it fit in my jacket in a holster that held two guns and a smallish sword against my back. It wasn’t comfortable, but it made the grade of concealed weapon. Lastly I slipped a switchblade in my pocket with the ammunition clips. Unfortunately I’d used my last grenade in the black market on that mutated octopus. I hadn’t stocked up on those lately. Getting lazy. I didn’t bother with the flamethrower. Janus was made of impervious metal and filled with some type of lavalike substance. It’d think a flamethrower was a refreshing shower or a damn sex toy.

Shoving the trunk back under my bed with a solid kick, I stood from my crouch. My combat boots were wet, but they would’ve been wet from walking through
the several inches of water anyway. They’d dry. “I’m going to cut you a break because you did save Nik at least once. But I know you won’t get it. You look like Nik, but you’re not half as smart, and wanting to invest in emotions for your son now? Is ‘too late’ not in your vocabulary? But since you want to try…”

It was Nik. I didn’t know what he wanted when it came to Kalakos, because
he
didn’t know what he wanted. I’d do my best to leave the door open, though—in case that’s what he decided.

“So listen, Kalakos. Concentrate.” Now I did meet his eyes, and he didn’t care for it. It didn’t matter that Niko and I had eyes of the same gray. The color wasn’t what counted. There were things in my eyes that no one would ever see in Nik’s. That no one would see in anyone’s eyes…except maybe Grimm’s.

“I’d do anything to save my brother.
Anything
.” I’d proven that. Some lived to regret it, most didn’t, and I hadn’t given a rat’s ass once.

“And he’d do the same for me. He has done the same,” I went on. “Think it through. He risks his life for mine. Then I see the mess he’s gotten himself into while pulling my ass out of the fire, and I’m right back in after him. Same risk. Same mess. Then back it goes again. Vicious circle, I think they call it.”

“That’s all but suicide,” he snapped. He was stunned, angry, and me? I was not giving a rat’s ass all over again. If he wanted a say in Niko’s life, he would’ve shown up sooner.

I ignored the comment. “And if we’re too far from each other and it’s too late”—I shrugged—“vengeance has nothing to do with the Lord. Cain was wrong. I am my brother’s keeper. And Niko’s mine.”

“That
is
suicide, plain and simple.”

“You said it yourself, Father Kalakos. Niko is who he is because of me. I am who I am because of him. For me that won’t stop. I’m terminal and Nik is my chemo. He keeps me human and he keeps me sane.” For as long as he could. I walked toward the door and Kalakos took a few reluctant steps back. He’d said I wasn’t a monster like the Bae, but I didn’t think he or I actually believed it.

“Niko,” I reflected, “I don’t know what he would’ve been without me. Not you. Absolutely not you. Better off? Maybe. Able to love, like he loves Promise? To trust, like he trusts Goodfellow? I don’t know. And neither does he.”

“It’s insane. Friends and family grieve and go on when people die. They don’t jump in the grave after them. People live on.”

“Yeah, people do.” I brushed past him in the hall and left him behind. People mourn and move on.

Certain monsters and heroes don’t.

Leaving Kalakos at our place, we took a cab to the Ninth Circle. There was no worrying over the driver hearing us. He couldn’t hear us. He was an Ullikummi. They were from the Middle East, their skin the same color as cooled volcanic rock, blind eyes hidden behind sunglasses, and they were deaf to go along with the rest. Despite being blind, they navigated somehow. I hadn’t seen one get a ticket once or run over anyone unless it was on purpose.

“As plans go, this is lacking in everything that one consists of,” Niko said, also back in his own clothes and content with his own weapons. “Facts, arrangements, a goal in general.”

An Auphe had once killed one of Ishiah’s peris before to get to me. I wasn’t going to let that happen again.
“Plan or not,” I said, “Grimm has us by the balls.” We had nothing, but Grimm—he had a plan…for years. Complex and with every chance of working, of taking back the world, that was his plan.
My
plan had been surviving as long as I could. Trying not to kill too many people when it came to the end, and holding back the end as long as I was able. I’d thought it was a plan. It wasn’t.

It was fucking irresponsible.

Of course, I might not be the end I thought I’d be. Grimm had a hell of a bigger shot at that than I did. His objective was different and he was all about the Second Coming. If he had five or six backup plans to the Coming, I wouldn’t have been surprised.

“If we don’t have a plan, then a fact-finding mission will do,” Nik decided, running a finger around his steel mala bead bracelet.

“You and your obsessive need to label shit.” I started to elbow his ribs as usual, but remembered we all had weeks to go before we weren’t the next-best thing to pork cutlets. I wanted to give him a hard time, but not double him over in pain. “How about some unknown facts? We don’t know how many Bae there are. Grimm’s been on the loose for twelve years…”

“But he would’ve had to acclimate, learn to blend into the human population, find out the Auphe were dead, depriving him of revenge and forcing him to come up with a new plan,” Niko took over.

“And a goddamn plan like that takes time to set up,” I thought aloud.

“We also don’t know how many succubae he’s keeping prisoner, how long he’s had them, or how many Bae a pregnant succabae would deliver at one time. One? Three?”

I had no idea about any of it and didn’t particularly want to know. There could be anywhere from twenty or fifty Bae out there.
Fifty
. God. They were young and no Auphe, but every year they’d be tougher opponents. Every year they’d learn and sharpen their killing skills. If one year was enough for a Bae to mature to full-grown status, think what it could become in five years. Every year equal to eighteen or twenty years of added intelligence and reflexes. In a decade, they would be Auphe and more.

Undefeatable.

“How are your legs?” Niko asked. Grimm’s seeing me limping wasn’t what we wanted. “Did you take the pills?”

I grinned. “Oh yeah.” I’d dosed up on Vicodin to the max and then some before we left home. “I’m pretty sure I have legs, but I’m not feeling them.” The wounded don’t get to play the game. The wounded are broken Monopoly pieces thrown in the garbage. Grimm couldn’t know, which changed the winding road of my thoughts to the one that was waiting for me. I felt him like he’d feel me. The entertainment factor of that thought was higher than sitting in a cab discussing plans we didn’t know and facts we didn’t have. My chances of dying were higher as well, but that was the game.

Time to play.

Yeah, time to play.

The cab was stopping at the bar. “He’s there. I can feel him.” I reached for the handle while Nik paid. “I’ll talk to him. That’s what he wants, right? To drink, talk, and to convince me to be the second founding father of the Bae. But, Nik, you can’t sit with us. Take a table across the room, all right? Behind me.” Watching my back as always.

“Why?” was followed and erased by, “No. Absolutely not.”

“It’s the game. Him and me. Only Auphe get to play. There are two rules and that’s one of them.” I slid out and slammed the door behind me.

“We could take him together. It’s a possibility.” Niko slammed his own door, considerably harder.

“And he could gate however many Bae he’s fathered into the bar and wipe out everyone. If it looks like he’s going to kill me, I would appreciate your coming over and joining in. Swear. But if I don’t at least try the game, prove myself—then it’s all over. He’ll know I’m not as good as he is.” Or the same as he was. And I wasn’t.

Not yet.

“And it’ll be hell-in-a-handbasket time then,” I finished.

“I don’t like it,” he said, standing between the door and me. He could’ve been made of obstinacy instead of flesh and blood.

“And you wonder why I’m stubborn. I come by it honestly, Big Brother.” I snorted. I stepped up on the curb and then stopped. “Be ready and don’t move.” I added reluctantly. “The second rule of the game.”

This time his question was silent, but as forceful.

The second rule. “We’re going to hurt each other, him and me. Not fatally, at least not now. But like the park.” I rubbed at the bullet burn along the side of my neck. “Don’t come over with your sword to make sure all new baby Bae are born with two assholes, one carved by a katana, okay? The game always hurts. Whether you’re playing to play or playing to win, it’ll always hurt.”

“Why?” It was an echo of his earlier questions.

I didn’t answer this time. I didn’t want to tell him the truth.

If it doesn’t hurt, it’s not fun. If someone doesn’t bleed, it’s not the game.

I’d learned that when the Auphe had me in Tumulus. I didn’t remember it, but I knew it. Felt it.

“Just a fact-finding mission. Right?” I said.

He didn’t respond to the verbal poke, holding the bar door shut, before saying something I hadn’t expected to hear from him. Not in my lifetime. “I’ve seen you, Cal, when you’re Caliban, which is more often than you think. Don’t ever doubt you can take him.” It was the first time Nik had admitted there was a Caliban, that I was Auphe as much as or more than human. Cal and Caliban, not two. One. In the past I’d have been ashamed that he’d let himself believe it—the brother who always thought the best of me. Now I understood that this was how it should be and for the rest of my life how it had to be. He accepted me, all of me, with no denying of what I might become and what I might do.

“You’re my brother, every part of you. Don’t you forget that. And if you have to, then kick his goddamn ass, because I know you can,” he ordered, opening the door and following me through it.