Nightlife (27 page)

It was an unnatural sleep. There were no dreams, no sense of time passing. It was less like sleep and more like nonexistence. When I woke, I expected that somehow Niko, Goodfellow, and Rafferty would still be standing in the same positions. They weren't. I was alone. A rustle at the doorway had me amending that. Mostly alone. A wolf stood there, its round yellow eyes fixed unblinkingly on me. The upper lip was raised enough to show a hint of pearly white teeth. Reddish brown fur bristled along its neck and the ears were flat to its skull. It was huge, male, and pissed off.

"What a big furry dick you have, Grandma," I sneered with a voice rusty from disuse. Opening massive jaws, it gave me a silent snarl, turned, and disappeared from my line of sight. With Red Rover gone, I turned my attention to the room and scanned it curiously. It was Rafferty's surgery. Mopping blood from the floor would be easy enough; it was cheap green linoleum chosen for that very reason. There were shelves upon shelves of medical supplies, a squat and ancient refrigerator that chugged on reliably, and no windows. The house was backed up to a nature preserve if I remembered correctly, but better to play it safe. What went on in this room wasn't for the eyes of your average Joe. There were three beds and I was lying in the one closest to the open door. They were all strictly yard sale quality, scarred, stained, and with the occasional kid's name carved into the headboards. "John." "Timmy." "Bobby loves Katie." I was dressed in faded blue scrubs with a threadbare sheet and blanket pulled up to my waist. None of it was in the style to which I'd become accustomed, not by any stretch of the imagination.

I sighed and focused on the ceiling. A crack ran from corner to corner and I followed it idly with my eyes. I'd fucked up. There was no way around that. I'd let two humans and a mutated goat get the best of me. I'd failed the Auphe, who very probably were now no more. Maybe one or two had escaped the destruction of the warehouse, but I wasn't holding my breath on it. No, I was most likely the sole survivor—on our side of the fence anyway. I was the last of the great and grand plan, which to be truthful I'd never much given a shit about. It was only the paycheck that had ever concerned me. But although I'd never cared one way or the other about the Auphe's success, I did care about myself. First, foremost, and always. I wanted freedom and I wanted revenge and it didn't matter in which order they came.

There was no time like the present. I used my hands to push up to a sitting position. Swinging my legs over the edge of the bed, I balanced for a moment and then stood. At least that's the way it ran in my mind. In reality, nothing happened. My arms remained still at my sides, my legs unmoving beneath the covers. The only movement I seemed to have was from the neck up. I could turn my head in either direction, tilt it back, or rest my chin on my chest, and that was the sum total of it. I might have woken up, but that goddamn son of a bitch Rafferty had made sure I wasn't going anywhere. He had paralyzed me, turned me into a temporary quadriplegic. Until he returned and lifted the hoodoo, letting my nerves talk to one another again, I was pretty much screwed. And didn't that seem to be the story of my life lately?

Now I had to wait. Eventually they would have to reverse what had been done. They had already made the decision; they hadn't let me die. It was what I'd been betting on. Niko had missed his window of opportunity. He had the chance and, from what I could tell, the absolute intention of ending my life. But he hadn't. At the last possible moment he'd shifted the angle of the blade to leave me alive, if only just barely. Since he hadn't killed me then, I didn't believe he'd let me rot now. And while Rafferty might have healed me, he wasn't about to become my caretaker, spoon-feeding me Jell-O for the rest of this body's life. At some point he would have to set me free. And then he better run like a cheetah because what I was going to do to him would make this paralysis look like a tropical vacation.

Even the fantasies of a sliced and diced Rafferty weren't enough to keep me from contemplating exactly why I'd let Niko take his next-to-best shot to begin with. However, if the fantasies weren't enough to distract me, the approaching voices were. I was peculiarly grateful. It was a subject I wasn't sure I wanted to study, even from the far corner of my eye. Tilting my head toward the door, I could see into the kitchen across the hall. The three of them came through the back door, bringing in the smells of falling leaves, frost-singed grass, and an icy wind. Niko and Robin sat at the table as Rafferty moved over to the refrigerator. Removing three frozen dinners, he shoved them all into the small microwave on the counter. Goodfellow watched, wincing, as the dinners were stacked on top of one another and the timer was jauntily spun with a twist of the wrist.

"This does not bode well," Robin said glumly, running a hand through wind-tousled curls. "I've yet to see culinary delights belched out by one of those devices."

"O ye of little faith," Rafferty rumbled. He slid a look at me across the distance. "Well, well, the baby's awake. Want me to put him back down?" he asked Niko.

Niko shook his head. "Leave it. There's nothing it can do."

Okay, now, that just hurt. My lips peeled back in a manner reminiscent of my earlier visitor. They ignored the snarl and they ignored me. That was worse. I think it was safe to say in my entire long life I'd never been ignored. Reviled, cursed, feared, but never…
never
ignored. Turning away from me, they continued with what passed for conversation among the sheep. Baa baa baa.

"How're the ribs doing?" Rafferty didn't wait for Niko's reply. Reaching over, he laid a hand on my brother's arm and let his eyelids fall in concentration. A second later he opened his eyes and grunted, "They're knitting. Hurting some, though, huh? How 'bout some Tylenol?"

Amusement a pale watercolor wash across his face, Niko said, "And here I thought you would simply slap the whammy on me."

"Trust me, I save the whammy for bigger and better things." The microwave dinged and he stood, calling over his shoulder, "Catcher, bring us the Tylenol!"

Minutes later, there was the clatter of nails on the worn wood floor and the wolf trotted into the kitchen holding a large red-and-white plastic bottle in his mouth. Robin raised his eyebrows. "That is one smart dog."

I saw Rafferty's shoulders tense and thanks to Cal's memories I knew why. Pretending as if he hadn't heard the comment, he went on to drop the dinners along with silverware on the table before taking the bottle and wiping the outside with a kitchen towel. Shaking out two, he dumped them in Niko's palm. "Dig in. Grub's on."

Peeling back the plastic film, Robin poked at the steaming dinner with a fork and made a face. "A grub or two wouldn't be much of a surprise. Neither would a rodent part or the occasional human thumb."

"You bitched at breakfast, bitched at lunch, and here we go again. You could always cook, Goodfellow. Nothing's stopping you." Rafferty began shoveling food into his mouth with relish.

"Nothing but the lack of even the most rudimentary of the basic food groups." Robin discarded his fork and pushed the uneaten dinner away. "Your pantry is empty and the refrigerator is developing new life and new civilizations as we speak. Perhaps your friend could share his doggy chow with us."

Niko tapped a finger on the back of Robin's hand warningly. "Not a good subject, Robin. Let's move on for the moment."

Goodfellow looked puzzled and his confusion was understandable. Nonhumans, whether monsters or human wannabes like the puck, could sense their own. Some could smell the difference, some could see it in a rainbow-chased aura, and still some sensed it in a way they couldn't even explain. Either way, you knew… You always knew. But there was nothing around Catcher that hinted of anything but the canine-slash-lupine… not to the paranormal senses.

There was silence after that. Apparently no new subject had enough appeal to pop into anyone's mind. Robin sat with chin in hand gazing absently into space.

Rafferty had confiscated the spurned microwave dinner and was making his way steadily through it. Niko had given his to Catcher, placing it carefully on the floor. The wolf stared at it dubiously, then fastened his teeth delicately around the edge, lifted it, and promptly dumped it in the garbage can by the back door.

"Not exactly a ringing endorsement, is it?" Robin drawled.

"Shut the hell up." Rafferty glared at Goodfellow and then turned his scowl back to me. "And you… go to sleep, damn it." If I'd ever needed a sign as to just how powerful the healer was, I received it. Like a light switch had been flicked, I tumbled from light to darkness. He hadn't even needed to touch me. From nearly twenty feet away he'd been able to put me down. It would've been humbling to anyone with less recognition of his own superiority. As I fell, I heard him shift from annoyed to defensive. "Sorry. But he was spooking me with those silver eyes. Jesus, they're freaky as hell."

I wondered dreamily what he would think of his own eyes when I plucked them from his sockets and fed them to him. Then, once again, I was gone.

The next time I awoke, the house was dark. The only illumination was a dull yellow light that spilled dimly down the hallway. It probably came from the den. Rafferty was much too practical to have a living room. He would be harder on the furniture than Catcher.

My position had changed; I was now on my side with a pillow behind my back supporting me. They might hate me, but they couldn't seem to bring themselves to hate what they still thought of as Cal's body. They were taking awfully good care of it. I immediately went to work trying to break the paralysis that held me. It was most likely pointless, but you never knew what the power of sheer rage could accomplish. And I was as coldly furious now as I had ever been. Locked like a falcon in the cage of my own body—it had long since passed irritating and was now just this side of unbearable. I wanted to rend; I wanted to shred; I wanted to kill. I bared my teeth and shook my head violently. But the most I accomplished was one absolute bitch of a headache. I tried to curve my hands into claws, tried to kick free of the covers. Nothing. I was as petrified as a centuries-old piece of wood. Dead and gone.

Yeah, they
wished
.

Soaked with futile sweat and panting with impotent rage, I heard it. Far down the hall, in the land of the light, came the explosion. It was Rafferty. "No! I won't. Goddamn it, Niko, I
can't
."

Niko's voice was low, audible only in part. "I know…" and "… sorry…" were all I could catch.

"No, you don't know. If you knew, you would never ask. I'm a
healer
. I can't kill. I won't kill."

Robin joined in then. "We've tried everything. There is nothing left to us. This would be painless. Cal deserves that. You would be saving him from further suffering. Can't the healer in you see that?"

"So you had me give him life only to turn around and take it?" Rafferty said bitterly. "Why did you bring him here then? Why didn't you just let nature take its course?"

"It was a mistake." Niko spoke louder this time, more firmly, but with as weary a tone as I'd ever heard from him. "My mistake. I thought I saw…" He let the words trail away. "It doesn't matter. It's the only way, Rafferty. If you don't do it, I will. My brother's blood is already on my hands. I'll finish what I started."

"Jesus," Rafferty said in a voice as weary as Nik's. "Sweet Jesus."

All right, this had better be a joke. One big, frigging mother of all jokes. Kill Cal? Kill this body? After all they'd gone through to avoid just that? Couldn't they make up their goddamn minds?

Apparently they could. After nearly twenty minutes of silence, the sound of footsteps reverberated down the hall. Any vestige of worthless humanity melted from me instantly. My lips remained locked in a snarl, and my eyes narrowed with a wrath that verged on madness. Humans. Sheep. Coming to take what was mine.
Mine
. Bastards. They had no idea what they were dealing with, even Goodfellow. Did they think they could make an end of me so easily? They were wrong. Fatally wrong.

"Cal?"

Niko stood in the door. The dark smudges circling his eyes gave mute testimony that it had been days, if not longer, since he'd slept. The lines scoring his face deepened as he stared at me. There was pain in his eyes, endless pain, but there was peace too. It was the same emotion you saw in the terminally ill. Acceptance. Letting go. Love.

Shit
. They were serious about this.

He stepped into the room. "I let you down, Cal. I'm sorry." His lips curved sadly. "But you know that, don't you?" Standing by the edge of the bed, he bowed his head and rubbed knuckles over the surface of the blanket. "Kid brothers, they're a pain in the ass or so everyone says." The next words were softer, but I heard them nonetheless. "Everyone is wrong." Pulling up the covers higher on my chest, he smoothed the folds. "Good-bye, little brother."

Rafferty and Goodfellow had followed him quietly into the room. Robin moved shoulder to shoulder with Niko, a silent support. Rafferty moved to the other side of the bed and pulled the pillow out from behind me, dropping me to my back. He didn't look at me,
couldn't
look at me, if his clamped jaw and greenish white skin were any indication. "You two going to stay and watch me commit murder? Sure you don't want to make some popcorn first?" he spit with a near brutal antagonism.

Goodfellow's face solidified to ice. "If you cannot do it, then step aside." There was a knife in his hand, small but deadly. "If you won't help Caliban, then we will."

The anger melted away from his face, leaving only desperation and a numb despair. "No." Rafferty scrubbed his face hard with both hands. "No. You're right. I can set him free and I can do it without pain." Reluctantly, his eyes finally came to rest on mine.

"Touch me and it will be the last thing you do in your miserable life." Involuntarily venom began to pool and leak from the corners of my mouth. "And there'll be plenty of pain for you. Never-ending, soul-destroying pain." A thickly folded towel covered my mouth and kept me from dissolving the healer's face to a blood pudding. Niko. Always prepared. Always goddamn prepared.