Downfall

by Rob Thurman

  “No,” I insisted. “Trust me, Cullen. Cal can predict Grimm, but I can predict Cal. I know what his plan will be. I know it, I swear to you. I will do whatever it takes to make it so that Niko and he survive it.”

  “You said you were my caomhnoir,” my guardian, “and you swore three times over. . . .” He paused, his exhalation a child’s fear for his brother and himself . . . a child, five winters old fighting to keep another brother alive. “Keep your promise, please. It hurts to die and I’m . . .” It was Cullen who said it, but it was Cal’s chin that lifted stubbornly with a voice unsure.” . . . afraid.”

  “Three times three,” I promised again, and felt my stomach lurch. He was afraid. Cullen and Cal both, the same person in one way and yet not in another, but they were both afraid whether both would admit it or not. “I will give my life for his, but, Cullen, stay hidden, please, and keep Tumulus hidden too, if you can. This is Cal’s life this time around. I know yours was short, but he deserves to have one of his own. Tumulus would rip it from him. Push it down as far as you can.”

  “I will. Keep your promise and I’ll keep mine.” The eyes stayed on mine and a hand snapped out snake-fast to clasp mine. I twitched but held on to it as the dark eyes flooded back to Auphe red and Cal, back in all his profane if now woozy glory, repeated, completely confused, “Where am I?”

  He looked around the room again as if seeing it for the first time. “Oh, shit. I fucked up . . . didn’t I?”

  I felt my bones shift under the hold he had on my hand, but I cared not at the pain, and laughed in relief and renewed faith. “You did. You fucked up.

  “But would you be Cal Leandros if you did not?”

  * * *

  I fetched Niko into Cal’s room and ignored any scowls or accusations that might have been made regarding foreign sedatives substituted for honey in my hospitably offered tea. People could be unaccountably suspicious when they cared to be. Wasn’t that a shame? Especially when I had done it and did not care one bit if I were caught out in such a thing?

  Humans. They did make me laugh.

  Niko had replaced his hand in Cal’s where mine had been, and that was fine. If there weren’t cracks in the smaller bones of my hand, it wasn’t for lack of effort on Cal’s part. “How are you, little brother?” he asked.

  “For shit. That’s how I am.” He sat up under the covers of the guest bed, no less dejected than he’d been before. “I’m sorry. I don’t remember it exactly. I don’t remember what I said or did, but I know I went Auphe. I know I fucked up. And I’m goddamn sorry.”

  “But you didn’t try to hurt me and here you are now. You’re you, so what have you to be sorry for?” Niko pushed it all away as if it hadn’t happened or, if it had, wasn’t important. It was so well done that I honestly was in wonder of it, how dismissive he was of not one, but two Auphe right there ready to slaughter anyone and everyone.

  Except Niko.

  Everyone save Niko. I didn’t know what an Auphe-Cal would do if I’d been there. When you don’t know things, there’s one way to find out. Ask. “Cal, if I’d been there with Niko and Grimm, would you have killed me?” I plopped on the end of his bed in a casual slouch with a curious countenance and something hidden behind my back.

  “No, Robin. Shit, you don’t believe . . . no. Not you. You fought and destroyed the Auphe with us. You were at the gates of Troy, you fought against the Romans when I was Caiy, you who stood with Alexander when I passed, you’re always there,” he answered, shocked then retreating behind one of many walls. Miserable that I would ask that, angry that I would doubt him when I’d worked years to gain his trust. “You’re the one who guarantees that Nik and me aren’t alone . . . ever. If I don’t remember it, the fucking history books tell me that,” he finished flatly from behind the wall. Angry at me for my uncertainty, angry at himself for causing it.

  Ah, children. So faithful. Ah, me. So cynical.

  I should’ve known better than to question. I didn’t know if he’d have that kind of control, but he thought he would. He wanted to; he wanted to stay with us as long as he could. That was all that mattered. Every—Maat cursed—one of us needed to believe some things, whether we were lying to ourselves or not.

  “I am sorry. I know you wouldn’t.” I gave one of his blanket-covered legs a pat before adding. “Especially as I’d defeat you easily and spank you for the naughty half Auphe that you are.” He gave me a wary sideways glance but the wall crumbled somewhat. I felt his formerly tense leg relax under my hand. It was a good start. “How about Promise or Ishiah?”

  “Promise and Ishiah . . .” His eyes went from a thoughtful scarlet to a bitterly angry crimson, and what was written on his face was not an indication of certainty at all. “Hmm. Let me . . . fuck . . . think . . . who? Blood-sucker-leech-Promise. No, Niko loves Promise. No. Yes. Maybe. Ishiah . . . bad . . . bad. Pigeon who left us to die. I remember him. I know him. Coward. But Robin feels for him. I don’t know. . . .”

  I didn’t know what he was caught up in with Ishiah. Ishiah hadn’t known of Cal and Nik until the past few years, but Cal was sane, relatively sane, honestly as sane as I could hope for at this time. I’d have to go with that. I stopped his Auphe-ish drifting by moving my hand from behind me and slamming his glove-and-claws against his chest with a hard toss. “Here. Use it as you wish, but make certain you know who you use it against.”

  Cal caught it with surprise and an edge of guilt, as if he knew he’d done wrong with it but couldn’t recall how. That was right and I didn’t try to reassure him there. He was dangerous and I wouldn’t try to convince him otherwise. That would be idiotic. “You’re sure?” He lifted the glove as if he wanted to put it on but feared it at the same time.

  “No.” I could be honest. It didn’t happen often, but it wasn’t impossible. “I’m not, but you had better be before you put it on again. Do you understand me, Cal? Niko and I might be safe from you, but there are more than the two of us out there, and you and Grimm hooking up to share a buffet made up of human homeless at the nearest shelter isn’t an option.”

  I straightened, leaned in, and had a blade at his throat before he or Niko could register the movement. My family, they were, and I loved them, but they were human or Auphe-human, and while the second was worthy of fear, he wasn’t me. He had been born of the first predators on earth, but I had been born the actual first and second predator long before dinosaurs had hatched to see the sky. It made a difference. A horde of Auphe were undefeatable, true, but one incredibly young Auphe like Cal? One Auphe did not have my speed or my ability to take a life one on one. I loved Cal, I loved him as my brother, but that meant I had a responsibility to end his life as my brother if he didn’t have it all in check . . . before he could do what he would always regret.

  I had told Cullen I would be there for Cal, but being there had so many meanings, mercy in life and a mercy killing, a child couldn’t know.

  “Cal, I will tell you this only once: If you put that glove on again and lose control, I will kill you.” He said Niko and I were safe, sacrosanct, but Ishiah and Promise he was less sure about. Then there was the fact that Niko had said he’d remembered his time in Tumulus, boasted of hunting and eating in a way that defied any measure of humanity left in him. And he’d laughed. He’d laughed at the memories of that Auphe-hell as if it were fucking Disneyland. That wasn’t the control I needed from him.

  “As much as it would hurt me—and it would hurt more than you could comprehend—I would do it all the same. I would end you. Do you understand?” I questioned as I watched the small rivulet of blood course down the skin of his throat.

  He nodded, unmindful to the steel at his throat and his attention on me alone. Silver-white hair, lava red eyes, but Cal through and through. “Fuck, of course I understand, Robin. I’d do my best to let you. I mean it. Three times three.” An oath that couldn’t be broken. A promise he had no idea what meant n
ow, but knew at a subconscious level, Cullen’s level, what it had once meant. That was enough for me.

  Three times three.

  I smiled, put away my dagger and surged forward to rest my forehead against his. “Put it on, then, cub, and let us go kill as many Bae as we can find.”

  13

  Caliban

  Niko had lost his shit, which hardly happened.

  I was a little more than in awe of it as I watched Robin and him shout at each other—and there was a huge amount of shouting—with the artfully tarnished silver and copper hand-painted design of the bedroom wall as a background. The colors wavered in and out, as my head wasn’t quite right yet. Whatever Nik had shot me with had left me dizzy and with a sharp headache.

  The shouting didn’t help any of that. I slid on my glove-and-claws and felt a fleeting disappointment that it wasn’t the disemboweling sort of shouting and wasn’t that too bad?

  What was worse than the “too bad” that skittered through my head was the fact that I thought that at all.

  It was that secondary thought, that recognition that had me pulling it together. I kept my promise to Robin and held on to the human Cal, claws and all, and not the Auphe Cal. Three times three. Whatever that meant. I had no idea, but it seemed important. Like one of those old historical oaths, the rare ones that people used to keep. The ones you didn’t break. Considering the other things that had gone through my head today, not knowing why a bunch of threes equaled an unbreakable vow was nothing at all in comparison. It was also nothing at all in comparison to the fighting.

  Not that I cared when Goodfellow and Niko sparred, mock fighting. But this was real. They were fighting like dogs in a pit. It was wrong. They didn’t fight like that. Not for dead and gone and that’s all there was, but I could see in Nik’s set and cold face that’s where he was now.

  At first I thought it was about what I’d done. I knew I’d lost something of myself back at Nik and my place when Grimm had shown up. I didn’t remember much more. The claws, Grimm, Tumulus, maybe, although that was gone now, Nik in my bedroom doorway with a gun. Nik with a gun—that was unreal no matter how you frigging looked at it. But there he’d been. Nik with a gun. My brother who considered anything not a sword as disgusting and lazy and, well, me all over. Him with that attitude the majority of his life and yet he’d shot us both. Grimm and me.

  But he’d shot me first.

  I knew why. He was saving me first. I’d been shot with a tranq gun before. I recognized one when I saw it, although the Auphe in me didn’t. That had been lucky, that Auphe ignorance, or things might have turned out differently . . . and far more bloody.

  That wasn’t the issue currently. Keeping my brother and best friend from killing each other . . . watch me prioritize.

  I put my hands up, one clawed as deadly as you could want, and shouted, “Stop! Jesus Christ, just . . . stop. I was Auphe. I’m the one who fucked up and yeah, I’m the one who needs to be put down like a rabid dog if I can’t hold it back, but I am holding it back now. I’m Cal now, not Auphe. So, fuck, just stop!”

  Robin looked at but not out a window, as it was covered with blinds and a curtain, both so muting that there might not have been any light at all from outside. His shoulders were set with anger and regret because it was his back to the wall, wasn’t it? Before it had always been Nik alone who had accepted the responsibility of taking me down if it came to that. Now the puck was throwing his money into the pot and showing his cards. If Nik couldn’t do it, and for all the years he said he would—I didn’t think he could—but Robin would. “I’m fine with who you are and who you might be,” Goodfellow said, guttural, and not from the shouting, I didn’t think. “And I know what I’ll do in either case.” What he was saying was unrelenting and reassuring all at once. I had no problem with it. As he said, he would do whatever needed to be done no matter who I was.

  Cal or Auphe or both.

  Mind? Hell, I was grateful he could be that and do that for me. And he’d be doing it for Nik as well. If Nik didn’t have to do it himself, I’d be thankful. I didn’t want to put that on him, to kill his own brother, and it had been on him for a long time now. Goddamn grateful didn’t cover it.

  “Nik.” I looped fingers around my brother’s elbow, fortunately within reach, and jerked him back down to the chair beside my bed. “He’ll stand behind me if I fight Grimm, and he’ll stand against me if I fight the world. What more could I ask? Nothing. He’ll put me down so you don’t have to. That’s a gift. He’s a goddamn saint for that, okay? Now calm the fuck down, would you? Please?”

  Niko, who sat on the bed beside me as alert and ferocious as any guard dog, was so many levels of screwed up, fucked up, and a thousand times done with this shit. I was surprised he had words for it all. He bowed his head, exhaled, and let it all go. Much more calmly, he offered, “He’s doing what I should do. But what I don’t think I can do, as often as I promised. I am the one who should apologize, to both of you.”

  Nik, who’d been my brother, my father, my mother. He had seen me take that first breath, and that was no exaggeration at all—how could I expect him to be the one who made sure I took my last? Whether he thought it his duty or not, whether I needed it or not, I couldn’t expect it.

  “Do not say you are sorry or I’ll swat you again.” Goodfellow sounded serious on this one. “That is why I am here.” Robin gave me another pat to my foot and then rubbed a hand across the top and back of Niko’s head, pretty much destroying his braid. “To do what you cannot bear to do for each other.” He stood and gave a full-body shudder. “Now this is becoming sickening. Embrace or hug or whatever perversion one must do between brothers. I have to leave before I must vomit at the sight of so much emotion. I’m off to the living room and wine to wait for Ishiah.”

  He was gone and I smeared carelessly at the few drops of blood that I could feel pooling at the base of my throat. “He’ll do what has to be done, Nik. I’m not sure it’s fair—hell, I’m sure it’s not—but he’ll do it. That’s better than you having to do it. Let him, all right?” I swung my legs out of the bed. “You shot me and you hated that, didn’t you?”

  “You have no idea.” I felt his fingers automatically wipe away the blood on my throat, on a bathroom cloth that wouldn’t be seen again. “Despite that, you don’t know what I could do if I had to.”

  But I did. I did know what Nik could do and what he couldn’t, and Robin knew that as well as I did. Niko couldn’t kill me. . . . Whether it would save the world and all humanity or not. He’d had to once make an attempt at killing something that was not me but lived inside me. At the last second he’d turned an attempt at a mortal wound into near-mortal. That, combined with the desperately good fortune of getting me to a healer we knew in my last moments to bring me back, had given him a taste of what he’d sworn. He wouldn’t be able to do it again. That’s the way it was, and I was glad of it for the both of us. My brother couldn’t kill me, but Robin, my other brother, could. He could remember me in every life and knew, painful as the passing years were, I’d return. Niko knew that, believed that, but he couldn’t remember it. As the ultimate agnostic, I knew: If you couldn’t see it, you couldn’t believe it. It was difficult to kill your brother on faith alone.

  Robin had seen it, lived it. Robin didn’t need faith; he had fact. He could save humanity from Grimm and me by ending us both, and that was more than I’d hoped for.

  “I’m starving. Since I made breakfast, you can make lunch.” Twenty-five years of protein shakes and vegan casseroles caught up with me in a hurry as I thought better of that and what he would make. I slid out of bed, taking off the claws. They weren’t practical for eating . . . not what humans thought of as food. “We’ll scrounge in his refrigerator. He usually has a buffet that would boggle Vegas in that thing.”

  On the living room couch Ishiah had arrived and sat giving Robin an oral report of his findings. If
you think oral means his tongue was down Goodfellow’s throat, you’d be right. I groaned but went with relief it was only his tongue. I didn’t believe it—all right, didn’t want to believe it when Robin said I’d once gone to orgies thousands of years ago. I had no problem waiting on my next life, human again, to see if that were true or not. As I headed for food, Niko was giving them the same look he gave me when I fondled my guns a little too much during cleaning.

  “Maybe he can tap out in Morse code with his dick if he learned anything else about the Bae,” I suggested with bite. I hadn’t forgotten Ishiah and the carnival yet, whatever he’d done for us since. “Or spell it out in saliva.”

  “Ask me,” came a voice far more familiar than I wanted it to be.

  Grimm crouched on top of the refrigerator. “I can tell you all about your one thousand and twenty-five brothers and sisters. That is what your sickly flying rat was looking for, right?” Once again, his gate came and went so damn quickly I didn’t see it and barely felt an uptick in my pulse at its presence. How the hell could he be that good, better than the oldest of the Auphe had been? Could he be right that he was an improvement over any Auphe? If in gating only?

  “Ah, but look.” There was that silver grin. “I have a phone now, as communication is important, even to us monsters.” Yeah, the motherfucker did. He took it from the pocket of his leather jacket and held up the screen to face me. There was a mass of white serpentine coils in which I couldn’t make out one Bae from another. “That is the last litter. Precocious. They ate their mother five minutes after they were born.” His tainted silver grin mocked me. “A family moment. Should I text so that you can see the next birth? Sometimes they eat each other as well. Those Hallmark moments always deserve to be commemorated.”