by Rob Thurman
I could change the future by rewriting the past.
I hoped.
Fuck, I hoped.
Giving the twitching body lying facedown at my feet an encouraging nudge, some might say kick in the ribs with my combat boot, I snapped, “Move your ass, you son of a bitch. You’re already aimed in Hell’s direction. Slide your metro card and go already.”
A thin wet whine managed to work its way from his throat as the body, ninety-nine percent dead makes you a body in my book, struggled toward me with one shaking hand clawing at the asphalt and the other hanging on to that knife as if he’d superglued it to his homicidal hand. He was still coming after me. If he were at a funeral home, they’ve have embalmed him already and, yet, here came the knife weakly slashing at my ankle. Was it six feet away from his maximum reach? Details. Nothing but details. Motherfucker. I wanted him to suffer for what he’d done, but I was suffering too. The stench was only getting worse and he was getting more homicidal the less blood he had in him. How was that possible?
Sheer willpower to be the most annoying dick he could conceivably be?
Fingers kept scratching in the trash of the alley floor as the choking became louder and stubbornly continued. I exhaled, miles past pissed now. Asshole didn’t begin to cover this one. I squatted to capture glazed eyes, once muddy, now dark as grave dirt. But there was a flicker in them, hate, vicious and brutal. It was fading, but I didn’t know if it was fading fast enough. “You’re a monster,” I said, matter-of-factly. “Punishing monsters like you is a hobby of mine.
“But I’m on a tight schedule. Half a minute and I’ll finish what you started. And I’ll make it hurt. You think this is bad? Drowning in your own blood, agonizing breath by agonizing breath?” I smiled the special, nasty one I’d learned the two long years spent in my own monster hell. Fourteen years old and I’d been dragged there by the thing that bred my mother like she was a show pony, if show ponies accepted cash for services. The monsters there, the Auphe, had taught me death was a game and life was too dull to tolerate without the razor edge possibility of losing it at any second.
“This . . . this is nothing.” I didn’t sound anything but unrepentant as that’s what I was, no more, no less.
Sometimes I was a monster too.
Sometimes I was a lion.
It depended on my mood and my mood now was not fucking good.
“This is flowers and fucking sunshine compared to what I can do to you. I’ll make thirty seconds feel like thirty years. See if that motivates you to get your murdering ass in gear. Oh, and pray if you want. Won’t work, but it’s fun to watch.” I slapped his patchy bearded cheek lightly. “Good talk. You’ve got fifty seconds left.”
Standing back up, I kept count under my breath. Monsters and murderers both, true, but no one knew how to motivate like an Auphe. And they’d taught me, whether I’d wanted to know or not. I’d managed to bury most of the memories of those two years. Some resurfaced now and again and a few I’d never forgotten at all. This one refused to go. I hadn’t made up my mind on whether that was for the best or not.
It was convenient. As long as you kept it a bluff. So far I had.
I was pretty certain.
Did my best, what else could anyone want from me?
I avoided the puddle of dark red edging toward my boots. Evidence was bad. Revealing. Avoid it whenever possible. It was part of being on constant guard—Nik’s number one lesson when I’d been a kid when it came to Auphe and humans—Be on guard, Cal. Always. Don’t let the monsters come up from behind, don’t let people see how different you can be. See them, but don’t let them see you. You’re a lion, little brother, remember? Watching from the tall grass. Invisible.
I’d listened to Niko my whole life. And being on guard was a behavior I hadn’t outgrown. Never be seen by those you might not escape and be on guard against those who didn’t already know what I was. Being dissected by the government is not a healthy career goal. I’d listened, but sometimes no matter what choice you make, it’s wrong. There isn’t a right one and you are fucked—no escaping it. Being on guard hadn’t changed the truth that during one desperate, otherwise hopeless moment when I’d had to make a decision to break Niko and the Vigil’s rule.
To come out of the grass.
A lion in the light of the day.
One in the shocked sight of an entire herd of dazed and staggering human sheep.
There was no taking that back, leaving the tall, tall grass.
And here we fucking were.
No. Here I was.
Alone.
Until I made things right, and I would. No matter who had to die, no matter what I had to do. I’d already torn apart time itself to walk years into the past. I didn’t know the consequences of that and I didn’t care. Those were considerations that could kiss my ass at their very best, that’s how little I gave a shit.
Weepy consciences are for people who have the luxury or the biological wiring.
Right now, I had neither.
There was the scraping of metal against the asphalt as the dick’s knife hand spasmed, dirt rimmed nails clawing the ground. Too bad it wasn’t dirt under him. He could dig his own grave. A wheezing explosive cough sprayed red on the alley floor and the random trash that littered it. Christ. The asshole absolutely refused to die. He wouldn’t let go of it, his life or his knife.
Okay. Enough. This was over. Time for a countdown.
“Fifteen seconds. Ticktock,” I reminded. “Ever wondered what it would be like to be skinned alive? It’s time consuming as hell, don’t get me wrong, but don’t worry. I don’t have to actually do it to make you fucking feel like I am.”
I’d appeared out of thin-fucking-air, eight years rewinding in the absence of an instant, blinded momentarily by a blaze of the purest of white light. If OSHA had been around a millennia ago there would’ve been warning labels about bright lights/possible loss of vision everywhere in the time travel artifact industry. It had faded slower than my sight returned—I saw my own ink black shadow projected against the wall. I must’ve looked like an angel wanting to do some smiting. Wasn’t that ironic? You’d think that would make an impression on the bastard who tried to slit my throat. It didn’t. A fiery sword added to the mix wouldn’t have made a difference. He was crazy enough it didn’t get a blink from him as he had instantly lunged out of his makeshift bed and tried to bury that piece of shit blade of his in my throat.
The knife . . .
The knife told his story in excruciating detail of who had died by the blood-dried streaks on the metal. There was the scent of the heavier dose of iron that sped through the veins and arteries of men, the naturally wild honey fragrance of women, and, worse, the fresh bright tang of new life—kids. He killed fucking kids. I’d have finished him immediately when he was slow to haul ass to Hell if it hadn’t been for the kids. For that I had no problem in letting him pay. Making certain he paid and paid and then paid some more.
I could still smell that new life, innocent children snatched and slaughtered, their lives snuffed out as I stood over him. He was a bastard of a monster who simply happened to be born completely human. That wasn’t new to me. I’d stopped being surprised at how the human ones outnumbered the supernatural kind long ago.
I was about to give him a ten-second countdown when the smothered gurgling at my feet became a convulsive seizure. It was quick to start, slow to end, and fierce as I could’ve wanted between. And then there was one last gasp—an exhalation soaked in blood. One breath finished. I waited for the next to begin. It never did.
“Ten seconds left, asshole,” I muttered. “You got off easy.”
The entire thing, attack and a kid killer too stubborn to die, had taken three minutes at most—quicker than the majority of his victims took to die at his incompetent hand I’d bet. Minutes in reality until his last breath, but that didn’t stop me from h
oping it had been an eternity for him. Either way, it didn’t change my thought of an impatient, “Finally.”
Now he was history.
And I had work to do.
• • •
Absently, I slid my knife, a favorite KA-BAR in matte black, back inside my jacket after I finished cleaning it with one last automatic wipe-down with the Greek take-out menu I’d snagged off the asphalt. Yeah, definitely, enough of dwelling on the how, the why, the what of why I was here. Now came the important part. It was time to rewrite what should never have been written.
I had to get moving.
I patted the body down for his cell phone. Everyone had a phone, junkies and murdering monsters too. Slipping it in my jacket pocket, I then stepped over the slumped form of what had been a snarling, filth spitting, rusty blade wielding addict. He’d wanted money for drugs. I could smell the chemical imbalance cascading out his pores the same as I’d smelled the blood of all his victims on his knife, and he’d been desperate. Too bad for him he had been in an equally desperately wrong place at a far more desperately wrong time.
Then I walked out of an alley I had once known well. Twilight didn’t mean anything. It could’ve been afternoon or morning. That particular slice of space between two older buildings was forever a place of gloom and shadows. It didn’t make a difference what time of day it was, in that place it was always night. It was why I chose it to take the eight-year step into the past . . . that and its location. I wouldn’t be seen. It was a good guess that’s why the son of a bitch who’d tried to stab me had picked it as well.
Bad luck for him was the thought of less than a second, and then I forgot.
Forgot about the asshole.
Forgot his dead body.
Hell, forgot he’d ever existed.
Scanning the surrounding area, I recognized the landmarks of a hole in the ground from eight years past. It was six blocks away from where I needed to be, and I started walking. The cars, I dodged. The people I less than politely elbowed out of my path in the routine New York way. The noise, the stench, none of it was that different despite the eight years difference. I inhaled the scent of Chinese kebab from a nearby street vendor I’d been to at least fifty times. I’d lived for that shit when I’d lived in this area. But things were different now and not because I’d moved.
I immediately felt a fist of nausea that twisted my stomach, stretched up to claw at my throat, and filled my mouth with bile at the odor of the roasted meat. It happened too fast to move, much less run for a garbage can. Bending over, I vomited on the sidewalk.
Straightening, I wiped my mouth on my jacket sleeve. Hygiene wasn’t high on my list of concerns right now. I ignored the bitching of the people milling around or lined up at the food carts. Instead I stepped over my pool of sick and stopped at the corner. I could’ve kept moving. I didn’t have far to go to my destination as planned days ago. But plans had changed. And while I hadn’t eaten today, food could wait . . . if I managed to be hungry again. I had my doubts.
As for meat, I had no plans of eating any ever again.
It was time to get moving. I damn sure wasn’t waiting on a miracle.
Miracles never happened. That’s why they had been and always would be the most painful and ugly of words. That’s why you did it yourself. There was no one else. I didn’t need a miracle. Miracles never failed to let you down. Miracles were for shit, plans changed and failed in the worst of ways, but there was me. I was for shit myself, no denying, but, unlike the lie of hope for the hopeless, I wouldn’t fail in this.
I stepped off the curb at the red light, which for taxis means go five mph slower and caught an off-duty—sorry, not happening—cab by refusing to move as I stood in front of it. I added a polite slamming of my fist on the hood of the car when it tried to push me out of the way. Polite enough whatever cursing the driver spat. I had a new plan, a different and more important destination, and unexpected problems to solve. After that I’d be back here to put the ragged remnants of the old plan into motion. I’d be a few hours at the most. I had the time.
I had the time.
That should’ve, would’ve been funny barely hours ago.
It wasn’t now.
2
When I returned two hours later, my driver was a happier man with the fare and a two-hundred-dollar tip to keep him from calling the cops when I needed him to wait for me a time or two. I had gotten out to take care of one precaution before moving on to the next. I’d debated punching him in the face at his nonstop bitching and slowing down long enough to roll him onto the sidewalk, but while maybe one or two New Yorkers would call the police, neither would remember the cab number. But when the driver woke up, he’d remember and for once in my life I could not afford cops anywhere near what I was doing. Money worked as well as a punch, if not as satisfying.
Back where I’d begun, on the same damn curb even, I started walking. It was full dark at seven thirty, October edging into November. The sun disappeared sooner and the monsters came out early. It didn’t make a difference, light or dark. It was safer to walk the remaining three blocks than have anyone, cabdriver included, knowing where I was going. When I arrived at my onetime original destination, it was as humble as I remembered. There was the cracked concrete stairs that collected a hundred stains, vomit, blood, other bodily fluids you didn’t want to know about—every color different and a brutal blend spelling out the dregs of NYC life. Rip it out, hang it in a gallery and someone would pay you ten thousand dollars for it.
Down the stairwell to the basement, there were several piles of trash that were home to rats big enough to eat a Chihuahua in a swallow, no chewing required. I heard the rustle and squeal of them as I waded through the stinking bags. The rats hadn’t bothered me before and they didn’t now. They were New York’s real citizens, not the people—if you went by head count. I ignored the rustle under the garbage and the slink from pile to pile. Standing on the bottom stair, I blinked dubiously at the door from the bottom stair before snorting despite myself and shaking my head.
I hadn’t remembered this little detail.
This bar had no name.
It had originally, long before I’d known about the place. There had been a neon sign spelling out Talley’s once upon a time. Some of the wire and glass was still on the door, but I didn’t know what color the sign had been as it’d been long shattered before I came along. Never fixed, it was the invisible label of one of the many nameless pushers of alcohol in the city. It was the perfect place for a kid three years shy of being legal to work in a bar to fork over a fake ID, one out of ten or so, all with different names. They were names just like Talley—his was gone, the kid’s weren’t real. Same thing in the end—nameless.
This no-name bar was what that kid had needed. It had been one of the best options to get the privilege of working under the table for poverty wages as he slung beer and mopped up vomit. Not a great job, a shitty job in fact, but better than nothing at all.
There were a helluva lot better things than nothing at all, but there were worse too.
That I was here was proof of that.
I zipped my jacket a third of the way up to keep the metal of knives and other weapons muffled from scent and sound. The jacket was beat-up black leather worn enough to be cracked and shot with creases of gray. Planning for this, I’d gotten it this morning from the Salvation Army. It was comfortable and the brutal weathered look fit the neighborhood. More important, it didn’t smell of home or family and it had cost only fifteen bucks. It also gave me room where I needed it. Automatically, I shifted my shoulders to adjust my holster, double-sided with a gun under each arm. It was habit, no more. I couldn’t shoot who was waiting inside. I could do barely more than give him a hangnail, which was going to be a trick as he might not feel the same about me.
He was a cranky son of a bitch. I knew that better than anyone.
And with ev
ery right to be one, my brother would’ve told me with disappointed reproval if he was here.
But he wasn’t.
Closing my eyes for a second, I settled into a crucial frame of mind. Then, stepping down over the trash, I took the two steps necessary, if that, to put my hand on the door. I hesitated, then pulled my shit together with every ounce of determination I had within me and every ounce I didn’t, but would lie to myself that I did. As my best friend often said, fake it until you make it. He also said, if that doesn’t work, stab them in the eye and steal their wallet. Since this one was hands off, I’d have to go with his first piece of advice.
“Hurry up, asshole. I got places to be.” The rumble and growl of warped vocal cords came from behind me. Wasn’t that the way to be on top of things? I could forgive missing the smell. Wolves were all over the city, living their crooked lives. I caught their natural cologne of wet-dog at least a few times every day. Having one sneak up on me without trying, that was pathetic. What was more pathetic was he’d done it while I was brooding. Worrying whether I had the skill to make it past our natural suspicion and get me to believe myself.
Yeah, odds were my life was over. I had to remake and undo the worst of nightmares and while I had an opportunity, a second chance when I didn’t have faith in second chances. I’d used all mine up. That made this a bad day, fuck did it, but focusing to the point that I wasn’t aware of what was around me, that would have me dead before I could begin to save anyone else.
I turned around to face the Wolf who was two steps up. He was wearing a longer leather jacket over a hooded sweatshirt. And need the sweatshirt he damn well did. The hood was pulled up and forward to hide as much of his face as possible. Shadowed face or not, I’d come across more than my share of this kind of Wolf and knew what I’d see, more or less. With an under bite of fangs too large to close his mouth over, inhumanly pale amber eyes, and a fine coat of brown fur climbing up from beneath the shirt to cover his neck not quite to his chin, he was one of the Wolves that would never pass as human.
