by Rob Thurman
Darkling tumbled to the floor, clawed hands trying in vain to stop the outpouring of blood. "No. NO." And surreally enough one hand lifted toward me… as if I would take it. As if I would save him. "We are one… you and I. One."
The next blow hit his throat. I swung the sword high and chopped at his neck with every ounce of strength left in me. The scales were some protection, and the head stayed attached by bands of muscle and flesh… just barely. Blood geysered from his mouth, bubbling horribly as he tried to suck air through a bisected trachea. The wound in his abdomen was leaking other fluids now, greenish ones that smoked and sizzled as they hit the tile. He was a mess, my former monster. One helluva mess.
And that's when I really got started.
Time passed. I didn't know how much, but suddenly Niko was there, prying the hilt from my hand. Robin had a sheet and was covering the ruined pile of mutilated flesh, splintered bone, and pulverized organs that mounded on the floor. It would've been a mystery what the creature had once been if you hadn't known. It would've been hard to recognize what had lived in you, controlled you, and then finally consumed you.
He'd eaten me alive, Darkling. Devoured me whole. Yet I was still here. I studied the slowly staining sheet blankly. How could that be? I dropped to my knees. I'd killed and been killed. I'd been the pale shadow of a monster and then a vibrantly gleeful, self-aware one. I had been swallowed and my soul dissolved. But I was still here. And I realized…
I wasn't at all sure I wanted to be.
The strength I'd had before melted away. I couldn't walk. I couldn't even stand. But I could crawl, and I did. I moved reluctant hands, pushed with my knees, and did anything I could to put distance between the others and myself. Now that it was over, I didn't trust myself to even be in the same room with them. I put my head down and ignored the sound of voices calling my name. I ignored it and tried to move faster.
"Cal." Niko's voice, calm and soothing, tried to seep through the cotton wool that wrapped my brain. I wouldn't let it. I pushed one hand, one knee, farther. I'd get away. I had to. The hand on my shoulder had me jerking to one side, trying to escape its touch.
"Stay away," I said with numb desperation. "Get away from me."
Goodfellow's sharp intake of breath passed by me, leaving me untouched. He didn't understand, not really, but Niko did. He always knew, always saw through me as if I were a pane of glass. But I should've known he wouldn't listen. Blocking my path, he dropped urgently on the floor in front of me and wrapped his arms around me. Hard enough to be painful. Hard enough that I couldn't doubt or ignore the fact that he was there. And, not coincidentally, hard enough to restrain me. One hand cupping the back of my neck, he said without a shred of doubt, "You won't hurt us, little brother. You don't have to run." Relentlessly, he held on. "We won't let you run. Not when we've just gotten you back."
I shook my head. How could he believe that? How could he believe I might not hurt them, might not try to kill them again? How could he believe that when I couldn't? The words had been only in my head, but Niko heard them nonetheless. "It wasn't you," he said vehemently. "It was not you. It was never you. The bastard is gone, Cal. The thing that did this to you is gone. Let him go."
He was gone. Yeah, I bought that. The trouble was I thought he might have taken the best parts of me with him. I pushed against Niko, trying futilely to break his grip. Finally I gave up; he was stronger than I was at the moment. There was no escape. I didn't say anything; the words simply weren't there. Hell, I don't even think there were words for what I was feeling. But there were words for one thing… one thing that I had to know. "My eyes." I swallowed. "My eyes… gray?"
Niko faltered for a second, then strengthened his hold. "Yes, Cal, your eyes are gray." He tightened his lips, then turned to Rafferty and demanded, "Do it." The healer had already moved to our side. Eyes troubled, he let his hand hover over my head as he hesitated. Niko apparently wasn't in a patient mood. His voice harshened instantly. "He can't remember. He cannot. Now do it, goddamn it."
The healing hand settled on my hair and I heard a soft voice beside my ear. "I can't make you forget, Cal. The memories are horrible, I know, but they're your memories. And you may need them someday. I can't make them disappear." Then more firmly, "But I can make them fade." The words shifted from my ear to a dark and still spot inside my head and became but one word. It was silent yet heard nonetheless. "Fade."
We both faded, the memories and myself. Faded like an ancient sepia portrait. And then just like Darkling, we faded until we were no more.
Chapter Twenty-three
I didn't want to wake up.
Yeah, I know. That's not exactly a news flash when it comes to yours truly. But this was different. It wasn't rolling over and burrowing under the blankets because it was too cold to put your nose outside the covers. And it wasn't the entire-body hangover that kept you mattress bound because you worked too many late shifts. Last, but certainly not least, it wasn't the abject laziness that came from the love, the sheer adoration, of sleep. As much as I wished it were, it wasn't any of those things. The reason I had now wasn't nearly as easy to admit to.
I didn't want to wake up because then it would be true. Concrete and inescapable. I would have to come face-to-face with the fact it hadn't been a dream. I would have to accept that the past days hadn't been a nightmare, that they had been real life. And that good old real life had made me the nightmare.
Who the hell would want to wake up to that?
As in most things lately, I had no choice. The distinctive odor of dog breath puffing into my face dragged me to a place I didn't want to go: consciousness. Giving in to the inevitable, I gagged and waved a hand weakly in front of my nose. "I know you can lick your own balls, Catch. You don't have to prove it to me."
A wide grin of immaculate ivory teeth paired with a happily lolling pink tongue greeted my bleary vision. A healthy bushel of air was blown out light brown nostrils, spraying icy cold droplets directly in my face. "Gah." I rolled over and moved to a sitting position on the bed. "I'm up. I'm up. Jesus, cut it out, would ya?" A huge paw nearly the size of a small soup bowl plopped on my leg, the claws scoring my skin lightly even through the cloth of the scrub pants. "All right. All right. You win." I stood hastily and Catcher promptly took my place, curling nose to tail. Smug yellow eyes laughed at me before closing for a nice nap.
With one hand on the waistband holding my pants up and the other combing through what felt like the nest of the last dodo, I took a look around. No wonder the wolf was so insistent. This was his room. I recognized it from a long-ago visit. Apparently I'd graduated from the surgery, or maybe they just thought I might not want to wake up there. They were right. No amount of bleaching and scrubbing would clean the floor or my mind of what had lain there.
"Sleeping Beauty awakes. Did your furry prince there give you a kiss? No tongue, I hope."
Goodfellow stood in the doorway, looking disgruntled yet pleased at the same time. The reason for his annoyance was immediately clear. Dressed in some very old castoffs, he was wearing worn jeans and a sweatshirt that had once been a bright, bright blue. Now it was a bright bleach-spotted blue. It had the logo of a long-gone amusement park on it complete with roller coaster and happy, waving cartoon figures that had made me cringe even in my younger days.
"Looking good, Papa Smurf." I gave a not entirely genuine yawn, almost desperately relieved at the distraction.
"Aren't you the humorous one?" He scowled. He couldn't hold the grimace long, though. It transmuted to a smile not often seen on Robin's lips, I was sure. There was no mockery, no sly superiority, no "Hey, sailor, you in town long?" There was only deep pleasure and an honest relief. "You look well yourself, Cal. You seem well."
"Yeah?" I looked down at my feet, toes a bit blue themselves against the cold wood floor. Seemed well. It was a big step… a huge step… from seeming well to actually being well. But even seeming well was a step in itself, and any step forward at this point could only
be a good thing.
I remembered it all. From the point of Darkling's merging with me up to Rafferty's making fresh, raw, and unbearable memories seem like old ones. Everything I had done, everything I had attempted to do, it was all still there… only slightly removed. That had kept me in my right mind and kept me alive. I might not be well, but I was sane, and damn… as far as I was concerned that was a full-fledged miracle. "I think I am okay." My lips twitched lightly before I amended, "More or less." For now anyway. "Where's Nik?"
"Still asleep." He leered and I saw the Robin I'd come to know come rocketing back. "Maybe I can be his prince."
As hilarious as it would be to see Niko chasing Robin through the house with a sword and vengeance on his mind, I didn't believe Rafferty was ready for any more disruption in his life. "I think Nik already has his sights set on a nice lady vampire," I pointed out with a true sympathy. My brother… he did leave a trail of broken hearts. All my girlfriends in school, Promise, Meredith. Ah, Jesus, Merry…
"I know," he said breezily, cat eyes teasing. "I just like to play."
I didn't have to depend on any latent Grendel blood to smell that lie. I had wondered why Robin had helped us these past weeks. What I'd seen in his eyes… that god-awful, devouring loneliness had hit a very real and true note, but now I knew there was something else. That it had been unrequited and an impossibility considering Nik's sexual orientation didn't change the way Goodfellow had felt. That the puck was probably thousands of years old and had known better didn't either. Thousands of years old or only a short sixteen of them, your heart will always have one up on your head. We stood there for a moment, each trapped in our own thoughts of what could've been and thoughts of what actually was. Robin broke the silence. "About Niko." Dropping his eyes to my stomach, he shook his head in unconscious denial. He couldn't see where Niko's blade had punctured me, not through the scrub top, but I imagined he could picture it in exacting detail. "He never would have. If there had been any other way… anything else he could've done. You have to realize…" he said thickly before stopping.
"Robin—" I started before he cut me off firmly.
"If you could've seen what the week was like for him," he stated with an earnestness that contrasted sharply with his normal flippancy. "If he slept, I never saw it. We scoured the city looking for you. Nik shook down anyone who was even remotely part of the family. If their great-grandma had ever given her neighbor the evil eye or a case of the warts, that was enough for him. He had them up against the wall. He even went to that little psychic and begged her to—" Abruptly he thought better of that subject, remembering what I had sent the werewolves to do. The silence was probably for the best.
The attempted murder of a teenage girl is always touchy conversation. Go figure. "Sorry," he offered quietly.
I shrugged and nodded, my face so studiously blank that it hurt.
He didn't seem to feel much better about it, but he did continue. "He blamed himself, you know. For losing you to Darkling and for getting you back only to lose you again. He never said a word about it, but he didn't have to… It was so clear. And then there was the gate. You and that thrice-damned gate." The long-fingered hand swooped with agitation through the brown curls. "What else could he do?"
Nothing. There was nothing he could've done except kill me. Which he should have… would have, in fact, except for what he'd seen at the very end. In Darkling's hesitation, he'd seen my hand reaching out for his. He'd seen me, when I hadn't even seen myself.
But if things had been different, if he'd been forced to free me in the only way left to him, then Niko wouldn't have walked away from that warehouse. He wouldn't have walked away from me. I knew that as well as I knew anything in this world. We'd always been together in this life. We'd always be together elsewhere as well.
"It's okay." I smiled reassuringly at Goodfellow. "He did what he had to do." I never had any doubts about that; I never would. Sharp green eyes studied me, then, reassured, took me at my word.
A sleepy grumble from Catcher brought us around. "Sorry," I apologized to the wolf. "We'll get out of your room."
"His room?" Robin exhaled, palpably relieved to be focusing on something else. He looked around, his gaze caught by the tumbleweeds of reddish hair peeking from beneath the bed. It then focused on the world's largest rawhide bone against one baseboard, and a bowl of water sitting on a folded towel. "Ah. Quite a few of these things are his, aren't they?"
I took a look around myself. There was a beat-up acoustic guitar propped in one corner, a pair of skis in another. An open closet door showed hanging clothes with sneakers and a battered basketball on the floor. The bureau had a coating of dust, along with a handful of change, a wallet, and, at the far end, a framed picture. In comparison, the glass and frame were spotless, not a speck of dust on them anywhere. Two men stood on a ski slope, their arms slung casually over each other's shoulders. One was Rafferty, his head topped with a knit hat pulled down to his ears, and his nose red as fire from the cold. The other man, unless you looked with extreme care, looked enough like him to be his twin and not the cousin he was. The auburn hair was half a shade darker and the amber eyes a full shade lighter… yellow, in fact.
Turning my attention to identical yellow eyes, I sensed an agreement, an implied permission, in them before they shut once more. "They're all his things," I said quietly to Robin. "Every last one of them." Ushering Goodfellow out of the room, I left Catcher alone with the remnants of his old life and the harsh realities of his present one.
Robin looked understandably mystified. He peered over my shoulder back into the room. "But…" At my frown he lowered his voice, not that it would make much difference. Catcher would still hear. "He's not a werewolf. He doesn't have the slightest hint of otherworldliness about him at all. How can that be?"
"It's not my story to tell." I continued to urge him down the hall. "You'll have to ask Rafferty. I guess it'd be a toss-up as to whether he'd tell you or just punch you in the nose." Rafferty wasn't much on "sharing" or airing his family's laundry, dirty or otherwise, to anyone. Still… Robin had done a lot for Nik and me. He'd risked his life many times over for us, virtual strangers, when the smartest thing to do would've been to run for the hills. I owed him more than I could repay. Relenting, I murmured, "Catcher's sick. And it's not the kind of sick Rafferty can heal." There was more to the story than that, I sensed, much more, but that was all I knew.
Stopping at the bathroom door, I changed the subject. "I'm going to grab a shower." The fastidious wrinkle of Goodfellow's nose commented that might not be such a bad idea. I snorted, half annoyed, half amused. "You're something else, Goodfellow. It's almost enough to make me forget you saved my ass."
"Not just your ass," he reminded me with a haughty rise of his eyebrows. "It was the asses of all mankind. In fact, savior of the world wouldn't be an exaggeration. Hmmm, I wonder if I could get that on a plaque for my office wall. A nice gold finish. Polished rosewood. My face staring nobly into the distance."
The sad thing was that he probably would. The puck did love to provoke. Irritating, vain, self-absorbed, complacent as hell, and with a sexual appetite that would've had Mae West running for her mother, that was Robin Goodfellow all over. But in addition to that, he was loyal, intelligent, courageous in the heat of battle, and defiant in the face of death. Without him we wouldn't have survived. I'd still be lost inside a monster and Niko would be dead… or worse yet, unmade. It was a debt I would never forget. "Robin…"
The self-satisfied expression on Goodfellow's mobile face shifted to something more rueful and true. "Don't. Let's not ruin my reputation. What would my fans think?"
"Probably the same thing I do. That you're one helluva guy," I said with the utmost sincerity. "I owe you, Goodfellow. I won't forget that." Putting a hand on his shoulder, I squeezed it and then gave him a light push. Smiling, I added, "After all, you said it yourself on the way up here, right? You're a hero. And, Robin? You really are. Doubt anything else you wan
t to, but never doubt that."
He eyed me with an uncertainty I hadn't known he was capable of. "A hero," he echoed, bemused, as if the meaning escaped him. Although I believed it wholeheartedly, it might be a while before Robin could bring himself to.
"Doesn't mean you're not still a pain in the ass, though," I pointed out with a grin before walking into the bathroom and shutting the door behind me. I doubted he noticed I was gone. Through the door I heard him repeat "hero" again. The word had a wholly different inflection to it now from the self-mocking version he'd labeled himself with in the car. Maybe if he said it often enough, he'd finally take it to heart. I hoped so. He deserved to.
I undressed and examined the wound on my stomach. Rafferty did nice work. It was completely healed, leaving only a fading purple ridge of scar tissue. Touching a finger to it, I thought of what it must have cost Niko to do what he'd done. What it was still costing him even now. As dark and worrisome as that thought was, something pulled my attention from it. Like diamonds it glittered in the corner of my eye.
The mirror.
Funny how something so innocuous and commonplace could turn so quickly into the scuttle of a scorpion, the slither of a snake, the hand breaking through the grave. So why wasn't I laughing? Grimly, I turned the shower on full blast. The hard-running water provided covering sound as I wrapped a towel around my fist and shattered the mirror over the sink. Only then could I turn my back on it and climb into the shower. Only then did I feel safe.
The shower was actually an old iron claw-foot bathtub. It'd seen better days, like most of us. The shower curtain looped around it on a metal pole bent into a U. There was rust on the tub's outer belly, orange stains on the pregnant curve of a waddling hippo. But on the inside it was sparkling clean and smelled strongly of soap. I picked up a bar and sudsed it absently in my hands as the steaming water flattened my hair and ran in rivulets down my body. It wasn't long before the soap squirted from my grip and landed with a clunk on the tub bottom. I looked at it blankly. At that particular moment picking it up seemed… pointless. And not merely mundanely so, but senseless on a cosmic scale. Like it was fate that the soap should be lying there, melting in the falling water. Since I'd gone toe-to-toe with destiny and fate fairly recently, I decided I'd do something else this time. Sitting down in the bathtub, I rested my head in my hands. And then?
