by Rob Thurman
I cried like a baby.
Chapter Twenty-four
It was a testimony to what Niko had suffered that he was still asleep when I dragged my butt out of the shower. The hot water had long since run out and I emerged from the bathroom shivering, with parts of me wrinkled as a prune. With a towel slung around my hips, I returned to Catcher's room and borrowed some of his sweats. After I dressed, I moved on to the surgery, counting that as my best bet for finding my brother. Opening the door a crack, I saw him in one of the beds. Not my old one. I couldn't exactly blame him there. He lay on his side, face tranquil in repose against the pillow. The short hair managed to give his nose an even more Roman presence. I smiled despite myself. It might be a long time before I could tease Niko about that. It was difficult to even imagine giving him a hard time now… after all he'd done for me. But the day would come again; it was inevitable between brothers. Until then I tucked the image away for future ammunition.
I moved my gaze to his shoulder, the one I… the one Darkling had driven a knife through. A pinkish dimple was the only evidence it had ever happened.
Safe to say we'd given Rafferty a workout he wouldn't soon forget. For nearly a full minute, I watched Niko sleep on. He'd always slept the bare minimum, my brother. Too much sleep was bad for the body, he said, and made the soul lazy. I was definitely living proof of the second half of that statement. Niko, though, he was always up, always doing. Sharpening the mind, sharpening the body, and trying in vain to accomplish both with me. The contrast now was unsettling.
Closing the door silently between us, I leaned against the wall beside it. What else could I expect? Rafferty could knit the flesh, but there were things he could not do. He couldn't replace lost sleep, the same as he couldn't replace lost blood. He could speed up the production of red blood cells, yes, but not manufacture them out of thin air. Healing wasn't magic. Healing allowed your body to do what was natural, only at a much accelerated rate. Healing didn't erase all Niko had put himself through. Only time and Niko himself could do that. And if he proved stubborn about it, tying him to the bed for his own good wasn't out of the question. The four most terrifying words in the English language, aren't they? "For your own good."
Pushing away from the wall, I headed for the kitchen. I wasn't the slightest bit hungry, but my stomach had a different opinion on the subject. The kitchen was empty. Where Robin had gotten to was a mystery, but I could see Rafferty in the back working on the fence. I helped myself to whatever I could find in the refrigerator, which wasn't much, before hitting the cabinets. In the end I had to settle for canned soup and three peanut butter sandwiches. Luckily I'd never been especially picky about my food. Chasing it down with a carton of milk dangerously close to its expiration date, I wiped my upper lip with my sleeve as I watched Rafferty through the window.
Rafferty was an acquaintance at best. Maybe if we'd known him and Catcher longer, we might have counted them as friends. Although considering our levels of paranoia, it wasn't all that likely. Of course calling them merely friends now would be doing them a severe injustice. Move over, Gandhi; these guys had helped save our lives. Our lives and in my case maybe a whole lot more. Dumping the carton in the garbage, I walked to the back door and out into the yard.
He heard me coming. Glancing over his shoulder, he looked me up and down before nodding. "You're looking good. Did you eat?"
"Everything left in the house," I confirmed, settling down in the fall yellow grass and resting my arms on my knees. "Need any help?" The fence looked fine to me, sturdy as hell. Chain link, which sat oddly in the pastoral setting, and now he was stringing wire along the top. I didn't know much about that sort of thing, but he looked to be in the process of turning the fence into an electric one. A very large electric one, and I had a good idea who it was for. Catcher had… spells. An old-fashioned word, but an apt one. I'd seen only one of them and I had no desire for a repeat performance. It would be unpleasant, damn unpleasant, if he ran off in the midst of one of them.
"No. I'm almost done." The reply was a curt and clear "Keep away" sign.
I respected the unspoken request. In his position it wasn't something I would've cared to chat about either. "No problem," I said easily. "Manual labor's never been a hobby of mine anyway. Just ask Nik."
That stopped him in his tracks. Setting aside his tools, he turned, head tilted down toward me. "He's fine, you know. Healthy as a horse. I patched him up, but he probably could've done without me. Forget flesh and blood. Your brother's made of piano wire and pure grit."
"Yeah, he is." Tough and gruff Rafferty trying to reassure me, it was one for the record books. Darkling hadn't been far off on that one. The man didn't waste much time on bedside manner; he was more concerned with keeping patients alive. In the dire straits he was often called into, there wasn't always time for both. Running a piece of grass through my fingers, I ducked my head, then sucked it up and met his eyes. "Sorry for all the shit we brought to your door." Even through the haze he'd used to soften the edges of my memories, I still recalled the expression on his face as I'd watched him with silver eyes. Sheer revulsion, the kind saved for something wholly unnatural. "Not to mention what I brought inside me."
He snorted. "Don't get stuck on yourself, Cal. I've seen worse than that piece of shit. Hell, I've wiped my ass with worse."
Utter bullshit, every word of it, but I still appreciated the effort. "Gee, I had no idea you were such a badass," I remarked blandly. His choice in bathroom hygiene I thought better left undiscussed.
"But I always knew you were a smart one," he growled, getting back to his work with a snort. "Go wake your brother up. It's time he ate something too. After that, send him back to bed. And if he has a problem with that"—I caught only a glimpse of the smile, but it was enough to make me glad I wasn't Nik—"you come tell me."
I could handle Niko myself, but that didn't mean I wouldn't enjoy watching him at the mercy of someone else for a change. "Will do." Standing, I hesitated before saying softly, "Thanks, Raff. For saving my life, keeping me sane. I don't know how to—"
He didn't let me go on, waving a hand at me impatiently. "Get out of here, would ya? I'll never finish if you keep drooling all over me."
Thanks offered and received.
I went ahead and fixed Nik's lunch. I was willing to bet that there wasn't anything remotely acceptable to his palate in a twenty-mile radius. Once again peanut butter sandwiches were the name of the game. I made four and piled them on a plate. I'd finished off the milk and ended up carrying in a bottle of orange juice that hadn't even entered the fermentation state quite yet. A real find. In the surgery I passed through the door and made a wide circle around the area of the floor where Darkling had died. Or if I wanted to be more honest with myself… the area of the floor where I had turned him into a macerated mound of bleeding flesh. Honesty… who the hell needed it?
Putting the food on the small table beside the bed, I leaned over and laid a hand on Nik's shoulder. I could count the times on one hand I'd woken up my brother instead of vice versa. Giving him a light shake, I cajoled, "Up and at 'em, Cyrano." Dark blond lashes parted instantly to show a gleam of irritable gray. Following that, they just as promptly lowered, uninterested. "Okay, be that way," I drawled. "I can always call Robin in. He was saying something about sleeping beauties and princes. I didn't catch it all, but I'm sure he'd be willing to explain it. Maybe even demonstrate it." So much for my resolution to lay off the teasing for a while. But desperate situations called for desperate measures.
Besides, it worked.
The bloodshot glare was proof of that. But the glower disappeared almost instantly as Nik's brain caught up with the rest of him. Speaking of whammies, Rafferty must've laid a big one on him to get him to sleep so soundly. Gripping a handful of my sweatshirt, Niko levered himself up and wrapped an arm around me. The embrace was quick and hard, his short hair rough against my jaw. I hugged him back just as fiercely. For the first time in what seemed like an eterni
ty, we were both ourselves. Not a brother bent on an impossible rescue. Not a monster with nothing but murder and mayhem on his twisted mind. And not a traumatized leftover, crawling on the floor in panic and self-loathing. We were just family, separated for what seemed like an eternity but now together again.
"Cal," he said hoarsely against my ear. Clearing his throat, he released me and sat up. "You're better." He didn't say the next logical thing, that I was myself again. Niko had never been one to lie, even to make things easier. He was a big believer in the theory that when things are easier in the beginning, they're always worse in the end. Straightening my rumpled sweatshirt with a motherly gesture I'd kidded him about in the past a thousand times, he said pointedly, "I know those are not for me."
Sitting on the edge of the bed, I reached over and handed him the object of his ire. "Don't be a snob. If it was good enough for the King, it's good enough for you."
Dubiously, he accepted the peanut butter sandwich and peeled back the top layer of bread. "No bananas?"
"Give me a break. It's a wasteland in there. They don't even have the stuff to make a chili dog."
"A travesty," he commented gravely before taking a bite and chewing it with a distinct lack of enthusiasm. "The mystery meat consortia must be up in arms."
I watched patiently as he finished the first sandwich and began on the second before I asked diffidently, "Want to fill me in? Goodfellow told me some and we… Darkling figured some of it out on his own."
He caught the misstep, but let it go and launched into a succinct summary of what had transpired while I'd been otherwise occupied. "Otherwise occupied," it was a nice euphemism for what I'd really been doing—laying waste to all around me. Niko regained my attention with a sharp rap to my knee. As Robin had said, they'd searched high and low for me without any luck. George still refused to help. If she saw anything, she wasn't saying, even when Niko and Robin fought off a pair of werewolves at her door. Knowing what we did now, how could we have expected anything different? No matter what she'd said, she would be betraying someone. It was a god-awful position for anyone to be in, but it was a special hell for someone like George.
"What about Samuel?" I asked soberly. It had been Samuel who had saved the day; Darkling had been right about that. In the end the guitarist had seen the Grendels for what they were. He'd made a decision no one should have to make and he'd made it with a remarkable nobility. He'd turned to his niece and taken the weight from her shoulders. She'd given him our address and he'd gone to Niko with the location of the warehouse. The plan to smuggle my brother and Goodfellow in had been concocted and Samuel had cooperated every step of the way. He'd gotten them in and fought at their side. The last glimpse I'd had of him, the warehouse had been coming down around him as he held the Grendels back. Samson at the temple.
"He atoned." Nik wasn't a religious man by most standards, but he had a moral code that would have had Mother Teresa's staunch approval. Samuel had committed a grievous act, but in my brother's eyes he had more than redeemed himself.
"Do you think he made it out?"
Niko took the third sandwich and handed me the last one. "Anything's possible," he answered with care. "If nothing else over the years, we've seen that."
We'd also seen how few fairy-tale endings actually materialized, how many happily-ever-afters survived reality. Not too damn many. My fingers pressed deep into the soft bread before I exhaled and took a bite. "He was a good guy," I murmured around the mouthful. "Deep down, where it counted, he was a good man."
"Perhaps, I think, even a great man." Nik discarded his sandwich unfinished. Studying me with an unwavering attention, he watched as I slowly worked on mine. Several minutes of this scrutiny passed before he spoke. It might have been unnerving to someone else, but I was used to it. Niko had something to say. When he was ready he would say it and not a moment sooner. When the words finally came, they were fairly innocuous—on the surface. "How are you, Cal?"
How was I? A simple question, right? Straightforward. Direct. And as loaded as a dealer's Glock. "Didn't we cover this already?" I blinked and sucked peanut butter off of my thumb. "Fine and dandy. Right as rain. Want I should go on?" I'd known that I wasn't going to get off so easily. I just hadn't known it would come so soon.
"Only if you want to tell me what's really going on." His finger poked me in the chest and then flicked my head. "In here and here."
I'd always been a pathetic liar where Niko was involved. You would think Mom's swindler genes had skipped a generation altogether. Not that trying to lie to my brother came up that often. Now, though, in post-Darkling times, I felt more reticent with Nik than I had with the others. It wasn't difficult to understand why. I had tried to kill Goodfellow and I would've made the same attempt on Rafferty if I'd been given the opportunity. But while betrayal is betrayal, history is also history. What I'd done to Nik, who had spent his entire life trying to protect me… it was in a realm all its own. I knew my brother like no one else did, and I knew exactly what to do to hurt him the most. In an odd way I regretted the things I'd said to him almost more than the attempts to take his life.
"Cal?" Nik prodded, not without empathy. At my continued silence, he locked fingers around my wrist and squeezed lightly. "You know this isn't idle curiosity on my part. I want to know what it was like for you. I want to understand."
So he could help me. So at least one person would know exactly how it had been for me. Yeah, I knew that. And I also knew he would suffer for the hearing of it, but that wasn't going to stop him. I had the most bizarre urge to cover my eyes like a child. If you can't see it, it's not there. Unfortunately, every time I closed my eyes I could see it. No trick could change that. "I remember everything, Cyrano," I said slowly. "Every single goddamn thing, every emotion, every sound, every sensation, like they were my own." I looked down and took a deep breath. "I tried to burn a man to death, beat another one to within an inch of his life. I tried to kill George." Shaking my head, I swallowed and pushed on, "And when I shot you… stabbed you…"
I stopped, rubbed my hand harshly over my face, and started to get up before Niko's hand on my arm held me back. Fight or flight, it was a sensation I'd spent a lifetime becoming familiar with. I sat back down and continued flatly, "When I did those things… I can still feel the emotions. Glee. Satisfaction. I have that in me now. I have every damned memory and it makes me sick." And it did. It made me physically ill, but it was more than that. Much more. "It makes me sick that I spilled your blood. That I hurt you. You, Nik. But you know what's worse? You know what really kicks me in the gut? It was the most goddamn fun I've ever had." That time I jerked away from him and paced the room. "It wasn't me. I know it wasn't. But Jesus, I remember it just like it was."
He slid out of bed and followed, stopping me with a hand on my shoulder. "Cal, listen to me. You're right. It wasn't you. Maybe that doesn't make a difference to you now, but it will. In time, I promise, it will. Those memories, those feelings, will fade." Thanks to Rafferty, they already had to a certain extent. If they hadn't, I couldn't imagine the shape I would be in. "It will get better. You just have to give it time."
"Not sure I can wait that long." I gave him a wobbly smile that disappeared as quickly as it had come. I wasn't the only one who had memories or who would have sleepless nights. And I wasn't the only one who would dread closing his eyes. Nik had some horrifying memories of his own… in many ways equal to mine. Maybe worse. He'd done things he would regret until the day he died, no matter how necessary they were. "I'm sorry, Nik. I am so damn sorry."
"I think we will both be living in a universe full of sorry for a long, long time." He gave me a look so colored with melancholy humor and undiminished affection that I felt like a child again, in awe of a brother worlds away wiser than I.
Steering me back to the bed, he waved me imperiously to a sitting position. "You didn't do any of those things. It was Darkling, not you. I do not want you apologizing for something that wasn't your fault. Are we cle
ar?" I opened my mouth to protest, but it was futile. Niko repeated with steely authority before I had a chance, "Are we clear?"
I surrendered, conditionally. "If you admit there was nothing you could've done to stop Darkling from taking me. You didn't lose me, Nik. I'm not a pair of keys or a jacket. You didn't lose me. You never could. You admit that and we're clear."
He stared at me for a moment, still standing. Finally, the tension beside his mouth loosened slightly and he sat beside me. "I'll try." The corner of his mouth curled. "You try and I'll try and we'll see who gets there first."
"Only Darkling could steal the Grendels' thunder, and they were trying to destroy the world," I rasped wryly, resting my head in my hands.
"Only," he agreed ruefully, resting a warm hand on the back of my neck.
I straightened and took a closer look at his hair. It was more chopped than sheared. I suppose that happened when you cut your own hair. I reached over and tugged an uneven strand at the crown. "You might want to get that evened up, Kojak."
"A new nickname, the joy of it all," came the icy retort. But I could see he was pleased at the effort, no matter how lame it was.
