Slashback

by Rob Thurman

  Who better than me—something darker and more deadly than any demon—to kill an angel?

  He’d thought himself judge, jury, and executioner. Now it was my turn to play that part. I aimed the Mossberg at him. It didn’t matter if you were from Above or Below or somewhere in the middle; you touched my brother and you died.

  “You’re wicked, Jack,” I said without emotion. “You’re wicked and wrong and I damn sure am not here to save you.”

  I shot him in the head and then the chest, shattering him to hundreds of pieces falling as tears from Heaven. Niko was at my side as Pyriel—no, Jack, he’d always be Jack to me—continued to rain down on the floor with the soft ringing of bells. You know how the movie goes: when you hear a bell ring, an angel gets his wings. Or gets a slug in the head. Choose whichever version you like.

  “My turn,” Niko said firmly, the rope he’d escaped easily enough still in tatters around his wrists. Jack had left him his weapon as he’d left me mine. Jack had made sure he could escape to stand and fight. Jack who’d wanted a challenge from the one who’d killed his worshipper twelve years ago. Jack—who’d gotten exactly all that. I wished he’d had longer to enjoy it. I wished we all had. Sick or not, Jack had been far beyond the grace of a mercy killing.

  Wordlessly I passed over the shotgun and Nik used the barrel to beat those pieces of Jack, glittering bright as a crop-killing frost, to a fine, crystalline sand. The metal flew up and thundered down more times than I cared to count. With every blow the sound of rotten ice breaking beneath careless feet echoed. Gone, but it didn’t matter. You could hear the death in him the same as before I cut him down. Finally a wind blew in through the destroyed window and Jack—his presence and fatal song—simply blew away.

  Gone, just like that. As if he’d never existed at all. I’d have killed all the angels in Heaven to have made that true.

  “Feel better?” I asked, moving to stand beside Nik as he dropped the shotgun to the floor.

  He wiped at the trickle of blood running down his jaw and bumped my shoulder. “You know, little brother, I think that I do.”

  * * *

  We were at home . . . surprising me as I hadn’t thought we’d live to come back. The start of the plan, if not the rest of it, had worked out—color me all kinds of fucking surprised. I’d started at the top of the list of churches, Ishiah and Robin at the bottom and we’d met, more or less in the middle. Fortunately, Ishiah had a plan of his own he hadn’t told me about, one he hadn’t had much faith in—that the peris from the bar could kill and remove the storm spirit from Jack. Peris were forbidden from killing paien in New York, parasites included. He doubted he could get all of the crew from the Ninth Circle to risk expulsion from the city or that they’d be able to accomplish it if they did agree. That spirit had been riding Jack a long, long time. Fortunately, Ishiah had been wrong on both counts. For an ex-angel he had less belief than I’d have thought.

  In the end, it was what Robin had suggested. Without each other, the spirit and Pyriel weren’t even the halves of a whole. Easy prey.

  Promise was with Niko in his bedroom, taking care of the cuts on his face and his wrists. As the door was closed, she could be taking care of other things, but I doubted it . . . this time. My hands looked like they’d been through a meat grinder, my ribs told me breathing wasn’t on the menu for supper today, and my face was peppered with tiny fragments of metal chain. All of which Goodfellow was working on, but it wouldn’t be long before Nik was out to take over.

  “It’s difficult to believe Jack would go to those lengths to relive Junior’s favorite scenario. He was the master after all. Junior was only the apprentice . . . or the worshipper. I’m not certain what label to put on that wretched bastard,” Robin said. “Putting you in the basement instead of Niko. Niko in the closest thing to an attic instead of you.” Nik had mentioned it was the same setup from twelve years ago when we left the church, the things I’d already known but as always hadn’t talked about, what Junior had done to us both, which was a good thing. Not talking about it all those years, trying to protect each other, that had been a mistake.

  Or mostly a mistake.

  “Either he hated losing an apprentice or he was the dramatic sort. Or both,” he continued. He was right about one thing: it had been as close to being exactly the same as Jack could make it. Robin was bathing my hands in peroxide diluted with sterile water. After that he’d follow with antibiotic cream, loose bandages, and we’d hope there wasn’t any scar tissue that was bad enough to limit my range of motion. Pulling a trigger was important in my business.

  “The light was different,” I murmured. I couldn’t tell Nik. I’d sooner eat my gun. But I needed to tell someone or I’d end up having a meltdown the same as my brother. There’d be no avoiding it. Some secrets eat you from the inside out until nothing is left.

  “The light?”

  “The skylight in the attic was red. Everything looked red there. Everything looked bloody before it actually was.” I flexed my fingers under the loose gauze and winced. That was not good. That put the ribs into perspective.

  “Nik used to call me a rubber ball when I was a kid. All the time. He said I could bounce back from anything. He said I was amazing that way.” That was a warm memory. I’d keep that one. “Then the Auphe took me when I was fourteen.”

  “And you didn’t bounce back,” Goodfellow said quietly.

  “No, I’d stopped bouncing a little earlier, when I was eleven. I stopped after what I saw in the attic. What I heard really.” I flexed my other hand, and, damn, that was worse than the first one. “I pretended. Fake it until you make it, right? I faked it with the best of them. But no more bouncing, not the real kind. That’s when I knew I was right not to tell him. I didn’t want him to be like me.”

  Resigned to fate.

  “Tell him? Tell him what?”

  “I was awake part of the time, in the attic. Nik doesn’t know. Nik can’t know,” I warned. “I was awake when Junior cut me with his knife, telling me I was an innocent. I had no sin in my blood to drain, but he liked that part. Loved it. He knew I wouldn’t mind.” I’d still been confused and half out of it from the drugs but I remembered him holding me close, with an arm wrapped around my bare back as he dragged the point of the knife through my skin to watch me bleed.

  Robin rested his elbows on his knees and folded hands against his mouth. “Gamisou. The monster.”

  I almost laughed, but Nik could’ve heard. I held it back, but it wasn’t easy. “Monster. That’s what he thought he was, but then a Grendel opened a gate into the attic and Junior found out how wrong he was. The Grendel . . . fuck, the Auphe, I mean, slashed him to pieces. Left him dying on the floor. I’d never seen anything like it. It tore Junior apart with no more effort than it took to breathe.” Vicious and predatory and fucking murder made of moonlight and blood. “Before they’d only watched me. I didn’t know. I had no idea what they could do.” I’d had no idea how outside of the world and everything in it they were. How alien and how fucking unstoppable. “And then it came over and whispered in my ear. I was on the floor, trapped in a corner. I’d never seen one close up, only through windows. I didn’t know they could talk. . . .

  “It had bent down and pressed those metal teeth to my ear and hissed possessively, ‘You belong to us, little cousin. One day we will come for you. Next year, the year after, the year after. You will not know, but we will come and take you through that.’ A black talon pointed at the roiling mass of ugly, tarnished light that had torn a hole in the world and hung there, waiting. ‘We will take you home to your true family. Wait for us. Watch for us.’

  “Then it and the gate were gone. Nik had pounded up the stairs just as I’d let my eyes shut. I’d heard him talking urgently to me, but I wasn’t hearing words anymore. I did hear the meaty thump that was the knife ramming into Junior’s heart, Nik finishing him. For all that the Auphe had half killed him, Nik had completed the job. Nik had killed to save me.”

&
nbsp; “How could you not tell him?” Robin had his hand on my shoulder squeezing. It was the same one Nik gave me when he knew I needed reassurance, but not the embarrassment of the words.

  “How could I? Nik was meant for college, meant for a real life. If I’d told him the Auphe would be back for me anytime, he never would’ve tried those things. He wouldn’t have gone to school and it wouldn’t have made a damn bit of difference. Even at eighteen Nik wasn’t a match for all the Auphe.” I’d known that and I’d thought I was doing the right thing. “You know, Robin. It took four of us and a suicide run that never should’ve worked to do that.” I slumped back in the couch and let my head fall to stare at the ceiling. “Three years before they came for me. It was a long time. It was so fucking long knowing every night might be the night. But it was worth it. Niko didn’t get all the college he wanted or that real life, but he got a taste and that’s better than nothing, right?” I believed that. I had to, but for one other person to tell me so, for one other person to know—that would be good.

  Secrets are so goddamn heavy.

  “It is worth that.” Robin moved from the coffee table to sit next to me. “You’re a hero, Caliban. I know you refuse to believe that about yourself, but you are. You say how Niko raised you, how he saved you. What you don’t let yourself see is that you saved him as well—more than he knows. You let him see there was more to life than abusive mothers and life on the run. It didn’t last long, but it lasted long enough for him to know it was possible and build the same thing for you both now. And, no, I won’t tell. You each have far too impossible heights of guilt. It’s like an unholy competition. I refuse to add to that.”

  I lifted my head and let the corners of my mouth twitch into an honest smile. “Thanks. And thanks for letting me get it out. I have mental graves all over the place and I get tired of reburying that particular one.”

  There was silence; then Robin asked one more question. “Do you think Jack shorted out your gating abilities for good?”

  I tilted my head back again, this time with my eyes shut. “I don’t know. With Grimm out there and all, I should care, but right now, I don’t.”

  And while it wasn’t a practical feeling, it was a good one.

  That was enough for me.

  I’d seen enough holes in the world to last me a lifetime.

  16

  Niko

  Twelve Years Ago

  “It made a hole in the world.”

  They were the first words Cal had said since he’d woken up two hours ago. I’d bandaged the cut on his chest, which wasn’t close to as bad as I thought it would be. It would scab over by tomorrow and be gone in a week. Junior had liked to play before he truly got started. Bastard. I gently scrubbed the duct tape residue from Cal’s face and lips and wrists with soap and warm water. He woke up halfway through the process and let me dress him in pajamas without helping or trying to stop me. He stared at me with blank eyes, then past me. Rain sluicing down the empty windows of an abandoned house. He would bounce back. Cal didn’t fail to bounce.

  Unless his brother slapped down that ball and crushed it underfoot because he didn’t want to believe.

  I smoothed hair I’d already combed out into his usual straight sheen. He let me fold him up on his mattress as I climbed in behind him, pulled his blanket over us and wrapped arms around him.

  “I’m here, Cal.”

  Silence, and it went on.

  “You’re not alone. I’m staying.

  “Junior’s dead.” I swallowed, but said it. Cal didn’t trust anything I hadn’t done myself and I had done it. “I killed him. He’s not coming back.

  “We’ll leave tomorrow, away from that house and the police, but we need the rest tonight, okay?

  “I won’t, I can’t make it up to you. From the first time you told me, I should’ve said screw Junior’s good name and the police. With some things your instincts are better than mine and I fucked up.”

  None of my uncustomary cursing got through to him either.

  “Cal . . .” I tightened my grip on him, wrapped around him as I hadn’t since he was six and had nightmares every night—clowns, evil reindeer, and Grendels. “I’m sorry.”

  I didn’t know if he would say anything, if he could say anything, but I heard the faintest of whispers, the barest of exhalations against the skin of my hand tucked under his small chin when he said those first words.

  “It made a hole in the world.”

  Once he started, he didn’t stop, his voice much younger than eleven. “It made a hole in the world. It made a hole in the world. It made a hole in the world. It made a hole in the world. It made a hole. . . .” He turned his head to bury it in the pillow.

  I didn’t know what he meant. He could’ve been awake for a few minutes and seen the Grendel start what I finished on Junior, but a hole in the world? I didn’t know. I ran fingers through the long strands of his hair. “I’ll stop it. Whatever it is, I promise I’ll make it go away.”

  Pressing a light kiss to the top of his head, wishing he’d punch me for that as he normally did, I murmured, “Love you, little brother.”

  There was a shudder and a promise more determined than I could’ve asked for. “Love you, big brother. Forever.” Ferocious in its way, protective almost when that was my job. It was enough to worry me more.

  What had he seen?

  God, what hadn’t he?

  * * *

  We moved the next day. Packed what little we had and took the bus several states away. We didn’t leave a note for Sophia, but she would find us. She always did. She was like a Grendel that way.

  The apartment was cheap and dirty and not fit to live in, which is why it was more or less abandoned until maintenance got around to it. We could squat for a while. It had been three weeks and Cal was back to normal—as normal as my little brother ever was. We’d slept in the same sleeping bag for two weeks before he decided he was eleven and only babies slept with their brothers. I was surprised it took him that long to move to the sleeping bag right next to mine. For all that had happened, Cal was never one to admit he was afraid . . . of Grendels, of anything. Two weeks for him was the same as two months for someone else.

  It worried me, but he didn’t mention that night in the house, in the attic, and neither did I. I tried. It wasn’t healthy, all the books said, to bottle up that kind of trauma. But when I did make an attempt, it was as if Junior was back with the bleach spray scorching my throat, banishing my voice.

  I’d almost gotten Cal killed by not believing him. I couldn’t live with that—so I put it away. What Cal did with it I didn’t ask. I couldn’t without tasting bleach, feeling his blood on my hands, and reliving the terribly satisfying crunch of knife through bone.

  I couldn’t talk about it. If I did, I couldn’t be who I needed to be for him. I wouldn’t be strong. I think it would’ve broken me . . . for good.

  So that’s what I did. Put it away. I wouldn’t take it out again, not as long as I lived.

  I hoped.

  As for Cal, he seemed fine, not quite cheerful, but . . . functional. His ball was bouncing, if not as high and wild as normal. I didn’t know how that could be, that he was walking and talking at all, but that was Cal. I should be grateful and I was. I was more than grateful; I was proud. The deck had been stacked against my little brother since before he was born. He never let that stop him and he never let it beat him. One little boy and he had the strength of a hundred men. I loved him, but I was also . . . humbled by him. He was an amazing boy now and he’d be a man to be reckoned with when he grew up. I was fortunate I was the one who would see that. Of all the people in the world, somehow I’d been chosen, and hard as it could be, this life, I’d never give it up. Make it better, yes, but never give up the miracles I got to see on a daily basis. Even on the days I stumbled and didn’t know what to do, I was the luckiest person alive.

  I came in the apartment door, ignored the smell of mold from the ceiling that no amount of scrubbing had
done away with. It didn’t much matter anyway. The black-green of it matched the carpet. “We start the new school tomorrow. Have you been catching up on what you missed?”

  Cal looked up at me from the same math book from a table with the same wobble and, terrifyingly, wearing the same casual expression. The déjà vu was a punch in the stomach. “Mrs. Kessler is a cannibal.”

  Mrs. Kessler? Who had painted her door cotton candy pink, who was seventy at least and baked cookies for everyone on the floor? That Mrs. Kessler? Yet, she did eat a lot of what looked like pork sandwiches in that rocker on her tiny balcony. I headed immediately for the scarred baseball bat propped in the corner.

  Cal laughed. “Sucker.” It was his first real laugh since Junior’s attic. His first true laugh, first true grin, and it was worth being fooled for that. Of course he still had to pay. That was how brothers did it. I chased him out the door and down the hall. I echoed his laughter, my first too, and continued racing after him out of the building and down the sidewalk. Of course I let him think he could outrun me, giving him the glee and the hope.

  Hope is the second most important thing in the world.

  Trust is the first.

  * * *

  When Sophia finally caught up with us, the bruise from her thrown whiskey bottle had almost faded from Cal’s chest. I was checking it for the last time, the pale tinge of yellow, and smiling, relieved. That’s when I heard the first door open. I recognized the particular click of our mother’s picklock at work. “It looks good,” I told him as he pulled his shirt down. “I’ve got a new Wolverine comic book I’ve been saving for you. It’s under my sleeping bag. Have fun.” While he dived for it, I went to meet Sophia.

  I met her in the living room with her last full bottle of whiskey I’d brought with us when we packed. It was poetic justice. I liked poetry and I liked justice. I hefted the bottle. I didn’t say anything. What was there to say? I’d made a promise to myself. It was time to keep it.