by Rob Thurman
I couldn’t see the exact color of them down here, the lights were dim—the bare minimum, but I could see the tug-of-war behind his eyes. One side was, best guess, hit your brother with the mummified killer koala bear. The other side, which I’d have laid money on pulling ahead, wasn’t nearly as forgiving as that.
“Sooo … we don’t keep count?” I concluded.
“Wahanket!”
Damn, Leandros could get the volume up there when he wanted. Where had all that Zen gone?
There was a long sigh, a hot breeze over distant sands, and finally, “I am here.”
“Here” was two narrow corridors over and five rows down. There a space was cleared for what looked like a wooden Egyptian reclining couch—as far as I could tell. It had a King Tut look to it. That was what I apparently used to classify old Egyptian things, and I had no problem with that. It was a good system in my book, especially as it didn’t involve reading actual books about what ancient Egyptians used for furniture before IKEA came along. There was also a computer, a television nicer than the one we had, several mounds of smaller electronics scattered about, a fucking Wii, if you could believe that, and a metal table littered with sharp instruments and blood—old.
But once it had been new.
It was hideous. I could picture … I could remember … cats. Dead cats. Completely dead and being cut up. Couldn’t mummify without cutting, could you? The smell of it. The smell of fear and spilled urine and guts … Monsters kill, monsters murder, and, given the chance, some monsters do a great deal worse.
Wahanket was a monster, no waivers for good behavior, and I hated him. The feeling was sharp and cold, and I knew it was right.
Righteous. Both voices were a choir on that one.
The growl in my chest rose up in my savage smile as I saw the claws of a great lizard where one hand should’ve been. “I did that, didn’t I? You pissed me off. You fucked with me, and I didn’t much like it.” The specifics I didn’t have yet, only the taste of the memory, but the fact was solid and true. Sometimes you didn’t have to remember to simply know. I took a step closer. I’d done that, and I wouldn’t mind doing it again. I took another step.
No, I wouldn’t mind at all.
A hand landed on my shoulder and held me back. “Wait, Cal. If he has information, we need it.”
Wahanket wasn’t the mummy of a human being, but l couldn’t have told the difference, except for the scales and claws of his replaced hand. Resin-stained bandages cracked with his every movement. His nose was a dark cavity, his teeth stripped of gums and blackened, a scrap of leather revealed to be his tongue when those teeth parted. A mummy so disgusting and unnatural that Salome and the bear in comparison could be plucked off a toy store shelf. They all did share the same eyes, a wavering, undying glow.
“Why do you come here?” He didn’t bother with my talk of his hand or how I’d been responsible. With his other hand he gestured, joints creaking, and the bear wriggled off Niko’s blade to land on the table where it had been made, turning to hiss and keep us in view. At least it had been long dead before Wahanket had gotten at it, not like the cats, dug up from some old boxed exhibit down here. One stuffed koala bear meant for educational purposes turned into a killer Teddy with no interest in eucalyptus leaves whatsoever. “And with nothing to offer in trade?”
“One of the last times we traded, you tried to shoot my brother with his own gun. That covers our tab indefinitely, I’ve decided.” A hand swatted the back of my head, a daily event, I was learning. No wonder it had felt familiar when Miss Terrwyn had done the same, as it had its roots here. “As for you, little brother, trading guns to homicidal mummies for information is not a good idea. An obvious statement, but one that escaped you at the time.”
As I rubbed the back of my head with one hand, my other was in my jacket searching for something appropriate for the situation—that situation making Wahanket unavailable for all future trading activities. He was a monster even among other monsters—strike one; Niko said he’d tried to shoot me sometime in the fuzzy past—strike two; and I didn’t like him in so many goddamn ways—strike three. Plenty of reasons, although the “not liking him” one was more than enough for me.
The swat I’d gotten on the head was doubled to be felt through the leather of my jacket covering the back of my shoulder. I growled again but let my hand drop. Niko wanted information. I could wait. Once he had it, then I could kill Wahanket, and we’d both be happy. Win-win. I didn’t need the warning tickling the back of my skull.
Monstermonstermonster.
Blackened teeth snapped together, but Wahanket gave in without argument while laying a soothing claw on the back of the hissing Disney reject. “Very well. I can be generous when I wish. What is it you want to know?”
“Of Ammut, and don’t claim you know nothing, you desiccated depravity. If anything, you are one and the same kind, only you are far weaker than she is. She is a god and you’re nothing more than a killer of cats hiding in a basement, the lowest of cockroaches fearing the light.” If this was Niko buttering up an informant, I wished I’d washed my own cereal bowl that morning.
Wahanket … Hadn’t I once called him Hank? There’d been a stupid cowboy hat he’d worn. He’d seemed harmless then. He’d … I blinked and whatever I’d been thinking was gone. It slithered away into the corner of my mind, out of sight but waiting. It was coming back. The cats. The hand. Slowly and playing hide-and-seek, but it was all coming back, the memories. Me.
“A god? She is no god. She can but steal life. I can give”—his claws stilled on the back of the ragged beast of his creation—”as well as take.” The light disappeared in the eye sockets of the bear and it fell stiffly onto his side. It was the same as it was before he had done his work on it—dead. Defaced and definitely less educational, but dead.
“If you’re her equal, why aren’t you aboveground killing vampires, Wolves, lamia, and whatever else she can gather with her spiders?” Niko asked. I saw the yellow eyes of a cat crouched on the crates behind him, but Salome’s brother or sister in undeath was content to watch. Maybe it didn’t want to end up like the bear. Or maybe it liked Salome more than the mummy that had killed it before raising it from the dead.
“I have spent more years than you can imagine taking and giving lives. I am older than the pharaohs, older than Egypt or any pyramid. I knew the Nile when it was only a trickle of water and I have existed long enough to know there is no thrill to be had any longer, none that I haven’t tasted. Save one.” The tendons of his neck stretched and split as he turned his head to take in the computer.
“If you wish to know of Ammut, now she cares for higher nests as opposed to warm dens. She likes to view her kingdom, but I have my window into endless kingdoms. I do not need what she needs. I can sustain myself without feeding. I am beyond that. If she were as powerful as I, then she could do the same. If she does not feed, she will starve within a month. Pathetic. I have heard of deaths that could be caused by her, but if she is here, I cannot say for sure. We come from the same place, but we are not the same kind. We are not connected. We are not”—the claws of one hand curled tight—”sociable creatures, either of us.” It was funny how “sociable” could sound as if he’d like to skin her alive and reupholster his King Tut sofa. “She would not come here to me. I know not where in this world that she now perches.”
“She likes to perch while you like to hide from your shadow like Punxsutawney Phil. Is that right?” I asked with a sneer that had a mind of its own.
The distant glimmer in his skull switched its regard from the computer to me. The glow, hepatitis yellow, brightened. Sometimes bright means cheerful; sometimes it means a heightened interest—either good or bad; and sometimes it’s the blaze of sheer fury. His head jerked forward toward me with the same quick action of a striking snake. “What have you done?” His eyes were so bright, it was as painful to look at as staring into the sun. “What have you become? How have you let someone else steal what sho
uld be mine?” His teeth snapped and parted to let through a sound like nothing I’d ever heard. It damn sure put the hissing of a dead bear to shame. “I have bided my time, waiting for you to ripen, and now you are barely half of what you were, barely worth taking at all. What have you done?”
Mummies could move faster than any spider when they wanted, faster than a half-grown boggle. Wahanket was a hurricane-force wind and I was the palm tree that went down before it. Long, thin fingers and a lizard’s talons wrapped around my neck, cutting off my air instantly. “It was mine, and you lost it, you worthless sack of skin. It was mine. Itwasmine. Itwasmine. Mineminemine.”
It was getting dark fast and I didn’t think that had anything to do with the natural gloom down here. You didn’t have to choke someone for minutes, unless you were an amateur. Less than fifteen seconds of pressure on the carotid arteries would have your victim out cold. Out cold and on a dissection table. Of all the memories I’d lost, that couldn’t have been one of them. Of course not.
The blackness spread and I couldn’t see Wahanket anymore, but I didn’t need to see to get a hand inside my jacket. My thoughts were getting hazy, but I didn’t need them to choose the right weapon. I only needed instinct, and instinct was all over this.
Monster.
Cat killer.
Motherfucking mummified asshole.
Instinct chose one of my backup Desert Eagles, the one having been lost in the canal. Instinct pulled the trigger. It was a few seconds later when blood made its way back to my brain and I could see again that I found out instinct had been cock-blocked. The round that should’ve shattered Wahanket’s skull had hit nothing. Niko must have kicked him off me, because the mummy was on his back several feet away with a katana skewering him to the floor. But to judge from his thrashing, strong for a pile of bones and jerky, the blade wasn’t going to hold Wahanket forever. The man who’d turned him into a temporary shish kebab didn’t strike me as that concerned. His hand disappeared inside his duster and reappeared with a can of lighter fluid. I hadn’t asked about it when we’d stopped and bought it on the way. If I asked about everything I didn’t know or understand right now, I would never shut up. I was going with a mostly wait-and-see policy until I was back to normal.
I had to say, I liked what I was seeing.
Niko sprayed the mummy from head to toe and with one flick of his thumb set him on fire. The flailing redoubled and the cursing started. I sat up. “What about your sword?”
There was a dismissive shrug. “It’s not one of my favorites. I came prepared. You never know when Wahanket will have useful information or not, the same as you never know if he’ll go from mildly cooperative to wildly homicidal.” He held down a hand to me and pulled me to my feet.
A lot of people seemed to be taking my amnesia personally—the Wolves, the boggles, and now this piece of shit. “What was he talking about? That I’m only half of what I was?” I rubbed at my throat, but it was in one piece other than the scabbed spider bite. I owed that to Leandros, who was as fast as he’d been when disarming me in Nevah’s Landing—as fast as I had the strong feeling that he always was.
“He can take life forces like Ammut, even if they’re not the same. Perhaps a meal for these kinds of predators includes it all: your life, your memories, your skills, your emotions. And you most definitely do not care for Wahanket, the same as he does not care for you.” That was fairly obvious, I thought as Niko went on. “He might have been waiting for your … dislike of him to peak before he tried to drain you.”
“The cherry on the top of a Cal sundae, huh?” Niko appeared to have no problem accepting that guess, and Wahanket was one of a kind—puzzling over it would probably be pointless, although it still didn’t explain the Wolves and boggles. I was about to bring that up when I was distracted by Wahanket—not by what he was doing, but by what he wasn’t doing.
The mummy’s cursing was indecipherable, a language I didn’t know—if he was as old as he claimed, then one that no one knew. “Shouldn’t he be screaming? If you set me on fire, don’t think less of my manliness—muy macho and all, but I’d scream like a banshee.” He was burning fast and furiously without a hint of smoke. Too bad, if you were going to eat old meat, it was better smoked.
“I doubt it hurts much. His body is dead. No living nerve endings to register pain. This is more of a temper tantrum and hopefully, once burned to a crisp, he’ll be less physically capable of attacking us in the future—the near future at least. There’s no need to kill him, if we actually could kill him. And we do need informants. He’s no more homicidal than the rest—as long as you show some sense and don’t come alone.”
Being set on fire would only slow him down and not even permanently? Well, damn, let’s see if we could slow his ass down a little more that that. “I’ll be back.”
“Good idea,” Niko commented. “Find a fire extinguisher. We don’t want this to spread. Watch out for the cats.” I had every intention, but I still thought the cats were more on our side than Wahanket’s.
When I came back, I tossed him the extinguisher, which had actually been his thought and not mine, with one hand and hoisted the fire axe with the other. I hadn’t forgotten my prechoking opinions. Tried to shoot me once and strangle me this time. Monster. Cat killer. Wannabe murderer of me. Motherfucking asshole.
Oh yeah … the last one.
I just didn’t like him. Best reason of all.
He was more sizzling than flaming now. I barely felt the heat as I chopped off his arms and legs. Niko hadn’t mentioned it when reading me his mental list of what entertained baby brother Cal—reading, parties, yeah … lame. No, this—this was what I did for fun. And, goddamn, it was fun.
On the beach when I’d woken up, I’d known I was a killer, but I’d convinced myself along the way that I was a good killer. A noble Boy Scout of killers. But there were no good killers. There were only killers … period, and this bullshit about do the job but don’t enjoy the kill? The road to Hell … The slippery slope; why had I been embracing those idiotic cliches days ago?
What’s worse than killing for a living? Being bored killing for a living. Hell, yes, enjoy your job. Love your damn job. I was on the side of good, right? I killed monsters, kept people safe and all that crap. Why shouldn’t I enjoy it?
“A happy monster killer is an efficient monster killer,” I told Wahanket with the last chop as the yellow eyes continued to glare at me from a blackened, burned skull. He’d gone quiet, the cursing done, but that stare told me I was on his list—forever and top of. Numero uno. That was fair. He was certainly on mine.
“We wouldn’t want me to lose my edge, would we, pal? Practice makes perfect.” I pushed his arm a few feet from his torso. “As for thinking I’m not all I was, I’m catching up and quick. Good thoughts for you to think about while you put yourself back together. By the time you do that, I’ll be myself again and won’t we have some good times then?” I kicked his other arm even farther away. “Hope you have some superglue around, shithead.” I dropped the axe beside him and smiled. It felt good, that smile. Satisfied. So much so that I considered picking the axe back up and turning the mummy into some even smaller pieces. Yep, very, very satisfied.
Niko, oddly, looked anything but.
“Fun and games with Wahanket over already?” Robin, who was sitting on our apartment couch when we arrived home, checked his watch. “That was quick, quicker than Ammut trying to have Cal swimming with the fishes like mobsters of old, and, as ‘quick’ so very often means, I’m guessing you came away unsatisfied.”
“He has a key?” I jammed an elbow in Niko’s ribs. “You have to be kidding me. And you just installed the new lock this morning.”
“Kid, I was picking locks before the human race invented them … or reinvented them. Blatant patent infringement, stealing from our kind.” He stretched and propped his feet on the coffee table. “Well? Wahanket?”
“You’re wrong there. I came away very satisfied.” I grinned—i
t felt a little dark and a little nasty, but that was okay. Things were coming back. Feelings, no full-on memories yet, but the apartment seemed more familiar—I felt like a driver who had missed the curve but was driving over the median and seconds away from getting back on the right path. No, not the right path—the correct path.
My path.
“He cooperated then?”
“Nope, not worth a damn, which made it massively more entertaining.” I went to the refrigerator and got a beer. There was only one and as it wasn’t made of soy, I was assuming it was mine.
“Mmm. That’s unfortunate, but Wahanket is who he is. We’ve always known that. We’ve always accepted that. It would be a mistake to think he could change or should change.” When I turned back, I saw the fox’s eyes settled not on me, but on Leandros, and there was an odd emphasis not on Wahanket’s name but on the word “change.”
I shrugged. “Then you’d be wrong. He has changed. He’s now a scorched Wahanket puzzle made of six pieces. Not a complicated puzzle, but one I’m not putting back together.” I took a drink. “Especially as I spent the time taking him apart.”
“Mmm,” Robin repeated, running a hand down the front of his silk shirt. I’d noticed him do that before and was now having a deja vu shimmer that it was a habit of his. I checked my weapons; he checked his clothes. “Spiders and mummies. None are spared your wrath. Tell me you didn’t do it with a fork.”
Shaking my head, I took another swallow and flopped on the couch next to him. “Better. Axe. And I’ve been thinking about that Wolf at the bar. I have no idea why I’d felt bad about that. She’d tried to kill me. What was I supposed to do? Pet her furry little head and tell her home? Home, girl! Drag her out to a pet cemetery and have her cremated with a shiny brass urn, bow, and framed dog treat? Jesus. My first and last ever sentimental moment.” She’d been a killer—through and through. Who cared how she’d gotten that way? Born wild, born to hunt, you still made your choices and suffered the consequences. Evolution was no free ride.
