by Rob Thurman
“You are lecturing me?” Niko sounded as if that would knock him flat before his toxic milk shake would.
“I’ve seen the T-shirts I bought myself for Christmas. I’ve seen the way Wolves and others act around me. If there’s something to be done, something in the gray area,” the dark areas … darkest of the dark, “I think that’s my half of the partnership.” I was proud of that choosy phrasing. “Think,” not “know”—and I did know.
If wrong had to be done, I would do it. One of the First, born of the First, and living in the shadow and the murk. As the details of my life grew less and less sketchy, I knew that all of his life Niko had protected me. I’d done the same for him when I was old enough to, and I’d keep doing the same. I would let him be who he was by being who I truly was or had been. I would step into those shadows for the last and final time to let Niko step back into the light where he belonged.
Right now, shadows or not, I was hungry. I got up and made a sandwich, all while Niko continued to watch me, a distinct aura of suspicion overcoming the odor of the sludge in his untouched glass. “You said you’d stay outside. You lied to me.”
I raised my eyebrows at the last remark, which took real balls for him to actually say, what with all he was trying to keep from me. I chewed my bite of peanut butter and jelly without comment. It was enough to have Niko drinking his sludge. Ninjas in glass houses …
I finished and changed the nonsubject. “Goodfellow said we’d need formal wear for the party. What’s formal wear?”
“You are dead to me. No, you are worse than dead. The worst thing I can do to you is let you live to make every minute of every day of the rest of your life an eternal hell.”
When he opened his door this time, Goodfellow was dressed—in a way. With wavy hair standing on end and a ratty bandage draped over it, he was wearing an expensive, a given there, tux—James Bond style. I could admit, masculinity intact, that it was pretty sharp, or it had been once. Now it was missing one pant leg from the knee down, one arm at the shoulder, and there was a mummy cat hanging from his shredded tie.
Spartacus showed his garbage-disposal teeth in a grin at me as he swung from the cloth strip that was meant to be knotted in a bow tie around the puck’s neck. “Spartacus, hey, pal, are you telling Robin how to dress?”
“You named it. You actually named it, and you named it Spartacus. Zeus, I hate you.” He stalked off, Spartacus hanging in there happily. Inside the penthouse, the contour couch was now a scrap pile of leather, stuffing, and wood. The walls were clawed until they formed the optical illusion of the bars of a prison cell. A once highly expensive rug was about a thousand pieces of cloth mixed with strips of frayed bandages scattered about the place, and undead cats lounged everywhere. Salome perched on top of that giant refrigerator with dimly glowing eyes crossed in pleasure—a queen overseeing her domain and her new minions. It was only right. Every powermad villain merited minions.
Ishiah, his tux in one piece, closed the door behind us. “This wasn’t the brightest thing you could have done, Caliban. Robin is one of the best, if not the best, tricksters in this world. Are you familiar with the Greek tale of Oedipus Rex? It wasn’t simply a story. It was truth. There were two prophecies. Robin had nothing to do with the first or the second, but when chariot rage, the original road rage, ended in murder, he did arrange for the rest of the prophecy to come true. Marrying mothers, jabbing out eyes with golden hairpins, suicide. All three members of that royal family were murderers or potential ones. Tricksters don’t care for either. That was only a job to him. Justice. This”—he waved an arm at the inside of the penthouse and twenty-four avid yellow eyes followed the movement—”is personal.”
I’d felt my own eyes cross the same as Salome’s, but mine was in boredom, not pleasure. “Sorry. I missed most of that. Oedipus Rex … Was that a dinosaur? Like a T. rex?”
“I may as well post the ad for your replacement now.” He followed the puck. “Your tuxes are in both bathrooms. If your ‘gifts’ haven’t eaten them.”
He flipped me off when I called after him gravely. “Adoption is love. I saw that on the side of a bus, so it’s gotta be true.”
“That wasn’t very angellike,” I added as I watched the finger disappear with him.
“Understandable, since he isn’t one.” Niko went for the first bathroom. “And if Robin does cause you to blind yourself with anything from an antique hairpin to a banana, I will have no sympathy.”
All the cats purred louder as I walked through them. At least they were happy to see me. Dogs didn’t like me and I’d figured out why now. Nothing could smell a twisted genetic product like a Wolf or a dog … but cats didn’t have a problem with me. After all, they played with their victims. No rush to judgment there.
I found the other bathroom, only because the door was open. I wasn’t opening any closed doors here. Seeing wet feathers in the massive whirlpool tub was enough to have me dressing so quickly, I tucked the shirt into my underwear instead of my pants. The tux was all right, black on black—with no tie of any kind. Goodfellow definitely knew me there, but Miss Terrwyn would’ve again been shaking her head at my vampire-looking, silly white boy self. Except that vampires existed, and I wasn’t white. My skin was pale, but it hadn’t come from being some British-Scottish-Irish-German-American mutt. I’d gotten that from the Auphe; otherwise I’d have been a pale brown like Niko … or our mother.
Born of the first murderers to walk the earth and unable to get a goddamn tan. Welcome to my world.
It was enough to make me wish for the whole amnesia enchilada back and not the half-and-half I had now. But wishes weren’t promises, and tainted genes or not, I was keeping that promise to Nik. It didn’t matter that he didn’t know I’d made it. I knew, and that was enough.
I’d woken up in water, sand, and dead spiders with a deep hatred of monsters. Then I found out I was one. I hadn’t seen anything that addressed that on the side of a bus—only the adoption ad. Adoption and love—good stuff, but self-worth? You were on your own there. Ammut thought I had worth anyway and then some. Here was hoping she’d show up and tell me all about it. I opened the bathroom door back up to face cold ruthless eyes not quite an inch from mine. Ammut’s?
Worse.
They were Goodfellow’s.
“Do you know there are things … No, there are words, actual, simple words—I’m reasonably positive that I could trim them down to six total—that I could say to you that would make you unable to function sexually for five years? Even with yourself?”
Whoa. “You’re a witch?” Couldn’t be. There was no magic in the world. Monsters, yes. Magic, no. It was one of those things I did know instinctually without anyone telling me.
“No, Caliban. I’m not. I’m merely extremely knowledgeable in the psychosexual fields and I’m also very, very vindictive.”
“Um … Niko? You out there?” I backed up a step and Goodfellow followed, maintaining the exact lack of distance.
“Remember Alexander the Great? Not that great, especially when he poisoned my friend. What’s good for the gander is … good for the gander.” He smiled. It was the first of his smiles I’d seen that wasn’t sly or wicked. It was goddamn scary. “Then there was Genghis Khan. He should’ve paid more attention to the blade I gave his kidnapped princess and the ingenious place she was hiding it and less to killing every male child as tall as his steppe pony’s shoulder. The princess was a nice woman and didn’t like child killers any more than I do. Ah, and who do you think said, ‘Release the Kraken’? That horny rapist named Zeus? Hardly. He was always trying to steal my thunder.” Two more steps in perfect synchronization—me back, him forward.
“And then there’s you—you who released the equivalent of the Ten Plagues on my home. Can you imagine what I plan on doing to you?”
“Nik!”
“Yes?” Nik was behind Robin, his hand on the puck’s shoulder. “Do we have a problem?”
“I think Goodfellow wants to poison
me, stab me with a knife I’d prefer sterilized first, then make me watch a god-awful, bad-special-effects movie from the eighties.” I slid past him before he tried to escape Niko’s hand. “I could’ve stabbed you with that fork, you know,” I told the puck, “but I didn’t. And with the cats, I saved lives … unlives … whatever, and this is the thanks I get. Bastard.”
“You could’ve left them with Wahanket,” Goodfellow snapped.
That flipped a switch in me. Cheerful and dark. From the feel of it on my face, my smile was the mirror of what the puck’s had been—goddamn scary. “In spirit maybe. But the only thing useful with Wahanket anymore is a DustBuster and a Ouija board.” I put the smile away. It wasn’t for them. I was saving it for Ammut. “And you’ll be able to find homes for them. Every rich vamp will want his own mummified cat. Except Spartacus. He stays here. He’s for Salome.”
“And how precisely do you figure that?”
I kept Niko between him and me. “Spartacus likes me. Salome wants to eat me. Okay, she doesn’t eat. Kill me. Whatever. If Salome likes Spartacus, I have it made. He’s my wingman to peace and not being eaten.”
“You are truly pathetic.” Goodfellow shook his head, but he lost his bad humor or switched it to a new source when he saw my shoes. “You are not wearing black sneakers with a Brioni tux. I won’t allow it. I won’t be seen within a mile of you.”
“If Ammut is there, I plan on some running. Those shoes you gave me—nice for looking at my reflection, but they suck for running.”
“I think it’s time for the party. The discussion about history-making vengeance and foot apparel can take place later,” Niko interrupted. “I do have a date, and it’s not Ammut, waiting for me there.”
That date was Promise, the sad vampire. It sounded like a children’s book. Promise, the sad velvet vampire—won’t you be her friend? I dimly remembered why she was so solemn now. Her kid … Her daughter had died. No … That wasn’t quite it. Think, think. Ah. Her daughter had been killed—by Niko. Yeah, that was right. Her daughter had been a true nightmare of a creature. She’d done things that not only were unforgivable but also not survivable, depending on whom she did them to. She’d done those things to us all, but most particularly to Nik. Promise had raised a monster beyond redemption.
Why was I sure Niko was incapable of doing the same?
Nature versus nurture.
Genes versus a determined big brother, with fish sticks and Scooby Doo cartoons, who’d taken care of you from your first breath.
Which wins?
After we met Promise at her place, then took her chauffeured car to the Tribeca Grand, the first thing I did when we made it past the doormen, all four of whom looked with disdain at my shoes, I pulled her aside. “Can I talk to you for a second?”
She waved Niko back with a small flick of plumcolored oval nails in a motion so minute that I barely saw it. I wished I had him trained half that well, but then again the rewards were vastly different. “What is it, Caliban? Are you doing better? Niko has been not very forthcoming on the subject.” That irritated her. I could tell by the rapid touch of her fingers checking her hair. The brown and blond was swept up into some sort of something that probably had a complicated name I didn’t have a clue about, but Promise wasn’t the nervous, fidgety type. She was the still pond, the unmoving stone, the unchanging mountain—the same as Niko. Like for like.
If she was irritated, it was because she’d been left in the dark, and not the kind vampires cared for either. “You don’t know. He didn’t tell you.” Across the massive foyer, Niko, fidgeting himself, gave a careful smooth to the front of his own tux. Two Zen peas in a Zen pod.
“Tell me what?”
Her eyes, violet before, were now dark purple with concern. They were the same color as the dress she wore that fell to the floor, the flash of the same color reflected in the black pearls wrapped around her neck. Such an … I don’t know … elegant woman. Not for my kind, but for Niko, yes. He deserved her, and I didn’t want to hurt her, but I needed to know. If I was wrong, many more people than Promise would get hurt. “You didn’t know he started drugging me a few days ago? With the Nepenthe venom? Trying to keep all my old memories gone for good? He’s been trying to keep me … shit, happy, I guess.”
“Without telling you? No. He wouldn’t do that,” she denied, her head shaking in the negative instantly. “Niko’s honesty is … insurmountable. Trust me. I lied to him once and that was all but the end of us.”
I came close to remembering that too, but it wasn’t important, not now. “And what would he tell me, Promise? What reason would he give me for getting me to take the drug voluntarily? What’s the truth he doesn’t want me to know?”
She looked away for a moment, then back and remained silent. Goodfellow and Ishiah had been willing to give me clues, but she was completely loyal to Niko. I didn’t mind. In fact, I preferred it.
“I don’t want to ask you this,” I continued, “particularly since I only half remember knowing you, but I have to. It’s coming back, all of it—mainly because Niko is a shade less smart than he thinks he is at drugging people and because part of me has been breaking through all along, even when drugged. But that’s a small part.” I took her hand. It was warm and why wouldn’t it have been? Vampires were alive, not dead. Born, not made. I remembered. I turned it over and traced the lifeline. It didn’t look any different from mine. “Niko has taken care of me my entire life, from diaper one.” I quirked my lips. “And I’ll always do the same for him, but I can do that better the way I was before.” The way I was close to being now. “I know that. But what I need to know is, in the end, is it worth it? Or am I like your daughter was? Am I beyond redemption? If I try to save Nik, will I end up doing … things? Bad things? Things he couldn’t live with?” Things he couldn’t let me live with. “You raised a monster, Promise. You know one when you see one.” I looked at Niko again. “Am I a monster worth its life because I can save my brother’s? Or am I just a monster—period?”
She took her hand from mine, cupped my cheek, and as Niko had been constantly doing to himself for me, she threw me under the bus for him. It was symmetry. “You do whatever needs to be done to save Niko. You do that, Caliban. You do anything. Do you hear me?”
In a way, it was the answer I’d been looking for, but not the reassurance I’d wanted. That was life. With the good came the bad. It was all about balance.
I knew she loved him, though, which made it better. She loved him more than she loved anything or anyone. Good for him. Good for them both. I held out my arm. “Is this how they do it? I’ve seen it on TV.”
She slid her hand into the crook of my elbow, already having second thoughts. “Cal, I shouldn’t have… .”
“I won’t tell him.” If I did, that would indeed be the end of them. It wouldn’t be very brotherly, and it wouldn’t be right. “What’s to tell? With my memory?” I grinned. “You’re good for him, Promise. Better than I’ll ever be. We were just talking about you adopting a mummy cat. That’s all.”
“A what? A mummy …” Goodfellow walked up in time to hear her confused remark.
“Ah, good. I’ll pick out a nice one for you. Two would probably be better. To keep each other company, less bored, less inclined to kill your neighbors. Would you prefer male or female? Not that it matters. Death and mummification are the ultimate spay and neuter program. I’ll have someone drop them off at your place tomorrow, should we survive tonight.”
Niko took Promise’s other arm and led her away from the dead-cat discussion. Since I’d come back, he hadn’t had much time with her and I knew why. He’d expected honesty from her. How could he then be with her when he was being anything but honest even to himself?
A conscience … More and more they seemed a pain in the ass.
Goodfellow, Ishiah, and I watched them go, dark blond head bent to the brown/blond one. “She looks like a tiger with that hair,” I mused.
“And she’ll eat you like a tiger if
you piss her off onefifth as much as you’ve pissed me off,” Robin growled.
I gave him a narrow-eyed glance and an equally narrow smile. “Do you really want to play, puck? I can make the time.”
Surprise flashed behind his eyes and as quickly was gone. Pucks were much better than my brother at playing a part, and he didn’t want to have to tell Niko the show was over. That he gladly would let me do. “You’re back then?”
My smile—only half of what I’d pretended it was, I hoped—widened. “About seventy, seventy-five percent.” I hooked an arm around his neck and squeezed, messing up his tie and collar mostly on purpose. “I missed remembering you, you horny bastard. Besides, think about it. Would a ‘good’ Cal dump eleven dead cats in your apartment? Or turn Wahanket into a dust pile that could double as an ant condo?”
“Good Cal tried to stab me with a fork,” Robin pointed out as he tried to straighten his tie, but he didn’t shake off my arm. Before Nik and I had shown up, and before Ishiah had come around to admit his own stupidity, Robin hadn’t had many friends—any friends. There were prejudiced bastards even among the supernatural kind. Tricksters weren’t favorites by any means.
“Good Cal thought you were a monster,” I reminded him. “Now I know what a monster is.”
“Ammut?” Ishiah standing beside us murmured, and although I couldn’t see the wings, I heard them rustle.
“Her too.” But she wasn’t the only one. I let go of Goodfellow and straightened my suit jacket to feel the weight of my weapons in place. I smelled her all right. She was here, and my grin now? I didn’t think there was a word for it. Not in these modern days. Not anymore. The first to invent, create, conceive. The first to smile for all the wrong reasons.
“Come on, guys,” I said. “Let’s go kick some Egyptian ass.”
