Blackout can-6

by Rob Thurman

  My hand—the hand of something new and something old and something unlike anything on this earth.

  That was what the healer who’d tried to fix me had said I was. I never forgot that. Who would? In a fog of amnesia, I’d thought all monsters were an abomination, because there was some part of me that thought I was an abomination. I’d been called that more times than I could count—by the supernatural, by my mother. Why should there not be a piece of me that thought the same?

  But I was wrong.

  I’d always been wrong about that. It was time to retire that word, because I wasn’t an abomination. I was the Wolf I’d killed my second day back in New York. She’d evolved to be what she was. She had choices, but some of those choices were defined and limited by her genes. It was the same for me. I was what I was. That little boy who’d learned about death by grieving for a dead blackbird was long gone; he’d evolved. And the Cal from the past week …

  The Cal that could’ve been, should’ve been, but never was—he was gone as well. It was as if he’d never existed, and in actuality he never had. He hadn’t been a reality, only a possibility—more like an impossibility, a dream. A good dream, but only a dream … as genuine as he’d felt, as real and right as the choices he had made—for Nik and me. You can fight the world, but you can’t fight yourself. You can’t deny yourself. Not forever. It didn’t stop me from cutting another lock of hair to let fly, for him this time—for the better Cal, the one who couldn’t exist for more than a moment in our world.

  He’d been more than the good guy he’d obsessed about. He’d been a hero. He was worth mourning. That was something I couldn’t say about myself, but I could say this:

  I was Caliban Leandros of the Clan Vayash.

  I was Caliban, Auphe.

  I was something new and something old and something unlike anything on this earth. I was the only one. I sat in the car as the house burned eight others like me to less than blackened bone.

  The only one …

  Now.

  I heard a voice again, tickling at the base of my brain. It wasn’t the one that had warned me about monsters and abominations, the one that had warned me most of all about myself. This one was still me, though, but it was the other half of me … or more than half. Souls … How to divide them up? Who knew? Listening, I heard the voice whisper sly and satisfied as I watched the fire rage on:

  So much for the competition.

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Rob Thurman lives in Indiana, land of cows, corn, and ravenous wild turkeys. Rob is the author of the Cal Leandros Novels: Nightlife, Moonshine, Madhouse, Deathwish , and Roadkill; the Trickster Novels: Trick of the Light and The Grimrose Path; and the novel Chimera and its sequel (to be released later in 2011), Basilisk.

  Besides wild, ravenous turkeys, Rob has three rescue dogs (If you don’t have a dog, how do you live?)—one of which is a Great Dane-Lab mix who barks at strangers like Cujo times ten, then runs to hide under the kitchen table and pee on herself. Robbers tend to find this a mixed message. However, the other two dogs are more invested in keeping their food source alive. All were adopted from the pound (one on his last day on death row). They were all fully grown, already housetrained, and grateful as hell. Think about it the next time you’re looking for a Rover or a Fluffy.

  For updates, teasers, music videos, deleted scenes, social networking (the time-suck of an author’s life), and various other extras, visit the author at www.robthurman.net.

  ALSO BY ROB THURMAN

  The Cal Leandros Novels

  Nightlife

  Moonshine

  Madhouse

  Deathwish

  Roadkill

  The Trickster Novels

  Trick of the Light

  The Grimrose Path

  Chimera

  Anthologies

  Wolfsbane and Mistletoe

  EDITED BY CHARLAINE HARRIS AND TONI L. P. KELNER

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