Deathwish can-4

by Rob Thurman

  It was too late. If he’d thought it through, he’d know that. Short of chasing Seamus down to the lobby and killing him in front of anyone who happened to be strolling through, this fight was over. I reached through the doorway and caught Cal by the back of his jacket as the door to the stairwell slammed shut at the end of the hall. I saw it on the wall down there and on the doorknob, swipes and smears of dark red. Blood. Some would say quite a bit.

  I would say not nearly enough.

  5

  Cal

  “He’s good.”

  That’s what Niko said in the aftermath of the fight while mopping the small amount of blood from his chest with a washcloth. “He’s good.” Like he’d say, “It’s hot today,” or “Darn, I’m out of tofu.”

  He’d tagged Nik during a sword fight. He was more than good. And those three shots I’d put in him weren’t going to slow him down. Vampires healed fast and had an incredible tolerance for pain. All of that made Seamus a problem. Because, hey, the Auphe weren’t enough. Let’s add another goddamned monster gunning for my brother.

  The couch had already been tossed over. What was one more kick? I slammed my foot against it. It didn’t make me feel any better, but it didn’t make me feel any worse either. “I told you I didn’t trust him,” I said grimly, as he pulled a new shirt on. “Being followed, my ass. He planned that.”

  “No, that was real. Or whoever shot that spear would’ve killed me then. But there’s no denying Seamus used being followed as an opportunity to get closer to Promise.” The meeting she’d had yesterday with him that she hadn’t told Niko about. “And if he killed us both . . .” Niko’s eyes glittered with an anger he normally would’ve kept hidden. Niko didn’t have many buttons, but Seamus was pushing the ones he had—Promise and me. “Who’s to say it couldn’t be blamed on those following him?”

  “And how hard could killing us be? Two humans.” I wasn’t really human, though, and Niko was by no means your average one, but Seamus hadn’t known that. He knew now . . . at least when it came to Nik. No matter how long the bastard had been around, Niko was his match—even in an ambush.

  So what would he try next time? How much further would he go to get what he wanted?

  Far.

  “We don’t have time for this. Not now,” Niko said firmly, the anger already squelched under his customary control. “We’ll deal with it later.”

  He was right. We didn’t have time for it, but Seamus had plenty of time. All the time in the world. The son of a bitch. “Promise isn’t going to be too happy.” I wasn’t too happy about it myself. Then again, I hadn’t had a secret meeting with the Scottish bastard. Maybe Promise wouldn’t be happy in an entirely different way. Niko said he trusted her, and that should’ve been good enough for me. And for him, I was trying damn hard to make it be. I hefted the duffel bag I’d stuffed with clothes, weapons, and ammunition, my grip tight enough to whiten my knuckles.

  “Naivete in you, little brother. I’m surprised.” He lifted his own bag and stepped over the wreckage of our door. The landlord was not going to be pleased, but for a hundred bucks we could get him to nail it shut with plywood before the place was emptied out.

  I guess I was naive, because it looked like Niko had been right about her after all. When we made it to her place and told our story, Promise wasn’t unhappy. She was pissed.

  “He is dead. Dead.”

  Eyes ebony, whiteless, and frozen with rage, Promise was saying all the right things, in my book. Seamus dead. Yep. Totally on board with that. As icy as Niko himself, I hadn’t seen her like this often. It made me wonder what she’d been like back in the blood-drinking days. She might be an omnivore now, but she’d been a carnivore once. Niko said she didn’t talk much about her past, and there was probably good reason for that. To see her sweeping out of the darkness at you—you’d think angel, you’d think demon. And you’d be right on both counts.

  “Dead,” she repeated. This time I saw her fangs and I saw them lengthen before my eyes. I’d seen her climb walls, seen her snap necks, but that was a new one for me.

  Nik didn’t seem surprised, but when you have a kid brother who’s half monster, not much can shake you. “We’ll take care of it,” he said, catching her wrist lightly as she paced past him. Her hair loose and a mass of motion around her, she was like a wind—the gale-force kind that takes down everything in its path. “After the Auphe, we will deal with Seamus. Together.”

  “If Seamus is cooperative enough to not attack you again before then,” Robin added.

  “Not helping,” I muttered as I continued to unpack my guns onto Promise’s dining room table—even if I was thinking the same thing.

  He drained his wineglass and raised his eyebrows. “Who said I was trying to?” He sighed, green eyes somber. “Helpful or not, it’s the truth. But, really, what’s the difference? We’re already watching for the Auphe. We’ll watch for him as well. When you’re neck-deep in it, what’s one more dollop of manure?”

  Maybe the death of Niko, that’s what. Seamus was determined. Then again, I thought as I stared down at my guns, he wasn’t the only one.

  Robin’s hand moved past mine into the long bag and pulled out a sword. “Something for every occasion. Except clothes. I hope you don’t expect to wear mine. Your skin would probably melt at the touch of true fashion.”

  “I have clothes, jackass.” I pushed his hand away, and looked back at Promise and Niko.

  “I brought this on us.” She stood still now, and I could see glints of purple behind the black clouding her eyes. “If I hadn’t suggested we take his case. If I hadn’t let him fool me for an entire century that he had changed his ways.” Her face was stone. “I’ll have his heart, scarlet and still in my hand, and none of you will interfere. He is mine.”

  “The challenge was to me,” Niko countered. “We will finish him face-to-face.” Face-to-face. Face-to-goddamn-face, because although he had drilled in me over and over that there was no honor in battle, only survival, Nik did have honor. Maybe the only person in the world who did.

  “The challenge may be to you,” Promise argued back, “but the insult is to me, that my affection could be transferred so easily.”

  I didn’t know if Niko would’ve gone further with it, or asked about that meeting she hadn’t mentioned yet. Considering Promise’s mood, it probably wouldn’t have done any good. But it didn’t come to that. One phone call ended the topic.

  That same one phone call had us sitting at a diner across the street from a church in Brooklyn. There George’s father was having a memorial service on the first anniversary of his death. He’d been sick a long time, George had said, before he died. He’d kicked the drugs, but he hadn’t been able to survive the deadly present a few dirty needles had left behind. We hadn’t been able to go to the funeral, as we were recuperating from some serious wounds at the time, but we could pay our respects now—for George—from a safe distance away. If the Auphe were watching, we were having lunch. Nothing more. I doubted they understood the concept of mourning death anyway. It was a ceremony that escaped or bored them, and they most likely ignored it entirely. Why bury what you can eat? Why mourn a long-gone snack?

  As for George, I thought she’d know we were there. She might refuse to look far into the future, but the little things were just there to her. We’d arrived too late to watch her go into the church. I hadn’t seen her dark red cap of hair or deep gold skin. She wouldn’t have worn black. That wasn’t her. Whatever she believed about death—I’d never asked—she wouldn’t honor her father by looking different than she always was. He wouldn’t have wanted that.

  Hell, I’d never met the man. How did I know what he would’ve wanted?

  I clicked the salt and pepper shakers against each other and looked away from the church. If she’d been there, why would I want to see her anyway? Seeing was just the next best thing to not having. They both sucked, but it was my choice. I would live with it.

  “I’m not eating here.�
� Robin looked at the laminated menu with unadulterated horror. “They think grease is a marinade and that a Band-Aid in your food is à la carte.”

  “We’re not here to eat. So just order something and sneer at it like you normally do,” I ordered.

  Promise, in one of her hooded cloaks, was sitting across from me and farthest from the window. Niko sat next to her, eyes moving from the people in the place to the street outside. He was always on watch. He’d taught me, and I was good enough. But there was good enough and there was Nik.

  He tensed minutely and that was something I was good at picking up on. I turned back toward the window, blinked, then narrowed my eyes. “Holy shit.” When a dead guy shows up at a memorial service and he’s not the one being eulogized, you take notice.

  “Samuel,” Niko said. “Unexpected.”

  “Unexpected” was the word for it. Samuel had once worked for the Auphe, keeping close to me while in a band that played at the hole-in-the-wall bar I’d worked at—keeping an eye on me from feet away. Even the Auphe couldn’t do that. But then he had changed his mind, had died to save us from them. He’d worked for them in the beginning for the promise of saving his brother. I couldn’t say I might not have done the same. And I hope I would’ve died to make up for the mistake like I thought he had when I found out how horrific a mistake it was. But now he was standing in front of the church. Alive. It was his brother that they were holding the service for, and I wondered why George had never felt the need to bring up the fact her uncle was still alive. I knew the answer to that the instant I asked it. She thought it was his decision to tell us.

  And that’s what he was there to do.

  He looked away from the church over to the diner. He saw us immediately through the glass. He saw us, because he’d been looking for us. One of the little things George was willing to share—that we would be there. Where’d she draw the line? Between what was little and what was big? How did she know? How did she know she couldn’t look at our future, hers and mine, but she could look at this? And why did both of us have to be so damn stubborn?

  Either way, it was over. No point in thinking about it now . . . or ever again.

  I watched as Samuel crossed the street toward us. He was a tall black guy with a close-shaven goatee, big and tough . . . now moving with a limp. He hadn’t had that before. His head was shaved too, new as well. It showed a half-moon scar behind his ear, clear as day—the same kind that Niko had described on the guy following Seamus. Samuel hadn’t seen me since the days before Niko and Robin had managed to get the Auphe-hired hitchhiker out of my head. So when he hesitated after coming through the door before moving over to us, I understood it. Darkling had been every bit the son of a bitch the Auphe were, and when it had squatted inside me, I hadn’t been the safest person—safest thing—to be around.

  I took off my sunglasses to show my eyes were gray, not possessed silver, and he nodded and pulled up a chair. “Sorry. Georgie told me they got that thing out of you, but . . .” He shook his head at the memories. “Seeing is believing.”

  “You’ve got that right.” I planted the muzzle of the Glock, hidden under the red plastic tablecloth, in his abdomen. “You know, I felt pretty forgiving when you died to save our lives. I’m feeling a little less than that now that you’re still walking around.”

  He rested his hands carefully on the table. “I can see that. I think I’d probably feel the same way.”

  I half expected Niko to reel me in. For him to say that Samuel hadn’t known what the Auphe were capable of. That we barely had ourselves. But Niko had spent a week looking for me then, not knowing where I was . . . if I was still even alive. An entire week of that. I’d been possessed, but in my mind Nik had had the worst end of it by far. Now he sat, his eyes impenetrable. “Samuel,” he said, voice empty. “I thought you died with honor. I see I was wrong about one. Now I have to wonder at the other.”

  Promise, who had never known Samuel, remained silent. Robin, who had, drawled, “Order him the tuna casserole. That will kill him faster than any bullet.”

  “In this place? I’d say you’re right.” Other than speaking, Samuel didn’t move. He was mostly as I remembered him: calm, easygoing. A trustworthy sort of guy, if you were into that sort of thing. I hadn’t been then, and he damn sure hadn’t earned it now.

  “What are you doing here?” I asked flatly. “I get what you’re doing over there.” I jerked my head at the church. “But what are you doing here?”

  “Because I do owe you, and I know it.” He added seriously, “Then there’s the Auphe. They’re back and that’s trouble for more than just you. It’s trouble for the Vigil too. You do know about us, right? Our psychics were able to pick up that you were poking around. Investigating. Something about a mummy. They weren’t able to get a clearer picture.”

  “Psychics.” Niko gave a quick glance back toward the church.

  “No, not like Georgie. If only,” Samuel said ruefully. “Ours are much weaker. They have no future sight, but they can pinpoint when something has happened as it happens. They know when we need to get moving.”

  “To do what?” I demanded. The Vigil did exist. Wahanket hadn’t lied. He was a killer, but he wasn’t a liar. Good to know. Gotta have your priorities straight.

  “Clean up. We don’t always get there in time, but mostly we do. And if it’s a mess someone else, like the Kin, will clean up, we let it alone. Those mutts are damn good about cleaning up after themselves. I have to give them that.” It made sense. The Kin didn’t want attention any more than their human Mafia counterparts did.

  Samuel tapped his fingers on the table, but kept the rest of his hands still—respecting the gun. “Basically, we’re supernatural janitors.” He gave a self-deprecating smile. “At least that’s what I consider us. The Vigil found me when they were cleaning up that Auphe mess we were all caught up in. The collapsed warehouse was explained as a gas-main explosion. That’s why I’m alive today. The Vigil.”

  “Yeah, we read about the so-called gas-main explosion. So you escaped? It didn’t look that way from our point of view,” I challenged.

  “I didn’t escape, not entirely.” He moved his hand, very carefully, to knock on his leg just below his knee. There was a hollow sound. “My leg was crushed. They did their best to save it, but I lost it below the knee.” He flashed a slow grin. “But half is better than nothing, not to mention the fact that I’m alive and that’s damn amazing in my book. A miracle, one I know I didn’t deserve.” He placed his hand back on the table. “I knew about the Auphe, so it was recruit me or commit me. The Vigil’s been around a long time and they have their philosophy. I don’t totally agree with it, but I’ll take it over a mental institute any day.”

  “And what is this no doubt fascinating philosophy?” Robin dropped the offending menu and pushed it away.

  “We protect the human world from the knowledge of the supernatural one. People couldn’t handle it. If they found out, there’d be war, and no matter who won, the results wouldn’t be pretty.” He focused in on Niko. “You wouldn’t want the entire world knowing about your brother, would you? I doubt he’d last long. It might take the military, but they’d get him sooner or later.”

  “So you just clean up?” I said skeptically, basking in the whole right to exist. Whoopee for me. “Wipe up after some monster’s snack. You don’t interfere?”

  “We make exceptions, but they’re rare. Only when a nonhuman is so overt, so out there in what he’s doing, that he’ll give away the secrecy we’ve kept so long. There might not be as many nonhumans as humans, not that we know for sure, but there’s no guarantee humans would be on the winning side. Keeping the secret is everything, you understand? Everything. If we have to kill a werewolf or boggle who can’t bother to hold their buffets in private, we will.”

  “Watching us for thousands of years. The pucks must have given you quite the show.” Promise clasped her gloved hands on the table.

  “I’ll bet we did.” Robin c
urled his lips smugly, not ashamed at all. “We should’ve charged admission.”

  “So, what of the Auphe?” Promise continued, ignoring Goodfellow. “They grow more bold all the time. What are you doing about that?” she demanded.

  “Not a damn thing,” Samuel admitted. “By the time our psychics know where they are, they’re already gone. We’re hoping you can succeed where we’ve failed. The Auphe were mad—don’t think I don’t remember—but they’re worse now. They have to go before it’s too late and the world wakes up and sees them. There’s only so many fake escaped-mental-patient stories you can put out. But if we can’t find them, we can’t stop them. . . . Making the assumption we’re even capable of stopping them.” He exhaled with the confession. “They’re the Auphe.”

  And that said it all.

  I pulled my gun back slowly and slid it back under my jacket. “Nik?”

  “It’s an interesting story.” Niko didn’t look particularly interested. “What I don’t know is why you’re bothering to tell it to us, and why now.”

  “It took me this long to get up and mobile again. To be trained. And like I said, I owe you.” With the threat of being shot gone for the moment, he slipped a hand in his pocket. Placing a card with a phone number on the table, he said, “Call me if you need me. Any time. I have a lot of making up for what I did to you guys. Not to mention the entire Vigil owes you for taking care of Sawney Beane. He was the damn definition of overt and psychotic as the cherry on top. He had to be taken down, and I don’t think we could’ve done it.”

  And that’s how all the bodies had gotten cleaned up a week ago when we were fighting the supernatural mass murderer, why none of his victims’ pieces had turned up in the park, the college, or were discovered by subway workers. The Vigil had tidied up but good. Niko had been right. Our mystery janitors and the Vigil were one and the same.

  He rapped a fist on the table and gave me an amused smile. “I tried to talk them into recruiting you and Niko, you know, but they say you’re our biggest annoyance. You cause us quite a bit of work.” Pushing halfway up with one hand on the back of his chair, he asked curiously, “Am I leaving?”