by Rob Thurman
“No, thanks. If somebody accidentally dropped a bottle behind me . . . yeah, I think you get the picture. Enclosed places with one way out aren’t exactly my friends right now. Now hurry the hell up. Go get jack shit off George so we can go.”
It was Cal and his stubborn bravado . . . not at their best, but there. And that counted. I pulled off my gloves, black silk hunting ones. They kept the warmth in and allowed the finer touch for pulling triggers and tossing knives. I handed them to him. I didn’t bother to ask where his were. I knew he had no idea. “And don’t put them down your pants. Your balls will have to survive as best they can.” I left him as he was pulling the gloves on and looking up at a white sky that kept falling. . . . He was doing his best not to imagine a portrait of Georgina through a frosted plate glass window.
It was overly warm inside the shop when I arrived. It was also empty except for its proprietor, reading the paper with hugely magnified lenses, two body-guard wolves in human form in a booth by the window, and Georgina.
Younger than Cal by two years, she was the oldest soul I’d come to meet. Wrapped in the package of an eighteen-year-old girl wearing a dark red velvet coat that was a bit worn around the hem. Consignment wear, but as with most things regarding Georgina, it was right for her. As this place was right for her. She took what came and always seemed content in it. Her nose was pierced since I’d last seen her. A tiny garnet. She was beautiful, if your eyes were open to what beauty truly was. It was in the softness of chocolate eyes, the pixie cap of dark red waves, skin of deep brown-gold, and freckles that sprinkled a perfectly ordinary nose. She had Samuel’s, her uncle’s, smile . . . slow and thoughtful.
“Niko.” There came that smile.
I sat in the booth opposite her. “Georgina.” I bowed my head to her as I had done to all my instructors at the many dojos over the years. In many ways, she was as much a teacher as they had been.
The smile faded. “I’m sorry. I tried. I did.”
“Tried? What did you try?” My hopes that she would help us were faint, straw-grasping, but if she were at least making an attempt, maybe they weren’t all in vain.
Her eyes were sad as she reached across the table to take one of my hands in hers. “I can’t change things, but I’d hoped I could look and see where the path ends. Where you and Cal will be when this is all over. I wanted to be able to tell you that you would pass through this. Be safe.” Her hands tightened on mine . . . with fear, I thought. “But I can’t. I can’t look because I’m afraid of what I’ll see. I can’t help you, and I can’t comfort you either,” she said with resignation.
“Georgina, you may be all we have.” We might find Oshossi, between Robin and Mickey, but no one could track the Auphe. They were here, there, nowhere . . . a poison-tainted wind.
“I’m sorry.” She squared her shoulders to deny, “There’s nothing I can do.”
Nothing. Nothing she could do. Nothing she would do. Her hands were warm on mine. She couldn’t be moved any more than a marble saint, yet she felt warm. It seemed wrong. The oldest soul I’d met and the oldest I hoped I ever did come to see. She was wise and compassionate beyond her years, beyond a simple human span of years, in fact. I respected her for it, but lately I’d come to see that the compassion of someone who sees the entire world as opposed to the single struggling ant isn’t necessarily a human compassion.
“There’s a reason and a purpose to even the darkest of the dark. Hold on to that, Niko,” she said softly. “Please.”
Purpose. Knowing that your purpose in life will inevitably be fulfilled isn’t a comfort when your purpose is to die ripped to shreds before your brother’s eyes to drive him insane. And that would be a kind and giving act compared to what would be done to him then. Insane or not, catatonic or screaming day and night, they would use him. Violate him until the day he died. Wishing he were dead before they had that opportunity was the best I could hope for.
Hold on to that? Forgive me if meditation only took me so far.
In many ways Georgina, who was fully human, was less human than Cal. In the two years we’d known her, she’d always refused to meddle with the larger affairs of the universe. She’d find a lost dog, tell if a baby would be a girl or a boy, offer hope that, yes, love was coming, and that your sick relative would pull through. She gave warmth and comfort, but she wouldn’t save your life. She wouldn’t save her own, if it came to that. In this situation she wouldn’t even look to see the outcome. Wouldn’t tempt her own philosophy. She had a wisdom only seen in the holiest of people.
But speaking from the ant’s perspective, I wished she had less wisdom and a more human perspective, because now people she could’ve saved were dying. I’d thought that might make a difference. It seemed I thought wrong.
“The Auphe killed one of Cal’s co-workers at the bar,” I said. “Did you know that?”
“I knew when you called. I am so sorry for Cambriel.” She plucked his name from the air like a bit of drifting dandelion fluff. “I wish it were different, Niko. Please know I do, but we all have to walk the road before us. I can’t change that.” She sounded genuinely sorrowful.
“I had my sympathy for your position, Georgina.” But it was gone. “But do you know what they plan to do to Cal? Do you know it’s a thousand times worse than any torture, any death? If they take my brother when a few words from you could’ve stopped it, I’ll have nothing at all for you then. Not one damn thing.” My hand tensed to stone under hers. “For once break a rule. If not for me, then for Cal.”
She withdrew her hands. “I can’t,” she said with a sudden and sharp flash of anger. I might wonder at her humanity, but she reacted the same as anyone when pushed into a corner. “Do you think I haven’t tried? When I was a child, before I knew better? You think I didn’t try to save my best friend or my grand-mother? Or the nice neighbor who made me cookies and didn’t deserve to burn alive in her apartment? I did try, and it was for nothing.” She slapped a small hand on the table. “Nothing. You can change the twists and turns, you even can make the way smoother, easier, but you can never change what lies at the end.”
“You haven’t looked, then, to see how all this will end?” I persisted. “You can’t at least give us that? You can’t at least look?”
“No. I told you I can’t. I tried, but I can’t. Call me a coward if you want.” She lifted her chin. “I know I’ve heard it before, but I just can’t look for endings anymore. Do you think I’d want to live whatever happens twice?” The anger disappeared as suddenly as it had come, melting to sorrow and regret. “I might have to accept the end of the path, but that doesn’t mean I don’t cry for it.” She wrapped her coat tightly around her, as if it were cold. It wasn’t. She looked away. “I miss Cal. Don’t tell him. It would only hurt him. But I do miss him.” And he missed her, but there was little to be done about that now. Both had stubbornly tied a knot in their relationship there was no getting around.
“Georgina, please.” It wasn’t a word I said often. I said it now with an angry desperation you didn’t need psychic powers to sense.
She pulled the coat tighter around her neck. “Good-bye, Niko, and take care.”
A singularly useless thing for her to say, I thought more savagely than I was proud of. Tumble into your razor-lined pit of destiny, but take care as you do so. My friend, my lover, and my brother gathered under Damocles’ sword . . . a hair from brutal and bloody death, all of them, and that was what she offered me.
“Just look,” I said sharply.
She slid out of the booth and began to walk away. I thought I saw tears. I didn’t care.
“Look.”
She disappeared into the back of the store. I gripped the edge of the table hard for a moment, then surged to my feet, flipping it over with a crash that sent the owner scrambling for the phone. The wolves watched me warily. They knew who I was through Delilah, and they knew I wasn’t Auphe. But they also knew I was dangerous. They slunk past me and followed Georgina out of sight, lea
ving me with the wreckage of my futility.
Outside the store I walked the ten blocks to Cal, who looked at my face and said warily, “What? What happened?”
I took his arm and pushed him into motion, saying brusquely, “I lost my temper. I imagine the police are on their way. Let’s go.”
It was dusk as we pulled up to the Seventy-second Street pedestrian entrance to Central Park to wait for Mickey. When we’d dropped him off on his mission, we’d set this as the time and pickup place for his retrieval. Not that it was easy to know it from what lay outside the car. A full-on blizzard had us surrounded by blowing white snow. You could barely see five feet, and it didn’t look to be letting up anytime soon. It could be dusk or midnight for all one could tell. The winter wonderland I’d been so skeptical of earlier in the day had shown up with a vengeance.
We’d killed several hours checking to see if our landlord had replaced our door yet, getting more clothes from our apartment, eating lunch, and buying more ammunition for Cal. Not once did he bring up the subject of the scene at the ice cream shop after I’d filled him in, which, to be fair, I’d been tempted not to. Now I wasn’t sure if I was grateful, or worried that he’d had some form of mild stroke that had robbed him of the information. He hadn’t even said anything about my throwing of the table, true harassment fodder I’d never thought he’d let pass.
“Are you drooling?” I asked abruptly, tapping one of my small throwing knives against the steering wheel. “Numbness in one side? Any incontinence I should be aware of?”
Eyelids half-mast and lazy lifted all the way. “No more so than usual, Nik, but you’re a helluva brother just for asking.”
“Mmm.” I flipped the blade, slid it under my sleeve, back out, and then flipped it again.
He straightened in the seat. “Not that you were exactly the poster boy for meditation yourself there, but do you really want me to give you hell over something I’ve wanted to do a few times myself?” He planted a knee against the dashboard and exhaled. “I kept thinking she and I, maybe . . .” He shook his head. “If she’d have just looked, but hell, no. That que-frigging-sera-sera thing. What’s the point of seeing if you can’t change the big things, the things that matter? I used to think it was me that kept us apart, but it’s not. It’s her. It’s always been her.” This time his fist hit the dashboard with considerably more force than his resting knee had.
“Infinite insight,” I said thoughtfully, “brings only infinite annoyance.”
“So it sucks?”
“Yes, indeed it does.” I put away the knife before I was tempted to follow my brother down the primrose path to automotive destruction. Just as I did, there was a scrabbling at the door to the backseat, and Mickey scrambled in. There was a splatter of wetness as he shook off melting snow, saying immediately, “Give to me. Now.”
Cal passed back a Styrofoam container of the best Thai in the city. “Ah. Is good. Yes, is good.” The pointed muzzle was buried in coconut curry chicken. “You starve me with this work. The park, it is picked clean. Oshossi’s clan, they devour all. No squirrel, no rabbit. Boggles take the one or two revenants left.” Black eyes focused on us both. “Hungry.” The hunger sounded as black and ravenous as the eyes appeared.
“Okay, Jesus. Hold on. I’ve got more.” Cal gave him two more containers, and I think counted his fingers when he drew his hands back. It wasn’t long before Mickey finished and began grooming his hands and whiskers.
“Well?” I tried for patience, but considering the day so far, I don’t think I achieved it. “What of Oshossi?”
“I did not see him. He is not in park that I know, and his creatures? They are not quick to speak to others. Not quick to trust. Even for the handsome and suave such as me.” The five-inch incisors snapped in a rat grin. “But I talk of the city. Of how to get around. The tunnels. The abandoned places. They listen. But they are not like me. They are not so smart; they are only few steps above animals. They are clever in ways of hunt. Very, very clever. But they know few words. Simple.” He yawned, and beside me Cal stifled a gag at the stench of it, rolling down his window a few inches for fresh air. “Finally, finally, they say, Oshossi only comes to park to send them on hunt. Where he is other time, they will not say or do not know.” He looked sleepy now, the gloss of his eyes dulling.
“How many creatures does he have?” I asked.
“Ccoa five, cadejo fifteen, and Gualichu one.” The teeth showed again, not in a grin this time but in fear. “One is enough.”
“Gualichu,” I mused. “That’s a spiritual being per folklore. He has no body. I assumed, then, that he might be a myth.”
“He has body. Very large, like spider with a thousand legs.” The dull eyes sharpened and looked out the window with unease. “We go now. Home.”
“May as well,” Cal grunted. “Looking in the dark for a giant cobra centipede that I can’t even pronounce might not be the brightest of moves.”
“We fight many creatures whose names you can’t pronounce, but point taken.” I started the car. Cal, more lazy than safety conscious, hadn’t bothered to take his seat belt off as we’d sat parked. I began to fasten mine when something landed on the roof of the car, hitting so hard the roof caved inches under the pressure. I let go of the belt and threw myself sideways at Cal as I heard a familiar sound—the sound of metal under tension, a sharp twang. An arrow of black metal as big around as a quarter punched through the roof and impaled the driver’s seat I’d just vacated. Oshossi had gone from machetes to a weapon typical of a hunter. A bow and arrow—the kind that could actually kill cars.
Impressive.
One of the backseat doors was flung open and I saw Mickey slither out and disappear into the white-out with a speed that let me know this wasn’t a setup. He had every fear that one of those arrows could very well be reserved for him. Cal drew his gun as I moved off of him and slid into the backseat to draw my tanto knife.
“Forget Shaft.” Cal aimed up and pulled the trigger of his Glock. Six silencer-muffled shots punctured holes in the ceiling. “I think Oshossi’s got the title of mean motherfucker nailed.”
Too many old movies; too much bad TV—the thought was just forming in my mind as I started out of the car. I didn’t make it. The world was suddenly revolving in an explosion of glass and the scream of metal against asphalt. I hit the ceiling, the backseat, the floor, and when the car came to rest from the rollover, I was halfway between the front and the back.
It wasn’t over. There was a massive force heaving us up and the car flipped end over end. How many times I don’t know. I hit upholstery, a door, and then the back window. I didn’t feel it so much as recognize the crunch of safety glass spiderwebbing.
And I was free. There was no metal or glass, only the fast whirl of a carnival ride. It spun you in circle after circle until there was nothing left but free fall. But falling is never free. It always has its price. If not now then later.
Now . . .
I didn’t know much about now.
There was the smell of snow with a coppery taint. The ground hard and cold under my cheek. The rest of me . . . Was there a rest of me? Hard to say. I could still see. Strange things. A huge metal shape crumpled and compressed against a tree, wheels spinning lazily up at the sky. There was a figure all in black . . . long black coat, black hair, black titanium bow, half a head taller than . . . taller than . . . the other one. The familiar one. Leather jacket, black hair in a ponytail, a gun—a gun that was fired. Soft muffled explosions. Barely audible as the snow crept down thicker and thicker. “You son of a bitch”—savage and hoarse. “You goddamn son of a bitch.”
He staggered under the shots, the first one—who, Shossi? No. Not right. That wasn’t right.
He stumbled but didn’t fall. Instead he turned and vaulted over the car, because it was a car. Mangled, barely recognizable, but a car. There was dark skin, harsh angles and planes like stone, gleaming gold eyes, black hair short and sleek as an animal pelt, and then there was
only white as he melted away. Into the storm . . . into the park. Gone.
And the snow kept coming. It was peaceful. Calm. Quiet.
Then there was a cry, distant. A child . . . Cal?
No. Cal was fourteen. Not a child. And Cal was gone. The Auphe had taken him and he was gone, pulled through a hole in the world. But I would wait, because he would come back. He had to come back. They took him right out from under me, and he had to come back. I couldn’t have failed that badly. I was his brother. I was supposed to keep him safe. I . . .
Was that a siren?
But that wasn’t right. The Auphe had burned the trailer to the ground, and the fire department didn’t come. Too far in the woods. No one saw the smoke or flames at night. No one saw Sophia burn like a torch, or her blackened corpse. No one saw because no one cared. It was only Cal and me. Always. Only the two of us all our lives, and he couldn’t be gone.
“Oh, God, Nik. Shit. Oh shit.”
There was a hand under my shoulders and one under my neck turning me carefully from my side to my back. A face swam into my vision. Black hair nearly white with snow, a straight slash of dark brows, gray eyes, pale skin, sharp chin. He looked like . . . someone. A cold hand wiped at my face and came away dripping red. Snow? When had the snow turned red?
“Jesus.” The pale skin went even paler. “Hold still, Cyrano, okay? Don’t move. Let me get them.” There were hands brushing over me, at my ankles, my waist, tugging at cloth. A knife appeared and slid between my chest and a snug band. Something long and stiff was eased from under my back. Suddenly against the white there was gray, a hideously hungry gray.
A hole in the world.
That had just meant something minutes ago, but now the meaning was lost.
The hole was swallowing things now. Guns, knives, leather and metal. And when they were gone the hole swallowed itself. I wished I could’ve swallowed myself too. Out of nowhere, the pain came. My head, it throbbed until I could barely see. But pain was only pain. It could be conquered. It could . . .
