Doubletake can-7

by Rob Thurman

  The kid I had once been was right. I would come back from any future trips to Auphe land and those trips could be nothing but deliberate and by choice.

  For now.

  How long would now last?

  But it wasn’t time for thinking about the future when the present had gone to hell, no road of good intentions needed to lead the way. I heard, “Cal, move!” and jerked my head up in time to see Janus, wreathed with smoke, but still intact except for the original missing claw-hand. He was rushing me, and Niko was behind him with the antitank rocket.

  It reminded me bizarrely of the old Road Runner cartoons. Explosives, grenades, antitank rocket and a determined coyote, and it was then that it struck me that the poor furry bastard had gotten screwed by Acme’s products every damn time and we weren’t doing any better.

  I lunged sideways, heard the rocket fire and hit Janus in the back. It knocked it forward, but not off its feet. It went down to all fours, claws digging into the earth, its head spinning slowly. One face smiling, one frowning. Over and over.

  Scrambling off to the other side away from Niko where we wouldn’t be one concentrated target, I shouted, “You’ve got to be shitting me! C4 and the rocket?”

  “And all of my grenades. Don’t bother wasting yours,” Niko called back grimly.

  But I did have to when Janus staggered back up, shaking the ground, and came after me again. Mr. Popularity, that was me. I ran. I wasn’t as fast as when I’d been Caliban, and that was a problem, because Janus was quick enough that he was a blur of metal and flame. Throwing another grenade, I kept going, barely avoiding the claws reaching for my legs. One more explosion to Janus, and nothing compared to the C4 and rocket. He went down and was up again faster this time.

  That’s when Niko ran between us, his xiphos up. He was trying to distract Janus from me and annoy him with the xiphos, which was the full extent of its powers I’d seen so far. And where the fuck was Kalakos? He wanted his role in the battle. Well, here it was. I started to yell his name when Niko found a way to make the sword do something else than only annoy the automaton. He arched his arm back and threw it directly in the boiling red left eye. There was a sound, metallic and buzzing but louder, as if Janus had swallowed a hundred chain saws. It staggered in a weaving circle. Niko pushed at me. “We have to find Kalakos and his sword.”

  I was already moving, but as I ran I felt it in my pocket. My cell phone was vibrating. I snatched it and held it to my ear. “Way to go with the goddamn impeccable timing, Goodfellow!” I snapped. I heard frantic noises, but they weren’t loud enough to register as words. Shit. I couldn’t imagine it could be as important as being halfway to dead, and shoved it back in my pocket, still running. It vibrated again.

  “Motherf—” I cut myself off. I could be wrong. With Robin it might be that important. I switched to text and read as I ran and yelled for Kalakos all at once. After I read it again, I stopped and I didn’t shout for Kalakos again. From what I was reading, he was the last person we wanted around.

  I was on the other side of the powder magazine, and with one eye black and dead, as I’d done to Boggle, Janus was walking through the rubble of it that now stood less than four feet high. I was on the automaton’s blind side until its head started to turn again. I crouched down in the bushes. Kalakos, the son of a bitch, stood, rising opposite me on the other side of the clearing. Only the red light and his dark blond hair let me spot him. For all his complaining, it didn’t look like he was in any hurry to join the fight.

  And I knew why.

  “I saw you, Caliban.” With my pale skin, no one had much problem seeing me.

  Kalakos had shouted, but his voice was piercing, deep, and full of the contempt I’d expected at the beginning when he’d first shown up at our door.

  A Vayash, proving you should always judge a book by its cover. “I saw you on your phone. You looked surprised, although not as surprised as I expected. A father touches his son, who in turn touches his brother. You accepted me if only for him. Family can be a joyous and yet woefully naïve thing.”

  His smile was my smile, the one I gave the worst of my enemies…the moment before I ended them in metal and mortality, guts and gore. I should’ve been his son, not Niko.

  “That horny goat who’s been missing, let me guess. He had something to tell you, didn’t he?”

  Robin had. There had been a secret code, commands in a long-lost language, but with each new buyer, they were changed to the new language. Mutable, as Dodger had said. Adusted to the new owner’s language of choice. And wouldn’t that make sense? You don’t sell a car but refuse to give over the keys. The commands had been changed to Rom when Hephaestus had given Janus to the Vayash for safekeeping, and hardly a burden when you thought about it. He was an unplugged toaster for all the guarding or care he needed. The Vayash knew turning him on in this modern day and age wasn’t an option. And they weren’t murderers. Some were con artists, bounty hunters; some got by doing honest odd jobs; some were thieves. They were all different, the same as any other people.

  Except when it came to their real burden. Then they were all killers with one truly exceptional assassin, a man who could fight like Niko but lacking the conscience of his son, and he was ready to do what had to be done. Grimm hadn’t stolen Janus from the Rom. No one had.

  We were separated now, the four of us. We stood at the four points of a rectangle. If I could hear again from the rocket’s explosion—well enough, anyway—Niko would be able to as well. If I wished him deaf for a few minutes, I thought he would understand. He was staring at Kalakos now. He had heard what was said about Goodfellow and the derision that had been unmatched by the paien in the black market. The monsters didn’t hate me as much as my former clan did.

  “Janus is not the Vayash burden I came for.” He pointed his sword at me. “While some burdens are to be kept, some duties to be honored, some are to be destroyed. Janus is an obedient tool if used wisely; you, Auphe freak, are a chaotic nightmare and we will carry you no more.”

  “Goodfellow says the Rom can waken Janus by the blood from the death of one of their own clan. Their burden. Their blood. You killed your own clan members just to flip a switch and turn him on like a goddamn vacuum cleaner?” I growled.

  “Only the one. There was no second victim. That was an embellishment to the story, as all good stories have. I was certain I could do you on my own…easily. I am Achilles reborn, but the others insisted I use Janus. Their fear of you is that deep that they cannot believe a human would be a match for you. That meant the sacrifice was necessary. Lots were drawn. It was a good death. A death to restore his clan’s honor among the other Rom. He went willingly and I made it painless.”

  His smile wasn’t mine any longer. It wasn’t the imitation of Nik’s. It was that of a ruthless murderer, one who’d slaughtered more than one before coming after me; I knew it. It was the smile of someone who belonged on death row with a needle in his arm. An arrogant, sociopathic asshole who should be put in a grave and nowhere else.

  “Relatively painless, at least. And he was sixteen without having stuck his dick in a woman yet. As lives go, his was a waste anyway. If he screamed and cried for his mother”—that smile let me know he had—“blame yourself. It’d been a long time between hunts, and that is thanks to you, freak. No Rom will speak to us or hire me. We are dead to them. We have been cast out by all the clans due to our shame, so our shame must end that our exile can end.” That goddamn smile. I’d cut it off his face. “I do miss my work. Killing and raping at random is good for fending off boredom, but it doesn’t pay. I want my old life back. All the Vayash do.”

  “And for that Cal has to end,” Niko said. “You fooled us so well. No, you fooled me. Nothing but suspicion from the beginning and you still fooled me. Let me guess. You healed Cal so we wouldn’t begin moving him to hide him from your machine. It would give Janus time to find us again.”

  “Which would’ve worked perfectly if the abomination hadn’t used his u
nholy door to carry us away to the house of the goat,” he growled. The smile was gone now, his sword twisting back and forth in his hand. “Then worse, yet another abomination appears and steals Janus. Pulling it here and there through that same unholy doorway. Leaves it in the park to do what war machines do when their target isn’t there: mangle and destroy whatever is.”

  Grimm had stolen Janus, but not for long and not in the beginning. He’d seen a toy and a way to taunt me and he’d taken it, probably from our place after it had attacked us there. Grimm and his goddamn binoculars. He could see me, but I couldn’t feel him.

  He hadn’t directed the titan or known how. He simply turned it loose to see what it would do, and death and destruction was it. He didn’t know it was centered on me or he would’ve turned it loose a little closer…just to see what I would do. No one played games like Grimm, even accidentally.

  “You targeted it on Cal.” Now Niko’s other sword was in his hand. “Specifically. You came to me. You asked for my help. You saved my life with Hephaestus. You tried to save my life with the boggles, or pretended to, so Cal along with Goodfellow would drown in mud or be killed by the Boggle below. You asked to claim me as a son. And you did it all to murder my brother.”

  “Never have I told so many lies that made me want to bite off my tongue. You’re the son of a slut and a whore. Why would I claim you? I saved you to gain further acceptance. To stay with you. I was at the point where I was going to slit the freak’s throat myself no matter what the clan wanted. I could stand no more of you demons. Sharing the same space with you, eating with you—all of you unclean and debase. Your kind and all you touch contaminate me. It was disgusting enough that I think I deserve a bonus for all of this. I’ll bury the burden myself, but first I’ll have Janus wipe the world of my first and only mistake.” He turned and said something in rapid-fire Rom to the automaton and then pointed the xiphos at Niko.

  Janus had been reprogrammed.

  Kalakos was dead. Achilles reborn, my fucking ass. He was dead.

  Somehow.

  Niko didn’t stand around waiting for his fate. He ran. Quicker than Cal could, but not as quickly as when I let out the Auphe in me. But neither human nor Auphe matched the titan. I was running too, and although fast as shit, I wouldn’t break any world records with it. But I could throw like a son of a bitch. Could’ve been a baseball star in another life. “Nik!” I pulled off the bag and strap and tossed it farther than I could ever run.

  He caught it and didn’t stop running and dodging claws scoring the ground behind him. He took one grenade from the bag, flipped the spoon, pulled the pin, and dropped it back in the bag with the others. Then he somersaulted sideways as Janus’s last tangle of metal talons buried themselves up to its wrist in the dirt where Niko had been less than a moment before. Nik didn’t take advantage to get more space between them. He propelled himself toward the automaton, which had dropped to one knee to pull its killing claws free. Niko used that. He—counting off the grenade’s six seconds, because I sure as hell was—planted a foot on Janus’s knee and, taking advantage of its blind eye with the sword embedded in it, used the thrust of the forward motion to leap high enough to hang the bag around the titan’s neck.

  I blinked and he was gone, already running as I’d not seen him run before, and Niko was the fastest human I’d seen in my lifetime. Counting the short three to four seconds he had left, he would make it out of the blast zone. I knew it.

  I knew it because if there was an Achilles reborn it wasn’t that bastard Kalakos.

  It was my brother.

  A warrior from the womb. A reluctant warrior, but a warrior like the world hadn’t seen in thousands of years.

  I threw myself on the ground right before the grenades blew, closing my eyes against the fierce light and heat, and opening them immediately after to see Nik down, but because he’d done the same. He’d made it. I’d made it.

  And so had that goddamn Janus. An explosive collar on a demonic metal dog and it didn’t stop it from freeing its claws and rising to its feet. The ground shook under the weight and its head spun to move the blinded eye. It saw Niko climbing to his feet and raced toward him as if nothing had happened. How could something that heavy and made of metal move that goddamn fast?

  If we’d had that suitcase nuke from a year and a half ago, I didn’t think that would have done a damn thing. It was indestructible. We weren’t. We were good at what we did, but with the biggest disadvantage around when we could die and it couldn’t.

  Niko was weaponless now except for his various swords that would do no good, the same as my guns. Useless. If he managed to get to Kalakos and use his sword to blind another eye, what would that do? Janus would have two left and that was enough.

  It wouldn’t have made a difference if it had had only two eyes. I could see it run as Niko turned and ran again. It would reach him before he could reach Kalakos. Better than human, better than a crippled Auphe, what do you do then?

  Nothing…nothing that would work.

  I didn’t care if it would work. I did it anyway.

  Other than hurling myself in front of Niko before the automaton could reach him, there wasn’t anything I could do—and I was too far away from them both with the titan’s speed to do even that. I pushed up off the ground and ran. It was hopeless, but I did it, because that’s what you do. Deny reality. Deny you won’t make it in time. You do your best to throw yourself between your brother and death whether it will save him or not. You shred your lungs, seizing more oxygen than is possible, tear tendons to gain ground with a flight that isn’t there. You do the physically impossible.

  You died for your brother or you died with your brother. Watching him die was the impossibility.

  It was just what you fucking…

  Goodfellow.

  Goodfellow—he’d told me about Janus’s commands. And about more. He’d found out how to wake Janus and how to put him back to sleep.

  And they were the same.

  I wasn’t going to make it. I wasn’t fast enough or close enough and had one more day before I could gate. One more damned day. The four-year-old me was wrong. There was time enough to be practical once more tonight. To trust myself one last time—the very last time. I didn’t close my eyes. I didn’t think about it or concentrate. I didn’t focus. There was time to be four again, but there wasn’t time for any of the rest.

  I made the third gate.

  The gate that would kill me.

  Niko had stopped. He couldn’t run anymore, but Niko was Niko. He would face death, not turn a cowardly back on it. He staggered and turned to face the blades of Janus’s hand flying toward him. He faced it like the warrior he was. Across the circle, Kalakos, keeping his distance—another warrior but worthless, a fighter, but spineless—disappeared, haloed by dark-veined tarnished silver.

  Wasn’t that just too bad?

  He reappeared in a haze of gray and black directly before Janus’s outstretched claws thrusting through the air with such a swift velocity that the flash of them was only an afterimage. It was a titan. It had some abilities that couldn’t be re-created these days. It was faster than an Auphe…

  But it wasn’t an Auphe.

  We had abilities too, and they beat speed-walking every fucking time.

  The long-lost metal went completely through Kalakos to touch but not penetrate Niko’s chest in the day’s last red-stained impossibility. I saw Kalakos shudder, I saw his head fall back to gaze blindly at the sky, and I saw him die. With it I saw Janus go dark, the scarlet in it go black, and the automaton fall backward. Asleep again. Vayash blood would awaken him and Vayash blood would send him back to sleep. For all that Kalakos had been a shit and a half, he had been Vayash. His blood did the trick, no problem. Niko. Niko I could see standing hardly a stone’s throw away from it all.

  Alive.

  That was all I needed to see.

  I closed my eyes as the darkness came.

  All I needed…

  22<
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  “Cal, you didn’t.”

  I heard Niko hitting the ground beside me where I lay on my back. It had all given way: my knees, my legs, my body. I’d fallen as well—as all monsters had, Janus and Kalakos, one with the earth. “No. You didn’t do it. You didn’t. Tell me. Tell me, you son of a bitch.” This time he gripped my shoulders and shook them hard.

  Being one with the earth wasn’t as peaceful as you’d think.

  He shook me again, with more force. “Cal, tell me.

  “Tell me you wouldn’t visit that nightmare on me.” There was no resignation. There was demand, refusal, and fingers pressing to the bone in a grip that was absolute and eternal.

  Painful as shit too.

  “Yeah, sorry. I kind of did. And ow.”

  I opened my eyes and slid a hand under my head that my brother was knocking against the ground with the shaking. I had to give him a break on not picking up on the fact that I was breathing. With Janus inactive, it was dark now, and we’d been thoroughly conditioned to believe that making a third gate would burst my brain like an overfilled water balloon. Why wouldn’t he think that I was gone?

  And it had been true—about the third gate. I’d seen that when I’d tried to gate out of the basement when I was trapped with Grimm. A third gate had been impossible then, and impractical. I’d have killed myself but not him. But that had been two days ago.

  “Buddha,” he swore fervently. “How…No. Give me a moment.” He felt my face for the blood a second gate would cause. There was a small nosebleed at best, less by far than the usual.

  “I can wipe my own nose. I am a man after all, remember?” I held up my fist to show the ring he’d given me. You could hardly see it in the night gloom, but it was there. “I have proof.” I brought my hand back and used the bandage on my left hand to soak up the slow-flowing smear of blood. “And I’m wiping, so why don’t you take a break?”