by Rob Thurman
Well, shit.
Chances were you were supposed to be worried about identity crises, not embrace them. If I were the hugging type, I’d say I’d just given my slow and gradual defection to the monster side a big one.
I couldn’t say I hadn’t meant to do it. I didn’t know what I’d meant to do, but I had planned on thinking about it for at least another fraction of a second. Debating the right and wrong of it, the thousand shades of gray, the thousand hues of justification, as there was a chance. . a small one. . that I was wrong.
I sighed and brought them back.
It had only been a second, but they looked as if they’d been gone a while. Time ran oddly in the Auphe world. A day here could be two years there-I knew that all too well. The seven of them appeared a little thinner and were curled up in moaning, whimpering fetal balls on the street. I knew that feeling too. Tumulus wasn’t Hell-no, it was Hell’s big brother. Not a pleasant place to be. My best guess was they’d been there a few days in Tumulus time.
That was enough that I didn’t think they’d be attacking anyone else anytime soon. Someone official would eventually come scoop them up and stick them in the real world’s version of Arkham Asylum. After what they’d seen on the other side, they’d be lucky to regain enough coherence to use a spoon again, much less a butcher knife, in the next few months.
Now, though, it was time to get on with what I was doing before a bizarre street cult thought I didn’t look holy enough, that I needed to pray more. That was New York for you. Not many Jehovah’s Witnesses jumping you on the street, but Jehovah’s pseudo-ninjas willing to kill you to save your soul, those we had. Pretty presumptuous ones too. How did they know what I did or didn’t do? I could pray. I could be holy. They didn’t know.
My grin widened despite my uncertain conscience. It felt like a tangle of razor wire decorating my face. Yeah, I guess maybe they did know. Apparently my ability to blend in with your average, harmless humans wasn’t all it’d once been. Of course I wasn’t all I’d once been. I was more or I was less, depending on your point of view.
Either/or, I’d have to work on passing for a little more normal. I still had to shop. Beer and porn didn’t buy itself.
I checked my watch again. Still on schedule. For good or bad, right or wrong, eight wannabe psycho-killers had been taken care of in less than a minute. I had plenty of time left to deal with Nik.
Although I did wonder how they had known precisely where the theoretical line of the danger zone ran between monster versus human New York. Knew consciously instead of instinctually, unlike most humans, and knew to the inch. That was peculiar. But as none of them were remotely close to coherent, there was no point in asking. Plus, they were no longer my problem or the problem of any annoying innocent bystanders. As my curiosity on most situations was fairly nil once the potential violence was over, I let it go. Maybe I’d think about it later, maybe not. Psychos in my world were a dime a dozen. Who had the time to think about them all?
Besides, Nik came first.
Soon enough I was waiting at the third landing in the stairs of Promise’s building. A very rich and exclusive building it was with a condo board that would reject the queen of England for not keeping a low enough profile. They liked their privacy here, their quiet, and a certain appearance. I made it past the doorman only because Promise, who was Niko’s love life I was there to save, graciously slipped. . I mean, tipped him two hundred bucks a month for me sullying the atmosphere.
Leaning against the wall I waited for Niko to climb down the twenty flights of stairs, which he would be doing, I knew for a fact. For the past four weeks he had shown up nearly every night I worked at the bar at closing to make sure I made it home in one piece. Sadly for his sex life, this was not new behavior for him. Not at all. My nearly getting killed inevitably turned him into a hybrid of babysitter/bodyguard/and human Terminator. It was past time to break that cycle. For his sake.
As for the walking instead of the elevator, it wasn’t all about the cardio. Never take the elevator. Ask anyone who’s killed someone in one of those steel boxes-yeah, that’d be me holding up my hand-they’re nifty death traps with limited opportunity of exit.
“You should be at work.”
I’d been waiting for him, but naturally I hadn’t heard him. Nik was too good for that, too good for me. I had smelled him though. The faint tang of oiled metal and the farm fresh smell of goat-milk soap. The man could slice out your heart and hold it in his hand before you even noticed he was there, but he was addicted to goat-milk soap because it was “all natural.” It was embarrassing as hell is what it was. The fact that I used it as I was too lazy to buy my own soap wasn’t embarrassing at all. That was just practical.
“Cyrano, it’s been a month now. Nothing’s happened. You need to take a break. I’m here to make sure you take it,” I said with exasperation as I looked up at him moving halfway down the stairs from the fourth floor and waited for him to join me. He did need a break, although I hadn’t had much luck convincing him of that. The guy deserved a life of his own that was more than rolling out of Promise’s warm bed at three a.m. to look after me, but once a big brother, always a big brother. That his little brother was a monster in his own right didn’t put a dent in his determination.
Promise had been patient about the protectiveness issue several times now, but everyone’s patience runs its course. Promise with her knowing eyes, fields of lavender under moonlight, and her ability to snap a neck as gracefully as the movement of any Renaissance dance, was good for Nik. She was a mirror of his calm and control, and being a vampire helped if our work spilled over into our private lives. Promise had no difficulty taking care of herself. I didn’t want him to lose the sanctuary he had in her because of me. The very reason he needed a sanctuary was thanks to me after all.
“Grimm waited twelve years to find you,” he pointed out, stopping beside me. “I doubt a month of laying low will be much of a strain for him.”
Grimm was the problem I’d gifted Niko with, the reason I’d blown off Ishiah and his serial killer. Grimm was actually my problem, the outlet for the worst part of me-he did double duty. He was not Nik’s trouble, but brothers, like company, loved misery. Or was that the other way around? Whatever. Grimm was half Auphe like me, the result of the same experiment in genetic engineering spawned by a race that had once ruled and ravaged the earth long before man had yet to be the next best thing to a tadpole. Now, thanks to Niko, some friends and myself, the Auphe were extinct, but part of their experiment remained. Grimm and me.
Grimm wanted to kill me and he wanted my help in fathering a new race to replace the Auphe. And being half Auphe he saw no reason he couldn’t have both things. It was something of a blind spot, but not a surprising one when the Auphe had been the worst of the worst when it came to monsters. They had lived only to murder and mutilate and do so as frequently as possible. Our childhood name for them, Grendels, had fallen damn short of the reality.
Now Grimm thought he had the balls to step into their jockstrap-and he was right.
As problems went, Grimm was a big one. I was a monster, no matter what Nik said to the contrary, but there were degrees of monster. Grimm was the better monster. A month ago I’d sent him packing with a chest full of bullets, but I’d been able to do it only because I’d set my human part to one side and let all my monster come out to play. A dangerous thing that.
A fun thing.
That too, but my kind of fun came with a price tag. Every time I let it off the leash, there was more to chain back up when I was done. More monster equaled less room for the human in me-the sanity in me. There were monsters and then there were monsters. I didn’t want to become the latter. . if I had a choice. . at least not this soon.
What I’d done to the eight killers on the street-that was nothing to what I could do. Nothing. I could have done so many things. .
Not the time nor the place.
No longer a member of the human race was the singsong rhyme
in my head.
I snorted at the childishness of my own subconscious before shoving it down hard and slamming the lid on its box. I had once made a mental box when I was a kid to store bad thoughts, bad memories, bad desires. Now I had thousands of boxes. That was good, in my opinion. It meant that I was in control. I would fight to my last breath to keep it that way-identity crisis or not.
Not that it mattered now, because this was Niko time. I needed to make the most of it. Niko deserved a personal life that didn’t involve playing bodyguard to me and I wasn’t giving up on that.
“If Grimm shows up,” I said, “I’ll gate the hell away to parts unknown”-at least to Grimm-“and he’s screwed.”
Gating or traveling was a nice way of saying I’d tear a bleeding hole in reality, wounds of rippling tarnished light, and step through to end up a block away or a thousand miles away. My choice, although not to where I’d sent my eight attackers in questionably fashionable hoodies. I’d never go to that place. Never again.
The ability to gate came with the Auphe blood and though I hadn’t been able to use it well or often at one time, now I was cooking with gas. The Traveling King. All bow before me. Grimm could gate too, but as long as he didn’t know where I was going, he couldn’t follow.
“Ah yes, the gating,” Nik said with grim bite. “The gating that you think gives you an edge when we hunt the supernatural now. Fighters who think they have an edge often get sloppy.” A light smack to the back of my head accompanied each following word. “Do. . not. . get. . sloppy.” He dropped his hand and added with a growl, “Especially with Grimm.”
There I stood, carrying the two guns I hadn’t used earlier, a fancy new garrote, and four knives concealed in various easily accessible locations-all of which I could wield as automatically as I could breathe, and yet I was being schooled like a three-year-old thrown into a mixed martial arts caged death match. Did Dirty Harry have to put up with that? Nope. Then again all Dirty Harry’s partners died on him. Nik stuck around and had all my life. That was worth a smack or two.
Plus as Nik was the one who’d taught me to use any and all weapons, he could and would kick my ass if I tried to smack back. Affectionately kick my ass of course. . with brotherly love. Not that brotherly love made it sting any less. Which was not why I didn’t tell him what I’d done only a half an hour ago. I didn’t tell him because he already worried about my getting careless. He didn’t see that using the gates as often as possible helped me catch up with Grimm, whose experience in that was years and years longer than mine. Grimm-the better monster.
When it comes to living versus dying, you want to be the better monster. But. .
Nik’s not always practical.
That wasn’t the voice of my inner Auphe. That was the voice of a much younger Cal who had learned at the age of four that being practical was better than behaving, because practical kept you alive. Behaving wasn’t as effective that way. Practical was a definition in a black bound dictionary, the words written in the scarlet red of fresh blood. Practical was the code I survived by.
Not that I brought that up either. Nik had worries enough now, and Nik was ruthlessly practical when he had to be.
That was the key: when he had to be. I didn’t mind being the practical one if it let him keep his hands clean. I didn’t have to think about it like he did. It was as natural as breathing to me. I was good at being a monster and Niko was good at being a man, the very best of them. I wanted him to have the chance to stay that way.
But, sooner or later, we would have to talk about the gates. Sooner, most likely. Niko was going to have to accept my practicality in this.
“Don’t get sloppy. Got it,” I said with a good nature I reserved for a very few. I didn’t smack, but I did aim an elbow at his ribs. He avoided it without seeming to move. “Now go back upstairs and bang”-his eyes narrowed and I immediately amended my sentiment-“and crochet passionately while drinking Metamucil or whatever you geezers do in bed. I’ll see you in the morning. Bring me a love-stained afghan.” These words would come back to bite me in the ass, because while I could deal with it when it was out of sight, out of mind at Promise’s place, the reverse was true when it was closer to home.
His eyes narrowed further to slits as he gave my out-of-luck elbow a disapproving glance. “You’re not inspiring faith in your fighting abilities or even your ability to bully on the playground.”
Fortunately, no one else other than Niko was standing on that landing waiting for inspiration or faith as neither of us proved much good at providing them in the next moment-the moment the body fell out of the sky.
All right, there was no sky, but it fell far-at least ten stories if not more. It plummeted to land on our feet. . literally. Or it would have if Niko hadn’t jumped back up the stairs and I’d jumped back down, both of us with weapons drawn. The flash of descending red, gray, and white had had my Desert Eagle in my hand just as it hit. The fall hadn’t been silent. I’d heard the cacophony of bangs as it hit the metal handrails, bouncing its way down. The landing wasn’t quiet either. There was a wet, heavy thump. “Shit,” I breathed. “Where the hell did it come from?”
I hadn’t seen anything. It had come down out of thin fucking air as far as I could tell. It hadn’t been from one of Grimm’s gates. Those I could feel in my gut, twisting and adrenaline-packed, and invisible they were not. No, this wasn’t him. I’d already looked up to see nothing. Now I looked back down and saw why the impact had sounded as if the body had fallen into mud instead of on once-immaculate marble tile.
It had been skinned.
I hadn’t seen that before. I’d seen people gutted, their throats cut; I’d seen mutilated corpses and even dismembered remains. Parts of a meat puzzle. You could put those kinds of puzzles back together, but they weren’t ever the same. And neither were you. With every new horror, you thought that was the end. You’d seen enough. Nothing, no matter how new under the sun it was to you, would be able to rattle you again. You always thought it. And you were always wrong. I probably should’ve been grateful for that. That was the nature of being human. I was still human, some of me anyway, no matter what the depths of me said.
I moved back toward it and studied the god-awful mess at our feet, trying to feel gratitude for my spoonful of humanity. I tried and failed. Right then I would’ve preferred a monster’s indifference.
There was leaking red flesh, patches of rippling fat like small clumps of yellow grapes, the smooth shine of muscle in the stairwell light, dead veins and arteries the color of ash, and the pale flash of bone from surgically clean slashes over the chest between small scarlet mounds. The eyes weren’t gone, but they were burned to the black of charcoal. The lips, the only skin still intact, were the smooth pink of a woman’s lips. They were peeled back from the teeth in agony, showing she’d been alive when the skinning started.
No, no fucking gratitude in me at all.
Goddamn it. I kept the Eagle ready and used my other hand to run over my face, quick and hard. Coming to terms. All right. As much as we had on our plate already with Grimm planning to remake the world in His image-could I get a Hallelujah-I was forced to admit Ishiah was right. There was no way around it now. Something had to be done, especially as we were obviously subjects of special interest. Nothing says “Hi! Nice to meet ya!” like a dead, tortured woman crashing on top of you. A basket of muffins and a balloon bouquet couldn’t match that for the goddamn personal touch.
I exhaled and ignored the pungent smell of death with long practice. “Oh yeah. I forgot to mention: Ishiah says there’s a serial killer in town.” I checked the stairs rising up and up above us again. “And it’s not human.”
Niko wasn’t pleased I’d planned on holding that information back. He was less pleased about that than about being targeted by a supernatural serial killer for reasons unknown. To be fair to him, that wasn’t new. We’d been targeted by another supernatural serial killer a few years before-Sawney Beane. But we’d attracted his attention
by chasing him first-a case for which we had been paid. Whatever this son of a bitch was, why he had a hard-on for us, I had no idea.
We’d checked with Promise to make sure she was all right. The body was too tall to be her, but on the inside I couldn’t tell vamp from human, except for the teeth and they retracted at death. I didn’t blame Niko for calling her. It was quicker than running back up twenty flights to make sure you weren’t off on the height by a few inches. She would also arrange for the police to be called as they already knew about the bodies and a killer, just not a supernatural one, but she’d give us a few minutes until we were done. With his katana still in one hand, he used his other to take pictures with his cell phone to better research what type of monster was into skinning people alive. He’d remarked on the three cuts in the chest. All three crossed each other, but whether it was supposed to be a mathematical shape or a letter, I had no idea. The murderous asshole must not have made it past kindergarten in monster school.
I left my phone in my pocket. I didn’t want pictures, I sucked at research, and if I had pulled it out, Niko would’ve most likely inserted it in a place I was saving for my colonoscopy when I turned fifty. My caution didn’t help. Once we were out of a cab and home, my plans for the whole Niko having a life having taken a nosedive, he used words instead. The second we made it through the door, it was all over for me.
“You somehow thought in your minuscule mind that it was a good idea to keep the fact to yourself that another Sawney Beane is turning the city into his hunting ground?” he demanded.
Although it had been only a lie of omission and an extremely short omission at that, I gave him the truth now. “It was for your own good.”
“My own good?” he echoed, not impressed with my logic. “That is what an adult tells a child, an impatient adult, and it’s certainly not what I told you when you were young.”
He was right. He’d always explained exactly why things were the way they were or why things had to be done. He hadn’t once brushed me off with an “it’s for your own good.” Even as a kid he’d been a better man than I was now. It didn’t bother me a bit. Watching out for Nik was more important than being a better man.
