Slashback can-8
Page 26
Now I felt guilty for dying-repeatedly-instead of feeling as if I’d fallen through the rabbit hole, which would be a far more normal reaction. Fuck. I gave him a light shove. For once, I’d try not to make everything about me. “Short, but apparently we always eventually turned back up. . like a bad penny, the kind coated with the supernatural Ebola of rotten luck.”
“True.” His smile was solemn enough to make the unspoken words etch themselves in the air as sharp as diamond-cut crystal: although sometimes it took a very long time before you did.
There was nothing to be done about it-except taking it up with Niko’s Buddha and universe-at-large and I had a feeling that wasn’t an option. That meant I did with it what I did with all problems I couldn’t solve: I ignored it and moved on. “So since we met you at the car lot. No, hell, since you showed up on our porch when we were kids, you thought. . knew who we were to you and you didn’t bother to say anything? Didn’t think we’d like to be clued in?”
“Naturally I didn’t tell you when you were children. First, you kept calling me a pervert.” He glared. I might have forgotten most of it but he hadn’t. Neither forgiven nor forgotten. “And second, it would’ve interfered with your development.”
Niko picked up the thread of conversation. “Who we’d become, who we were meant to be. A person has the same basic core of personality in each life, but there are some differences based on environment, genes, the paths we choose, things such as that.”
In this life, yeah, genes were in the driver’s seat on that one. In this life, for once, I wasn’t mortal, but I was as likely to have that short life span. More likely in fact.
“Did you know I was Auphe. . when I was a kid?” I asked abruptly. I didn’t stop with one swallow of Scotch on that question.
“No.” Goodfellow sounded. . hell, sounded as if he’d thought about this more nights than I’d care to consider and found himself guilty every time. “No. If I had known about them, if I’d known about Sophia, if I’d known how bad it truly was, I would’ve interfered and gamisou personality development. I could see you were poor, but I didn’t see the rest. I am sorry for that. You don’t know how sorry.”
He turned his attention to his wine. “When years later, at the car lot, when we met for what you thought was the first time, you hadn’t seen all that you’ve seen now. You wouldn’t have believed me, the things that I knew. You didn’t trust me either, not then. You didn’t know me.” And the wine was gone again. He was like a camel, storing wine for the long trek across the desert. “Finally, after six years, the time seemed right. Last month I started dropping more hints than the number of hair extensions Rapunzel threw out her tower window and you didn’t catch on. Achilles, the bacchanalia when we were in Greece, the lifetimes you’ve dragged my ass through the fire and on and on. I expected that from Cal. He’s oblivious in any life, but I was disappointed in you, Niko.”
“As there were three creatures trying to kill us then, including my own father,” he said dryly, “and Jack now, I’ve been a shade distracted. Forgive my unmindful ways.”
“Were we anyone else famous besides Achilles and Patroclus?” I asked curiously.
Goodfellow rolled his eyes upward. “The wonder of the afterlife revealed to you, your personal afterlife, mind you and that is the question you ask. How vain. If you’re good, I’ll tell you later. However, I was Robin Hood and my john was anything but little.”
On that somewhat horrifying note, Niko held up his bottle and Robin joined in, ignoring the fact his was empty. I raised mine to meet theirs and Niko said soberly, “To friends. They go and they come. The going must be difficult, but know we will always come back.”
Personally, I wasn’t a big fan of history repeating itself, but in this one case. .
I made an exception.
18
Cal
Nine Years Ago
It came when I was in bed for the night.
A tap at the trailer window, harmless. It could’ve been one of those giant summer beetles. They were everywhere this month. Then one more tap, soft, like the beating of a moth against the glass. They were out this summer too, some as big as your hand. They left a shimmering dust against the glass every night.
I looked up from where I’d been pounding my pillow into submission, not worried. As the years pass, you forget the things you should remember. Forget promises made. It wasn’t a moth, but it hung in the window all the same-the Grendel outlined by a bright full moon, its skin scrubbed even whiter by the lunar glow. The narrow face, the slanted red eyes, the thousand needle teeth bound by the same gleeful grin I remembered from Junior’s attic. This time it wasn’t here to only watch. It tapped again and it spoke, the voice the same too, the gargle of glass wrapped in a serpent’s complacent hiss. “Mine.”
Three years was a long time.
Nik had saved his money. He had college now and his plan for our future. The wheels were in motion and finally we were leaving Sophia. He was the happiest he’d ever been and I’d gotten to see that. That was something to be grateful for. I’d gotten to fucking see that. He would be all right eventually. I hoped. He’d miss me, more than anything-I knew that. I knew my brother. But afterward, in time, he’d have a life, a real one. Normal. That was something he wouldn’t have with me in it. No goddamn way. That’s the way it was and I’d known that long before I was eleven. Long before I was fourteen.
A hand with spidery fingers and black talons exploded through the glass, the nails hooking into my flesh. It hurt and I was scared. I was so damned scared, but I held on to it: three years was a long time. Three years had been long enough for Nik to be happy.
“Time to go home,” the Grendel crooned.
Three years.
I’d had my big brother for three more years.
A serial killer had almost taken that from me. A Grendel had given it back, but nothing is free. I’d known that all my life.
“Time to go home,” it reminded me with a laugh as it snatched me through the window, all my struggling and screaming less than nothing to it.
Three years.
I hung in the night air, terrified, my sweatpants wet with piss, feeling the sanity pour out of me like water out of a pitcher, but despite it all. .
I thought it was worth it.
It had to be worth it.
It was for Nik.
Two years later when I escaped the Grendels to come back through my own hole in the world and found my brother still waiting, I knew it was worth it. And the years we had coming to us after that, each one we’d take for our own no matter how hard we had to fight for them, run for them, rip the world apart for them, they’d be worth it too. We’d find that life I’d wanted for Nik. We’d have friends we could trust with the truth someday. We’d have the not quite normal but normal enough for us. We’d have all of that, no matter what we had to do to take it for our own. That’s what we did, Nik and me. That’s what we always did.
We survived.
And that was worth everything.
Lions didn’t play to win. Lions didn’t play at all.
Lions survived.
— Niko Leandros
FB2 document info
Document ID: fbd-f7a37a-b6ce-a343-babd-91e8-8413-123d61
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Document creation date: 08.03.2013
Created using: calibre 0.9.20, Fiction Book Designer, FictionBook Editor Release 2.6.6 software
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