Doubletake

by Rob Thurman

  Eventually after a few thousand—or thirty or forty thousand years…who was counting—the pucks’ supernatural buddies eventually caught on—or at least their genes did—and after generations upon generations of other races being robbed, lied to, and somehow talked into an orgy with five of their best pals, the pheromones couldn’t overcome the nature-driven evolution of an innate and rather deserved mistrust.

  That was the pheromones of one puck at work.

  One.

  Enticing in the beginning, suspicious and distrustful in the end…but, still, only one puck, Robin had said. But get more than one puck together and things changed. The pheromones mixed into something new, thanks to that evolution of suspicion and wariness—something new and unpleasant. Get five pucks together and everyone supernatural would become extremely nervous. Get ten together and there would be fighting, screaming, and running. Get the entire race in one spot and the chemical overload could conceivably drive lesser species mad or stop their hearts from fear alone. For the hardier predators, it would be as if they were a single small child drifting in the ocean while a hundred giant great white sharks circled them.

  That was the Panic.

  That was why all supernatural critters were fleeing NYC as fast as if someone had told them the Red Sox were invading. All of that sounded like a good excuse for me to desert Niko to the job. Keep my share of the money. See ya when I see ya. Send up a flare when it’s over. But, Robin had admitted sourly, Auphe weren’t affected. As with most poisons and venoms, they were immune to the pheromones. The Auphe were never any fun. The Auphe never played fair. The Auphe ate my brothers, sisters, dog, and crapped in the back of my pickup truck. Bitch, bitch, bitch. Here was the one time I thought I could use that in my favor; being half of the genetic monster to first crawl out of the primordial ooze…before turning around to murder the second slimy thing to creep out…but no.

  When did I get my goddamn silver lining?

  It obviously wasn’t going to be today. I went straight to my bedroom. The fight with the kishi had been light exercise. Goodfellow’s briefing had been as brutal as boot camp twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, five years in a row. I wanted sleep and I wanted it now.

  Niko stayed up to read or meditate or trim his bonsai tree while thinking of ten ways to kill a revenant with its tiny gnarled branches and leaves. Those weren’t smart-ass guesses; they were what I knew. Niko had many interests, some lethal, some not, but I knew them all. Family. I hesitated in my bedroom doorway. “It’s kind of weird,” I said.

  Niko had been headed for the main area of the apartment after I’d finished the first aid on my leg. He stopped to look back at me as I stood in the doorway of my room. His eyebrows lifted in silent question. “Family,” I elaborated. “I was thinking about family when we were fighting the kishi. I thought it was because they were making a home for their own family, but then Robin comes along with every family member on the face of the planet. Maybe I’m psychic; you think?” I didn’t want to be psychic. I had enough nonhuman traits to deal with as it was.

  He whirled quickly enough that I couldn’t avoid the book he threw to nail me in the stomach. I grunted, but managed to catch it before it fell to the floor. Niko’s reflexes were the best I’d seen, among man or monster. “Did you see that coming, O psychic one?” He held out a hand and caught the book I tossed back at him.

  “No. Ass.” But I rubbed my stomach and grinned. He was right. The Auphe hadn’t been psychic and our mother only pretended to be. “Let me know in the morning how many ways you come up with to use your puny shrub as a deadly weapon.” I changed and hit the bed hard. I slept hard as well. If that didn’t prove I didn’t have the slightest psychic ability, nothing else would.

  But cursed?

  That was a different story.

  * * *

  It was eight in the morning when someone banged a fist against our door. Niko was in the shower washing away the sweat of evil exercise. He’d already been out and run his ten miles. As my leg was tenderized and marinated by baby kishi Alpo, he’d given me a onetime break and hadn’t forced me to join him. I was still in bed when I heard the knocking, but I staggered up, cursing at the hair hanging down past my eyes and wearing nothing but sweatpants and two pairs of socks. My feet got cold. Hercules probably had acid reflux. We all have our weaknesses.

  I passed through the large open space that formed the combination living area, kitchen, and workout gym to the door of our converted garage, and undid the one bolt. Most New Yorkers had several. Unless it was a particularly nasty case we were working, Niko and I didn’t have a problem with encouraging break-ins. Spontaneous sparring was like a jolt of extra caffeine in your coffee. Perked you up.

  Opening the door, I began to snarl a natural, “What the hell do you want?” It was way too damn early and I embraced NYC manners like a native. What else would I say?

  It turned out I didn’t end up saying anything at all. I swallowed the words as I saw it…him.…all in a split second. I saw the dark blond hair and olive skin, the familiar profile, the way he held himself on the balls of his feet, cautious and loose. A fighter. A warrior. I saw it all in an instant and I gave him what he deserved. Not a word, not a demand, not a greeting.

  I tackled him in the doorway, slamming him to the floor.

  I said I wore just sweatpants and socks to bed. I did. That wasn’t a lie. But I always carried something to bed, and out of it, with me. Sometimes it was the Desert Eagle tucked under my pillow. Sometimes it was the black matte Ka-Bar combat knife I kept under my mattress. Sometimes I swapped them. I wouldn’t want to get into a habit. Being predictable gets you killed. This morning it was the knife, serrated and ugly. Yet when it saves your life often enough, when it’s buried against the flesh of a traitor’s neck, it becomes a thing almost beautiful.

  “You should be dead,” I hissed at him, a wholly inhuman hiss. I had one knee firmly planted in his flat gut, pinning him. He wasn’t struggling or fighting me and he could have. I felt the hard play of muscles under my knee. But if he didn’t want to defend himself, I didn’t care.

  I’d thought it when fighting the kishi: I didn’t play by the rules. If you played by the rules, you died, and if anyone was going to die in this moment, it wasn’t going to be me. “You should be worse than dead.” This time I cut him, scarcely enough to split the skin…to let a measly few drops of blood course down to cup in the hollow of his throat.

  “You motherfucker. You could’ve helped him. You could’ve saved him.” He could’ve saved him from our mother.

  Saved him from me.

  I could live with what I was now. It had taken years and finally an amnesia-induced epiphany, along with an inner sacrifice, but I could cope with the thing I was. That didn’t mean that Niko should’ve had to. He could’ve had a normal life. Ours was anything but.

  Black eyes gazed at me impassively. “Are you going to kill me or not?”

  I wanted to. More than anything in the world, at that moment I wanted to. And I didn’t see a single reason I shouldn’t…save one. I growled, my chest vibrating with the sound, and then slammed the blade home…millimeters from his head into the cheap pressed-wood flooring and padding we’d put down over the concrete. “It’s not my place to, you worthless son of a bitch. It’s his.”

  I got to my feet and looked over my shoulder at Niko standing several feet behind. He was dressed in a long-sleeved black shirt and black jeans, wet hair already braided, his gray eyes fixed on me with confidence. Knowing I’d do the right thing, or what he thought was the right thing. But that wasn’t it. It was what I’d said. The fate of that piece of shit on the floor was in Niko’s hands, not mine.

  Gray…I was glad his and my eyes came from our mother. It was one thing he didn’t share with the man flat on his back. I peeled back my lips and gave a savage grin. “Daddy’s home. Want me to make the tea?”

  I’d known what my father was since I was five or so. Sophia had told me from the day I was born,
I was sure, but to genuinely grasp that Dad is a Creature Feature, you had to have a few years on you. When it came to Niko’s father, she’d told us he left before Niko was born, had left a few weeks after Niko was born, had visited once or twice but Niko was too young to remember. Sophia didn’t bother to keep her lies straight, because she didn’t lie to deceive, not to us. She lied to hurt.

  Niko and I hadn’t known any truth of his father except he was Rom like Sophia and of the same clan, Vayash. Only Vayash had the occasional blond hair from hundreds of years ago, when they’d stayed in northern Greece for a time. And though it was forbidden to marry or have sex with a gadje, an outsider, that northern Greek blond hair and lighter eyes had made their way into the clan regardless.

  Horny then was no different from horny now.

  But that had been long ago and the Rom were nothing if not practical…eventually, which was how Niko could be blond and still be considered full Rom. He had their dark if slightly olive skin, and all Rom knew the quirks of all the clans. My black hair and gray eyes meant nothing when combined with my pale, decidedly non-Rom skin. I’d have been rejected as tainted with outsider blood.

  If I weren’t already rejected as tainted with much worse.

  I bent over and retrieved my knife before going into the kitchen. I wasn’t making any damn tea for Niko’s sperm donor, but the kitchen was as far as I could get while keeping an eye on him. As for me, normally I would’ve had waffles with half a bottle of syrup, and coffee. This morning I didn’t have an appetite for anything that wasn’t red and spilled with a blade. I folded my arms on the breakfast counter, bent at the waist to rest my chin on my forearm, the Ka-Bar remaining in my hand, and watched through the long strands of hair that still fell over my eyes.

  A panther watching unblinking through the tall grass.

  A last drop of blood ran from the tip of the knife to mar the sand-colored countertop. I lifted my top lip to show teeth at the sight of it and I went back to watching. The man…Niko’s father…didn’t miss any of my show.

  He stood smoothly, moving the same as Niko moved: effortless and flowing as water. His clothes were similar as well. Dark, not particularly noticeable, would blend into the shadows well. He shifted his dark eyes from me to my brother. “I am Emilian Kalakos. Your mother, Sophia, I didn’t know if she told you that—my name.” He was confident with the smear of blood remaining on his neck. I almost growled again.

  Niko regarded him without emotion before saying, “No. She didn’t. Close the door behind you. Our reputations here do not need any further fuel for the fire.”

  “I am welcome then?” That was custom among the Rom. They didn’t include the gadje in it, but Rom wouldn’t enter another’s home without knowing they were welcome there.

  Glancing at me, Niko quirked his lips, a somewhat less homicidal version of my predatory smile. He was letting me know he knew who his family was and it wasn’t this older reflection of himself. “No. But if you wait for welcome you will die an old man on the sidewalk. I leave it up to you.”

  Kalakos apparently knew when to push and when to not look a gift horse in the mouth. He shut the door behind him. “Do you want an excuse or an explanation?” he asked calmly. I hated the sound of his voice. It was wry, amused, self-possessed—it was Niko’s voice, and Niko was unique. This shithead shouldn’t be moving like him, looking like him, or sounding like him. The fact that he deserted his son meant he shouldn’t be at all. This time I did growl once more.

  “That would be Caliban. Your brother?”

  To give him some credit, there wasn’t the hesitation I expected before “brother.” Nor were there the many other words the Rom had for me, none of which meant “brother” or anything remotely close to it. The Vayash, shamed as they were that a woman of their clan had whored herself out to a thing fouler than the word “monster” could begin to describe, had nonetheless eventually told the other clans of my existence once one hired us for a job. When that had happened, I couldn’t be a secret any longer. The others had to be warned.

  With Niko at my side during negotiations, willing to dishonor himself by standing with me, the Vayash decided they had no choice. It was their duty to see that the others didn’t see me as merely polluted by gadje blood, that my pale skin wasn’t from a pasty white Midwesterner who lived on diet of deep-fried cheese but from an Auphe. Ninety-nine percent of humans knew nothing of the supernatural world that swirled around them. The Rom knew it all. They knew of the Auphe. They knew what I was.

  I’d been spit on enough to prove that on our one visit to our Clan. But I’d been much younger then, half catatonic, half homicidal, and a great deal less in control.

  Pity I’d had any control at all.

  Pity indeed.

  This time my conscious and my unnaturally mouthy subconscious agreed.

  “His name is Cal. Do not call him the other again.” Niko’s lips flattened. Sophia had named me Caliban from the Shakespearean play. Caliban the beast-man-monster from The Tempest. She made sure I knew what it meant too, and called me by it every opportunity she had. Mommy had been an educated whore.

  Niko had never called me anything but Cal. It was naïve for him to think that every one of his Cals could wipe out all the Caliban that came from Sophia’s lips.

  Yep, naïve…but they sometimes did.

  Kalakos kept his eyes on me and I knew what he saw. Half-naked, pale eyes gleaming through the curtain of my hair, a bloody knife, and a smile that tasted of years and years of spite—I wasn’t surprised he might think Sophia had been closer to the mark.

  Good.

  “Why are you here?” Niko demanded, his normal…his inherited calm gone. In its place were emptiness and the chill of the wind across the arctic ice.

  Kalakos turned back to him. He looked about forty-five, but not an ounce of fat on him. All lean muscle, like Niko. They were almost exactly the same height. His hair was much shorter than Nik’s braid, though. Looking closer I could see one or two silver strands in it. He wore it slicked back tightly in a two-inch-long ponytail. It was good for fighting, not obscuring your vision. It was how I usually managed to keep the mess of my own heavy hair out of my face. Not anymore. Not while he was here.

  “The Vayash Clan failed in its watch. We have lost our duty, our burden. They have sent me to bring it back. I know I cannot do it alone.” He included us both in his glance this time. “And none of them are fighters, not the kind you two are known to be. No matter what has come before, all Vayash must work to right this. The burden is here in the city. Worse, it knows that you are in the city. If you will not help me willingly, help yourselves. It can sense the Vayash and it will kill all Vayash that it can find.”

  All clans had a duty and a watch. I thought I’d been the Vayash one. Looked like I was wrong. Or they had a two-for-one burden to carry. Too bad for them.

  “All Vayash?” Niko narrowed his eyes. “Then that is not a problem for us. You are the only Vayash in this room and it’s been that way for seven years.” While we nodded to the clan name when dealing with other Rom, we didn’t claim it. It was a truth that became a lie and now was used only for convenience. Rom were honest only with other Rom. But their money spent the same as anyone else’s.

  “We came to you when Sophia was murdered, burned to death by the Auphe,” Niko continued. “When Cal…” He didn’t finish that sentence. I knew he didn’t like saying it aloud; I knew he didn’t like remembering it.

  I was better off, in a sense. I didn’t remember much of that time when we visited the Vayash, and what I did remember was a foggy haze. When I was fourteen, the Auphe had burned our trailer, killing our mother while Niko escaped out a tight back window, and they’d taken me to a place only Auphe can go. Another world or a murderous reflection of this one, I didn’t know or remember any of that. I didn’t remember escaping and finding my way back home. The fact that only a day and a half had passed at the burned trailer site, yet I’d returned—somehow—sixteen instead of fourte
en at best guess, made not remembering that much…safer. They played with time like they played with lives. The Auphe had had me for two years. Yet all of it I’d recalled, more or less, was the rare sensation of cold or of rough rock against my skin.

  Had I actually remembered those years in detail, I imagined the Cal in me would pour down an invisible drain and leave a Caliban-shaped nightmare in its place.

  As it was, after I’d returned, it had been a long time before I’d been anything close to functional. I’d rarely spoken. The only human touch I could stand was my brother’s hand on my shoulder, and that took a while. I had remembered the Auphe taking me and I vaguely remembered stumbling home naked through a rip in reality, but next to nothing between. But I’d known they’d come for me again. I might not know anything else, but that I knew.