Blackout

by Rob Thurman

  I tickled Spartacus’s stomach and the cat opened his mouth to show me a preview of Jaws 15, the IMAX version. Luckily, it was a yawn. “Yeah, I’m bored too, buddy. Now where did I leave that axe?” I didn’t ask as a threat. I asked out of genuine curiosity. I was bored. I was done playing around with this barbecued son of a bitch. Playing with something that can’t run or even crawl—where was the challenge in that? “Who am I, Wahanket? And if you don’t cough up something in the next five seconds, you’ll have to write down the information I want, because I’m going to cut out your tongue.”

  Wahanket pulled himself up onto the ancient bench, lying on his chest to watch me. He wasn’t bored at all. “Do not worry. I shall tell all you wish to know. The meat tastes sweeter when it knows why it was chosen, flavored with the disbelief that any could bring it down. Despair and disbelief, nothing teases the palate so much as those.” Gold flakes had transferred to the bench into the blackened flesh of his hand. I could see the spark of them, a starry night, when he pointed at me. “You … You are Auphe.”

  That was what the boglet had said. I was off, that wasn’t news. I was absolutely off. But the word wasn’t completely that. It was somewhere in the middle of “Off” and “Ouph-fey.” A human tongue couldn’t exactly replicate it. But I could see the word in my head, dripping with black bile, smelling of blood, part of me. In every part of me.

  I was Auphe.

  Always had been, always would be. A word made of screams and slaughter, murder and madness, albino pale skin, red eyes, the shine of hypodermic-needle teeth—more needles than a hospital would need in a month. White, red, and metal, like my Peter Pan crocodile.

  Here you have brothers and sisters. Baby boy, baby boy.

  The shadows grew wider around me, but I didn’t stop. I did have a brother. Not one that a crocodile had given me, but a real one, and he needed the real Cal. And real or not, Cal or not … I kept my promises. I told Niko I’d be his brother and there was only one way to do that—by bringing Cal home. “Auphe,” I said with a distance so great that I may as well have been on the moon. “Who are the Auphe?”

  “Were. Who were the Auphe?” One of the flakes of gold fell from his hand to the floor. A speck of the sun falling to Earth, a soul falling much farther. “They are all gone now, except for you, half-breed. But once they were the first.”

  “The first what?”

  “The first of anything. The first of everything. They were the first to walk this world. They were the first to kill simply for pleasure. They invented murder, created torture, conceived terror. This world was theirs for millions of years.” The yellow glow softened. “So very long ago, when Death itself bowed to its masters.”

  “They set the gold star standard for nightmares like you. Great. How did I get to be one? Half of one?” Because one of them damn sure hadn’t been trolling for a good time and met up with Sophia. Easy or not, she had to have some limits.

  The gold is gone, and you’re still here, brat. You’re still goddamn here.

  Or not. Sometimes a whore is a whore to feed herself and her children. Sometimes it’s for drugs or rent or because it’s her body to do with as she pleases. And sometimes someone like my mother sets a gold star standard of her own. They’d paid her to make me … not to have me. You have babies; you make monsters. I’d been an experiment; I knew it. I knew it. I didn’t know why yet, why the Auphe would want a half-breed, but the hell with the how and the why of it. That was coming fast and furious on its own, clawing up through my subconscious. I’d know, whether I was ready or not, and I didn’t need this asshole to tell me that.

  “I’m a monster then, like Ammut?”

  Wahanket laughed. It sounded as if he were choking on his own mummified organs, if he hadn’t removed them. “No, you are not a monster like Ammut. Ammut will be a child in your shadow when you return. Ammut is simply a creature like any other creature, eating to live. Enjoying meals that taste especially finer than others, as you would taste. She kills to survive. You … Auphe … You are the only monster in the world. We all pale before you.” He clacked his teeth together. “Which is why you are a challenge; why your life will taste the most flavorful of all there is.”

  This piece of shit was sewing himself back together for one reason only—to get his own chance of sucking me dry of Auphe. To make a meal of someone and something he should never have fucked with from day one. Informants are difficult to come by, eh? Then we’d have to try harder. This one had answered his last question, although he had told me what I required. Cal, the real one, could handle Ammut. It was all I needed to know.

  I put the mummified cat down and I found that axe.

  When I was finished, I didn’t need to put his head in a box. A hundred skull fragments weren’t going to knit a Christmas sweater or put themselves back together again. I dropped the axe in the midst of a pile of shattered bone, cracked resin, and one very ex-mummy. “The first,” I said to the remnants. “I’m one of the First of this world.” They invented murder, created torture, conceived terror, he’d said.

  “Invent, create, conceive, and you wanted to screw with that. You should’ve thought about what the First would do to you instead of what you would do to it.” Bone crunched under my boot. “And you, mighty Wahanket, were barely worth the fucking time.”

  When I turned to leave, I felt a weight thud onto my shoulder. Spartacus rubbed his bedraggled, bandaged head against mine with the same death-by-avalanche purr that Salome had. “I’m not leaving you, Kojak. I have a better home for you. In fact …” The eyes still glowed on top of the crates. Wahanket had made pets, but he hadn’t made any friends. Not one had interfered in his destruction. There were what looked like ten mummy cats watching me watching them. “Eh, why not? If Goodfellow is so oversexed that he can’t put his damn pants on to answer the door, he deserves what he gets. Come on, guys. Get your wrinkly King Tut tails in gear and let’s show a trickster what trickery and revenge are all about.”

  One of the best things about NYC … An ex-but-soon-to-be-again monster can walk down the sidewalk surrounded by a bunch of loping dead cats, catch a cab with an extra fifty thrown in by calling himself a vet student with some patients in dire need of bandage changing, make an extra stop, and not long after that be back home. I opened the door, sat on the couch, grabbed the remote, and turned on the TV.

  Niko was now in the kitchen, showered and mixing something that would not only eradicate any Ammut toxins remaining, but probably anything living at all. “Where did you go?”

  “Wouldn’t you like to know, Mom?” I changed the channel. “Oh, hey, Robin.” He had started talking about tonight’s party when I’d left for the museum and he was still on his cell phone, making plans for the catering, talking a mile a minute, when I’d returned. If Ammut ate us, that would be one big, fat wasted catering bill. “You’d better shut off your phone and get your ass back home. I left you a present.”

  He brightened, a magpie at the sight of a shiny coin. “A present? I love presents. I can’t believe you, especially you, actually got me … Oh, skata. What am I thinking?” He jammed the phone in his pocket, grabbed his coat, and was out the door before I made it to the next channel.

  “What did you do?” Niko demanded, turning off the blender. “What did you get him?”

  I held up one arm that was missing three-fourths of what had been a tough, thick leather jacket sleeve and grinned at him. “Eleven dead cats. The doorman thought it was hilarious. I don’t think he likes Robin much. And I think the condo board is meeting as we speak to discuss enforcing pet limits with a subcommittee looking into pet aesthetics. Not everyone can be Best in Show or win beauty pageants. Stuck-up asses.”

  “Buddha save us.” From the glance he gave the blender and then me, he was entertaining the thought of throwing the contents at me. “You took Wahanket’s mummy cats. Why?”

  I shrugged, turned back towards the TV, and changed channels again. “Well, first off, he was a malicious evil shit who
killed cats to make mummies out of them. That is beyond sick. They deserved a better home.”

  “Don’t tell me you just said, ‘He was a malicious evil shit.’ “

  “That would be reason two.” I clicked off the TV. “No one needs an informant like that. I don’t care how hard it is to find one. He tried to shoot me, strangle me, wanted to eat me, and he was a cat killer. The first three I could deal with. Cat killer, no.” I peeled off the ruined jacket and tossed it over the back of the couch. Twisting again, I could see the kitchen area where Niko was thinking. I could see the quicksilver motion behind his eyes and all but hear the hum. Wheels turning, and it was a few hours too soon for that.

  I tried to distract him. “Since you found me, Niko, tried to show me who I was”—and keep me who I wasn’t, I thought—”you’ve been something for me to shoot for. You walk the straight and narrow. You’re a good man, best man I’ve known in my whole week now. But you’re a good man in a job where good is a drawback. You’ve made allowances, excuses, and you’ve made them, I know, for what you thought were the right reasons. Let a cat killer live; maybe get information to save other lives. But, Nik, when you do wrong, the reason is never right enough.” It was a difficult concept to grasp as the shadows wrapped around me, but I did. For now … I still did. Cal wouldn’t, but I did. Then again, I might be underestimating Cal. For himself, he might never know, but for his brother … I thought he did. Niko had his honor, and I would’ve guessed Cal would do anything to let him hold on to it. Who’s to say a monster can’t love his brother?

  “You are lecturing me?” Niko sounded as if that would knock him flat before his toxic milk shake would.

  “I’ve seen the T-shirts I bought myself for Christmas. I’ve seen the way Wolves and others act around me. If there’s something to be done, something in the gray area,” the dark areas … darkest of the dark, “I think that’s my half of the partnership.” I was proud of that choosy phrasing. “Think,” not “know”—and I did know.

  If wrong had to be done, I would do it. One of the First, born of the First, and living in the shadow and the murk. As the details of my life grew less and less sketchy, I knew that all of his life Niko had protected me. I’d done the same for him when I was old enough to, and I’d keep doing the same. I would let him be who he was by being who I truly was or had been. I would step into those shadows for the last and final time to let Niko step back into the light where he belonged.

  Right now, shadows or not, I was hungry. I got up and made a sandwich, all while Niko continued to watch me, a distinct aura of suspicion overcoming the odor of the sludge in his untouched glass. “You said you’d stay outside. You lied to me.”

  I raised my eyebrows at the last remark, which took real balls for him to actually say, what with all he was trying to keep from me. I chewed my bite of peanut butter and jelly without comment. It was enough to have Niko drinking his sludge. Ninjas in glass houses …

  I finished and changed the nonsubject. “Goodfellow said we’d need formal wear for the party. What’s formal wear?”

  “You are dead to me. No, you are worse than dead. The worst thing I can do to you is let you live to make every minute of every day of the rest of your life an eternal hell.”

  When he opened his door this time, Goodfellow was dressed—in a way. With wavy hair standing on end and a ratty bandage draped over it, he was wearing an expensive, a given there, tux—James Bond style. I could admit, masculinity intact, that it was pretty sharp, or it had been once. Now it was missing one pant leg from the knee down, one arm at the shoulder, and there was a mummy cat hanging from his shredded tie.

  Spartacus showed his garbage-disposal teeth in a grin at me as he swung from the cloth strip that was meant to be knotted in a bow tie around the puck’s neck. “Spartacus, hey, pal, are you telling Robin how to dress?”

  “You named it. You actually named it, and you named it Spartacus. Zeus, I hate you.” He stalked off, Spartacus hanging in there happily. Inside the penthouse, the contour couch was now a scrap pile of leather, stuffing, and wood. The walls were clawed until they formed the optical illusion of the bars of a prison cell. A once highly expensive rug was about a thousand pieces of cloth mixed with strips of frayed bandages scattered about the place, and undead cats lounged everywhere. Salome perched on top of that giant refrigerator with dimly glowing eyes crossed in pleasure—a queen overseeing her domain and her new minions. It was only right. Every powermad villain merited minions.

  Ishiah, his tux in one piece, closed the door behind us. “This wasn’t the brightest thing you could have done, Caliban. Robin is one of the best, if not the best, tricksters in this world. Are you familiar with the Greek tale of Oedipus Rex? It wasn’t simply a story. It was truth. There were two prophecies. Robin had nothing to do with the first or the second, but when chariot rage, the original road rage, ended in murder, he did arrange for the rest of the prophecy to come true. Marrying mothers, jabbing out eyes with golden hairpins, suicide. All three members of that royal family were murderers or potential ones. Tricksters don’t care for either. That was only a job to him. Justice. This”—he waved an arm at the inside of the penthouse and twenty-four avid yellow eyes followed the movement—”is personal.”

  I’d felt my own eyes cross the same as Salome’s, but mine was in boredom, not pleasure. “Sorry. I missed most of that. Oedipus Rex … Was that a dinosaur? Like a T. rex?”

  “I may as well post the ad for your replacement now.” He followed the puck. “Your tuxes are in both bathrooms. If your ‘gifts’ haven’t eaten them.”

  He flipped me off when I called after him gravely. “Adoption is love. I saw that on the side of a bus, so it’s gotta be true.”

  “That wasn’t very angellike,” I added as I watched the finger disappear with him.

  “Understandable, since he isn’t one.” Niko went for the first bathroom. “And if Robin does cause you to blind yourself with anything from an antique hairpin to a banana, I will have no sympathy.”

  All the cats purred louder as I walked through them. At least they were happy to see me. Dogs didn’t like me and I’d figured out why now. Nothing could smell a twisted genetic product like a Wolf or a dog … but cats didn’t have a problem with me. After all, they played with their victims. No rush to judgment there.

  I found the other bathroom, only because the door was open. I wasn’t opening any closed doors here. Seeing wet feathers in the massive whirlpool tub was enough to have me dressing so quickly, I tucked the shirt into my underwear instead of my pants. The tux was all right, black on black—with no tie of any kind. Goodfellow definitely knew me there, but Miss Terrwyn would’ve again been shaking her head at my vampire-looking, silly white boy self. Except that vampires existed, and I wasn’t white. My skin was pale, but it hadn’t come from being some British-Scottish-Irish-German-American mutt. I’d gotten that from the Auphe; otherwise I’d have been a pale brown like Niko … or our mother.

  Born of the first murderers to walk the earth and unable to get a goddamn tan. Welcome to my world.

  It was enough to make me wish for the whole amnesia enchilada back and not the half-and-half I had now. But wishes weren’t promises, and tainted genes or not, I was keeping that promise to Nik. It didn’t matter that he didn’t know I’d made it. I knew, and that was enough.

  I’d woken up in water, sand, and dead spiders with a deep hatred of monsters. Then I found out I was one. I hadn’t seen anything that addressed that on the side of a bus—only the adoption ad. Adoption and love—good stuff, but self-worth? You were on your own there. Ammut thought I had worth anyway and then some. Here was hoping she’d show up and tell me all about it. I opened the bathroom door back up to face cold ruthless eyes not quite an inch from mine. Ammut’s?

  Worse.

  They were Goodfellow’s.

  “Do you know there are things … No, there are words, actual, simple words—I’m reasonably positive that I could trim them down to six total—that
I could say to you that would make you unable to function sexually for five years? Even with yourself?”

  Whoa. “You’re a witch?” Couldn’t be. There was no magic in the world. Monsters, yes. Magic, no. It was one of those things I did know instinctually without anyone telling me.

  “No, Caliban. I’m not. I’m merely extremely knowledgeable in the psychosexual fields and I’m also very, very vindictive.”

  “Um … Niko? You out there?” I backed up a step and Goodfellow followed, maintaining the exact lack of distance.

  “Remember Alexander the Great? Not that great, especially when he poisoned my friend. What’s good for the gander is … good for the gander.” He smiled. It was the first of his smiles I’d seen that wasn’t sly or wicked. It was goddamn scary. “Then there was Genghis Khan. He should’ve paid more attention to the blade I gave his kidnapped princess and the ingenious place she was hiding it and less to killing every male child as tall as his steppe pony’s shoulder. The princess was a nice woman and didn’t like child killers any more than I do. Ah, and who do you think said, ‘Release the Kraken’? That horny rapist named Zeus? Hardly. He was always trying to steal my thunder.” Two more steps in perfect synchronization—me back, him forward.

  “And then there’s you—you who released the equivalent of the Ten Plagues on my home. Can you imagine what I plan on doing to you?”

  “Nik!”

  “Yes?” Nik was behind Robin, his hand on the puck’s shoulder. “Do we have a problem?”

  “I think Goodfellow wants to poison me, stab me with a knife I’d prefer sterilized first, then make me watch a god-awful, bad-special-effects movie from the eighties.” I slid past him before he tried to escape Niko’s hand. “I could’ve stabbed you with that fork, you know,” I told the puck, “but I didn’t. And with the cats, I saved lives … unlives … whatever, and this is the thanks I get. Bastard.”