Blackout

by Rob Thurman

  “You could’ve left them with Wahanket,” Goodfellow snapped.

  That flipped a switch in me. Cheerful and dark. From the feel of it on my face, my smile was the mirror of what the puck’s had been—goddamn scary. “In spirit maybe. But the only thing useful with Wahanket anymore is a DustBuster and a Ouija board.” I put the smile away. It wasn’t for them. I was saving it for Ammut. “And you’ll be able to find homes for them. Every rich vamp will want his own mummified cat. Except Spartacus. He stays here. He’s for Salome.”

  “And how precisely do you figure that?”

  I kept Niko between him and me. “Spartacus likes me. Salome wants to eat me. Okay, she doesn’t eat. Kill me. Whatever. If Salome likes Spartacus, I have it made. He’s my wingman to peace and not being eaten.”

  “You are truly pathetic.” Goodfellow shook his head, but he lost his bad humor or switched it to a new source when he saw my shoes. “You are not wearing black sneakers with a Brioni tux. I won’t allow it. I won’t be seen within a mile of you.”

  “If Ammut is there, I plan on some running. Those shoes you gave me—nice for looking at my reflection, but they suck for running.”

  “I think it’s time for the party. The discussion about history-making vengeance and foot apparel can take place later,” Niko interrupted. “I do have a date, and it’s not Ammut, waiting for me there.”

  That date was Promise, the sad vampire. It sounded like a children’s book. Promise, the sad velvet vampire—won’t you be her friend? I dimly remembered why she was so solemn now. Her kid … Her daughter had died. No … That wasn’t quite it. Think, think. Ah. Her daughter had been killed—by Niko. Yeah, that was right. Her daughter had been a true nightmare of a creature. She’d done things that not only were unforgivable but also not survivable, depending on whom she did them to. She’d done those things to us all, but most particularly to Nik. Promise had raised a monster beyond redemption.

  Why was I sure Niko was incapable of doing the same?

  Nature versus nurture.

  Genes versus a determined big brother, with fish sticks and Scooby Doo cartoons, who’d taken care of you from your first breath.

  Which wins?

  After we met Promise at her place, then took her chauffeured car to the Tribeca Grand, the first thing I did when we made it past the doormen, all four of whom looked with disdain at my shoes, I pulled her aside. “Can I talk to you for a second?”

  She waved Niko back with a small flick of plumcolored oval nails in a motion so minute that I barely saw it. I wished I had him trained half that well, but then again the rewards were vastly different. “What is it, Caliban? Are you doing better? Niko has been not very forthcoming on the subject.” That irritated her. I could tell by the rapid touch of her fingers checking her hair. The brown and blond was swept up into some sort of something that probably had a complicated name I didn’t have a clue about, but Promise wasn’t the nervous, fidgety type. She was the still pond, the unmoving stone, the unchanging mountain—the same as Niko. Like for like.

  If she was irritated, it was because she’d been left in the dark, and not the kind vampires cared for either. “You don’t know. He didn’t tell you.” Across the massive foyer, Niko, fidgeting himself, gave a careful smooth to the front of his own tux. Two Zen peas in a Zen pod.

  “Tell me what?”

  Her eyes, violet before, were now dark purple with concern. They were the same color as the dress she wore that fell to the floor, the flash of the same color reflected in the black pearls wrapped around her neck. Such an … I don’t know … elegant woman. Not for my kind, but for Niko, yes. He deserved her, and I didn’t want to hurt her, but I needed to know. If I was wrong, many more people than Promise would get hurt. “You didn’t know he started drugging me a few days ago? With the Nepenthe venom? Trying to keep all my old memories gone for good? He’s been trying to keep me … shit, happy, I guess.”

  “Without telling you? No. He wouldn’t do that,” she denied, her head shaking in the negative instantly. “Niko’s honesty is … insurmountable. Trust me. I lied to him once and that was all but the end of us.”

  I came close to remembering that too, but it wasn’t important, not now. “And what would he tell me, Promise? What reason would he give me for getting me to take the drug voluntarily? What’s the truth he doesn’t want me to know?”

  She looked away for a moment, then back and remained silent. Goodfellow and Ishiah had been willing to give me clues, but she was completely loyal to Niko. I didn’t mind. In fact, I preferred it.

  “I don’t want to ask you this,” I continued, “particularly since I only half remember knowing you, but I have to. It’s coming back, all of it—mainly because Niko is a shade less smart than he thinks he is at drugging people and because part of me has been breaking through all along, even when drugged. But that’s a small part.” I took her hand. It was warm and why wouldn’t it have been? Vampires were alive, not dead. Born, not made. I remembered. I turned it over and traced the lifeline. It didn’t look any different from mine. “Niko has taken care of me my entire life, from diaper one.” I quirked my lips. “And I’ll always do the same for him, but I can do that better the way I was before.” The way I was close to being now. “I know that. But what I need to know is, in the end, is it worth it? Or am I like your daughter was? Am I beyond redemption? If I try to save Nik, will I end up doing … things? Bad things? Things he couldn’t live with?” Things he couldn’t let me live with. “You raised a monster, Promise. You know one when you see one.” I looked at Niko again. “Am I a monster worth its life because I can save my brother’s? Or am I just a monster—period?”

  She took her hand from mine, cupped my cheek, and as Niko had been constantly doing to himself for me, she threw me under the bus for him. It was symmetry. “You do whatever needs to be done to save Niko. You do that, Caliban. You do anything. Do you hear me?”

  In a way, it was the answer I’d been looking for, but not the reassurance I’d wanted. That was life. With the good came the bad. It was all about balance.

  I knew she loved him, though, which made it better. She loved him more than she loved anything or anyone. Good for him. Good for them both. I held out my arm. “Is this how they do it? I’ve seen it on TV.”

  She slid her hand into the crook of my elbow, already having second thoughts. “Cal, I shouldn’t have… .”

  “I won’t tell him.” If I did, that would indeed be the end of them. It wouldn’t be very brotherly, and it wouldn’t be right. “What’s to tell? With my memory?” I grinned. “You’re good for him, Promise. Better than I’ll ever be. We were just talking about you adopting a mummy cat. That’s all.”

  “A what? A mummy …” Goodfellow walked up in time to hear her confused remark.

  “Ah, good. I’ll pick out a nice one for you. Two would probably be better. To keep each other company, less bored, less inclined to kill your neighbors. Would you prefer male or female? Not that it matters. Death and mummification are the ultimate spay and neuter program. I’ll have someone drop them off at your place tomorrow, should we survive tonight.”

  Niko took Promise’s other arm and led her away from the dead-cat discussion. Since I’d come back, he hadn’t had much time with her and I knew why. He’d expected honesty from her. How could he then be with her when he was being anything but honest even to himself?

  A conscience … More and more they seemed a pain in the ass.

  Goodfellow, Ishiah, and I watched them go, dark blond head bent to the brown/blond one. “She looks like a tiger with that hair,” I mused.

  “And she’ll eat you like a tiger if you piss her off onefifth as much as you’ve pissed me off,” Robin growled.

  I gave him a narrow-eyed glance and an equally narrow smile. “Do you really want to play, puck? I can make the time.”

  Surprise flashed behind his eyes and as quickly was gone. Pucks were much better than my brother at playing a part, and he didn’t want to have t
o tell Niko the show was over. That he gladly would let me do. “You’re back then?”

  My smile—only half of what I’d pretended it was, I hoped—widened. “About seventy, seventy-five percent.” I hooked an arm around his neck and squeezed, messing up his tie and collar mostly on purpose. “I missed remembering you, you horny bastard. Besides, think about it. Would a ‘good’ Cal dump eleven dead cats in your apartment? Or turn Wahanket into a dust pile that could double as an ant condo?”

  “Good Cal tried to stab me with a fork,” Robin pointed out as he tried to straighten his tie, but he didn’t shake off my arm. Before Nik and I had shown up, and before Ishiah had come around to admit his own stupidity, Robin hadn’t had many friends—any friends. There were prejudiced bastards even among the supernatural kind. Tricksters weren’t favorites by any means.

  “Good Cal thought you were a monster,” I reminded him. “Now I know what a monster is.”

  “Ammut?” Ishiah standing beside us murmured, and although I couldn’t see the wings, I heard them rustle.

  “Her too.” But she wasn’t the only one. I let go of Goodfellow and straightened my suit jacket to feel the weight of my weapons in place. I smelled her all right. She was here, and my grin now? I didn’t think there was a word for it. Not in these modern days. Not anymore. The first to invent, create, conceive. The first to smile for all the wrong reasons.

  “Come on, guys,” I said. “Let’s go kick some Egyptian ass.”

  13

  The penthouse party was the same as all penthouse parties—this being my second, which made me an expert. It was fancy; everyone was rich and snooty; it had great views of the Manhattan skyline; there was food … absolutely fantastic food. I’d taken over a platter of bacon, mushroom, and crab bits I couldn’t begin to pronounce but could eat by the bucketful, and I was hoarding the platter for myself.

  “Does Niko know you’re almost you again?”

  “Can you picture the invisible cross he’s dragging around on his back,” I asked, “hear the splish-splash of Pontius Pilate lathering up with hand sanitizer?”

  “Yes.”

  “That’d be a no then,” I snorted.

  “Blasphemy,” Ishiah muttered under his breath at my exchange with Robin as a feather wafted out of nowhere to land in Goodfellow’s wineglass.

  “I’m beginning to have serious doubts about this nonangel crap you peris are spouting.” Other than that comment, I went back to concentrating on the room. Ammut was here. I had the musty corpse taste of her in the back of my throat, under the bacon, but the entire room reeked of Wolves, vamps, other supers who could pass for human, and humans themselves soaked in perfume or cologne.

  That was what Delilah had meant when she’d said I didn’t need to wear my cologne. I had that spray Robin had given me last year to cover up my Auphe smell from Wolf noses when I’d meet to hook up with Delilah. I hadn’t used it in a long time now. When she’d smelled me in that stairwell at her attempted massacre of our clients, she’d been smelling the mostly human me; the Auphe part of me had been on vacation—gone fishing, buried, or busy.

  My best guess was the Auphe in the rest of my genes had become more or less dormant while the ones in the memory portion of my brain—if Niko had been there, he would’ve provided the medical word for that—had become hyperactive trying to repair the venom damage. All my Auphe channeled its energy to that one area. For a while, I was more human than I’d ever been in my entire life.

  Or would ever be again.

  The Auphe immune system wasn’t like a human one, it was far more efficient and goal-oriented, or there had been many things over my life that I wouldn’t have survived. Those were thoughts for other times though. For now, I was sticking with the original problem—Ammut and her arachnid posse.

  Above the penthouse was the rooftop terrace, which was essential. Half the guests were human and taking out monsters was a private thing unless we wanted a shitload of humans convinced they’d been slipped some illegal hallucinogenic. Or we’d have a shitload of dead humans because the Wolves and vamps were certain to make sure the humans wouldn’t be spreading the news of the supernatural—who were natural and not super at all. Either way, shit was involved and it was far too much trouble. That was why we had the terrace… . It was prime cage-fighting territory, minus the cage, with the addition of the possibility of falling to a splattery death on the sidewalk far below.

  Eh. Details.

  Speaking of Wolves and vamps, we were quickly surrounded by them. One Wolf made a move on my platter of bacon goodies. I growled. He snapped, and I snapped back. He was in completely human form, a high breed—no All Wolf for him—and I looked as human as anyone else, but no matter how human we both looked, snapping at each other like hungry bears over a platter of hors d’oeuvres drew a bit of attention.

  “Stop it. Be good. No treats for you tonight,” Goodfellow hissed at the two of us. The Wolf had brown hair pulled back into a short ponytail and ice blue eyes. Average, ordinary, if not for the eyes. If you saw past the unusually pale eyes and smelled what lay beneath, then you’d know much more. He was an Alpha, a big and bad one. “We are wolves amidst the sheep, but the sheep rule this world now. Don’t forget it,” the puck warned.

  The vamps, including Promise, who was standing with Niko, looked resigned at the food-aggressive behavior as they gathered around us. Puppies, always piddling on the carpet, always making a mess, always wanting attention. In the spirit of unity, I let the Wolf take a handful off my platter. “Yeah, like you fang manglers never fought over food … while it was still kicking and screaming,” I said with scorn to the other vamps around us. At least the Wolves were honest about it. You’d think the vamps never ordered their steak rare, much less had eaten a person in the old days. “All the dental bonding and porcelain veneers in the world can’t cover up how you used to get your food in the old days.”

  Niko lost all expression, not that he usually had much to lose. He knew something was up, which meant he also knew my Nepenthe venom blood levels were down. But there was no chocolate-mint toothpaste here and that meant my brother was up the creek without a toothbrush, a spider, or a hope. I grinned at him, then handed off the platter to my new Wolf friend and opened my Armani-Brioni some kind of hyperexpensive tux jacket to reveal the black T-shirt beneath: IF BEING A DICK IS WRONG … I KNOW I’M NOT RIGHT.

  The Wolf growled again when he caught sight of it. “Lighten up, Fido,” I said. “I gave you some Snausages, so shut your Alpo-hole.”

  “Ammut is here,” Niko added, stepping forward with a look for everyone except me. “We will kill her and you will pay us the other portion of our fee. If you feel this is a problem, take it out of the Lupa’s earnings. They’re responsible for at least half of this mess.” Not that they were, but if they were going to claim to be, then why not make them cough up the price? “If you don’t exert some domination soon, they’ll be the only ones of you left to make any messes at all.”

  Promise had those pristine, perfectly manicured violet nails of hers through the tux of what looked like the lead vampire, a small, unassuming bald man with the blackest, most empty eyes I’d seen. I think her nails went through skin and flesh as well, because there was a pained flicker at the corner of his mouth. “We are civilized now,” she said in a voice that was silk over titanium. “We cooperate with others. We pay our debts. We are beings of reason, not of bloodlust. Do not make me remind each and every one of you why I was the sole vampire to survive the Black Death without being burned alive. Show the Leandros brothers and their companions the respect they are due and perhaps no more of us need perish.” She stepped back, already with a small strip of silver gray cloth to wipe the blood from her nails. She tucked it into the bald vampire’s jacket. “I take blood from no one now. Not even the likes of you.”

  A hand grabbed my arm and yanked me into motion. “Let’s do a circuit of the room and see if you’re any closer to finding Ammut’s scent than while standing about stuffing
your face with all the work ethic of a minimum-wage slushie operator,” Niko ordered.

  “Do you know how hard it is to make the perfect slush—” I didn’t get a chance to finish the sentence. It was for the best.

  “You’re starting to remember, aren’t you?” he demanded in an undertone. “What you did to Wahanket. The cats. Resorting to violence over bacon, a bigger giveaway than all the others. It’s coming back.”

  I kept my eyes focused on every woman we passed. Ammut was an Egyptian legend, but with those bronze scales and the myth of a lion’s mane, I had her pinned as a blonde. “Yep. Just like you said it would. You said it would wear off and you were right.” The grip on my arm tightened. It felt like the grasp of denial at odds with one of hope, and the double-strength grasp was beginning to hurt.

  How did I read emotions from a grip, from the clench of bone, and the ripple of muscle? I’d been hit a damn lot in this job. You picked things up. I could close my eyes and tell you what kind of monster had punched me in the face and if it was because he wanted to eat me, kill me for fun, or was showing off for his girlfriend. I’d been educated in the ways. “I know … No, I remember how much you love being right,” I said, but not rubbing it in too much. After all, he was always right—almost. He’d find out soon enough that this “almost” was one goddamn big one he might never live down. “I also know if you don’t ease up, I won’t be able to use this arm to shoot anything, much less an Egyptian fake goddess. And, most important of all, bacon is worth fighting over.”

  He released me. “I suppose I didn’t expect that it would happen this … quickly. I thought that flash with Delilah at the brownstone was a fluke.”

  “Right now, it doesn’t much matter. When I’m all the way back, we’ll have a party. Celebrate my homecoming and Ammut’s going. Oh shit, there she is.” I’d been wrong. She did appear Egyptian and she was a goddess. By one of the long stretches of windows, she stood with a champagne glass in hand. She was alone, a long fall of black hair rippling in waves to the middle of her back. Her skin was dark, but only a shade darker than Niko’s, her lips full and painted a dark red-bronze, and her eyes as black as her hair. Her dress was familiar; green-andgold scales that molded her from a high neck to an inch or so above the floor. She knew it was a trap—anyone with one brain cell would—but she was confident that we would fail and she’d scarf us up the same as those bacon appetizers. I couldn’t blame her. We hadn’t been much of a challenge earlier, and bacon … Damn, it was bacon. How could you not risk a little to get a pound of that for breakfast?