Rob Thurman - Basilisk

That was when I saw it.

The lights in the parking lot were dim and old, same as the motel, but I had excellent night vision and it was getting better the more I matured—as were other things. It was good enough now that I saw the oil on the side of the cover over the rear wheel. Fresh and gleaming, two fingerprints of wet amber—as fresh as if someone had just crawled out from under the car but a moment before. And who changed the oil on someone else’s car at four in the morning?

No one.

“Stoipah, no!” I dropped my bags and ran. “Don’t touch the car!”

But it was too late. His fingers had already hooked under the handle. I’d reached him at the same time and tackled him as hard and fast as I could. I might have been frozen when he had fought the man on the car outside Cascade Falls. I wasn’t frozen now. I wouldn’t let myself be again.

The explosion wasn’t huge; only big enough to take out the car and whoever would’ve been standing next to it. We weren’t. We were fifteen feet away, over a scraggly hedge into the other section of the parking lot. The medium-sized fireball behind us heated the air to more than a hundred degrees; the smoke scorched my lungs, but I didn’t care. Beneath me was my brother and although he was wheezing for breath, his face reddened by the heat, he was alive and not tiny pieces spread far and wide for the morning pigeons to peck. “What . . . ?” he said, choking. “How did . . . you know? How . . . did you get us . . . out of range?” It was a good question, considering he had at least thirty pounds on me and all dense muscle.

I pushed up to take the weight off his chest and let him recover his breath more quickly. “I saw the oil on the back of the car. Fresh. Someone had been under it. You don’t crawl under a car at four in the morning unless you’re planting a tracking device or a bomb.” The rest? Mmm. There was truth and there was explanation. Sometimes they could be entirely different things and sometimes they could be the same. In this case, they were the same. “Adrenaline. I’m in my prime. Not a geezer like you. I’m stronger than I was three years ago. I work out with your weights.” I didn’t. Exercise was boring. “You’ve seen me.” He hadn’t, but ordinary people don’t recall every detail of every day.

Truth, explanation, and half of a somewhat white lie. I’d tell him the entire truth later, when the time was right, but for now, half an untruth was what I gave him. I felt like hell saying it, but I saved my brother’s peace of mind, for now, and his life, for good, I hoped. That made it worth it. The car burned behind us and I felt a hand pat my back vigorously. “Small bonfire,” Stefan said with a crooked smile; then, apparently his breath back, he pulled me into a one-armed hug so fierce that even a chimera like me yelped. “Don’t do that again, okay? It’s my job to protect you, not vice versa. I’m the big brother. Me. Got it? If I blow up, I blow up alone. You go with Saul if that happens.”

This time when I pushed up, I stood and held a hand down to him. “No.” The sentiment was true and spoken matter-of-factly; I wasn’t going to change my mind.

He took my hand and got to his feet. “Misha, this is not a game. It’s never been a game. You know that. You almost died for me once. If you actually succeed, don’t think I’m going to stick around. I did it for ten years. I can’t do it again.”

I saw him again as he’d once been: the drowning man. I’d given him what I said I wouldn’t: lies. He gave me the truth.

I wished he’d lied instead.

I glared at him, but what do you say to a truth like that? I wasn’t going to not try to save him if I had the opportunity, but after what Stefan had given up, it would be like spitting in his face to say I wouldn’t try to survive if I could. I couldn’t do that—throw away what he’d given me. “If I’m too slow next time,” I said grudgingly, “I’ll go with Saul. But try not to make that an issue, all right? Be more careful.”

He raised his eyebrows at my tone—he was lucky to have any eyebrows at all after the explosion. “I’ll do my best,” he said with a patience his colleague didn’t share.

“You two stop bitching at each other and get over here by the fucking SUV,” Saul snapped from down the row of parked cars, some littered with burning debris. “Your TV-fried friend might not have left only one present.” He dropped to the cracked parking lot surface and crawled under his vehicle. A minute later he returned. “Nothing.” He then checked the engine. “We’re good to go. Now, get in the damn car!” People were gawking out of the doors of their rooms and there was the unhappy wail of sirens in the distance.

Stefan and I threw our bags in the back and obeyed. This nighttime Saul was much more frightening than the day version. Ginger and gray chest hair, combined with his pajamas, a pair of tight purple silk boxers and that was it. He looked like an obscenely horny children’s dinosaur—but lean and quick with ropy muscle. He charged double for wetwork, he’d said. You can’t do wetwork, you can’t kill, if you’re the size of a four-hundred-pound fake prehistoric lizard.

You could have better taste in clothes and pajamas, though. You could have pajamas, period. Was that too much to ask? The color seared my night vision. I couldn’t imagine what it would do in broad daylight. Hopefully he’d cover the boxers up with clothes by then. Godzilla hopped from my shoulder, where he’d returned after the Twinkie incident, to the top of Saul’s head, curled up in the bed-hair nest and dozed off. “There is not enough money in the world,” Saul ground out.

In the backseat, I gave Stefan a visual once-over. He’d hit the asphalt with a lot of force. I knew. I’d been that force. He’d lost his bandage for the cut on his forehead. I’d been the one to clean the dried blood earlier, determine the need for stitches, apply ointment, and bandage it. I was the house vet after all. It was my job. Stefan had complained he could do it himself, but at the same time I could see the pleased look in his eyes. Missing memories or not, I’d accepted I was his brother weeks after he rescued me, but years later, he didn’t take it for granted. Plus I placated him with some cheese and peanut butter crackers while I took care of the wound. The tasty treat worked wonders in distracting cranky turtles, ferrets, and brothers.

I lightly touched the cut with one fingertip to assess how it was healing. It was a thin red line, scabbed over, and much better than before. “So?” Stefan inquired. “Add that one to my other one and I look like some grandma’s patchwork quilt, huh?” He didn’t sound too concerned. Scars didn’t bother him. Vanity wasn’t a problem for him.

“Believe it or not, it looks good. Cleaning away all that blood combined with the best prescription antibiotics that can be obtained illegally from Canada”—I shrugged—“it wasn’t nearly as bad as it seemed, and I did a fantastic job—as always. Can veterinarians win Nobel Prizes? Although I’d settle for government disability for the permanent damage done to my eyes by Skoczinsky’s sleep-spandex.”

“I was going to say he hadn’t changed, the smug little bastard,” Saul grunted from up front as we passed a fire truck headed back toward our motel. “But he has. For the worse. Now he’s a smug, full-grown bastard.”

I ignored him. I had to or I would’ve reached up to touch his shoulder and paralyze his vocal cords. While I didn’t have a problem with that plan, Stefan might. Leaning back against the seat, I changed the subject. “How many more men do you think Raynor had?”

“Impossible to know. But not any more, I think, or someone would’ve shot us in the parking lot when the bomb didn’t work. I did leave that one electrocuted bastard alive, though. The smart thing would’ve been to finish him off.” Stefan shook his head and let it go. He’d killed, but he didn’t like it, and I’d never blame him for that. How could I?