Rob Thurman - Roadkill

And were still that color.

Because I was still here, wasn’t I? I was still goddamn here. What Suyolak had threatened to do to me, I’d done to myself.

Niko’s hand hadn’t left my shoulder. “Can you turn it off, Rafferty? The traveling? It’s what’s done this.” He didn’t ask me, either because he didn’t think I was in my right mind-and he could’ve been correct-or because I was so frozen that I couldn’t ask for myself. The why of it didn’t matter. He asked. He wasn’t wrong either.

Before the traveling had gotten so easy, before it made me feel so damn good, I’d been myself. Being me had never been worth any prizes, but I hadn’t been killing animals and eating their raw meat and considering rather happily doing the same to my fellow road-trippers.

I hadn’t been in my right mind for a while now and never noticed. Or worse yet, I had noticed, but I’d liked it too much to wonder why life had gotten so much better, things so much easier.

I’d seen those people before, all my life, the jackasses. Everyone had seen them walking around, wearing those idiotic T-shirts-I’M WITH STUPID with an arrow pointed sideways. If life issued those routinely when needed, Rafferty and Niko would both be wearing I’M WITH SCREWED with the arrows pointed directly at me.

Really, really so damn screwed and it was my fault, all of it.

Rafferty didn’t close his eyes as I’d seen him do once or twice when concentrating on a patient. He’d had plenty of time to examine my inner workings while I was out. “No.”

“You’re absolutely sure?” Niko persisted, his calm still seeping away bit by bit, and Suyolak wasn’t responsible this time. I was.

“The only way to turn it off is to turn Cal off, and I don’t think you want that.” Rafferty’s hand was warm now, close to uncomfortably so.

Niko’s grip tightened yet again, the joint creaking under it. “It’s in his genes,” the healer continued. “And the thing about Auphe genes? They’re dominant over human genes. Hell, no matter what they’d managed to breed with, they would’ve been dominant. They were the first sentient creatures on this world. The first , and, in a way, the best-at least at what they did: kill. Up until now you said Cal had traveled rarely and with side effects: vomiting, dizziness, bleeding. But then it had gotten easier, right? That means the Auphe part of Cal ’s genes that had been dormant became active. And there’s more Auphe in Cal than just traveling.” He moved his gaze from Niko to me. “You might look human on the outside, Cal -mostly-but on the inside, that’s not the case. In your blood, in your genes, you’re something new and something old, and something completely unlike anything on this earth. Your traveling did that. It was a biological initiative… or for you, a trap. The more you traveled, the more serotonin your brain released, and the better you felt-a feel-good loop. A happy pill a hundred times better than any pharmacy could dole out. And now here you are.” His hand wasn’t letting me go.

Niko had said that back at the beginning of this… at Abelia’s RV, when I’d opened a gate. When I’d said I could control it-control myself. When he’d also said I was an adult with adult consequences.

And here I was, Rafferty had said.

Here I was, all right, and it was a place way beyond meditation’s ability to help, although Niko had done his best there. If I’d done it more often, been better at it, it might have worked. Then again, from the way Rafferty talked, it was all a matter of time. It had been since I’d been made. Each time I thought I was free of the Auphe, they came back closer than ever. Being one was as close as it came: not half, not part, but a card-carrying last member of a dead race. I wasn’t going to go through this again. I wasn’t going to agonize over it. I was through with bullshit. I knew what I was; I’d known all along despite a crapload of denial. It was time to pay the piper and no damn whining when I did.

Time to face those adult consequences.

I’d gotten upright with Nik’s grip on my shoulder and the other hand helping me. I didn’t try to move my legs. I didn’t know how Rafferty would take that. My shoulder was now against my brother’s and I felt him tense when I said it-without shame, without rejection, with nothing but acceptance of the alcoholic reaching rock bottom. “I’m Auphe. I’m not human. Not part-time. Not even on the fucking weekends. I’m Auphe.”

“No,” Nik refuted with instant sharpness, as he always had. He never gave up, but this time was different. He was going to have to, for both of us.

“No,” Rafferty echoed, still focused on me. “You’re not Auphe. But you’re right, you’re not human either and thinking you are while using powers that aren’t is only going to get you dead or someone else dead. Maybe a lot of someones. All the wishing in the world isn’t going to change that, and I can’t turn off the Auphe part of your genes.” He’d said earlier that he’d never manipulate genes again after what he’d done to Catcher. I didn’t blame him. I could end up a lot worse than Catcher with the possibilities riding in my genetics. “I can’t turn off the powers that go with them either,” he went on, “but I can make it very unpleasant for you to use them. I can take the feel-good away, and you might, no promises, but you might stay where you are now. The Auphe in you won’t progress. Or,” he finished matter- of-factly, “I can end your life now. Your choice. But I won’t let another possible Auphe, the last Auphe, loose on the world. Suyolak can’t make you all Auphe like he threatened, but he doesn’t have to. There’s enough potential in you to be walking, talking murder incarnate without any of his help.”

Rafferty was right and it absolutely did not matter. He might as well have been talking to the wind. Niko had kept my SIG while I was unconscious. The three of us in the back of the car, me between them, it made blades awkward, although not impossible for my brother. Nothing regarding a blade was impossible for him, but this statement was for me and he used my weapon for it. He had the muzzle of the automatic pressed hard against Rafferty’s forehead with an inescapable speed. Caesar, Genghis, Attila, Alexander… I’d said it before: They all fell in Niko’s shadow.

“The only life ending will be yours,” he said flatly.

He had what looked like three pounds of pressure on a trigger that took a little less than four. Rafferty could kill him, stop his heart, explode a vessel in his brain, but the death spasm would take the healer along for the ride-all over an Auphe. A healer wasn’t dying because of that. And there was no damn way my brother was dying because of me.

I put my hand on Nik’s wrist and squeezed. He didn’t look at me and I didn’t expect him to. In battle, you kept your eyes on the enemy. I only had to get him to see that Rafferty wasn’t the enemy. “It’s okay, Cyrano. Adult consequences, remember? I’ll let him fix me.”

Fix me…

He couldn’t fix me, though, could he? He could only cripple me-the bastard who imagined I needed fixing at all. I’d accepted who I was, hadn’t I?

Maybe I even liked who I was. I did like being able at work to scan the bar and make someone hate me or fear me with a single look. Wasn’t that better than being ashamed as I had been in the past? Wasn’t having others fear me better than fearing myself? Rafferty wanted to take the feel-good away. The feel-good was called that for a reason. It was the rush that made life better… more than better. Made it what people wished for when they were kids: perfect, everything you wanted, everything you needed, and you were ruler of it all. King of the mountain. King of all the mountains and everything that lay between them. Nothing could touch that feeling. No one could take it away either-not if you didn’t let them.