Rob Thurman - Roadkill

Not if you killed them first.

Ripped them apart. Eviscerated them and spread their guts for all to see.

Wouldn’t that be something? Wouldn’t that be better than the fanciest of paintings?

I could kill them all, saving my brother for last, to show him all the training in the world couldn’t beat what you were born with. Even Niko couldn’t kill me if he couldn’t catch me, and no one could catch me when I started traveling. I could open a gate and come out behind him or above him and put a bullet in his head. It would be easy. I could see it: the head that had shared the same pillow with me when I was five; the bullet hitting, the blood staining his blond hair. I could see… I could see…

The head that had shared my pillow then, to watch over me, because he knew before I did that monsters existed.

Monsters like me.

God. Rock bottom, I’d thought before.

This was rock bottom: thinking, relishing accomplishing what I’d die to prevent anyone else from doing to my brother. And if that anyone else also happened to be me, that was fine. I would die first. Fucking die .

“Now,” I said in a voice not mine, not remotely close, “Nik, let him do it now.” Or someone in this car would die. I only hoped it would be the right person. Rafferty would be reading my intent to vanish, because part of me was fighting hard to run, the part of me that had to be tamed so I could live. If it won, it would also lose. I hoped to God Rafferty made sure of that. But then Rafferty and Niko would follow me within a fraction of a second, Nik’s finger still tense on the trigger.

“Now,” I repeated, although it was so goddamn difficult to say.

Why was the sane option unbelievably hard to hold on to?

Then again, who wielded the almighty right to define sane?

Them? The weak? Why not me?

“Hurry the fuck up . ” Not only was it not my voice; it was not a human voice at all.

Niko slowly let the gun fall while Rafferty put that scorching hand on my head and I learned what brain surgery without anesthesia was all about. Later Nik told me the brain actually can’t feel pain, only the nerves and muscles around it. I took it on faith that that was true for human brains, but for a part- Auphe brain, some Mayo Clinic geek needed to do some serious research in that area, because there was pain. There was more than pain. I could feel Rafferty in there, a thousand scalpels slicing every cell, a hundred, a thousand, a million times. It was pain beyond vision or breath, beyond hope of an end to it, beyond hope of anything but an eternal hell of agony. I wished that same million times that he’d killed me instead. It was never answered except that each time I made that wish, I felt another piece of me slashed open. It was minutes, in reality, I guessed, but it felt like years-thousands and thousands of years.

That made it easy to understand that when I could see again, I saw my hands around the healer’s throat doing my best to strangle the life out of him. My best was good. If I hadn’t been weak from that pain, I’d have succeeded. Rafferty wasn’t doing anything to stop me. Niko reached past me to peel my fingers from the purpling flesh.

“Sorry,” Rafferty apologized, massaging his throat. “You said hurry and I needed to. If I’d had more time, I wouldn’t have let you feel that. But you were-” He coughed harshly and substituted a rough hand movement aiming toward the sky. He was right. I’d been more than halfway gone in intent and a second away from the deed.

My head still throbbed without mercy and I methodically pounded it against the front bench seat. It was that kind of pain, the sort that makes you want to knock yourself out to escape it. Hitting rock bottom, acceptance of your addiction; officially those two concepts sucked. Doing the right thing also sucked. I might think differently later, when this passed, but at the moment I wasn’t counting on it. Niko’s hand rested on my back and that should’ve made it better. He was Nik again, my brother-not just one more victim in the crosshairs.

I hit my head harder. This time I wanted the pain. I deserved it. Having that thought about the only family I had, the only one who’d given a damn about me for most of my life, I deserved pain. Being crazy was no excuse. Going Auphe was no excuse. There was no goddamn excuse for it. It was Nik .

Rafferty should’ve killed me.

But he hadn’t, and I had to deal. Niko had done everything possible to save me. I’d let him down once-shit, more times than I could count. But right now, I was going to step up to the plate. Be a fucking man, even if genetically I didn’t come close. I heard Robin move in the front seat to lay one on the back of my neck. It felt like ice through my sweat-soaked hair. My chest hurt too, my heart beating so fast I was surprised it hadn’t torn its way through my chest. Yeah, good old rock bottom. Wasn’t one of the twelve steps to recovery accepting a higher power? I didn’t believe in a higher power. I wished I did so I could hope one day to kick its ass for this.

“It’s all right, kid. It’ll pass.” He was probably guessing, but I appreciated Goodfellow’s effort. He’d been my friend for a while now, as hard as it had been to admit I could have friends-that I could trust someone besides my brother. But Robin was a friend, and a friend would lie to you when the truth wasn’t worth hearing.

“This is it,” Rafferty said quietly, words raw from a throat he felt didn’t deserve to be healed, else he would’ve done it. No bedside manner, but he’d been better off with a great bedside manner and a little less conscience. “It’s called serotonin syndrome. A little serotonin makes you feel good-like you did before-but a whole lot of it will kill you. Every time you travel, this is what you get-a shitload of serotonin your body isn’t meant to handle. The headache is from your blood pressure skyrocketing. A human might stroke out, but your human-Auphe brain can take it. The chest pain is from the tachycardia, your heart working triple time. Your body temperature will go up too, hundred two, hundred three. That’s from one jump. You make another one, you get another serotonin dump, and the blood pressure goes even higher, which your brain may not be able to handle. Your heart beats faster; your temperature goes up to one oh four or six. All of that has a good chance of killing you. A third jump…” He stopped before completing that sentence. Complete it he did though, sounding anything but proud. “A third jump means no more Cal.”

And that meant no more Auphe.

Okay then-problem solved. I couldn’t travel enough again to remotely think black and bloody Auphe thoughts about killing my brother. I’d die first, and that was fucking peachy by me. I stopped beating my head against the seat, though, and suffered through the headache. Goodfellow’s hand disappeared from my neck and I heard the gurgle of water. A moment later a bottle of water was slowly poured over my head and neck. It felt good, better than good, as my skin cooled beneath it. Taking a breath and shoving the pain down, I straightened, and what did I face?

The mirror again.

Things hadn’t changed. No, that wasn’t entirely true. The gray was still shot here and there with dark scarlet. The tiny flecks weren’t the blazing fire glow of Auphe eyes, though, but they didn’t belong in your ordinary human eyes either. Yeah, this was good. Before, there were some that could smell the monster on me. Now everyone in the supernatural world could see it. “What the hell,” I muttered, wringing my hair out as I eased back against the seat behind me. I covered my eyes with my other hand. “Great opportunity to get a few pairs of dark sunglasses. Expensive. People will think I work for the government or the Sunglass Hut.” I felt in my jacket pocket for my old pair. Nothing. Naturally. No sunglasses. No cheerful Cal. No anything. Auphe blood had made me a happy guy for a while, a short while, but it had felt nice. I should’ve known that was way too good to be true. No nice for Cal Leandros. It didn’t mean I didn’t miss the feeling-lie that it had been. But it didn’t mean I was going to let myself dwell on it either.