Rob Thurman - Slashback

Yellow and black pools of hazardous waste began to puddle across my vision. It was almost dark outside. He had to wait fifteen or twenty minutes; then he’d be able to drag me over to his house and no one would see. I used all the energy I could gather to reach up a hand and claw at the rag across my face.

“Now, Niko, that’s the name your brother screamed when I was waiting for him like I waited for you. That must make you Niko. Don’t be that way, Nicky. Don’t you want to see your little brother again? Whole anyway? It’s harder to make them out once they’re in pieces, the bodies. You have to blur your eyes, you know, like at those crazy posters with the hidden spaceships.”

The hand across my face was unmovable. I thought Junior was fat and sloppy, but there was hard muscle under it. It was one more thing I hadn’t seen. I’d thought he was dim and slow. I hadn’t seen the cunning predator in his eyes or heard the lie in his words. And now. . now I couldn’t see anything. I could still hear the mumble of his voice, dribbling on, but that too faded. I faded with it with five words echoing over and over in my mind.

Your little brother.

In pieces.

Cal

Present Day

Pieces of eight.

I’d wanted to be a pirate when I was a kid-after cowboy and before race car driver. I would rather have told a story about that kind of pieces of eight than the one I did have to tell. Eight men-eight pieces in a game-eight possible pawns.

I told Niko about the other men by the Ninth Circle, members of the same prayer circle as the ones in East River Park, and I told him exactly what I’d done with them-how I’d sent them away, how I’d brought them back. I was honest though-about how near a thing it had been to leaving them gone for good. All he had to say was we’d had this discussion and while unfortunately it had been after the fact, he wasn’t going to insult me by repeating the lecture. He also said that while I had done it, I’d also fixed it. I should give myself credit for that. I’d overcome a bad impulse when it would’ve been easier not to. He was proud.

Back in the recliner resting my ribs and my growing hangover, I thought about replying that he always enjoyed both insulting me and lecturing me, but I didn’t. I didn’t want to turn that pride into a smack to the back of my head. And he could be right. At the park I had asked Nik what the right thing to do was. I was trying. That I was trying less for my sake or the world’s sake and more for my brother’s sake, that didn’t matter. I was trying and the reason I chose to try was Niko. That counted. To me.

Considering Niko brought me a Mountain Dew to keep me from getting it myself and forcing me into another swipe at the codeine, which he would promptly confiscate as it didn’t mix well with alcohol, made me think it counted to him too. My boss, Ishiah-they didn’t come too much holier-than-thou than him-had once told me Niko was a good man, among the best of men, but his fatal flaw was that he’d burn down the world to save me.

That he was the sole reason that I wouldn’t burn down the world said something. . we were the flip side of a coin. That kind of balance was something the Buddha-loving badass that was my brother could understand. It didn’t matter what you’d rather have or that things would be easier another way-the world was about balance. I didn’t give a crap about Buddha and yet I knew that.

Nik disappeared down the hall and returned without his coat. He shrugged out of the harness that held his katana and placed it on the kitchen counter. Normally he would’ve left it in the bedroom with his duster, but with Jack popping in and out, he’d want his preferred blade close. He had more than enough practice and nonpractice blades in the gym area, but your favorite was your favorite. If you were going to be prepared, you may as well be prepared with the best.

“Goodfellow should be here by now,” I grumped, “with my pizza.” We’d called him to come talk about this new development, if it was one. I knew coincidences were rare, but I wasn’t looking forward to admitting I’d been jumped by a bunch of homeless men in white who wanted me to pray to Heaven while they killed me and I’d casually chalked it up to that Cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs New York experience every tourist campaign told you didn’t exist.

I would have stuck to coincidence, too, if it hadn’t been for the second attack. Jack working with his prey didn’t make sense and I wasn’t sure I believed that’s what was happening here. Didn’t believe one hundred percent, which was important. I wasn’t a gambling man. It was ridiculous to pin a theory on Niko’s estimated eighty-nine percent. He was throwing numbers around and if I had to hear one more time how he scored first in his college statistics class. .

“I have arrived.” The door was wide, soundlessly picked and opened as always. “Where are the flower petals beneath my feet? Where are the virgins to feed me honey and grapes? At the very least where is my theme song? Some Barry White would be astoundingly appropriate.” The puck was grinning cheerfully, haloed by the weak sunlight. Ten hours away from Jack had either done him good or. . shit, he’d gotten laid too.

Goddamn it, I remembered those days. I had to get back out there. Unfortunately the Auphe weren’t popular with paien just for a chat. Screwing was almost always a no go. Humans were completely out of the question. I couldn’t risk getting someone pregnant. I couldn’t risk making another Auphe mix-breed like me.

“Where’s my pizza?” I demanded flatly.

“I brought you pancakes the other morning. Once a year is my limit for taking pity on the celibate.” He clapped his hands together and kicked the door shut behind him. “What’s the lead on Jack? The sooner we put him down like a pack of plague-ridden squirrels, wretched rodents, the sooner I can stop babysitting you two and get back to the debauchery that is my life.”

“Monogamous debauchery?” I tapped fingers on the arm of the recliner. “Is that possible? And what about Ish stealing all your cards from the bad old days of whoring, whoring, and a little more whoring?”

“He made that all better. Kissed it better, isn’t that the saying?” The grin was all debauchery now, monogamous or not. “Would you like to know where he kissed it?”

“Nik,” I said desperately, “how about you fill him in on my massive fuckup.” Forget the hundred percent bar. I would own that fuckup, propose to that fuckup, and marry that fuckup if it would stop Goodfellow.

Niko, whose face was more impassive than usual, meaning his hangover was epic, was leaning against the wall while Goodfellow sprawled on the couch. I didn’t blame him. The wall looked safer. “We already told you about Jack’s victims being what he could consider wicked.”

“Not that that explains why Jack first went after Niko and kept on him once he dumped me like bad chicken salad,” I interjected.

“You have much in common with bad chicken salad. I’d not thought of that. Nausea inducing, occasionally deadly. A smell that is decidedly off. .”

“Hey!” I protested. “I shower every day. Ask Nik. He keeps trying to charge me for that Amish soap of his I steal.”

Robin waved it off, having accomplished his goal of pissing me off for the day. “Back to Jack. It is still true about Niko. He shouldn’t be wicked in Jack’s eyes,” Robin mused. “Wholesome and noble as a nun knitting socks for orphans, that is your brother. He is a warrior but not a murderer.”

“Then there is the fact we have now run into two groups of humans. They’re obviously homeless, but they dress in white sweatshirts, don’t drink or do drugs, but they are very insistent that we pray to Heaven and God and they have large knives to force the issue,” Niko went on. “It seems unlikely Jack who is concerned with the wicked and these humans who are concerned with sending souls to Heaven would appear at the same time and not in some way be connected.”