Rob Thurman - Slashback

“You’re the fucking smartest man I know,” I continued. “You could be a college professor, married, have two point five kids and a picket fence. Or you could’ve been the world’s top mercenary living on a private island. You could have done anything and you gave it up for me. Now you’re blaming yourself. . no, you’re blaming a fifteen-year-old kid who was doing it all for stumbling once when the weight went from overwhelming to impossible. How can you blame that kid when you won’t blame me, an adult, for doing things I know aren’t right and refusing to believe in the consequences? If you’re going to be like Jack and judge someone, judge me. I do know better, but it doesn’t stop me. You’re the one who does that. I’ve screwed up so many times and you’ve never thrown one of them back in my face. Treat my brother the same way. We’re a package deal.”

Moving carefully, I nudged his foot with mine. “That fifteen-year-old kid was my hero and no one, not even you, gets to say shit about him, all right? He was a hero and there is nothing he did or didn’t do that will ever change that.”

This time I saw it, not amusement, but the tension. It drained out of him and this time when he looked up, I saw Nik. My brother, not the torn up, despairing kid from twelve years ago. “Is this what I get for not letting you wallow in the past, moaning about what an abomination you were?”

“I was fond of that word, wasn’t I?” I tilted my head down, letting the hair fall over my eyes so that I could stare through the veil with menace and malice. “Boogety.”

The corners of his mouth quirked. “Yes. Terrifying.”

“Damn straight.” I grinned. “Now stop picking on that kid. I loved him. He meant the world to me and he never let me down-I don’t care what you or he says about that. Got it?”

“I believe I have it.” It was solemn and sincere.

“Good. No more wallowing. If I don’t get to, neither do you. Now get back out there and help us come up with a way to kick Jack’s ass. I’m working with a horny goat and feather duster. I don’t have much confidence in.” Not true of course. I had a helluva lot of confidence in Goodfellow and a moderate amount in Ishiah, but nothing like I had in Nik.

“Give me a moment and I’ll be there,” he promised. “I’m not looking forward to it after what they saw me do.”

“Hate to tell you, Nik, but they already knew you were human. Granted this is the first time they saw actual proof, but they knew.”

He looked down his long nose and snorted. “Go. I’ll be right there. I’d say do something annoying to distract them from my entrance, but that’s a given.”

“Ass,” I said fondly. “Three minutes or I’ll tell them about the time you stared at my teacher’s breasts. The one that was a stripper? Remember her and how you-”

“Out.” He pointed, but he was almost smiling now.

I levered myself off the dresser and closed the door behind me, moving as if it didn’t feel as if my ribs were made of ground glass. I was proud of that.

Back in the main room, I asked Ishiah and Robin, “Jack. . what do we do now? How do we figure out how to kill him? How do we even find him? Does knowing he was an angel help us at all?”

Ishiah, looking less like an angel with his wings tucked off wherever and dressed in a faded blue shirt and jeans, was already on his feet and had been long enough to start pacing. My question stopped him. “It does,” he said abruptly. “Of course it does. How could I be so blind? Churches.” He swiveled to face me. “He’s trying to save sinners if in a very macabre and twisted manner. He’s gathering followers. He still believes in prayer and souls. He would be most at home in a church. Abandoned ones most likely or we’d have heard about congregations going missing.”

That was good. That was goddamn excellent. There couldn’t be that many abandoned churches in New York. With real estate at a premium they wouldn’t be empty long before they were turned into a trendy pizza place with stained glass windows of the Virgin Mary.

I was at Nik’s door fast this time and I didn’t think that was possible. Opening it, I said, “Nik, we know where to look for Jack. Grab your sword.”

He didn’t have to, and he didn’t have to look for Jack. Jack had found him instead. Nik was gone.

The room was empty.

Niko

Twelve Years Ago

When I woke up, I felt empty. My mind blank, my skull hollow. It was a long time before a distant and misty path woven out of confused thoughts appeared. For every step on it that I took toward consciousness, I took two back. It reminded me of the dreams where I could see my room around me, but I couldn’t move-the feeling of being stuck halfway between the dream world and the real one.

This was the same. Or that’s what I thought, but what I was seeing wasn’t my room. It wasn’t any of the rooms I’d slept in, and there were many, in my life. There was the thickness of shadows and the slow swing of one dangling lightbulb. A cloud hung around the glow-a halo around a fogbound moon. It should’ve been peaceful. I’d spent many nights outside under the stars and moon when Sophia had worked a carnival. I’d liked that part, that feeling of floating up into the sky, the feeling of serenity.

I didn’t feel serene now. I felt terrified. As one half of my mind was hypnotized by the swinging stand-in for the moon, the other half was screaming. I needed to move, I needed to go, I needed to stop him. But where and who, I didn’t know. The adrenaline spiked my heart into a rhythm so fast and desperate I could hardly breathe and I didn’t know why.

My eyes drifted from the light to the wall. Concrete blocks with the sheen of moisture. Farther down was a cracked concrete floor. More than cracked-shattered. I could feel the damp in my lungs and I could smell. . I jerked in a hard breath and spasmed, the floor scraping the cheek that rested on it.

I’d been at home. I’d been with Cal.

No.

I’d been at home and Cal was gone.

I smelled it. One corner that was darker than the others, but even in the dark I could see where the floor fell away into a deeper darkness.

Cal was gone.

I vomited. Not much, only a trickle, but it tasted sharply of chemicals.

Homemade chloroform.

This time I moved with more purpose. There was pain in my shoulders as I tried to inch across the floor. Stopping, I drew in several ragged breaths and tried to sit up. It took me several tries and nearly ten minutes, but I made it and by the time I did, I knew where I was.

I was in a basement. Junior’s basement and through the pounding headache the stench was stronger, making the smell of vomit nothing. Death and decomposition. I could see the blurry outline of stacked bags of quicklime against another wall. It could do only so much this close to the pit dug in the corner. The haze across my vision was fading and I saw that too clearly, but not as clearly as the rot I choked on. If it smelled this tainted and wrong to me how badly had it smelled to Cal when I’d tried to tell him this maniac was a grocery store butcher?

At that moment, choking on air that reeked of dead bodies and seeing that my hands were fastened with police-issue cuffs around a metal support pole, I realized big brothers don’t get to mess up.

Not once.

Not ever.

Look what happened when you did.

“I talk to the darkness and the darkness talks to me.” Junior’s voice drifted down from the stairs leading up. He would be sitting on the top stair as I could see his knees folded and his scuffed sneakers. One of those sneakers had a single drop of crimson blood on it. Small and as big as the sun all at the same time. “But he’s not all darkness, my master. At times he’s a light that blinds. A light that’s just for me when I give him an especially good offering.” He seemed genuinely pleased about it. Like a dog who’d done his trick just right and got a pat from his master. “I know what he wants. What he likes.”