Rob Thurman - Doubletake

He reached into the depths of a coat similar to many my brother had. The only people who wore coats like that in the summer were people who carried swords or were flashers. With the way things were going, the son of a bitch was a flasher with a sword. He retrieved a soft cloth bag and from that he pulled a round iron box about the size of an orange. “This contains something old, very old. An ointment made by the most powerful healer who ever lived.” He didn’t smile. If he had, with what he said next, I was pretty sure Niko would’ve taken that second punch to kill him then and there. “The rumors do pass among the clans. I assume you know of Suyolak.”

As we were the ones to destroy him, yeah, we knew Suyolak, the Plague of the World, born Rom and died a monster. Knowing him hadn’t been the best experience. People had died. We had almost died. The world itself had almost died. Suyolak was the original Grim Reaper…an antihealer who lived only to slaughter. I didn’t see a damn thing that dead bastard could do for me.

“Do you want to die?” Niko demanded, quiet and remote. “If so, return to the main area. There’s more room there for me to work.”

Kalakos exhaled, eyes shrouded—troubled? Good. He should be. “You are as I was at your age. You fight for your brother while I fought for myself. You fight for better reasons.” He lifted the lid from the box, scooped a small dab of dark green salve from within, and rubbed it on his face. In a rewind of time, the bruises faded, the nose straightened, although he winced as it did so, until all that remained was an untouched face and a crust of dried blood that he scrubbed off with one wipe of his hand. “Suyolak was born a healer of the Sarzo Clan. He was a healer for many years before he walked into the shadows. He made this before he turned. As far as I know, it is the last. I think there is enough to heal your brother.” He offered the box to Niko. “It is yours. The very least I can do.”

Niko accepted the box before searching Kalakos’s now-restored face—every inch of it—then passed it to Promise. “I have heard of such things,” she said, careful not to touch the contents. “I feel nothing inimical from it. I would touch it but I don’t want to waste any. There is little left, and Cal…”

Cal was fucked-up five ways to Sunday. If it worked on a half human, half Auphe…if it wasn’t a trick, I’d need a gallon of it, rather than a small box. But if it did work, Promise was right to be cautious. I’d need every speck of it I could get.

“Cal?”

When Niko said my name, Promise waited until I released the grip on my Eagle; then she handed the box to me. I took a whiff. I remembered too goddamn well how Suyolak had smelled—the one who’d Kalakos had so poetically said “walked in shadows.” I’d know a single molecule of his graveyard stench anywhere. There was none of it in what was cradled in the iron box. Iron was what had kept the ointment viscous rather than hundred-year-old dried flakes. Iron blocked the escape of psychic emanations and that’s what healing was. Not magic, but a genetic psychic talent.

Our Suyolak wasn’t in this. It smelled green, fresh, with a hint of mint and pine. “It’s safe,” I confirmed. “Our pile of dust had nothing to do with this.”

“If this doesn’t work, don’t bother running. You’ll die either way, but it’s been some time since I dismembered anyone alive. It takes a while, time I’m willing to spare.” Niko had done before what he claimed, but only with monsters and only the extremely horrific ones, but Kalakos didn’t know that. “Or I’ll let Promise have you. She doesn’t drink blood anymore, but has decapitated those who earned it a time or two since I’ve known her.” Now, that was true. I did enjoy watching Promise at work.

Kalakos didn’t appear worried. “It will.”

Niko moved to the other side of my bed and began to pull down the blanket to reveal my ribs.

“Niko, wait.” With Promise watching Kalakos, I felt safe in letting the SIG rest on the covers as well. I tapped my head lightly, and that alone had my vision and the pain doubling. “This is the only weapon we have right now. Wherever I managed to send Terminator deluxe”—and I hadn’t remembered yet—“when it gets back, Tumulus and me, it’s all we have.”

He nodded, then shook his head as he took the box from my other hand. The furrows over my ribs that had torn me open had been ugly, had to have been, and I could’ve bled out from them. Had almost bled out from them, as I still had a fresh bag of blood hanging from the IV pole this morning. It was why he hesitated. “If you can’t run, if you can barely move and it catches you, you won’t have time to build a gate.”

“Nik.” My lips quirked. “I was as twitchy as Goodfellow in a roomful of polyester suits last night, thanks to the puck grope-a-thon. If there was ever a time I could run like a bat out of hell, it was then. It still caught me.”

He frowned. “You know how I feel about your using logic. Turning my own weapon against me. You might as well steal my katana and stab me in the heart.” Through the bitching, which was more than likely to distract me from the pain of his tilting my head forward, he took a tiny amount of the balm on a fingertip and applied it to the cut on the back of my head. From the tracing of his finger it was a good four inches long. I felt an instant tingle and warmth and then an annoying pinch. “Hey, ouch.”

“Shit.” That was Niko cursing yet again. He’d cursed more in the past day and a half than in most of his life. He moved to the supply cabinet against the wall, flung open a drawer, and was back in an instant while stripping open a package. He went to work on the incision with hand flying.

“Niko, what are you doing and—Ow…what the hell? This isn’t the kind of healing Rafferty did.” I had my hand on the Eagle, ready to pick it up and nail Kalakos where he stood.

“It’s the staples I had to use to close the cut. You’re healing around them.”

And now he was pulling them out of completely healed flesh, which stung, but that faded too as the ointment finished the job. “Aren’t you going to complain that I should’ve thought of that first?” he asked with the last staple removed, his hand mussing the back of my hair to hide the memory of it.

“I’m not that much of an asshole.” Of course I was. “Does it make you feel better that I did at least think it?”

I could see the smile behind his somber mask. “In fact, it does.”

Promise and Kalakos waited in the living area while, behind his closed bedroom door, Niko took care of the rest. Luckily the stitches holding my muscles back together were dissolvable, and Suyolak’s balm sailed over them. Although the amount in the box had seemed small, a little went a long way and then some. There was enough left for the burns and kishi bite on my leg. After that, I took back the box and scraped a finger inside, gathering just enough left to film the skin. Then I popped the finger in my mouth, the same as a kid with cake batter, and sucked it off.

Niko eyed me warily. “I don’t think that’s meant for internal ingestion. What are you doing?”

“An experiment. You never know until you try.” I sat up, gloriously pain-free, and added, “Now, take out the IVs, tell me how to get this damn catheter out, then give me and Cal Junior some privacy. Knowing Goodfellow, he took a picture with his phone and Junior’s an Internet star by now.”

Niko coughed once before saying gravely, “Yes, a star. I’m sure.” Then he grasped my arm and gripped hard. “I saw you, and I…” He didn’t have to say it. I knew what he’d thought.

“I’m never dead.” I grinned reassuringly. “Heaven doesn’t exist, and hell has barricaded the door. I’m stuck here.”