Rob Thurman - Doubletake

Niko had sat on the floor in the spot I’d vacated…the other end of the table. His hair was wet but already braided. He hadn’t put on his shirt yet. He was letting his tattoo speak for him.

As he wasn’t going to start, Kalakos did. “You’re right in what you think about me. But I see you with Caliba…Cal”—he paused and chose his words carefully—“and for all that you suffered and survived with Sophia, the Auphe, protecting your brother, becoming a man almost before you had become a child. I had no such obstacles to approach anything close to that in my life, and I’m a cold man. A man without honor to his own blood, without worth. As were my father and his father—a chain of unfeeling bastards were we all. Had I taken you with me I wonder if you would be who you are today. The fact that I am…that I was such a callous bastard may have been the making of you, Niko. You who are the best man I’ve come to know.”

He linked his fingers, the light sparking off the silver ring he wore on his right hand. “I have no excuse, but I think you wouldn’t be who you are if you had learned from me. You made your own way, a better way. Had I taken you, your brother would’ve been alone with Sophia. I travel always. It was years after his birth before I knew of it. I can guess that you are the better for not being raised in my image, but I know he is the better for being raised by you.”

That was true enough and it had nothing to do with my being better or not. If I hadn’t had Niko, the Auphe plan would’ve worked. I would’ve unmade this world by sending them back. Humans would be scarce and hiding in caves now or extinct, the Auphe would rule, and those were the hard facts.

But when it came to family, facts were meaningless.

Niko stared at him, and if I were sensitive to feelings and auras and all that new age/old age bullshit, I’d say the room got colder. “Amazing how the hindsight of a saint is twenty/twenty and every word a smug explanation of how your being a bastard was the making of me and the saving of Cal.” He stood. “I would’ve liked to have known if I had other brothers, perhaps sisters, but that’s not the one thing that I wanted from you the most. I wanted what you owed me. Two words, and instead you would have me thank you for what you did and what you didn’t do.”

I shadowed out of the bathroom with the knife. Despite my threat, I didn’t think I would get to cut Kalakos’s throat. He had it coming, but Niko wouldn’t like it or let me. He would think it would darken the humanity I had left. I didn’t think so. If anything, as a punishment, it fell short of what his father deserved.

Kalakos took off his ring and placed it in the center of the table. “You’re right. It doesn’t make a difference if it turned out for the best or the worst. What matters is, I was wrong.” He touched the ring with the tip of his finger. “All Vayash men are given one when they become a man. My actions have shown I never became one. I was wrong, and I’m sorry. You don’t abandon your family. For any reason. Even a bastard like me should’ve known that.”

The two words Niko had wanted. Needed.

I’m sorry.

So…

Fine. I wouldn’t try to cut his throat.

Damn it.

Niko didn’t have any other brothers or sisters, I found out after I was done with my shower. I used up the tepid water until it was ice-cold and kept going until my fingers and toes were blue. It took that long to soak off the dried blood from my legs and feet, thanks to Hephaestus and his floor of militarized cheese shredders. I was rubbing antibiotic ointment on my legs and wasn’t bothering with bandages. There weren’t enough in all the first-aid kits and I wouldn’t get pants over that mummy effect.

The door opened without a knock, which only two people would do. Robin—looking to beef up his porn site material—or Niko, who’d seen it all before from the day I popped out of the oven.

“What’s taking so long?” he started with a scowl, then a frown when he took in the sight of my legs and the bloody water still circling the shower drain. “When the Cyclops took me under, you ran for me. From across the room, you ran.”

I tossed him the empty tube of ointment before grabbing a towel to scrub at my dripping hair. “Yeah, I ran. Sort of a given, Nik.”

“Kalakos was closer and he ran carefully, picking his way through the metal. From the looks of you, you did not. You look as if you’ve been…flayed. Damn it, Cal, it wouldn’t kill you to be as careful as him once in a while.”

“No, but it might have killed you, and I keep saying it, but I have never heard you curse this much in your life, much less in two days,” I said, voice muffled by the towel. “Well? Any brothers or sisters?”

“If you’d fallen, you could’ve cut your own throat five times over and no, no siblings but you.”

I peered from under the towel, my lips curving in a wicked smirk. “Did you cry? In relief, I mean. At least one tear?”

“I thanked every major religious figure I could think of. I thanked Goodfellow as well, as he once pretended to be a god. I wanted to cover all the bases.” His face showed nothing but absolute sincerity.

I grinned wider and went back to drying my hair, then dumped the towel in the sink. I avoided the mirror as always and carelessly finger-combed my hair. “Do you think he meant it? That he’s sorry?”

“Probably not, but he made an effort and that may count. Fractionally. I have to think on it.” His lips tightened. “My God, your legs.”

“Looked at yourself lately?” He’d cleaned off the blood from himself in the car while it was still fresh. It didn’t change the fact that he appeared to have been attacked by five or six tiny dominatrices with small whips. And it wasn’t his legs, although they were now covered with pants, but his arms, his chest, his neck, and a few cuts on his face, from being pulled down through the floor by the Cyclops. I’d seen it in the car and here. We were all sliced and diced, some more than others and some less. Niko and I had the most. Kalakos and Robin the least. Kalakos because he was careful. I swallowed the growl. Robin, in spite of running full-out, because he had a few millennia of practice at dodging sharp objects. I respected the puck’s skill. I didn’t respect Kalakos’s investment in keeping his skin whole.

But whichever half you fell into, the more or the less, the four of us were all injured, Niko had pointed out. “The subject of the first class for blind butchers wouldn’t have fared as badly as we did.” That was a Nik joke. Not the type that are funny because they’re true, but the type that aren’t funny because they’re too true.

“Tired?”

I groaned. “You have no idea.”

Five minutes later he’d kicked Robin off the one couch in the room and had me on it with pillow and blanket before I had half pulled on a Chen-donated pair of cotton pajama pants. Goodfellow complained; I didn’t blame him. The cushions were soft and comfortable. The floor wasn’t going to be either one. But I heard Nik telling him it was time for his shower and first aid assisted by Niko himself.

My brother, he knew how to take one for the team.

“Monogamous or not, I am horrifically wounded and need all the first-aid assistance I can get,” Robin agreed promptly. “Ish would want that. For my health…my best interest. I’m sure of it.”

Ishiah wasn’t on a mission. He’d gone to Vegas to hole up in a hotel room and recover. Or flown farther, to Mexico, where they sell Viagra in barrels, not bottles. Whichever it was, I knew he had sun, and nothing trying to eat his feathered ass. I wished we could say the same.

Knife under my pillow, I slept instantly and hard and dreamed of Grimm. Of living his life shackled and chained. Tortured and craving the taste of raw meat. Dreamed of freedom and traveling a land I didn’t know existed. Learning things I hadn’t suspected, but knew I needed once I saw the world…the real world. I had a nightmare of killing a teacher, but I couldn’t remember what she looked like or what her name was or why she kept talking when she should’ve been dead. I dreamed grim and Grimm, but no more than five or six times.