Rob Thurman - Blackout

Niko put his spoon down with a sigh. “We, not just you, are working for a coalition of the preternatural in New York. Something is sending the Nepenthe spiders to kidnap werewolves, vampires, revenants, lamia, succubi, incubi, on and on—anything nonhuman. Sometimes their bodies are found, sometimes not, but none are ever seen alive again. We were hired to stop the creature behind this.”

“God, not creature. Well, goddess. Ammut,” Robin said cheerfully, slicing his ham to small pieces. “She’s supposedly an Egyptian goddess, which, of course, I , personally, figured out from the Nepenthe spiders. I was in Egypt hanging at the court of Ramses for a while. That obelisk he built, let’s just say I personally might be the reason he was obsessed with large phallic objects. But I digress. The spiders are from Egypt, originally birthed before the time of the pyramids. Their venom, greatly diluted, can bring forgetfulness to the sorrowful. It was called the nepenthe elixir—psychotherapy for the pharaohs. It was all the rage for the royalty who could afford to lose several servants to catch one of the spiders. However, a direct bite will make an animal or human forget how to run, to stand, to move, to think, to breathe even, making them easy prey. Snap, snap and all the baby spiders have dinner that night. Very efficient.”

Goddess? We were after a goddess ?

The next bite of waffle on my fork slowly slid off to splat in a pool of syrup on the plate. “What … the … fuck?” I said with what I classified as extraordinary calm before throwing that calm out the window and trying to stab Goodfellow with the fork—again.

Niko dragged me backward out of the diner, which was across the street from the motel, with his arm in a chokehold around my neck. Goodfellow followed, though, with enough lag that I was guessing he paid the check. I stumbled purposely as he came through the doors, felt the hold on my throat ease slightly—brotherly love turned out to be a great weakness—flipped Niko over my shoulder, and went after Goodfellow again. Who needed guns and knives—forks were my new weapon of choice.

As I hit Goodfellow, he twisted in a move I’d swear no one, unless they had Silly Putty for bones, could accomplish, and I somersaulted over his hip to land flat on my back. My head bounced on the asphalt in a manner I didn’t at all enjoy. Hissing in pain, I blinked against the double vision to bring into focus the two faces peering down at me. One was concerned and one puzzled.

“Was it something I said?” Goodfellow questioned, all innocence. He tilted his head toward Niko. “It could’ve been you. Vampires, werewolves, revenants, yadda yadda. Perhaps you blew a circuit in his view of a two-monster world: spiders and the magnificence that are pucks in all our glory.”

Right then I hated them both equally enough that Goodfellow had a good argument in the blame department. No, not Goodfellow. Puck. He was a puck. He didn’t deserve a name, the annoying shit. “You.” I pointed at Niko with the fork. At least, I attempted to point at him. Things were still a little blurry. As much as I wanted to hold the two of them responsible for that, I knew better. This was my fault. I’d let myself forget one basic fact, the very first fact I knew about myself—the one that nobody, not even Miss Terrwyn, had to tell me. “We have a last name? Same last name? Fuck it. Who cares? What’s your last name?”

“Leandros of the Vayash Clan. Our last name is Leandros.” He reached down, slid his hands under my shoulders, and sat me up.

“Whatever.” I closed my eyes and let the world stop whirling. “You, puck. Go back and get my food. I’m still starving.” I wasn’t, not anymore, but it was a matter of principle. “Leandros, get me back to the motel so I can throw up.”

“Are you dizzy? Nauseated? You could have a concussion.” The last possibility sounded accusatory, and Goodfellow countered in the same tone.

“He tried to stab me with a fork, Niko. For the third time, I might add. He is as my own family, and I’m willing to take one for the team, but taking syrup-coated metal like a spear through my throat is a lot to ask for.” I felt a hand gingerly pat the top of my head. “I’m sorry, kid. I’d have steered you toward the waitress’s bountiful bosom if she’d been out here. Oh, here she comes now … with the manager … who’s calling the police. Skata , it’s always something. Take him back to the room, Niko, and I’ll clear this up here.”

Just that quickly I was on my feet and across the road before I was able to get my eyes open. Then we were in the room, and I was sitting on one of the beds. Vampires, werewolves, other crap, gods. Gods . Goodfellow was on the money. I wanted the world back where and when I thought spiders and pucks were all I knew. Although I had known when I’d woken up in the Landing that the world was full of monsters, not only spiders, I simply didn’t have names to put to them and proof that I was right. I’d let myself think in those four normal days that I might just be a little crazy, because crazy was better than a world made of nightmares.

“Are you all right?”

I stopped rubbing the small lump on the back of my head and looked up at Niko. No. Leandros. Leandros was easier right now. There was too much to absorb and I needed some distance to do that. I needed to be able to breathe and to think. “I just found out that the world is one big frigging horror movie. I might need at least thirty seconds to process that, okay?”

“I can understand that,” he said slowly. “But you do need to know that being a vampire or a Wolf,”—as werewolves apparently preferred to be called. Good for them—”or a puck or a peri or any other number of things, doesn’t necessarily mean they are monsters. The majority are like people. Some are good; some are not. And some …” He let the rest of the sentence trail away.

“And some are?” I prompted.

He exhaled and sat beside me. “And some are monsters with no thought other than killing and no more soul than lies in the bullet of a gun. That doesn’t make the world a horror movie. It merely makes it like it already is, only with a few more layers that ordinary people will never see.”

“Just lucky ones like us,” I said grimly. “Whoopee.”

The puck came through the door then with my food in a Styrofoam container. “I paid off the manager, but I’d advise we leave as soon as possible. You, Junior, now owe me an extra three hundred on top of the damage to my pants.”

“Okay, I have to hurl.” Not from the bill or his obsession with his pants, but from the smell of the food. It looked as though I’d bought myself a slight concussion after all. I made it to the bathroom, slammed the door behind me, and vomited into the toilet. It wasn’t much. I’d had but half of my lunch, no supper yesterday, and not much of breakfast today before having my world—and my stomach—turned inside out.

I had straightened and grabbed the towel to wipe my mouth when the window about five feet up the wall exploded. It was frosted glass for privacy and fair sized, about two feet by two feet. It was the perfect size for the Nepenthe spider that came barging in. Double pincers in simian jaws were opening and closing rapidly, eight black legs were supporting it on the wall and reaching for me, six eyes were fixed on me as its bulbous body finished sliding through the window. It was the size of a big dog, exactly the same size as the German shepherd across from the Oleander Diner that had fled at the sight of me, leaving piss in its wake. The spider’s eyes were the same color as that piss, bright, cheer, middle-of-the-daisy yellow.

I jammed the waffle fork that I still had in my hand right in the middle of all six of those eyes. “Hello, Sunshine.”