Rob Thurman - Blackout

Here was the fact I’d let myself forget across the street minutes ago—what I was. I hadn’t been completely serious with my attack on Goodfellow. I was serious now. I kept my arm up and barely out of reach of the pincers as the spider thrashed and screamed. I didn’t know spiders could scream, but this kind was doing a damn good job of it. I pushed the fork in farther until the heel of my hand hit eye and flesh before I rotated the metal, scrambling whatever it was using for a brain. Behind me the door flew open as the spider screeched one last time, twitched violently, and then went seventy-five pounds of dead on the floor. I let go of the remaining five inches of metal and wiped eye goo off my hand and onto my jeans.

“You … You killed a Nepenthe spider with a fork ?” Goodfellow said in a strangled croak over my shoulder.

“Yeah.” I snorted and returned to flushing the toilet. I wanted to be a tidy killer for the maid’s sake. “Now imagine what I could’ve done to you at breakfast if I’d really tried.” I gave him a dark grin and added, “Sunshine.”

Goodfellow was less talkative—say “Hallelujah”—as we once again climbed into the car and headed north. Despite what I said about not wanting to go back to New York, I didn’t see I had much choice with spiders either following the two of them or following me. I was guessing me. I’d racked up five to my name so far, and if that didn’t make me the most popular target for the eight-legged crowd, I didn’t know what did. I could try to bail anytime I wanted before we reached the city, but I’d have to start carrying forks by the bucketful if I did.

Speaking of which, I watched as the puck picked up from the floor a clear plastic Baggie containing a plastic fork and knife typical of fast-food “silverware” and then cracked open the car window enough to shove it out.

“That’s called littering,” I commented with the smirk of a mean-spirited ten-year-old bully, which was very close to how I felt. Not pretty, but honest. I wasn’t a bad guy, repeat-repeat, if a damn good monster killer, but I had a headache. I’d been kidnapped—sort of. I was finding out about a weird and creepy world, and I had a job that no one with an ounce of self-preservation would want, where the customers were as freaky as your targets, and you could bet your ass no one tipped—or gave you a free shirt. Being an okay guy was different from being a hero. How long did monster-fighting heroes live in this shadowed world?

“Littering or self-survival,” Leandros added. “Cal, behave and tell Robin you won’t kill him with a fork if he drops his guard.”

Behave? Leandros could claim to be my older brother all he wanted, but I didn’t ever see a moment in the future where his telling me to behave would have any impact on what I did. If that was the brother I had been before, well, best plant a cross in the dirt, because that brother was dead and dust. I was my own man. “No,” I replied, amiably enough. There was no need to be too rotten. I’d already proved my point with the spider. They’d scooped me up like a toddler out of a playpen at Nevah’s Landing, but I knew what I was dealing with now. So did they.

“No?”

“You sound like the Grand Canyon. Every time I say something you don’t want to hear, you repeat it right back. It’s rather unninja of you. Do you get a ninja silence-in-crisis merit badge taken away for that? Do they slice it off with a shuriken from a hundred feet away?” I was wearing one of Leandros’s shirts, black—which led to all the ninja bashing. “And that’s right. I said no. I will collect as many forks as I can and the puckster here will never know when one is headed for his monogamy-loving ass. I don’t know you. Either of you, and all the talk in the world isn’t going to change that.” I leaned back against the seat to watch the scenery pass. “Since I don’t know you, I don’t know what you might do. And since I don’t know that, I don’t know how I’ll react. That’s just honesty. I’m good with forks, but I’m not psychic.”

There was an immediate stinging flick to my ear, not to my head, which was sporting an asphalt headache. He was that considerate at least. “Ow! Shit.” I cupped the ear that burned like fire. He was as bad as Miss Terrwyn had been with a swat.

“Now you know what I, personally, will do if you don’t show respect for your elders.” This time I had seen him move, but he was quick, this brother of mine—cheetah double take quick. “As for Robin, he may just forget about his newly found monogamy and show you a rerun of what you’ve forgotten. He comes by his reputation honestly, from what you told me.”

Jesus. An event I couldn’t remember, but I was doomed to hear about it on a daily basis. “You play dirty.” I sulked, dropping my hand.

“Yes, I do. You taught me how.” Leandros kept driving, seemingly unperturbed at the thought of any reprisal from me. “Since you don’t know us, we’ll tell you anything and everything you want until your memory comes back.”

“Great,” I interrupted before he could say anything further. “I have a shitload of questions for you.” Now that I’d found out about the number of nasties in the world, a list so long, the rain forest would have to be entirely razed to make the paper for it, I could focus on more personal questions. “The puck said one of those spider bites would make someone forget everything, forget how to move, how to fucking breathe.” Jesus. “Even if none of them was left alive to eat me, why didn’t I suffocate on that beach?”

Goodfellow answered that one without thinking twice, which meant he had thought twice or more than twice. The henhouse, I reminded myself. Always remember the henhouse and the fox with a mouthful of feathers. “The only thing I can think is the spider bit something or someone else before you. Like a rattlesnake, it didn’t have a full dose of venom—you received enough that you lost part of your memory, but you kept everything else. You managed to get the ancient pharaoh Prozac, only double or triple the amount. You didn’t forget a recent sorrow. You forgot your entire life. But it does wear off. Have faith.” It was a very smooth explanation, but before I had a chance to comment on how smooth, he’d already changed subjects. “Also, have faith that if you do kill me with a fork, someone will avenge me. Someone with wings, a sword, and a temper to drown the world in fire instead of water.”

“Robin,” Leandros warned.

“What? I’m simply saying. He wanted information. I want to make sure he has the entire picture,” the puck defended himself. He went on to give me more information, not waiting for me to ask for it. Niko and I were brothers. Niko was full Rom with a handful of centuriesold North Greek thrown in, which explained the blond hair. I was half Rom, half gadje —a combination frowned on by the gypsy clans, but not by our mother who had taken off on her own when she was a teenager. She had no prejudices when it came to bed partners, gypsy or non. He put that very carefully. He did not say Sophia didn’t care whom she screwed, but as he went on to say that Niko and I had no other family, that neither of us knew who our father was, it was easy to connect the dots. Mom got around—and around and around and around. That was a good reason that Niko wasn’t telling me this himself. Who would want to tell his brother that his mom was a slut?

Mom was also dead. She’d died in a fire, the result of bad trailer wiring. I waited to feel something on hearing that. Fine, she never met a mattress she didn’t like, but she’d been my mom. She could’ve had good qualities. She could’ve made cupcakes for my birthday or played with me on a beach that wasn’t freezing. There are worse things than liking to screw around. I had to feel something knowing she was dead, knowing she’d burned to death. Goodfellow hadn’t said that; she could’ve died of smoke inhalation, but I knew better. I didn’t remember, but I knew.