Rob Thurman - Blackout

“Cover me,” I said, stepping over the body this time … after giving it a solid kick in the ribs. He wanted me to be prepared, he’d said. I was prepared, but no one was going to pass up pausing to sightsee at what he thought was a zombie. “I’m going in. I’ll flush twice if I need reinforcements.”

It’d been a long drive and all the new information—new to me at any rate—in the world couldn’t change one of life’s most basic facts: When you gotta go, you gotta go.

“Who am I?”

Leandros was fishing a feather out of his soy milk with an irritated sigh when the question registered. Discarding the feather on the table, he looked at me, and it was strange. It had been strange, weird, and just fucking bizarre from the moment he’d walked into the Oleander Diner—seeing my eyes gazing back at me, not that I spent a lot of time looking at my own in mirrors. But that didn’t matter. There was someone who was literally part of me walking around in the world. We shared blood, flesh, DNA. We were joined, chained together, in a way only nature could pull off. It shouldn’t have felt that odd. How many people didn’t have blood relatives? None. How many people didn’t have brothers or sisters? It was so normal to have siblings that not having a brother or sister would’ve been more statistically off than having one—or that was what I guessed. I didn’t much care about accuracy and statistics. It didn’t change the fact that looking at part of myself was stranger than bathroom-loving spiders and nonzombies by far and away, and I had no idea why.

Maybe because you don’t deserve it.

Bullshit. I did too deserve it. Hard worker, monster killer, protector of the weak, kicker of the alcoholic and perverted ass. Why wouldn’t I deserve family?

“Who are you?” He distracted me from my inner pep talk/argument with myself. “As in you are Caliban Leandros of the Vayash Clan? That you work in this bar that cannot serve one drink in three years that hasn’t had at least one feather in it? That you hunt monsters if they warrant it?” Resigned to the feather issue, he sipped the milk before finishing. “Or who are you, starting from birth until now? Then there’s that most basically raw level, the psychological one. Goodfellow would probably rather tell you that—if you want to be on a ledge without the will to live within five minutes. He drove Freud into a phallic-obsessed psychosis. He could drive you into an early grave. He’s that persuasive.” He fished out another feather. “Besides, we need to return to work on finding Ammut. Her killing won’t have stopped while we were gone looking for you.”

I took a swallow of my own drink. Beer. I deserved it after what Leandros had inflicted on me since eight a.m. We’d run. For no reason. That was the baffling part. No one was chasing us; yet we’d run miles and miles. I’d discovered I goddamn hated running or anything remotely exercise related … even if it was, again, “for my own good.” That kind of epic discovery merited a beer. That we routinely ran every single day, rain or shine, called for a pitcher of beer, but I stuck with the bottle. If we ran again later, it would mean less to puke up. The lunch we’d had a few hours ago had made its own attempt without any alcoholic help. Leandros’s favorite place had turned out not to be vegetarian, but vegan, which was for people who preferred their suicide slow. Starving yourself to death via bean curd took commitment.

“Huh. That’s the most I’ve heard you say since I met you. It’s been only two days, but damn. I didn’t know you had it in you,” I said. “And considering how well we’ve apparently not done against Ammut so far, maybe we should leave her spider-loving ass alone.”

“At least you aren’t saying kidnapped any longer, and you’re the one who does most of the talking. My role is usually trying to keep you from talking as it tends to annoy our clients and our enemies. You do like your”—he searched for the right word—”hobby. And your hobby involves irritating nearly everyone you can. As for Ammut, we can handle her. We’ve handled worse.”

I had a hobby, one I was probably born with, but still it was another piece of me confirmed. I grinned and took another swallow. “Who doesn’t love sarcasm?”

“Anything you’ve killed. I’ve actually seen you hesitate on a deathblow so you could deliver some sort of action movie tagline first.” He shook his head, giving me the same look he’d given the feather in his milk.

“Then I’m a sarcastic idiot?” I grinned again. Brotherly resignation—that was fun too.

The eyes that were my mirror suddenly weren’t anymore. They lightened and I saw amusement in the gray. Did I ever look like that? Content? At peace? The way I semi-avoided my own reflection, who knew? “Yes, you’re a sarcastic idiot, but you’re easier to keep alive than a fichus and you look good in the corner of the apartment.”

“And I can water myself. Handy.” The bar where we were drinking, the Ninth Circle, was where I was a part-time bartender. It was also a “peri” bar. Peris, Leandros had told me, were rumored to be half angel, half demon, but they were simply supernatural creatures with wings and the source of most angel myths. Then he added that all myths were wrong in one way or the other and to never depend on them, assuming I remembered them. I should depend on him instead.

For someone who had kidnapped me—no matter how he phrased it, claimed me as his brother, and made me run this morning until I’d hoped I’d cough up my lungs so I could die and end it all, he made me want to believe him. He had this air about him. If this were a movie, and it seemed more like it all the time, he’d be dead in the first fifteen minutes; it was just that kind of aura of too damn good and noble for this world. A Goose in a world full of Mavericks.

On the other hand, he chopped the head off a revenant as if he were dicing a carrot for a salad. Honorable but deadly. I was lucky to be related to him and that he liked me. If he didn’t, it might’ve been my head bouncing down the hall. I frowned slightly at the thought. “You like me, right? I mean, you swore to find me to the ends of the earth with all sorts of angst in your great big noble basset hound heart, but that’s duty. That’s an obligation. Do you actually like me?” Okay, that didn’t make me sound like a girl at all. “Do you not hate me, I mean. Am I an okay coworker? Do a good job with the monster killing? Not cause too much trouble? Remember to get you a Christmas present, like extra hefty garbage bags for tossing out nonzombie bodies? Am I a not-too-crappy brother?” Oh shit, forgetting Christmas seemed like something I would do, considering the condition of my room. My brain was probably in the same condition—a crazed mess where not one dutiful holiday responsibility could be found until a month too late. “Fuck. Am I a bad brother?”

Under all of that verbal diarrhea was the same thing I’d kept repeating in Nevah’s Landing—I’m not such a bad guy. Tell me I’m not a bad guy. Only this time, here was someone who actually knew for sure.

This was stupid. It wasn’t as though he’d want to waste his time on someone who wasn’t halfway decent. His standards were high—up-in-the-atmosphere high. I could tell—anyone who was around him longer than two minutes could tell. That meant I couldn’t see him putting up with someone who wasn’t worth it. I didn’t know why I wanted the Leandros brothers’ seal of approval anyway. I was who I was. I’d worn a gingham apron without killing anyone over it. Really, how bad could I be?

He studied me so intently that I instantly wished I’d kept my mouth shut. Unless I was eight years old and had a Barbie Diary, this wasn’t the kind of conversation I should be having. I was a guy. Guys were stoic and macho and we had three emotions: bored, angry, and horny. If there were more, they’d have sent around a memo. I slid down in my seat and concentrated on my beer. God knew I couldn’t fake a piss break. Godzilla himself would probably pop out of the goddamn toilet with the luck I’d been having in bathrooms.