Rob Thurman - Blackout

“You can lie? Just not to me then.” When it was me, he clearly sucked at it. If you thought about it, that made him a good brother. I didn’t feel like a good anything right now. “I cleaned up the spiders last night; you can handle this mess.”

I took a last glimpse of the small, pathetic piece of meat on the counter and for a flicker of time it was much worse than the death of a blackbird. What is a miracle inside a person is nothing but a gravestone of flesh on the outside.

“The bitch gave up her snack just to send us a message.” Which we didn’t understand. Eight wasted lives to tell us nothing. “I say it again, you people need to look into e-mail.”

I slammed my bedroom door behind me, lay on my bed, and started emptying my jacket of knives, throwing them at the wall. It already had “Screw you” spelled out. I would see if I could add to that. Niko didn’t follow me. Wise man—crappy liar, but a wise man. After a few hours, I decided grown men didn’t sulk in their bedrooms. It was almost two a.m. when I headed out of our place on my own—because I needed it, to be on my own. To find not an Egyptian monster, but to find more of myself as Niko was doing his best to keep the old Cal buried … while mourning him with every halfhearted swat and god-awful excuse of a lie, every hour of sleep lost. He wasn’t the only one with good hearing. I heard him up half the night. He was practicing; trying to find a restful mind in an exhausted body—as he was doing now. He was in the gym area in sweats and bare feet. “Use protection” and “Did you brush your teeth?” were his only words in response to my noninvitation when I passed him as he slammed a roundhouse kick into one of the heavy bags.

God, what a fucking bad liar. “Sucked” wasn’t close to the word.

It should be a good thing, seeing easily through the man who wanted to be … who was my brother. It wasn’t. It only made me wonder why he was lying at all. Okay, he thought I was happier this way, and that damn Halloween picture proved him right. I hated to say it, but it was true.

But never mind the picture and my truth; it was the way he was lying. It was weird, as if no lie could explain away our rotten childhood. There were plenty of kids with crappy childhoods. Big deal. Why try so hard to lie and explain something that was almost normal these days?

But no one needed to explain why he followed me when I hit the street. I had a tattoo, the words of which Niko had told me meant “brothers-in-arms” in Latin—could you believe it? I was surprised I wasn’t a parasitic twin in a pouch under his armpit that he patted on the head and fed chocolate pudding—we were that close. Let me loose alone on the town by myself, target of spiders and high-class heart-eating bitches? No way would he let that happen. He couldn’t lie to me, but he could follow me without my seeing him. Somehow, I still knew he was behind me. I didn’t have to see him or smell him. It was pure gut knowledge, no malfunctioning brain cells required.

Always his brother’s keeper.

I hesitated two blocks away, deciding where to go, and headed for St. Mark’s to catch the six o’clock train while consciously not looking over my shoulder for my brother. Why ruin it for him? Niko didn’t have a matching tattoo that I knew of, pussy, but if he had one at all, I was sure it would say Massively Overprotective Brother from Kick-Ass Hell. I doubted they could put that in Latin, but that was what it would say, punctuated with a ninja star or two crossed soybeans, depending on his mood, and announcing his mission to the world.

He had changed my diapers, after all.

That made up my mind for me. No more hesitation. Alcohol—I needed alcohol. Niko could follow me all he wanted and drag my unconscious body home if it came to that. Then he could be the massively overprotective brother who dodged drunken vomit—less martial and heroic when phrased in a tattoo, but I didn’t mind.

I went to the Ninth Circle, thanks to three things. I knew how to get there since I’d already been given the tour of my old life and that hadn’t fallen into one of the black holes of consciousness that riddled yesterday. I knew someone I wanted to talk to would be there. And, a given, there was a huge amount of alcohol. It wasn’t long before I was on what felt like the wrong side of the bar, beer with a whiskey back before me.

“You usually don’t drink the more embalming of the alcohols. You most often stay with beer.”

Goodfellow, not the one I wanted to talk to, had sat down next to me. I did the shot of whiskey. “And why’s that?” I asked.

“Your mother was a raving alcoholic. Raving in most things from what I gather, but alcohol being one of her primary obsessions.” His own glass was flanked by two bottles of wine. I’d seen his tolerance. Alcoholism would be a problem for him only if someone started giving him entire barrels of the stuff. “As a result, you and Niko rarely drink. Tempting the fate of bad genes isn’t always a good idea.” He considered his glass for a moment, then touched it to mine. “But then sometimes fate is fate and one learns to live with it if not embrace it. If you don’t remember anything at all in the wilds of your amnesia, Caliban, remember that. Remember it well.”

Now there was the best kind of lie, one that wasn’t a lie at all. He’d told me something, something important, but I didn’t have enough of my past yet to know what it was. “A raving alcoholic, huh?” He wasn’t pulling any punches.

“Very much so. Verbally abusive, emotionally abusive, especially towards you, which would explain Niko being as much of a guardian in addition to brother when it involves you. Sophia had quite the pitching arm as well when it came to bottles and glasses.” He poured himself a third glass. “She was also a thief, a liar, and a whore—three qualities I usually favor, but in her case, combined with the maternal instinct of a wolf spider, she gives the rest of us liars and thieves a bad name. As for whoring, I’ve often been offered money for my brilliant performances, but I never took it.” He grinned and poured a second glass. “But it’s good to know I have a career to fall back on if the thieving and lying fail me one day.”

“Except …” The prompt had a threatening tone.

Goodfellow handed the second glass to Ishiah, who’d drifted up, no wings or feathers this time. “If it’s for money, it’s not cheating. It’s a righteous occupation of long standing. If one dies penniless in a ditch, monogamy becomes difficult … or far more easy, depending on your outlook.”

At Ishiah’s outlook, a fierce glower, the puck sighed. “Just remember the Good Samaritan story from that book you’re so very fond of. Picking someone who’s been mugged out of a ditch and carrying them home to oil them up? I know they were big on oiling people in those days, feet and all, but when you’ve been beaten and mugged, oil isn’t what you’re looking for. Trust me, there’s more to that story than anyone knows.” Ishiah’s glower went to nova-heat proportions. “Fine. Fine. I’ll wander off to a table then. Wave when you’re done discussing things of great import, and I’ll be back with something of far greater import in my pants. Dusty and unused for almost five hours now. Ah, sirens at table six. Perhaps they can sing sad lamentations of a warrior retired from battle.”

When he was gone and handing out his monogamy cards to the sirens, beautiful women with a green tint to their skin, Ishiah picked up the wineglass and drained it. After the two swallows that it took, I asked him, “Why? Man to bird, why? Why Goodfellow? Are you that hard up to be laid? How does he ever stop talking long enough to actually screw anyone?”

He instantly fisted my hair and smacked my face against the bar. He was nice enough not to do it hard enough to break my nose, and I was nice enough not to pull the trigger on the gun I had shoved against his throat.