Rob Thurman - Blackout

“Show him the respect he deserves. He is your closest friend. He knows you.” That had to be true, because Goodfellow wasn’t rushing over to break this up. He knew his … mmm … Wingnificant Other wasn’t going to smash my brains out on the bar and that I wasn’t going to shoot him for trying. Niko, lurking somewhere outside the bar, hadn’t come in either … to prevent violence or avenge the fact my beer hadn’t been served to me in a baby bottle. Ishiah wasn’t a threat—or a monster. He was just my sometimes boss.

I straightened, put my gun away, and pushed the hair back so I could see. If it didn’t grow and fast, I was going for a buzz cut. “He knows me. He’s my closest friend. Everyone says so, but how do I know for sure?” Now was a time for facts. Considering the decision I’d made based on a brother’s need and in spite of a picture I, still to this minute, wish I’d never seen, I wanted facts to go with it. That was why I was here. Ishiah knew Cal … and knew me, but as an employer, not a friend. He’d be more likely to tell the truth and not soften the blow.

“What he told you about your mother,” the eavesdropper said, “do you think you told him that? All of that? You and Niko are secretive—anyone raised the way you were would be—so despite Robin’s being your friend, would you have told him that?”

No. Friend or not … no. That kind of past abuse … The rest of it was one thing, but to know two kids, kids I didn’t remember although I was one of them, had lived through that. I wouldn’t be throwing those details around. You shouldn’t be ashamed, but you were. You shouldn’t feel guilty and tainted, but you did. Niko had carefully edged around that information, blurring it, but Goodfellow had given me the real deal and, although I recalled none of what he’d told me happening to Niko or me, I felt it the same as if he’d kicked me in the stomach. It wasn’t a good feeling, which was why Niko hadn’t told me … and why Goodfellow had. Goodfellow was my friend, but he was Niko’s friend too.

Robin knew what Niko was doing to me—for me. After all, he was the supplier, the dealer in the dirty deed, but he also knew what Niko was doing to himself. He wasn’t going to choose between us. He gave me a hint about my past self through the truth about my mother, but the rest was up to me. Niko, unlike me, had walked through that past, whole and unshadowed, but how long would he stay that way if he lost his one anchor? If he lost his real brother?

The choice to claim the past and the old Cal that went with it was one Goodfellow was letting me decide for myself. He didn’t know I’d already made it.

But I still wanted to know it was the right choice.

“Then how did he know?” I asked as I heard a Wolf pass behind me and laugh. It wasn’t a nice laugh, gloating and gleeful with the whisper of sheep behind it. I let it go. It was happening more and more now in the hour I’d been in here. From that, I gathered that pigeons like Ishiah rated above sheep, but Wolves rated above both—in their furry little minds.

“Because it’s what he does. He’s a trickster that has lived longer than I can remember, and I’ve lived a very long time.” There were the wings, not in disturbance this time, though. Spread and lifted high, they made you think of eagles proudly surveying their domain. “I’ve seen man take his first step. Robin has been around long enough to have probably stepped on one of man’s slippery ancestors crawling from the ooze. He can take the smallest fact and spin an entire tapestry from it. But you gave him that one small fact at some time or another and you never would have if he weren’t your friend.”

I was getting so much truth now that I was surprised they didn’t charge extra for it. Abusive whore of a mother. No wonder Niko had to raise me. A horny puck that never shut up as a best friend, but, considering the T-shirt slogans I picked out, it was a wonder I had a friend at all.

I finished my beer and got another from Samyael. Good old Sammy was quick with the beer. “Can I ask you something, boss?”

“‘Boss’?” He took my empty and disposed of it under the bar. He was doing my job tonight. “You usually only call me boss when I have an axe against your neck.”

“An axe, huh? I must call in sick a lot.” I drank half of the second beer. As Goodfellow said, fate was fate; genes were genes. I wasn’t an alcoholic yet or I’d have gone into DTs in the Landing as I hadn’t touched the stuff there. But that didn’t change the fact he was trying to tell me something about who I’d been—he simply wouldn’t do it outright. Ishiah might. “So can I? Ask you something?” He paused, already looking as if he regretted it, but nodded.

“Is Cal a good guy?” Not me, but Cal, because there was still a difference. I didn’t watch his face for the response. I drank some more and waited.

When he finally answered, I accepted the single-word reply with a slight tip of my head in thanks. This time I was the one who had to take a while to think. When I was done, I asked him one more question. “If Niko had to choose between me and a burning orphanage full of big-eyed kids hugging fluffy kittens, which would he choose?” It was facetious as hell, but it got the point across.

Ishiah took the beer from me and drank it himself. “Irish courage … in a way. I picked that up from Robin. What it took you barely months to find out about him, it took me thousands of years. I was such a pretentious ass and full of dangerous, even deadly conviction. I judged him. It was only when I judged myself that I saw the truth. Now I won’t deny any truth.” He replaced my bottle with two more—one for me and one for him.

“Niko’s flaw—and it is a fatal one—is that if it came down to saving the world or saving you … he would save you.”

Fatal to the world and big-eyed orphans, I could see that, but to me it meant one thing:

How could I do anything less?

I didn’t know if it was my sheepness that offended the Wolves or my singing. But finally the last sounds that had kept them howling and hiding under their tables wasn’t enough to hold one of them back. He was too drunk to care about our Kin agreement or too tone-deaf to appreciate the song. While the rest of the Wolves covered their ears and kicked in agony instead of trying to kill me, this guy had had enough.

One or two or seven or twelve had been giving me the eye—blue, yellow, orange, brown, green, take your pick—and muttering among themselves. The more I drank, the more they muttered and the less their loyalty to the Kin word mattered. Then again, the more I drank, the less putting a bullet in a fuzzy ass bothered me, which made us even. I couldn’t say if that bullet would be lethal or not as my double vision was getting worse. I was matching Goodfellow drink for drink, which made me some sort of superhero with a mutant gene for consuming oceans of alcohol. And with mass quantities of alcohol comes singing.

The puck had started and I had followed. From the startled looks the peris gave me, that was not me, but considering this particular me was probably going away, screw it. I’d party while I was here. As for the singing itself, we weren’t bad. A karaoke machine would’ve helped me with the lyrics if not my kick-ass sheep rep, but I had a good voice, go figure, and of course pucks were great at everything, so said Goodfellow.

But while American Idol might’ve thought we could shoot gold records out our asses, the Wolves didn’t care for the higher notes of the song and “Danny Boy” was not their thing. I thought their pained howling added to the song, which was sad, or so Goodfellow told me. The peris took it in stride. Ishiah had said he’d given up his judgmental ways. That didn’t leave him much room to bitch.