Rob Thurman - Blackout

If anyone would know how to make that ancient nepenthe potion of the pharaohs, or know someone else who did, it would be Goodfellow. He was the one who’d known of its existence in the first place and who knew its effects. He did that for Niko, and he’d given me enough of a clue in the bar for me to make my own decision. Under the cloak of talking about my mother’s alcoholism, he’d told me … Sometimes, genes or no genes, you simply had to accept who you were.

I didn’t know personally if Cal was a good guy or a bad guy, but I did know he was a shadowed one. I also knew what Ishiah had told me, but that wasn’t anything I’d repeat. I also knew people reacted to me like a grenade that inexplicably didn’t go off. I know Wolves and boggles had lost respect for me, even though I could still kick their asses. I knew body-temple Niko wouldn’t have gotten a tattoo for his Cal unless he thought it would help the return of part of that Cal—some of him but not the part that remembered, not that unhappy part. No one who cared for his brother wanted him unhappy.

Niko wasn’t the kind to make mistakes often, but with me … and with Cal, he had.

I didn’t know Cal, that was true, but I knew myself. I wasn’t a murderer. I was a killer, but only if I had to be. I wasn’t an abusive shit like our mother was said to have been. But most of all, I wasn’t a thief. I wasn’t stealing Cal’s life or Niko’s brother. I’d thought it before: Niko Leandros was a born martyr, but now it was time for him to walk away just this once and let someone else take the stoning in his place. Cal wasn’t happier this way, because I wasn’t Cal; I was only a piece of him.

Whoever Cal was didn’t make a difference. I wasn’t complete. I wasn’t the real deal, but real or not, illusion or the foundation of an actual person, I was a good guy. If you could have anything in the world, that was one of the better things to have. Tombstones crack and fall. Fortunes come and go. Legends fade. What you did with your life, no matter how short it was or how real it was, that counted.

That lasted forever.

“Did you fall asleep?” A sharp elbow stung me over my ribs.

I let it all slide out of sight. It was a waiting game now. My memories would come back, but I couldn’t pick when. That was out of my hands, although using Niko’s vomit-worthy toothpaste instead of the minty-fresh venom-laced one would make sure it did happen and sooner rather than later. Sitting around thinking what a damn heroic guy I was wasn’t going to make anything happen on the Ammut front, though. I had to pay that rent.

“Thinking how annoying it would’ve been to wake up to five or six Nikos instead of just the one. You’re damn annoying all on your own. More brothers? No way.” I elbowed him back. “Since we don’t know anything about what bat-shit-crazy Ammut wants from us, why don’t we dangle ourselves in front of her so she can ask us personally? Get Goodfellow to hold whatever rich shits of New York party he’s going to tonight.” The puck had said it would take days to do right and be believable. But if we put enough bait in the trap, it wouldn’t have to be believable—only too good to pass up. “Have him invite a crapload of vamps and Wolves and whatever else crawls out from under the beds along with humans. Stack the deck. It’ll be too juicy a temptation. Ammut will either try to eat the guests or jump us to ask us about the brothers-and-sisters thing.”

The Peter Pan albino crocodile smiled in my head and that long grin … Oh, shit … It was made of metal. Every tooth was bared in that horrific grin, shining like a serial killer’s blade. Here we have left you presents. Here you have brothers and sisters.

Or my mind could stop goddamn teasing me and tell me itself. I waited a second, but there wasn’t any more from the crocodile that seemed to know more about things than Niko and I combined. Lucky crocodile. Lucky me, because I didn’t want to see it anymore, not the gleam of one hideous fang.

“You call him,” I said as I stood back up. “I’m scared shitless he might have it set to speakerphone and I’ll hear something that will make me jab my eye out with the closest sharp object.”

“Where are you going?” he demanded—overprotective or on my ass to keep away the lazy. The result was the same.

“To brush my teeth,” I said before he could. I couldn’t save him from the chain of deception, but I could save him from at least one link in it. It was all in that brother handbook.

Whatever part of that brother I was.

It was Delilah who led us one step closer to Ammut and a bigger step to the old me—hours before the party Goodfellow had managed to set up. She called us with the location of a brownstone with a basement full of bodies. That was a surprise; then again, maybe not. Niko had said she wanted to impress the Kin by killing or saying she’d killed Vukasin, but she’d impress them even more if she killed an Alpha and helped bring Ammut down—all while letting us do the heavy lifting.

Ambitious and smart didn’t begin to do this chick justice. If I had one chance before this was all over … Ah, damn, she’d eat me alive. Literally. During the act probably. The real Cal, like me, was a killer, but unlike me, his moral judgment about it had to be more blurry than mine. He could run with the Wolves, while everyone else heard only baaing when I was around. I was nothing but a sheep in their eyes—a very badass sheep, but badass or not, a sheep was a sheep. Kill someone in the middle of sex? I couldn’t do that. But I didn’t doubt that Delilah would and Cal could. She would for the sheer fun of it. Trying to kill Vukasin and the council before Ammut beat her to it showed she loved her slaughter, and Cal would do it in self-defense. I hoped it would be self-defense.

Niko missed his brother. Yeah, self-defense. That guy loved the hell out of his brother, and a stone cold killer—he wouldn’t have raised one of those. He was like frigging Gandhi with a katana and a boot in your ass—ethical but pragmatic. He wouldn’t have brought up a human version of a monster.

The laughter in my head was twofold this time, one fold hysterically amused and one fold darkly bitter. What lived in Cal, good, bad, and in-between, made me not particularly sorry I was only part of him, the silhouette of him on the sidewalk fading more every hour as the sun moved across the sky.

I wondered if I’d remain part of him, aware, or if I’d disappear completely.

Now I lay me down to sleep …

What of you would I possibly want to keep?

Or maybe I’d be a voice in his head. I hope I said better things than I’d had to hear. But better yet, I wouldn’t be there at all. Better to sleep, locked in his subconscious, because I had a feeling he wouldn’t listen to much of what I had to say.

“What are we doing here?” Goodfellow said as the taxi stopped. When he’d called us to tell us about the party, Niko had said we’d gotten wind of Ammut moments before his call and to grab his sword and pick us up at our place.

“Delilah called,” I said as I opened the door and stepped out of the cab. “She said there were some leftovers here for us. Investigation, clues, all that crap.”

Once he and Niko were out and the cab was pulling away, he said, “If Ammut shows up at the charity event”—which was what rich people called an excuse to get hammered—”this entire trip will have been a waste of time. I hate wasted time. It interferes with my wickedness and dissolution. Do you think becoming this degenerate comes without practice? I’ve invested millennia in becoming the magnificence that stands before you. But it takes time and upkeep to maintain these heights. Time not spent in what may well be a putrid pit of spiders and bodies.”