Rob Thurman - Blackout

“You are not. Yet you are. And you know nothing,” she said, her voice almost as husky as Ammut’s.

A predator. A murderer. A manipulative liar. A killer through and through. I hated her. I did.

But, goddamn, she had the most amazing breasts ever. She put that little red Wolf at the strip club to shame. With the tattooed choker of wolf eyes and Celtic swirls that circled her neck, the vicious scars across her stomach, she twisted me inside and I couldn’t say why.

She smiled, her teeth white and even, human, but they’d worn blood in their time, I knew. “ Baa baa, little boy lost in the woods. Are you a sheep in killer clothing or a killer in sheep clothing? Find out. Soon. Or I will.” She was gone almost as quickly as Ammut, snatching up her clothes and taking the stairs three at a time. And, yes, her ass was as amazing as her breasts.

Sometimes it’s either shit or go blind. This was one of those times. Horny and hate—two sides of one coin.

Goodfellow and I continued to wait and, when Niko could finally sit up, my legs were sore but functional, and he was a much lighter green than before. He hadn’t puked in at least ten minutes. I gripped his shoulder. “You with us, Nik?” I asked. If I sounded concerned, shit, I was. It would be hard to drag a half-dead brother to a hospital while choking the life out of a puck who’d lied to you.

“Cyrano?” My grip tightened. It hadn’t been enjoyable watching him struggle against the poison and it had been less enjoyable not knowing what to do about it. Not knowing what I’d do without him, my family—a family I’d gotten attached to way too soon, but some things you couldn’t control. I’d looked over my shoulder in Nevah’s Landing often enough to know that someone should be there, standing with me. Now that I knew who that was, he was staying there. I didn’t care what I had to do to make that happen.

The truth isn’t pretty, but it is what it is. And questioning it is a waste of time.

He’d fed me when the woman who whelped me hadn’t. He’d clothed me. He’d made me go to school… . Okay, that had doubtless sucked. He searched for me when I was lost. He kept me alive when I was drunk and Wolves wanted to eat me. He gave me a home. He hired metaphorical buses so he could not so metaphorically throw himself under them for me. He did all of that for me.

Brothers—it went both ways.

He slowly wiped his mouth on my shirt, then coughed. Finally, he raised his head and rubbed at his bloodshot eyes. “It was nearly worth it to get rid of this offensive T-shirt of yours.” He tossed it over the top of the tofu special on the floor. Tofu did not make for fragrant vomit. “I have had much better days than this.” More of a graygreen now, he said, “You called me Nik. Then you called me Cyrano.” Uneasy, pleased, and then both emotions vanished under a set expression. “Did she hurt you?”

“Drain a little life out of you?” Goodfellow added, sitting on the stairs above me where he’d moved about fifteen minutes ago out of Niko’s immediate range, his voice drifting down from behind. “Although you’ve more than enough to spare. It might improve your attitude. Mellow you somewhat. That’s not necessarily a bad thing.”

I reached up and smacked his leg hard as I answered Niko. “No. She choked me with a few gallons of perfume, which slowed me down some. It was strong”—almost impossibly so, close to hypnotic—”and after, it was the same old, same old. ‘Where are they? Give them to me. Where are your brothers and sisters?’”

Behind, I heard Goodfellow make a noise, unidentifiable, but when I glanced back, he was smooth faced and innocent as a babe again. Right. I gave my attention back to Niko, who had been looking at Robin as well with what was my best guess of puzzlement and dread, but trying to read emotions under green nausea was difficult. “How about we go home? Because I am done with basements. This one or any future ones.” We made it up, neither one too steady, but Goodfellow helped and, despite aching legs on my part and a rebelling stomach on Nik’s part, we made it upstairs, down the hall, and out the door. I zipped up my jacket to conceal the missing shirt and to keep from freezing my ass off as Goodfellow flagged down a taxi.

Niko was alive, Goodfellow was alive, I was alive, and Delilah was gone. As things went, that put us on the plus side of the scoreboard. The fact that no one was curious why I hadn’t gotten sick wasn’t discussed. They also hadn’t commented—very cautiously hadn’t commented—on my not being curious as to why Ammut’s poison hadn’t made me all but vomit my stomach then intestines up … as it had Niko, as it would a human. I didn’t bring it up either. They didn’t want to have to answer, and I didn’t want to ask. I didn’t want to hear Niko have to make up another lie—that her perfume had protected me by canceling out the poison and that being bitten by her spider had inoculated me against other poisons of the Ammut kind. He would’ve come up with something. No, I didn’t want to ask.

Let sleeping dogs lie.

Listen to Wolves such as Delilah who don’t always lie.

Stop lying to yourself.

Half-breed , Ammut had whispered . Twice now, she’d said that. Half-breed , and that made me important to her, a monster that thought people weren’t worth eating. She needed me to find others like me, those half-breed brothers and sisters—whoever they were, wherever they might be. Brothers and sisters Niko, I was positive, knew nothing about. The look he had given Goodfellow had said as much.

Half-breed.

I was half human. I was Niko’s brother, so I must be.

Had to be.

But, Jesus, what was the other half?

I didn’t want to leave Niko alone, not until he was one hundred percent, so I asked Goodfellow to stay with him. The puck had calls to make, the rest of that party to set up. Niko could recover and, between calls, Goodfellow could bore the crap out of him by discussing the origins of Roman vomitoriums, because he’d yet to shut up about it. Show the guy some puke and it was nostalgia time for the wild and crazy days of a crumbling empire.

Niko was all about history, though. He might enjoy it … until the part where men were gladiators, body oil was cheap, and if there was a hole, someone’s dick was shoved in it. It reminded me of pictures in the news where deer would get their heads stuck in plastic Halloween pumpkins. I could visualize oiled-up gladiators running around in a drunken, panicked frenzy with their dicks stuck in ancient Roman wine bottles.

“Amphorae,” Robin said, punching in another number on his cell while Niko moved through some katas on the exercise mats, his way of recuperating—working the poison out of his system. “Ancient Roman wine vessels were called amphorae.”

“Shit, did I say that out loud?” The fact I had was only half the reason I was getting out of our place, but it was reason enough. I’d already popped some Tylenol for the residual ache in my legs. “But, hey, whatever. Fun, new knowledge … about the correct name of where gladiators could put their dicks if they were out of other options.”

“In Rome, you always had options.” His wicked smile was enough to have me bolting for the door as he started talking on the phone again.

“Cal, I told you I didn’t want you going out alone, not when Ammut obviously knows who you are and where to watch for you.” Niko stopped his workout. He was still paler than someone with his darker skin should be and the blond hair was almost brown from sweat. He looked sick, better, but still sick, and I kept that in mind.

“It’s broad daylight,” I protested. I’d showered—for a vegetarian, Niko could vomit with the best of them—and now I was back in fresh jeans and a black T-shirt. Just black. I’d run through all my clean and barely passable as clean T-shirts with nasty sayings that came courtesy of Goodfellow’s gift certificate, and had borrowed one of Nik’s shirts. Or stolen it, let’s be honest.