Rob Thurman - Blackout

“And we were only just attacked in broad daylight,” he said, extra slowly in case I’d missed that fact.

“Inside. I plan on staying outside where all the world can see. I have a hunch about Ammut I want to check out. You need to get better and you have only hours to do it. I’ll be back in no time.” From the sweat he ignored running down his face, he wasn’t convinced. He squinted his eyes at the flow, like Clint Eastwood … damn macho. The sweat did not exist; only me and my idiocy did. “I’ll even bring back some Pepto. Have you in the pink in no time.” I grinned and was out the door before his poison-weakened body could lay a beat-down on me … or a sit-down. That was more likely. He’d tackle me and sit on my back until I came to my senses.

Unfortunately, the senses I was coming to weren’t what he wanted, and I slammed the door behind me, sprinting down the block as fast as my sore legs could carry me. Neither he nor Robin came after me. I’d trusted them in the past week, more than I’d have guessed I could trust anyone when I’d woken up in Nevah’s Landing. Now it was their turn, and they came through. Without trust, in our world—my world now—you had nothing. It made me feel kind of bad that I’d lied like a dog to them and lied better than Niko had to me since he’d shown up in my lost life. That answered that question. It definitely made him the better brother.

I had no plans on staying outside and I had no hunches, gut feelings, nothing like that about Ammut. I did have them about someone else, which was why I went back to the museum to see the mummy … Wahanket? I’d done something to him, something bad, something that kept trying to claw its way out of the pit in my memory that Niko’s nepenthe potion had shoved it into. And it wasn’t only that, with every new hour I had more and more memories leaking into my brain; dirty dishwater into a sponge. Dirty, because shadowed Cal in that shadowed photo wasn’t clean, but that wasn’t my judgment call to make. That wasn’t my job; being a brother was. Here was hoping Wahanket didn’t hold a grudge.

Sangrida—I remembered her name, which was helpful—was equally helpful in walking me past security again and escorting me to the correct basement door. I thought I was done with basements after Ammut, but they weren’t done with me. “Why is your brother not with you?” Her blond hair was pulled back into a tight, elaborate braid that looped around her head. She was Princess Leia—with a bleach job and a bucketful of steroids.

“Ammut,” I explained. “Nik’s okay, but he needs to stick close to the toilet. Hurling issues.”

Apparently Goodfellow wasn’t the only one with Too Much Information syndrome. She sighed, her massive bosom heaving. On other women it would’ve been breasts, melons, tits, whatever, but on her, it was bosom. If I forgot that—of all the things I’d forgotten from the last museum memory, this was a thought that still echoed—I was positive a size-eleven Valkyrie boot would end up in my ass. It was a bosom, to be respected, not stared at, and, yeah, maybe I’d go on down the stairs while she was studying me, contemplating God or Odin knew what. I did know that I did not want to end up as Thor’s bitch in Valhalla. “Thanks, ma’am,” I said hurriedly, and went down the steps faster. A mummy versus a Valkyrie—I’d take the first any day.

There was a basement, then a subbasement, and it was somewhat familiar. Unfortunately, the familiar was of the where-the-fuck-is-he kind. Wahanket liked his privacy and that made finding him difficult; I remembered that—I did, a genuine flash of recalled annoyance. This time I worked on sniffing him out. Although there were quite a few things down there that smelled mummified, the largest one was the one I tracked down. It was a strong scent of mummy and … barbecue.

He hadn’t moved from last time. I remembered that too—the large space. The computers mixed with Egyptian artifacts. The mummified cats perched on surrounding crates towering high. Salomes wherever you looked. Pooh … the koala bear, I meant, was still dead on a metal table. Long dead and no longer undead and that was good. Then I got a look at Wahanket and figured out why he hadn’t moved to a new undiscovered location.

He was a torso.

Granted, a torso with a head and one arm, but, basically, a torso.

Yeah, now I remembered. I remembered the axe.

The other arm and two legs were neatly stacked in a pile on the floor and beside that was a large curved needle strung with wire, the same wire that was holding that one arm on with neat stitching at the shoulder. As soon as Wahanket saw me, the arm dragged the body behind an Egyptian bench of some kind and blackened teeth bared as the mummy hissed at me. I’d done a bad thing to him all right. Part of me felt every bit like the monster he was, part of me didn’t give a damn, and another part of me felt as if the cats were cheering me on.

And yet another part of me chose to ignore the shadows that grew around me. They were my shadows, and I was done denying or refusing that.

“Hank, it looks like a helluva craft project you’ve got going on.” I pulled up a chair, gold with smooth pieces of inlaid blue, red, and black stone. Sitting, I spread my legs some, took out a knife in one hand—I didn’t see a gun doing much good—and patted my knee with the other. In seconds a mummified cat was draped across the denim, making a grinding, grumbling growl of pure bliss. Where Salome was gray and hairless, had lost all her bandages, and was sporting a small gold and ruby hoop earring, this guy—and it was a tomcat with shriveled, mummified balls—was mostly wrapped. But between the yellowed bandages, the skin was paler in spots and almost black in others. It was spotted like a piebald pony.

“How you doing there, Spartacus?” The first to step forward, he got the name—so sayeth the movie. I rubbed between his ears. Goodfellow knew everything and everyone—Captain Cook, Ramses, the Pied Piper, and even Caligula, he’d once said. I couldn’t quite hear the echo of that particular memory, but I knew it. Chances were he’d known Spartacus in the day too … and had that movie cued up on his DVR and ready to go at all times. Plus, Salome might be less inclined to bite off my head if I brought her a friend.

“You did this. You did this to me, you empty vessel. Worthless and weak.” The mouthy mummy remained pretty crispy too. Niko … Niko had set him on fire. That was what had happened. It wouldn’t destroy him, he’d said. It wouldn’t hurt either, only slow him down. Good informants were hard to find; he’d said that too. Wahanket would survive it, and he had. Then I’d come along—me and a convenient fire axe. He’d survived that as well, but that impression … It would be a little more lasting.

That was the first time I’d seen the shadows and felt the pain inside. That was the first time my brother had drugged me. Niko had also said the mummy had once tried to shoot me and before I’d made with the axe, he had tried to strangle me as I’d deprived him of something. Wahanket had been clear. I’d had something he’d wanted, but I’d lost it. But what was that something? The same thing Ammut wanted? The same quality the boggles and Wolves thought I was missing? Creep, creep, came the memories, but not fast enough—not as fast as Ammut was moving.

Now was the time to find out the why of all those things. That was why I’d come back to Wahanket. He knew who I was—what I was—and he was going to tell me. I wasn’t waiting on the Nepenthe venom to wear off on this. This was something I might not want to know, but I needed to know. Ammut had proved too dangerous to the others to let things take their natural course.

Wahanket, professional disperser of information, was going to tell me all those things I didn’t want to hear about Cal, but I needed to, because Cal was far more likely to be able to handle Ammut than I was. Cal would be able to protect his family and friend when I might not be able to. The first night in Nevah’s Landing, I’d turned out the light and slept in the darkness, because, while monsters lived in darkness, so did killers.