Rob Thurman - Blackout

One of the best things about NYC … An ex-but-soon-to-be-again monster can walk down the sidewalk surrounded by a bunch of loping dead cats, catch a cab with an extra fifty thrown in by calling himself a vet student with some patients in dire need of bandage changing, make an extra stop, and not long after that be back home. I opened the door, sat on the couch, grabbed the remote, and turned on the TV.

Niko was now in the kitchen, showered and mixing something that would not only eradicate any Ammut toxins remaining, but probably anything living at all. “Where did you go?”

“Wouldn’t you like to know, Mom?” I changed the channel. “Oh, hey, Robin.” He had started talking about tonight’s party when I’d left for the museum and he was still on his cell phone, making plans for the catering, talking a mile a minute, when I’d returned. If Ammut ate us, that would be one big, fat wasted catering bill. “You’d better shut off your phone and get your ass back home. I left you a present.”

He brightened, a magpie at the sight of a shiny coin. “A present? I love presents. I can’t believe you, especially you, actually got me … Oh, skata . What am I thinking?” He jammed the phone in his pocket, grabbed his coat, and was out the door before I made it to the next channel.

“What did you do?” Niko demanded, turning off the blender. “What did you get him?”

I held up one arm that was missing three-fourths of what had been a tough, thick leather jacket sleeve and grinned at him. “Eleven dead cats. The doorman thought it was hilarious. I don’t think he likes Robin much. And I think the condo board is meeting as we speak to discuss enforcing pet limits with a subcommittee looking into pet aesthetics. Not everyone can be Best in Show or win beauty pageants. Stuck-up asses.”

“Buddha save us.” From the glance he gave the blender and then me, he was entertaining the thought of throwing the contents at me. “You took Wahanket’s mummy cats. Why?”

I shrugged, turned back towards the TV, and changed channels again. “Well, first off, he was a malicious evil shit who killed cats to make mummies out of them. That is beyond sick. They deserved a better home.”

“Don’t tell me you just said, ‘He was a malicious evil shit.’ “

“That would be reason two.” I clicked off the TV. “No one needs an informant like that. I don’t care how hard it is to find one. He tried to shoot me, strangle me, wanted to eat me, and he was a cat killer. The first three I could deal with. Cat killer, no.” I peeled off the ruined jacket and tossed it over the back of the couch. Twisting again, I could see the kitchen area where Niko was thinking. I could see the quicksilver motion behind his eyes and all but hear the hum. Wheels turning, and it was a few hours too soon for that.

I tried to distract him. “Since you found me, Niko, tried to show me who I was”—and keep me who I wasn’t, I thought—”you’ve been something for me to shoot for. You walk the straight and narrow. You’re a good man, best man I’ve known in my whole week now. But you’re a good man in a job where good is a drawback. You’ve made allowances, excuses, and you’ve made them, I know, for what you thought were the right reasons. Let a cat killer live; maybe get information to save other lives. But, Nik, when you do wrong, the reason is never right enough.” It was a difficult concept to grasp as the shadows wrapped around me, but I did. For now … I still did. Cal wouldn’t, but I did. Then again, I might be underestimating Cal. For himself, he might never know, but for his brother … I thought he did. Niko had his honor, and I would’ve guessed Cal would do anything to let him hold on to it. Who’s to say a monster can’t love his brother?

“ You are lecturing me ?” Niko sounded as if that would knock him flat before his toxic milk shake would.

“I’ve seen the T-shirts I bought myself for Christmas. I’ve seen the way Wolves and others act around me. If there’s something to be done, something in the gray area,” the dark areas … darkest of the dark, “I think that’s my half of the partnership.” I was proud of that choosy phrasing. “Think,” not “know”—and I did know.

If wrong had to be done, I would do it. One of the First, born of the First, and living in the shadow and the murk. As the details of my life grew less and less sketchy, I knew that all of his life Niko had protected me. I’d done the same for him when I was old enough to, and I’d keep doing the same. I would let him be who he was by being who I truly was or had been. I would step into those shadows for the last and final time to let Niko step back into the light where he belonged.

Right now, shadows or not, I was hungry. I got up and made a sandwich, all while Niko continued to watch me, a distinct aura of suspicion overcoming the odor of the sludge in his untouched glass. “You said you’d stay outside. You lied to me.”

I raised my eyebrows at the last remark, which took real balls for him to actually say, what with all he was trying to keep from me. I chewed my bite of peanut butter and jelly without comment. It was enough to have Niko drinking his sludge. Ninjas in glass houses …

I finished and changed the nonsubject. “Goodfellow said we’d need formal wear for the party. What’s formal wear?”

“You are dead to me. No, you are worse than dead. The worst thing I can do to you is let you live to make every minute of every day of the rest of your life an eternal hell.”

When he opened his door this time, Goodfellow was dressed—in a way. With wavy hair standing on end and a ratty bandage draped over it, he was wearing an expensive, a given there, tux—James Bond style. I could admit, masculinity intact, that it was pretty sharp, or it had been once. Now it was missing one pant leg from the knee down, one arm at the shoulder, and there was a mummy cat hanging from his shredded tie.

Spartacus showed his garbage-disposal teeth in a grin at me as he swung from the cloth strip that was meant to be knotted in a bow tie around the puck’s neck. “Spartacus, hey, pal, are you telling Robin how to dress?”

“You named it. You actually named it, and you named it Spartacus. Zeus, I hate you.” He stalked off, Spartacus hanging in there happily. Inside the penthouse, the contour couch was now a scrap pile of leather, stuffing, and wood. The walls were clawed until they formed the optical illusion of the bars of a prison cell. A once highly expensive rug was about a thousand pieces of cloth mixed with strips of frayed bandages scattered about the place, and undead cats lounged everywhere. Salome perched on top of that giant refrigerator with dimly glowing eyes crossed in pleasure—a queen overseeing her domain and her new minions. It was only right. Every powermad villain merited minions.

Ishiah, his tux in one piece, closed the door behind us. “This wasn’t the brightest thing you could have done, Caliban. Robin is one of the best, if not the best, tricksters in this world. Are you familiar with the Greek tale of Oedipus Rex ? It wasn’t simply a story. It was truth. There were two prophecies. Robin had nothing to do with the first or the second, but when chariot rage, the original road rage, ended in murder, he did arrange for the rest of the prophecy to come true. Marrying mothers, jabbing out eyes with golden hairpins, suicide. All three members of that royal family were murderers or potential ones. Tricksters don’t care for either. That was only a job to him. Justice. This”—he waved an arm at the inside of the penthouse and twenty-four avid yellow eyes followed the movement—”is personal.”

I’d felt my own eyes cross the same as Salome’s, but mine was in boredom, not pleasure. “Sorry. I missed most of that. Oedipus Rex … Was that a dinosaur? Like a T. rex ?”