Rob Thurman - Blackout

“I may as well post the ad for your replacement now.” He followed the puck. “Your tuxes are in both bathrooms. If your ‘gifts’ haven’t eaten them.”

He flipped me off when I called after him gravely. “Adoption is love. I saw that on the side of a bus, so it’s gotta be true.”

“That wasn’t very angellike,” I added as I watched the finger disappear with him.

“Understandable, since he isn’t one.” Niko went for the first bathroom. “And if Robin does cause you to blind yourself with anything from an antique hairpin to a banana, I will have no sympathy.”

All the cats purred louder as I walked through them. At least they were happy to see me. Dogs didn’t like me and I’d figured out why now. Nothing could smell a twisted genetic product like a Wolf or a dog … but cats didn’t have a problem with me. After all, they played with their victims. No rush to judgment there.

I found the other bathroom, only because the door was open. I wasn’t opening any closed doors here. Seeing wet feathers in the massive whirlpool tub was enough to have me dressing so quickly, I tucked the shirt into my underwear instead of my pants. The tux was all right, black on black—with no tie of any kind. Goodfellow definitely knew me there, but Miss Terrwyn would’ve again been shaking her head at my vampire-looking, silly white boy self. Except that vampires existed, and I wasn’t white. My skin was pale, but it hadn’t come from being some British-Scottish-Irish-German-American mutt. I’d gotten that from the Auphe; otherwise I’d have been a pale brown like Niko … or our mother.

Born of the first murderers to walk the earth and unable to get a goddamn tan. Welcome to my world.

It was enough to make me wish for the whole amnesia enchilada back and not the half-and-half I had now. But wishes weren’t promises, and tainted genes or not, I was keeping that promise to Nik. It didn’t matter that he didn’t know I’d made it. I knew, and that was enough.

I’d woken up in water, sand, and dead spiders with a deep hatred of monsters. Then I found out I was one. I hadn’t seen anything that addressed that on the side of a bus—only the adoption ad. Adoption and love—good stuff, but self-worth? You were on your own there. Ammut thought I had worth anyway and then some. Here was hoping she’d show up and tell me all about it. I opened the bathroom door back up to face cold ruthless eyes not quite an inch from mine. Ammut’s?

Worse.

They were Goodfellow’s.

“Do you know there are things … No, there are words, actual, simple words —I’m reasonably positive that I could trim them down to six total—that I could say to you that would make you unable to function sexually for five years? Even with yourself?”

Whoa. “You’re a witch?” Couldn’t be. There was no magic in the world. Monsters, yes. Magic, no. It was one of those things I did know instinctually without anyone telling me.

“No, Caliban. I’m not. I’m merely extremely knowledgeable in the psychosexual fields and I’m also very, very vindictive.”

“Um … Niko? You out there?” I backed up a step and Goodfellow followed, maintaining the exact lack of distance.

“Remember Alexander the Great? Not that great, especially when he poisoned my friend. What’s good for the gander is … good for the gander.” He smiled. It was the first of his smiles I’d seen that wasn’t sly or wicked. It was goddamn scary. “Then there was Genghis Khan. He should’ve paid more attention to the blade I gave his kidnapped princess and the ingenious place she was hiding it and less to killing every male child as tall as his steppe pony’s shoulder. The princess was a nice woman and didn’t like child killers any more than I do. Ah, and who do you think said, ‘Release the Kraken’? That horny rapist named Zeus? Hardly. He was always trying to steal my thunder.” Two more steps in perfect synchronization—me back, him forward.

“And then there’s you—you who released the equivalent of the Ten Plagues on my home. Can you imagine what I plan on doing to you?”

“Nik!”

“Yes?” Nik was behind Robin, his hand on the puck’s shoulder. “Do we have a problem?”

“I think Goodfellow wants to poison me, stab me with a knife I’d prefer sterilized first, then make me watch a god-awful, bad-special-effects movie from the eighties.” I slid past him before he tried to escape Niko’s hand. “I could’ve stabbed you with that fork, you know,” I told the puck, “but I didn’t. And with the cats, I saved lives … unlives … whatever, and this is the thanks I get. Bastard.”

“You could’ve left them with Wahanket,” Goodfellow snapped.

That flipped a switch in me. Cheerful and dark. From the feel of it on my face, my smile was the mirror of what the puck’s had been—goddamn scary. “In spirit maybe. But the only thing useful with Wahanket anymore is a DustBuster and a Ouija board.” I put the smile away. It wasn’t for them. I was saving it for Ammut. “And you’ll be able to find homes for them. Every rich vamp will want his own mummified cat. Except Spartacus. He stays here. He’s for Salome.”

“And how precisely do you figure that?”

I kept Niko between him and me. “Spartacus likes me. Salome wants to eat me. Okay, she doesn’t eat. Kill me. Whatever. If Salome likes Spartacus, I have it made. He’s my wingman to peace and not being eaten.”

“You are truly pathetic.” Goodfellow shook his head, but he lost his bad humor or switched it to a new source when he saw my shoes. “You are not wearing black sneakers with a Brioni tux. I won’t allow it. I won’t be seen within a mile of you.”

“If Ammut is there, I plan on some running. Those shoes you gave me—nice for looking at my reflection, but they suck for running.”

“I think it’s time for the party. The discussion about history-making vengeance and foot apparel can take place later,” Niko interrupted. “I do have a date, and it’s not Ammut, waiting for me there.”

That date was Promise, the sad vampire. It sounded like a children’s book. Promise, the sad velvet vampire—won’t you be her friend? I dimly remembered why she was so solemn now. Her kid … Her daughter had died. No … That wasn’t quite it. Think, think. Ah. Her daughter had been killed—by Niko. Yeah, that was right. Her daughter had been a true nightmare of a creature. She’d done things that not only were unforgivable but also not survivable, depending on whom she did them to. She’d done those things to us all, but most particularly to Nik. Promise had raised a monster beyond redemption.

Why was I sure Niko was incapable of doing the same?

Nature versus nurture.

Genes versus a determined big brother, with fish sticks and Scooby Doo cartoons, who’d taken care of you from your first breath.

Which wins?

After we met Promise at her place, then took her chauffeured car to the Tribeca Grand, the first thing I did when we made it past the doormen, all four of whom looked with disdain at my shoes, I pulled her aside. “Can I talk to you for a second?”

She waved Niko back with a small flick of plumcolored oval nails in a motion so minute that I barely saw it. I wished I had him trained half that well, but then again the rewards were vastly different. “What is it, Caliban? Are you doing better? Niko has been not very forthcoming on the subject.” That irritated her. I could tell by the rapid touch of her fingers checking her hair. The brown and blond was swept up into some sort of something that probably had a complicated name I didn’t have a clue about, but Promise wasn’t the nervous, fidgety type. She was the still pond, the unmoving stone, the unchanging mountain—the same as Niko. Like for like.