Rob Thurman - Blackout

Give them to me. Where are your brothers and sisters?

Givegivegive.

And I was. I was going to give her what she wanted. It was her bad luck that she didn’t know I was more poisonous than any Nepenthe spider.

“I can tell you where they are, the rest of us half-breeds, and me? I’m right here.” I felt the strange suction where my flesh touched hers as she drew a little of me … of my life out. It was barely a mouthful and I had a lot of life to give. She was welcome to it. “I know you can feel me. I know you can taste the Auphe in me, can’t you?”

“Yes.” The gold eyes, wild and striking in their way, closed. Ecstatic yet almost hesitant. That answered that question. She’d never sampled an Auphe in the flesh, not before me. She was intoxicated instantly. Some couldn’t handle their liquor; some couldn’t handle their life force. Too bad for her. Someone’s eyes were bigger than their stomach. “Dark,” she murmured. “Infinite in its rage, hate, hunger, and other desires. Desires the same as my own.”

Not hardly. Her desires were a Santa wish list compared to mine.

“I’m glad you like it. Consider that one taste a freebie.” I opened a gate around my hand, tarnished gray and silver, and shoved it through her chest. Her scaled flesh melted away, gone forever, beneath my fingers until I touched what passed for her heart. I could feel the serpent-slow beat of it against my skin. She couldn’t feed through a gate. Nothing could breach a gate unless I wanted it to. The gates,the doors, they belonged to me and only me.

“Can you still feel me?” I tightened my fingers. “How about now? Can you feel me now, Goddess ? You murdering bitch.” The eyes were open again and they weren’t so beautiful any longer. “Let Niko go or we’ll see how you manage to tie on the lobster bib and chow down on anything in the future without your fucking heart.”

Ishiah had told the truth in the bar when I’d asked the question.

I was a bad guy, when I needed to be, which made me the right guy for the job.

The fury behind those eyes, in the fast and ominous chittering of all the spiders that surrounded us, didn’t matter. That the bronze and green coils unwrapped themselves from around Niko’s neck, setting him free, was the only thing that did. He dropped to the concrete on his side, unmoving. In the yellow illumination of the rooftop lights I could see the gray touch, the ashes of mortality in the color of his skin. It would fade as his breathing returned to normal. His color would come back; it was coming back. He was all right. Safe. That was the only way it could be.

A good guy or a bad one, a monster or a man, whichever, I fucking loved my brother.

A soul I could do without. I couldn’t do without Niko. When it came to options, there I had none. I didn’t want any. And when someone messed with him, hurt him, especially because of me … goddamn what a big mistake they’d made—one they would regret as long as they lived.

Yeah … That wouldn’t be too fucking long, now would it?

“Release me.” Her heart was beating faster beneath my fingers now. She was a predator, but all predators had someone higher than them on the food chain. Something bigger. Something badder. They all had to answer to someone. Today her someone was me. “I did as you said. Release me . Now! ” The goddess voice was back. Ammut, Eater of Hearts, Devourer of Souls. Hear my voice and obey. Bow and obey. The hypnotic flower aroma was back too, everywhere, thicker than ever as it soaked every molecule of air, but it wasn’t helping her now. Fool me once… .

There was no second part to that saying in the life I lived.

I cocked my head, as if considering the request. “Why? I didn’t say I would. I only said what I’d do if you didn’t do what I told you. And in any case, whatever I said, it wouldn’t make a difference. Unlike you, I am a monster. I was born to lie and kill. You, pathetic fucking monster wannabe, you were born to die.” I ripped out her heart, black and gold, and threw it down. Ammut, Eater of Hearts. We would see how she did without one of her own and a huge, gaping hole in her chest. Then, with the gate still glowing gray around my hand, I took her brain. Sometimes the heart wasn’t enough. The heart and the brain together always were.

“Wannabe to never was. So long, Queen of the Nile,” I said flatly.

She fell, a snake whose back was broken on a country road by a careless driver. As she fell, so did the spiders. I hadn’t planned on that. I was about to grab Niko and go through a larger gate. To where? Who cared? Out of here was the important thing. But it wasn’t necessary. The remainder of the thirty or so spiders shivered, legs flailing, before they flipped onto their backs into full-blown convulsions and finally collapsed—turning gray and still. They were now the husks Ammut had made of her victims. She’d shared her stolen life force to keep them alive … likely from the days of pyramids and pharaohs when Nepenthe spiders were common in the desert. Now they were nothing but long-dead bugs ready to be swept off the windshield.

That was the way some days went—a bitch of one if you were a spider.

A cold February wind blew by and the spiders disintegrated into heaps of gray dust—bad day for spiders; fantastic fucking day for me and the janitors. Ammut was slowly dissolving into an oil slick of gold and black. Profound age made for a great cleanup. The gold mixing with the night color—it was the sun being swallowed by a permanent eclipse. It was beautiful, it was a cataclysm, and then it was only a memory.

I had many of those now.

The irony of the entire thing was that she hadn’t been much of a monster at all; we’d faced much worse. Not to mention the only reason she’d come here was for me. I hope the replacement council never found out about that. If I’d been at full capacity—had been myself—we’d have gotten her at the brownstone and been at home watching TV, eating pizza, and not wearing uncomfortable James Bond cast-off tuxes. I crouched next to Niko and smacked his face lightly, then more firmly. He was nearly back to his normal olive color, although the bruising around his neck was going to be nasty. “That stings,” he grumbled, his voice hoarse and his eyes still shut.

“Yeah, I’m crying for you on the inside. I swear. Open up those baby grays, Cyrano. I did all the work. At least you could live through it.”

He did live. He opened his eyes too, rolling slowly and carefully onto his back. “That’s the second time you’ve called me Cyrano.” His gaze shifted to the ash mound of what had been the spiders and to the puddle of Ammut. “You killed them. You killed all of them.” I couldn’t take credit for the spiders, but, then again, why not? It had been a weird week. I’d take all the credit I could get.

I reached down under Niko’s neck and back to pull his braid free, laid it on his chest, and gave it a pat. “No need to cut your hair. I’m back. All of me. I’ve been on my way back for a while.” I shook my head and snorted. “Nepenthe venom in the toothpaste, Nik? Really? As if I wouldn’t notice that and you becoming Hans the Hygiene King?” I slid a hand behind his back and eased him up to a more or less sitting position. “It wouldn’t have made a difference anyway. Not in the end. My Auphe immune system would’ve fought off the full dose of venom the Nepenthe spider gave me in Central Park.” Not Goodfellow’s lie about a half dose. Before I gated to Nevah’s Landing, I’d gotten a full dose of venom all right. No doubt. But an Auphe immune system had no peer. Had I been full Auphe, the bite might not have affected me at all.

“It would’ve eventually fought off your minty-fresh version too. Humans build up a tolerance to drugs. Auphe ride over them hell-bent-for-leather.” I tugged his braid, for the first time since I’d disappeared. I didn’t know if he missed that, but I’d missed doing it. I’d been doing it as long as he’d had one. “I was coming back, sooner or later, and no one, not even you, could stop that.”