Rob Thurman: Blackout

Niko exhaled and traced his fingers over the grip of his katana. We all have our security blankets, some more lethal than others, and his and mine hadn’t changed an iota over the years. “I’d wondered before,” he started cautiously, then more resolutely, “how many times did the Auphe try before you? How many failures were there before you were born? I’ve wondered that since I was old enough to take my first biology class in school. What they were trying to do … Whom they were trying to make. Human genes crossed with Auphe genes would never work with only one attempt. I can’t imagine how many it would take.” He’d wondered, huh? He’d wondered; Robin had very well known of the possibility. I should have thought about it too, but I hadn’t wanted to. I was the very best at not doing or thinking things I didn’t want to. Cowardice or self-survival or both; at those I excelled.

The Auphe hadn’t been keeping an eye on just me in those days, but on multiple mes. For some reason the others hadn’t been allowed to “be human” for a time while being observed. The Auphe needed two things from their breeding program: the ability to travel—to build gates and move hundreds of miles in a second—and the capacity to still be human enough to host a parasitic creature called a Darkling that could channel a power enormous enough to cross millions of years instead of only miles. Humans were the only creatures the Darkling could possess, and it had accidentally blown up a few Auphe while proving that. That the creature slid in and out of mirrors, more slippery than any reflection and no less homicidal than the Auphe, had been the beginning of my mirror phobia. That it had taken my mind and slid in and out of it as easily wasn’t something I wanted to think about.

It would’ve taken a while to find out if the rest of the Auphe-human half-breeds were defective, or maybe they’d been defective from the day they were born. I didn’t know which would be worse—being defective or being the success, the goddamn golden boy of Auphe genetics. I was about to find out, though. The ones that were alive were in Nevah’s Landing—as the albino crocodile with the smile of metal had told me. Waiting … They were waiting for me.

I hadn’t gone there for them at the beginning of all of this; I hadn’t known they’d existed, but I was going for them now.

“Let’s get Promise and Goodfellow out here to help you,” I said, standing. “I have something to do.” Something that should’ve been done before I was born. But the Auphe, in their infinite ability to be sons of bitches, hadn’t done what I would have guessed. They hadn’t killed the failures. That would have been too easy for them and for me.

Niko shook his head. “No. Do not even think about it. You are not going to Nevah’s Landing to take out a nest of half Auphe by yourself—if they need taking out at all. Think, Cal. They might be like you. Only without the power to build gates. They could be the same as you.”

That was funny. Goddamn hilarious. They might be like me. Of anyone in this city, only Niko would think that made it better. God, I did love my brother, no way around it.

“No, I’ll go. This is mine.” I helped him stand and, within seconds, he was good—stable and capable of taking care of himself as I called Goodfellow on the cell to get his ass out here. I wished he’d taken better care of himself in the past week and less care of what had only been a reflection of me—the best reflection.

“They’re not your responsibility, Nik,” I said. On this I had no give. “They’re not your family.” Thank God they weren’t. He didn’t deserve that. “They’re mine. I don’t want you to see that.” I met his eyes quickly before looking away. He wasn’t the only one ashamed. We’d both have to learn to get over it. “I don’t want you to see them in me, all right? I don’t. I’m not sure that’s something I could live with, knowing what you might see.”

And there was no way I wanted him to see what I might have to do.

“I’ll check them out. See if they’re salvageable. I’ll call if I need help. There come Promise and Robin now.” The chair was kicked aside as the door to the roof opened. “They missed the real thing, but they can take you to the after-party.” I gave his braid one last yank, tossed it over his shoulder, and said, “Ask Ishiah what your tattoo means. I’ll be back in time for you to kick my ass over it. Swear.”

He sheathed his sword, jaw tightening before he exhaled. “You’re the most goddamn stubborn man I know. Goddamn it, I missed you, you asshole.” Three curse words in two sentences—that was more big-time emotion for Nik. He wrapped one arm around me and that brotherly man hug I’d tried to avoid in Nevah’s Landing came back to bite me in the ass. The one arm made it brotherly. That my ribs nearly gave way and my spleen pretty much did too made it manly. That I returned it just as hard was, hell, just manners.

I was always about manners.

Nevah’s Landing smelled the same as it had when I’d left. Salt, a touch of swamp, water, and saw grass brown and crisp for the winter. People, the metal tang of cars, of old asphalt parking lots that might never see the fresh tarry black of it. Spanish moss … I liked that smell. If a plant could smell like air, Spanish moss would be the one.

Air and nothing else. No blood. No decay. Only air. That was provided you didn’t count the hole in reality hanging there, gray, silver, black, and swirling with a hunger to gobble up the world. I shut the gate down with that mental twist I’d learned at the age of nineteen. It went … sulky and snarling in my mind. It could sulk as much as it wanted. It knew who held its leash.

I was behind the motel where I’d lived that so-called normal life for four whole days. I didn’t want to slice open a tear in the world and walk through to see two people screwing on a mattress that lay on top of my guns. My babies. Most of the asses in the Landing, thanks to the diner food, weren’t small. They were big and wide as a barn door, as they say. I could just imagine them moving back and forth in stretch-marked thrusts… . I did not want to see that. No one wanted to see that.

I wiped the blood pouring from my nose, fought the skull-crushing headache, and let the sweat pour down my neck and face, soaking my hair. Once I’d made gates as I’d pleased, as Auphe did, and as often as I’d pleased. Rafferty, our long-gone healer that Delilah had tried and failed to kill, thanks to my gun muzzle behind her pretty ear, had “fixed” me. Limit the gates, everyone thought, and limit the Auphe genetic influence on me, because there hadn’t been a doubt that the more I “traveled,” the more Auphe I felt. Rafferty had done some chemical rewiring on my brain, though only a little, because he couldn’t break me down genetically and remove the Auphe half. That would leave half a human, and that, well, I guess that would be an unpleasant puddle of gore on the ground.

He’d found a way around that. He’d given me something called serotonin syndrome. One gate, bad. It would trigger an uncontrollable flood of serotonin in my brain, which would cause my blood pressure and body temperature to go up radically. Gate two, worse—the same as what was behind door one, but doubled. Gate three would probably mean death from a burst aneurysm in my brain. Since the two I’d used on Ammut for her brain and heart had really been only one—in theory, this was technically number two. If Rafferty was right, I’d survive it.

I guess I’d wait and see. It took me two days or so to “reset” the gates, which meant I’d be driving back to New York—again, thanks to Rafferty.