Rob Thurman: Blackout

Out on the porch, Warden Sidle was shifting from foot to foot, nervousness showing in the speed of the movement. I didn’t see it—the back and forth shuffle, because I didn’t bother to look at the worthless shit, but I could hear him. That was fine, because I had no particular desire to see him at all. “That was quick, Mr. Caliban. Did you enjoy yourself? The masters said it was important you enjoy yourself, so I kept them for you. A long time. A real long time. And when they screamed, and they screamed up one helluva commotion, I taught’em better. Splash of acid. Hot poker through the bars. I kept them safe for you. I kept your playthings safe.”

Playthings.

I put a round through his head, still without turning—I have great peripheral vision.

His body fell hard onto the porch. I heard the splatter of brains and blood hitting the weathered wood as I kept walking. He hadn’t been worth words before. He wasn’t even worth a glance now. At the car I pulled out the full plastic gas cans I’d bought at the gas station—because I’d known how this would turn out. I’d known from the very beginning. I spread the gas around the base of the house. It wasn’t long before it was in flames, the entire structure. It was how Vikings had gone out, given up the flame to the gods—usually in a boat, but I didn’t have a boat, so a house of nightmares would have to do.

I got back in the car and I watched it burn, lighting up the night. I watched my family burn. Until I heard the sirens, I would stay and continue to watch. Better safe than sorry. I didn’t have as much hair to offer now, but I took one of my knives and sawed through a four-inchlong lock. When friends die … when family dies, you cut your hair and you mourn. So I’d been told and so I now remembered. I held the dark strands outside the window to be swept away in a bonfire-heated drift of air, my hand soon empty.

My hand—the hand of something new and something old and something unlike anything on this earth.

That was what the healer who’d tried to fix me had said I was. I never forgot that. Who would? In a fog of amnesia, I’d thought all monsters were an abomination, because there was some part of me that thought I was an abomination. I’d been called that more times than I could count—by the supernatural, by my mother. Why should there not be a piece of me that thought the same?

But I was wrong.

I’d always been wrong about that. It was time to retire that word, because I wasn’t an abomination. I was the Wolf I’d killed my second day back in New York. She’d evolved to be what she was. She had choices, but some of those choices were defined and limited by her genes. It was the same for me. I was what I was. That little boy who’d learned about death by grieving for a dead blackbird was long gone; he’d evolved. And the Cal from the past week …

The Cal that could’ve been, should’ve been, but never was—he was gone as well. It was as if he’d never existed, and in actuality he never had. He hadn’t been a reality, only a possibility—more like an impossibility, a dream. A good dream, but only a dream … as genuine as he’d felt, as real and right as the choices he had made—for Nik and me. You can fight the world, but you can’t fight yourself. You can’t deny yourself. Not forever. It didn’t stop me from cutting another lock of hair to let fly, for him this time—for the better Cal, the one who couldn’t exist for more than a moment in our world.

He’d been more than the good guy he’d obsessed about. He’d been a hero. He was worth mourning. That was something I couldn’t say about myself, but I could say this:

I was Caliban Leandros of the Clan Vayash.

I was Caliban, Auphe.

I was something new and something old and something unlike anything on this earth. I was the only one. I sat in the car as the house burned eight others like me to less than blackened bone.

The only one …

Now.

I heard a voice again, tickling at the base of my brain. It wasn’t the one that had warned me about monsters and abominations, the one that had warned me most of all about myself. This one was still me, though, but it was the other half of me … or more than half. Souls … How to divide them up? Who knew? Listening, I heard the voice whisper sly and satisfied as I watched the fire rage on:

So much for the competition.

Rob Thurmanlives in Indiana, land of cows, corn, and ravenous wild turkeys. Rob is the author of the Cal Leandros Novels: Nightlife , Moonshine , Madhouse , Deathwish , and Roadkill ; the Trickster Novels: Trick of the Light and The Grimrose Path ; and the novel Chimera and its sequel (to be released later in 2011), Basilisk .

Besides wild, ravenous turkeys, Rob has three rescue dogs (If you don’t have a dog, how do you live?)—one of which is a Great Dane-Lab mix who barks at strangers like Cujo times ten, then runs to hide under the kitchen table and pee on herself. Robbers tend to find this a mixed message. However, the other two dogs are more invested in keeping their food source alive. All were adopted from the pound (one on his last day on death row). They were all fully grown, already housetrained, and grateful as hell. Think about it the next time you’re looking for a Rover or a Fluffy.

For updates, teasers, music videos, deleted scenes, social networking (the time-suck of an author’s life), and various other extras, visit the author at www.robthurman.net.

The Cal Leandros Novels

Nightlife

Moonshine

Madhouse

Deathwish

Roadkill

The Trickster Novels

Trick of the Light

The Grimrose Path

Chimera

Anthologies

Wolfsbane and Mistletoe

EDITED BY CHARLAINE HARRIS AND TONI L. P. KELNER