Rob Thurman - Blackout

“Who wants to know?” I countered placidly, dipping another fry and tightening my grip on the knife. I wasn’t a bad guy, I’d figured that out, but I didn’t know the same about him.

“Who?” The anger was overridden by another emotion, one that made me doubt that the fury had been completely real. This one was, though, as real as they came and easy to read: dread. “Your brother, Cal. I’m your brother.”

Well, fuck me running.

I hadn’t seen that coming.

I deserted the rest of my food and walked out of the diner, with more than my arm up my sleeve. I waved an “I’ll be back” at Miss Terrwyn, then ducked her scowl before hitting the door. She had a soft spot all right, but no tolerance for slackers. Outside, I considered standing but decided, whatever this guy had to say, I’d prefer to hear it sitting down. And with a knife, I thought, I could hurt someone standing or sitting. Was I that confident? I took stock in myself and four dead spider monsters and decided that, yeah, I was. This guy could be as quiet and armed as he wanted. I was armed too, and had a T-shirt whose EAT ME message no one had yet been able to take me up on. I might not be a bad guy, but nobody had said I couldn’t take care of myself.

While I might have the haircut of a sheepdog, I was one badass motherfucking sheepdog.

I sat on the bench and leaned back as if this sort of thing happened to me every day and twice on Christmas. “You’re my brother,” I echoed him. I started out very skeptically, but his darker skin to my pale, his blond hair to my black, all meant nothing when I looked into eyes the same color gray as mine. All right, we were related, but that didn’t mean brothers, and being related didn’t mean there was love, warmth, family bonding, and all that shit either. Cain and Abel. The Godfather movies. These were some of the things I hadn’t forgotten. I had to play it safe. I wasn’t a bad guy, but I wasn’t a stupid one either. If my brother was so worried about me, where had he been when I’d taken on four giant spider monkeys from Hell by myself?

“Are you waiting for a brotherly man hug?” I drawled. “Yeah, keep waiting, buddy.”

He crouched down in front of me to be eye to eye. I could feel my knees pop in outraged sympathy at the fluid movement. “You don’t remember, do you?” For a moment he looked lost beyond an innate confidence he wore the same as he wore his skin. That lost expression was the same lost I’d been feeling for days. “Damn. We were afraid that might be it.”

“You found him? More lost than Atlantis ever claimed to be and there he is. Grab him and tag his poutanas yie ass before he wanders away again.”

I spared the quickest of glances toward a brown-haired man about thirty feet down the sidewalk and moving toward us fast before I had the knife at the blond guy’s throat the second I faced him again. “No one is grabbing or tagging any part of me. Period. We clear?” No, I wasn’t stupid, and I didn’t like the looks of this one damn bit. I hadn’t killed Luther the perv when I tossed him through the window, and I had no real desire to kill anybody, because I was not a bad guy. This guy, though, wasn’t your average anybody. He was like me. He moved like me, carried weapons, was a killer. I’d seen that in one quick look. But what I couldn’t see was what kind of killer he was. I killed monsters. I didn’t know where he drew the line or if he had a line at all.

“Goodfellow, stay back.” The eyes that so oddly mirrored mine stayed calm. “Cal, I’m going to take the knife. Don’t be alarmed.”

Don’t be alarmed. He had balls, I had to give him that. He could fight me for the knife and, from the way he moved, he might give me a run for my money, shark to shark, but to tell me up front that he was going to disarm me and think that I was just going to let that happen. He could kiss my …

Holy shit.

The knife was gone and my hand was empty. I was unarmed and facing someone very dangerous. This was serious, but more than that, it was flat-out embarrassing. I flexed my fingers and dropped my hand as casually as if I’d been swiping a fly instead of holding a blade at someone’s throat. He was like me all right, only better, and that added proof to having the same color eyes. “Cal,” I said, disgruntled. “You called me Cal. So which is it? Calvin, Calvert, or Calhoun?”

Brother. I might have a brother. I’d wrapped my mind around a lot of crazy-ass shit these past few days, but I could have hit a wall on this one. A brother … holy hell. When I looked over my shoulder at that empty spot, was he the one I was looking for? This guy? Tired, he looked tired—at least he did to me, with the skin under his eyes a deeper olive than the rest of his face, but his lips still quirked up slightly at the edges at my belligerent question. “Caliban. It’s short for Caliban.”

“Like the monster, the one from Shakespeare.” Jesus. I was all about that, from the beach to my fake IDs to the real deal. I flashed monster cred as if it were a goddamn gold card. I was a wannabe like Miss Terrwyn had said. Again, embarrassing. Could you roll your eyes at your own idiotic ego?

My remark about Shakespeare had the almost-smile fading from his lips. “No, not like the monster.”

“Where have you been? Have you been here all this time? The days and days we searched without sleep, with barely a hope to keep us going, and, Zeus, what are you wearing? Is that gingham? Tell me that’s not a gingham apron. I’m not sure I care to go on in this vale of tears knowing that you are actually wearing a gingham apron. Why are you wearing a gingham apron?” The other one, the brown-haired guy down the sidewalk, had stayed back for all of two seconds before he was at our side, his green eyes pained as if it hurt to look at me.

“Because I can’t cook,” I answered absently. It was happening. Right now. I hadn’t found my past, but it had found me and hauling family with it. I’d thought maybe associates in the same business. I’d thought maybe, wild chance, a friend or two. But a brother? I didn’t know if I was prepared for a brother. Worse yet, I didn’t know if a brother was prepared for me. Then again, I worked hard at the diner, and slaying monsters. I wanted to mouth off once or twice or twenty times, but I didn’t, because it wasn’t smart, careful, or safe. I’d been nothing but those three things since I’d woken up in the Landing, with the minor exception of throwing Luther through the window. Maybe I wasn’t giving myself credit. I wasn’t a bad guy, right? So maybe I was a good deal in the brother department too. On sale and barely used.

As for his being a killer, if I was his brother and one he missed enough to come looking for, he couldn’t be that bad either. No worse than I was, or I wouldn’t have had anything to do with him. I knew right from wrong. I knew people from monsters.

One, like Luther, you disciplined. One, like the spiders, you destroyed.

“You’re wearing an apron with ruffles because you can’t cook. Ah. That makes perfect sense. You’ve no idea how I appreciate your clearing that up for me,” the other guy, the fashion critic, said. “You’re wearing blue as well? Bright, frighteningly neon blue? I’ve never seen you wear anything but black and gray. And your hair, what by all that is unholy … Actually I approve of the hair. If less were hanging in your face, that would be better, but overall—I approve.” He sat on the bench beside me with a weary “Whoosh,” stretched his legs, and wrapped an arm around my shoulders to give me a slight shake, then a rough squeeze. “You scared us, kid. Scared the Hades out of us.”

I dropped my eyes to his hand on my shoulder. The man, the self-proclaimed brother who had disarmed me as if I were a kitten with a ball of yarn, smiled. “There’s that brotherly man hug you’re so intent on avoiding.”