Rob Thurman - Deathwish

“So you just clean up?” I said skeptically, basking in the whole right to exist. Whoopee for me. “Wipe up after some monster’s snack. You don’t interfere?”

“We make exceptions, but they’re rare. Only when a nonhuman is so overt, so out there in what he’s doing, that he’ll give away the secrecy we’ve kept so long. There might not be as many nonhumans as humans, not that we know for sure, but there’s no guarantee humans would be on the winning side. Keeping the secret is everything, you understand? Everything. If we have to kill a werewolf or boggle who can’t bother to hold their buffets in private, we will.”

“Watching us for thousands of years. The pucks must have given you quite the show.” Promise clasped her gloved hands on the table.

“I’ll bet we did.” Robin curled his lips smugly, not ashamed at all. “We should’ve charged admission.”

“So, what of the Auphe?” Promise continued, ignoring Goodfellow. “They grow more bold all the time. What are you doing about that?” she demanded.

“Not a damn thing,” Samuel admitted. “By the time our psychics know where they are, they’re already gone. We’re hoping you can succeed where we’ve failed. The Auphe were mad—don’t think I don’t remember—but they’re worse now. They have to go before it’s too late and the world wakes up and sees them. There’s only so many fake escaped-mental-patient stories you can put out. But if we can’t find them, we can’t stop them. . . . Making the assumption we’re even capable of stopping them.” He exhaled with the confession. “They’re the Auphe.”

And that said it all.

I pulled my gun back slowly and slid it back under my jacket. “Nik?”

“It’s an interesting story.” Niko didn’t look particularly interested. “What I don’t know is why you’re bothering to tell it to us, and why now.”

“It took me this long to get up and mobile again. To be trained. And like I said, I owe you.” With the threat of being shot gone for the moment, he slipped a hand in his pocket. Placing a card with a phone number on the table, he said, “Call me if you need me. Any time. I have a lot of making up for what I did to you guys. Not to mention the entire Vigil owes you for taking care of Sawney Beane. He was the damn definition of overt and psychotic as the cherry on top. He had to be taken down, and I don’t think we could’ve done it.”

And that’s how all the bodies had gotten cleaned up a week ago when we were fighting the supernatural mass murderer, why none of his victims’ pieces had turned up in the park, the college, or were discovered by subway workers. The Vigil had tidied up but good. Niko had been right. Our mystery janitors and the Vigil were one and the same.

He rapped a fist on the table and gave me an amused smile. “I tried to talk them into recruiting you and Niko, you know, but they say you’re our biggest annoyance. You cause us quite a bit of work.” Pushing halfway up with one hand on the back of his chair, he asked curiously, “Am I leaving?”

It was a good question. Niko considered him for several seconds, then gave impassive permission. “You’re leaving.”

“You’ll call if you need my help?”

“You’re leaving,” Nik repeated, his voice cooling even further.

Samuel nodded in acceptance. “If you change your mind.” He pulled a few bills out of his wallet and let them fall by Niko’s plate. It was only when he was at the door that he called back over his shoulder, “Sorry about the coat. Hope that covers it.” The door shut behind him and he headed back toward the church.

Niko’s coat? What . . . ? Oh, hell. The speargun. The Vigil guy with the scar. Samuel had just confirmed they were behind that . . . were watching Seamus. Why? Did they think he was going to be overt? Noticed? Whatever. I only hoped they killed the bastard. It would be one less thing on our plate to worry about. Less worry, I could use more of that. I didn’t need the distraction, not with what I was trying to do.

What I was still trying to do hours later.

You didn’t notice the tinting at night on the windows. Promise’s guest room, one of four, looked over Central Park—it was a blot of darkness surrounded by thousands of lights. Fairy lights, if you lived in some fantasy world. I’d never seen that world, not even in my dreams.

Not that all my dreams were bad; they weren’t. I had nightmares, more now that the Auphe were back, but I had good dreams too. I usually didn’t remember them, but I’d wake up with the sensation of warmth on my face, of floating. No details, but I’d take it. Then there were the XXX-variety dreams. Now, they were all about the details. Testosterone, gotta love it.

But dreams would have to wait. I had things to do. Things to think.

Think like an Auphe.

I told Nik that I would. Told myself that I could. Whether I wanted to or not.

Auphe blood—was that the same as an Auphe brain? An Auphe soul? Stupid question—they didn’t have souls. No damn way. But the blood . . .

Last week to fight a killer, I’d opened a gate and traveled through it. It was one of a handful I’d opened and one of the few times I’d felt it. Slippery, cold, savage. Carnivorous and content with that. Very content. It had only lasted a few seconds, but that was long enough for me to decide traveling wasn’t a good idea. Opening a door in reality could open a door in me. It let the Auphe part of me out. Let it take a peek around. It had disappeared with the gate, and hadn’t shown up again. If I guarded myself, it might never. Yet here I was, inviting it in. Sit down, have a beer. Let’s talk.

How ’bout those Yankees?

I sat on the bed and stared out the window, watching as the lights slowly began to swim. And I thought. Ugly, bile-black, murder-red thoughts. They crept in and I let them. I liked to think they weren’t mine . . . that they were the result of two years of being held by the Auphe. Two years of a prisoner’s intimacy with his captors, knowing what roamed in their twisted brains. I didn’t remember that lost time, but it was there. I wanted to think that’s where the thoughts came from. I wanted to deny they were mine. Deny they were me. Then I said, Fuck it, and just thought them.

For a long, long time.

“Cal, stop it.”

I heard the words, but I didn’t understand them. They were just sounds. They came and went, but they didn’t mean anything.

“Stop it. Now.” A hand fastened tightly on my forearm and gave it a hard shake, bringing me back to myself. Words were words again. “What are you doing?”

My hand, it was haloed in gray light. A gate . . . very small, contained. I blinked and let the light bleed into nothingness. I raised eyes from my now-normal hand to Niko. “Thinking.”

Bad things. Such bad, bad things.

He didn’t let go of my arm. “Don’t. I know you said you would, but we’ll get out of this without that. It’s not worth it.”

To save Nik and my friends? It was worth it. It could eat my soul if I had one, and I thought it just might. It could turn me inside out; I didn’t give a damn. If it saved my brother, it was worth it. “I think they’ll come tomorrow or the next day,” I evaded. “Not all of them. Three or four. Probe our defenses. A suicide run, if they have the chance.” Because vengeance is all. Sacrifices have to be made. “It’s what I would—” My lips twisted and I corrected, “It’s what an Auphe would do.”

Niko hesitated, not like he doubted me, but more as if I didn’t have all the facts. But if there was something I didn’t know, he didn’t fill me in. Instead, he just said, “All right. That’s good intelligence to have.” He moved his hand from my forearm down to my wrist, squeezing tightly. “But don’t do it again. Don’t go to that place. I mean it, Cal. No more.” To that place in my head where things were dark and memories were black holes, sucking up everything around them until you forgot there had ever been anything to remember at all. Or to forget.