Rob Thurman - Deathwish

“I don’t know anything about it.” I twisted the towel in my hands. “I don’t know how big it is. I could open a gate right in the middle of the Auphe, for all I know. We could drop right in their laps, and that’s not like Santa’s lap, okay? We won’t be getting any candy canes out of the deal.” Tumulus. Christ. I felt the towel rip under my grip. “Not to mention the me-going-crazy thing. But, hey, why don’t I mention that?” Only the amnesia, the defense of an adolescent mind, had saved me the other time I’d gone to Tumulus and come back. I knew it wouldn’t save me again.

“Not we, Cal. Me,” Niko said, absolute. He reached over and took the towel from me. “If you can get me through, I could do a little reconnaissance, that’s all. I doubt odds are high that I would walk into the center of the Auphe.”

Him, not me. I should’ve known that and would have if the mere thought of that place didn’t have every nerve in me firing in dread and sheer fight-or-flight panic. Nik would never consider sending me over there. It could’ve been my idea and our last hope and he still wouldn’t have allowed it.

“No.” I was as absolute as Niko. “That’s their territory. You don’t take on someone like the Auphe on their territory. You should know that. You taught it to me. They could find you. Time is weird there. You could be gone a minute or a year. There could be pockets of no air.” The air had been thin there, hadn’t it? High-altitude thin? Hadn’t I struggled to breathe when they had dragged me there from home? Hadn’t I thought I’d suffocate? I felt my lungs suddenly ache for oxygen before a black curtain dropped down, wrapped around the flicker of memory, and took it away. Banished, like always.

“No.” This time I snapped it. “Make that hell no. Fuck no. Any goddamn no you want. I’m not doing it.”

“The time component. I hadn’t considered that.” Which gave away a frustration he didn’t allow to show. Niko didn’t forget to consider all aspects of a situation. Ever. But he’d been on target. We were basically sitting around, plastic ducks lined up at the carnival waiting for a BB gun to take us out. How do you fight an enemy you can’t follow? Can’t locate? They wouldn’t keep playing with us forever. They’d get serious sooner or later, mad or not, tire of the games, and then. . . . yeah, then.

“What if you kept the gate open? Linking our world to theirs? That might keep time running consistently in both places.”

I couldn’t believe it. He was still talking about it. Fine. He could have that conversation all by himself. “We need to dump the body,” I said, as if the subject of Tumulus had never come up, never existed. In fact, Tumulus was where the Easter Bunny painted his eggs—one big damn fairy tale. “Robin said the river.”

Niko frowned, but it was for himself, not me. He’d brought up something he knew I had problems with—profound, mind-melting problems—and for nothing. But it wasn’t for nothing. He was trying, and right now that’s all we had. Grasping at the thinnest and craziest of straws. I reached over and slapped his stomach with the back of my hand. “Hey, I’m the one not speaking to you, remember?”

The frown faded. “No river. Goodfellow’s since had a better idea while you were showering. Promise needs more time to heal before riding to the river is an option.”

“How is she?” I asked. More importantly, how was Nik when it came to Promise?

“Resting. She’ll be more mobile tomorrow.”

“And will you be staying with her tonight or shacking up in a guest room?” I stood, grabbed my sweatpants from the shower, and wrung them out. “Did you decide if you can live with good enough?”

“I don’t know,” he answered quietly. “Not yet.”

Sophia . . . that bitch hadn’t done too damn well by either one of us. She’d made me a monster and made Niko the brother, father, and caretaker of that bouncing baby monster. She’d screwed us both up so badly, I didn’t think we’d ever get over it. She’d burned on earth and I hoped she was doing the same in hell.

I moved past Nik into the hall and back to my room to dress. He followed. “So what is the plan, then?” I asked, pulling on jeans and a rumpled sweatshirt I fished out of my duffel bag. “Use Samuel again?”

“No.” Niko picked up the damp towels from the floor, wadded them into a tight ball, and hit me precisely in the center of the chest with them. You wouldn’t think cotton could sting. You’d be wrong. “I’m quite sure the Vigil would like nothing more than an up-close look at an Auphe, a nice and tidy autopsy to find out their vulnerabilities. All of which is one step away from dissecting you. They want the Auphe gone, and while Samuel may be willing to give you the benefit of the doubt there, who knows what the rest of the Vigil may have in mind. The less opportunity they have to focus on you, the better.” And while I was human on the outside, the inside wasn’t quite the same. They’d have something to look it. Good times on the autopsy slab.

“No dissections; got it.” Sitting on the edge of the bed, I put on socks. “So what’re we doing with it?”

“Robin called in a favor of his own.”

That favor was at the door as we spoke. Ishiah’s voice carried when he was annoyed, and he was almost always annoyed. This was no exception. As we entered the living room, he was nose to nose with Robin. “Your laziness and sloth know no bounds, do they?” he demanded. “I have a bar to run, my own life to lead. I do not exist solely to be at your beck and call. And I most definitely do not wake up every morning with nothing but the happy expectation of running errands for you. Difficult to believe, I know.”

Robin yawned in his face. “You’re so very good at that. The temper, the scowl. Absolutely terrifying. You must drink shots of testosterone in your morning coffee.” He nudged the oversized garbage bag at his feet. “Here’s the package. Dump it wherever you like. Stuff it and mount it as a souvenir in your bar for all I care. Your choice entirely.”

“It’s not.” The wings flared, appearing from nowhere, and a few feathers flew free. I picked up one as it drifted to the floor by my feet. Between translucent and white with a dusting of gold, it was twice the length of my hand. Robin had Ishiah so frazzled that he was actually molting. The puck was one gifted son of a bitch, I had to give him that. “You are not handing me a bag of Auphe. I know you are not.”

“Think of it as a conversation piece.” Robin grinned lazily. “And I expect you to take it off my bar tab in trade.”

Refusing to believe it, Ish took a step back, bent, and untied the bag. Immediately, the blue-gray eyes darkened in disgust. “Unholy creature.” He retied the bag, then wiped the palms of his hands on his jeans. “One. You actually managed to kill one. You’ve more survival skills than I gave you credit for.” He looked past Robin as he said it . . . to Niko and me.

“I’ve killed Auphe,” Robin said in protest. “In fact, I’ve killed many whilst I saved the entire world last year. Didn’t you get the memo?”

“I’ve always known about your survival skills.” Ishiah picked up the bag with little effort, despite the weight of it. “That’s why history writes of the Last Stand of the Three Hundred, not the Three Hundred and One.”

“Someone had to live to tell the tale. There’d be no heroes if there wasn’t anyone left to talk them up, now, would there?” Goodfellow gave an arrogant tilt of his lips before muttering, “All I wanted was the company of a few hundred half-naked, oiled-up men, and out of nowhere I’m facing the entire Persian army. Where is the luck?”