Rob Thurman - Deathwish

“What is it?” Cal wasn’t much for introspection. Unlike Xolo, if he was looking, there was something to see. I moved to his side and saw nothing but snow and hundreds of bare trees.

He narrowed his eyes and kept them on the window. “One of them is watching us.”

The Auphe.

“Right now,” he added grimly.

“I can’t see it,” I said, calm. Maybe a little too calm. The bogeyman was right outside, but look at me. Look how calm, cool, and collected I was. Like ice. You could frost a beer mug on my ass. “But it’s out there.” The Auphe bitch. I breathed on the glass and wrote in the condensation I SEE YOU. I didn’t really see it, but I felt it—as much as if it had been standing outside the window, inches away, facing me, all grins and murderous cheer. “It must have opened its gate pretty far away, because I didn’t feel it.”

“But you feel it now?” Niko stood by my side and kept his eyes focused on the night beyond the glass. “This is new, isn’t it?”

“Yeah, new.” New, fun, and exciting. Feel a monster’s eyes on you. Hurry and call in now for a sample. Comes with a free prize. “All the traveling I’ve being doing lately. Maybe it’s another instinct thing that finally popped up. Pack animals sensing their own kind.”

That sense of being watched for days—it’d started out small, like a small dose of paranoia, and it had grown and swelled, to the point that I was looking over my shoulder every hour or so, until I’d looked out of the window today, this very minute, and known . “They’ve always known where I was, Nik. Always. Since the day I was goddamn born. It was part of their plan.” And remaking the entire world in their image, that had been one helluva plan.

“We guessed they were watching us since we stopped running, but this makes even more sense,” he said. “They wouldn’t have to watch us all the time to know where we were. And it would explain how they followed us all those years. How we wondered why we never lost them for long. How they always managed to track us down again and again.”

“They could sense me, no matter where we went.” A biologically built-in tracking system. GPS built into the genes. The results were slower but as sure. Sticking together these past few days had been the worst thing we could’ve done, all of us, because I led them to us. The Auphe could sense themselves in me. Sense their blood just like I was one of them. It was one more repulsive goddamn tie to them and a hideous thought, but that thought, as horrible as it was . . .

It gave me another one.

I grinned darkly and saw the reflection of my teeth in the glass.

A really nasty idea.

One every last piece of shit of them deserved.

Timing. It was all about timing. The same way setting off a bomb is about timing, because the Auphe were a living bomb. Too late and you might miss your target. Right on time, way to go. Too soon? Too soon usually meant you weren’t going to be around to appreciate the other options. . . . You were going to be tomato-colored paste on a wall somewhere. And when the explosive had a mind and an agenda of its own, yeah, you were probably screwed. It didn’t bother me that my whole life hung on a “probably.” Hell, it always had.

The next day, Delilah, who had refused to talk on the phone, refused to fear any Auphe, now shivered with an all-over body twitch of disgust when I sat in the cubicle beside her in the main branch of the New York Public Library, the mythology section. It seemed appropriate. “You stink.” She cupped her hand over her nose. “Of suburbia .” It was as close to horrified as I’d ever seen her.

I wasn’t sure what suburbia smelled like. Pink flamingos, Virgin Marys, waving flags, and Big Wheels, maybe. “If you weren’t so damn stubborn, you wouldn’t have to smell me,” I retorted.

Every time I’d tried to talk to her on the phone she’d disconnected, until I’d finally agreed to meet her. Since I was an Auphe homing beacon, I made sure she was there a half hour before I arrived and she’d promised to stay a half hour after I left. Then again, promises and Delilah—I wasn’t sure she was patient enough to always keep them. Smart enough, yes. Patient . . . different story.

“Better clean death than your stench.” She left her cubicle to sit on the desk of mine, very obviously not there for the book learning.

“The Auphe won’t give you that.”

“Yes, yes.” She rolled copper eyes. “To wait thirty minutes. Sneak like weasel. Cower like sheep. I understand.” Her silver ponytail hung over her breast. “Where is your keeper?”

“Safe.” Nik was a lot safer alone and on the move than he was with me. Not that it hadn’t taken some convincing . . . on both sides. We’d had to convince each other and ourselves that it was the right thing to do. If I was wrong about the Auphe being imprinted on me like Satanic baby ducklings, if they were simply following with more skill than any creature should have, I could lose Nik. If I was right and the Auphe got pissed off that I was the only one they could find . . . then Nik could lose me.

Of the games they’d played with us the past week this time, I was finally dealt in. And my hand was good—aces high, because I didn’t think I was wrong.

Not this time.

And that promise I’d made to Nik, how I’d outthink them, how I’d get us out of this—I might just be able to keep it.

They were all gone now—Promise, Cherish, and Robin. They’d scattered before the sun had come up. The Auphe watching that night had been joined by another one and had stayed put as the others left. Both had melted out of existence when Niko and I had driven off that morning in his car before going our separate ways in the city. I hadn’t felt one since. Not yet. Definitely not when Niko and I had split up.

It had to be one of the hardest things I’d ever done. I knew the Auphe wanted him, almost more than they wanted me—because of me. Walking away from him based on a feeling, an ability I barely knew existed—“tough as shit” didn’t begin to describe it.

And for him to let me go? He almost couldn’t do it. Literally. He’d spent his life making sure I kept mine, and to not be there to watch my back now? I didn’t think he could take that first step away. He didn’t think so either. This wasn’t a fight with a mummy or a battle with a werewolf. This was the big time—the real monsters. Our monsters.

Walk away? Now?

I saw it in his eyes. Impossible conflict. My big brother, who’d guarded me since my first breath, and he couldn’t do it. Not even if it meant saving us all. He believed in me—he did—but when belief runs up against a lifetime of habit, belief can be kissing the canvas in a heartbeat. Just that one step . . .

I took it because I knew he couldn’t.

“Tell the son of a bitch Samuel hey for me.” I grinned before turning and merging into the crowd on the sidewalk. If it was the last look he ever had of me, I wanted it to be of the same cocky, cynical, stubborn bastard I’d always been. That thanks to him, I’d lived long enough to be. When I finally gave in and glanced back, he was gone.

It was the right thing to do, but I’d never felt more alone in my life. Your brother watched your back and you watched his.

Always.

God.

But he was safe. I believed it. I believed it because I had to.

“Safe.” In the library Delilah leaned down to whisper by my ear. “Safe is overrated. Safe is not fun.”

I let my thoughts shift from Nik to the image of a very nude, very limber werewolf, then gave myself a metaphorical smack back to reality. Not that doing it in the stacks with Delilah wouldn’t have been entertaining, not to mention some stress relief, but I didn’t have the time. And not really the concentration. Knowing the Auphe could appear on the top of a shelf any second and snatch me away while I was going at it was enough to take the lust out of anybody’s thrust.