Rob Thurman - Deathwish

“Yeah, well, you heard wrong.” I pulled the tie from my hair to let the dark strands fall free against my neck. I stretched the black elastic until it dug into my fingers with a painful bite. “They have a problem with us. And an Auphe problem is one fucking big problem. We don’t need the distraction right now.”

Niko disagreed with me. “Job or not, Cal, we still have a problem,” he pointed out with inarguable logic. I hated logic. It was never on my side. “They’ll come when they come; we can’t change that. Whether we’re working a case or not. Putting our lives on hold won’t make us any safer.”

Or any more likely to survive, I added silently. But he was right, and it wasn’t about the money. It was about what I’d said earlier, keeping at least some of your thoughts somewhere else. Not enough to be truly distracted, but enough to keep from drowning in dread and apprehension. I shifted my shoulders to loosen the tension in my neck, and exhaled. “Okay, okay. I’m in.” Moving from kidnapping to extermination to babysitting—our cases weren’t quite heading in the right direction. Thoughts for another time . . . like when our asses weren’t in such a sling. Or when we were dead.

Plenty of time then.

So we took the job. Robin, unable to help himself, jumped in to haggle Seamus up to an outrageous fee. It was a wonder he left the poor bastard with the tartan boxers on his ass. On that slightly disturbing thought, I turned toward the door with the others, leaving behind echoing spaces, powerfully raw art, and Seamus . . . Seamus, who was staring at Niko’s back as I looked over my shoulder. Not at Promise as I’d expected. But at Nik. Staring and staring hard.

This could be a problem.

The seven deadly sins.

Wrath, lust, gluttony, greed, sloth, envy, pride.

The puck pillowing his head on the bar counter of the Ninth Circle, sleeping the sleep of the exhausted and overindulged, had the latter six covered. But Cal, my brother, had the first all to himself. He tried to hide it, and from anyone but me, I believe he most likely succeeded. He’d come a long way in a year. Then it would’ve rolled off him in waves, choppy and fierce. Some emotions still did show: annoyance and impatience being the primary ones, and annoyance was threatening enough when others knew you were half Auphe.

Discipline would come. He was only twenty. Twenty and missing two years of his life. Eighteen mentally, the cynicism of a forty-year-old, and one of the bravest men I knew. He would deny it, but it was true. Kidnapped by the Auphe, possessed by a creature that had all but eaten his soul, and he went on. He clawed his way from the pit and went on—balanced on a knife’s edge. The Auphe were determined to snatch his sanity before they took his life. He’d already seen things, experienced horrors that I hadn’t been able to save him from. But I wouldn’t let what had happened before happen again. I would kill anything.

Anyone.

He was my brother.

I’d been handed a newborn at the age of four. Our mother must’ve fed me and changed me. She must have given me the bare necessities to survive, but she didn’t do the same for Cal. From the moment he came into this world, she had never wasted one moment of affection or attention on him. After handing him to me, I don’t think she ever touched him again, not on purpose, in his entire life. Sophia took the Auphe’s gold to bear a half-human, half-Auphe child, but I don’t think she saw him as a child, just as a thing . She’d even named him Caliban—the offspring of witch and demon from Shakespeare, a deformed monster, and she made sure he knew what it meant.

Bitch. It wasn’t a word I said often, but it was the only description that suited her.

Sophia had died a horrible death, and I couldn’t say I once felt an ounce of sympathy for her. She’d have made a good Auphe: sociopathic and utterly without compassion. She might have not physically touched Cal. In fact, she barely acknowledged his existence, but when she did, she said things to him—gloating, evil words, and I couldn’t protect him from them all. Call a child a monster often enough and he’ll believe you, maybe all of his life.

After the home birth—no hospitals if they could avoid it for the Rom, living below the government’s radar—pale and sweating, she had cut the umbilical cord, tied it off with a strip of yarn, and handed the bloody, writhing bundle to me. “You’ve been wanting a pet,” she had said, voice hoarse from grunts and restrained screams. “Here you are.”

Four years old. What do you do with a baby when you’re four years old? You learn responsibility. You go next door to the next run-down row house and ask the woman there, the one with five children of her own. She tells you how often and how to feed, because Sophia can’t be bothered, gives you a few cans of formula, a half box of diapers, and an old bottle. Then she sends you away with a look in her eyes that says she’s done all she’s going to do. You’re not her problem, so don’t darken her door again. There are worthless monsters and worthless human beings, and sometimes it’s hard to tell the difference between the two.

I’d been lucky Cal had rarely been sick. Never a cold, never colic, only once with something like the stomach flu; the healthiest baby in the world, thanks in part, I was sure, to Auphe genes. If he hadn’t been, he might not have survived. Best intentions, especially at the age of four, don’t always count.

Bad memories and dark bars—the two seemed to go hand in hand.

We’d come to Cal’s work, his day job, so to speak, after agreeing to take Seamus’s case. It was early afternoon, but the bar was half full. I’d taken a table in the corner by the bar. I flipped my dagger as I opened my book, Thucydides’s History of the Peloponnesian War , and ruthlessly vanquished the desire to slam the blade into the polished wood of the tabletop.

I moved on to practicing grips before my control wavered and I did bury the dagger in the table. Memories—you can’t escape them, but you can’t let them rule you either. Or you won’t be any good to yourself or your brother. I should concentrate on this new development on the Auphe front. All female—what could it mean?

“You’re late.”

I didn’t look up at Ishiah’s annoyance. Cal’s employer was both bark and bite. Either way, Cal could handle it.

“It’s funny. You say that every time.” I heard Cal toss his jacket behind the bar. “Like you expect something different.”

Ishiah owned the bar the Ninth Circle. He hired Cal as a favor to Goodfellow. The two of them, peri and puck, had issues with one another, Cal had told me. Actually, he’d said they bitched about each other until they made his ears bleed. Always with the turn of phrase, my brother. Apparently, the behavior ranged from cool exchanges to out-and-out threats of violence. While it was entertaining as hell, Cal had yawned one night after work, he never had figured out what their history was. For all their sharp words, they had a certain respect for one another, it seemed. If it hadn’t been for Ishiah swooping in, literally, at the last minute earlier in the week, Robin would be dead. That said something. And I knew Cal was grateful.

But that didn’t mean he was going to be on time.

It was an understanding the two had. Ishiah had given Cal a job when he didn’t particularly want to. And as Cal tended to alarm a good deal of the clientele, it was no doubt best to get some liquor in them most days before he showed up. Sedate them somewhat. But with an understanding or not, Ishiah still called Cal out on it. He was the boss; that was his job. It wouldn’t do to let the other employees see Cal get any special treatment . . . especially as he was the only one without wings. Peris, like every other creature on the planet, weren’t without their prejudices.