Rob Thurman - Moonshine

And then it was. Literally nothing. In my hand… nothing.

He came out of nowhere… like all bad dreams do. He must've been perched on the side of the building, waiting. They were good at that—waiting. One moment I stood alone and the next he flowed up over the edge to stand before me, a horrifically distorted reflection.

I froze. I'm not proud of it, but it's a fact—one of those cold, hard ones you're always hearing about. He stood there before me, simply stood… as if he wasn't a ghost. Wasn't a figment from a life now led only in nightmare. Wasn't Auphe.

Transparently white skin, narrow face, sullenly burning molten eyes. Flaxen hair lifted on a nonexistent wind, and a thousand needle teeth bared and washed with a foaming saliva. It was a sight I'd thought I'd never see again. "Traitor." The voice was flat and harsh, the dry rasp of scales across a stone floor. "I've been searching for you." He crowned himself with the gold circlet that had been so easily snatched from my paralyzed fingers before he flashed a taloned hand toward my throat. "High and low." The claws punctured skin without the restraint Cerberus had shown. "Far and wide." The face leaned close to mine until its fetid breath soured the air in my lungs. "Here and now."

My eyes closed involuntarily. They believed wholeheartedly what my mind wanted to. It wasn't true. It was an illusion. It was a dream. I'd open my eyes and it would be gone. Just like that… gone. Only it didn't happen that way.

"I am the way, tainted cousin." The grip on my airway tightened. "I am righteous vengeance. You cannot close your eyes to that."

Transfixed, immobile… fucking useless . I should've shoved the fear and terror down. I should've concentrated on the loathing… the hate. Submit to an Auphe? Lie down for this pasty-ass shithead? No. No . I could snap the heel of my hand under his pointed chin and shove him away. I could plant a foot in his gut and throw him over the edge. The motions were so clear in my mind. I could see them, but I couldn't move. He was half the size of the Cerberus wolf, and still I couldn't move. Everyone has something in their life, in their world, that can break them. You might not be able to imagine it or to even fathom it exists… but it's there. For every single person, it's there. Mine, however, couldn't break me. It was far too late for that.

Couldn't break what had already been broken.

"Get away from him." Niko's taut voice was behind me. It couldn't have been far; the roof wasn't that large. There was no reason he should sound a world away. "Get away from him now ."

The warning claws sank deeper in my flesh, a catch-all deterrent. "Betrayed your kind," the Auphe hissed. A strand of colorless hair touched my cheek. It was slippery and it burned, a track of cold fire. "Betrayed your own."

He wasn't wrong. I had betrayed the Auphe. Biggest and best accomplishment of my life to date. I'd participated, although not as much as I'd have liked, in the wholesale destruction of what remained of their race. Niko, Robin, and I had kept them from turning this world into what it had once been before humans had ruled. We'd stopped them from taking us back to when the supernatural was natural, the water and air were perfume sweet, and humans were at best toys and at worst a mild nuisance. While a world run by the Auphe might be more ecologically sound, the murder and mutilation ratio would be a definite downside. I "Did you think we were all gone, traitor child?" I could taste blood in my mouth as the elongated fingers continued to tighten around my throat. "Did you think there would not be consequences for one such as you?"

No. I'd never thought that. I'd been living with the consequences of the Auphe all my life. Only recently had I been dealing with the consequences of their death. I would take the second over the first any damn day. Or I would have done that until now. Of course, none of my thoughts were quite that coherent. Rapidly disintegrating, bits and pieces of them would roll and surface briefly, silvered fish in a storm-driven sea, before vanishing under an ever-rising swell of sickened disbelief. It was a disbelief that refused to die despite the evidence before me. It couldn't be a live Auphe. Couldn't be.

"Did you think you would be safe?"

Could.

"Did you think you would escape your beloved family?"

Not.

"You shall not."

Be.

Nails were ripped free from my neck with callous efficiency. Bloodstained, they were held up for my examination. "But it will not be this simple. For you, never this simple. Never this painless.

"Every moment." Lipless teeth touched my fore-head in a hideous parody of a paternal kiss. "Of every day." He took a step back, graceful as a striking snake. "We will watch you. We will take all from you. All and everyone." A red-tinted claw traced the circlet on his head. "As I took this."

I tried then. I really did. It was as if I'd forgotten how to make my body work. Nerves were sluggish… joints fixed and rusty, but in a pathetic, drunken fumble, I was able to reach out with a numb hand.

Slow, too slow.

"This, betrayer, is only the beginning. We have such games planned for this world." The grin was as bright and cold as a slice of winter sky. "What a pity your sanity shall not survive to see them." One more step and he balanced on the edge of the roof, then plummeted off.

Niko's sword, still wet with wolf blood, struck the edge a fraction of a second after the Auphe's plunge. " Fuck ," came the viciously spit curse. That sounded like me, not my calm, cool, collected brother. At any other time I would've been amazed and amused that Niko would admit to knowing the word, much less using it. At this particular time, however, I didn't feel amazement. I damn sure didn't feel amusement. In fact, I suddenly felt nothing at all. My legs gave way and I fell to my knees.

"Cal."

I didn't feel the rough surface beneath me, or the way it scored my flesh raw as I methodically beat my fists against it.

"Cal."

I didn't feel the pressure of hands on my shoulders or the hard motion that shook me. I could see it all, distant and hazy, but I felt absolutely nothing and that was fine with me. Hands stopped my fists from their pounding, then wound around fistfuls of my shirt to pull me effortlessly to my feet. The keen of a siren floated over Nik's voice, giving the words peculiar halos of red light. "The police are coming, Cal. We have to go."

Go? Where could we possibly go? In a world where the Auphe still lived, where could we go? We'd already learned the hard way that we couldn't hide forever. Not from the Auphe, and not from what I had done. George's best chance of coming home, George's only chance…

And I'd just lost it.

Numbness can't last, as much as you might like it to.

Too bad.

I sat on the edge of the tub and focused on the tiled floor as Niko finished mopping the blood from my skin. He'd removed the torn stitches from my arm and cleaned the half-healed bite, but otherwise left it alone. The copper that had filled my mouth when facing the Auphe had been from a savagely bitten tongue; I kept that less-than-heroic gem to myself. The only real damage had been done to my neck, and that wasn't nearly as bad as it could've been. The Auphe had made it clear my death would be the least of my punishment. They didn't want to try to use me again to bring an end to this world. They knew I was a less-than-reliable tool, and from the sounds of it, they had other ways in mind. No, they didn't want to use me anymore; what they wanted from me was far more simple than that: pain.

The bite of antiseptic stung under my jaw and I hissed. It was the first thing I'd felt since the rooftop and my first real reaction. "Welcome back," Niko said with quiet relief, opening a package of small butterfly bandages.