Rob Thurman - Moonshine

I jerked my arm away and said sharply, "Don't."

"I'm sorry," she apologized instantly. "God, I am so sorry. I didn't mean to, Cal. I swear."

George didn't "read" people without permission. It was an invasion of privacy, and no one knew that better than she did. The fact that she had read me unconsciously said very clearly that my oh-so-vaunted arm's-length distance wasn't worth a damn to either of us.

I shoved the gate up, scraping the metal across the abrasion I'd gained in climbing the Ferris wheel the night before. The momentary sliver of pain grounded me. It was no big deal. As long as that was all she'd seen, it would be okay. I fumbled with the keys and jammed them one by one into the lock of the door. George, no doubt knowing which was the right one, stayed silent behind me until I opened the door and stepped through.

She followed after me. "Honestly, Cal, I would never—" she started.

"It's okay," I cut her off. "I know you wouldn't look without asking." It was the first time George had read me… short moment though it was. I was very careful about that. When we needed help or guidance, it was Niko she read. What she had learned about me through him, I didn't know and I didn't ask. What I did know was that I was no goody bag to be rummaging through. There were bad things in me, things no one should have to see. Hell, I didn't even know if George was aware I wasn't fully human. Some days I told myself she had to know. She'd had to have picked up on that while reading Niko. She had known her uncle was destined to die at the hands of the Auphe; how could she not know what that made me? But other days… I wasn't so sure.

Moving behind the counter, I checked the temperature on the freezer, fed the slushy machine with ice, and then quickly began to stock the ice-cream bins under the glass counter. The place had once been a drugstore with a soda counter, long before I'd been born. Now it was a soda counter with a lot of empty space and a lonely magazine rack. Mr. Geever kept the place running solely by virtue of George's calling. She sat in the shop for several hours a day and helped those that came. And come in large numbers they did. While she didn't take any money for her services, she always gently urged each person to buy an ice cream from the Geezer. It kept the old guy in false teeth and stool softeners with a little left over for trips to see his equally ancient sister.

"Cal." Funny how a voice of cinnamon velvet could be so utterly implacable.

It was a familiar tone. Horrifyingly familiar. "Niko been giving you lessons?" I grumbled to myself, and then, relenting, I looked up.

An unwavering gaze faced me. "What could I see that would be so bad?" she asked with a shot-to-the-heart honesty.

What a question… and one with too many not-so-nice answers. "Dead little girls for one," I said flatly.

Her lips tightened, but she didn't back down. "If you're thinking that's a first for me, you're wrong."

Not much of a surprise. I had one helluva track record with being wrong. "Then why would you want to see any more?" Along with being wrong, I also had a record of digging in my heels. Laying out the last gallon of chocolate, I reached automatically for the spray bottle of disinfectant and the slightly grungy towel beneath the counter and began to wipe off the glass.

"Caliban," she sighed, and bent her head to blow lightly on the surface of the icy glass.

Not so long ago I hadn't been comfortable with my full name. It brought up some conflicted emotions, to say the least. With a dark twist of humor, Sophia had named me for a slouching man-beast of Shakespearean fame. In my snarky and sullen teenage years I'd made a stand and demanded to be called Caliban and nothing else… not Cal, not anything that might let me forget what I was. I was certain I was a monster and I was determined to wear the label. Niko ignored me as he always did when he felt it was in my best interest. Even now he called me only Cal.

Lately, though, I'd gotten sort of used to the occasional "Caliban." Promise, George, and Robin, they didn't realize the emotions it carried with it and would use it now and again. And when George called me that… hell, the emotions became all new ones. Good ones, if I could let myself admit it.

But they disappeared almost immediately when I saw what her finger was sketching with quick strokes on the frosted glass. She'd drawn on the glass once before like that, but what she'd done then had been much more innocuous than what flowed from her now. Only a few lines, but the face jumped out at me as if it were alive. Pointed ears, streaming hair, a thousand metal teeth. Auphe. How did it go? Say the devil's name and he'll appear? It probably was the same for doodling his driver license's photo. Extinct or not, I didn't want to take the chance. Instantly, I reached over with the rag and wiped it away. She rested her hand on mine before I could pull it back. "That's not you, Cal. It never could be."

I guess that answered my question on how much she knew, I thought numbly. "It is me, George," I countered grimly. "Part of me anyway." The bell tinkled and I looked past her. "Looks like your first disciple is here. Better go show them the light." Carefully I slid my hand from beneath hers and turned my attention to unlocking the cash register.

It was part of me and I could never let myself forget it. Hey, almost destroying the world… it's kind of hard to gloss over. And it had been close. Really, really close. That was what the Auphe had wanted me for, from my very birth. I was part of an experiment in breeding, born and bred for destruction. It seemed the Auphe needed a very special type of creature to further their goal. And that goal was nothing short of wiping out this world and replacing it with another. The Auphe traveled via holes ripped in the fabric of space itself. Gates, doors, whatever you called them, they could slice one into the air, step through, and be someplace far away when they arrived on the other side. Now, if only they could form a rip not just through space but through time as well. The few of them that were left could go back to a prehistoric time when they, not the dinosaurs, ruled the earth. Armed with twenty-twenty hindsight, they could wipe out humans before we even got started. And with my involuntary help, they almost had.

Yeah, that kind of thing made it hard to forget just what you were.

"Stubborn." It wasn't said under her breath; it wasn't even a whisper. And it was accompanied by the sharp sound of her heel hitting the floor as she turned on it and whirled away. Georgie in a temper—there was a first, and despite the unsettling turn to the situation I felt my lips twitch. Then the half-born smile faded. She knew. She knew and she didn't seem to care. What that might mean to me I couldn't even begin to wrap my mind around.

Several hours later Mr. Geever returned early from his sister's and I made my escape, giving George a hasty and stiffly casual wave. She was sitting at a small table in the corner with one of a never-ending stream of petitioners, but that didn't slow my pace any. By the time I hit the door I was going at a clip quick enough to have the bells jangling frantically overhead. I'd spent a good period of my life running. Why change my ways now? As defense mechanisms went, I had this one down pat.

The rest of the day was spent very carefully not thinking about what had happened that morning. I did the dishes, put up clothes, even scrubbed the tub… things I rarely if ever got off my lazy ass to do. By the time Niko came home, I was so desperate for a distraction that I said something that literally stopped him in his tracks.

"Hey," I said the moment he opened the door. "Good day? Learn a lot? Wanna spar?"

He stood still in the doorway with keys dangling from his hand to regard me with bemusement. "Wrong apartment or pod person. I'm not quite sure where to place my bet."