Rob Thurman - Nightlife

They were still coming, leaping over the dead and the •shattered, the wounded and the bloody. Covered with blood and ragged flesh, they kept coming. Lead-borne death was not going to stop them. As far as I could tell, it wasn't even going to slow them down. They were going to pass through the gate. Whether they went over the three in their way or through them, it didn't matter. It was going to happen. At this late stage in the game there was no way to stop it.

My brother refused to accept it. The bastard had always been stubborn. From the time I could walk he'd been bossing me around. For that matter, he'd done his best to boss all of creation around. But he'd never been able to make the world do what he'd wanted it to do—he had never succeeded in making it leave us alone. Now he stood in front of me, giving it one last shot, although I think he knew it was futile. Refusing to give in because that's who he was. From beginning to end, that's who he was. "Shut it down." The sword was unwavering at my throat. "I won't tell you again."

"You wasted my time telling me at all." I couldn't use my arms or hands in my defense, but Nik had taught me better than that. My own predatory talents didn't hurt either. I aimed a flashing kick at his knee that he avoided easily. It was a feint and I didn't expect it to work. What he didn't anticipate was the poison that I spit in his face. Even distracted by the blow directed at his leg, he still managed to dodge far enough to the side that the venom missed his eyes. He reeled backward as the skin on his left jaw and chin began to redden and swell. It wouldn't kill him; chances were it wouldn't even make him sick. This new body, merged though it was, was slower to produce toxins. It had taken me this long to make any at all and it was nowhere near full strength. If I'd hit Niko's eyes, however, I would've blinded him. As it was now, he'd have only an agonizingly painful allergic reaction.

Meanwhile, I could simply kick him to death. Perhaps it wasn't as festive as blindness, convulsions, and the vomiting up of internal organs, but it would have to do. With his free hand clawing at his face, Nik staggered and went down to one knee. I lashed out and slammed a blow to his thigh that took him all the way to the ground. The next one landed in his ribs. My headset tumbling off from the exertion, I was poised for another kick when I caught a flicker out of the corner of my eye. It was the first long slide into home base.

The bullets were still flying, but one Auphe passed through the curtain of them as if it were a gentle summer rain. He bolted past me and leaped toward the gate in a motion as liquid as flowing mercury. He almost made it. He was three feet from the gate and still in midair when Niko's sword cut him in two. One moment Nik had been on his side with my foot in his ribs; the next he'd flown to his feet, spun, and taken out the Auphe with one stroke. The newly sleek blond head whipped around and he snapped at Goodfellow and Samuel, "Keep them back!"

"Oh, was that the plan?" Robin countered acidly. "Perhaps I should've written it down." Swinging his gun, he slammed the stock into the face of an Auphe who'd made it too close. Ichor and mucus sprayed into the air in a peculiarly artistic fan pattern.

Samuel kept firing. He had less to say, but it was considerably more to the point. "Hurry, damn it!"

And then the blond head turned my way. There would be no more warnings, I saw. No more chances. That's when I remembered about the hair. The knowledge scurried out of the depths of my brain, and I heard the distant blue velvet chuckle of Mommy dearest. It was something she'd once told the two of us when I was young enough to think her booze-soaked ramblings were bedtime stories. This one had been about her Gypsy roots. I suppose they were partly ours too, although she never made any effort to include us. Sophia came from Greek Gypsy stock. The customs of both groups had been intertwined and one particular old Greek tradition had been adopted by the Rom of that region.

You cut your hair for those who have died. You cut your hair and you mourn.

"Cyrano." I met eyes that in different times had been the same color as mine and said ruefully, "Really?"

I could've stopped him. I would've lost the gate, but I could've stopped him. The picture of how it would go was clear in my mind. I would drop the gate, swivel in one motion to wrap my arm around Samuel's neck. When I turned back, I would have his gun and I would have him between glittering death and me. As the blade pierced my hostage's heart, I would unleash enough bullets to turn Niko into a distant memory. Easy, simple, and I could've done it. I could have.

But I didn't.

Instead of Samuel's heart the sword slid into my abdomen like it was coming home. My hands fell to close tightly around my brother's. His fingers were cold and they shook minutely beneath mine. We both held on to the hilt like it was a lifeline. Odd. It wasn't anything near that… for either of us. "Well." I barely could hear myself, my words that were softly carried on failing breath. Niko heard me, though—I could see that in his face, in his eyes… in the depths that swallowed all light, all hope, all faith. "Look at that." Falling to my knees, I felt the relinquishing kiss of metal inside me as I slid free of the blade. I smiled up at him, the faint curve of my lips almost genuine. "My mistake. I guess you have the balls after all. Good for you, big brother." It felt final, those words. I let go of Niko to cup my hands over my stomach and watch with detached fascination as my life simply flowed away.

And as I went, so did the gate. It fell at the same time Niko's sword did, one just an echo of the other. Where once had hung a passageway to a time long ago, now stood only a blank wall. I dropped my eyes from the nonexistent gate to the fallen blade and then looked back up at my brother. "What? No souvenir?"

Nik didn't react to the comment or to my next one about the sky falling. In fact what he was responding to was anyone's guess. He didn't seem to notice when the sound of gunfire sputtered to a halt as Goodfellow and Samuel ran out of ammunition. That this happened in almost the same instant that the building began to collapse didn't seem to catch his attention either. Every iota of his considerable concentration seemed to be focused on me. I couldn't say how long it lasted. Maybe it was only seconds, but it seemed longer, much longer. What he saw, I didn't know. Silver eyes, transparent skin, fading consciousness, and a growing pool of blood—that was a given. But what did he see beyond that? I just didn't know. For the first time I couldn't read him. I'd seen his despair, his anguish, and then I'd seen it drain away to be replaced by… nothing. Nothing that I could identify, in any case.

Coming to some enigmatic decision, he blinked empty eyes and I was pulled over his shoulder before I could put up a fight. Not that it would have been much of one. Then he was running. As he went my vision began to darken and I allowed a decision of my own to be postponed. I never had been one to throw in the towel, not in either of my incarnations.

Behind us came the Auphe. I couldn't see Robin or Samuel; they must have been ahead. I could see my former employers, though. There were only slices of them as I sank further into cloying blackness, but it was more than enough to let me know my ass had been canned. If they caught us, separating my remains from the others would be a matter of DNA analysis. I'd failed them, but even worse than that, I had ruined their guinea pig. This body had what was a potentially fatal wound. It was now useless to them, and without it, so was I. The rage in their faces and their fiery eyes was for me as much as for Niko, Goodfellow, and Samuel. No two weeks' notice, and severance pay certainly wasn't looking like an option. I let the thought swirl down the drain to be replaced by another. It was a repeat of an earlier one. I could've stopped Nik. I could've stopped it all. So why didn't I?