Doubletake (12 page)

When he did say it…I obeyed. I was about to close my eyes when he whipped his head around and soundlessly put a hand on the unsheathed katana on the low dresser behind him. He was listening. I didn’t hear anything except dripping IVs, the low beep of a blood-pressure machine, and a narcotic ringing in my ears, but if Niko heard something, it was there.

I started to sit up, but realized before I did that that was the worst thing I could do. Monster slayer? I couldn’t slay a hamster right now. The only thing I would do was get in Niko’s way. He stood, not frozen, but waiting. What he waited for stepped into view out of the darkness of the hall. The only light on in the place was in this room, and it was a low light in deference to my concussion at that. It didn’t matter. I recognized him all the same.

Kalakos.

He had outrun the boggles. Damn that streak of humanity in me. At the moment I didn’t regret anything more than not dropping him directly into their pit. Mama Boggle would’ve solved this problem for us with one bite of her jaws. Niko’s father scanned the bedroom. He didn’t seem surprised by what he saw. “You heard me pick the lock,” he said to Niko. “I suspected you kept it slightly rusty for a reason. You are like me. No matter what we do, you and I, we will always have our reasons.”

I saw Robin in the murk behind him. Kalakos didn’t hear him. As long as he had lived or guessed he’d lived, no one would hear Goodfellow if he didn’t want to be heard. He had a sword as well, not a katana, more crusader style, but lighter-weight. It was lined up directly at Kalakos’s back as the puck took several silent steps closer.

Niko pointed his katana. “Leave,” he ordered flatly. “Now.” I was vulnerable, embarrassing as that was, and around an unknown variable. He didn’t like it.

He didn’t like it to the point of being on the verge of burying steel in flesh without a thought.

But that bastard didn’t see that as I did. Kalakos’s eyes showed no fear, but they did show resignation. “I told you that the burden is one all Vayash are responsible for recovering.”

“We have nothing to do with your burden or the Vayash.” Kalakos didn’t know Nik, had never bothered to know him, but I knew him. I knew that while he rarely lost control, when he did…it was one goddamn thing to see. And he was standing on the edge. Teetering.

The black eyes focused on me, on the bandages, the medical equipment, the dried blood that still covered Nik’s scrubs.

Just…about…now.

“I think it seems that you do.”

That was that.

“
That
is the burden? That is the duty? It did this to my brother? When you said it could sense Vayash, you meant that literally? Sense us by our
blood
?” Niko’s knuckles went white under his olive skin. “And you wanted us to help you fight it. Did you lead it here?”

The point of Goodfellow’s sword came to rest against flesh. I could see that in the tightening of the skin around Kalakos’s mouth. Sandwiched between two blades, he kept his hands carefully away from his body. It was a smart move.

“I told you that it smells Vayash like a wolf smells a sheep. You chose not to listen. And I did not bring it. It came of its own—”

Niko didn’t listen to the rest. His hand wrapped around the grip of the katana slammed into his father’s face with brutal force, knocking him down and out. While Kalakos lay unconscious on the floor, Niko spit on him. I didn’t think I’d seen Niko do something more unlike himself or had seen him as furious, but then, as Kalakos had said, he and my brother always had their reasons. This was history repeating itself. “This is what the Vayash gave us when we came to you,” Niko said coldly. “And this is what you get in return, you bastard. You and your burden.”

Kalakos’s getting his ass kicked in a truly righteous way for a truly righteous reason made me feel better than all the narcotics in the room. Niko had buried this for his entire life, and it was time that he had a chance to get it out and deal with it. To “emote.” It was a fancy word for a beat-down, “emote,” but that only made me enjoy it more. I had only one regret.

“Goodfellow, kick him in the ribs for me, would you?” I said. The words were barely understandable. I was going
down as fast as Kalakos had, but barely was good enough. As my eyes closed, I heard the meaty thud of Robin’s shoe against flesh. It was a good sound to take me into sleep. I probably gave a smile as I went.

One dark and satisfied smile.

“Niko, there is a man in your garbage Dumpster outside. I can see his legs showing from beneath the lid.” There was silence, but the scent of heather. I pictured Promise brushing a kiss across my brother’s lips. “It is not quite what I would call being inconspicuous.”

“In this situation I do not much care about being conspicuous or not.” There was the sound of the blood-pressure cuff inflating and the tightened pressure on my arms. After several seconds, Niko exhaled. “Finally. Normal.” That was good news. My brain wasn’t going to explode. I didn’t use it much, but it was nice to know. “As for that worthless garbage masquerading as a human being, if the police show up, I’m quite certain he’ll wake up and talk his way out of his mess, because it’s not and never will be our mess.”

Huh. All that emoting and ass kicking hadn’t seemed to bring Nik much closure. I knew about closure, only I tended to laugh a little maniacally when I heard the word. No one knew better than I did that closure was a fairy tale, and expecting Niko to embrace it in a single day wasn’t doing him much service.

I opened my eyes to see Promise with her arms wrapped around Niko as he sat in the chair beside the bed. She was resting her pale cheek—like me, vamps weren’t much for tans—against his. Her hair was all brown again, the wide blond stripes gone. I coughed and said hoarsely, “No more…tiger? I liked the tiger look.”

“It was very high-maintenance. Much like you, Cal.”
She reached over Niko’s shoulder to stroke a gentle hand down my blanket-covered leg. “What have you done to yourself now?” There was nothing but sympathy in her voice, but Niko’s face tensed all the same.

“He didn’t do anything to himself.” He stood up and walked away from the circle of her arms. Standing at the foot of my bed now, he tugged the blanket down a few inches to cover my bare feet. I was a restless sleeper, drugged or not. As for sleep in general, the effects of the lack of it that lined his face were more apparent as he let go of the cloth and folded his arms, brooding. He didn’t look at her or me, only inside himself. He’d changed from scrubs into a black shirt and black jeans. “My…The man who fathered me is responsible for this. Cal almost…” He shut his mouth tightly before relaxing slightly. “Kalakos did this. He is the one in the Dumpster and he is exceedingly lucky that he will eventually wake up. I gave several hours’ consideration last night to whether I would allow that to happen or not.” Nik must have changed his mind about Kalakos’s bringing the Janus automaton here intentionally as opposed to following it or there would’ve been no consideration and no waking up for his father again.

I cared less about intentions and more about the results, especially when they happened to Niko or me. I would’ve had no problem killing the worthless bastard if Niko wanted to drag his unconscious body back inside, and I wouldn’t need to consider it for hours or even seconds. All I’d need was someone to fetch me one of my guns. But this wasn’t about me or the fact that I’d almost been butchered like a pig at the slaughterhouse. Oddly, my human and Auphe sides both agreed on this issue. The first thought was that Niko needed to take care of this himself to come to terms with an abandoned, fatherless life. The second…

Unconscious. Human. Worthless. Boring.
The dark stretched within me and yawned.

What could I say? They were both right.

But Kalakos would wake up again, and if Niko decided he’d made a bad call, yet hesitated—very doubtful, but if he did—I had a feeling my opinion of what I would do would change, but the agreement within me wouldn’t. After all, brothers helped each other out. Besides, worthless and boring or not, it beat TV.

TV…Nik should get a TV in his room instead of all those boring books.

TV would be good now.

Where was the remote…?

Niko gripped my leg lightly. I’d almost dozed off again. “We’ll have to move you. Soon. Before that thing finds us again.”

I yawned. “I know.”

“It’ll be painful, medicated or not,” he warned.

“Your cooking is painful. Moving I’ll survive,” I assured him.

“Then you can come to my home and I’ll have the housekeeper make you a completely nonvegan lunch and dinner.” Promise smoothed my blankets again, but her eyes were on Niko. “If your father is genuinely to blame for what happened to Caliban, then I know better than to think you would let him live.”

“It’s complicated,” Nik replied with ten times his usual understatement, “and I am sorry, Promise, but Kalakos is not a subject I wish to discuss, not now.”

Then came the knock at the door, and “complicated” was ready to talk to Niko whether he was ready or not. “Maybe the third time’s the charm,” I said. “Promise, could you get me a gun from under my bed?” I must have been due a dose of pain meds soon, because the
pain was growing sharp, but being clearheaded and pissed off pushed it down and made me more than capable of handling a firearm or two. “Or two guns. Yeah, two would be good.”

She took a look at me, the guy barely able to move and pissing through a catheter—Jesus, I hoped she didn’t know that—and shook her head. “Boys with their toys…and their grudges.” Niko was already gone, heading toward the door with katana in hand. Promise left as well, but returned with my SIG Sauer and one of my backup Desert Eagles. Chrome instead of the matte black I usually went with, but I’d discovered over the years that color didn’t matter. They’d both put a bullet in you with equal effectiveness. I didn’t hide them under the covers. I let them rest in sight above the blankets with my fingers curled around the triggers. I wasn’t afraid of Kalakos, although he’d damned well better be afraid of me.

I’d have offered one to Promise, but Promise had her own weapons—natural and man-made. She was as lethal as either of my guns. “He knew about Niko before he was born,” I said quietly, hardly above a murmur. “He didn’t come for him. He didn’t take him from Sophia. He didn’t save him. The only time Niko has seen him is now…when Kalakos
needs
something from him. Remember that.”

“I will,” Promise, the violet of her eyes swirling with black, said, and I saw delicate fangs lower and lock into place as she did.

“I swear it to you, Niko. I tried to warn you, but leave that behind us. I can help him. It will be back. It is only semiaware; yet that is enough for it to know it hates its captors. The Vayash. Any Vayash, and it will not care if you deny the clan. It will smell the Vayash in your blood.”

Kalakos, sounding like Niko, but off just enough for me to make the distinction.

“As if I’d trust him with you. We are moving. It will not find us.” That was Niko, but not one I was used to hearing. There was the fury, buried but clawing its way free. Not forgotten, not forgiving.

“When Janus returns from wherever it was sent, it will find you eventually, but will your brother be healed enough to fight? Or still in that bed, able only to die?”

That ass.
Granted, Janus had taken me down when the worst I’d had was a baby kishi bite on my leg, but still…
That ass.
My fondest hope was that I did have the time to heal to show Kalakos what I could do given free rein. I didn’t think Niko would silently hold me back this time.

Unfortunately, Kalakos had offered the only thing that would have Niko letting him in the house, much less not slicing him open for an intestine-fest on the floor. There was a long pause…Niko thinking, then: “To you, I am Leandros, not Niko. Better yet, to you, I am nothing—the same as I’ve always been. To you, I have no name at all. You are too without value to speak them.”

He meant it. Niko didn’t say anything he didn’t mean. That didn’t change the fact that seconds later he was in my room with Kalakos because he was that desperate. Grasping at straws. I’d need weeks to heal, if not a month on the ribs. If Janus came back anytime sooner than that, which was a good possibility, as I had no idea where I had sent him except that it hadn’t been Tumulus, it would take it less than a second to end me. How many moves, and how often would be enough? How quickly could it find us?

“What do you have that you think can fix this?” Niko demanded, jerking his head in my direction. “Your duty,
your burden, it all but ripped Cal apart.” And Nik had put me back together, but he couldn’t force me to mend any faster than I normally did. “Why do you imagine you can heal him?”

Kalakos looked somewhat the worse for wear since last night. He’d straightened his clothes, his hair remained in a tight ponytail, but his face was covered with dried blood and his nose was obviously broken. Nik’s nose. Once proud, now bent to one side. There were also bruises covering one cheek, his right jaw, and half his forehead. One punch had done that. He was lucky. Niko could’ve killed him with that one punch, easily.

He reached into the depths of a coat similar to many my brother had. The only people who wore coats like that in the summer were people who carried swords or were flashers. With the way things were going, the son of a bitch was a flasher
with
a sword. He retrieved a soft cloth bag and from that he pulled a round iron box about the size of an orange. “This contains something old, very old. An ointment made by the most powerful healer who ever lived.” He didn’t smile. If he had, with what he said next, I was pretty sure Niko would’ve taken that second punch to kill him then and there. “The rumors do pass among the clans. I assume you know of Suyolak.”

As we were the ones to destroy him, yeah, we knew Suyolak, the Plague of the World, born Rom and died a monster. Knowing him hadn’t been the best experience. People had died. We had almost died. The world itself had almost died. Suyolak was the original Grim Reaper…an antihealer who lived only to slaughter. I didn’t see a damn thing that dead bastard could do for me.