Downfall (23 page)

It was on the fourth kick that he had bitten my ankle as viciously as a rabid wolf but with far worse breath
drifting up to my nose. A night of bad wine and worse pork. “You are a demon to bring this morning upon us.” He’d snarled up at me in Phoenician, a magnificent language for insults. “And you sucked the cock of the donkey that mounted my mother.” Then he was gone again, sound asleep and content in his bed of dirt and vomit with his eyes closed this time against the sunlight.

One cannot pick their family or, despite the saying, often cannot pick their friends when fate is involved, and one definitely cannot pick their karmic-bonded idiots.

The proof was in my living room.

“Arturus and Caiy?” From there Cal sounded tired as well as if he too had only woken up with enough alcohol in his blood system to regret it.

“King Arthur and Sir Kay. It wasn’t as legend and movies have you think. There was much more horse manure and body odor than gold and legendary swords. Arthur was no more than an illiterate chieftain and Kay a soldier and foster sibling with a noted acid tongue. Yes, that would be you, Cal. Your heroic death was probably closer to being kicked to death by a cow. A Roman cow, maybe, to keep you British and ‘noble.’ Caiy died fighting a Roman conqueror, bovine conqueror. I’m guessing they left out the bovine part of the tale. There was also a Myrddynne who could do things that men found to be ‘witchery.’ That would be Merlin and Robin, I’m quite certain. He could pass off pulling rabbits out of hats and coins behind ears as ‘witchery’ in those days.” Niko sounded equally exhausted.

It hadn’t been rabbits. It had been frogs and the occasional hedgehog I’d made magically appear in that stupid hat. And for the maidens, it was a given, it was my cock that materialized within. It wasn’t as if I wore that ridiculous hat, which was not pointed or be-starred as idiot fiction would claim, for the things it did for my hair.

“Then there was Alexander and Hephaestion,” Niko went on. “They died months apart. For all that we seem to have what most would call an unhealthy attachment to each other and cannot live an entire year alone, we don’t seem to do any service to Robin, who does go on alone and who knows for how many hundreds of years before he sees us again. You heard him. He has spent thousands of lives with us and yet we keep leaving him, which might not be so bad if we were old and withered and he’d be glad to see us depart in our decrepit stage. He could find others to drink with if that happened and stop paying village women to change our medieval diapers, but if that has been the case but once, he hasn’t mentioned it.”

“Phelan and Cullen,” Cal said, low and not meant, I don’t think, to be said in a place here or now.

“What did you say?” Niko asked, with the same weariness, but, praise Mnemosyne, no genuine comprehension of what Cal had said.

Cal’s voice went on as if Phelan and Cullen had not been said aloud, had not happened, and I kept hoping Cal wouldn’t know, not consciously. Subconscious was a lost cause. “Achilles and Patroclus. Alexander and Hephaestion. I didn’t give a crap about history or any of the other subjects you homeschooled me in, but I remember that those two pairs were close. Like, really close. As in closer than brothers and more into . . . you know. Oh, shit. I think I need to put my head between my knees.” Ah, poor Cal . . . if he remembered what he’d done in other lives, including orgies that offered men, women and, not to forget, hermaphrodites . . . would combust.

“I imagine . . . no, I
know
 . . . that Robin spread those rumors and laughed while he did so.” Niko was right to say that. I had lied, I had spread rumors, and if it was because Achilles wouldn’t give me the time of day, in a
sexual sense, and Patroclus had given me false hope, the bastard, of his cousin to drag me into a long, drunken war. They deserved the rumors.

I tossed aside one of my pillows and thought of the foul-tongued Persian mercenary who’d made malicious comments when I clawed the ground until blood stained my fingers at Patroclus’s funeral pyre and then he had laughed outright, saying I wasn’t a god—I wasn’t even a man, when I’d knelt at Achilles’ own pyre and begged his forgiveness. Of course the dead can’t grant forgiveness.

The Persian had laughed, yes, but only once. He had no time for a second as I’d instantly taken him to the ground with a vicious slice that opened his guts. Knee on his chest pinning the thrashing, screaming garbage in place, I considered what gift he could make to the pyre in apology for his disrespect. It was an easy decision. He thought I wasn’t a man for mourning my comrade, my family. I knew without a doubt what he’d prize the most in proving himself a man. I relieved him of them, and I did not do it quickly or mercifully. When done, I let him continue to scream and struggle for a while. Why wouldn’t I? Surely a
man
could take a little pain.

Finally, I tired of the noise and the mess as his attempt at flailing about caused his intestines to begin to pour free from his abdomen. With my dagger, I indicated his cock and balls lying in the dirt and sand beside his head where he could turn for an excellent view. “Not a man, you say? How much of a man do you feel with your manhood itself gone?” I hissed. While the day was warm, I was cold—a creation of ice. “What? No answer?” Nothing he could say now would move me, not that he didn’t try. The screams had faded to moans and now became begging. I hated when those as worthless as him begged, and today wasn’t the day to spend much time on this son of a whore. This was Achilles’ day.

I was crouching beside him now, and I rocked back on my heels for a better look at the display I had made of him—the pageantry of what precisely was
not
a man. “I’m going to kill you, but first you watch. If you don’t, you won’t die for as many agonizing days I can drag from you no matter how you whine and plead.”

The pain already had his skin tight against skull, as if he’d been dead for years. He did watch as told, as I knew he would. First I reached down and hefted his cold and shriveled prick in my hand to hold before his eyes. “The merit and value of a man . . . I hope for your sake it isn’t measured by the length of your dick. You would fall short to say the least.” I tossed it on the funeral pyre. “What you thought made you a man, I sacrifice to one who was born knowing with his first breath what truly makes one.” Bravery, courage, loyalty—that was what made men.

“As for these. . . .” I ignored his whimper as there was a faint sizzle when his flesh entered the fire, “These shall be for Patroclus.” I showed my teeth in a rictus of a grin I knew couldn’t possibly reflect the current insanity inside me. I picked up the testicles and whistled. All the camp dogs came running and I tossed the Persian’s balls to the nearest one. “Patroclus liked dogs. I think he would’ve appreciated you giving them a scrap, no matter how tiny, of meat.”

He was crying and had been since the first cut to his stomach. So much for that portion of his definition on what defined manhood. The base coward was not an offering worthwhile of Achilles here now or of the ghost of Patroclus days gone. I hoped they took it in the spirit in which it was offered. Defeat of the dishonorable and a laugh for Patroclus who had genuinely loved that pack of dogs.

I’d exhaled, abruptly too exhausted to care if I took
another breath. My dagger slashed, cutting the mercenary’s throat deeply enough that his head tilted back to show bone cut through. It was only the few strips of flesh and tendons that left it attached to his body by the scarcest of tethers. Unimportant. The only thing of importance now was the silence.

There was quiet and it was good. Not a sound could be heard but the crackle of the flames. No one laughed. Not that they didn’t want to learn the lesson the Persian had—that wasn’t the reason. They too knew and fought with Achilles. They were his men and they mourned as well.

There were no more gathered around who lacked respect for the greatest warrior of his time.

The rest of the body I left for the dogs to devour. They’d had the smallest of tastes, they were ready for more. It was a good day to be a dog. I turned back to kneel again by the pyre. There I would stay until the fire burned to nothing, until the last charred splinter of wood was cold.

The Persian had known nothing.

If you’ve never wept at the funeral of a friend, then you have never had a friend.

*   *   *

Memories. They were but memories, that was all. I pushed them aside with long practice to return to the present in time to hear Cal’s next words.

“He’s gone through too much for our sakes.” I heard the rattle of empty bottles against one another. Cal cleaning up? That was unlikely, but it could happen. Unlikely as the sun turning purple, but vaguely possible. “We’re not like him. Haven’t you noticed? All those people we were or the ones we know about, they died young and who knows how long it takes him to find us to begin with? He was careful not to let us know anything about
this reincarnation crap when we were kids in this life. That means he did that in all our other lives. He waited for us to grow up and become whoever the hell we were supposed to be.”

There was the shattering crash of glass. Cal was cleaning then, in all his carelessness, which made me appreciate the effort more. “In all our lives he waits until we’re adults and then, to thank him, we up and die after hanging around with him ten or fifteen years at fucking best. We leave him after fifteen years, and he spends hundreds alone until we can be bothered to be born and found by him again. A
thousand
lives or more that we’ve come and gone, a thousand, he said. How he’s not crazy as hell, I don’t know. I would be. This life right now with the Auphe by itself is too much for anyone. Hell, I wish he wouldn’t torture himself like this. I highly fucking doubt we’re worth it.”

“He chooses this. He doesn’t have to find us and go through life after life at our side. He could ignore us if he crossed our path. He could not seek us out.” That was Niko, and Niko most often knew what he thought, but he didn’t sound certain this time. He wanted to believe what he said, but I don’t think that he did.

“Nik, shit. If we lived forever and Robin died and lived and died over and over again, do you think we’d let him do that alone? Particularly if he had a death wish like we seem to have?” Cal snapped. “Hell, no. There’s no choice. He’s family. For all that he’s done for us in the only life we remember, imagine what he’s done for us in the thousands we don’t remember. If he did that for us, we’d do the same for him. I know I come first with you the same as you come first with me, but maybe that’s because we don’t remember Robin each time we’re reborn.” There was the explosion of glass this time. A bottle hitting the wall. Cal’s typical reaction to what he
couldn’t fix, and it made me that much more fond of him, as I was that accustomed to it now. “He talked about Patroclus and Achilles and he didn’t say how we died, but as much I wish I had ignored your history lessons, I
didn’t
,
because I know how it happened.”

I stood at my bedroom door now. My penthouse was large and the hallway long and I could barely see a bare slice of Caliban, his now black-and-white hair hanging down as he tilted his head to stare at the floor. I watched as he combed fingers through the strands. He was worrying about me when day by day he became physically more Auphe. He wasn’t thinking of himself, desperately compromised . . . but of me. Could any god have created a more true friend? No.

“I know Patroclus died first,” Cal asserted quietly, hoping the breaking bottle hadn’t woken me or because he was tired. That feeling I knew very well. “And I know Achilles freaked the hell out. Killed that prince and desecrated his body. I remember that because you taught it to me. That’s what I know from the history books, but what I
remember
now that I’ve heard most of the story from Robin.” Except for the end, for the dying part I refused to talk of, not a word. No one could convince me to do that. But my silence had been pointless. One would think after Cullen that I’d know that not telling the entire story wasn’t protection enough with Cal’s Auphe-enhanced memory. I’d been a drunken fool.

“I remember a sword cutting my throat and then again, stabbing into my chest.”

I saw Cal’s head fall even lower. “I saw you and Robin above me, talking, yelling.” Not yelling—screaming. We had screamed, Achilles and I. “But I couldn’t breathe,” Cal went on. “I tried, but I couldn’t fucking breathe. I felt like I was drowning, but I didn’t taste salt from the sea. It was copper. It was blood. I drowned in my own blood.”
I heard him clear his throat as if he could taste that blood still. “You looked mostly like you. Your hair was a darker blond, you had scars on your face, but your eyes were the same gray.” Not surprising as Achilles had managed to fast-talk his genes into what would be the Leandros clan. “Robin . . . Robin was exactly the same.” There was a choked laugh. “He’d have to be the same, wouldn’t he? And I don’t remember that from any history lesson you taught me. Goodfellow, Puck, Pan, at the battlefield.”

Cal’s words became louder, stronger. “You said he was to keep me safe. You said, ‘You are the Great
God
Pan and you swore to keep him safe, oath-breaking bastard.’ You blamed him, cursed him, hurt him, almost killed him. I think he would’ve let you. I know he didn’t try to stop you, and I
couldn’t
stop you. I couldn’t breathe through the blood or say a word and I couldn’t tell you to
stop
. I died and fuck knows what you said to him then.” There was a ragged exhalation. I heard it and saw it in the heave of his shoulders, but when he spoke, it was unbreakable steel. “Nik, don’t do that again. Don’t ever put that on him. He can’t keep me safe. You can’t keep me safe. That’s what being human is about, and even if I’m only half human now, it doesn’t matter. I will never be safe and my life will always end. Don’t blame Robin for that. He does all that he can and more. The same as you do.”

There was a long pause and Cal didn’t raise his head. “I said that?” Niko questioned quietly, the remorse blatant, but I didn’t want that. I didn’t want his guilt. I didn’t deserve it.