Downfall (34 page)

Wolves, werewolves, weren’t people who’d evolved the ability to turn into wolves. It was the other way around. Wolves had started out as wolves and Rafferty had cured Catcher only to start him on the path to de-evolution. He’d been stuck in wolf form and, worse, slowly losing the higher intelligence werewolves have in any form. The last we’d seen them had been in Yellowstone Park when Catcher was a wolf in form and mind, finally lost to the wild, and Rafferty had joined him to live out their lives as wolves.

“Holy fuck.” I grinned back at him. It was the first
time I’d ever seen him in human form other than in a picture on the dresser of his bedroom. “Doesn’t it feel weird not to be on all fours after so long?”

“That’s what she said,” he laughed, shoving hands in the pockets of his jacket.

“Damn,” Robin muttered. “I wish I’d said that.”

Niko was staring at me and that was odd because here was Catcher, not back from the dead, but improbably back from something equally difficult. He’d been stuck in wolf form for seven or eight years before his mind finally went. “Rafferty,” he said, “you told us you couldn’t fix Catcher. You couldn’t undo what you’d done at the genetic level.”

“I couldn’t. No healer, shaman, half trickster, no one could help.” Rafferty was, as far as we knew, the best healer alive in the world today. We’d brought him in to fight the antihealer, Suyolak, Plague of the World; that’s how talented he was. If he needed help with Catcher, his chances of finding it had been extremely low. “But I finally found a full-fledged god who’d made a short jailbreak and was running around northern Canada. Our god, god of the wolves, Fenris. He heard me, he saw my offerings of meat and blood. He came when I asked.” He looked up at the sky, refusing to be ashamed if his stubborn scowl meant anything. “Wolves do pray too.”

Even I knew Fenris was the Norse wolf-god and son of the trickster god Loki. “He showed me a few things about genetics and shape-changing. He’s back on the chain gang again.” He lowered his eyes back to the ground and shrugged as if the loss of his god were nothing. . . . Nothing he was willing to show us was more likely. “But I got my cousin back. My more mouthy version of him anyway,” he amended. “And at least he remembers to flush now.”

Catcher rolled his eyes as he stepped down into the snow, bent down, came up again, and nailed his cousin
with a snowball. “The love, it’s almost embarrassing.” He grinned cheerfully.

Niko reached over and took a handful of my hair to hold up for me to see. “Is that how you were able to do this? Genetics?”

It was black. My hair clenched tight in my brother’s hand, it was black again. I swiped a tongue across my gums and didn’t feel the ridge of receded metal teeth any longer. “My eyes?”

“Gray.” Niko smiled. “Plain boring gray. Do you think you can survive that? Is that not exotic enough for you now?”

“Is it permanent?” I turned to Rafferty, who was brushing the snow out of his hair. “If it is, I’d think about kissing you on the mouth if it wouldn’t give Robin ideas. Maybe even tongue.”

He grimaced. “Yeah, I think I’d rather be paid, thanks. And yes, it’s permanent. Okay, not the eyes. You can still give a flash of red to scare the shit out of whatever you’re fighting at the time. I know you’re ass enough to enjoy that and a little Auphe cred goes a long way. They’re wired to your emotional responses, your evil temper, same as they were. You’ll have to practice not making the cabbies piss themselves if you get annoyed at being short-changed.”

“Please keep the tongue and the ideas to yourself,” Catcher added. “I’m as laid back as a Wolf gets, but I’m not a saint.”

“As if I don’t always have ideas.” Robin reached down a hand and pulled me to my feet.

Rafferty followed us up. “You’re not human. I still can’t remove half your genetic material without you turning into a puddle of fleshy goo. But I’ve taken you to as far back as I could, your birth DNA setting. You’re still half human, half Auphe, but now you’re frozen that
way. The Auphe genes won’t take over. It can bite my healing ass. This once Auphe genes
don’t
win.”

The closest to human I’d been . . . but not a part of humanity. I had been different since the beginning—from the first beat of my heart in the womb. Everyone who’d come into contact with me, child, kid, or adult, had known it. They’d known I wasn’t like them. I might look like them, but on the inside, I wasn’t. They sensed that I was other. Not human. Not Auphe, as they didn’t know what an Auphe was. My own species—mine and Grimm’s.

That didn’t mean it wasn’t a fucking miracle. As a kid I’d been a lion doing his best to behave in the middle of a herd of sheep, but in the past few years, I hadn’t been a lion. I’d been a rabid
thing
. While homicidal rage came in handy once in a while, I’d make do without—because, hey, fucking goddamn miracle. “What about gating?”

He made a so-so motion with his hand. “Not sure. Gating isn’t a physically cosmetic attribute like the eyes. Can newborn Auphe gate? I don’t know. I really don’t want to know. It could go either way. Don’t try it here, though. It’s fucking disgusting to see or feel for the rest of us. I hope you have to walk like the rest of us clowns.”

Robin’s hand was still gripping mine from pulling me to my feet and I yanked him into a hard hug. “You saved our lives, you ass, lying from start to finish. Hell, you always save us in some way we don’t know about, but this was an outstanding con job from the beginning. A thing of beauty.” It had been. Sophia would’ve clawed out his eyes with envy. We’d been manipulated by him for months now if not an entire year, and as much as I chafed against being scammed, he was the only reason Nik and I were alive. I, for once in my life, was not going to bitch about things being kept in the dark.

“You have every right to brag, you son of a bitch.” I smacked the back of his head just as Nik had taught me
by example.
“Go raibh maith agat”
—
thank you
in Gaelic—“from Cullen,” I whispered at his ear. “Also Cullen kicked out your hypnosis when Rafferty healed us. You saved our lives with it, I know”—the only reason I wasn’t pissed as fucking hell he’d manipulated me into it to begin with—“which is the single excuse I have for not following Cullen’s example, but by kicking a sensitive body part of yours instead, asshole. Don’t try that again, not without asking, lifesaving or not.” I smacked the back of his head again. “But thanks all the same from me, too. This me.”

Robin twitched in surprise when I mentioned Cullen. Then he grimaced at the mention of the hypnosis. He kept hoping, I think, that Cullen would sleep again. I thought he would now, that part of me, but he’d waited around to see the end, after popping up here and again to look through my eyes and tell me the lengths that Robin would go . . . including the whole Svengali thing he’d pulled on me.

“Brat.” He tried for scathing, but he didn’t come close to making it. “Besides, a promise made three times three. What could I do but save this new life for you?
Nil a bhuiochas ort, Cullen
,” he told Cullen, and as he did I felt Cullen slip away, satisfied. Resting once again. “You’re welcome.”

The words were painted with melancholy. Robin and Cullen, in real life they’d not had the chance to meet. I wish they could’ve. The two of them, both devious as hell . . . my descendants would still be kings or queens of an independent Ireland and the rest of the U.K. would be huddled as far from the drunken and nuclear-enforced border as they could get.

I’d once been devious. Hadn’t thought shooting someone in some area of the body other than the face was as sneaky as you could get. Who’d have thought?

“It’s too bad reincarnation doesn’t go backward. Imagine what we could do then knowing what we do now,” I said, slapping him hard on the back to pull him into a rough embrace before turning him loose.

“Funny you should say that. There’s an artifact I’ve heard of for thousands of years now. It is said to manipulate time in some fashion. No one’s quite certain what the result of its use is, but . . . it’s a thought. I was thinking of looking for it. Achilles and Patroclus could live long enough to get erectile dysfunction. I would find that hilarious.” He slung his arm over my shoulder and both of us grinned at the sight of Nik dropping his face into his hands.

“You should have let us die,” he said, muffled and heavy with grim morose, the complaint aimed at Rafferty. “It would’ve been more merciful. Never mind. I’ll do it myself. Someone hand me my katana.”

I laughed, a real laugh without a hint of cynicism, and it was one of the first I could remember being that fucking pure, before throwing my own arm around Niko’s neck and reeling him into a pile of three—three times three times three. Niko, Robin, and me . . . death itself hadn’t been able to change that no matter how many times it took two of us. We came back each time and each time Robin was waiting. “You said you were ready for a new game, a new ride.” I gave my brother’s braid a yank.

“How about we live our life, perhaps even a whole one, this once? I could use the rest.” He gave a doubting groan, but I knew a fake one when I heard it.

“I think we can do that.” I grinned at him. It was a genuine one. Despite the earlier laugh, it didn’t feel any less odd on my face. Wildly rare and beyond bizarre. “We made it, Cyrano.”

He swatted the back of my head lightly as I’d done to
Robin as Niko had done to me and on and on. “We did, little brother.” His smile was small but . . . at peace. For Niko the smile was equal to my grin, and the peace . . . this was a first for that.

I’d thought right before I died that shit happens. I’d thought it every hour of every day of my life and it does. Shit happens. All the time. All my life. But sometimes, while I wouldn’t have believed it until I saw it here, miracles do happen. Even if a trickster has to make one out of thin air. Sometimes you do get to ride off into the sunset, whole and alive, even if ironically enough you have to die and be brought back to life to do it.

All we had to do was saddle up.

And watch us ride.

Goodfellow

Niko and Cal were talking with Rafferty, Catcher, and Flay, who were all quite complimentary to Slay when he trotted back with a plump dead rabbit. The brothers hadn’t asked me how I’d been positive Grimm would let Cal walk away. You’d think they would be more than curious, as they would be and then some, had they a gram of sense.

Cal had said about himself: He was a killer; why wouldn’t he be a liar as well? That was the truth. Yet they weren’t thinking about that truth. It could be that they didn’t want to offend me to insinuate that after saving their lives, I would then risk them all over again on the belief and my word that Grimm wouldn’t keep his. That he wouldn’t be the same as Cal—a killer and a liar. They would want to have faith I had him in a bind, to have faith in me instead of what they knew of Grimm—liar,
cheater, killer. They would want to believe that I’d gotten the better of him and somehow forced him to keep his word. They would want to believe in me, as I’d not given them the reason to think otherwise.

That I was the same as Grimm . . . liar, cheater, killer . . . they didn’t mention. Family members are like that, aren’t they? Always thinking the best of you. That was quaint. They shouldn’t have worried about my emotions. My
feelings
.

I wasn’t the same as Grimm.

I was so much worse.

I only needed the opportunity to prove it.

The Wolves had kept quiet as I’d asked them to, which I appreciated. I’d have to tip them, despite the fact that Rafferty’s bill would be exorbitant. His always were. Barkers without Borders was a myth to him. He charged more than a concierge doctor who came with a complimentary bottle of aged scotch. Not that it mattered as long as he kept his mouth shut. What did matter was the fact that I thought it was best like this for Cal and Niko. That they trusted that Grimm would hopefully keep his word to me, but staying alert and sharp for him to attack out of nowhere nonetheless.

Alert, sharp . . . safe.

With their history, it wouldn’t do any harm at all for them to stay vigilant and observant. Whether that particular bogeyman showed up, they had to know, there’d be others. Better safe than sorry.

I felt a hand on my shoulder as Ishiah returned from deep in the woods where he’d dragged the body. “Hidden away?” I asked.

“Hidden away,” he confirmed. “Until the wildlife eats it or it rots.”

Earlier with help from some still current angel companions, Ishiah had been able to bring me here. We’d
beaten Grimm’s gate and I’d watched at a distance alone as Cal’s and Niko’s bodies had been dumped out of midair to lie dead in the snow. Unmoving in the crystal white, they’d been as unmoving as gravestones of flesh as blood seeped seemingly from every pore, covering them in a blanket of crimson, staining the snow with death. I’d seen their blood time and time before . . . in the dirt, in the sand, in the grass, drifting in the salt water of the ocean. I hadn’t wanted to see it again. Instead I’d shifted my scrutiny to the one beside me.

Grimm.

I had stood by him but not too close. No, not close, as I was not a fool. He would’ve thought me one if I had, and it would’ve been true.

But I was anything save a fool.

“He wins this round, little goat,” he’d said to me as Rafferty began to work on restarting their hearts, repairing the infinite damage that Cal’s killer gate could’ve done within them . . . putting them back together, cell by cell. “But this is better as there will be more. He lives and I get to torture him over and over until he gives in or dies in agony.” He gave me a mirror/metal-bright smile of murderous anticipation. “Wasn’t that the
deal
?”

There had existed no deal in which Grimm would willingly let Cal walk away forever. That would be a dream and a fantasy and a lie. I hadn’t bothered to bring it up in our earliest negotiations for the waste of time it would’ve been. That white lie was one I’d created for the brothers. White lies are always better than the truth. I frankly couldn’t believe that they’d bought it, all in all.

“More, Grimm? Why?” I wouldn’t have stood even as near him as I had if I hadn’t seen Cal rip him open from navel to sternum with his metal claws. I didn’t know how fast an Auphe could heal, but it wasn’t this fast. Grimm was standing with his intestines either held in with
surgical or duct tape, pure will holding him up. Add to that the gate he’d promised and delivered,which had pulled the brothers out of Cal’s own gate long before they reached the sun, separating them from all the Bae—that would’ve drained him to the dregs. He was weak, weaker than he’d ever been, slower than he’d ever be, at his most susceptible, and blind to his vulnerabilities. That was conceit for you. His ego wouldn’t let him believe it, and he thought I didn’t know it.

He’d been mistaken.

A puck was
made
to spot weaknesses, and I was nothing if not a product of my race. I didn’t have the power of a god. I didn’t need it. I was a
trickster
, and we had gods bowing at our feet with the force of our words alone.

“Honestly, why?” I’d repeated. “Aren’t you tired of it yet? The never-ending killing. The game. World domination. All of it. It’s dull after a while. I’ve done it. Trust me. I have ruled and I have rampaged. I’ve been the throne and the power behind it. I know,” I’d said, and meant it. I had done it all and tiresome it had never failed to become.

“It’s all we have.” His metal slice-of-hell grin that chilled all that breathed and lived widened into a nightmare where you could see a thousand of your reflections. “It’s what we are made to do whenever we gather together. What we were born for, Caliban and I.

“Caliban said it himself. We are something new and something old and something unlike anything on this earth,” he’d finished with his grin twisting with vicious spite, scornfully annoyed at my questions.

Impassioned in his dark belief.

Distracted by the thought of future games.

Was that opportunity knocking?

I thought that it was.

Distraction is for children.

I’d barely had time to think what a naïve child he truly was when Ishiah’s sword had cut through his neck from behind with a swiftness that left Grimm grinning yet when his head hit the ground, followed a fraction of a second later by his body falling onto the snow. Perhaps I hadn’t been as alone in my distance as I’d seemed, but I was a liar too as I’d said, in words and impressions. I’d felt no obligation to emphasize to Grimm what he should have already known.

I had been careful to give Ishiah that necessary swing room for his blade, but I thought I felt something splash my chin. I’d bent down and studied my reflection in Grimm’s gleaming silver teeth as his decapitated head tilted to one side on the frozen white beneath it. Ah, there it was. Wiping the drop of blood from my chin, I echoed, “Mmm. Whenever you gather together. Pity there is only one of you left. No more gathering now.”

I’d straightened and inhaled the pine and glacier scent in the air. It smelled good. Fresh and clean, like a new beginning. I wouldn’t mind one of those.

“Something new and something old and something unlike anything on this earth.” My laughter had been superior, yes, and condescending, somewhat, but I’d
earned
that attitude. I’d then given his separated head a contemptuous kick into the depths of the thickly growing trees. “Actually you’re the same as everyone else, and guess what. There’s one of you born every minute.

“Sucker
.
”