street. From his expression, I knew he could feel the claws beneath my skin. Or maybe they weren’t beneath my skin. That thing had been big; its claws could be equally big, and I didn’t have a lot of spare flesh on me, thanks to Niko’s training regimen. That could be why Niko’s touch didn’t hurt. It wasn’t me he was touching, but the claws that had captured me and burst open flesh as they slid along my ribs. I did feel cold, yet I felt a warmth running beneath me.
Blood.
It has a unique, soothing heat that lets you know you might not have bought the farm yet, but the Realtor has the contract in front of you, and the pen is in your hand.
“Cal, where did you send it?”
He didn’t look worried, which meant he was. “I don’t know,” I said, and I didn’t. I had no idea where I’d sent it. “I couldn’t gate. I hit my head”—more accurately cracked it open like an egg—“…couldn’t think straight, couldn’t…pull it together.” Not for a gate and not for the faraway Tumulus. “Before, I could…have.” When I could gate with no effort at all, no head wound would’ve stopped me. No wound would have. “Before it would’ve… been easy, but Rafferty broke me.” I said it resentfully, spitefully. But while the dark part of me meant it, the rest of me didn’t, not really. The healer had done what was best at the time, at least what he thought was best, and it had kept me sane long enough for me to find a way to stay that way permanently.
Yet now I was sane but still broken.
“Crippled,” Niko murmured. What I’d accidentally said in the bar.
“Didn’t mean it,” I denied immediately. “That was then. We didn’t know.” Didn’t know there’d be a now when limiting me to two gates with the third one killing me along with the Auphe in me would be more harmful than helpful. At the time gating had brought out the worst in me—the uncontrollable darkness in me. “Rafferty didn’t know…you didn’t know.”
I could hear Goodfellow’s rapid footsteps coming from the bar. Niko let it go. He didn’t have much choice. We could talk and bond and spill our feelings, but as I’d bleed to death in the street at the same time, I thought the girly shit could wait.
A hand rested on my forehead. I opened my eyes. When had they closed? “We have to get this off of you, and with its being embedded into the street, I think you’d rather not be conscious when that happens.”
“Just don’t mess up the face.” I slurred a little. “Only thing left on me worth looking at these days.”
He wasn’t smiling now. In the face of death, yes. In the face of this, no. But his tone was reassuring. “You’ll wake up as good-looking as you ever were, which isn’t saying much.”
Before I could reply, I saw a skin-colored flash and then I dreamed.
Of smoke and lightning and living metal that would grind you to blood and bone dust.
Black Sheep Interesting.
And fucking annoying.
He was maimed. Spoiled. He hadn’t gated away. Couldn’t gate away, but why? He was the Unmaker of the World. He had once been able to build a gate to the past…to millions of years ago. You can’t create a damned and doomed doorway such as that without the innate ability to gate with unmatchable ease.
Nearly unmatchable, that is. There was me, wasn’t there? Yes…ah, yes…there was me.
I took another bite of my dinner and chewed as I put down the binoculars. He had looked dead as the pathetic meat bag of a human and the goat tried to free him from the metal claws of a thing the likes of which I’d never seen. A curious thing too, but I didn’t have time for another curiosity. Caliban was my one and only at the moment. I’d gated his attacker to the top of a building far across the city. It seemed to like building tops. Whatever that thing was, it wasn’t mine, but it might prove useful to keep around. One never knew when death incarnate would be needed. But in the end my brother was my toy; his miserable life or death belonged to me alone.
I swallowed and took another mouthful. Caliban might have looked dead, but he wasn’t. He was family, and our family didn’t die easily. No no no no no. I was proof of that. I had lived through twenty years of torture…lived and escaped. Twelve more years hadn’t made me forget every burn, every sear, every slice of a blade, every week of starvation—none of it, because those memories made me stronger and more determined.
This failure was going to prove to the family that rejected me, the family that was gone but not forgotten, that I was better than they were…so very much better.
And the success…Cal-i-ban, something had happened to him. He had built a gate to the past. I’d “talked” to those who roamed this city: the vampires, the revenants, the Wolves, others. I’d talked to them with my teeth and my man-made claws. I left nothing but shredded flesh, intestines, and death when I was done with them. But isn’t that the result of talking? I thought it was, and if I thought it was, no one would tell me anything differently or I’d talk to them as well.
They’d all said the same: He could gate like a motherfucker.
Something had happened. I had only to find out what. Not that in the end it mattered. We healed. Against anything that didn’t kill us—we healed. It might take time, but we never failed in that.
We were Auphe.
What didn’t kill us only pissed us the fuck off.
I tossed away the leg of the security guard who had tried to stop me from accessing the rooftop of the building at a safe distance from Caliban’s party. He wasn’t muscular or flabby, the guard, but in between. Succulent and soft, yet not too soft—the perfect consistency. But I was full. The rest could stay on the roof until someone found the leftovers. I sat up and put my sunglasses back on. Night to everyone else, but the lights…it made it day to me. I didn’t like the day. I didn’t like the tedium of lying on rooftops either. I’d relieve the tedium later by slaughtering one or two people…or three or four. With the sudden lack of paien - kind around for the past two days—except for the goats, and even I wouldn’t bother with a putrid, diseased goat— humans were all I had, and they were no challenge. It took more to satisfy.
But soon…soon I’d find out what had made Caliban less of an opponent, less family, and so much less interesting. I had patience though. Thirty years of it. We would see what we would see. He could again be a worthwhile challenge himself, sooner or later.
I needed a challenge, and so…
I would wait.
Awhile.
“Nothing for his blood pressure. It’s far too high from Rafferty’s manipulation, but with the blood loss it should be dropping like a rock. If we give it a chance, the combination should stabilize it in a normal range.”
Odd when hearing something like that can be comforting, but it meant one thing: I was home.
It was still dark, but that was fine. I was content to float there awhile. I knew when I opened my eyes that things weren’t going to be as pleasant.
Once we had a healer, Rafferty. He could lay his hands on you and knit flesh back together like magic. Except there was no magic, only monsters. He had a genetic gift, one much better than mine. Then Rafferty had left—for good, I thought. He had family of his own to care for.
There’d also been a Japanese healing spirit who had lived in the city, working as a doctor and teaching
