Doubletake

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.

“Do you want to die?” Niko demanded, quiet and remote. “If so, return to the main area. There’s more room there for me to work.”

Kalakos exhaled, eyes shrouded—troubled? Good. He should be. “You are as I was at your age. You fight for your brother while I fought for myself. You fight for better reasons.” He lifted the lid from the box, scooped a small dab of dark green salve from within, and rubbed it on his face. In a rewind of time, the bruises faded, the nose straightened, although he winced as it did so, until all that remained was an untouched face and a crust of dried blood that he scrubbed off with one wipe of his hand. “Suyolak was born a healer of the Sarzo Clan. He was a healer for many years before he walked into the shadows. He made this before he turned. As far as I know, it is the last. I think there is enough to heal your brother.” He offered the box to Niko. “It is yours. The very least I can do.”

Niko accepted the box before searching Kalakos’s now-restored face—every inch of it—then passed it to Promise. “I have heard of such things,” she said, careful not to touch the contents. “I feel nothing inimical from it. I would touch it but I don’t want to waste any. There is little left, and Cal…”

Cal was fucked-up five ways to Sunday. If it worked on a half human, half Auphe…if it wasn’t a trick, I’d need a gallon of it, rather than a small box. But if it did work, Promise was right to be cautious. I’d need every speck of it I could get.

“Cal?”

When Niko said my name, Promise waited until I released the grip on my Eagle; then she handed the box to me. I took a whiff. I remembered too goddamn well how Suyolak had smelled—the one who’d Kalakos had so poetically said “walked in shadows.” I’d know a single molecule of his graveyard stench anywhere. There was none of it in what was cradled in the iron box. Iron was what had kept the ointment viscous rather than hundred-year-old dried flakes. Iron blocked the escape of psychic emanations and that’s what healing was. Not magic, but a genetic psychic talent.

Our Suyolak wasn’t in this. It smelled green, fresh, with a hint of mint and pine. “It’s safe,” I confirmed. “Our pile of dust had nothing to do with this.”

“If this doesn’t work, don’t bother running. You’ll die either way, but it’s been some time since I dismembered anyone alive. It takes a while, time I’m willing to spare.” Niko had done before what he claimed, but only with monsters and only the extremely horrific ones, but Kalakos didn’t know that. “Or I’ll let Promise have you. She doesn’t drink blood anymore, but has decapitated those who earned it a time or two since I’ve known her.” Now, that was true. I did enjoy watching Promise at work.

Kalakos didn’t appear worried. “It will.”

Niko moved to the other side of my bed and began to pull down the blanket to reveal my ribs.

“Niko, wait.” With Promise watching Kalakos, I felt safe in letting the SIG rest on the covers as well. I tapped