Doubletake

As little as I cared about Kalakos, I did care about my brother.

Shit.

“Do you want to talk to your son?” I demanded abruptly, the last word the painful bite of tinfoil on my tongue.

“I do,” Kalakos answered simply. He hadn’t taken his first bite yet, and put down his fork.

“Okay,” I said brusquely. “I talked to Niko when we were driving to Bridgeport.” The real reason I’d insisted on separate cars. “I think I convinced him to talk to you long enough to ask you some questions.”

“I’m surprised you would do that, with all that has happened. Blood under the bridge, so to speak”—again with the similar quirk of the lips I saw daily from Nik—“but I am grateful.”

“Don’t think this means he thinks of you as his father or a human being, for that matter, although he might give you the benefit of the doubt on the last one. Niko thinks anyone is capable of change. But I’m not Niko. I know who you are. I know what you are.”

I didn’t have to have an Auphe sense of smell to scent my own kind—branded by violence. “All the apologies in the world aren’t going to change that. Even saving his life won’t change it. You’re no different from Sophia.” I smiled and it wasn’t the one I’d given Niko. This was as cold as the inside of a morgue drawer. “Funny, though, considering what you think or say you once thought of me, you’re no different than I am in the very worst of my ways.”

I, on the other hand, was different from him or our mother in the one way that counted. They had nothing in them that wasn’t tainted and completely selfish. I had Niko. I had Robin. I had Promise and Ishiah, not in the same way, but still, a way I refused to let myself believe Kalakos had, wanted, or was capable of. It was too late for him, but I’d let Niko decide for himself, and watch his back while he did.

“So if he does want to ask you something, say if he has any other brothers or sisters out there—because no other relatives would be capable of being the disappointment you are—you’d damn well better answer him. Try to manipulate him, try to get something out of him for the information and he’ll simply walk away. That’s Niko’s way.” I stood and let the blade up my sleeve fall into my hand. I flipped it, a mercury-silver pinwheel, to point at him.

“And after he does I’ll be waiting in the shadows to slit your goddamn throat. That’s my way.”

“Is that the Auphe in you speaking?” Kalakos asked, his mind on me, but his eyes on the knife.

“No, you asshole,” I snapped. “It’s the brother in me.”

I faded off toward the shower as Niko stepped out. He’d have heard the discussion. The room was too small not to. He did deserve to know if he had other brothers or sisters out there, if nothing else. I hope he stuck with the decision I’d dragged out of him in the car. If he did have any siblings, it wouldn’t make him any less my brother. Would I be jealous? Hell, yeah. But I wouldn’t begrudge him human brothers and sisters—the kind that hadn’t once freaked out and killed and eaten a raw deer in the woods.

Then again, maybe one sibling was all he thought he could handle.

I stood in the small bathroom with the door open, leaning against the frame—watching and listening. I’d meant what I’d said to Kalakos. Every word, which meant I wanted to hear every one of his.

Niko had sat on the floor in the spot I’d vacated…the other end of the table. His hair was wet but already braided. He hadn’t put on his shirt yet. He was letting his tattoo speak for him.

As he wasn’t going to start, Kalakos did. “You’re right in what you think about me. But I see you with Caliba…Cal”—he paused and chose his words carefully—“and for all that you suffered and survived with Sophia, the Auphe, protecting your brother, becoming a man almost before you had become a child. I had no such obstacles to approach anything close to that in my life, and I’m a cold man. A man without honor to his own blood, without worth. As were my father and his father—a chain of unfeeling bastards were we all. Had I taken you with me I wonder if you would be who you are today. The fact that I am…that I was such a callous bastard may have been the making of you, Niko. You who are the best man I’ve come to know.”

He linked his fingers, the light sparking off the silver ring he wore on his right hand. “I have no excuse, but I think you wouldn’t be who you are if you had learned from me. You made your own way, a better way. Had I taken you, your brother would’ve been alone with Sophia. I travel always. It was years after his birth before I knew of it. I can guess that you are the better for not being raised in my image, but I know he is the better for being raised by you.”

That was true enough and it had nothing to do with my being better or not. If I hadn’t had Niko, the Auphe plan would’ve worked. I would’ve unmade this world by sending them back. Humans would be scarce and hiding in caves now or extinct, the Auphe would rule, and those were the hard facts.

But when it came to family, facts were meaningless.

Niko stared at him, and if I were sensitive to feelings and auras and all that new age/old age bullshit, I’d say the room got colder. “Amazing how the hindsight of a saint is twenty/twenty and every word a smug explanation of how your being a bastard was the making of me and the saving of Cal.” He stood. “I would’ve liked to have known if I had other brothers, perhaps sisters, but that’s not the one thing that I wanted from you the most. I wanted what you owed me. Two words, and instead you would have me thank you for what you did and what you didn’t do.”

I shadowed out of the bathroom with the knife. Despite my threat, I didn’t think I would get to cut Kalakos’s throat. He had it coming, but Niko wouldn’t like it or let me. He would think it would darken the humanity I had left. I didn’t think so. If anything, as a punishment, it fell short of what his father deserved.

Kalakos took off his ring and placed it in the center of the table. “You’re right. It doesn’t make a difference if it turned out for the best or the worst. What matters is, I was wrong.” He touched the ring with the tip of his finger. “All Vayash men are given one when they become a man. My actions have shown I never became one. I was wrong, and I’m sorry. You don’t abandon your family. For any reason. Even a bastard like me should’ve known that.”

The two words Niko had wanted. Needed.

I’m sorry.

So…

Fine. I wouldn’t try to cut his throat.

Damn it.

Niko didn’t have any other brothers or sisters, I found out after I was done with my shower. I used up the tepid water until it was ice-cold and kept going until my fingers and toes were blue. It took that long to soak off the dried blood from my legs and feet, thanks to Hephaestus and his floor of militarized cheese shredders. I was rubbing antibiotic ointment on my legs and wasn’t bothering with bandages. There weren’t enough in all the first-aid kits and I wouldn’t get pants over that mummy effect.

The door opened without a knock, which only two people would do. Robin—looking to beef up his porn site material—or Niko, who’d seen it all before from the day I popped out of the oven.

“What’s taking so long?” he started with a scowl, then a frown when he took in the sight of my legs and the bloody water still circling the shower drain. “When the Cyclops took me under, you ran for me. From across the room, you ran.”

I tossed him the empty tube of ointment before grabbing a towel to scrub at my dripping hair. “Yeah, I ran. Sort of a given, Nik.”

“Kalakos was closer and he ran carefully, picking his way through the metal. From the looks of you, you did not. You look as if you’ve been…flayed. Damn it, Cal, it wouldn’t kill you to be as careful as him once in a while.”

“No, but it might have killed you, and I keep saying it, but I have never heard you curse this much in your life, much less in two days,” I said, voice muffled by the towel. “Well? Any brothers or sisters?”

“If you’d fallen, you could’ve cut your own throat five times over and no, no siblings but you.”

I peered from under the towel, my lips curving in a wicked smirk. “Did you cry? In relief, I mean. At least one tear?”

“I thanked every major religious figure I could think of. I thanked Goodfellow as well, as he once pretended to be a god. I wanted to cover all the bases.” His face showed nothing but absolute sincerity.

I grinned wider and went back to drying my hair, then dumped the towel in the sink. I avoided the mirror as always and carelessly finger-combed my hair. “Do you think he meant it? That he’s sorry?”