Doubletake

Good.

“Why are you here?” Niko demanded, his normal…his inherited calm gone. In its place were emptiness and the chill of the wind across the arctic ice.

Kalakos turned back to him. He looked about forty-five, but not an ounce of fat on him. All lean muscle, like Niko. They were almost exactly the same height. His hair was much shorter than Nik’s braid, though. Looking closer I could see one or two silver strands in it. He wore it slicked back tightly in a two-inch-long ponytail. It was good for fighting, not obscuring your vision. It was how I usually managed to keep the mess of my own heavy hair out of my face. Not anymore. Not while he was here.

“The Vayash Clan failed in its watch. We have lost our duty, our burden. They have sent me to bring it back. I know I cannot do it alone.” He included us both in his glance this time. “And none of them are fighters, not the kind you two are known to be. No matter what has come before, all Vayash must work to right this. The burden is here in the city. Worse, it knows that you are in the city. If you will not help me willingly, help yourselves. It can sense the Vayash and it will kill all Vayash that it can find.”

All clans had a duty and a watch. I thought I’d been the Vayash one. Looked like I was wrong. Or they had a two-for-one burden to carry. Too bad for them.

“All Vayash?” Niko narrowed his eyes. “Then that is not a problem for us. You are the only Vayash in this room and it’s been that way for seven years.” While we nodded to the clan name when dealing with other Rom, we didn’t claim it. It was a truth that became a lie and now was used only for convenience. Rom were honest only with other Rom. But their money spent the same as anyone else’s.

“We came to you when Sophia was murdered, burned to death by the Auphe,” Niko continued. “When Cal…” He didn’t finish that sentence. I knew he didn’t like saying it aloud; I knew he didn’t like remembering it.

I was better off, in a sense. I didn’t remember much of that time when we visited the Vayash, and what I did remember was a foggy haze. When I was fourteen, the Auphe had burned our trailer, killing our mother while Niko escaped out a tight back window, and they’d taken me to a place only Auphe can go. Another world or a murderous reflection of this one, I didn’t know or remember any of that. I didn’t remember escaping and finding my way back home. The fact that only a day and a half had passed at the burned trailer site, yet I’d returned—somehow—sixteen instead of fourteen at best guess, made not remembering that much…safer. They played with time like they played with lives. The Auphe had had me for two years. Yet all of it I’d recalled, more or less, was the rare sensation of cold or of rough rock against my skin.

Had I actually remembered those years in detail, I imagined the Cal in me would pour down an invisible drain and leave a Caliban-shaped nightmare in its place.

As it was, after I’d returned, it had been a long time before I’d been anything close to functional. I’d rarely spoken. The only human touch I could stand was my brother’s hand on my shoulder, and that took a while. I had remembered the Auphe taking me and I vaguely remembered stumbling home naked through a rip in reality, but next to nothing between. But I’d known they’d come for me again. I might not know anything else, but that I knew.

So we had run. We’d crashed in Nik’s car or in motels and I’d curled in a fetal position under the beds with my knife and gone days without sleep. Niko…Niko had rented rooms with a queen-size bed so he could sleep under it with me, to make sure I knew I wasn’t alone.

That’s why Niko had gone to the Vayash Clan, our clan, for help, but that’s not what they’d given us.

I didn’t remember much of it. Time had passed since I’d escaped the Auphe, but I hadn’t known how long. I couldn’t tell an hour from a minute then. Colors were bright enough to make my stomach turn. The light was too bright, sunny days, cloudy days, always too bright. For a while it made me retreat further into myself. When it came to guessing something as changeable as time, a month was probably close, sounded right, and did it matter? Niko had found the Vayash, I didn’t know how, and drove us there in the first piece-of-crap car he’d owned. He’d opened the car door for me when we arrived. I did remember that—his face, his mouth moving, although I didn’t understand what he said. I didn’t always know who I was, where I was, but I knew Niko. He was the only anchor in a world of chaos. He hadn’t been as fortunate with me. He hadn’t known when I would be less aware, when I would be a whole lot more, and what rabidly unpredictable things I would do if it was the latter.

That day, I thought, had started out a good day. I still ate with my hands—pancakes. Not meat. I refused to eat meat, refused to look at it, and gagged at the sight of pork. Pinkish white like something…something I didn’t remember. Eventually I’d gotten used to it again. It took almost a year. Pepperoni pizza couldn’t be given up forever. But before then Niko had learned not to feed me meat; even the smell of it repulsed me, although I didn’t know why.

You knew why.

What do Auphe eat?

Who do Auphe eat?

I had dressed without Niko having to carefully remind me more than twice. English came and went, as it did that day. Sometimes I understood it; sometimes I didn’t. While I hadn’t said a word that morning, I did dress, although no shoes. The concept of shoes to me seemed idiotic. I couldn’t see the reason for them when the random feeling of freezing cold with nothing but jagged rock to walk or flee on was what I expected. Asphalt, carpet, or grass—decadence.

I hadn’t needed shoes, but my knife—I hadn’t let go of my knife once then. Not to eat, piss, or sleep. My knife I’d kept with me.

Good day…it must’ve been or I wouldn’t have gotten out of the car to face a gathering of people with Nik. He hadn’t had much choice. Leaving me in a car by myself wasn’t the best option. The last time when I’d forgotten how the door handle worked, I had tried to kick my way out through the safety glass with those bare feet and succeeded. This time I had followed just behind him, the front of my shoulder almost touching his shoulder blade. I was oblivious, not really there. Not really anywhere. Good, good day.

Then I smelled meat cooking. Burning. That had seemed wrong to me. Food and fire, they shouldn’t mix, should they?

Waste of flavor, waste of blood. I didn’t know why I’d thought that. But wasn’t it true?

Sheep. It was what sheep did. I pulled my knife from under my jacket. Sheep, yes, but I smelled their rage and fear soaking the air. The rage I’d dismissed.

The fear I embraced.

It had been a good day, but unfortunately for Niko it turned into an aware day. I liked aware days.

But no one else did.

Niko had said something to the group slowly surrounding us. All men. I didn’t listen to it. “No, Cal.” That was said to me. That I did try to listen to. Tried. Tried. Tried. He’d taught me to recognize my name again. “No knife. Our clan.” The women and children had fled inside their RVs. I hadn’t caught it all, understood it all, or recalled it all.…It didn’t make a difference. The result was the same. I’d heard him say, “Help.” More sounds. “Kidnapped. Killed.” And finally, “Family.”

For some reason that word I had known clearly. “You are our family. Help us.” Knew it because my two years of imprisonment had imprinted on me that those words were only to be laughed at. Weak and worthless. The Auphe had no family, did they? I couldn’t remember, but if they had…instinct told me that if they did and one of that family pulled up lame, you…they…would eat that brother or sister. And those sheep gathered around us…they were born lame. Lame as a species.

Then Niko had said something that shocked me, even in my condition.

Beg. “I’m begging you.”

Fuck the Auphe. I had family. I had a brother and these sheep had made him beg.

The men had completed their circle and I had turned to rest my back against Niko’s. Watchyourbackwatchyourbackwatchyourback. Alwaysalwayswatchyourback. You took down more that way. They moved closer and that had been when Niko had gotten his answer.

“Armaya khul! Beng!” He’d been the biggest of the men, their leader. If it had been now, I could tell you if his hair was curly or straight, if he had a mustache or not, but then…humans had looked all the same—alien. Wrong. Puny…

Prey.