I plucked at the bottom of my T-shirt and held it out to better see the lettering. It must’ve been the one I’d worn to the museum, because I didn’t remember changing when I fell into bed last night.
King of the fucking universe.
That was above and beyond the one I’d been wearing on the beach, which I wouldn’t have thought possible. “I’d say being an inconvenience is something I’m good at.”
“Ah …” Leandros stalled while pulling off the glove and throwing it away, but when he was caught by my expectant stare, he gave in. “Yes, you live to exasperate, irritate, piss off, and at times enrage others, but only those you think deserve it. You were a born smart-ass, Cal. Trust me, I was there when it happened, and that will never change.”
Something had changed, though. My brain had hopped a bus and gone bye-bye again, at least for yesterday. I remembered Ammut trying to drown me. I also remembered something else. It had come back instantly when Leandros had asked about my hair. Cutting and mourning—it hadn’t made me remember anything the night had stolen, but it had brought out one emotion, a gut feeling that couldn’t be denied any more than the rising or setting of the sun.
Leandros wasn’t a man who said he was my brother. He was my brother. Le … Niko was my brother and he’d lost me days ago, almost lost me the night before, and lost more of me again last night. He could stall all he wanted, but he was floundering and badly and I knew it. My memory didn’t have to tell me that; my gut did.
“We need to go out and check with Mickey, our other informant. He might know more than Wahanket. Take a shower and get dressed. Oh, and where Mickey lives, dress down, although considering what you normally wear, I’m not sure that’s possible. And for Buddha’s sake, brush your teeth. I’m beginning to think a boggle lives in your mouth at night when you sleep.”
Yeah, ignoring my relapse was a time-honored way to cover up what he actually felt, but he wasn’t getting away with it. Memories were hard to come by, but now I did have one thing and I wasn’t letting go of it. I had a brother, and I was going to show Niko that he still did too.
“Sure,” I said agreeably. “I just need to do one thing first.”
One small thing.
Hours later I was still doing it.
“What are you looking for?”
He’d asked once before and I could tell he thought he was being extremely patient when he asked again. And he was. Just as he was being patient dragging me out of a kill shed before some mysterious organization called the Vigil (how lame was that name?) showed up and sanitized our asses; or when he made me cards so I wouldn’t kill the wrong person or jump the bones of someone who’d kill me and use
my
bones for jewelry. He’d been patient when I’d stabbed the puck with a fork and tried to a few more times. He’d been patient when I’d been mildly appalled that we lived together—no wild bachelor freedom for either of us. Those memories I still had in a somewhat faded fashion. The other I was less able to recall, but I grabbed hold of it, stifled by shadows as it was.
He’d been as patient as was possible when he’d shown me a picture of him and me and some other people standing around. I didn’t remember exactly why I hadn’t liked the picture or whom I’d insulted in it, but I knew I had. I’d said something harsh and nasty, and he’d been patient with that as well.
That was one thing I wasn’t looking for—that picture. It had disappeared into one of yesterday’s memory gaps and it could stay there. I didn’t want to know why it had freaked me out. Or why it had made me say things I didn’t remember, but I knew those things weren’t too nice. Not fucking nice at all. But it didn’t matter, because if I accidentally stumbled across it, I’d toss it over my shoulder without a single look and keep going.
What I
was
looking for took two hours to find as I tore through the garage apartment like a tornado, which was appropriate, considering the midnight black morning sky outside with crashing peals of thunder and flashes of lightning. I didn’t pay it any attention as I kept moving, leaving weapons, food, furniture, clothes, anything I could lift, in my wake. What I was looking for, well, was pretty simple—I was looking for a break. Yeah, two hours, but I finally got it. I finally got that break.
I broke Niko Leandros.
I was beginning to paw through an Oriental lacquered chest against one wall in the living room when a hand grabbed my shirt and lifted me up to my toes. With his face in mine, he was looking much less stoic than he had since I’d first seen him. Met him. Seen him again after losing my memory and missing for days. Whatever.
“What … are … you … looking … for?” He enunciated each word with an angry pause between each one. The patience was all gone, which meant we might get somewhere. His darker skin was reddened, his eyes were slits, and he smelled how I imagined a charging rhino would smell. Rage—sheer out-of-its-cage fury.
Why had I been looking for this? One pissy superninja who could kill you with a pickle, resuscitate you, make you eat it, and then kill you again? Because Leandros was off his game. He was off his game because he’d lost his brother, and when you fight monsters, you can’t be off your game. Period. I didn’t know how I knew he wasn’t himself, but it was the same as with the other things I knew without any past associations to back them up. How my brain managed to work around my missing life to spit it out was a secret to me, but it wasn’t wrong and Leandros wasn’t right.
He was quiet. He’d been the quiet kind since he’d shown up to get me, I did recall that—not the mummy in the basement, but the quiet I did remember. He’d gotten quieter since Ammut and the canal and since I’d said what I had, whatever it had been about that picture, which made this quiet a different one. Uncomfortable, not Zen. We’d had Zen on tap on the trip from South Carolina, and then we’d had this non-Kwai Chang Caine version since this morning … since he’d asked about my hair, as if he thought I really had cut it to mourn my own death.
His
brother’s death. Although he’d come across to me as reassured as best as I could tell, it hadn’t changed his mood. He’d gone from right to wrong, but with the past few days and my near death. I didn’t blame him, because the man blamed himself more than I ever could. I was hoping that, as with lots of things in this world, I could fix him with one good swift kick—and two hours of destroying his obsessively clean world was just that. Now here was hoping he reacted like most appliances when you smacked ‘em.
Presto—toaster, thou art healed. Make with the English muffin.
“Me? I’m looking for a map.” I grinned before saying more somberly, “I need a map. But what are you looking for, Leandros? What do you need?”
He looked at me as if he didn’t know himself, before giving in. “My brother.” He let go of my shirt, dropping me back on my heels, and turned his back to me. “Goddamn it, I need my brother.”
“And I’m not him?” He already regretted what he’d said. I saw the rise and fall of his shoulders, his head bow, and a spine stiff enough I was surprised it didn’t shatter like brittle ice. But it didn’t as he walked over to one of the cabinets next to the refrigerator and brought back a neatly folded map of New York City.
“You could be, but, no. You’re not.” I
could
be, but I wasn’t? Unless my memory came back and then I would be. Or would I? He said I wasn’t his brother with as much belief and conviction as if that brother truly was dead and buried, his coming back an impossibility. That was confusing and then some, especially after he’d spent so much time on the drive back from South Carolina convincing me he was my brother. He all but stopped at a drugstore to see if they had a Whozurbrudder box next to the Whozurdaddy paternity test. I’m your brother. I swear I’m your brother. Hand to Buddha, I am your brother. On and on.
The mummy I couldn’t or didn’t want to remember, but that endless debate I couldn’t forget. Figured.
But, now, wait—this guy suddenly thinks, maybe I’m not his brother after all? The “What the fuck?” thought bubble over my head was implied, because, seriously, What the fuck?
I sat down on the workout mats and he sat opposite me. He pulled apart his braid with impatient fingers. Callused hands, hair long and from another time, eyes the color of an iron sword. If it weren’t for the darker skin, I’d expect him to be leading a charge of Vikings, swinging an axe, and taking the head of everyone who passed his way. Born too late, he was meant to be a warlord or a general or a god to both, with blood-soaked altars and every first son named for him.
But this wasn’t then and he’d shown himself to be a man of control, because if he wasn’t, what might he do with what nature had given him? His mind knew that, but his body belonged to the past. Warlord, general, god. All three sounded damn lonely things to be. You couldn’t be friends with someone who might die that day or the next. If you did, you’d pay. For every friend or comrade, you’d pay. Those days were ancient history, but we were living a reflection of them now. When you fought for your life, wouldn’t you need someone—just one person—who would always be there? Who was good enough to win those fights? Wouldn’t you need to know you wouldn’t end up a sole survivor? Alone in a world where the monsters never stopped coming? Wouldn’t you need that to not go out of your damn mind?
Fuck, yes, you would.
I spread out the map. “So I’m not your brother … yet. But I will be. Stop tiptoeing around me. Smack my head when I deserve it. It’ll remind me.” I’d seen aborted twitches several times before he managed to pull back in time before he swatted me. “I had a setback last night. Big deal. The venom can’t last forever. I forgot part of one day. I’ll remember it all soon enough. Then it’ll be the good old days again.”
He didn’t comment as he unfolded the map on his side. All that former optimism had disappeared, when he or Goodfellow was telling me every other minute on the trip back from South Carolina that I’d get it all back. Wait and see. I’d get it back. No time at all. She was coming round the mountain, riding six white horses and pulling my memory like a U-Haul. Now we were playing no comment on the subject.
With the map laid out, he did find something to say. “I said something idiotic. I’m sorry. You are my brother, only without certain … memories.” Memories hadn’t been his first choice of words, but I didn’t know what he had almost said instead. “I think you’re happier as you are now,” he went on, weighting down his two corners of the map with two of his steel bead mala bracelets. I remembered those when he’d grabbed me to stop me from stabbing the puck with a fork. “Our childhood wasn’t the best, and there’s no escaping it made us who we are. If you can’t remember those things and you’re more content this way, perhaps it’s better if you stay like this. Maybe I’m being selfish to want you to be who you were before.”
Ah, that was it. Guilt. Throwing himself under the bus. He certainly seemed the type from the bits and pieces floating around inside my skull. But, Jesus, how bad had our childhood been anyway? Slutty mom—I’d picked up on that, but to think I’d be better not remembering any of it? At all? That sounded much worse than a mom who screwed around a lot and liked to stay on the move. Goodfellow had said that, not Leandros. A puck, a trickster, but oddly more truthful than my own brother seemed now.
I looked up from the map and raised my eyebrows at him. “Are you happier? The way I am now, you don’t know for sure anymore that I’m your brother. That’s what you said, idiotic or not.” Despite the conversation, he frowned at associating himself with that particular word although he’d been the one to first say it. That cracked me up. He was vain about his intellect. That I would have to remember, no matter what. It was mocking material too good to pass up. “I have amnesia, but I can still hear. Tell me, are you happier if I stay like this?”
His forehead furrowed as if he weren’t used to me backing him in a corner. That was the great thing about control. You rarely lose a little. You usually lose it all. I smacked the side of his head just as he caught my wrist a fraction of a second too late. With his speed, “too late” meant a definite loss of control. I’d kicked the hell out of his toaster all right. “I didn’t think so,” I said, answering my own question. “I’m your brother all right, and one of us doesn’t get to be happy and one of us miserable. Now, get me a Magic Marker and I’ll make you glad your obviously not-that-bright other version of me isn’t totally back yet. I’ve got an idea while he’d probably be out hunting for offensive shirts. Take advantage of my usefulness. Soon I’ll be back scouring the city for the dirtiest T-shirt in existence.”
He let go of my wrist, rubbed the side of his head, but got up and returned with a marker. Sitting back down, control already back in place, for the most part anyway, he flipped the marker like a knife, flipped it again, and at last got around to asking, “Do you think you could call me Niko? Or Nik? Leandros, every time you say it …” He handed me the marker without the rest of the words. But I still got them.
It was like a kick in the gut for him, every time I said his name as if he were a stranger. I should’ve figured that out sooner. “Niko. Gotcha. Any nicknames? With your nose, I have to give you some sort of hell over that. Pinocchio? Never mind. I’ll figure something out. Now, show me where all the bodies were found or went missing.”
That was another memory that unfortunately hadn’t disappeared this morning—all the details on Ammut and how we were going to find Ammut—and Ammut the goddess, but not a goddess, but she could suck your life force anyway. Between Leandr … Niko and Goodfellow, they somehow managed to make simple life-threatening killer monsters boring.