Downfall (26 page)

Niko was safe from me.

Grimm . . . I didn’t give him a warning as I threw myself at him, my claws eager to bury themselves in his flesh. He was prey. Prey didn’t warrant words. It was time
to end Grimm. He was about to be roadkill scattered two miles long.

Grimm
was the one who should run.

Grimm was the one who should hide, as my claws were now inches from his skin.

Grimm was dead fucking meat, and I couldn’t
wait
.

Unfortunately, thanks to Nik standing in the doorway aiming a gun, it turned out that I didn’t have as much a choice about waiting as I’d have liked.

And the thing about it? About waiting?

It sucked.

Goodfellow

A phone call from Niko led me to the brothers’ apartment. Urgent as it sounded, I wasn’t as quiet as normal about picking the lock and running through the place until I found them. Even so with me at my most careless, Niko didn’t hear me as I came to a stop in the doorway of Cal’s room. That meant Niko was not having the best of days. Blond head bent, his back to the door . . . back to the Zeus-forsaken
door
—Niko who couldn’t have been born breech, as he wouldn’t leave his back unprotected in fetal stage . . . he was oblivious.

“Niko?” I tried cautiously.

“I shot him.” He didn’t look up or back at me. Too tired to take the most basic of precautions and that was worse than the phone call had been.

“He was attacking Grimm and they looked the same.” He stumbled verbally, murmuring “not the teeth, not
yet.” As if he’d said nothing, he surged on. “Robin, they looked the
same
.” Niko was sitting on the floor of Cal’s room. “When I saw that, I shot him.” He had one hand resting on Cal’s chest to make certain it continued to rise and fall as smoothly as it should. To make certain that Cal continued to breathe despite what had been injected into his bloodstream. Niko’s other hand was white-knuckled around the grip of a tranquilizer gun modeled after one we’d used on Cal a long time ago when he was possessed by a Darkling. This one I’d had made with the strength of the sedative taken up past “horse” to “herd of elephants.” I had known when the time came to use this that Cal would be Caliban and Caliban would be as Auphe as he could be.

End-days Auphe.

End-days Auphe would come with a metabolism to match, and I wanted to know that once hit he would go down without killing one of us, as I didn’t know if he’d know what that meant any longer—to be one of us. I’d had the gun made after Cal gated in front of all the world, for what he cared, gated in the light of humanity’s eyes and then killed a basement full of murdering humans with a single thought all because of that murdering Jack who had taken his brother. I’d given the gun to Niko this morning after insisting Cal take the trash to the incinerator, as he’d created so very much of it making breakfast.

There had been massive rumblings about my lack of gratitude, but I’d gained the few minutes necessary to give the gun to Niko and do a great deal of convincing in a very short period of time. I knew, however, he wouldn’t have accepted it any sooner, not while I was seeking my assistance with the Vigil. That hadn’t been threat enough to cause Cal to lose himself.

But there had been Cal’s physical transformation, and
while that itself hadn’t done it, there had been Grimm, then the thousand Bae, and finally Niko couldn’t deny it . . . End days.

The transformation that was all but complete now.

I sighed and sat cross-legged on a floor Cal apparently hadn’t cleaned, not once, after they moved in—slovenly infant. I sat beside Niko—whose phone calls, by the way, were beginning to rattle what was serving as my most stable grip on sanity lately—and a crumpled Cal. I traced a careful finger along a length of silver that had come free from the younger brother’s ponytail. The strand bit at my finger with invisible barbs and I absently sucked a drop of blood from my skin. There wasn’t a single black thread remaining in his hair now. I lifted one of his eyelids to see a scarlet iris and drug-dilated pupil. White and red. He was all Auphe save, as Niko dreaded, for the teeth now. His sedated breathing remained slow and he didn’t move under my touch. “You knew you might have to,” I said. “You doubtlessly saved his life.”

“I’m not sure. I think I might have saved Grimm’s instead.” A little gray behind his olive skin, Niko clenched the hand on his brother’s chest, fisting a handful of a T-shirt I’d bought as a joke not so long ago that seemed much less humorous now. “I think I might’ve saved them both. I think they would’ve killed each other. Grimm is Grimm and Cal . . . I heard Cal. He was talking about Tumulus. He remembered it. The worst parts of it”—he swallowed harshly—“and he was laughing. Robin, he was
laughing
.”

Not like the first time at all, then. Not like when I had hypnotized him to remember and he’d screamed until I thought his throat would bleed. The Auphe had taken Cal at fourteen and they had kept him two long years before he escaped. There were times, great stretches of it, where a boy that young would give in and be what his
tormentors forced him to be to escape the pain and horror of all that was being done to him. Maybe forget who he’d once been altogether.

“Niko, he was fourteen when he was taken by the Auphe and sixteen when he escaped. That is not the type of kidnapping to which Stockholm syndrome can remotely be applied. There was a time at the beginning when he would’ve been Cal, but it wouldn’t have lasted long. Fourteen and at the mercy of the Auphe”—a joke as they’d had none—“he would’ve done and been whatever he had to be to survive what the Auphe were doing to him. He didn’t have any choice, and some parts of that will always lurk in him. Unfortunately Grimm happens to bring them out. But they are not the whole of him and not in any measure his fault.”

I could not imagine what he’d gone through, and wasn’t that an amazing lie, even for me, that I had just told myself? Unfortunately, I could imagine it. I could imagine too much of it, and I knew I wouldn’t have survived it. Two years? After a week I would have chewed through my own wrist to bleed my life away. I could kill a true Auphe. Cal had been with over a hundred. A fourteen-year-old boy had survived what a million-year-old puck couldn’t have.

“You are the bravest son of a bitch I have ever known in the whole of time, kid,” I said to his closed eyes and still face. I lightly slapped his cheek with affection; pucks had no brothers save for me, and my brother in Cal could not be equaled. I would fix this. Ishiah’s God was not my god, but if he had been I would’ve been his right hand of justice or, more appropriately, his sinister left hand of bloody vengeance. Watch me. I then said briskly to Niko, “Did you shoot Grimm as well?”

“I had to. As I said, they would’ve killed each other. But the bastard gated away as soon as I hit him.”

I groaned in spite of myself. “He would. As persevering as Cal when it comes to clinging to life. In many ways I almost wish we could save him as well.”

Niko replied with an immediately wary tone to his accusation, “He’s evil.”

“He was kept in a cage from birth until eighteen years of age. He was treated in a manner I don’t care to think about.” Electrocution, branding, starvation—both Cal and Grimm had let those slip, Cal in moments of self-doubt and Grimm in battle.

“He’s what the Auphe made him. He’s not evil in that he chose it, but he is too far gone.” I tsked at the claws on Cal’s hand, unfastened and removed the hateful glove. “Of the three of us in this room, none of our hands are lily white or free of blood in this life. If you count my long one and the stream of lives of you and your brother . . .” I smiled carefully. I’d seen Grimm’s Auphe metal grin. I could make him seem as a toddler if I wanted with what I could exhibit in a show of my teeth, pearly white though they were, but I held back. “. . . Grimm is but a babe in comparison to the combination of who we are and what we’ve done throughout history.”

Niko frowned and I could see the protest forming on his lips. I tapped his temple before he could. “You don’t remember, and I’m glad of it. I would have it no other way, but do know, Niko, this life
is
one of the true episodes of karma I’ve seen you show. This life wipes away a few others you have lived.” I let it go, as it made no difference, not in the end. How Grimm came to be was horrific, who he was inevitable, but no matter the why, the how, or the sympathy he might deserve, I wouldn’t hesitate to kill him and I wouldn’t regret it.

I’d consider it compassion.

I’d mentioned Grimm to Cal once when he was half-asleep after one of my smaller, but still quite
alcohol-laden parties. Grimm and the other half Auphe kept prisoner in those cages, tormented by a sadistic jailer, more animal than Auphe or human. Unable to gate to escape. And Cal, who wouldn’t remember saying it now or wouldn’t have remembered it the next morning after the party, had said, “What is done cannot be undone. What is made cannot be unmade.” It sounded as if he’d said it before, if only to himself.

It was true.

Grimm could not be unmade. No matter how he came to be, he was here now and he had to be dealt with. “I brought the car. Let’s get Cal out to it and home.” Not that Grimm couldn’t find us there once he woke up from the tranquilizer wherever he had gone, but if he did, he did. We would deal with it if it happened.

Niko’s hand wrapped around my ankle, gripping it tightly. “Thank you for this. There aren’t many people I know . . .” He shook his head. “There is no one I know at all who would come when I asked them to help me with my full-on Auphe psychotic brother with no guarantee he wouldn’t try to kill them. Promise would come, but take the time to arm herself thoroughly. More and more she passes the chance to see Cal.” I could see him wondering, unsure whether she feared his brother or feared the end. I thought it was both. “So . . . thank you.” He rested a hand against the side of my neck briefly and then he stood, bent, and managed to get the deadweight of his brother slung over his shoulder.

“Someday I’ll tell you how you rescued me from a drunken Caligula in his stables with his brand-new stallion.” I grinned and slapped him lightly on the back of the head. “You probably would not consider us remotely close to even.”

“You’re not joking, are you?”

“Oh, how you wish that I were,” I answered gleefully.
Niko walked, footfalls heavy, toward the door. Cal wasn’t too much weight to bear, but neither was he light, in all ways.

Make of that what you will.

“I never joke about the occasions when I am able to genuinely scar your psyche for a lifetime, Niko. Who do you take me for?”

“The devil?”

Please.

The devil wished he had half my style and a fourth my schemes.

*   *   *

My phone beeped as I sat beside Cal still sleeping in the bed in his personal guest room. Niko was also asleep on the living room couch, as I might have drugged his tea—not enough to knock him out completely in case we were attacked, but enough to let him sleep if he needed it or I needed it for him. I was excellent in judging those sorts of measurements.

I had taught the Borgias everything they knew.

The number came up unknown, but I had all my sources working day and night and sources I didn’t personally know, difficult as it was to believe there were any of those left, so I took the call. “Goodfellow. The reward is still guaranteed, but my patience is limited and your life even more so if you don’t deliver. Go.”

“Robin, you confuse me, and that really is something. It is!” There was a familiar voice and the laughter that is tears that is laughter again of someone who knows all that is to come and has no surprises left in their future. Wouldn’t that make you cry and laugh all in one?

“You are the best of friends with Cal and Nik and the worst of enemies to anyone else and then you cover that up with the face—handsome—and words of a walking, talking, living celebration. You’re a party, Hob the first,
one that will kill the moment someone’s back is turned with a knife in their spine, a smile on your face, and a song on your lips.” The girl laughed again, a little more full of cheer this time. “I should’ve read you much sooner, but I was naïve and young.” A soft-voiced exhalation that reminded me of ice cream . . . sweet and buttery on the tongue. I could picture her light brown skin, dark chocolate eyes, and curly red hair that fell to her shoulders.

And yes, naïve and young she had been.

“Georgina.” Now, here was a psychic worthwhile, not like the others. A psychic too good, in fact, as she served fate and fate had no mercy. The fact that she knew I came from Hob showed how good . . . and merciless she could be. I had been Hob, in a manner of speaking—the first puck who would’ve given any Auphe at least a small run for their money. Even after Hob had made a second puck, me, in our race’s parthenogenesis reproduction, I was still Hob, identical in thought and memories, as well as desires as twisted and murderous as those of any Auphe. It was only through time after Hob and I separated to roam opposite sides of the world that I eventually developed a personality of my own. To become Robin Goodfellow with more pleasurable and decadent desires. Who sought companions, good food, alcohol—I was a different puck. It didn’t change the fact. . . .

Once I had been Hob.,

To know that indeed made Georgina the Oracle of this generation. But she was one who refused to interfere with intended fate or assume it could possibly be interfered with at all, which made her not very useful. All the power in the world and she refused to use it, refused to think it could be used or that anything could be changed

I gave Cal a quick check, but he was still under with no signs that the love of his life . . . one life, spare me . . .
had pulled him to consciousness. “I thought you did not believe in the destiny that could be changed, that you spat on the history of Delphi, the Oracle you could be now if you truly cared.” If Georgina were more like them, I’d have spent the past few years with less pulling out of my hair and killing not quite so many people who might have only questionably deserved it.

“Those were the days, weren’t they? But do you not remember the strife and chaos they caused with the simple truth?” She sounded wistful and far away, mentally if not physically. “And you know I don’t mind meddling in the smaller matters. Do you know that I met Grimm? Actually I did,” she exclaimed. “He’s scary, isn’t he? But so much like Cal I almost couldn’t believe it when he tried to kill me.” The laughter had gone to nostalgia to a faint giggle and then to a deep sadness. “I changed his thoughts. I was his teacher, not in New York. I couldn’t stay there anymore, not when I couldn’t do what Cal asked.”

Look at their future and tell him it was safe for them to be together, safe for her. She simply would not—and her philosophy that fate was fate didn’t make me any more forgiving of her for it. And Cal couldn’t live with that, the thought that she could die because of him and his life, but she refused to give in. Genuine, holy psychics are a true pain in the ass.