Doubletake (13 page)

“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 my head lightly, and that alone had my vision and the pain doubling. “This is the only weapon we have right now. Wherever I managed to send Terminator deluxe”—and I hadn’t remembered yet—“when it gets back, Tumulus and me, it’s all we have.”

He nodded, then shook his head as he took the box from my other hand. The furrows over my ribs that had torn me open had been ugly, had to have been, and I could’ve bled out from them. Had almost bled out from them, as I still had a fresh bag of blood hanging from the
IV pole this morning. It was why he hesitated. “If you can’t run, if you can barely move and it catches you, you won’t have time to build a gate.”

“Nik.” My lips quirked. “I was as twitchy as Goodfellow in a roomful of polyester suits last night, thanks to the puck grope-a-thon. If there was ever a time I could run like a bat out of hell, it was then. It still caught me.”

He frowned. “You know how I feel about your using logic. Turning my own weapon against me. You might as well steal my katana and stab me in the heart.” Through the bitching, which was more than likely to distract me from the pain of his tilting my head forward, he took a tiny amount of the balm on a fingertip and applied it to the cut on the back of my head. From the tracing of his finger it was a good four inches long. I felt an instant tingle and warmth and then an annoying pinch. “Hey, ouch.”

“Shit.” That was Niko cursing yet again. He’d cursed more in the past day and a half than in most of his life. He moved to the supply cabinet against the wall, flung open a drawer, and was back in an instant while stripping open a package. He went to work on the incision with hand flying.

“Niko, what are you doing and—Ow…what the hell? This isn’t the kind of healing Rafferty did.” I had my hand on the Eagle, ready to pick it up and nail Kalakos where he stood.

“It’s the staples I had to use to close the cut. You’re healing around them.”

And now he was pulling them out of completely healed flesh, which stung, but that faded too as the ointment finished the job. “Aren’t you going to complain that I should’ve thought of that first?” he asked with the last staple removed, his hand mussing the back of my hair to hide the memory of it.

“I’m not that much of an asshole.” Of course I was. “Does it make you feel better that I did at least think it?”

I could see the smile behind his somber mask. “In fact, it does.”

Promise and Kalakos waited in the living area while, behind his closed bedroom door, Niko took care of the rest. Luckily the stitches holding my muscles back together were dissolvable, and Suyolak’s balm sailed over them. Although the amount in the box had seemed small, a little went a long way and then some. There was enough left for the burns and kishi bite on my leg. After that, I took back the box and scraped a finger inside, gathering just enough left to film the skin. Then I popped the finger in my mouth, the same as a kid with cake batter, and sucked it off.

Niko eyed me warily. “I don’t think that’s meant for internal ingestion. What are you doing?”

“An experiment. You never know until you try.” I sat up, gloriously pain-free, and added, “Now, take out the IVs, tell me how to get this damn catheter out, then give me and Cal Junior some privacy. Knowing Goodfellow, he took a picture with his phone and Junior’s an Internet star by now.”

Niko coughed once before saying gravely, “Yes, a star. I’m sure.” Then he grasped my arm and gripped hard. “I saw you, and I…” He didn’t have to say it. I knew what he’d thought.

“I’m never dead.” I grinned reassuringly. “Heaven doesn’t exist, and hell has barricaded the door. I’m stuck here.”

“Perhaps, but sometimes you do a convincing imitation.” His grip tightened and he left me and Cal Junior with a list of instructions and a syringe—thank God
the kind without a needle. I read through the instructions twice and sighed. My damn dick was always getting me into trouble, and never the right kind.

Simple enough that it took only seconds. I then thought about a shower, but I was clean and smelled of soap, and Suyolak’s ointment had been absorbed into my body with no lingering trace of touch or scent. The soap meant I’d been given a sponge bath during my narcotic sleep, ridding me of blood and betadine. I’d have been embarrassed, but then Niko would remind me of how he changed my diapers when I was a baby. The last time he said that, I’d considered beating him to death with a box of Pampers.

Best to let it go this time.

I dressed in a pair of Niko’s sweats rather than moving naked to my room next door, and thought about how Kalakos seemed to be telling the truth, how he might have saved my life, how, from what he said, he was trying to restore honor to his clan and keep Janus from slaughtering indiscriminately. The only problem I could find with him was that he’d abandoned his son. Could you kill someone for that alone, when compared to all the rest? When all was said and done, the threat defeated, could you? I picked up my Eagle, one in the pipe as always, and opened the door.

I could.

The clang of metal against metal was audible long before I walked down the hall. Niko and I practiced most often with wood. He didn’t want to accidentally cut off something essential I might plan on using later. But this wasn’t practice; this was something else entirely. I wasn’t worried. If Niko needed help against Kalakos, he’d let me know, but as that was unlikely, I decided I was hungry. A
good sign. I laid my gun on the countertop, grabbed some cold, petrified pizza out of the fridge, hoisted a hip up on the counter, and watched the show. “What’s going on?” I took another bite. “I thought we were leaving. Why doesn’t Niko just take his head, shout, ‘There can be only one,’ and get this over with?”

“They are trying to prove something first. Who is the best? Niko will let him live only because he made you whole again, but your brother requires working out a good deal of frustration regardless.” She tapped a light lavender nail to her softly rounded chin. “Hundreds of years and the male psyche still escapes me.”

I lifted my head and caught the scent of musk and forest. “Wonderful. Chester the Molester is here,” I announced glumly.

The door opened and no one had heard Goodfellow pick the lock. Kalakos didn’t know who he was competing with when it came to breaking and entering, and that was a fact. Goodfellow did have a key, but he felt that was boring. Tricksters needed to keep up their skills. He picked pockets too. The used-car-salesman cover was a self-explanatory con of pure evil. “Lazarus has arisen!” he announced at the sight of me. “Not to mention the rest of you appears much improved as well. And I heard your highly inflammatory statement.” He put his lock picks away and leaned a wet umbrella against the wall. Had to protect that expensive suit. “You were dying. You’re my friend. How can you accuse me of taking advantage?” He sat on the couch beside Promise. “Besides, I can’t find a picture of a small enough Santa hat to Photoshop on it for my yearly winter solstice cards. Christmas, to you heathens.”

I began to wing what was left of the rock-hard pizza at his head when he folded his arms, leaned back against
the armrest, and stretched out, while propping his legs across Promise’s lap. “Never mind. I’ll torture you later.” He glanced at the peek of Promise’s fangs over her lower lip. “Greetings, Elvira. Is that an overbite or are you just happy to see me?” He didn’t wait for an answer or for her to break his neck, the second being more likely. “Now, this is exceedingly more engaging. Hot, sweaty men in battle. Thank Zeus that Ishiah doesn’t mind my looking.”

Promise gave his legs the same regard she would have if a giant gelatinous snail had flopped across her lap, but inhaled deeply and turned her attention back to the fight. For once in their lives she and Robin agreed on something. “The only way one such as you could not look is if your eyes were plucked from their sockets.” She tapped a painted nail against his chest, but he was beyond threats, his brain completely shut down. I could smell the waves of whatever was the puck equivalent of testosterone rising. He was practically one of those deodorizers they hang around car rearview mirrors.

Scent: horny.

Shape: I wasn’t going there.

I went back to watching the fight myself. They were on the workout mats in the gym area. Barefoot, shirtless, and soaked with sweat, both were matched in number of scars, although they were differently shaped and located. Both were also impeccably good with swords—Niko with his katana and Kalakos with what I thought was a Polish saber. The blade was long and curved, more so than a katana, the grip centuries-old wood. A karabela. It meant “dark curse.” When I was a kid, Niko hadn’t been able to get me to remember the periodic table for love or money, but weapons…those I didn’t often forget.

It had a few inches reach on the katana, but I had
faith in my heart for my brother. You know what beat faith? A Desert Eagle in the hand that I wasn’t using to eat pizza. If Niko stumbled…I didn’t think he would—not my brother. No. But if he did, we’d have to pay the cleaning lady fifty extra bucks to scrub Kalakos’s brain off the wall.

Money well spent.

I finished the pizza as Kalakos spoke, barely breathing hard from the exertion. “I did desert you. I did know Sophia was…as she was. But I hunt clan criminals and return them for punishment, or deliver that punishment if the crime is grave enough.”

Niko didn’t bother to reply. The fight went on. I hadn’t seen any human in my life who came close to my brother. Blades, bare-handed, the occasional gun he had little respect for—no one was as good. Neither was Kalakos, but was near enough that I didn’t like it. You can be the best in the world, but everyone stumbles; everyone makes that one mistake…humans and non. I had, more than once. The fact that Kalakos was good enough to take advantage of that if Niko did…

No, I didn’t fucking care for it at all.

“You’re one of the best I’ve fought,” Niko said. “It’s a shame.”

He blocked another of Kalakos’s blows before the Polish saber whipped under the katana and slammed the Japanese blade upward toward Niko’s face; then metal circled metal as the karabela’s point plunged toward Nik’s neck. That was when Niko kicked his father in the stomach, staggering the older man back a few feet.

He then blocked the hand gripping the saber, slamming fist against fist, started to sweep his leg, then abruptly swept the other, taking Kalakos off guard and throwing him down to the mat. “Elegant move. Rare.
I’ve seen it used only once before at that short distance.” Yeah, when he practiced it on me. The karabela didn’t bother to come up to block the katana that sliced toward the man’s throat.

Black met stony gray. “Not only did I hunt Rom, but I hunt the unclean, as you do when they threaten the clans. A child could not survive that life.”

“A child survived worse. A hundred times worse. Your failure has nothing to do with me.” Niko lifted his katana and walked away. But before he did, he said, “If you had learned in the beginning to fight for family instead of money, you would be even a better fighter and less of a dishonorable bastard than you are now.” He was right. Kalakos wouldn’t chase criminals and monsters for free. We didn’t either…if the client could afford us. If they couldn’t, Niko may as well have been Sonny and Cher’s lesser-known child, Pro Bono. At least fifty percent of our work didn’t earn us a dime, which was fine. Protecting others was a reward worth more than money. I was lucky that Niko had taught me that.