Time Untime (35 page)

Okay,
that
he felt.…

Before he could recover, four of them were on him.

“We don’t need Chacu or Coyote to finish you.” As Ren’s attacker reached for the Coyote’s club, a sonic boom went through the room so fiercely, it knocked everyone off their feet.

Damn, I’m on the floor again.
He was getting really sick of this vantage point.

At first, he wasn’t sure what had happened to knock them down. Not until he saw Ash grab one of the Gate Guardians and head-slam his ass into the wall.
Yeah, that hurt, didn’t it, puta? Slam him again, Ash.
He’d say it out loud, but the last one who’d grabbed him had broken his jaw.

Ash rounded the seven of them up, and left Chacu for Cabeza to finish off. His silver eyes swirling with fury, Ash snarled at the Gate Guardians, exposing his fangs. “You swore to protect the innocent.”

The tallest one tried to peacock posture Ash. It might have worked had Ash been a couple of feet shorter. But with those combat boots on, Ash topped seven feet easy. It’d be damn hard to intimidate someone that size if they were human. Toss in the god powers, and mad warrior skills …

You go on, bitch, and posture. Ash can probably use the comic relief.

Bald Ugly jerked his chin toward Coyote as he spoke to Acheron. “We owed a favor to the one who freed us. We were merely paying the obligation.”

Ash shook his head. “Ah, see now, that was your mistake. Your obligation tripped all over a man I consider a brother. One I don’t like seeing ganged up on and beaten to a pulp when I know one-on-one, you’d be picking up busted teeth … so I tell you what … How about I level this playing field a little?”

Still, the imbecile blustered. Maybe because his muscles were five times larger than Ash’s, he thought that gave him the advantage. But one of the first things Ren had learned when he’d shot up to tower over his shorter, bulkier opponents … Lean muscle didn’t interfere with fighting technique. It made you lethal. And you were a hell of a lot stronger than you appeared to be, so people underestimated the power of your blows. While a single blow from the mountain could lay you out cold, you could get twenty in to his one and have him down first. The mountain had to be accurate.

You? Not so much.

The mountain sneered up at Acheron. “We’re not afraid of you.”

Ash shrugged nonchalantly. “That would be exponentially foolish on your part. But I’m not the one you need to fear.” Ash turned and approached Ren. “You look like hell, buddy.”

“Ah, damn,” Ren said, trying not to move his busted jaw any more than necessary. “All those hours in the salon wasted. I’d just got my nails done, too.”

“You’re so not right.” Ash held his hand out to him so that he could pull Ren away from the wall, where Ren had himself braced to keep from falling again.

He took Ash’s hand with the arm that hadn’t been broken, and the moment he did, the pain vanished. Warmth spread through his veins as whatever Ash was doing to him healed his body completely.

Within a few seconds, Ren felt stronger than he ever had before. More than that, everyone else in the room was frozen solid—like someone had hit the pause button on a player.

Ash didn’t seem to notice. “You know, Ren, it occurs to me that you never took your Act of Vengeance when Artemis signed you into her service.”

“I didn’t want it, then.”

“And now?”

Ren glanced over to Coyote, who was frozen in the middle of a furious shriek that made the tendons on his neck protrude, and left his face a mask of ugliness.

As Dark-Hunters, they weren’t allowed to arbitrarily kill anyone. There were very strict codes they had to follow. Murdering someone was a big no-no. “You’d allow it?”

Ash arched a wry brow. “You’re part demon. Do you really give a shit what I think?”

“The demon in me that knows there’s a demon in you who can mop the floor with my raunchy butt tells me to say yes. I care. Deeply.”

“You’re such a liar,” Ash said with a laugh. “And a genius.” He jerked his chin toward the group. “So, how about that vengeance?”

There was only one person in the room he truly wanted to lay low. “I’m going to kill Coyote.”

“Take them all out if you want. You’ve earned it.”

Ren frowned at the offer. Ash wasn’t normally quite this bloodthirsty. Up until he’d married, Acheron had been all Hare Krishna—can’t we all get along? Peace and love, brother. Peace and love. Kill the Daimons to free the human souls, but play nice with everyone else.

Yet from the moment Ash’s wife Tory had placed that black titanium wedding ring on his finger, Ash had learned the benefits of “You knock on
my
door looking to fight? Then come on in, brother, and I’ll put your rabid ass down tonight.”

However, given Ash’s lengthy past condemnations of wanton bloodshed, Ren wanted to make double sure that they were on the same page. “What exactly do you mean by that? Send them home intact, a little broken up, or in bloody body bags?”

No sooner had Ren asked the question, than seven more Rens appeared in the room around them. They stood before the Gate Guardians and were also frozen in place, yet posed as if they were about to clobber the one in front of them.

What the hell?

Ash folded his arms over his chest. “Relax. They’ll vanish once they dispense of their assigned target … in whatever way you want them to. And you’ll be none the weaker for it. Their powers don’t draw from you.”

Ren gaped at Ash’s abilities. While he’d known the man had mad gpd powers, he’d had no idea that insta-clone-a-warrior was one of them.

“How did you do that?” Ren breathed. “For that matter, how can you even be here? I thought you couldn’t help us tonight.”

Ash shrugged. “Hope you don’t take this the wrong way, but your gene pool is a little shallow when it comes to intelligence. The hallowed part of the Valley doesn’t begin for another five miles in.” He flashed a fanged grin at Ren. “Great place to set up camp, huh? I’d laugh at your brother’s arrogant idiocy if it wasn’t so pathetic. Anyway, I thought you were going in with the others, not detouring here. Had I known this was your plan, I’d have had your back all along. Sometimes, Ren, you have to remember that you do have friends now. And some of us have been around for a very long time. Like a permanent boil on your ass, I’m kind of attached to all of you.”

Ren laughed. “I will remember that. Thank you.”

Ash inclined his head respectfully. “I shall leave you and Beza to your fun. I’ll take care of Choo Co La Tah for you, and continue holding the line against the vermin breaking though the barriers.” He headed over to where Choo lay in an unconscious lump.

“Acheron?” Ren took care to use the true Atlantean pronunciation of his name with a hard C and audible H. “
Herista
.”
Thank you.

Ash tapped his heart twice with his fist, which was an Atlantean gesture for blood family.
“Atee, mer, atee
.”
Anytime, brother, anytime
. Then, turning, he picked Choo up and vanished with him. As soon as Ash was gone, everyone returned to normal.

One day, Ash really needed to come clean about the full extent of his powers.

But that wouldn’t be tonight.

Tonight, Ren had a gate to seal, and a rat to catch. One whose eyes were now widened by fear as Coyote realized he had eight Rens to fight now.

One of whom was severely pissed off and wanted his blood over the beating Coyote had ordered.

Ren left his duplicate army to fight the others while he headed straight for Coyote. As soon as his brother saw him coming for him, Coyote did what he did best.

He ran.

Ren picked up the pace as he ran down the shaft, after Coyote. Tired of chasing the jackrabbit, Ren teleported himself in front of Coyote.

Still looking behind him, he slammed into Ren’s chest, then staggered back.

Ren gave him a pitiless glare as Coyote scurried backward on the ground, like a creepy contorted possessed human in a horror movie.
Stand up and face me like the man you claim to be.…
“I will never understand how our father was so blind to your true nature.”

Finally discovering some semblance of a backbone, Coyote stood up and lifted his chin defiantly. “What are you going to do? Kill me?”

Ren pulled the hand forged knife from his boot, and glanced down at it. It was one of the very few items he’d managed to hang on to from his human life—one of the very few things he’d owned as a human. Simple and elegant, it had a crow etched down one side of the blade and a hummingbird on the other. A bit of whimsy he’d put there one night when he’d been unable to sleep. Too many bitter memories had often robbed him of his rest.

But he’d always had a strong affection for weaponry.

One of the things he’d learned as a boy was metallurgy. He’d watch the smiths smelt different compounds, taking mental notes on what they did so that he could duplicate it in private.

By the time he was twenty, he made all of his own weapons. His bow, arrows, war club, and knives. And he’d learned, courtesy of Coyote’s “pranks,” to sleep with his weapons so that if they were touched or tampered with, he’d know instantly.

There was no worse feeling than to entrust your life to a tool that malfunctioned or broke while you were under attack.

And he had the scars to prove it. As a human, his weapons had been the only thing he’d ever taken pride in. Unlike people, they didn’t mock him. They didn’t leave him, and they protected him when no one else would.

He still felt that way about them.

In fact, the garage at his house was a forge. Since he could fly and teleport, he had no use for a car. There was no need in wasting prime space when he could use it for the only thing that gave him real comfort.

“Say something,” Coyote snarled.

“Sorry. I was lost in thought for a moment.”

“Are you insane?”

Ren laughed. “Given our genes? It’s a safe bet.” He sobered and narrowed his gaze on Coyote. “Tell me something … do you remember that time when I was nineteen and for my birthday, I made a matching set of knives as a gift for you and Father?”

“Yeah? So?”

“Do you remember what you did?”

“No. I don’t even know what happened to them.”

Of course he didn’t. Why should he? “I remember it.” With a clarity he would give anything to purge out of his memory. “I gave you yours first, and you convinced me that Father wouldn’t take his from me. That he would criticize it as being inferior. So I allowed you to give it to him while I watched. He assumed you’d made it, and he embraced you for the gift.”

“Father was bad that way.”

“No, Anukuwaya,
you
were always bad that way. You’re a shadow walker. A treacherous creature from the dark that pretends it’s from the light. It’s shimmery and beautiful, but it has no substance. No loyalty. When we were human, I never saw it in you, because I cherished you as my brother. I didn’t want to see it. And Father, even after Buffalo told him I was the knife’s creator, said it was the best one he’d ever seen. It was the only time in my life he looked at me with anything other than contempt. But you couldn’t stand it. The jealousy ate at you. And you couldn’t let me have those two minutes of his affection. Instead, you thermal-shocked the blade so that it would snap, and then showed it to Father, who thanked you for saving his life from my incompetence. Angry at me for having given him a defective knife, he threw it at me while I ate dinner alone in the kitchen.”

Ren opened the front of his shirt so that Coyote could see the scar on his shoulder where the knife had hit him while he sat unaware of his father’s rage. Their father had thrown the knife so forcefully, that it’d knocked him off his seat, and laid him out on the floor. Stunned, Ren had stared in horror as his father curled his lip and cursed him. “It was a fine weapon. It tore through my flesh and sinew and muscle like they were butter, and the tip embedded in my bone. If nothing else, you should remember that. It was over a year before I had full range of motion in my arm again.” Though to be honest, there were still some things he couldn’t do with that arm.

He held the knife up for Coyote to see it. “It’s been one of the best weapons I’ve ever owned. Eleven thousand years and the blade is still as strong as ever.”

“Why would you keep it, you sick bastard?”

His anger rose up in his throat to choke him, but Ren shoved it away. This wasn’t about fury. It was about retribution for a lifetime of misery Coyote had served him. “Because I wanted to make our father proud, and you happy, I melted down my mother’s necklace as part of the blades. The cost of a gift is never important. The important part is that it comes from the heart, and that it holds emotional value to the giver. There was nothing I treasured more than her necklace … except you and Father. So I keep this knife that I used to remind myself to be humble and to never,
ever
trust another with my life. To make sure I always knew where other people stood in relation to my position at any given moment, so that no one would ever stab me again while I was being inattentive to my surroundings.”

Moving closer to him, Coyote rolled his eyes. “I miss the days when you stuttered. You never rambled on back then about bullshit.”

“After tonight, you’ll never have to suffer my presence again. And never again will you take, harm, or threaten those I love.”

Coyote scoffed as he came to rest right in front of Ren. “You can’t kill me. I’m your brother.”

Ren pulled Coyote against him into a brotherly hug, then the instant he felt Coyote relax, he stabbed him through the heart. “From another mother,” he whispered in Coyote’s ear as he held him in his arms. “And the Keetoowah only count relations through their mother’s bloodline.…
He
is no brother of mine. And I owe him nothing.” Those had been the exact words Coyote had said to the priest when he’d asked his brother how Coyote wanted Ren buried.

More than that, Coyote had added, “He is not a true Keetoowah and he died with no honor. I don’t care what you do with his body, but do not insult or desecrate our beloved dead with a foreigner’s remains.”