Doubletake (14 page)

Killing is the true payment. Killing is the best part.

I gave an internal shrug. It didn’t matter what the darkest part of me thought. When the goals were the same, it…no, not it…
I
could think whatever I wanted. I was who I was. I didn’t need to change that control or the improved me with the acid erosion of denial.

Know thyself…and then know that your brother knows better than you.

At a stack of neatly folded towels on a shelf near the paper targets hung on the wall, Nik propped up his katana for cleaning when he was done with himself. Wiping the sweat from his chest, arms, and back, he added remotely, “You healed Cal. That allows you and only you a week to recover Janus. Then he becomes someone else’s
problem and not ours. The Vayash will have to send others to do what you could not.”

He stood, no better off than Niko, but not much worse either. He might have sweated a little more, breathed a little harder, but the difference was small. I liked that less and less. Niko was younger and more motivated, but Kalakos would have picked up tricks along the longer years to stay alive doing what he did. The dirtiest of tricks.
My
kind of tricks, but I wouldn’t turn them against my brother. Would he?

Kalakos started toward Niko, refusing to give up. It was a good thing for him that he left his saber behind. “There is no one else who can—”

I gave a low whisper of a hiss before slicing a hand across my throat, and he stopped talking immediately. That smell, the trace of rotten eggs…sulfur. I looked up at the metal ceiling far above. “
Shit
. Niko, now!” He didn’t question. He propelled himself across the room, lunged, and landed on top of Robin and Promise, which was a Goodfellow wet dream come true, and then I threw myself off the counter onto Nik. As I landed on his back, there was the tearing of metal and the shattering of our floor as Janus came to visit.

Suyolak’s medicine had healed me, but Rafferty’s rewiring was still in place. That meant I couldn’t make a gate as fast as my first one yesterday—it took me three days to recover fully—but it was faster than it normally would’ve been. Too bad it wasn’t fast enough.

Janus’s two-faced head was swiveling, its one claw missing. It was checking the soon-to-be battlefield, slower and more cautious this time. It then moved, deciding it had all enemies in sight, and was almost on us when Kalakos threw himself in front of it. He slid a sword into one of the glowing red seams in its chest. It
wasn’t the saber. This was a Greek sword, true as any ancient warrior charging Troy had held—a xiphos made of the same dark metal of the automaton. Kalakos slammed his feet against Janus’s abdomen and pushed hard, ending up half on the couch. Janus jerked and staggered back a single step, the floor cracking beneath his feet again. It was for only a second or two, but that was all I needed.

In those seconds we were as much history as Janus himself.

I liked games. It was true few others liked the games I played, but I didn’t care what they liked. It was a waste of their breath. I had discarded my sunglasses as the rain continued to fall and the lightning flashed. It was good weather. The air sizzled and danced and it was dark enough for certain curiosities to travel roofs and not be seen by the mass of ignorant humans that clogged the sidewalks of this place, insects overrunning their anthill. I tossed down the binoculars and laughed. That thing, that metal thing, had come back and dropped through the roof where Caliban lived.

Little pig, little pig, let me come in.
The first book I’d learned to read in my days of freedom. My teacher had been proud. I was a literate predator and that made me more dangerous than the first Auphe had been. When the prey was so many, you had to know them, truly know
everything about them. My teacher said a mind was a terrible thing to waste. She was right, and when she taught me all she could, I ate hers. I thought it a compliment to her teachings. She thought differently.

That meant I taught her a lesson as well: You shouldn’t say things you don’t mean.

Ah, but back to the good part, the now part. That wasn’t the best part, that metal thing, metal toy, showing up. It remained as interesting as I’d thought last night, but it wasn’t on my agenda now.

I was Auphe—the New Coming.

Toys could wait.

But Caliban…I couldn’t see him. The windows were too high, the angle wrong, but it didn’t matter. Blocks and blocks away, I had smelled the blood last night…Auphe blood—much more pungent and real than human blood. It would’ve been too far to smell him, whole, but the blood…its scent traveled…and traveled yet more. But then it had faded, disappeared this morning. Somehow he had put himself back together, all those pieces, and I
wanted to know how. I would know how. He’d be happy…very happy to tell me. Or I’d be happy to force him to tell me. At times I mixed up the two—a mistake easy to make when you didn’t care one way or the other. I clicked the man-made metal claws that encased my one gloved hand against the dirt. It was an apartment building, and I hid in the greenery they had forced to grow there in pots against its will, choking on the fumes of this place. Such a minor evil that I felt disgust and rage. Humans—their wickedness was so dismal and feeble that I wanted to rip out the trees and bushes and throw them over the side of the roof.

What had I been thinking again?

What had I…

Yes, games. I’d watched Caliban for three months now in this place. I’d had twelve years of freedom, but I’d returned for three years to piss around the home of my former prison—Nevah’s Landing—because I knew Caliban would as well. Sidle told us so. Sidle, our warden…our
torturer…Caliban’s victim without a single look…the bullet through his brain.

Not one glance as he pulled the trigger.

It was beautiful.

Games. Whether he’d admit it or not, I knew he liked games too. I’d followed him from Nevah’s Landing, a place he’d sooner not remember, living with cattle, picking up boring cattle emotion. He’d wiped out eight of our kind, useless kind, barely worth the carnage. But I might be wrong. Maybe he didn’t mind remembering what he had done—I wouldn’t. Maybe he had enjoyed it. Killing his brothers and sisters. I didn’t blame him. I’d have killed them too. They were weak. They couldn’t gate. Worthless maggots.

A fun game I’d wanted to play in the three years I’d been back, but I couldn’t. I’d especially wanted to play with Sidle. I would’ve dragged it out for weeks and weeks until his vocal cords ruptured from the screams. But no, no, no. I left them for Caliban.

The trap. The bait.

I’d watched him from the swamp, too far for him to sense me, and I’d learned about the last of our kind, or so he thought. I’d followed him back to this disgusting stench of a city and I’d learned more. He couldn’t gate. At first I assumed I just didn’t happen to be watching him at the right time. I had needs. I couldn’t watch him always. But then last night, he gave me nothing…which made him useless and not the Caliban I’d expected, the one whose name was snarled by all the nonhumans. Not the Caliban who the Auphe had tried to use to travel back and wipe out the humans before they infested the world like billions of locusts.

Caliban, but not the one they spoke of with fear and hatred. Not the one worth my time. I was on the verge of
impossible-to-bear boredom, ready to kill him as he’d killed the others, if he didn’t die during the night. But not for revenge—he wasn’t worth revenge, but because he was the same as the ones he’d killed in my onetime prison:

Useless.

But now he wasn’t. He had gated.

I had felt it. Auphe could feel one another, sense the presence of the superior, from a certain distance, which had kept me farther than I wanted from my target. But a gate was different. One could feel a gate much farther. Sidle had told us so. He enjoyed telling us the murderous tales and lethal abilities of the true Auphe, and of the shameful shadows we were of the true Auphe race.

But there is true and then there is better.

I was better.

I would prove it to Caliban now that he was worth my time.

I would prove it to the memory of the first Auphe. The first race had gone and the second had come.

Evolution, bitches.

The couch ended up at a sharp angle, one end propped up on the sofa in Goodfellow’s condo and the other on the floor. The expensive leather of Robin’s furniture ripped and tore. It was the second time I’d destroyed the puck’s wraparound couch. I only hoped the other end hadn’t landed on Salome or Spartacus. Spartacus didn’t deserve that, and Salome would gnaw off my leg and balls and be the first to bring the game of pool to the mummified cat community. It gave whole new meaning to “rack the balls.” I shoved Kalakos off of me. If we’d hit Salome, let her take her wrath out on him.

“You brought him too? Your generous nature surprises me,” Robin drawled; his end of the couch was the higher one. He looked comfortable. Good for him. He used to puke when I had to gate us away. Eventually he’d gotten used to it, as had Niko. Kalakos was all but doubled over, doing all he could to keep from vomiting. Humans didn’t like gates and gates didn’t like humans. “And you will pay for my sofa, I promise you.”

“I had to,” I snapped, wiping the slow ooze of blood from my nostrils. I was healed, but normally even in the
best of conditions, the nosebleed would gush like a river. The headache would be the same as being hit in the head with a baseball bat, but now it was only a lower-level migraine. Not that I’d ever had a migraine, but I thought it was a good guess. “I didn’t have a choice. Any hands, legs, any piece of any one of us at all that was outside the gate would’ve been left behind in our apartment. Fingers on the floor draw rats. And I like our couch. My ass imprint is the perfect depth. I wasn’t leaving it behind.”

“Yet my furniture means nothing to you.” Goodfellow stayed in place, hands behind his head, as the rest of us slid off and onto the floor. “The two of you are quite the experts with swords.” He addressed Niko and Kalakos, who was recovering. He was less green. He’d head back into the nausea range, because Goodfellow was talking and didn’t appear to be stopping anytime soon.

Janus—no big deal. A sweaty version of
American Gladiators
right in front of him, that was worth discussing. “It is almost as if Niko inherited some talent from you, although he is superior. He fights with his skill and his heart. You fight with your skill alone. Too bad. A strong heart usually wins. We pucks hate that, as it makes trickery more difficult. Unfortunately it is true.”

Kalakos still held the xiphos in his hand, the one that had actually seemed to make a mild impression on Janus. “Niko is impressive. I will not deny. All the male line of my family is the same and has been since…I cannot remember. Blond hair, fighters. There is a story that a man impregnated a girl from our clan back in Greece hundreds of years ago. Northern Greek and blond, he was supposedly descended from the Trojan war hero Achilles.” He shifted his shoulders. “Foolishness. Mythology, the historical rumors that never die.”

Robin crossed his ankles and raised his eyebrows.
“Mythology. When will you humans ever learn what is true and what is not? Achilles existed. There is no myth there. He was human, however. No goddess dipping him in a river by his heel. He was a human soldier and a superb warrior.” He moved a hand to pat his stomach. Salome appeared, jumped, and curled up, dead and purring. Her feline grin was the same as always—the Cheshire cat crossed with Hannibal Lecter. “It does explain a good deal. The inherent genetic talent of hundreds of years of warriors since Achilles, hundreds of more warrior ancestors before him. The general appearance: the blond hair and epic nose. You could be his brothers, both of you.”

Niko, ever prepared, had held on to his towel and finished cleaning up. “Or his cousin, Patroclus?”

“No, contrary to useless historical myth, they didn’t look much alike. Patroclus had dark hair. He also had a tendency toward a foul mouth and insubordination. When they were younger, years before Troy, he was whipped on one occasion, his back turned to rags of flesh…or at least he was until Achilles returned to camp and broke the neck of the
antisyntag
…the lieutenant colonel who was doing the ‘punishing.’ The man wasn’t fond of mercenaries to begin with. We had a time covering that one up. But as all the men hated him anyway, a few barrels of wine and it was forgive and forget.”

“They existed? You
knew
them?” Kalakos asked with a healthy dose of disbelief. “Achilles and Patroclus?”

Robin looked down his nose. “Were they worth knowing? Yes. Ergo, did I know them? Yes.” He stroked Salome’s wrinkly bare skin. “When Patroclus died, Achilles cut off his own hair to mourn him.” He stared into the light of Salome’s eyes as he said that, as if he could see it all over again in the dusty glow. “I handed him the dagger.”

“That tradition extended that far back?” The Rom had picked that up when passing through Greece. “To cut your hair?” Niko wondered, a shadowed memory passing over his face. Why wouldn’t he be curious? He’d once done it himself.

Robin didn’t answer the question, instead saying, “Niko, you can borrow the shower and some of my clothes if you wish. There is also soy milk in the refrigerator. Wine for Promise. Nothing for Cal, as he keeps destroying my condo. And when we are settled, I’d like to hear about the xiphos Kalakos has that didn’t kill Janus, but made the automaton at least hesitate for a second or two. Who knows how long we have? This is perfect weather for a war machine like Janus to move about unseen among the local populace.”

“We could’ve been hearing about the swords sooner if you weren’t telling us goddamn bedtime stories,” I growled. “And it’s a war machine? We have an actual war machine on our asses?”

The puck gently rang the gold loop in the tip of Salome’s ear. “I like stories. And obviously it’s a war machine. Do you think it was built to pick olives?”