Downfall (14 page)

“Perhaps,” he continued, “she has changed her psychopathic mind about Cal and for whatever twisted reason wants to keep him alive.”

My brother, the . . . wait. What? “Psychopathic? Twisted”?
That was entirely uncalled for. I’d been aware when I hooked up with her that she wasn’t entirely sane, but who is? I wasn’t entirely sane and aware right now, but no one was waving accusations in my direction, were they? She was nuts, but she’d always been nuts. Nothing to announce as new or in any way to blame on me.

“I am an enormous fan of rash assumptions.” That was Robin. I recognized the sarcasm. “But let’s keep this in the realm of possibility.” And the brutal truth, I recognized that too.

“He’s right,” I murmured, pleased that the words sounded close to . . . well, words. I was proud. “Delilah . . . dead.” I tried again. “Delilah wants . . . me . . . dead.” I opened my eyes to see the ceiling of Niko’s room, no scorching on his pristine beams like the soot-stained ones in my room. A pair of wide gray eyes and slitted green ones were both staring at me. The latter made me wonder what Robin was up to. “What?” I grumbled at him, and his suspicious gaze. “She hates me. If she’s saving me, she has reasons. And not sexy reasons.”

I did miss the sexy reasons. The murder and psychosis, I didn’t miss as much when I knew any moment they could be aimed at me. If I did progress to full Auphe, inside and out, Delilah would like me more—give our fiends with benefits further consideration. Psychos . . . how fair was it that they had more fun?

“I can’t believe she ever had sexy reasons regarding you, anytime, anywhere.” Robin accepted a piece of blood-soaked gauze from Niko’s hand and disposed of it out of sight. “Let’s go with she was insane before and she’s insane now and never will we know her reasons, as they’re reasons of which reason knows nothing.”

“That was a quote, Cal.” Niko was pressing something, I was guessing more gauze, against my temple. “A highly mutilated, highly inappropriate quote, but a quote
nonetheless.” He knew I hated quotes unless they involved profanity, sarcasm, and maybe cannibalism. I hated them doubly when my head hurt as much as it did. Where was I anyway? Oh. The usual postfuckup location. I was on his bed, where I most often ended up when wounded, as it was cleaner than mine. Better for wound care or any minor surgeries. Joy. I swallowed, tasted the faint aftertaste of blood, and decided I was alive enough not to worry about minor issues . . . such as anything anyone said while I was conscious. Except for one thing. . . .

“If I’m going to die, no quotes.” I ran my tongue over the crust of dried blood on my teeth and felt the impossibly high thread count of Niko’s sheets under the bare skin of my back, my shirt gone. “And if I’m going to live, no quotes. Where’s my shirt?”

“The same place as your jacket.” Niko’s hand increased the pressure against my head. “A better world. Let them pass on in peace. You, however, were shot . . . twice by the Vigil. They’re mostly superficial wounds, but you need to be more careful in the future.”

That wasn’t right. I knew the cat-thing had been flying around worse than a high-hopping toad on speed. Being distracted by that and not picking up on a human assassin was not at all my fault. When it came down to it, I was certain that research was Niko’s area and not knowing that a fireball-throwing, attack-dog-eating Asian cat creature could all but fly was his department. “No.” I swiped a hand at the one he had resting against my temple. I missed, but that didn’t mean I didn’t try. “You said . . . fireballs. You didn’t say it could
fly
. You . . .”

That’s when I felt it.

That was the thing about gates. If you couldn’t build them, make them, create that wound in the world, you couldn’t feel them either. With the epinephrine, I wasn’t
cured, but I was treatable. I’d been treated today. I’d traveled several times today. I could feel it when others traveled my way.

“Grimm.”

I sat up, the hell with the blood and having been shot but not enough to kill me. None of that counted now. “Grimm.” I looked around wildly as if I could see the whole city from the bed I was trapped in. “A gate. Grimm is in the city.”

Worse. I felt it. He was close . . . so damn close.

“Grimm is here.”

Goodfellow

I’d shown up at Niko and Cal’s place fifteen minutes after Niko called me. The speed laws I’d had to break and the driver I’d had to bribe with a vacation to Barbados not counted in that trip. Cal was shot, Cal was down, Niko needed me, and I went. Money is nice, but when you’re alone, it’s a luxury that eases your way yet bars you from knowing if anyone wants you for you alone. Do they want your company or do they want the luxuries your company brings with it? Most pucks don’t care. I had times when I didn’t care. Like me for me or like me for what I can give you, what was the difference? I very probably didn’t like you either, and while you were focused on my wealth, I was focused on your genitalia. But there was Niko, Cal, and Ishiah, and there I knew the distinction. There money meant nothing, blood was everything, and when they hurt,
you
hurt. I
hadn’t been born knowing that. Did I wish I’d not ever learned it?

Sometimes.

“He was shot.” Niko’s hands had already ripped Cal’s shirt off, and then I ran into his bedroom. He was cleaning and taping down a dressing on a long but shallow furrow on his brother’s pale-skinned back. “It had to be the Vigil.”

This was why I loathed subcontractors. They were inevitably less than efficient.

He was rolling him back now and trying to stop the bleeding from the crease on Cal’s right temple. Head wounds—they bled an ocean and at times you didn’t know if they were barely anything or the swipe of Death’s scythe itself. I pushed Niko’s hands aside and held the gauze in place myself as he tunneled scarlet fingers into his tightly bound hair. Strands of the dark blond braid fell loose and turned the same red that stained his hands. “It was a
Bakeneko
—it was nothing. Relatively easy except for his stupid, idiotic jacket and I’d factored in the destruction of that. I was hopeful at least.” He paced beside his bed. “But someone shot Cal. It had to be the Vigil. It was dark. There was only the moonlight to use to see. He . . . they had to have night scopes. I heard two of them scream, a man and a woman, when I heard Wolves take them down after they shot Cal. They attacked and
ate
the assassins. I could hear that too. Why would they when Wolves hate us . . . ? I have no damn idea of their motive. Fuck.”

I wondered if Cal had any idea the cursing his brother was up to when he wasn’t conscious to hear it and yet butter wouldn’t melt in Niko’s mouth when Cal could know what he was saying. I used to think that he was trying to be a good influence, but now I thought Niko had a bit of trickster in him. He didn’t curse when Cal
would hear, because Cal would enjoy it. It was the smallest of evils, but I approved nonetheless.

Neither Niko nor Cal was enjoying anything at the moment unfortunately. “Let me.” Niko sat on the side of the bed and replaced my hands with his. I didn’t fight him. We both needed something to do and I was already doing my part whether I was the only one who knew or not. He lifted the gauze, frowned at the still-pulsing blood, and reapplied pressure. “I am telling you, Goodfellow, it was the Kin. Several of Delilah’s own took out two members of the Vigil to save Cal.”

That’s when Cal woke up and offered a more realistic if not necessarily more accurate commentary on what had happened. I wanted to smirk at words that were so very Cal—not sexy reasons indeed—but I couldn’t. He looked . . . he didn’t appear right. I knew if he didn’t seem right to me, it was worse to Niko. Cal’s black hair was streaked in several locations with strands of silver and his eyes were gray hosting a rattlesnake pattern of scarlet. It was enough to lose hope at the sight, but Cal, his words, his actions . . .

He was the same. For now.

I’d seen him give in to his Auphe side before, more than once. I’d seen what it was when he went feral and rabid and was lost to his humanity. I’d seen Cal at his worst.

This wasn’t it. He looked more Auphe, yes, but inside, he was as Cal as he’d ever been. And when he said Grimm’s name, that Grimm had come, he said it with anger, not anticipation. When he said Grimm . . . cousin/brother/Auphe . . . he was saying stop him, keep him away, not bring him to me, not let us fight/join/flip a coin on the fate of the world.

Cal didn’t want any part of Grimm and that said it all.

He remained Cal.

I gently touched the dried blood on Cal’s upper lip that had come from gating too much with too little. Our cub. With the next gate the blood might come out of his ears. Zeus, I hoped not, but we didn’t have a choice. I bent down and whispered calmly in his ear too low for Niko to hear, “Cal.” Niko did not need to know this. Niko would make me incredibly sorry if he knew I’d hypnotically conditioned his brother, whether it was for emergencies or not. I was sorry, but emergencies didn’t come much worse than Grimm.

“Take Niko and you to where you lived when you were thirteen years old.” It was an age plucked at random but before the Auphe had taken him. Bound to be safer than what was happening now. “Now. Do not come back until tomorrow at the very soonest.
Odiemus.
” Obey.

He lifted his eyes to mine blankly and did what I’d taught him over this past year. “Cal,
odiemus. Ego enim iam parere.
”

His lips framed the words that didn’t have the breath behind them to say aloud as I’d taught him. A secret wouldn’t stay that way long if Niko heard his lazy baby brother speaking Latin. But I didn’t have to hear the words. I read his lips and knew them all the same. Zeus, I was screwed. Never such a mess as I had made. It wasn’t this Cal who’d spoken. It wasn’t this Cal that made it clear I wasn’t in charge forever.

I’d conditioned Cal to the hypnosis, but what had I missed? All the other Cals of all his other lives should be long gone, sleeping deep down that I couldn’t reach them. But who had recently appeared out of the past, whole and intact, because of a lying piece of
skata
of a story I’d told Niko? Who obviously wasn’t going to let himself be forgotten regardless of what I’d told Cal to do so at his panicked call when he’d remembered earlier?

Cullen. Cullen who was Cal before Cal himself was.

Ego enim iam parere.

Cullen
obeyed, but only for now.

Whatever I might command, whatever amount of hypnosis I laid upon Cal would have to get by Cullen first from now on. And as Cullen was Cal once upon a time and Cal was Cal period—stubborn as Hades, neither bowed before anyone, not even me, unless I tricked him. I’d tricked Cal into hypnosis. Cullen hadn’t been an issue, not a cloud on the horizon of this past year, not until I made him one with that damn story.

“Ego enim iam parere.”

He obeyed . . . but for now, not forever.

“You won’t have to,” I promised as quietly as before. “It’s coming to an end, and this time around, in this life we all win. I swear it. Three times three.” Three times three, a bond even a puck won’t break.

This time I said in English and loud enough for Niko to hear me, “Cal, gate!”

The combination of Cullen/Cal must’ve believed in my oath, and I hoped he kept believing it or life would get more difficult, if that were possible. The purple and black and gray swallowed him, his brother, and most of the bed. They were gone, far from here. I had no idea where. That lack of knowledge was best for all of us.

Hopefully both Niko and Cal would assume Cal had gated wildly, barely conscious, and taken them randomly to a place from their childhood, which meant far from here. Whatever their reaction, I could hold on to the satisfaction that I’d been right, little good that it did me. If any situation called for hypnotic-forced gating, Grimm was it. Not that he’d been all I’d thought of months ago when I started this: Grimm, Delilah and the Lupa, the Vigil. If there was a worst-case scenario, a puck had long ago thought of it, written it up, and submitted it as a
screenplay. I’d come up with fifteen more scenarios in which hypnosis could be a saving grace, such as Cal beginning to remember Tumulus on his own and his two years there and the insanity or catatonia that would follow. I hadn’t ranked the scenarios correctly or guessed who’d be fighting me on the other side, but I’d known eventually someone undefeatable would.

Something or someone always did and always had done so.

Gods, this had better be worth it, as I was
done
. I was pulling every underhanded trick out of my jockstrap this time. This was going to go my way and no one was going to stop me.

There were many times in the past that I’d known what was coming but refused to admit it as I’d thought I couldn’t stop it. I wasn’t doing that any longer. I was older and wiser. Once I’d respected my friendship with Niko and Cal enough to let them make their own decisions about their lives and about their deaths. If you love something, set it free . . . yes, well, if the cliché of that didn’t make one vomit, then the added incredible idiocy, naïveté, and sheer laziness of that saying impressed me not at all. I’d seen how letting Niko and Cal make their own decisions had worked out for them in the past.

If free will had ever had a manual, the two of them had thrown it away.

I’d seen death come far sooner than necessary again and again. Achilles and Patroclus. Alexander and Hephaestus. Arturus and Caiy. Phelan and Cullen. That had been only four lives among a thousand. I could name them for hours, a graveyard of death before its time. Cal had been right in his pissed-off and panicked call to me, half of it. They were karmic
gamou
dominoes. When one died, the other either immediately or very soon after followed. It wasn’t always Cal, as he feared, though. Niko
had gone first many a time himself with Cal following as swiftly as he could.

That meant two things. The first, I was tired, so very tired of it all. This in turn led to the second conclusion: Their major-decision-making days were over. They were humans, mostly.
Humans
. Why had I ever thought them capable of thinking anything through? I was a puck. I was a
trickster
and there was no more denying that. Fate was dealing the cards to Cal and Niko, but I would be the one playing their hand. I was born and bred for this. Whether the brothers knew it or not, they were sitting this one out and I was doing what came as naturally as the beat of my heart.

I watched what was left of the bed collapse onto the floor. It was a mess. But that was not my problem. I had no plans of cleaning it up.

“Grimm,” I said, leaning back in my chair with hands locked behind my head. Beyond the bedroom door, the hall was dark . . . except for a pair of bright red eyes.

I gave my best salesman smile.

It was the same one that had Eve picking Eden’s apple tree bare to give them all to me. “Here. Have a bite of the fruit of knowledge,” I’d offered with an appropriately devious smile as I tipped her with the last one. She had needed knowledge with her body—the beta version always leaves vast realms for improvement. With that knowledge, I’d heard a few angels gossip, would come shame at her nudity. She
needed
a little shame . . . let’s not lie, a great deal of shame. I was doing her a favor. She needed to be covered up, and the sooner the better. She made the Neanderthal female downstream munching on her own lice look like a vision of beauty and desire.

My grin widened as the crimson eyes drifted closer down the hallway, now with the sheen of metal claws sparking in the halo of the bedroom light. Getting the
customer in the door was the difficult part. After that, it was all over. That car was sold. “Come on in. Sit a spell.” I ran my tongue over my teeth. Slick. Full of predatory shine.

Smiling like the shark I was.

“Let’s make a deal.”

*   *   *

It was three days, not one, before I saw Cal and Niko again. What with being shot, superficially or no, concussed, and having gated too many times on too little epinephrine, Cal hadn’t been in the best of shape. Or as Niko had put it when he’d called me extremely early the next morning after the shooting from some dive motel in Arkansas:

“Be armed when we arrive home. I want to kill you with a clean conscience.”

I didn’t fail to smile fondly whenever Niko threatened me with bodily harm.

He’d seen me fight Auphe, the last troll, revenants, boggles, goddesses, zombies of two different types, and much more. I’d convinced him on occasion to spar with me as well and he generally agreed if I swore a solemn oath to keep at least my pants on. He’d given up on the shirt and refused to listen to my lecture on the history of naked Greco-Roman wrestling.

Clothed or unclothed, he knew who the better fighter was. Niko was one of the best, if not the best, human fighters alive today, but I was me. In my first fight I’d been armed with a rock. Yes, the rock was the first weapon. When the spear was first invented, I was ecstatic. I was vastly tired of wielding granite and getting blood and brain tissue splashing back on me during battles. Say what you want about preverbal man, he loved to fight. The
paien
around at the time weren’t any different.

Niko knew what I could do. That didn’t mean he would back down. That had been true before he was a nearly undefeatable warrior. Stubborn
nothos.

He hadn’t always been the best among humans, and wouldn’t that make him, highly offended, choke on his protein drink? It was true, as thoroughly he would deny it. Niko, a grim child with little in the way of choice, had learned and relearned to fight in this life for Cal. As he grew, he also worked to be the honorable man. Every day he embraced it. Honor and conceit, he would say, do not go together.

Yet, know it or not, he was so very conceited regarding his fighting skills that when I defeated him sparring, his face would go blank, his lips pressed tight against each other, all holding back his enormous annoyance. He’d glare at his sword as if it were the one at fault then take it to the rack of twenty-four swords mounted on the sparring area wall and place it at the bottom in a sheath with a deliberate misquote of Sun Tzu painted upon it: Even the finest sword will fail you.

The first time it happened I’d turned to Cal who, as usual, was slouched on the sofa. “The sheath of shame,” he drawled. “It’ll be punished until it rotates back to the top before it’s forgiven.” He’d flipped a page in a comic book . . . pardon, graphic novel. “Niko’s kind of nuts about his weapons”—he gave me a quick smirk as Niko’s back was to us—“and batshit about losing.”