Downfall (30 page)

“He would hate me, if he knew what I’d done, though I did it to save him. He’d hate me and repudiate me.” Guilt, anger, fear, loss; Ishiah knew all the emotions now, didn’t he?

“Repudiate? That’s a fancy word to say he might fucking
kill
you,” I growled, then cocked my head, hair falling loose that I’d not bothered to pull back up. “After all, he’s known us a lot longer than he’s known you. Thousands of years more. He’s known us before
you
were even created. We’re his family. And family trumps sex and fuck buddies every time.”

He had nothing to say to that.

I thought about it before saying in casual dismissal, “Yeah, you were a coward and worse. Hell, maybe you still are.” But this was the time—the Grimm time—for second chances. If not for Ishiah, then for Robin, who could need someone very soon, someone like Ishiah, to be at his side as the future of Niko and I was nothing but a bleak and rapidly approaching ending. Absently I noticed the taste of blood-tainted copper pennies in my mouth.

The taste of blood, the taste of tomorrow.

“But I’m going to give you a break,” I said flatly to the ex-angel. “You helped us with that serial-killing bastard Jack. You helped save Nik’s life, but that’s not why I’m letting this go, because now I don’t know if you risked anything on that at all anymore. Ex-angels and compromised angels . . . you could be the same. Here’s your break: I’m not going to mention this to Robin, any of it—how you knew the Auphe were after us when he didn’t, how you were a craven chicken-shit with wings.
And how you fucking left us to die or worse . . . and it was
much
fucking worse than dying . . . but I’m not telling that to him. Not for your sake; don’t think that for a goddamn second. It’s for him. It would hurt him, and after what he’s done for us, I won’t do that. I won’t hurt him.”

“I fought Jack. I helped to fight that storm spirit
paien
and then thought I’d be banished from New York by all
paien
for doing the forbidden, of killing it. I did that because Robin, Niko, and you had taught me what true courage was. In the past five years I’ve learned more from all of you about bravery and honor than I ever learned in my four thousand years.” He raised his eyes, closed them, and his fist twitched as if he wanted to punch the wall again. I was thinking Heaven had disappointed him. But that was his problem, not mine. “I wish I’d known those qualities earlier, at the carnival, but I didn’t. Or I had them, but not enough of them,” he admitted gravely, opening his eyes. “I can’t change what I did then, but I will not let you down now, Caliban. Yours and Niko’s and Robin’s. I won’t betray you again.”

Blah, blah, blah.

He could be telling the truth; he probably was. Did I care? Not so much. Redemption didn’t come as easy as he thought it did. For what he’d done, for my two years in Auphe Hell, redemption might not come at all.

I lifted my ass off the bed to reach my wallet and pulled out two twenties and a ten to wad up into a ball and toss at his chest. “There’s your fifty bucks you gave me then. Thanks for the loan. And, no joke, my mom really would’ve sucked your dick for twenty-five.” I gave him a grin, because my gift of silence to Robin or not, forgiveness wasn’t in my nature. The grin, ferocious and warped, was less lethal than ripping out his throat, which I did consider. That’s when I felt the metal teeth, all one thousand of them, drop over my human ones.

Like Grimm’s.

There were triggers and then there were triggers. Leaving a thirteen-year-old me at the not so tender mercies of the Auphe was one damn big trigger.

I tasted the metal and blood of my smile and I didn’t care. I kept going. “I hope you kept the bear I gave you at the carnival.” My voice was the Auphe guttural rock slide of the shattered glass when they deigned to speak human. “After all, you and your fifty bucks
earned
it.”

He gave up, bright guy that he was, and disappeared nearly as quickly as Grimm—although Ishiah used the door. I felt the teeth slide back up and I licked the blood from my human ones where my gums had been punctured. Ishiah could be a better person now.

He hadn’t been with Robin then, over a decade ago. He’d been an admirer at best, not that he would admit that to Goodfellow’s face. Then again, maybe he would. And Robin would make you a better person if you ignored the stealing, lying, conning, whoring, and tricking and concentrated on the loyalty, bravery—suicidal bravery, especially as he wouldn’t be reincarnated—generosity, and willingness to do anything for his friends.

Not that I minded the stealing, lying, conning, whoring, and tricking, as that’s who my friend was: Robin Goodfellow, once the Great God Pan, and once Hob the first and worst. He was a puck and I liked him for all the parts of him. Ishiah was an ex-angel, though, and maybe Goodfellow had improved on Ishiah’s past rampant self-preservation skills and willingness to let children be eaten by Auphe, changed him with what the nonjudgmental would consider the puck’s finer qualities. Anything was possible. And as I’d told Ishiah, I wouldn’t hurt Robin that way, hell, in any way, not after all he’d done for me.

I would hold a grudge, though. I might lose my mind, my soul, but never my grudges. They were something I’d
forget. If one day Robin tired of Ishiah on his own with no influence from me, huh . . . we’d see.

Hopefully the peri was a higher creature than he had been. I didn’t know that I’d be able to see it or recognize it if he were—my conscience had never been completely functional and shiny—and gauging his path was something that I could barely hope for at the most, right?

You could hope.

Niko and Robin, both had taught me that. I did genuinely hope he was, Ishiah, what I wished for because Goodfellow deserved that. I wished the universe would get off its ass for once and make sure that he got it.

“Time to go?”

I grinned at Niko in the doorway, a proper grin . . . human teeth, no blood. A good grin. Slipping on the glove, I stood. “Grimm agreed to the time and place. What am I saying? Robin got through to him on the phone. Talked to the potential conqueror of the world on the phone? That’s . . . freaky. Yeah, pretty fucking freaky.” I decided not to think about it. Better for my sanity. “Then off to see the Bae kiddies? Should we get some balloons?”

“Only if they’re filled with acid,” he said, face grim and eyes dark.

For the grin I bestowed on him this time, I had to make a conscious effort to keep the second layer of hypodermic needle teeth up and out of sight, but I managed. He had to see the hair and my eyes. The teeth too, no. Other than skin color, there would be no difference between me and Grimm . . . physically. I’d hold back on that sight as long as I could. “Acid and baby Bae. You made my day. Think we can get some before we go?”

He snorted. “Just be ready to fight, little brother. I have your favorite weapon ready to go with us. Let’s not get cocky.”

“You had to say it, didn’t you?” I drawled seconds
before Goodfellow popped his head in and said, “Cocky? Cock-meister? Did someone call me by name? Want a demonstration? I have a pair of Velcro pants somewhere that come off with one yank. Ah, let us talk about the word ‘yank’ for a moment. . . .”

Going to see Grimm in the far-off desert wasn’t that bad, if one thought about it, not in comparison.

Was it?

Hell, no.

Goodfellow

I’d called some friends in Canada, thanks to Georgina’s tip, to track down some other friends. I’d called an RV full of fur and dander and sent them in that direction, although they were close already. I knew Canada and I’d made a few educated guesses. The fact that I’d had to talk to Canadians . . . unholy. Human or
paien
, they were good-hearted and good-natured and everything good. Hearing a wendigo say “aboot” was horrifying all on its own.

There had also been a call made to the Lupa that for three million more, I would pay them to take down every member of the Vigil in NYC. That was for Cal, yes, because they wouldn’t stop coming after him, not as long as he lived. Every member of the Vigil agreed his control was gone and he had to die. I’d been told that by an informant, gone by now from the city. My mole in the Vigil,
Samuel, was a man who took no money for what he told me. He owed a debt to Cal but especially to Niko, who had made clear that debt would never be paid, but Samuel had best keep trying.

For Cal and for Niko, I’d paid the money, but it was for the
paien
as well. We could police ourselves on whether humans knew about us or not. If one of us ran amuck among the humans under the bright sun to be seen by all, we would make the decision of who could be saved and who could not. That was not for a human organization to do. I’d had enough of it, and helpful as they’d been in the past, they’d been so for their convenience . . . not ours.

The Vigil could play their games in all the other cities, but we had made New York an angel-free, demon-free zone, and we would make it a Vigil-free zone as well. This could be
Paien
City in time and if I had a legacy, if I died during all this, that would be it. I couldn’t save Rome from falling, but I could raise up New York to a place for our kind to be more free than anywhere else on this world.

“You seem pretty damn happy,” Cal said suspiciously, as of course Cal in the here and now was always wary of happiness . . . or drugs, sex, and rock and roll.

I bounced on my heels. “I wish I could’ve seen you at Woodstock. That would’ve been memorable.” I searched for the word. “
Epic
. Jimi Hendrix was a fan of fire too, as you probably do not know, as you are an ignorant fetus.”

“All right. Pizza makes Goodfellow high. Keep that in mind. Niko, you have the baby ready?” Cal asked. “She’s temperamental. Treat her right.”

“‘She’ is a flamethrower. They are sturdy, I promise you,” came his brother’s exasperated reply as he hefted the tanks on his back. He could only carry one katana now, and I did not imagine he was content with that.

“Be grateful I didn’t name her. Sylvia. That’s what I didn’t name her. Sylvia, and if she has problems with fuel injection, whisper that non-name to her and she’ll come around.”

*   *   *

Grimm’s location was in Arizona. Cal had been confident about finding it and had gone off to the bathroom to give himself an added boost of epinephrine and I saw him put several more syringes in his jacket pocket. I hoped the combination of the extralarge box—the way I like my condoms—I’d obtained for him and my not so subtle hint early of a poorly told legend would do the trick.

When he came back out, he already had Grimm’s phone in his hand and was halfway through punching in his number. When it connected, he said immediately, “I’m on my way.”

He’d told us that he wasn’t about to let Grimm open a gate for him and let us walk through, but there were a few desert locations he’d been to as a kid and a few he remembered well enough to get to combined with the Google Map Nik had printed for him.

That and the call I’d make to Grimm later should we survive this.

Flipping the phone shut without waiting for a comment from Grimm, he said, “Let’s go jack this motherfucker up. I’m opening the gate about six feet up in the air. Figure it wouldn’t hurt to drop on them like the Wrath of God—if they’re aboveground first.”

Frowning at the phrase, Ishiah had his sword out and seemed ready. I’d given consideration to telling him not to come, as, if Cal did lose his grip, I wasn’t at all positive he wouldn’t consider Ishiah simply another Bae. But Ishiah had been determined and Cal had absolutely no comment one way or the other than to say with a
peculiar curve of his lips, “If he wants to roll the dice, his choice.”

That? That in no way was reassuring. “Can you be at all sure that you won’t get . . . uh . . . excited, think of him as a Bae with wings and kill him?” I asked.

“Nope, I can’t guarantee that at all.” The peculiar stretch of Cal’s lips widened and I thought I saw a glimpse of silver.

Wonderful. He was already excited and not in the manner that I favored best.

Before Ishiah could argue, I ordered, “Close it behind me, Cal. Don’t let him through.”

“Robin, no,” Ishiah refuted fiercely. “You need me and you need me fighting with all of you. You can’t—”

Cal meanwhile was shrugging over Ishiah’s outburst. “Gotcha. No God in the Wrath of. Here we go, boys and girls.” He went on to open the gate in my living room, saying, “See you on the other side.” He walked through the tangle of colors I didn’t know he could see. Mixed in with the purple, gray, and black was the indescribable color of the world bleeding with every gate he opened. With everyone he or an Auphe had opened, it was as if you saw a little slice of the world wither and die.

Looking back at Ishiah, I exhaled, “His control isn’t ideal. He could kill you, Ishiah, with a single thought. I’ll be back. I promise.” I had learned long ago and particularly at the gates of Troy not to make promises in war. “My tongue betrays me,” I said ruefully.

“It most often does.” Ishiah watched me go, but there was hope in his eyes, a clear light of faith. Both were what angels did best, but this hope and faith wasn’t for Heaven. It was for me. I took a handful of his shirt and pulled him in for a quick kiss. Faith and hope. I was a trickster. I had faith in myself and hope was for the unprepared.

“And don’t listen to Cal. It’s this side I’ll see you on again.” I turned and, carrying my own sword, was on Nik’s heels as he went next.

I’d rather stab myself in the stomach than pass through a gate, but I was doing it more and more often. At least I no longer vomited. One took one’s blessings where one could.

They had shown up on time. That did surprise me. Grimm and forty Bae. That was less of a surprise. I landed hard on top of the back of one Bae and reached around to slice through his throat with the dagger in my other hand. Not far from me Cal had done the same, except with the use of his man-made claws. Grimm stood off to one side on a small swell of sand, wearing his own claws and carrying a gun in his other hand. Letting the muzzle dangle toward the sand-colored twilight as the sun dropped beneath the horizon, he said to Cal with approval, “You said you’d come alone. You lied.”

“I’m a killer. Did you think I’m not a liar too?” Now Cal was grinning and I could see why his smile had been so peculiar earlier. He had his teeth now, a legion of needle-fine metal teeth covering his human ones. He had not a single strand of dark hair left and his eyes were the same red as Grimm’s were. This gate had taken the last slivers of his physical humanity. The single difference between Grimm and him was their features, perhaps an inch in height, and Grimm’s darker, human-toned skin.

“What are you?” Cal questioned with a scorn that couldn’t erase that hideous grin. “The audience? Aren’t you going to play?”

Grimm’s grin was a twin to that of Cal. “You have to earn my participation. Let’s see if you can.”

Between the two of them, myself, the Bae, Niko was the only human. I didn’t know how that felt to him, as I was used to being the single puck wherever I went, but I
saw how his gaze fastened on Cal as he hit the sandy ground and it wasn’t different from any look he’d ever given his brother—full of confidence. Then Niko, knowing the first rule of combat, struck the first blow. There was no honorably patient waiting for the Bae to attack as he swiveled, triggered, and sprayed the flamethrower back and forth, setting several Bae on fire. It was the closest batch of crouching Bae, who’d had the sense or the Grimm-ordered sense, to spread out for more difficult targets, but when it came to what Niko was armed with, the gift of Prometheus, their precautions made no difference.

Cal had always loved that flamethrower and it was useful, but Cal was loving something much more now. He was in the midst of the Bae. He’d put his gun away and beneath his claws their black blood fell like an unhallowed rain. Three leaped and took him to the ground. In less than a second he was back up, tossing the head of the first with a cleanly sliced stump of neck down at the second one, who was still on the ground, its arms amputated to soak the sand around it. He then wrapped an arm around the neck of the third, which had been on its way back up, and tore through the scaled white flesh down its back to reveal the gleaming bone of its spine. It was instantly cut in half with titanium talons. The Bae collasped, the upper part of it twitching and the bottom dead as a graveyard.

I’d been the one to give Cal back his clawed glove, but I wished now I’d hidden it and let him use his guns. He enjoyed his guns, and savage grins showed occasionally when he used them. His grin now with black gore dripping from his leather-and-metal-covered hand wasn’t savage. It was feral, wild, and the color of the silver cupped in the hand of Judas.

Niko had said Cal had mentioned how they hunted in
Tumulus. Packs of Auphe like packs of wolves . . . and Cal with them racing across the ground and killing anything they came across. Whether he was remembering or not, I thought Cal considered this a hunt.

Fire, blood, bone—less than a minute and it was already heading toward a massacre.

I thought the Bae would start gating away, out of range, then gate back to take you from behind. That’s how they’d fought before, but not this time. It hit me abruptly why that was so.

Once Cal had said that if you could gate, then you could stop others from gating. It wasn’t a matter of who was stronger than who to do it. All Auphe could, although when it came down to stopping more than the one to equal you, strength and will, especially will, did enter into it. Cal had done it before, even stopped other Auphe, although not as many as forty, the number of the Bae here, and it had nearly killed him. But Bae were not Auphe, not in their ability to murder, and not in their ability to gate. They weren’t Auphe, only pale shadows of them, and Cal could hold them much more easily.
Was
holding them.

The Bae—lesser in all ways than the Auphe—and his belief in them, was Grimm’s first true mistake.

Cal and Grimm were different. They were an improvement on the Auphe—astonishingly enough, they could do things the Auphe hadn’t been able to do. Cal could open a gate inside someone and turn them into a geyser of flesh and bone. No one else could do that. The Auphe, definitely not the Bae, and if Grimm could, I had yet to see it. It was a new skill that had come with the mixed human/Auphe genes in him.

Grimm was a different story. I knew Cal couldn’t do that with him. He’d tried before and failed. Grimm had stopped his gate easily. When Cal had then tried to keep
Grimm from gating and failed, it was then a fact. Cal had been able to stop Auphe from gating, but he couldn’t do the same to Grimm. Grimm’s ability to build gates was inconceivable, unstoppable, and better than that of Cal and the long-dead Auphe. Perhaps that was
his
newly bred skill.

Interesting.

The Auphe had created more than they had ever known.

The Bae, confused, were growing more murderous at what Cal had done to them. Enraged at the loss of half of what they were, that their fighting was limited in a manner that was close to neutering them, they grew more vicious or more desperate—sometimes the two are the same. No vanishing and returning to snap your neck from behind. And wasn’t that terrible they were held to the same rules as Niko and me? While my sympathy for them did not overflow in the slightest, Niko continued to burn them alive, and I fought as I’d fought on so many battlefields. The sand beneath my feet was the same as the sand I’d stood on for too many wars to count: It soaked up blood with the same efficiency.

I took one Bae’s head, to whirl and slice the one leaping from behind me from sternum to pubis, and stepped over the guts that spilled free. I skewered one with a dagger through the eye and sliced through the throats of two more who’d crouched a little too close to each other. I felt claws rake across my back and twisted to the side and buried the dagger in one pointed ear to scramble what little brains it had.

In the next second I had one of them on the ground . . . the trees here were horrid, twisted things, vegetation scarce—I didn’t see a vacation here in my future . . . as I rammed my sword through its stomach. “You are . . . not human. Not . . . sheep.” It drooled black froth with its last
gasping breaths. I tapped my dagger on the tapered snout on his spade-shaped snake head. “No, child. I am not. And you are not an Auphe or anything close to one.”

Poor snake. If there weren’t a thousand of them, moving as one beneath Grimm’s command, they would be little in the way of a threat at all. Yet there were a thousand, and as magnificent fighters as we were, or at least I was, talent and ability didn’t matter when the three of you were smothered under the weight, teeth, and talons of a thousand.

Rolling to one side and leaping to my feet, I avoided the hissing, slithering charge of three more, taking two heads and then the third with a sweep of silver. Four more came and I started to lose track. White scales, the shine and curve of long metal succubae/incubi fangs, the sheets of night-shaded blood, the screams, and thuds of falling bodies.

Work, work, work.

A fight, yes. It could be considered a small battle. They weren’t Auphe, but they were incredibly more adept, dangerous, and deadly than human warriors.

It certainly was not a war, though.

Rather dull, considering that I’d once kept company with Ares, God of War.

I heard the barest shift of sand behind me and had my sword at a throat before they could move—standing thirty feet away was hardly good enough to evade me in the midst of a killing dervish.