Nevermore: A Cal Leandros Novel (26 page)

They didn’t seem to like the light. They’d hump and slither away from a direct, head-on beam, but they’d keep to the dying glow where it dimmed to one side or the other. Apart, I could guess each would weigh about eighty or ninety pounds, but as their movement said every pound was pure, agile, and, knowing my luck, fucking gymnastic muscle. But with the no fur, no eyes, no mouth or teeth that I could see although I definitely heard that much, they were bizarre shadows except shadows aren’t that dense or solid that you could hear their teeth clashing and the scrape of nails against the cracked and crumbling floor.

“No idea what they are,” I said grimly as I shot the one in the lead to see the bullet swallowed and hear the impact of it on a wall or pillar behind it. It’d passed through it as if nothing was there, but knew that wasn’t true. “No idea and don’t like them,” I corrected.

I fanned the light back and forth to have them peeling off. It didn’t stop them, but it slowed them some. Goodfellow had stepped away from me to get space to swing his sword. It was a lighter version of a broadsword,
heavier despite that but with more reach than the Roman short sword and more weight and force than his rapier. While I wished I hadn’t run that description through my head for a mental weapons checklist that was now labeled Goodfellow’s cock checklist, it’d been a good choice of weapon. It was too bad that it did nothing at all for the puck as the blade passed completely through the shadow and the shadow laughed. It was similar in no fucking way to the sound of a real weasel, but it was goddamn creepy as hell, no doubt.

Robin swore and aimed his own light at it, shoving it right into its face. And I do mean “into.” His hand vanished in the shadow that made up the creature. It squealed and backed away swiftly as ribbons of black began to pour from where the light had gone in. More swiftly than that, its entire narrow head fell apart. Turning into a rain of ebon, it fell to the floor, bubbled, and dissipated with the same consistency of mist. Its body began stretching and thinning as it began to grow a new head to replace the lost one.

I’d been counting and there were at least ten to fifteen of them. They were everywhere, then somewhere else. If one leaped into the darkened area our lights didn’t reach to our left, it would slither out from an equally lightless patch to our right. We couldn’t hurt them. Our weapons didn’t work on them. We could injure them with the flashlights, but not in a permanent way if they were growing back their heads. If anything, it irritated them more than anything else from the chorus of high-pitched squeals that had risen from the others in sympathy for the one who’d lost, and, goddamn it, seconds later grown its entire head back.

“We should meander, I think,” Robin suggested, holding up the hand that was gripping the flashlight he’d used to attempt brain surgery on our new friend. It was covered with blood. The skin of the back of it had been practically
flayed
. Long slices that had torn through every piece of skin that was available without completely skinning it altogether.

We couldn’t hurt them, but they had no difficulty hurting us.

“Yeah, we should go.” Regroup. Get out of this damn dark tunnel up into the daylight and, if pushed, shoot anyone whose shadow seemed too big for them. “Go and drink more. I don’t think we really tried hard enough with the drinking.”

They were coming for us, joining again into one mass undulation. They were between us and the direction we’d exited the tunnel onto the platform, but I’d been down here a few times before. I knew there was another way out. Stairs to a boarded-up door behind a fake facade of a small brick shop from WWII. Or, quicker and safer with instant gratification, there was another option. “I can gate us out of here,” I said as we backed away, pinning some in place and slowing other ones down. It kept them from leaping on us as a pack for as long as we could.

Goodfellow shook his head with enough force I wouldn’t have been that surprised if it had snapped. “No. I’d rather be eaten. What I said before, about doubting there were things worse than death, I’d forgotten the exception. I would truly rather be dead. I mean that and as you pointed out, technically, I already am dead. I’m already lost. So respect my wishes. Do not do—that thing. Just don’t.”

“Why?” I frowned, puzzled. I did get that the vomiting wasn’t much of a recommendation for gating, but it was less of a pain in the ass that certain agonizing death. And after a few trips, he’d gotten used to it and made it past the puking. He didn’t stop turning green, but he had toughed it out. “I’ve gated you before around twenty times at least, and you didn’t say anything. You didn’t say anything the very first time, which would’ve been the occasion for speak now or forever hold your peace.”

When had that been? If he was saying something about it now, he would’ve said something then. He was not a hold your peace type by any stretch of the imagination. What had . . . Ah. I had it.

“I remember. I didn’t give you any warning as I didn’t
have any warning. A Babylonian sirrush tried to bite you in two, poisoned you, and, as I was dragging you away from it, it jumped us. It was fly or die time. There were no luxuries then, like thinking, when you were three-fourths dead on the floor and there were jaws about to snap around my head. Hey, you’re the information broker of the, hell, world. Here’s an interesting fact I picked up as I was half swallowed. The sirrush not only has tonsils, it has six of them.” I caught an ambitious weasel wriggling behind a mound of rubble close to one wall and used the flashlight beam to slice through its body in front of its back legs and tail. That was a big chunk to regenerate. Hopefully it would take it longer.

Being thrown in the deep end without knowing prior to the push must have gotten him past this death-before-gating philosophy. He’d continued to survive gating if not to like it, but no one liked it—no one but the Auphe. He hadn’t, though, said why or what had happened who knew how long ago to make him like that. He hadn’t hinted that he was or had been like that. Sooner die than gate? That was a double scoop of profound phobia.

“I’m not three-fourths dead now and I am saying no gating. Leave me if you have to, but gate me and one day, years from now when you’ve forgotten this festive discussion, I’ll break into your place and cut off your testicles.” His face was set and unyielding as marble.

“You’re serious? I’ve thought you were a crapshoot of borderline genius and borderline insane, but I didn’t think you were an idiot,” I snapped. “I’m not leaving you to die.”

“I gather then you’re not particularly fond of or attached to your balls. You unquestionably won’t be attached to them if you go against my wishes.” Damn, the weasels were on the move. He gave me a hard push. “Run!” He followed his own advice as we raced through across the platform, then jumped down and back into the tunnel in the opposite direction.

We raced as fast as we could force our legs to pump. Our lights bounced and scattered as we tripped or vaulted over rubble. I couldn’t resist a glance over my
shoulder as the scuttle of claws followed us. I couldn’t tell how far back they were. I didn’t have time to turn the light on them and keep running without falling on my face.

“The Vigil turned Lazarus, normal human asshole, into some sort of unkillable pack of shadow weasels? I get the unkillable part is a benefit, a bonus package for being their guinea pig, but it doesn’t quite equal out to having to live as a pack of supernatural shadow weasels.” I felt teeth bury themselves in the back of the top of my knee and rip all the way down to the bottom of my heel—combat boot and all, a switchblade through butter. Slick as you please. “Son of a bitch.” I swiveled, impaled an inky neck with my flashlight and felt it vanish.

I hadn’t stopped to face it. I’d struck while still turning and let the momentum carry me around back to where I started and worked on running faster. There’s nothing like a little incentive and I had all I needed snapping at my heels.

“No. I saw him for a fraction—less than a fraction of a second actually. A fraction of a fraction. I couldn’t make out any details except that he was human in shape. Perhaps these shadows are pure unadulterated stench brought to unholy life.” Beside me, Goodfellow was keeping up easily. He was in good condition. Too good. He was arrogant as shit about his clothes, face, hair, but particularly his body. Yet I’d never seen him do anything resembling exercise.

He knew
paien
monsters, but he didn’t chase after them. Why would he? He hadn’t had a reason to until Niko and I had made a business out of it. He did the weekly orgy workout. That much sex could equal the ten miles I ran and the hours of sparring I’d both done daily, but I doubted it. If he could run like the Boston marathon was a stroll without regular exercise, what did it matter other than to hoard simmering resentment that he was an undeserving lucky bastard?

“Since we are going to die embarrassing deaths by shadow rodents—”

“Weasels aren’t rodents,” he corrected as
automatically as Niko would have, but he tossed a handful of smug on top of that educational serving.

“Death by weasel isn’t less humiliating than death by rodent. Trust me, the loser quotient is equal.” I tripped on a wide crack hidden in the darkness, bounced off the wall, and kept running. If I’d learned one lesson in life that topped all others, it was if something already plans on eating you and is on your heels with a fork in one paw and a knife in the other—keep running. “I’ll be taking it to my grave anyway. Tell me why this gate phobia? Auphe phobia I get. Everyone gets that. But phobia versus death? Gates separate from the Auphe part”—although they never were—“how’d that happen?

“And it would be my gate,” I added, confident. Why wouldn’t I be? I hadn’t doubted myself in a while now. “Not an Auphe and its gate. You trust me with my own, don’t you?”

There was a telltale silence, airless and still. It would be what you heard when you woke up in a coffin after being buried alive. The uncomfortable sound of a lonely and imminent death by suffocation. Robin’s silence wasn’t as uncomfortable as that, but it stung. He knew me, not yet this time around, but he’d known me a thousand other times, and I’d never turned against him. “You don’t. You don’t trust me. Niko doesn’t trust me and he was my brother. I can’t say ‘is’ my brother. My brother is eight years from now” and likely dead. “Either/or, this Niko
had
been my brother once and he doesn’t trust me. Cal hates me.” That I could live with. I wasn’t too fond of the little shit myself. But this, this I couldn’t deal with. Not on top of this Niko. They were shadows of what I’d lost, but shadows, sometimes, can let you fool yourself into pseudo-sanity long enough to remake your own world. “You think I’m Auphe,” I said neutrally. “You think that because half of my blood is theirs that I’d, what?
Eat
you? Like the weasels?”

I turned and clenched my hands in my hair, banging my forehead on the sewer wall. “I should’ve thrown your letter in the gutter. I should’ve gone through with what I
wanted, shot myself, followed my real brother the same as in every life. But the goddamn letter ruined everything.” I laughed hard enough to taste the salt of a scored throat. “I didn’t know there was anything
left
to ruin; I was as fucking wrong as it gets on that, wasn’t I? I came back because you told me it could be done, and because I trusted you, I believed it. I gave up my ticket out of this nightmare since you own my trust. You and Nik and no one else. I gave it to Niko and you, every scrap I ever had. I should’ve thought. I should’ve
known
that I’d come back and you’d still be dead. You aren’t Goodfellow. You aren’t Robin. Niko isn’t Nik. You’re memories, not people, and memories can’t give a damn about anyone. Can’t trust anyone. Can’t do shit for me.”

“No, that’s not how it is.” He was trying to pull me away from the wall despite the fact that I was simply leaning against it now, forehead to cold concrete. He could talk all he wanted. I wasn’t buying it. There were reasons not to like gates. There weren’t any that included “sooner die” than gate. A gate was a tool, a gun, and a gun was nothing but a paperweight without a hand to aim it and a finger to pull the trigger. He thought I was the hand and I was aiming at him with lethal intent. There was no excuse to prefer dying over letting me get us the hell out of here.

“That’s exactly how it is. You always trusted me before, but now I’m Auphe. Now I’m a monster, and you’d sooner die that trust me, you son of a bitch?” My Goodfellow hadn’t been like that, not once, and that was before I had known shit about the whole thousand lives past. “Hell, are you even real? Is any of this real? Or is it memories and nothing else? You can’t change memories or the future with them.

“If you are real, more than a shadow, then you know that in all those other lives, all through history, I never once betrayed you,” I snapped. “Never. And, believe me, asshole, there were certain centuries when life was brutal as fucking hell, where everyone, including three-year-olds, were ruthlessly amoral enough to slit your throat to
steal everything on you and yank out your teeth to make jewelry for the rich. And there was me in that god-awful life, who wasn’t moral in the best of lives. I would’ve cheerfully beat the shit out of a nun for a slice of moldy cheese. And the price on your head was higher than I could
even
count. If ever there was a fucking occasion to not have faith in me, it would’ve been then, but you knew better.”

I would have kicked the crap out of the nun, too, without thinking twice about it. When you’re straddling the line between hunger and starvation, there’s not much you won’t do. With each life, the world changed, people changed, morals changed. “You do remember that life, right? What I did and didn’t do when it came to you, despite the daily goddamn misery that was survival. But you don’t trust me
now
?

“Half starving in the woods, no shelter, with a sociopathic madman who planned on hanging us all at once—one drop and seven broken necks. He and his men searching the forest every single day and night, knowing if he caught just one of us . . . one of us starving, sleepless luckless bastards who followed
you
, who believed in
you
”—Robin who’d be a better king than the one who deserted us and the one who was stealing and starving the country blind—“well, that one luckless bastard would tell them everything.