Part 15 (1/2)

Walking toward us, the cop was freshly stamped from the hero cookie cutter. Square jaw, wide shoulders, impenetrable sungla.s.ses paired with an impenetrable expression. Disciplined, stalwart, a n.o.ble defender of order-it took less than five seconds for him to die. The Auphe landed on top of him, knocking him to his hands and knees. An infinity of teeth found the bare strip of skin over the starched collar and pa.s.sed through it as if it were no more substantial than a flesh-colored mist. Then there was another mist, this one red and viscous. I didn't remember moving, yet somehow I'd traveled from my seat to the back of the RV. Hands pressed against the gla.s.s, I saw the cop try to struggle upward. With one hand supporting his weight, he used the other to claw at the nightmare on his back. It was futile. His strength had disappeared with the blood pouring from his mutilated throat.

I wouldn't have recognized the growl that filled the air as my own if it hadn't been for the searing sensation of barbwire in my throat. I did recognize the gun in my hand, and better than that, I recognized that I could shoot through the window gla.s.s as if it were air. But as my finger tightened on the trigger, someone beat me to the punch.

Niko was a dark shadow in the sun's morning glow.

He was on the Auphe as quickly as the Auphe had been on the cop. Unfortunately, the Auphe had preternaturally fast reflexes, something his victim lacked. Or rather, had lacked. The dark gla.s.ses had fallen from the cop's face to reveal eyes that pa.s.sed from stunned to empty. Arms and legs spasmed, then gave way and the cookie-cutter hero fell. He didn't get up again. He never would.

The Auphe rode him all the way down. Lean and sleek, the bundle of sinew and claws showed the new day a dripping crimson smile. It was the same grin he turned on my brother as Niko's sword swung to separate head from body. Overconfidence-it wasn't a failing exclusive to humans. The Auphe knew how fast he was-what he didn't know was how fast Niko was. It was a mistake, a big one, and it lost him the bottom half of that charming smile. The narrow mandible disappeared in an explosion of black blood and bone as the Auphe flipped backward, saving the rest of his head. Niko followed so closely that it was impossible the Auphe could escape. Unless...

s.h.i.+t. s.h.i.+t.

I tore through the RV, tumbled through the door, and ran. A car, the first to pa.s.s since our stop, nearly hit me. It had slowed to gawk at the fallen cop. When I rocketed into its path with a gun and a matching metallic snarl, the driver swerved, gave up on the looky-lou, and sped off with squealing tires. I ignored the breeze of a b.u.mper kiss and kept running. I pa.s.sed the dead man lying in the emergency lane, vaulted the dry ditch, hit sand and scrubby gra.s.s, and kept moving. I was still fifty feet away when I felt it. It was only a shadow of the eviscerating sensation I'd felt when I'd unwittingly opened my own, but it was still a first. I'd never been able to sense an Auphe doorway before it opened-not until now. A ghostly hand pulled my intestines into a knot just before the air began to bleed gray.

The Auphe couldn't speak, not without a jaw, but he made sounds nonetheless. They were horribly triumphant gobbles that sprayed blood in an arc as he threw himself on Niko's sword with enough force to impale himself right up to the hilt. Arms wound with ropy muscle wrapped around Niko's shoulders and with what was either a laugh or a death rattle, the Auphe fell backward with him toward the gate. I hit them both in an impossibly long tackle, taking us away from that hungry silver light. As we hit the ground, I screwed the Glock into one pointed ear and pulled the trigger. Repeatedly. The pointed skull deflated into a misshapen ma.s.s and turned the surrounding soil into a rancid blot. Repugnant, but not as much as the door that hung before us-still open, still ravenous.

”You don't want to go there.”

Niko's hand was on my arm gripping hard. ”Where does it go? Cal, where does it go?”

”You don't want to go there,” I said again dully, my eyes locked on the doorway. It was bad, what lay behind it. There wasn't a word for the bad of it.

Then it closed, like the popping of a soap bubble. And with it, the awful blackness in my head receded. Blinking, I levered myself up off Niko and the dead Auphe. ”Cops.” I cleared the hoa.r.s.eness from my throat and tried again as I swiftly patched over the cracks in my artificial calm. ”The cops will be coming. We need to get out of here.”

”d.a.m.n it, would you change your antifreeze and have an emotion already?” came an irritated snipe from behind. A rumpled, snarling Goodfellow stood there. One hand held a sword and one had a death grip on his aching head. ”It was Tumulus, wasn't it, Caliban? He tried to take Niko to Tumulus.”

Tumulus, we'd learned, was Auphe h.e.l.l, a dimension of bare rock and endless desolation. Their home away from home. I'd spent two years there when the Auphe had taken me at the age of fourteen. I didn't remember any of it, at least not consciously, but it was clear that some part of me was aware enough to recognize a gate to the Abyss when I saw it. I'd survived that place, but only because the Auphe had wanted me to. I didn't think they'd be so inclined with Niko.

It was a conversation for another time; I was nowhere near ready for it now. Looking away from Goodfellow, I focused in on the body of the Auphe. Colorless hair mixed with coa.r.s.e soil and dark blood. The pale skin was now tinged with a creeping gray that spread like fungus. ”I wonder what CSI will think about him,” I muttered and closed my eyes tightly.

Not a whole lot, as it turned out. We stuffed him in the trunk of the police car and then we blew it up. Auphe and car... sky-high. Robin had suggested we put him in the RV with us and dispose of him later. Niko flatly refused, and he did it so that I didn't have to. Be in close proximity to an Auphe, even a dead one, for more than a few minutes? I couldn't have done it. I would've either thrown him out onto the road or jumped out myself.

Luckily, Flay had casually tossed off the inferno suggestion. Working for the Kin had provided him with the flexibility of mind and soul to a.s.sess a problem and immediately decide to blow it to kingdom come. Despite myself, I was beginning to have a reluctant-very reluctant-appreciation for the wolf. And when he jury-rigged a fuse for the gas tank out of one of the RV's ugly plaid curtains and detonated the car, all in the s.p.a.ce of two minutes, I had to give credit where credit was due.

After that, we hauled a.s.s. The poor d.a.m.n dead cop was beyond help and we left him where he'd fallen. Flay had suggested we put his body in the car, but the rest of us couldn't go along with that. Bad enough he was dead; we could at least leave his family something to grieve over. He would've called in our license plate number, but there was nothing we could do about that. The first rest stop we came to we would swap our plates out with another vehicle. Goodfellow said that the Auphe would burn almost entirely. Their bones were softer and more flexible than a human's; there wouldn't be much left for the crime lab to work with. And what was found would be considered a hopelessly contaminated sample. A hoax, a fluke... a mirage. It would be explained away. It'd been done before, and it would be done again. As long as humans didn't want to see, they wouldn't. h.e.l.l, I envied them. I wished I were that blind.

”Is it as Robin said? Did it try to take Niko to that place?” a voice asked softly.

I was curled up in the back with my head against the curtain-shrouded window and my knees pulled up against my chest. I had flexible bones too. Was it youth or something else? Didn't know, didn't care. As Promise sat down in the seat opposite mine, voices floated back from the front. There were soft, undecipherable murmurs that made the s.p.a.ce seem much larger. Niko, Goodfellow, Flay... they could've been miles away. If I concentrated, I could've brought them closer, but I was content enough in my self-imposed exile. Rather-I gave Promise a stony glance through strands of unbrushed hair-I had been.

”I don't want to talk about it.”

”Caliban.” My name was said with patience and empathy, but also with determination. She was worried about me, but she was also worried about Niko, and if she had to push me, then she would.

”I said, I don't want to talk about it!” This time I snapped and bit.

When it came to pus.h.i.+ng, Promise was among the very best. From gentle persuasion to an icy will, she had her ways of bringing you around. But her ways didn't compare to the ways of what was burning on the road far behind us. She could push all she wanted, but I'd been pushed all my life. I'd been watched from my first breath, and hounded to what should have been my last.

In other words, if I didn't want to talk, no one on this side of that gray doorway could make me. Recapturing a balance that was getting more precarious by the hour, I leaned my head back against the wall. ”Go away, Promise.”

Now I was the one pus.h.i.+ng, and with a lot less finesse than Promise would have used. I didn't have to see the flash of temper that initiated; I could feel it on my skin, as intense as that noontime Florida sun. ”I know you're afraid, perhaps even terrified.” The typical Promise serenity was sounding taxed to the limit, and I had a feeling that if I bothered to look at her, I would see teeth revealed with those words, the kind of teeth you didn't want to see from a vampire. ”But closing your eyes to the situation like a child isn't going to change things.”

She was half-right. Behaving like a scared kid wasn't going to make this s.h.i.+t go away. The only problem was, nothing was going to do that. Not a G.o.dd.a.m.n thing. The sole reason we'd been able to defeat the Auphe previously was that they'd all been gathered in one location. I sincerely doubted that was going to happen again. We were screwed. Front, back, and all ways in between. We could talk until we were blue in the face, but that fun fact wasn't going to change. So why talk at all?

Instead, I did what she told me not to do. I closed my eyes. Literally, metaphorically, figuratively... choose your poison because I meant them all. Velvet darkness loomed behind my eyelids, but it didn't stop me from feeling the very quality of the air itself change as Promise decided I didn't deserve her patience anymore. ”Not even for your brother would you try to face what is before you?” Cool and merciless. ”Not even for the one who has thrown his life away for you?”

Strong words... I'd thought them to myself long before Promise had ever entered the picture. They didn't sound any different aloud than they had the thousands of times I'd heard them in my head.

”Promise, don't.”

Different words, but in a way they were the same. Exactly the G.o.dd.a.m.n same. I opened my eyes to see Niko's forbiddingly impa.s.sive face tilted down toward the only person in his life he had loved aside from me. There he was, my big brother, doing what he invariably did... throwing his life away. Same as always.

Thanks to me.

”No,” I said quickly, straightening. ”No, she's right. I should tell you what I can, even if it's only guesses... impressions.” And with that admission they came, whether I was ready for them or not. Triggered by the doorway to Tumulus, they'd been waiting in the wings poised for the faintest hint of an invitation. Stupid me, I gave it to them.

I swallowed convulsively as I tasted air not of this world. It was cold and acidic, and it tasted of slow, lingering suffering. Not death. Death was easy. What I tasted made you long for the pillow over the face, the cleansing shot of pota.s.sium chloride to stop your heart. My fingers dug into the cus.h.i.+on beneath me, but I felt the grit of an alien soil that was more cutting than ground gla.s.s. I heard hundreds of voices whispering words I couldn't understand. Consonants that cut the throat, vowels that made your ears want to bleed. It was when I began to repeat the words over and over, strangling on their unnatural shape, that the hard slap rocked my head back.

The world came back. The good world-bright and warm. Plaid curtains, the hum of an engine, the smell of musky wolf. Good. Even the blood on my lip was welcome. In comparison with what I had tasted, it was wine... chocolate. Wholesome and so normal, salty but clean. I touched a tongue to it and reveled in the tang of it.

”Cal, can you hear me? Stay with me, all right? Stay with me.” Niko didn't look too happy as his hand gripped my shoulder, and as I saw the tiny wisp of winter fog roiling in the air before me, I could see why. It was small, the size of an orange. It wasn't a door, not yet... a keyhole at best, but it was the last one you wanted to peer through.

”You don't want to go there,” I said in a low and shaky echo, my eyes locked on the eddy and swirl of it. ”But I guess maybe it wants to come here.”

”Can you close it?”

I felt it inside of me, the way it turned... how it fed off of my energy, how it grew strength from my concentration and focus. It was in control, not me. ”Knock me out,” I said sharply as it doubled in size, gobbling up air and s.p.a.ce. ”Now.”

Niko didn't hesitate. He knew a little temporary pain was nothing compared with what would come crawling out of that rip once it grew large enough. It didn't hurt much. He didn't have the time to painlessly choke me out, but I barely saw the fist that flashed at my jaw with surgical precision, and I scarcely had time to register the crunch of knuckle against bone before I was gone where pain couldn't follow. I could only hope I took the door to h.e.l.l with me.

Chapter 18.

The pain hadn't followed me into unconsciousness, but it was waiting for me when I woke up. My jaw ached, but less than I would've imagined. It was no worse than the throbbing of a sore tooth, and the stillness within me was more than worth it. The doorway was gone. The pa.s.sageway to Tumulus was shut. We were safe. Of course, it took a few minutes to corral a confused brain into making that conclusion, but I got there.

Just as I did, there was a freezing touch on my jaw. ”Hey,” I mumbled, and slitted eyes in annoyance. ”Cold.”

”Ice packs most often are,” Niko said levelly. He tapped a finger on the back of my hand. ”Take it.”

I obeyed, holding it in place as I slowly sat up. The inside of the RV spun once, then settled into place. We were alone-as alone as you could be in a hotel room on wheels. I could see the chiaroscuro of Promise's hair up front, and I had a feeling she hadn't moved of her own accord. d.a.m.n. Cautiously, I worked my jaw back and forth, then moved the ice pack a little higher. ”You did a good job, Cyrano. Everything's where it should be.”

”Considerably different from the last time, then.”

He pinched the bridge of his long nose as the briefest of grimaces crossed his face.

You could say that. The closing of that particular doorway hadn't been brought about by a simple punch. Instead, it had involved Niko's sword burying itself in my abdomen. As Niko had saved the world with that move, I didn't hold any grudges. It had been the right thing to do. Even if it hadn't spared the world, with the shape I'd been in, it still would've been the right thing. I wished, not for the first time, that he could see that as clearly as I did.

”Sorry about the door,” I said, kicking his ankle with a foot covered by a dirty sock. I hadn't been too concerned about putting on shoes when I'd made my mad dash out into the clear Florida morning.