Niko’s coat? What . . . ? Oh, hell. The speargun. The Vigil guy with the scar. Samuel had just confirmed they were behind that . . . were watching Seamus. Why? Did they think he was going to be overt? Noticed? Whatever. I only hoped they killed the bastard. It would be one less thing on our plate to worry about. Less worry, I could use more of that. I didn’t need the distraction, not with what I was trying to do.
What I was still trying to do hours later.
You didn’t notice the tinting at night on the windows. Promise’s guest room, one of four, looked over Central Park—it was a blot of darkness surrounded by thousands of lights. Fairy lights, if you lived in some fantasy world. I’d never seen that world, not even in my dreams.
Not that all my dreams were bad; they weren’t. I had nightmares, more now that the Auphe were back, but I had good dreams too. I usually didn’t remember them, but I’d wake up with the sensation of warmth on my face, of floating. No details, but I’d take it. Then there were the XXX-variety dreams. Now, they were all about the details. Testosterone, gotta love it.
But dreams would have to wait. I had things to do. Things to think.
Think like an Auphe.
I told Nik that I would. Told myself that I could. Whether I wanted to or not.
Auphe blood—was that the same as an Auphe brain? An Auphe soul? Stupid question—they didn’t have souls. No damn way. But the blood . . .
Last week to fight a killer, I’d opened a gate and traveled through it. It was one of a handful I’d opened and one of the few times I’d felt it. Slippery, cold, savage. Carnivorous and content with that. Very content. It had only lasted a few seconds, but that was long enough for me to decide traveling wasn’t a good idea. Opening a door in reality could open a door in me. It let the Auphe part of me out. Let it take a peek around. It had disappeared with the gate, and hadn’t shown up again. If I guarded myself, it might never. Yet here I was, inviting it in. Sit down, have a beer. Let’s talk.
How ’bout those Yankees?
I sat on the bed and stared out the window, watching as the lights slowly began to swim. And I thought. Ugly, bile-black, murder-red thoughts. They crept in and I let them. I liked to think they weren’t mine . . . that they were the result of two years of being held by the Auphe. Two years of a prisoner’s intimacy with his captors, knowing what roamed in their twisted brains. I didn’t remember that lost time, but it was there. I wanted to think that’s where the thoughts came from. I wanted to deny they were mine. Deny they were me. Then I said, Fuck it, and just thought them.
For a long, long time.
“Cal, stop it.”
I heard the words, but I didn’t understand them. They were just sounds. They came and went, but they didn’t mean anything.
“Stop it. Now.” A hand fastened tightly on my forearm and gave it a hard shake, bringing me back to myself. Words were words again. “What are you doing?”
My hand, it was haloed in gray light. A gate . . . very small, contained. I blinked and let the light bleed into nothingness. I raised eyes from my now-normal hand to Niko. “Thinking.”
Bad things. Such bad, bad things.
He didn’t let go of my arm. “Don’t. I know you said you would, but we’ll get out of this without that. It’s not worth it.”
To save Nik and my friends? It was worth it. It could eat my soul if I had one, and I thought it just might. It could turn me inside out; I didn’t give a damn. If it saved my brother, it was worth it. “I think they’ll come tomorrow or the next day,” I evaded. “Not all of them. Three or four. Probe our defenses. A suicide run, if they have the chance.” Because vengeance is all. Sacrifices have to be made. “It’s what I would—” My lips twisted and I corrected, “It’s what an Auphe would do.”
Niko hesitated, not like he doubted me, but more as if I didn’t have all the facts. But if there was something I didn’t know, he didn’t fill me in. Instead, he just said, “All right. That’s good intelligence to have.” He moved his hand from my forearm down to my wrist, squeezing tightly. “But don’t do it again. Don’t go to that place. I mean it, Cal. No more.” To that place in my head where things were dark and memories were black holes, sucking up everything around them until you forgot there had ever been anything to remember at all. Or to forget.
“Cyrano, shit,” I dropped my head and rubbed at weary eyes with the heel of my free hand. “It’s all we have. How goddamn selfish would I be if I didn’t use it?” The lights had gone still again outside the window. Fairy land. I pulled loose of Niko’s grip—because he let me—and in turn I yanked at his arm until he sat on the edge of the bed. “You’ve put it on the line for me all your life. It’s my turn to step up. You can’t stop me. You can kick my ass, yeah, on a daily basis if you want. But you can’t stop me. Not until this is over.”
He studied me, frowning. “You are so damn stubborn.”
“Learned from the best,” I said truthfully.
He exhaled. “Be careful, then. Can you at least do that?”
I was saved from answering by the car crash from the living room. For a second I forgot we were several stories up. The sound was exactly the same. A waterfall smash of shattering glass and the scream of twisted metal. Niko lunged into motion and I was on his heels.
In the living room, Promise’s largest window was gone. With curtains billowing, the cold air whipped through to carry with it tiny pieces of glass—a razor-edged wind. On the floor was a thick carpet of the shining stuff. Misshapen pieces of the metal framework were embedded in two walls, the ceiling, and glittered in the light as much as the glass did. Diamonds and silver.
In the middle of it all, she stood.
Not Auphe. I eased my finger fractionally off the trigger of my Glock. Not Auphe. Don’t pull the trigger. Not Auphe.
Straight black hair whipped around her shoulders, blood covered her hands and sword, and her eyes . . . I saw those eyes almost every day. Wildflowers in spring.
“They’re right behind me.”
Although Niko and I had moved into the room, it wasn’t said to us. Violet eyes found violet eyes as Promise appeared in the hall. She had a crossbow in her hand and an expression of wary affection and resignation on her face.
“Cherish, what trouble have you brought now?”
A dimple flashed by a very familiar mouth. “It’s only a little trouble, Madre.”
Robin had been the one to pull the first watch and was in the living room when the window had exploded. He now stood, back pressed to the wall, next to the absent window, with his own sword high. He took off the head of Cherish’s trouble as it flowed over the bottom edge of the window. The first of her troubles, rather. They weren’t as little as she claimed. More and more came, pouring into the apartment in an undulating wave.
That’s when the big picture hit me, jerked from Auphe dread to an almost equally crappy reality. She had crawled . . . no. With that much force, she must have raced up the side of the building to throw herself through Promise’s window. And the trouble she was talking about had come right behind her.
“Black cadejos,” Robin said as he took another head. “Whatever they bite will rot off in a matter of days. Nothing can heal it.” He swung his sword again. “And, worse yet, they smell like dog piss.”
“Don’t feel bad,” I murmured to Niko, the icy clamp at the base of my spine easing. Cadejos. Big, ugly, and flesh rotting, but not Auphe. “I’m sure you knew that.”
He growled and stepped into the fray, beheading two cadejos with one blow. Several across the room had leapt up to the wall and were running along it. I nailed them in their low-slung foreheads. They did smell like dog piss. Not surprising—they looked like dogs as well . . . if you crossed one with a weasel. Black skin, sleek black hair, short legs, long length, and a whiplike tail. They were like a living puddle of oil, but with baleful yellow eyes and a mouthful of teeth that could’ve come from the dinosaur that made that oil.