He was one goddamn good brother.
Niko wanted the truth in life. More often than not, I was happy with the lie.
“She’s dead,” Robin said with a snort at my ignorance. “Dead cats don’t eat. She only purrs, claws my furniture, and kills man-sized dogs.” He frowned at the last bit, then sighed. “What can you do? We are all true to our nature. It’s how Zeus made us.”
“Then Zeus can go screw himself if he’s responsible for this.” I knelt beside the body of the Auphe Niko had killed. She . . . it didn’t look any less against God-and-nature dead than it had alive. Empty red eyes and metal teeth slowly losing their mirror sheen, it gave death’s gaping grin. Against God . . . yeah, right.
“If I ever needed proof there’s no God”—and I didn’t—“here it is. No Zeus. No Allah. If there were, they wouldn’t let this kind of evil walk the earth.”
I heard the chair creak as Robin stood and walked away. Moments later he returned with a mop and bucket and slowly took care of the puddle of blood I couldn’t force myself to look at. When that was done, his hand braced itself on my shoulder as he squatted beside me, wincing as he did. “I don’t know. I did meet Buddha once, the skinny version, in India. He gave me half his rice, laughed at my clothes, and told me if I could stay celibate for an entire week I’d reach enlightenment.”
“In other words, he was screwing with you.”
“In other words,” he agreed, green eyes nostalgic. “But he made me laugh. I didn’t laugh much in those days, not and mean it. Maybe laughing is better than a god.” His hand squeezed, then let go. “Now, let’s do something about dumping this pasty bastard . . . ah . . . bitch in the river. I have a feeling Niko wants to pick up a LoJack while we’re out and strap it to your wanderlust ass.”
Robin had heard what I’d said about Nik letting me go, but he’d taken it at face value. He thought I wanted to leave in hopes the Auphe would follow me—the same idea I’d had earlier when fighting the eel. Probably for the best that he thought that. I didn’t need a twenty-four-hour suicide watch with someone holding my hand while I took a piss. Niko knew I wouldn’t break my promise. Goodfellow might not be so trusting. I didn’t clue him in, instead settling for a noncommittal shrug. And, truthfully, it still wasn’t the worst idea—except for the fact Niko would track me down faster than the Auphe, and we’d be right back where we started.
“Leaving might work,” he continued. “They may follow you and forget about us. And then again, they may locate you in a few weeks or months and dump our dead bodies at your feet. The Auphe have far more patience than you give them credit for. They don’t have to choose either/or. They can have their cake and mutilate it too.”
That was an option I hadn’t considered on the beach. Seems I wasn’t the only one who could think like an Auphe. But I was the only one who could breed like one. Good old science experiment Cal. A male Auphe could impregnate a female human, but apparently a male human couldn’t impregnate a female Auphe . . . or at least not as quickly as I could. Sure, I was better, being half Auphe, but it’d be easier grabbing a random guy with no gun, fighting skills, or lethal brother. Although good luck on him getting it up for a nightmare of pale skin, bone-cracking teeth, and eyes of blood. As for me . . . the Auphe and Tumulus would send sanity bye-bye on me. Madness, torture, the memories of probably the same from the past; the Auphe would get what they wanted from me. One way or the other. I just didn’t know if being insane would make it better or worse.
“Are you all right? You look like you might . . .” Robin made an obvious gesture with one hand, while patting my shoulder with the other and leaning away from me all at the same time. The guy had talent.
“Fine. I’m fine.” Frigging dandy. “I won’t run. Nik would find me and make me wish I was dead before the Auphe actually had the chance to do it.” It wasn’t a lie, just a rehashing of what Nik and I had talked about on the beach . . . before I knew what I knew now. We hadn’t told Robin and Promise that I’d understood what the Auphe had said, and when I’d told Niko I was the last male Auphe, it had barely been a whisper, and a garbled one at that. Robin and Promise didn’t know that while the Auphe still wanted them dead, they had different plans for me. And I didn’t want them to know. That kind of pity I couldn’t take. If I saw that on their faces every time I turned around, it would only make all of this more real. And right, now reality was the last thing I needed.
I stripped off the gloves, tossed them on the newspaper-covered table, and reached back to wipe a sweaty hand across the top of my back. My bloody back. Half dried, the sticky residue of Niko’s blood was rough against my palm. Before it had itched; now it burned. “Shit,” I said. I’d been unable to look at it, but here I was feeling it. The Auphe wanted me, but not yet. First I got to see the big show. Death and despair, and you want popcorn with that?
They wanted Nik first. They wanted me to watch. Wanted me to see. Wanted me wearing his blood.
And I was.
I moved for the bathroom and the shower without another word. I stood under steaming hot water, letting it wash the blood away. I was there a good five minutes before I thought to take my sweatpants off, and it was nearly half an hour before I stepped out nude from behind the curtain. Niko was waiting to toss me a towel.
He leaned against the double vanity as I silently dried off and wrapped the cloth around my hips. He hadn’t made a sound when he came in. I hadn’t heard him or the door over the thundering water, and I fully expected a swat for it. I didn’t get it. “Are you speaking to me yet?” he asked, folding his arms.
“ ‘Goddamn you, you son of a bitch’ was speaking,” I told him wearily.
And that’s what I’d said to him after revealing I was the Last Damn Mohican, my head burrowing into his chest like when I was a kid, and Sophia had told me another bedtime story about how the monster wasn’t under my bed—it was in it. That’s what I’d said to him for not letting me go out the quick and easy way.
That was me, shouldering my part and stepping up to the plate as I’d promised myself I would. Way to be a man. Really showing I’d meant it when I’d said things would be all right. Thinking like an Auphe, I’d said I could do it and I hadn’t, not by a long shot. Only I could manage to pull off being a monster, but not monster enough. I put the toilet lid down and sat, the back of my head thunking back carelessly against the wall.
“Pity party for yourself?” Niko asked dryly, but behind the sarcasm I could see the shadow of worry.
“Like you wouldn’t believe,” I exhaled. “BYOA. Bring your own angst. It’s festive as hell.” The bandage was white against the olive of his skin, but he was alive, and I felt the mental knot unravel a little at that thought.
“Perhaps I’ll join you. My brother . . .” He stopped, took a long calming breath—probably to keep from banging my head repeatedly against the wall—and then started again, voice steady as a rock, worry to anger in a heartbeat: “My brother threw himself between me and the jaws of a shark. And if that wasn’t enough, he asked the shark to eat him first. Can you imagine how I would’ve felt if the shark had taken him up on it?”
“I’m guessing grateful’s not it.” Water—not Niko’s blood, just water—dripped from my hair and down my back. Cool and clean.
“No,” he replied grimly.
“Going to punch him in the nose? I hear he punched you.” The bruising under his eyes was more noticeable in the bright light of the bathroom. It’d been a good punch—short and precise with the exact amount of power I’d meant to go into it. Just as I’d been taught.