A picture . . . a portrait of my brother and blood and death. How easily I’d been persuaded to Cherish’s way of thinking today and earlier at the Harlem brownstone. As soon as a doubt would surface, so would the dizziness, and then they would both just as quickly disappear. The more I questioned, the further I’d been pushed into ignorance and compliance. Xolo. All Xolo. He hadn’t known us long enough to map out our minds until now, and as we’d previously agreed to help Cherish, she hadn’t needed to order him to manipulate us that much. Not until I started questioning. And then Cherish had him make a kamikaze of me.
“Christ, I get it now,” Cal cursed. “That’s how she pumped my brain about Nik at Rafferty’s and the hospital—what a fighter you are. Were you the best of us? Were you my keeper? No wonder I’d talked so damn much. I never talk that much. Not about us. Not about family. And I never would’ve thought she was part of the family without that damn chupa. She was looking for the perfect weapon. And, shit, Niko, you are the perfect weapon.”
That was it, then. My questioning earlier in the day might have hurried her plan a little, but it had been her plan all along. It was why she’d watched us spar so closely, watched us all fight. Robin, Cal, and I; she chose among us the one she thought best able to defeat Oshossi.
She had also made the most fatal mistake of her life.
“You can see how valuable that makes Xolo to me, the things he can do. You can also see why I could not allow him close to me with his new mistress. Why I depended on my creatures to dispose of her and bring him back. He is completely docile to whoever has him and feeds him.” Which was why Cherish had become so alarmed to see Cal trying to give blood to him in Rafferty’s kitchen. “And he knows well the workings of my mind. He could have me drown myself in the river, if so ordered, while thinking I’m but walking through the forest.” Which was why he could walk into the car lot but fled the brownstone where Xolo had been.
He stopped the motion of the last machete and let it point down toward the ground. “I use him to save what forests I can. To save what belongs to me. I want him back. I need him back. He can move the minds of men . . . the will of governments.”
“Then take him. If you have more creatures, find her, kill her, and take him,” I said, my voice empty and savage all at once. “We won’t stand in your way.” When I didn’t come back from Xolo’s illusion, she’d know either Oshossi had killed me or we’d killed each other. Either way, she wouldn’t stick around. In fact, I was positive she was gone already.
“And if she were here now?” he said, dark face curious.
“I’d kill her myself,” I responded flatly.
Oshossi looked around at the death that surrounded us. “My pets.” His stony face set dangerously, then relaxed slightly. “Victims, all of us. Go. But stand in my way again and you’ll be my victims next time.”
We went. I couldn’t feel my legs, but they still worked. Cal had come up from his crouch with my katana and wrapped my hand around its hilt. My other was still firmly fisted in his jacket. “Do you want to tell me what the son of a bitch Xolo made you see?” He had a good guess, I knew, but a guess wasn’t the same as details. Details I could not do.
“No.” There was snow beneath us—I could see it now—white and pristine as the void had been . . . the void that had shattered into a thousand pieces of sharp-edged, blood-streaked milky glass inside my head.
“You have interesting lives. Even Kin life not quite so interesting.” Delilah walked beside us in human form now, the change so quick it was a blur. Her bare feet walked through the snow without hesitation. “Pretty boy, give jacket now.”
“I lose more jackets this way,” Cal grumbled, but his worried gaze was still on me. “And stop calling me pretty boy. Upgrade me to smoking-hot man-meat, at least.” Delilah laughed until she nearly howled . . . a genuine wolf howl. Cal waited with uncustomary patience as I managed to unlock my fingers from his coat. He passed it over to a still-laughing Delilah while I immediately grabbed a handful of the back of his shirt.
“Where were you?” I demanded, and shook him. Shook him hard. And he allowed it without complaint. “Where were you?”
He didn’t bring up that I’d been gone only a half hour less than he had. He let it be. “I closed up the bar and met Delilah back at our place about two thirty. Like I said, the door was open, your malas were thrown down. I knew something was wrong.” His jaw tightened. “Really wrong. I used the GPS in our phones and tracked you to the park. I made a gate, Delilah came along for the ride, and we pinpointed your location.” He looked over his shoulder at what lay behind us. The Vigil would be busy tonight, if there was anything left that Boggle and her brood didn’t eat. “You killed everything, Nik. Everything.” He didn’t say it with awe—he said it for what it was. Fact. Cherish might have needed proof, but Cal had always known what I was capable of.
“I’m not done yet. She almost got her way. That evil bitch almost got her way,” I said with an emotion so dark and jagged it cut more easily than all the blades I owned.
“You want me to call Promise and tell her?” he asked. “Fuck it. That’s a stupid question. I’ll call her.”
He did. I didn’t listen. I, who listened to everything, paid notice of the smallest detail, didn’t listen. I hadn’t listened to much since two a.m. I knew she would be hurt, even after Xolo’s effects had worn off and she remembered how she’d trusted her thief and liar of a daughter with such an unnatural ease, considering their history. I knew she would be shamed and guilty that Cherish had risked all our lives over a lie and a lust for power to equal the Auphe’s. I imagined she ached for me, although Cal couldn’t tell her exactly what Xolo had made me see. She would guess like Cal had guessed, and all the guesses in the world couldn’t equal what I’d seen. I’d seen Cal die twice in my life. Two failures to protect him; one real, one illusion, both as carved into my memory with the same sharp edges.
Could a four-year-old be held to a promise?
Yes.
Could he do it justice?
Not always.
We were headed for the subway when Delilah began to peel off in another direction, the jacket making her barely legal. Her copper eyes looked through me, one roughened pad of her finger touched my forehead, then my chest. “Sick. Run it out. Hunt it out. Fight it out.” She shook her head. “Or go to the woods and never come out.”
Because that’s what a sick wolf would do—go to the woods, whether the woods were trees or a jumble of empty buildings, and wait to die.
As far as I could tell, it was better than that hospital bed I’d spent that night in. The wolves weren’t wrong. Cal had been listening to Delilah, because he had us off the subway ten blocks from home and had us running it. Ten blocks was nothing compared to my normal regimen, but after the battle I barely remembered, it tired me.
But not too much. The moment we entered the apartment, I pulled my tanto knife out and savagely slashed the rug in front of the coffee table to shreds before tossing it into the hall. It was where I’d seen Cal, seen the circle of blood. I still saw it, not with my eyes, but I still saw it. I couldn’t have that thing in here. Not with me.
Cal closed the door behind the flying cloth and gave a light shrug. “Never liked it anyway. Too Pier 1.”
I stood in the center of the floor, with no idea where I should go or what I should do. “You keep dying,” I finally said. I didn’t mean for it to sound accusatory, but I thought that it did. So much for my lifelong vaunted self-control. “You keep dying, and I keep breaking my promise.”