Except when it came to their real burden. Then they were all killers with one truly exceptional assassin, a man who could fight like Niko but lacking the conscience of his son, and he was ready to do what had to be done. Grimm hadn’t stolen Janus from the Rom. No one had.
We were separated now, the four of us. We stood at the four points of a rectangle. If I could hear again from the rocket’s explosion—well enough, anyway—Niko would be able to as well. If I wished him deaf for a few minutes, I thought he would understand. He was staring at Kalakos now. He had heard what was said about Goodfellow and the derision that had been unmatched by the paien in the black market. The monsters didn’t hate me as much as my former clan did.
“Janus is not the Vayash burden I came for.” He pointed his sword at me. “While some burdens are to be kept, some duties to be honored, some are to be destroyed. Janus is an obedient tool if used wisely; you, Auphe freak, are a chaotic nightmare and we will carry you no more.”
“Goodfellow says the Rom can waken Janus by the blood from the death of one of their own clan. Their burden. Their blood. You killed your own clan members just to flip a switch and turn him on like a goddamn vacuum cleaner?” I growled.
“Only the one. There was no second victim. That was an embellishment to the story, as all good stories have. I was certain I could do you on my own…easily. I am Achilles reborn, but the others insisted I use Janus. Their fear of you is that deep that they cannot believe a human would be a match for you. That meant the sacrifice was necessary. Lots were drawn. It was a good death. A death to restore his clan’s honor among the other Rom. He went willingly and I made it painless.”
His smile wasn’t mine any longer. It wasn’t the imitation of Nik’s. It was that of a ruthless murderer, one who’d slaughtered more than one before coming after me; I knew it. It was the smile of someone who belonged on death row with a needle in his arm. An arrogant, sociopathic asshole who should be put in a grave and nowhere else.
“Relatively painless, at least. And he was sixteen without having stuck his dick in a woman yet. As lives go, his was a waste anyway. If he screamed and cried for his mother”—that smile let me know he had—“blame yourself. It’d been a long time between hunts, and that is thanks to you, freak. No Rom will speak to us or hire me. We are dead to them. We have been cast out by all the clans due to our shame, so our shame must end that our exile can end.” That goddamn smile. I’d cut it off his face. “I do miss my work. Killing and raping at random is good for fending off boredom, but it doesn’t pay. I want my old life back. All the Vayash do.”
“And for that Cal has to end,” Niko said. “You fooled us so well. No, you fooled me. Nothing but suspicion from the beginning and you still fooled me. Let me guess. You healed Cal so we wouldn’t begin moving him to hide him from your machine. It would give Janus time to find us again.”
“Which would’ve worked perfectly if the abomination hadn’t used his unholy door to carry us away to the house of the goat,” he growled. The smile was gone now, his sword twisting back and forth in his hand. “Then worse, yet another abomination appears and steals Janus. Pulling it here and there through that same unholy doorway. Leaves it in the park to do what war machines do when their target isn’t there: mangle and destroy whatever is.”
Grimm had stolen Janus, but not for long and not in the beginning. He’d seen a toy and a way to taunt me and he’d taken it, probably from our place after it had attacked us there. Grimm and his goddamn binoculars. He could see me, but I couldn’t feel him.
He hadn’t directed the titan or known how. He simply turned it loose to see what it would do, and death and destruction was it. He didn’t know it was centered on me or he would’ve turned it loose a little closer…just to see what I would do. No one played games like Grimm, even accidentally.
“You targeted it on Cal.” Now Niko’s other sword was in his hand. “Specifically. You came to me. You asked for my help. You saved my life with Hephaestus. You tried to save my life with the boggles, or pretended to, so Cal along with Goodfellow would drown in mud or be killed by the Boggle below. You asked to claim me as a son. And you did it all to murder my brother.”
“Never have I told so many lies that made me want to bite off my tongue. You’re the son of a slut and a whore. Why would I claim you? I saved you to gain further acceptance. To stay with you. I was at the point where I was going to slit the freak’s throat myself no matter what the clan wanted. I could stand no more of you demons. Sharing the same space with you, eating with you—all of you unclean and debase. Your kind and all you touch contaminate me. It was disgusting enough that I think I deserve a bonus for all of this. I’ll bury the burden myself, but first I’ll have Janus wipe the world of my first and only mistake.” He turned and said something in rapid-fire Rom to the automaton and then pointed the xiphos at Niko.
Janus had been reprogrammed.
Kalakos was dead. Achilles reborn, my fucking ass. He was dead.
Somehow.
Niko didn’t stand around waiting for his fate. He ran. Quicker than Cal could, but not as quickly as when I let out the Auphe in me. But neither human nor Auphe matched the titan. I was running too, and although fast as shit, I wouldn’t break any world records with it. But I could throw like a son of a bitch. Could’ve been a baseball star in another life. “Nik!” I pulled off the bag and strap and tossed it farther than I could ever run.
He caught it and didn’t stop running and dodging claws scoring the ground behind him. He took one grenade from the bag, flipped the spoon, pulled the pin, and dropped it back in the bag with the others. Then he somersaulted sideways as Janus’s last tangle of metal talons buried themselves up to its wrist in the dirt where Niko had been less than a moment before. Nik didn’t take advantage to get more space between them. He propelled himself toward the automaton, which had dropped to one knee to pull its killing claws free. Niko used that. He—counting off the grenade’s six seconds, because I sure as hell was—planted a foot on Janus’s knee and, taking advantage of its blind eye with the sword embedded in it, used the thrust of the forward motion to leap high enough to hang the bag around the titan’s neck.
I blinked and he was gone, already running as I’d not seen him run before, and Niko was the fastest human I’d seen in my lifetime. Counting the short three to four seconds he had left, he would make it out of the blast zone. I knew it.
I knew it because if there was an Achilles reborn it wasn’t that bastard Kalakos.
It was my brother.
A warrior from the womb. A reluctant warrior, but a warrior like the world hadn’t seen in thousands of years.
I threw myself on the ground right before the grenades blew, closing my eyes against the fierce light and heat, and opening them immediately after to see Nik down, but because he’d done the same. He’d made it. I’d made it.
And so had that goddamn Janus. An explosive collar on a demonic metal dog and it didn’t stop it from freeing its claws and rising to its feet. The ground shook under the weight and its head spun to move the blinded eye. It saw Niko climbing to his feet and raced toward him as if nothing had happened. How could something that heavy and made of metal move that goddamn fast?
If we’d had that suitcase nuke from a year and a half ago, I didn’t think that would have done a damn thing. It was indestructible. We weren’t. We were good at what we did, but with the biggest disadvantage around when we could die and it couldn’t.