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 potassium chloride to stop your heart. My fingers dug into the cushion beneath me, but I felt the grit of an alien soil that was more cutting than ground glass. 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 space. "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 hell 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 passageway 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. Damn. 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.
"It wasn't your fault." He stopped my antics with an unrelenting heel that pinned my foot to the floor.
"Wasn't hers either." I pointed my chin toward the front and immediately regretted it as a sliver of pain branched through my face.
"She knows what happened when Goodfellow hypnotized you to access your lost memories." His voice was low, but I knew it was easily audible to a vampire if she cared to listen. "I told her."
"Hearing about it and seeing it are two different things, Nik," I pointed out, feeling the tingling stretch of swelling skin as I talked. "And, hell, it wasn't that bad this time. Robin didn't toss his cookies and I didn't try to gouge your face off." There'd been no screaming, no clawing through walls, no huddling in a corner unseeing and unknowing. A quick and easy pop to the jaw was nothing in comparison with that. Certainly nothing to lose Promise over. Niko wanted her, he deserved her, and if things went as badly in the future as I thought they might, then he was going to need her.
"We need better memories, little brother, if you're making this one out to be less than absolutely shitty," he said somberly.
He sounded like me and that was never a positive sign. Time to give a little push of my own. I let the ice pack fall and passed it back and forth between my hands. "Then go make some."
Releasing my foot, he looked away with an uncustomary avoidance, then shifted his shoulders. "She wanted you to know that she was sorry."
"I am, Caliban. I cannot tell you how much." Promise had drifted over to us, so silently that I didn't know she was there until I felt the touch of her fingers on my shoulder, her lips brushing over my bruised jaw. "I let my concern for Niko get the better of me—the better of you. The blame for what happened lies with me, no one else."
The apology was as gracious as Promise herself, and she meant it wholeheartedly. A few hundred years would give anyone more than a few chances to learn how to lie. I knew Promise was no different there, but I'd lived with a woman who lied for a living for the first fourteen years of my life. I'd also spent a lot of time in Goodfellow's company in the past year. If you listened to him, he'd all but invented the lie. The bottom line was I knew bullshit when I heard it, whether it came from a talented amateur or a ranking pro. Promise meant what she said. And even if she hadn't, I still would've been tempted to swallow it for Niko's sake… although his bullshit detector was as honed as mine.
"You thought it was for Nik," I said matter-of-factly. And in my book, that trumped any transgression known to man. I gave an awkward pat to her hand, then gently removed it from my shoulder as I stood. For the first time I noticed it was dark outside the windows. I narrowed my eyes in disbelief. No wonder the pain was muted. "Jesus, how long have I been out?"
"Thirteen hours. We're about five hours from home." As Niko filled me in, I became aware of another sign of the passing time. A bursting bladder. "I didn't hit you with that much force. Robin said that opening that door must have drained you and to let you sleep."
It made sense. Tumulus had to be more than a hop, skip, and jump from our world. Opening a doorway from the Brooklyn Bridge to our apartment… no big deal. Opening one to a place that existed outside our own was markedly different. It was an issue worth exploring, if exploring just that type of thing hadn't been what had gotten us here to begin with. Besides, my bladder was a damn sight more insistent than any curiosity.
"Trouble is, there are some parts it didn't drain." I dumped the ice pack in Niko's lap and headed for the small bathroom. "Take my seat, Promise. I might take . a shower while I'm in there." The warm water might unknot muscles that were suddenly protesting thirteen hours of inactivity. It did, a little too well. The second time I woke up it was to the sound of a shower knob being turned off and the distinct smell of wet dog.