They left pretty damn quickly. Rafferty had unloaded his and Catcher’s food while I was just opening mine, when my brother and Goodfellow returned. “Good, you’re back,” the healer said around a mouthful of chicken-fried steak. “Your brother almost shot a few truckers, I had to muddle a few memories by frying a few brain cells that, trust me, couldn’t be spared, and Catcher doesn’t like liver and onions, so somebody swap with him.” He pointed the plastic fork at me. “Killing in broad daylight. Appreciate the sentiment, but would appreciate not being mobbed by the villagers more. Kill them in the dark.”
I swapped my lunch with Catcher. “I didn’t kill them.”
“But would you have?” That was Niko, a pissed Niko, and there was no lying to Niko, no matter what mood he was in. That mood, I was forced to admit, had been annoyed since day one of the trip and it was ninety-nine point nine percent my fault.
I exhaled. “No, and before you add the ‘but,’ yeah, I wanted to shoot him… just in the leg, though, which hardly counts. He was an ass. He was looking for trouble. I’m a nice guy.” And wasn’t I, though? “I like to give people what they want.”
I missed lunch.
Niko thought that if I had that much excess energy, not to mention excess stupidity, I needed a workout. Behind the truck stop we sparred hand to hand for about forty-five minutes until every part of me ached, sweat soaked my hair, and the only person I had a desire to shoot was myself to put myself out of my misery. Yet there was my brother, trying to ground me and giving the Plague of the World extra time up on us because he thought it was worth it-I was worth it. It was at times like this I almost wished he didn’t think I was. I groaned, “Sadist.”
Niko looked down at me as I lay on my back on the asphalt and gulped air. We’d had a ring of spectators for the first half-hour. More nosy bastards. Back in New York, no one would’ve given us a second look unless we were blocking the entrance to the Internet café or a bar. “A gun, a potential shooting, in broad daylight in a highly public area? You might pretend to be less intelligent than you really are, but this is not excusable. They were idiots and easily handled without a penknife, much less your gun du jour.”
“I know.” I pulled in more ragged breaths. It had been stupid and there’d been a hundred other ways to deal with the truckers than shooting them or even just threatening to shoot them. I knew that, but… “I was feeling on edge,” I admitted, wiping stinging sweat from my eyes. “Bottled up. I wanted to do something. Anything, The truckers were just in the right place at the right time”-or would’ve been if I’d actually gotten to shoot one-“to let off some steam.”
“In other words, you were feeling antsy,” Niko said, studying me, before holding down a hand to help me up. But he didn’t. He only gripped my hand and added, “It’s been almost a whole day since you gated. Your need for it is growing and that means it’s not harmless. It’s not the equivalent of exercise endorphins. It is not a good thing in any way. Do I need to point out this is a problem?”
“No,” I grunted as a boot rested in my gut, “but I have a feeling you will anyway.”
He put a little more weight on me. “Brotherly love. Embrace the concept, little brother. No more gates. No more potential mutilation of the public at large. The entire adult concept comes with responsibilities. We have a job to do. If you get antsy again…”
“Suck it up?”
“I was going to say meditate, but you can do both. Or I can stuff you in the trunk of the car and set my mind at ease. I saw you…” He stopped speaking and pulled me to my feet. But I knew how he would’ve finished it. I saw you die once. I don’t want to see it again. I didn’t think my traveling was near the threat he did, maybe because I didn’t want to believe, but he was my brother. He was about three Nobel Prize-winning scientists smarter than I, and… shit, again, he was my brother. Everything he’d done in his life for me had been for me, not to me.
It was why he didn’t speak Rom. Abelia- Roo could mock him all she wanted. I’d been there when we’d gone to our mother’s clan for help when she was killed. I hadn’t been in the best shape, but I remembered what had happened. It wasn’t something you tended to forget, no matter what shape you were in.
I’d been sixteen, but still felt fourteen-the two missing years of memories a nightmarish whirlpool of black nothingness striped with chaotic red emotion. Not talking to anyone but Nik and then only one or two words at best. I’d never let go of the knife under my jacket… Nik’s jacket. Mine didn’t fit anymore. And Nik… Nik touched me at all times, now that I could bear to let myself be touched again, to let me know I wasn’t alone. He had his hand resting on my shoulder, squeezing, and standing close enough that we cast one shadow. Fourteen, sixteen, sane, insane, human, monster; I hadn’t known which of those things I was, but I’d known Niko was there. Even when I’d shut my eyes against a sun that still seemed far too bright after a month of escaping the Auphe, I’d felt the warmth of his hand burning through to my skin.
Cal.
My eyes had snapped open when he spoke, my knife already pulled.
“No, Cal,” had come the reassuring reply. “No knife. We’re here for help, remember? This is Sophia’s clan. Our clan. Family.” And because Niko was a good man even at eighteen, he’d believed that or wanted to believe it.
It was one of the few times he’d been wrong.
They’d known what I was. Sophia had left the clan, but the clan had never left her. She was Vayash. Vayash never left Vayash. They’d watched, kept track, and consequently knew about the deal she’d made with the Auphe to produce me. It didn’t matter that I didn’t have any say in the whole damn thing. The good people of the Vayash clan had spat on me, hid their children from the very sight of me, and they damn sure weren’t going to take an abomination like me under their protection. Niko… Niko was all Vayash, all human. Niko was welcome. He had only to cast me aside.
Or preferably kill me. After all, I was a monster, a thing, a rabid dog.
A man-eater, just not quite grown to full potential. Niko blamed them. Honestly, I didn’t.
Niko had turned his back on them, their life, their ways, their language, and hadn’t once looked back. They were as dead to him as we were to them. How do you deny someone who does that for you? You don’t. I pushed back sweat-soaked hair with an asphalt-scraped hand and gave his a tight squeeze with my other before I let go. “Sucking it up. Meditating. You got it.” I brushed dirt from my jeans. “So, did I do good? Workoutwise? Going to grade me?”
“I hear failing grades only discourage students. You’re progressing. Does that make you feel better?”
Considering Niko wouldn’t be happy unless I could protect myself with the lethal skill of a sixteen-foot-long great white, it was praise enough.
“Puppies done playing now?” Delilah purred from where she sat in a small patch of weeds several feet away. The remnants of her own lunch rested on a plate beside her, the bloody bones of what must’ve been two or three very rare T-bone steaks. Not one drop of red stained her leathers. “So cute. Like a bone as a reward?”
Niko wasn’t amused. He was a patient man, beyond patient, but that massive reserve was put aside for my smart-ass nature and our work in general. Right now he had little to spare for the Wolf who very probably was going to try to kill me. He didn’t like it when people and monsters and all that fell between made attempts on my life. I made my own decisions on where to sleep and whom to sleep with, but he didn’t have to like it and he didn’t have to show my possible assassin any faked appreciation of her humor.
Delilah tilted her head as she stood smoothly to move close to me, inhaling the smell of my sweat. “Wish to play more? Plague of the World can wait fifteen minutes more, yes?”