Nevermore: A Cal Leandros Novel (3 page)

I could’ve helped him along.

But considering what I knew he’d done—bad.

That I knew what he was—a human monster.

Nah.

Let him suffer. Slow and painful was what he deserved. At least he hadn’t turned while falling and hit me with that hosing down of blood I’d been so careful to avoid. It didn’t change my opinion on history, though, that one useful cut from behind, dodge the blood, if you plan on catching a cab later little fact picked up along the way.

I’d always thought history was boring. I thought that
the books were too thick, and whoever once gave a shit about memorizing all the tedious dates of this war or that ancient plague or some long dead philosopher who made logic so illogical you wished he’d died sooner? Dull as dirt, plain and simple.

Or so I’d believed.

But look at me now. According to one of those sayings about history, in this place, I was a historian. I could do what God couldn’t.

I could change the future by
rewriting
the past.

I hoped.

Fuck, I hoped.

Giving the twitching body lying facedown at my feet an encouraging nudge, some might say kick in the ribs with my combat boot, I snapped, “Move your ass, you son of a bitch. You’re already aimed in Hell’s direction. Slide your metro card and go already.”

A thin wet whine managed to work its way from his throat as the body, ninety-nine percent dead makes you a body in my book, struggled toward me with one shaking hand clawing at the asphalt and the other hanging on to that knife as if he’d superglued it to his homicidal hand. He was still coming after me. If he were at a funeral home, they’ve have embalmed him already and, yet, here came the knife weakly slashing at my ankle. Was it six feet away from his maximum reach? Details. Nothing but details. Motherfucker. I wanted him to suffer for what he’d done, but I was suffering too. The stench was only getting worse and he was getting more homicidal the less blood he had in him. How was that possible?

Sheer willpower to be the most annoying dick he could conceivably be?

Fingers kept scratching in the trash of the alley floor as the choking became louder and stubbornly continued. I exhaled, miles past pissed now. Asshole didn’t begin to cover this one. I squatted to capture glazed eyes, once muddy, now dark as grave dirt. But there was a flicker in them, hate, vicious and brutal. It was fading, but I didn’t
know if it was fading fast enough. “You’re a monster,” I said, matter-of-factly. “Punishing monsters like you is a hobby of mine.

“But I’m on a tight schedule. Half a minute and I’ll finish what you started. And I’ll make it hurt. You think this is bad? Drowning in your own blood, agonizing breath by agonizing breath?” I smiled the special, nasty one I’d learned the two long years spent in my own monster hell. Fourteen years old and I’d been dragged there by the
thing
that bred my mother like she was a show pony, if show ponies accepted cash for services. The monsters there, the Auphe, had taught me death was a
game
and life was too dull to tolerate without the razor edge possibility of losing it at any second.

“This . . . this is
nothing
.” I didn’t sound anything but unrepentant as that’s what I was, no more, no less.

Sometimes I was a monster too.

Sometimes I was a lion.

It depended on my mood and my mood now was not fucking good.

“This is flowers and fucking sunshine compared to what I can do to you. I’ll make thirty seconds feel like thirty years. See if that motivates you to get your murdering ass in gear. Oh, and pray if you want. Won’t work, but it’s fun to watch.” I slapped his patchy bearded cheek lightly. “Good talk. You’ve got fifty seconds left.”

Standing back up, I kept count under my breath. Monsters and murderers both, true, but no one knew how to motivate like an Auphe. And they’d taught me, whether I’d wanted to know or not. I’d managed to bury most of the memories of those two years. Some resurfaced now and again and a few I’d never forgotten at all. This one refused to go. I hadn’t made up my mind on whether that was for the best or not.

It
was
convenient. As long as you kept it a bluff. So far I had.

I was pretty certain.

Did my best, what else could anyone want from me?

I avoided the puddle of dark red edging toward my boots. Evidence was bad. Revealing. Avoid it whenever
possible. It was part of being on constant guard—Nik’s number one lesson when I’d been a kid when it came to Auphe and humans—
Be on guard, Cal. Always. Don’t let the monsters come up from behind, don’t let people see how different you can be. See them, but don’t let them see you. You’re a lion, little brother, remember? Watching from the tall grass. Invisible.

I’d listened to Niko my whole life. And being on guard was a behavior I hadn’t outgrown. Never be seen by those you might not escape and be on guard against those who didn’t already know what I was. Being dissected by the government is not a healthy career goal. I’d listened, but sometimes no matter what choice you make, it’s wrong. There isn’t a right one and you are fucked—no escaping it. Being on guard hadn’t changed the truth that during one desperate, otherwise hopeless moment when I’d had to make a decision to break Niko and the Vigil’s rule.

To come out of the grass.

A lion in the light of the day.

One in the shocked sight of an entire herd of dazed and staggering human sheep.

There was no taking that back, leaving the tall, tall grass.

And here we fucking were.

No. Here I was.

Alone.

Until I made things right, and I would. No matter who had to die, no matter what I had to do. I’d already torn apart time itself to walk years into the past. I didn’t know the consequences of that and I didn’t care. Those were considerations that could kiss my ass at their very best, that’s how little I gave a shit.

Weepy consciences are for people who have the luxury or the biological wiring.

Right now, I had neither.

There was the scraping of metal against the asphalt as the dick’s knife hand spasmed, dirt rimmed nails clawing the ground. Too bad it wasn’t dirt under him. He could dig his own grave. A wheezing explosive cough sprayed
red on the alley floor and the random trash that littered it. Christ. The asshole absolutely refused to die. He wouldn’t let go of it, his life or his knife.

Okay. Enough. This was over. Time for a countdown.

“Fifteen seconds. Ticktock,” I reminded. “Ever wondered what it would be like to be skinned alive? It’s time consuming as hell, don’t get me wrong, but don’t worry. I don’t have to actually do it to make you fucking feel like I
am
.”

I’d appeared out of thin-fucking-air, eight years rewinding in the absence of an instant, blinded momentarily by a blaze of the purest of white light. If OSHA had been around a millennia ago there would’ve been warning labels about bright lights/possible loss of vision everywhere in the time travel artifact industry. It had faded slower than my sight returned—I saw my own ink black shadow projected against the wall. I must’ve looked like an angel wanting to do some smiting. Wasn’t that ironic? You’d think that would make an impression on the bastard who tried to slit my throat. It didn’t. A fiery sword added to the mix wouldn’t have made a difference. He was crazy enough it didn’t get a blink from him as he had instantly lunged out of his makeshift bed and tried to bury that piece of shit blade of his in my throat.

The knife . . .

The knife told his story in excruciating detail of who had died by the blood-dried streaks on the metal. There was the scent of the heavier dose of iron that sped through the veins and arteries of men, the naturally wild honey fragrance of women, and, worse, the fresh bright tang of new life—kids. He killed fucking kids. I’d have finished him immediately when he was slow to haul ass to Hell if it hadn’t been for the kids. For that I had no problem in letting him pay. Making certain he paid and paid and then paid some more.

I could still smell that new life, innocent children snatched and slaughtered, their lives snuffed out as I stood over him. He was a bastard of a monster who simply happened to be born completely human. That wasn’t
new to me. I’d stopped being surprised at how the human ones outnumbered the supernatural kind long ago.

I was about to give him a ten-second countdown when the smothered gurgling at my feet became a convulsive seizure. It was quick to start, slow to end, and fierce as I could’ve wanted between. And then there was one last gasp—an exhalation soaked in blood. One breath finished. I waited for the next to begin. It never did.

“Ten seconds left, asshole,” I muttered. “You got off easy.”

The entire thing, attack and a kid killer too stubborn to die, had taken three minutes at most—quicker than the majority of his victims took to die at his incompetent hand I’d bet. Minutes in reality until his last breath, but that didn’t stop me from hoping it had been an eternity for him. Either way, it didn’t change my thought of an impatient, “Finally.”

Now
he
was history.

And I had work to do.

•   •   •

Absently, I slid my knife, a favorite KA-BAR in matte black, back inside my jacket after I finished cleaning it with one last automatic wipe-down with the Greek take-out menu I’d snagged off the asphalt. Yeah, definitely, enough of dwelling on the how, the why, the what of why I was here. Now came the important part. It was time to rewrite what should never have been written.

I had to get moving.

I patted the body down for his cell phone. Everyone had a phone, junkies and murdering monsters too. Slipping it in my jacket pocket, I then stepped over the slumped form of what had been a snarling, filth spitting, rusty blade wielding addict. He’d wanted money for drugs. I could smell the chemical imbalance cascading out his pores the same as I’d smelled the blood of all his victims on his knife, and he’d been desperate. Too bad for him he had been in an equally desperately wrong place at a far more desperately wrong time.

Then I walked out of an alley I had once known well.
Twilight didn’t mean anything. It could’ve been afternoon or morning. That particular slice of space between two older buildings was forever a place of gloom and shadows. It didn’t make a difference what time of day it was, in that place it was always night. It was why I chose it to take the eight-year step into the past . . . that and its location. I wouldn’t be seen. It was a good guess that’s why the son of a bitch who’d tried to stab me had picked it as well.

Bad luck for him was the thought of less than a second, and then I forgot.

Forgot about the asshole.

Forgot his dead body.

Hell, forgot he’d ever existed.

Scanning the surrounding area, I recognized the landmarks of a hole in the ground from eight years past. It was six blocks away from where I needed to be, and I started walking. The cars, I dodged. The people I less than politely elbowed out of my path in the routine New York way. The noise, the stench, none of it was that different despite the eight years difference. I inhaled the scent of Chinese kebab from a nearby street vendor I’d been to at least fifty times. I’d lived for that shit when I’d lived in this area. But things were different now and not because I’d moved.

I immediately felt a fist of nausea that twisted my stomach, stretched up to claw at my throat, and filled my mouth with bile at the odor of the roasted meat. It happened too fast to move, much less run for a garbage can. Bending over, I vomited on the sidewalk.

Straightening, I wiped my mouth on my jacket sleeve. Hygiene wasn’t high on my list of concerns right now. I ignored the bitching of the people milling around or lined up at the food carts. Instead I stepped over my pool of sick and stopped at the corner. I could’ve kept moving. I didn’t have far to go to my destination as planned days ago. But plans had changed. And while I hadn’t eaten today, food could wait . . . if I managed to be hungry again. I had my doubts.

As for meat, I had no plans of eating any ever again.

It was time to get moving. I damn sure wasn’t waiting on a miracle.

Miracles never happened. That’s why they had been and always would be the most painful and ugly of words. That’s why you did it yourself. There was no one else. I didn’t need a miracle. Miracles never failed to let you down. Miracles were for shit, plans changed and failed in the worst of ways, but there was me. I was for shit myself, no denying, but, unlike the lie of hope for the hopeless, I wouldn’t fail in this.

I stepped off the curb at the red light, which for taxis means go five mph slower and caught an off-duty—sorry, not happening—cab by refusing to move as I stood in front of it. I added a polite slamming of my fist on the hood of the car when it tried to push me out of the way. Polite enough whatever cursing the driver spat. I had a new plan, a different and more important destination, and unexpected problems to solve. After that I’d be back here to put the ragged remnants of the old plan into motion. I’d be a few hours at the most. I had the time.

I had the time.

That should’ve, would’ve been funny barely hours ago.

It wasn’t now.

When I returned two hours later, my driver was a happier man with the fare and a two-hundred-dollar tip to keep him from calling the cops when I needed him to wait for me a time or two. I had gotten out to take care of one precaution before moving on to the next. I’d debated punching him in the face at his nonstop bitching and slowing down long enough to roll him onto the sidewalk, but while maybe one or two New Yorkers would call the police, neither would remember the cab number. But when the driver woke up, he’d remember and for once in my life I could not afford cops anywhere near what I was doing. Money worked as well as a punch, if not as satisfying.

Back where I’d begun, on the same damn curb even, I started walking. It was full dark at seven thirty, October edging into November. The sun disappeared sooner and the monsters came out early. It didn’t make a difference, light or dark. It was safer to walk the remaining three blocks than have anyone, cabdriver included, knowing where I was going. When I arrived at my onetime original destination, it was as humble as I remembered. There was the cracked concrete stairs that collected a hundred
stains, vomit, blood, other bodily fluids you didn’t want to know about—every color different and a brutal blend spelling out the dregs of NYC life. Rip it out, hang it in a gallery and someone would pay you ten thousand dollars for it.

Down the stairwell to the basement, there were several piles of trash that were home to rats big enough to eat a Chihuahua in a swallow, no chewing required. I heard the rustle and squeal of them as I waded through the stinking bags. The rats hadn’t bothered me before and they didn’t now. They were New York’s real citizens, not the people—if you went by head count. I ignored the rustle under the garbage and the slink from pile to pile. Standing on the bottom stair, I blinked dubiously at the door from the bottom stair before snorting despite myself and shaking my head.

I hadn’t remembered this little detail.

This bar had no name.

It had originally, long before I’d known about the place. There had been a neon sign spelling out Talley’s once upon a time. Some of the wire and glass was still on the door, but I didn’t know what color the sign had been as it’d been long shattered before I came along. Never fixed, it was the invisible label of one of the many nameless pushers of alcohol in the city. It was the perfect place for a kid three years shy of being legal to work in a bar to fork over a fake ID, one out of ten or so, all with different names. They were names just like Talley—his was gone, the kid’s weren’t real. Same thing in the end—nameless.

This no-name bar was what that kid had needed. It had been one of the best options to get the privilege of working under the table for poverty wages as he slung beer and mopped up vomit. Not a great job, a shitty job in fact, but better than nothing at all.

There were a helluva lot better things than nothing at all, but there were worse too.

That I was here was proof of that.

I zipped my jacket a third of the way up to keep the metal of knives and other weapons muffled from scent
and sound. The jacket was beat-up black leather worn enough to be cracked and shot with creases of gray. Planning for this, I’d gotten it this morning from the Salvation Army. It was comfortable and the brutal weathered look fit the neighborhood. More important, it didn’t smell of home or family and it had cost only fifteen bucks. It also gave me room where I needed it. Automatically, I shifted my shoulders to adjust my holster, double-sided with a gun under each arm. It was habit, no more. I couldn’t shoot who was waiting inside. I could do barely more than give him a hangnail, which was going to be a trick as he might not feel the same about me.

He was a cranky son of a bitch. I knew that better than anyone.

And with every right to be one, my brother would’ve told me with disappointed reproval if he was here.

But he wasn’t.

Closing my eyes for a second, I settled into a crucial frame of mind. Then, stepping down over the trash, I took the two steps necessary, if that, to put my hand on the door. I hesitated, then pulled my shit together with every ounce of determination I had within me and every ounce I didn’t, but would lie to myself that I did. As my best friend often said, fake it until you make it. He also said, if that doesn’t work, stab them in the eye and steal their wallet. Since this one was hands off, I’d have to go with his first piece of advice.

“Hurry up, asshole. I got places to be.” The rumble and growl of warped vocal cords came from behind me. Wasn’t that the way to be on top of things? I could forgive missing the smell. Wolves were all over the city, living their crooked lives. I caught their natural cologne of wet-dog at least a few times every day. Having one sneak up on me without trying, that was pathetic. What was more pathetic was he’d done it while I was brooding. Worrying whether I had the skill to make it past our natural suspicion and get me to believe myself.

Yeah, odds were my life was over. I had to remake and undo the worst of nightmares and while I had an opportunity, a second chance when I didn’t have faith in
second chances. I’d used all mine up. That made this a bad day, fuck did it, but focusing to the point that I wasn’t aware of what was around me, that would have me dead before I could begin to save anyone else.

I turned around to face the Wolf who was two steps up. He was wearing a longer leather jacket over a hooded sweatshirt. And need the sweatshirt he damn well did. The hood was pulled up and forward to hide as much of his face as possible. Shadowed face or not, I’d come across more than my share of this kind of Wolf and knew what I’d see, more or less. With an under bite of fangs too large to close his mouth over, inhumanly pale amber eyes, and a fine coat of brown fur climbing up from beneath the shirt to cover his neck not quite to his chin, he was one of the Wolves that would never pass as human.

I saw something else: an inch and a half of metal showing below the bottom of his jacket. There were nicks and a ragged look to what was one of the worst sawed-off shotguns I’d had the misfortune to see. If that was the best he could do, I had no reservations that my younger self could handle it. Hell, I could’ve handled it when I was thirteen, much less eighteen. But it would be a complication to what was going to be complicated enough. I didn’t have the patience for this kind of shit. Not today.

“You’re goddamn kidding me with this,” I growled, harsh toward the back of the throat. My ex was a Wolf. She’d taught me how to throw a measure of lupine threat in any growls or snarls I might want to hand out. It wasn’t speaking his native tongue, but it let him know I was familiar with it in a manner that meant I’d picked it up by running with Wolves.

And Wolves did not run with just anyone.

“I know Wolves who could do more damage with one fang and half a claw than that piece of shit sawed-off will do. But you’re not that kind of Wolf. Can’t run with the real ones. An omega who’s licked the boots of every other Wolf in the Kin, so weak you need a gun.” I lifted my upper lip in a display of scorn. “The weapon of a sheep.” Wolves did love throwing the word sheep around.
If you were human, you were sheep, prey. I ratcheted up my growl. It was shading into something else, less and less Wolf. “But I shouldn’t be an ass. I like guns too. What do you think of mine?” I spread my jacket open to let him see the Desert Eagle and the Sig Sauer in my holster and the eight knives that practically covered the lining.

“No comment?” I took a step nearer to him. “Then how about this?” I stopped growling, but my voice wasn’t any more human now than the growl had been. I spoke the language of broken shards, crushed metal, avalanche shattered rock. “I smell you,
dog
. Why don’t you do the same and take a whiff of me?”

He did, his already wide nostrils flaring. All his fangs were showing now, but that was the type of instinct that was a lie, a bluff. The sharp tang of urine filled the air as the crotch of his faded jeans darkened. That was another instinct, but one that told the truth. He didn’t know me, but he thought he did. He knew what had made me, and while we weren’t identical, our scent was to most.

“My kind doesn’t play well with yours. You’re boring. You’re too easy. It’s over too soon. You taste like crap, like you live on rats. And coughing up hairballs for days is an absolute fucking bitch.” I took another step. “But you are still standing here boring me.
Annoying
me. I guess I can make an exception.” I moved to take another step and he fell, all Wolf grace lost. He did crawl up the stairs with impressive speed to disappear, leaving only the stench of piss behind.

That taken care of, I rezipped my jacket partially as it had been before and headed for the door. No more overthinking. No more waiting.

It was showtime.

Pushing the door open, I walked in while rubbing my palm on my jeans. I was liberal with my disgust. “Jesus, that is the most goddamn disgusting sticky door I’ve touched in my life. You can get 409 by the gallons you know. Or soap. Soap works. Steal it from the bathroom.”

I’d forgotten that too, the filth. Inside the place it was dim, if you wanted to be generous with the word. Too cheap for lightbulbs could be one excuse. Another could
be that the gloom conveniently concealed the very worst of the grime, the Talleywhacker’s sharp business sense hard at work.

It didn’t surprise me he didn’t recognize my voice. Whoever does in similar situations?

I walked across to the bar and picked a stool directly across from the bartender and plopped down, casual as they came. I grinned, trying for friendly, but I’d lost the ability for the genuine article around when I was five or so—unless I slapped on my best imitation. And I could imitate the fucking hell out of the real deal normally, but not to him. He, if anyone, would know the falseness of it immediately. Not that he was looking. His back had been to the door when I came in, but that didn’t mean he hadn’t been aware and alert—he had once been a lion, too, before the Auphe had taken us, and habits lingered. Were they skillful as they had been? No. They did linger and that was something.

I had seen him glance up at a dingy fragment of mirror duct taped high up on the wall. That was Talley’s idea of security, letting you watch your back, get a look at who came in the door if you were busy washing glasses, see if they already had a weapon out to rob the place. I didn’t miss Talley at all, the cheap, sleazy bastard. The kid had finished checking my cloudy, fly-specked reflection, not seen a shotgun in sight—which was nearly all the visual accuracy the DIY security system was good for—and silently finished up drying the glass in his hands while dismissing me without a second look.

He was a rude little asshole.

Made me kind of proud.

He was also careless as hell.

Made me rather embarrassed.

Most of all, it made me think how easy it would be to put a bullet in the back of his head. Sloppy and young as he was, he wouldn’t see it coming. He’d drop instantly, a painless death. I would disappear, as I wouldn’t have existed those eight years from eighteen to twenty-six. The Vigil wouldn’t have crossed my path and never would have created Lazarus to end what never had begun.
Everyone who had died in the bar would live. Goodfellow would live. Niko . . . Niko would not. He’d use a different method, but the result would be the same as my finger pulling the trigger while surrounded by fire and death.

When one went, the other followed. Always. In every life we’d lived.

No committing a suicide bizarre enough to make Guinness, then. I released the grip of my gun and slid my hand silently back out of my jacket. He still didn’t notice that or what a wide-open target he’d made of himself. Maybe that wasn’t fair. I’d come a long way in eight years, walked a long, more than human, path.

“So, hey, Junior, what’s on tap?” I asked, letting go of the failure of the buddy-buddy tone. I did keep the grin, but this one was a neutral and narrow baring of teeth. I was genuinely distracted with my own view of the mirror. He’d given my reflection a quick and disinterested look for blatantly visible weapons, hadn’t seen any, and then ignored me.

Sloppy. Considering how many weapons I did have—not just in hand for but a moment, but more than enough in my jacket, and one still lingering with the faint smell of blood—very sloppy. I went with moderately humiliated instead of merely embarrassed. I hadn’t gone with the same quick glimpse in the mirror that he had. I’d scrutinized his likeness when he’d looked up at the dirty silvered glass. Having only the short length of assessment he’d spent on his visual weapons check, I was lucky I’d learned in my business that facing down misbehaving
paien
mean each second counts. Use that second or two to examine every detail as closely as possible.

We weren’t twins.

I hadn’t expected us to be. I’d known that eight years can make a difference, sometimes big, sometimes small. It depends on how you age. Do you look younger than you are? Older? Do you look almost precisely the same but with more scars? I didn’t know. I hadn’t thought about it before. Why would I have? Rewatching old sci-fi movies I’d seen as a kid to be braced and ready for
time
travel
wasn’t something that had crossed my mind as being prepared for potentially dangerous situations that could jump out at you.

Until it did.

Leaving fuckup number three hundred and ten behind, I was now thinking, with morbid curiosity, what a person’s reaction would be to seeing themselves sitting on a stool three feet across the bar from them.

What would I have done in his place, what if I’d seen what he was going to see? I had a good guess and it was—the thought was cut off as he finally turned around, ready to tell me what was on tap. It would be watered-down piss if I remembered right, but that hardly mattered as I found out about this particular person’s response to facing themselves. This copy of me . . . no, not a copy.

This was me.

A particular puck had been right days ago when giving me the usual hard time. I hadn’t been bad-looking, barely legal baby face and all.

How the hell had I not gotten laid sooner?