Nevermore: A Cal Leandros Novel (35 page)

He would’ve been a good king.

He let his hand fall and used both of them to comb efficiently through my hair. It had dried finally on the cab ride over. It was Sophia’s hair, straight, but the thick weight of it made for a mess of stubborn twists and knots if I didn’t brush it while it was still damp and pull it back into a tight prison of a ponytail to let it dry completely.

“I wasn’t alone.” In the room with the small patch of gray sky high on the wall.

He murmured at my ear, “No, Will, you were never alone. And, Caliban, you won’t be alone either.”

“I don’t want to sleep.” If I slept, I’d dream, and I couldn’t see it again. Even under the foggy weight of the drugs, I didn’t forget that. “I’ll dream. Don’t make me dream.”

Niko’s face had gained years and weary lines during the puck’s speech. I understood that. It had been long. Very . . . extrem – . . . incredib – . . . just long. My brother but not my brother, not yet, knew why I wouldn’t want to dream. I’d told him about the explosion and how they’d left me. All of them. It was a good reason for showing no confusion over Goodfellow’s military style command of hand-holding. “You won’t. If you start to, whoever’s with you will wake you up. I promise, little brother.” He wasn’t mine and I wasn’t his, but I had been once and he would be again.

Cal was the opposite. When he spoke, there were emotions everywhere, high and low, waves crashing on a beach. Confusion, irritation, anger, jealousy, stubborn bucking of authority, resentment knowing he was being kept in the dark about something everyone else knew,
and it all kept building and building. It was amazing to watch. I’d never gotten to see them on me, especially not as many and all at once. They combined, hit fury at record speed, and poured over his face in a cascade of . . . “Ha!” I got it now. Robin had been right. I pointed at Cal and announced with wickedly gleeful recognition.

“Murder face.”

•   •   •

I woke up screaming and I didn’t stop.

Not for four or five minutes, maybe longer. The three of them were there, two were talking, mouths moving fast, but I couldn’t hear them. I could hear only the explosion, the first blast, the devouring hunger of the flames, the second detonation, the howling of a tornado made of whirling fire, the sky falling. The third one’s mouth was shut, but his eyes were too wide, pale skin paler yet. Shocky. That’s what they’d say on some hospital show. He looked shocky. The first two came closer to me, one’s hand reached out to grip mine so tightly that my fingers were the blanched blue-white of interrupted circulation, but the third one, he moved back. Moved away and crouched on the floor, his arms wrapped around his knees, his hands fisted, knuckles white.

I knew who they were. I knew their names. But just as I could see their mouths move and not hear the words, knowing their names didn’t mean anything. I could see them spelled out in my mind, superimposed over the flames and smoke, but I couldn’t read them. I couldn’t say them. I couldn’t remember the sound of the letters spilling out into the air. And I couldn’t comprehend how I could see the three of them, the people with names no more use to me than hieroglyphs. How could I see them and the room around us when I was sitting in the street, surrounded by pizza boxes, watching my family burn? How could I see both at once?

Did I care how? No.

I didn’t care. I didn’t care. I didn’t care.

Wedging myself in a corner of the couch, yanking away from the touches, ripping my hand out of the one that was squeezing bones to dust, I snatched up the
cushion next to me, retreated farther into my space, and pressed my face against the cloth. It didn’t block out my screams from the world, but it blocked out the world—this one—from me. I let myself fall back into nothing but the loss and the screaming.

Those I understood.

•   •   •

“Caliban.”

Robin had one of his cars sent over and drove it himself, ditching it blocks away, destined to be towed. We were making the rest of the way to the
Ever
docked at Pier 17 on foot. I didn’t think it mattered to Lazarus: On foot or by car, he’d be well aware we were coming. It was less trouble in that it made it easier to avoid security guards such as the one hopefully not still hanging across from Niko and Cal’s apartment.

My stomach was uncomfortably full. It was a given Niko and Goodfellow were too smart to overfeed me after days without food, but by the same token, a small amount of food would stretch a shrunken stomach. I didn’t remember what I’d eaten, it wouldn’t have been meat—I trusted them on that. I didn’t remember eating period, which meant I’d been too loopy and far gone to do it myself, choosing instead to paint my face with it and think I was making art. They had to have fed me, spooned it into my mouth like I was a goddamn baby. I closed my eyes and had a flash of someone making airplane noises. That fucking Cal. I didn’t get how Niko and Robin could trust me, now, all my life, when I couldn’t trust myself. Going by this Cal, this version of me, if my arms were longer, I’d stab myself in the back. And I’d do it with enough eager enthusiasm. I’d likely have balloons, a cake, and a magician while I did it—make a real party of it.

He hadn’t been shining bright with enthusiasm during the screaming. Wrapped up in a ball, trying hard not to piss or shit himself, staring at me like I was his worst nightmare. That would be because I was. He’d seen me screaming loud and long enough to bring down the building on top of us, and he knew. Whatever had
happened to me to put me in a hell I couldn’t scream my way out of, it was going to happen to him. That was in his future and his future wasn’t looking pretty.

I hoped he
had
shit his pants, the spiteful little bastard.

“Caliban.”
It wasn’t said with more insistence. If anything, it was said with more desperation.

I wasn’t pissed at Robin or Niko about the, not nightmares—that wasn’t what they called them. The terrors, that’s what they were.
Terrors.
It was worse when the terrors were one in the same as your life. Robin and Niko, it wasn’t their fault. They’d have noticed the first tremor or twitch and kept their word to wake me up. It hadn’t been their shift though, as they were catching some needed sleep of their own for facing Lazarus. It had been Cal’s watch, and he had enough respect for his brother and enough wariness of Robin’s display of fighting skills and icy command to sit with me as he’d been told. That didn’t mean he cared enough to watch me. A nightmare. So what? He knew how bad nightmares could get from months of them after escaping his two years with the Auphe. He’d lived through them. If I had one, I’d live through it too.

Whatever he’d been staring at, the wall, the ceiling, his own feet wondering if they were still growing and whether his latest pair of combat boots had started to feel cramped, I had no idea. He hadn’t been keeping his eyes on me though, as that tremor, that twitch went unnoticed and then the abyss gobbled me up, chewing at me with teeth like serrated knives all the way down. Yeah, what Cal had been watching instead of me, I had no interest in asking him.

I did know he damn sure hadn’t been holding my hand. But I hadn’t expected that. I’d just expected him to watch. There was no question he didn’t like me. I hadn’t known that he hated me miles more than he’d ever hated himself.

Once I’d managed to climb out of the pit of nononononono, stop screaming in horrified denial, and recover enough to project the thinnest veneer of fake sanity, I’d
regained the ability to talk . . . some . . . which is a good thing to have. I’d pushed Robin and Niko back and away with no real force, saying I needed to shower, which was true. I was soaked in sweat and stank of fear that human noses would be able to pick up. I reclaimed my hand from the puck’s grip as no matter how many times I’d torn free of it, he kept coming back to snag it. He realized, hell, everyone in the room realized, I was panicked, confused, not remotely oriented, had no idea which of the whens I was in, which of the versions of who were with me, had no idea what was real and what wasn’t, and smothering in terror that
all
of it was real.

As much effort they’d put into talking me out of it, it became clear that I’d have to crawl out myself. But Robin kept his promises when he made them to us. He told me I wouldn’t be alone and if I couldn’t hear or understand him to know that I wasn’t, he’d shown me in the only way left. No matter how viciously hard I’d shoved at him, or clawed my hand from his, he was right back, his grip as solid and tight each time. Trying and hoping I would know he was there somewhere in the screams. Not alone. You’re not alone. When I’d finally come back and was getting ready to head for the shower, I’d shaken my hand to regain the circulation and let one corner of my mouth quirk. “This was not a first date, Goodfellow, I don’t care what you tell your friends.” His smile at my effort was bigger than mine, but, beyond relieved, not any more genuine.

“Caliban, stop.”

The shower was enormous with a water flow like Niagara Falls, but through that I heard the yelling that devolved into twice-the-volume, full-on drill-sergeant shouting, the kind of red-faced screaming that preceded many second-degree, fit-of-rage murders. I kept scrubbing off the sweat and fear. It was not my problem. It was kind of a pity Goodfellow couldn’t kill him as I’d cease to be, pop like a soap bubble, and vanish into the neverwas. But if he could’ve snapped Cal’s neck with no consequences to me, it still wouldn’t have been my problem.

When I’d come out of the shower, wet hair jerked
back into an elastic tie at the base of my neck, I was dressed in new less sweat drenched clothes, a new Caliban-friendly shirt—
THAT WHICH DOES NOT KI
LL ME HAS MASSIVELY
FUCKED UP.
He’d had it made while I slept as under the letters was a small cartoon weasel on its back, with X’s for eyes, a lolling tongue, and four feet in the air to demonstrate how dead it was. It was a black shirt with the letters and weasel, except for the deep red X’s and tongue, a dark gray. Personalized and good for night work when you wore dark colors or you ended up as a cartoon weasel.

Niko had this
look
, not on his face, but on all of him. It was everywhere. In his expression, in the tense lines of his body, in his eyes a shade empty and his eyes weren’t that. He could hide any emotion behind them when he had to, but even then, they weren’t empty. They were the lid to Pandora’s box and you could see the potential in them, if not what it was the potential of that was inside them. He wasn’t hiding anything now. He wore his disappointment, invisible chains wrapped around him, the weight of them changing how he stood, how he moved, and what it did do to his face did show as disappointment, but more, it changed it to someone else’s face. He had Niko’s features, complexion, eyes, but it wasn’t the Niko I’d known every day—until two days ago. He hadn’t looked like this—ever, not at the height of my seriously fucked-up Auphe shit.

“Caliban,
wait
.”

Robin was armed, I assumed—there was no nonmentally scarring way to check, ready to go, and carved from ice. He had his back turned to Cal and that I had seen before. Not aimed at me or Niko, but at the puck’s enemies or those he didn’t consider worthy enough to be an enemy. As far as he was concerned, Cal didn’t exist. That, despite my opinion in the shower . . . that was
my
problem. Shit. It was another impossible thing no one could imagine. Goodfellow was family and he would always choose Niko and me over anyone else. He wouldn’t know how to consider differently. He would be mentally
incapable of
thinking
that it was a choice. But when he was faced with two Cals, he could have a different thought. If one of us injured the other, then only one of us was his brother, since his brother wouldn’t do anything to hurt Robin purposely. And hurting Robin’s brother-in-blood was more of a wound than hurting Robin himself.

Cal would’ve been better off if he’d stabbed Robin in the kidneys as threatened. Instead he’d hurt me in a way that had me preferring a stabbing myself. It would’ve been less painful. If Robin could’ve killed him, if he’d been anyone but what he was, he would have. As he couldn’t, he wrote him off. He wasn’t his family, wasn’t his. I was. Robin had a choice and he chose me. I didn’t blame him. He didn’t know this Cal yet, and while technically only knowing me for several hours, he knew me for thousands of years and I knew him the same. For the first time, I knew all the lives, all the Calibans and the same Robin they had known time after time. Thousands of years of every exciting, amazing, horrifying, crazy, stupid thing we’d done. Compare that to a few hours of knowing a sullen asshole kid who’d stabbed us both in the back. Had done the same to Niko, Robin’s other family. It was a logic knot even a trickster could unknowingly tie in his own brain.

“Would you just
wait
, damn it?”

Cal had hurt us, the three of us, but it hadn’t been purposely—or not purposely enough to be considered premeditated. He’d been careless, didn’t give a shit about me, hated me, but . . . Niko would forgive him. Niko had no choice in that. What Cal had done, Niko would think . . . thought it was wrong. Dishonorable. Spiteful. Not simply amoral, but over the edge into something darker. It was something Sophia would’ve done and that had to hit the hardest, but Niko wouldn’t have thought that if Cal had been that careless with someone else. A stranger. Someone we didn’t know or trust. Pretty much anyone outside the circle of Niko-and-Cal. It was that Cal had done it to someone who would be Niko’s brother that had him looking at, then away from, him with
disappointment and disbelief. In the end though, Cal was Niko’s brother. I was only the potential of his brother. Cal had to come first. He’d forgive, he’d try harder to forget, but they’d be all right again. It might take a few days or a week, but Cal was Cal and Cal was his. There was nothing he couldn’t forgive him.

But I’d be gone sooner or later and while that’d be better for Niko and Cal, what the fuck would happen with Robin? Without him, both of them would be dead in a year. If he stayed that long, to save them out of obligation, and then walked away . . . well, we’d be dead a few more times.