Nightlife (22 page)

Inside, the Auphe were milling about purposefully, clearing the enormous space of what looked to be a decade of debris. There were close to a hundred of them, their long hands pulling and pushing with an unnatural strength. A hundred, that must be just about every Auphe left in this world. Tumulus itself might stand empty as they gathered here. That's the breaks of having your own spot on the endangered-species list. "Hey, boss," I called to the nearest one. "What's up with the spring cleaning?" Transforming the very face of existence took some doing, but I didn't think absolute cleanliness was a prerequisite.

There was no mention of the visit paid to me earlier. The Auphe weren't used to disobedience. They were most likely assuming I was now walking the straight and narrow and saluting the almighty Auphe as I went. Dream on. I was a mercenary, not a whore.

In answer to my question, the Auphe's spidery finger pointed downward. It could've been China he was indicating, but I didn't think so. Jade, pagodas, and stir-fried noodles were nice, but not particularly helpful in our situation. Crouching, I laid a hand on the small area of floor that had been cleared. The concrete was cold to the touch, much colder than the air around us. Much colder than it should have been. It tried to leach the warmth from my flesh as it whispered black, poisonous things in my ear. Evil, horrible things that could turn a soul inside out and turn every shred of light into the darkest of despair. Nifty. "Ah," I hummed with approval. "Nothing warms my heart like a good slaughter."

That was another thing that would raise some serious power. Violent death, and lots of it. Many people had died in this spot and what was left of them was cradled deep in the earth beneath us. It had happened long ago by human standards, but it had poisoned this place so thoroughly that it was still tainted hundreds of years later. Here it had waited… waited for us, waited for just this moment. Kismet, huh? Brought a tear to the eye, it did.

It could have been Native Americans massacring the wannabes or it could've been vice versa. It may even have been before a white man ever touched this soil. Whatever it had been, it was human on human. It was peculiar how humans would kill at the drop of a hat—but they always had a justification… a
reason
. Defense, rebellion, justice, revenge, insanity—there were always excuses. The few that admitted the truth, that they did it just for the fun of it, those they locked up. Or they killed them, for the good of society… ironic, eh?

Heard the phrase "fuck up a wet dream"? That was humans all over. They could take a concept like killing, something so pure and pristine, and wrap it up in a mess of psychobabble, denial, and chains of ridiculous ritual. They did their best to ruin the simple joy, the magnificent beauty of it. And yet they managed to accomplish it on a grander scale than we ever had. I had to admire that.

I patted the concrete and felt the rage, the hatred, and the horror of life abruptly snuffed out. It tickled my palm like the silky hair of a mink. Sweet. "Hang in there," I said soothingly. "Won't be long." No, not long at all before we sucked them dry. There would be no more uneasy death echoing through the years, no more unheard screams for vengeance. There would be only nonexistence. Okay, it wasn't heaven, but neither was it hell. They should be counting their blessings. They were going to be luckier than most whose paths I crossed. I gave one last pat and stood. "You can thank me later."

As for that grand murderous scale humans laid claim to… we were about to give them a run for their money. Unmaking isn't the same as destroying, not at all, but the end result was. Since our planned result was the literal undoing of the vast majority of the human race, I had to think that end was plenty good enough. The Auphe had truly been inspired to come up with this scheme, I didn't mind admitting. Since the dawn of time the Auphe had been near the top of the food chain. I wouldn't give them the very top rung, but there was no denying that they thought they occupied it. But then the humans came. They weren't much of a threat. Hell, on the contrary, they provided entertainment. Fun to play with, cunning in their own brutish way, and they didn't break too easily. There's nothing worse than a flimsy toy.

The downside was, our toys bred. In one breath there were thousands, in the next millions. And even a million grunting, dirty pigs could take out one single farmer, no matter how clever he was. Yeah, one moment the Auphe were swimming along, happy as clams; the next a tidal wave of humanity swept them out to sea. Swept over us all. They were too many and we were too few, and that's just the way it was.

Now.

So, the Auphe reasoned, why not open a gate to then? And that's why they had needed me. No Auphe could open a gate to the past. The energy needed for that was phenomenal; they simply didn't have it. And channeling energy was not a talent the Auphe possessed. It was, however, one I did. I had quite a bit of natural energy of my own, and when I channeled a huge power source in addition to that, the end result was little short of a nuclear explosion. In a perfect world I could've inhabited an Auphe, channeled, and opened the gate. It would have been a piece of cake, theoretically. But naturally, it wasn't. We tried that before the breeding program began. Our best effort had resulted in several exploded Auphe. Turns out Auphe and I weren't a compatible merging. So, several experiments later, the Auphe settled on a human as the most likely option. I could possess one of those, we discovered, and with some tinkering a human's genetics could be manipulated enough to crossbreed. The finished product would be human enough for me to take over and Auphe enough to open a gate. It was easier said than done, but eventually it'd been accomplished—"eventually" being the key word here.

We'd thought we had the whole thing wrapped up with the half-breed. But Caliban had thrown a kink in it and good, the little shit. I grinned and patted my own chest with affection. My little shit now. He'd proved stubborn, both mentally and physically. Cooperation wasn't top on his list when he was still sane; it didn't shoot up any higher when he hopped aboard the loony-mobile. Not that that would've stopped the Auphe. But where that wouldn't, his physical failings did. He couldn't open a gate. His nervous system, inner battery… what-the-hell-ever… it just couldn't flip that switch. It was not mature enough, not sufficiently developed, to make that jump. The Auphe's only option was to wait, and wait they did… right up to the moment baby Cal opened his first real gate and took off. Now that…
that
had been hilarious. Too bad he didn't remember any of it. Killing his father and escaping under the nose of the Auphe, good times. Good times.

But it was four years later and Cal's run was over. Now it was simply a matter of opening that gate to the past. It was too late now for the Auphe to prevail against the bubbling mass of mankind, but before, when humans were few and far between, they'd be fish in a barrel. The in-the-know future Auphe would join the blissfully clueless past Auphe and that would be all she wrote for Harry Human. The Auphe wouldn't have to wipe them all out—95 percent would probably be enough. They
were
damn good playthings. No reason to throw out the baby with the bathwater, right?

Then life for the rest of us would become as it had been in the beginning. The humans would be huddled in huts or caves. Once again they would dread every rattle at their door, knowing that it could be the wind or… it could be us. Heady stuff, fear. It was the appetite teaser that sharpened the taste of violence and blood.

I would kiss the electric blankets good-bye, sad to say, but sometimes you had to suck it up and take the bad with the good. It was going to be a piece of cake. Smooth sailing.

Yeah, smooth sailing. Was I wrong to think they probably had that embossed on the
Titanic's
cocktail napkins?

Turned out that, as usual, I was not wrong. When things go well, you should be suspicious. When things go
exceptionally
well, start sniffing for the dog crap on the bottom of your shoe. Or in this case the dog crap at your front door.

I'd given the fur balls my hotel address for a report on Little Red Riding Hood and the next morning I was eagerly awaiting word. That is, if "eagerly" could be defined as laid up in the Jacuzzi, drinking wine and smoking the richest tobacco that room service had to offer. Hearing the less-than-discreet scratch of claws at the door, I blew a plume of cigar smoke at the arched ceiling and called out, "Come on in. The water's fine." I heard the measured tread of two feet slowly approach the bathroom. Seconds later Wolfgang was in the doorway, blood and bruises barely hidden by a long, ratty coat. When he winced and spat red phlegm on the floor, I could see several teeth shattered to splinters. Fang was conspicuously absent. This was not good.

"Well, well, look who's back, tail between his legs." I dumped the cigar in the wineglass and went straight to the bottle. "Looks like someone got his furry ass kicked," I said coldly. Propping a foot on the edge of the tub, I took a long swig of grape to fortify myself against the mindless incompetence. "Spill it, Rover. How'd you screw up?"

"No girl." Absently, the werewolf lapped at the ragged slash on the back of his hand. "There was no girl there," he repeated defensively, licking his wounds both literally and figuratively. "Only men with swords. Many men."

There was a lie in there, maybe two. I could smell it. Cal would've been able to, and thus so could I. "No girl, you say." That, I was guessing, was the first lie. She'd been there all right. No reason for Niko to be standing guard if she hadn't been. Ruminatively, I tapped the mouth of the bottle against my chin. Now, as for the second lie. "A whole slew of sword-wielding, bloodthirsty men, all to defeat your worthless ass. Don't you rate? Where's the girlfriend?"

"Dead." There was a brief spark in his eyes. Fury, sorrow, loss. "She fell… from the roof. Jumped one of the bastards, but he dodged—" He shook his head, shaggy hair falling to cover his eyes. "Gone. All gone. Tried for revenge. But too many."

"Too many." I stood, the water cascading down me. "Tell me again how many. Tell me again how many is too goddamn many." The bottle I hurled at the wall exploded into purple-coated shrapnel. It wasn't as sharp as the rage whirling inside of me. The Auphe weren't the only ones that didn't like to get their way. "Because you know what? I'm thinking that number is only one."

The werewolf's lips peeled back to reveal clotted black blood and a still impressive set of choppers. Then the bravado shriveled and his head hung low. "My girl. My beautiful girl." The back of his hand made a pass at his nose. "Two. There were two. Human. Other. They took my sweet girl from me."

Two. Niko was one. Goodfellow would be the other. That son of a bitch was starting to annoy me. Why that stupid rabbit wouldn't run, I had no idea. It was enough to make me lose my temper, and I liked to think of myself as an easygoing guy. I took a step and felt a sliver of pain stab through my instep. Hissing, I reached down and pulled a shard of bloody glass free. Flimsy body. It was a side effect I didn't find too pleasant. One more annoyance, but it wasn't as bad as the one echoing in my ears. Wolfgang was howling now. It was a mourning song for his lost love, plaintive and haunting as the stars' last cry before the universe winked out. Wistful. Lost.

And loud as shit.

A broken bottle in the trachea cured that quickly enough. I dropped the remnants of the bottle neck on the floor. It landed in the rapidly spreading pool of blood and broke as thoroughly as Wolfie's heart had. Then there was silence, blessed silence. Stepping over the still body, I went to get dressed. I was going to have to leave the maid one helluva tip over this mess. Just went to show… you never send a dog to do a Darkling's work.

Luckily enough, I had my plan to take care of Niko, and now Goodfellow, already in place. As for George, she'd have to be moved to the back burner. Either she hadn't talked or it was too late to worry about it now. I was going with my gut instinct that she hadn't. In the soda shop when one and one had been but a half I'd seen her tears. Fatalism had surrounded her like a nimbus of blue light. What will be, will be and not in that happy "
que sera, sera"
way either. There's a theory that destiny cannot be changed, cannot be maneuvered, cannot even be tweaked. If you ascribe to that philosophy, then delivering bad news is rather pointless… unless you enjoy the look on someone's face when you tell him a piano will fall on his head next Wednesday and there's not a damn thing he can do about it. While that'd be reason enough for me, sweet little Georgie Porgie probably wouldn't go for it.

What was my philosophy? you might wonder. Simple. Live in the moment. Yeah, yeah. Sounds pretty familiar, I'm sure. Every self-help guru, every pseudoenlightened nut job, everyone who thought they were deeper than a parking-lot puddle, they all spouted it. No doubt about it, it was cheesy. But it was also true. Let the Auphe worry about the glorious past and the inhospitable future. The past was lousy with great memories, the future rife with possible ones, but so what? Nothing mattered but the here and now. Oceans of blood from the good old days weren't worth that one scarlet drop silky between your fingertips in the blessed here and now. Live in your past accomplishments and it's hard to keep up with, much less enjoy, your current disembowelments.

But that was my outlook on life and as happy as I was with it, my bosses weren't likely to agree. Or to even give a shit for that matter. Tucking the distracting thoughts out of the way, I left the hotel room. Sooner or later someone would be looking for me, what with the dead werewolf on the bathroom floor. The policy at the desk
had
distinctly stated No Pets.

Outside I walked, rode the subway for a bit, and then walked some more. When I reached a certain corner on a particular block, I made another call on my cell phone. This time I got Niko, and damn, was my brother pissed. A curt "Yes?" echoed in my ear. The word could've been carved from dry ice, cold and searing all at once. So much unadulterated fury buried infinitely deep beneath the arctic tundra, damned if it didn't gave me a warm, fuzzy feeling. Playing with Niko was like playing with fire, and any pyromaniac could tell you that's more fun than a barrelful of rabid monkeys.

"Hey, Nik, how's it hanging?" I waved at the doorman across the busy street. He squinted, then gave me a two-finger salute from his cap, remembering me from the day before. "Guess who?"

"You." Succinct, my brother. You had to give him that.

"Is that any way to be?" I offered mournfully. "Why can't you call me Cal, big brother? I'm still family, right?"

"Cal is my family, not you. I know your name, Darkling. I know what you are, and you are not my brother. Do not for one moment think you can play some foolish game with me."

"Why not? You've played enough games with me over the years. Thrown me here, tossed me there. All in the name of being a good brother, of course, teaching me to protect myself. Aren't you curious to see how much I've learned?" I smiled wolfishly. Maybe he couldn't see it on my face, but I knew he could hear it in my voice. "I know I am."

"I wouldn't exactly call it curious," he responded flatly. "But if that's what it takes to get us face-to-face, then I'm more than willing."

"More than willing" being quite the understatement, even for the habitually understated Niko. He would do anything to see his brother. It was too bad for him that he never would again, not even when he stood and stared into the depths of my eyes. I wondered if he would live long enough to realize that. Here was hoping.

"Face-to-face," I mused with a flickering of memory. "And through a glass darkly. Soon, Cyrano. I'm not quite ready, not yet, but soon." With that lie still sweet on my tongue, I added, "Was Promise naked under that silk robe? Was she nothing but smooth skin and creamy pearls? You know what? Maybe I'll just have to see for myself." Without waiting for a response, I flipped the phone shut. Now, Niko… now we see just how good you are.

It wasn't long before they showed up, Niko and his motormouthed sidekick. Thankfully the utility belts and tights were left at home for the date crowd. Goodfellow drove his expensive sports car carelessly up on the curb and bailed out hastily to follow Nik towards the doors of Promise's building. Ignoring the outraged arm-waving of the doorman, they were almost inside when I drew them up short with another call.

"You beat me to her, big brother," I said with mock wistfulness as I heard his phone click on. "Or did you?" I knew he had called her to warn her, but a sliver of anxiety, no matter how illogical, can still give a knot to the stomach and the burn of sweet acid to the throat. And I was nothing if not about the giving. "Vampires don't turn to dust, did you know that? More of a puddle of goo really. Sticky too. The maid might want to bring an extra mop."

"You—"

I didn't wait for the happy descriptions of my personable self that were bound to follow. Instead I motioned to the kid standing ten feet away. Chomping his gum like Bessie's socially challenged cousin, he shoved the twenty I'd given him into his pocket and then slammed an elbow into the Mercedes at the curb. As I cursed convincingly, the sound of the car alarm traveled simultaneously to the cell phone and across the street. Looking over at Niko and Robin, I saw the simultaneous turn, and the realization in their eyes. Standing frozen for a second, I dropped the phone, turned, and ran.

Cal had been quick, lithe with a natural runner's grace. I was quicker. The combination was enough that I had to force myself to lag, to maintain a strictly human speed. I struggled through crowds on the sidewalk, let a car clip me on the hip with a grazing blow. I took the fall with a grunt and endured the asphalt-scraped palms all in the name of a good performance. Method acting, it was the key to believability. As I lunged to my feet, the car door swung open and a pale oval hung in the gloom. Impenetrably tinted windows, rich leather interior, caveman-browed driver… I should've recognized the car even before it hit me.

"Lady of the pearls." The smile that cut my face was blacker than her windows and as curdled as rancid blood. "I thought you'd be waiting for me upstairs to give me the ride you gave my brother."

Her face remained calm and untroubled. There were no pearls this time, only a hand held out to me. The darkest violet silk glove protecting it, her hand moved into the sun toward me. "Come with me, Cal. I'll take you home."

Why did they keep trying? Why the hell couldn't they see it?

"You've got it wrong, vampire," I spit. "I'm bringing home to you. To this whole goddamn world." With her hand hanging in the air behind me, I turned my back on Promise and kept running, this time flat out to regain the distance I'd lost in the fall.

The park was not that far and looking over my shoulder, I caught glimpses of Niko in the distance—Niko and that piece-of-shit Goodfellow. I was truly going to enjoy teaching the randy goat that he should've stuck with screwing as his avocation, because the noble-hero crap was getting on my nerves. The worthless son of a bitch wasn't anything more than a horny tomcat who inexplicably thought he was a tiger. He
knew
who I was, knew the things I was capable of. If he thought he was a match for me, he'd better lay off the juice. It was giving him delusions.

There were people in the park, although not as many as usual. No one gawked as I ran through. Could be I was a jogger. Could be I was a mugger chasing a victim. Hell, a mugger could be chasing me. Didn't matter. That was Central Park. They went on with their business and I went on with mine. Before long I was in the trees and moving toward a wilder area. Not like the old days wild, but as wild as it got in this time and place. Once I settled into position in a thick clump of underbrush, I took several huge breaths to hyperoxygenate my lungs.

It was a trick Niko himself had taught me. When he and Robin came into view I stopped breathing. Unless you could hear my heart beat, I was a silent presence. Niko's ears were good, but no human's were that good. And while Goodfellow had his talents, listening had never been one of them.

I watched as they paused. Niko knelt and ran a hand lightly through the yellowing grass. Standing, he exchanged a wordless glance with Robin. They knew I'd been through there. It was obvious enough if you knew how to read the signs… the bend of a blade of grass, the crumpling of a leaf. Obvious, and I hadn't made any effort to conceal it. But what lay beneath that grass, below that leaf, wasn't quite so apparent. Buried in dirt not nearly liquid enough to suit him, Boggle waited with all the patience of a trapdoor spider. And he came up out of the ground with the same arachnid speed. It was a thing of beauty.

They'd taken a step, intent on pursuing me. Niko was dressed in his traditional black coat long enough to conceal at least twenty lethal blades. Goodfellow was in a dark green sweater, artfully faded jeans, and a brown leather duster similar in length to my brother's. Jesus. Nik was dressed to fight. Peter Pan, on the other hand, was dressed for a photo shoot—fall wear for the monster killer on the go. Did I enjoy it when Boggle ripped that expensive ensemble to shreds?

You bet your ass I did.

On their second step, Boggle got them. He catapulted through the covering earth like a heat-seeking missile. One swat of his massive hand had Goodfellow flying through the air as weightless as a child. Green yarn hung snagged on the long black claws as they swiped at Nik in turn. The blow missed. I wasn't surprised. Bog had never been a match for my brother, not alone. Fortunately, he wasn't alone now. As Niko twisted with liquid grace out of Boggle's reach, I stepped out of the brush, aimed, and fired all in one motion. It would've been a great time to say something sharp, something witty, some catchphrase that made box office gold. Damn satisfying, but it could've slowed me down. I was a kick-ass monster, but my brother could kick some serious ass in his own right. One on one, I could take him. Since the days of apple-peddling snakes there hadn't been anyone or anything I couldn't put down. Cyrano wouldn't be any exception, but… he could hurt me. He was almost as deadly as I was and he could do some damage. The Auphe wouldn't be too appreciative of any delay because I happened to get my ride banged up. They wouldn't be appreciative of any of this if they found out.

So… no warning. No smart-ass comments. No wisecracks. Nothing but silence and a bullet to the chest. The impact knocked Niko backward several feet before he hit the ground hard. He lay sprawled motionless on his back with legs and arms spread. His face was blank and his eyes even blanker. They stared up at the sky, not surprised or shocked, not swimming with pain or fear, not full of the glory of heaven or the horror of hell. No, there was none of that. There was only emptiness.

It was disappointing, I didn't mind admitting. A complete lack of drama. With the sharp smell of cordite perfuming the air, I gave Boggle a pat on his crusty shoulder in passing. "Good job, Bog. Now go rip a leg off the other one, would you? I want to pay him some personal attention in a minute, and I don't want him scampering off." Goodfellow had his chance to run and he'd wasted it. Now I had a chance to take his ass to school, and that I was not wasting. Shoving the gun, another of Boggle's souvenirs, into my waistband, I savored the heat of the muzzle against my skin. It warmed me against the chill in more ways than one. Kneeling on the ground beside Niko's still form, I took a handful of the blond braid and gave it an affectionate tug. "Strike one, big brother. I'll bet you never guessed the bigger man would turn out to be a monster." I laid the tight twist of hair on his chest and straightened the collar of his coat. "I always told you I was one, didn't I? But you never listened." It was as the hand suddenly looped around my wrist that I noticed… no blood. On his chest, there was no blood, only charred cloth.

The eyes blinked, the emptiness transmuting into something far more dangerous. "You are a monster." The voice was hoarse, roughened with pain. "But my brother isn't."

Bulletproof vest… the bastard was wearing a bulletproof vest. Abruptly, I realized that as well as I knew Niko, he knew half of me equally as well. He knew Cal's heart wasn't in the way of the sword, but rather in the way of the gun. When push came to shove, Cal could use any weapon, but personal preference was always going to tell. All that familial intimacy had come back to bite me in the ass. The grip squeezing my wristbones until they ground painfully together wasn't too pleasant either. Sticking around didn't seem like the best idea at the moment and I flashed my other hand toward the gun at my waist. My hand was on the rubber grip when I felt a sharp pain over my breastbone. Half an inch of Niko's favorite dagger was sticking into my shirt—not to mention my flesh. A quarter-sized stain of blood blossomed around the metal as I released the gun.

"Ouch," I said mildly, touching a finger to the edge of the blade. "You play rough, big brother."

The gray eyes, a memory of what mine had been, narrowed, but Nik remained silent as he let go of my wrist, retrieved my gun, and tossed it far into the bushes. He had sat up confidently without the gingerly motion I would expect from a cracked rib or two. Stoic, hiding his pain, both the physical and the mental. The knife didn't shift in position as he moved, not even a millimeter.

"What would Mom say about all this?" I clucked my tongue in rebuke. "Oh, I know. That she should've drowned me at birth. And you know what? She'd have been right." Leaning forward purposely, I felt the blade press harder against my chest. Slowly, I took off my sunglasses and dropped them to the grass. Pewter eyes met silver. "You know something else, Nik?" Placing a hand over his, I playfully pulled at the dagger until it buried itself just a shade deeper in me. "You don't have the balls."

"Maybe he doesn't, you misbegotten nightmare, but I do." Goodfellow's voice came behind me, sharply furious. A hand buried itself in my hair and yanked me backward. On the ground in a position that echoed the one Niko had just occupied, I looked up to see Robin, the worse for wear. His coat was shredded as well as his sweater. Bloody gashes crossed his chest and his eyes were dilated black with rage. It was the same rage that had his sword swinging toward my throat so fast I could all but hear the air hiss in its wake. It occurred to me that I might have made a slight miscalculation. Niko would hesitate to kill me outright, for Cal's sake. Goodfellow didn't have any such problem. He might have liked Cal, sure, but I was pretty certain he liked himself a whole lot more. With him, sympathy was going to take a backseat to self-preservation every time. It was the son of a bitch's one good quality. It was too bad the one thing I admired about him was the one that could get me killed.

Could
, but not necessarily
would
.

Niko came through, protecting me just as he'd always done. Deflecting Robin's blade at the last second with his own, he said quietly, "No."

Panting with exertion and frustration, Robin turned and looked over at Niko, who now stood with an arm held unconsciously close to his side in a protective gesture. He could try to hide it all he wanted, but I had hurt him, even if only a little. Hopefully, I'd be able to hurt him a lot more… hurt him unto death.

Goodfellow kept the point of his sword hovering above my neck. "Nik, you have to see. You have to realize." Calming slightly, his breath slowing, he continued almost unwillingly. "Your brother, he wouldn't want to live like this. Everything I've seen of him, everything you've told me… he would hate it. He would despise it with all his soul."

I relaxed against the grass, putting my hands behind my head and raising my eyebrows." 'Nik'? 'Everything you've told me'?" I repeated with cynical incredulity. "You two have gotten awfully cozy since I've been gone. You haven't dumped Promise already, have you, big brother? Please, God, at least tell me it wasn't some sort of clichéd affirmation-of-life thing. I'll save you the trouble of shish-kebabing me and just die of embarrassment instead."