In case I lost mine or had no heartbeat or fingers left to press the button. The customary precautions. Then I took one of the two duffel bags we’d given a mystified Kalakos to carry and took out a can of spray paint. Neon glow-in-the-dark red. Another prop to Grimm’s ego. Niko had been right.
Practical was the way to go.
Playing the Auphe game for a human reason wasn’t.
And I thought people couldn’t change. This was me changing my ways.
As Niko observed, I shook the can and sprayed a large circle around the magazine. I’d stomped down the shorter grass that had sprung up through the cracks in the concrete and the paint went on fairly evenly. Outside of the circle I sprayed symbols. They looped, came to odd points, tangled with one another, turned jagged, insane, and forbidding as anything written.
“And that would be?” he questioned. I hadn’t mentioned this part to Nik. It wasn’t a weapon, unless you counted psychological ones. It might not do shit, but then again it might. If ever there was a time to pull out all the stops, this was it.
“Grimm can’t speak Auphe.” I started spraying the English translation in yet another ring around it. “He hates that. He hates that I can. From the two years they had me, I know some. I don’t remember it, like I don’t remember anything else from then. If I tried to say something in it now, I couldn’t. It just comes to me…sometimes. But Grimm doesn’t know that.” He’d know…know that I thought I was more Auphe than he was, mouthing their dead words, but Grimm didn’t know anything about what I felt when it came to that.
It didn’t mean it wouldn’t burn his ass.
For a guy who thought he was superior to the Auphe, he had a thing about which of us had the most of them in us. He was a conflicted son of a bitch. Black sheep often were. Your family of monsters throws you in a cage and has you tortured and you hate them for it. Your family of monsters throws you in a cage and has you tortured, but you want their acceptance.
Now, that was pathetically human.
“How often is sometimes?” Niko inquired, hiding that he was uneasy about that. But not hiding it very well.
“Hardly ever. Like two or three times when I was really pissed off, but only with Auphe.” Or the Auphe in me. “Nobody else brings it out.” I finished up and stood to look at my masterpiece. The English read, “It’s only an illiterate human half-breed with the cock of a herpes-ridden, snake-raping sheep who can’t speak or read the tongue of the First.”
“Grammatically atrocious, but effective,” Niko admitted.
“Grimm is as conceited as you”—I elbowed my brother—“about his intelligence. This has a chance of pissing him off so badly that control will be the last thing on his mind.”
Kalakos glanced at the circles and rapidly away. “Evil magic,” he said with dark accusation. “Those are the words of demons. They will drive us to madness.”
“Unless I spray it in your eyes, it won’t do shit to you or anyone.” I snorted and tossed the empty can of paint to Nik. “The Auphe spoke, but they didn’t write. No written language. I copied this from that spooky little girl two blocks down who’s always writing on the sidewalk. It’s gibberish.”
“Actually I think it’s Hungarian.” Niko tilted his head.
Huh. “Could be. Her place smells of goulash a lot. The good spicy kind.”
He put the paint can in his bag, folded up the bakery boxes and bags, and stuffed them in there too before splitting the grenades between the two of us. “I’ll be at twelve o’clock. Kalakos at eight. You at four. Let’s not make goulash of one another. Kalakos, stay back as far as you can until we blow it all. Once the C4 goes—and if it doesn’t do the job—you won’t have accurate enough hearing to count the grenades.” He started to offer the Javelin to me, but I shook my head.
“Grimm will definitely be after me. Janus could be after us all. Better you have it. The instruction manual’s taped to the side.” One last joke.
“And I get nothing?” Kalakos demanded. “I can and have fought with the best of them. I helped Niko escape the Cyclops. If this is all you expect of me, you should’ve left me in the car until it was done.”
“You ever used a grenade?” I asked. “A rocket? A goddamn nuke? I didn’t think so. If I’m going to be killed, I’d rather it be by Janus or Grimm than because you miscounted and threw a grenade down my throat. So hang back. Niko and I will be doing the same thing. And if we’re screwed and none of the explosives do the job—here.” I gave him back his xiphos. “So far it’s the only thing that has made Janus think twice.”
I slapped Niko on his shoulder. “See you when I see you.”
He cuffed the back of my head as he walked behind me to pick up his bag. “The Javelin has night sight. I’ll be seeing you the whole time.”
“Wait.” I pulled a ponytail holder out of my pocket…the hell with Kalakos’s identical one…and yanked my hair back tightly. Praise Jesus. I could see. “And now I can see you. Later, big brother.”
He lifted his hand, his lips curled smugly, having gotten his way. “Later, little brother.”
We all separated and headed into three different directions, burrowing into the greenery. It was almost impossible, it being as unyielding and densely woven as a prison fence, but using my combat knife, I made my way in about six feet. Grimm would know I was there. He would find me by scent and feel me as well. But knowing I was there and knowing where I was within several feet weren’t the same.
Six feet back, he wouldn’t see me, as the branches, leaves, and grass had all sprung back into place—which was important. He wore those sunglasses all the time for a reason, and not just because his eyes were red. I hadn’t inherited the Auphe heightened ability to see in the dark, but it was safe to say he had. Six feet back and hidden by nature. Six feet close and ready to blow the C4 with backup grenades in the smallish bag that I had looped from left shoulder to right hip. It woudn’t interfere much if I had to unholster my Glock with my left hand while either setting off the detonator with my right or using it to throw grenades. All assuming my left hand cooperated.
I flexed it and gritted my teeth. I straightened it, then flexed it again. This time I tasted the blood of a teeth-torn bottom lip. Now I knew. Cooperation was not on the menu, but I’d make do. If it’s not broken or severed, you can make it work and the hell with the pain. I wasn’t taking the pain pills. I’d rather hurt than lose my edge. I checked my phone one more time. It was the same. Nothing. Goddamn it, Goodfellow, I thought, your horny ass had better be alive. Then I turned the phone to vibrate and slipped it in my front jeans pocket.
The sun set and Mars rose. Mosquitoes swarmed about, but after one bit me, it and the others buzzed off. Like that succubus had once made clear: They did not like the way I tasted. I was about to check the phone again when I felt him.
Grimm was here. On the beach maybe. I didn’t try to see. It would be impossible through the New York version of the Amazon jungle. And if he was on the beach, he wouldn’t be there long. I was right. I could feel him moving…gating…triangulating our scent. There was the familiar flash of gray, silver, and black light on top of the Battery East and then they were there…on the powder magazine.
The king of the Second Coming and his malignant windup toy.
It was dark, but the night wasn’t as deep as you’d think. Janus glowed. I thought it would, but not like this. The crimson, in heat and color, that outlined each metal shield that scaled him like a dragon lit up the entire top of the powder magazine. Its eyes were lamps to lead the dead, and the face with the grinning mouth and pointed ebony teeth was half turned my way. I could see the liquid twin to lava running slowly out of its mouth. Whatever had made this had made it in a volcano and you couldn’t tell me any different. Its mouth wasn’t big enough to throw virgins into, but other than that…volcano god.
“I like this place, Caliban,” Grimm said as the gate died around him and Janus. “If nothing else, you take the game higher with every throw of the dice and ra
ttle of the bones.” The light from Janus was enough to let me see the half Auphe take a step to see over the side of their royal stage. He wanted a three-sixty view of his victory ring. He got something else instead. He walked the top, all four sides, reading the Hungarian goulash recipe and the English pseudo-translation that went with it. Every word that shone on the ground.
Graffiti to outrage the ego.
When he finished, he halted, facing me precisely. I’d been wrong that he couldn’t nail down my precise location, but I hadn’t been wrong about his being pissed. His eyes made the long-set sun as nothing. His Auphe teeth were down, the silver reflecting the red aura around the magazine, turning the metal needles into flickering flames.
“Why would I want to befoul my tongue or my eyes with the scribbling of a race that let one miserable half human destroy what was left of it?” He didn’t gate to the ground. He leaped, hitting the dirt at the base of the magazine. He made the jump down as if it had been three feet instead of twenty. It threw me off. My thumb was on the detonator, but I’d expected to see the swirl of a gate as I pressed the button. The physical action of it rather then the Auphe one put me off for a fraction of a second before I recovered.
The detonator Rapture had sold me had an inch-tall antenna and was small enough to fit in the palm of my hand. I’d dealt with C4 once or twice—some monsters are bigger than others—but I hadn’t used this much of it before on any job. It should have an approximate blast zone of thirty feet. I pressed the button on the detonator and blew that motherfucker before Grimm could gate this time or take a single step. There was a very nonstereotypical war-movie boom. Or rather…
BOOM!
Holy shit. As far back as I’d been, six feet into the weeds, which was a good fifty feet from the powder magazine, I was thrown back farther. I didn’t have any idea how far. The branches and twigs of the wild bushes whipped at me as I was tossed, but didn’t make it through my jacket. As I’d been crouching when I set off the explosive, my back was clearing a path for me. When I landed, I considered myself pretty damn lucky.
And then something else landed…on top of me. Grimm. The son of a bitch had escaped a mess of C4. Outgated an explosion that to human eyes would be instantaneous. Why the hell he wanted my help, I was beginning to wonder. Why he was enraged I could speak Auphe and he couldn’t, that I knew. The Auphe had made him and thrown him away like garbage. Said he was garbage. He hated them, but he wanted to prove to them they were wrong. He was something they couldn’t have thought possible to create: He was the first of nature’s second big fucking mistake, not the Bae. No supernatural creature thought the Auphe evolved—why would the perfect predator need to evolve? Yet they had. Grimm wanted to prove it to them, except they were gone and I was the only thing left of them. But why he thought I could be his equal, was almost his equal, was fit to wipe his royal Bae-siring ass, much less help breed his race, I didn’t know.
Outgated a fucking explosion. Jesus.
His man-made curved claws dug into my shoulder, his knee bearing all his weight was wedged against my crotch, and his hundreds of hypodermic-needle teeth were pressed against mine. I was grimacing. He was smiling. The fact that pain was peeling my lips back and rage his nevertheless had the same effect. “You insult me. You insult yourself. You’re a fool, but a fool I will give one last chance. Come to the Bae or I’ll rip off your face and your balls. But I won’t kill you. Not for hours. Not until there is nothing to remove from your bones.” His breath had the sweet fragrance of raw meat on it. The warmth of copper. The odor of death.
Sweet. It smelled sweet.
Things that are meant for you. Tell him yes. Be the Bae with him. The Second Coming is for you and him. And you want it. To rule. To kill. To make it better than before.
I held tight to the control that hadn’t let me down yet. Those thoughts weren’t true. Not unless I let them be. Not true, I repeated silently to myself. Not true. I had the power to deny them and I would. But they were…
Practical.
Be practical.
If you couldn’t keep that part of you from whispering slyly, demanding harshly, stop ignoring it—use it.
Temporarily and with a different type of control.
Four years old and I’d known what to do. I damn sure wasn’t going to do any less at twenty-four.
I didn’t fight it. Grimm was better than me—now. Fighting what was in me wouldn’t change that, and fighting it didn’t make me more human, only not as Auphe as I could be. And I could be much, much more. I’d tainted a good deal of my soul, if it existed, for control and now I was going to intentionally give it up, turn it off, push it aside. I’d have to have faith I’d be able to get it back. I’d have to believe I’d come back. A child’s assurance told me I would. I chose to believe him.
I let it go.
Let…it…go.
Things changed. My desire to join Grimm changed and it changed in all the best ways.
Join him? The laughter echoed in me—derisive, disgusted. He is a failure. No matter what he can do now, there will come a then. Auphe are not wrong in our judgments. He was a failure once. He will be a failure again. The Bae and the Second Coming are not his. They are mine. They are mine because I will take them and fix them.
Building is the sheep way. Taking is the Auphe way.
I’d been fishing my hand in the bag on the ground by my hip. He was watching for a move toward my holsters. I gave him a different one. I pulled the ring on a grenade and shoved it down the front of his jeans. “They can sew my balls back on. They’ll need a microscope to find what’s left of yours,” I snarled. “Good luck knocking up the snakes by wishing real fucking hard.”
His snarl matched mine and he flung himself off of me, retrieved the grenade, and tossed it where it exploded off in the brush. He could’ve gated out of his clothes, leaving the grenade behind too, but that would be Auphe. Fighting naked—the highest of predators, but animals too. No clothes. No history and education to refine your plans. The highest, yes, but unchanged for millions of years. They didn’t advance in their ways, didn’t retreat. A human would think that primitive.
Caliban would think it practical. Didn’t I? Why do you need weapons when you are one? Why do you need clothing when you can kill and luxuriate in the warmth among the bodies of your fresh prey? Why learn when you are the only thing worth learning about in a world that belongs to you?
“Sheep.” I said it in Auphe that the failure couldn’t understand.
“Never even a black sheep, failure. Only a malformed human sheep.” I said that in English so that he would understand it this time—to hear his shame, one no greater. “You are human, the Auphe in you barely a single cell. Any race you create with succubae is already polluted twice over. Yet I can make them right.”
By wiping them out.
I had the patience the failure only thought he had. I could wait until I finally became all Auphe. The Auphe genes in me wouldn’t stop their progress—ever. A trillion clocks ticking away inside until the day I was pure Auphe.
I would take his succubae, and then I would undo his Bae until they were nothing but piles of bloody parts and start again when the time came. Make them as Auphe as they could be until they too one day became pure. The mongrels he’d created—I could be patient, but I didn’t have a million years for them to turn. Half-pure—my race would be whole far sooner than that.
“You think you can do better than I have?” he growled.
“I know I can.” This time I pulled the Eagle and emptied the clip at his head. “Because I am Auphe.”
Inside now and, with time enough, I would be outside as well.
I gave him a grin and then the worst threat tailor-made for him. “The single one left. Auphe live free to kill.” I grinned wider. “Human failures go back to their cages.”
He’d gated as I pulled the trigger, but I was already turning, faster than I’d ever moved in my life, to where I felt reality ripple behind me. I was firing the Glock
this time before the gate even opened. I hit him several times in the chest in that one second before he disappeared again.
“So long, brother.” The sneer wasn’t on my face, but the word was soaked with it. I didn’t think he’d be coming back for a while if at all. That gave me time.
Things to do. Track him or his corpse down. Him and his Bae bastards, his succubae breeding ground. My succubae breeding ground. They were long-lived. They could wait as long as I could for my last human cell to die, gobbled up and transformed to something far superior. Then the first race to walk the earth, the first to discover the pleasure of murder, the Cains of the supernatural world—we would return.
No.
I cocked my head to the side. What was that?
I’d heard…What had I heard? A voice. Small, but determined.
No. Caliban time is over. No more practical today. It’s Cal time again. They were the words of a four-year-old. Familiar. Firm. Undeniable.