Downfall

  I’d slammed the metal shutter closed to the booth and locked it, but not before I saw the guy walk away, pale blond hair washed out under our dim lights. He was walking slow and grim as if his dog had been run over. Fifty bucks to get on someone’s good side and here was hoping we lived long enough to spend it. Asshole. I hadn’t thought about him again beyond giving the money to Nik to feed us, clothe us, and keep Sophia in the dark about it. Out of nowhere there was an explosion of white and gold light around the guy as he kept walking, and then he was gone. Vanished. Supernatural dicks. I cleaned the money out of the booth, including the fifty bucks. Fifty bucks and sorry about your impending doom, kid. “God’s work, my ass,” I’d snorted, and stomped a white-and-gold feather into the mud as I’d left to find Nik and get supper.

  The recollections became so sharp and real that I stopped running through the waist-high grass to swear. Light blond hair, gold-and-white wings, following after an acquaintance of ours named Robin, throwing a little God’s work in there.

  “Ishiah, that worthless son of a bitch.” Fifty goddamn dollars to get on Robin’s good side, fifty bucks to get laid by a puck. Fifty dollars were his thirteen silver pieces. I was glad that hadn’t worked out for him at all and Goodfellow haven’t given him the time of day for twelve more years. Ishiah had known about the Auphe, which Robin hadn’t when we were young, and Ishiah had left us anyway. Angels and peris, neither were worth a damn. They’d saved us once when it was easy, but when it came to the Auphe—the truest of monsters—they hid behind excuse of rules and fake ignorance.

  Robin would’ve taken us if he’d known about the Auphe, but we hadn’t known enough about him or them to tell. As far as we knew, he was human and that wasn’t any help. And as far as he knew, the Auphe in me much harder to sense at that age, we were human kids that needed to live their lives until they were old enough to have the stamina and legality to hang around with him. He’d been waiting for us, ready to find us when life decided the time was right. If he had known about the Auphe, he would’ve hidden us from them immediately. He would’ve died trying to save us if he’d known. He’d said so when finally admitting to the reincarnation bizarreness, and I believed him as I believed only Nik in this world. Robin hadn’t known and so had walked away to let us grow and develop as this life demanded until he would see us again, grown and ready for more adventure.

  Ishiah . . . he had left us and had walked away without a backward glance. Ishiah, who had known that the Auphe chased us, and had given us fifty bucks. Two twenties and a ten, and good luck surviving the entire Auphe race who is after you. Fifty bucks, but you might be able to bribe the totality of the Auphe nation with that if you bargain wisely.

  “Ishiah, that worthless son of a bitch,” I growled.

  That had to be out of nowhere for Nik, but he was used to that from me and kept going. Beside me, he pushed me back into motion. “That’s your customary opinion of him, but not pertinent right now.”

  He had no idea what I was talking about, and with the situation we were dealing with, that was for the best. “Yeah, it usually is. Duck!” I yelled.

  Niko hit the ground and rolled over onto his back as I swung the shovel and half decapitated the Bae leaping out of the grass at us, fast and strong as the lion I was. With transparent, glittering scales, eight-inch fangs from a snake meant to pin and rip flesh, inherited from their succubus mothers. The white skin beneath the scales, the metal composition of the fangs, if not the dark color, the crimson eyes, the slippery white hair cascading down their backs like a waterfall made for hypothermia and death—that was Auphe.

  “Home run,” I crowed.

  The Bae staggered. Grimm called them the Second Coming, an improvement on the Auphe. I would have thought he’d learned some after the last time he’d sicced them on us, which ended up in their death. Gruesome and bloody, like one of your better sparring sessions, it was saved in my mental scrapbook. We’d killed them, but that didn’t mean that was all of them unfortunately, and not one who fought us survived. Once you’d fought a real Auphe, a Bae . . . a Bae was nothing. If Grimm knew any other half Auphe besides me, I’d tell him he needed to invest in peer review of his Frankenstein lab work. If he didn’t have peers, as I was not at all willing to help, then he should review and rethink his own work.

  However you saw it, Grimm had never fought an Auphe or he would’ve known his Bae weren’t going to do the trick against those who had fought them and won.

  I gave our attacker a vicious grin or maybe it was my I-just-won-the-lottery-grin—sometimes I didn’t know the difference since both put me in a good mood—as it weaved back and forth, trying to keep its cervical spine from fracturing in half completely. It held on to its head, handfuls of hair, with both hands and was washed chest to waist in black blood. It bared its enormous curve of titanium metal fangs and hissed at me, little garter snake that it was.

  I leaned closer and hissed in an exact echo back, “It’s an old saying, but Grimm should’ve taught it to you anyway. ‘There’s no crying in baseball.’”

  I’d played sports when I was young. Niko thought it would help run off my excess, more than human energy. And it had worked for a while, until my lack of comprehension regarding rules became more of an issue when a dodgeball in your hand had not been as effective as a baseball bat. I’d never understood rules and I didn’t to this day. If you were playing to win, you’d do absolutely anything and rules didn’t count. Winning was winning, and did I get that?

  Yes, I did.

  That meant I carried my bat with me after hitting the ball to take down a second baseman before he could tag me out, or I tackled a kid before he made it to home plate, banging his head into the ground until I was sure that home plate was the very last thing on his mind. I didn’t hurt anyone that badly, didn’t put anyone in the hospital, as that would draw attention, which we didn’t do. That had been Nik’s rule and that one I understood. Attention was bad when you lived life on the run. No, no hospital—I’d been careful while doing as I had been told by the gym teacher: Win. It didn’t stop me from getting labeled with “rage issues” and daily visits with the guidance counselor. She couldn’t understood no matter how many ways I explained it to her: If winning is the goal, rules have to be ignored. You can have one or the other but not both. That’s logical. She hadn’t seen it that way and written “sociopathic tendencies” in tiny cramped letters in my file. I didn’t care. She was a human and except for Nik, humans had no idea about the world, not the real one. She could label me a sociopath if she wanted, but I wasn’t ashamed. I’d guarantee I’d survive longer than her with that label.

  Winning is all. That’s what the coach told us. It was one of the few things I had been told in school that made any sense. That was what resonated throughout me as nothing else ever had.

  Win.

  “Batter’s up!” I gave a warning call.

  I swung again and while the Bae’s head didn’t come off completely, its body did fall to the ground, where I bashed in its skull with the shovel. It only took three or four times. I had to say, it was a good shovel. It was a little rusty, but the head was solid and heavy and as much a weapon as the guns I’d left behind in our apartment. If I needed a shovel in NYC, I’d take this one with me. I might take it anyway for decoration and the occasional beat-down of whatever broke into our place.

  When we were young or even in our early twenties and we’d faced the Auphe, we’d been . . . shit . . . terrified. Killing one of them . . . only one . . . with Nik, Robin, and me, it was doable but not guaranteed. Every time you faced one, you were flipping a coin as to whether you’d live or die. Killing the entire race of over a hundred seemed impossible. I was more afraid of them than death a thousand times over. Death was easy. The Auphe were a nightmare you couldn’t imagine no matter how hard you tried, and with them there was no escape unless they wanted it. They were monsters to the other monsters. They were crazed, blo
odthirsty, sadistic, insanely cunning, and you could not win against all of them unless you were willing to die and take them with you. Unless you were lucky enough that they missed your plan and let you die when you took them with you. Auphe didn’t understand sacrifice and giving your life for something else. They couldn’t predict that.

  Yet that’s what we’d done . . . but it’d worked out better than I’d hoped, although the suitcase nuke the Vigil had provided us with, ah . . . the irony . . . had contributed quite a bit.

  It had worked though and that was all that mattered.

  Then Grimm, a half-breed like me, who’d been running free while I hadn’t known and while the Auphe themselves hadn’t known, had captured succubae and made these things—these Bae. One-fourth human, one-fourth Auphe, and half succubae.

  They were . . . curious and interesting.

  At first.

  Grimm had been different. He’d lived life in a cage for half Auphe failures, those who couldn’t gate, for eighteen years with a part-Auphe caretaker/torturer watching, and tormenting him and the others. That would drive anyone insane—until he had learned to gate and escaped, carrying insanity and a grudge so massive that King Kong couldn’t have lifted them with both hands.

  But I’d spent two years with the real thing, living as the real thing, the Auphe in Tumulus, with all they could say and do to me. I didn’t remember it, but I knew I fought as they fought, I ate what they ate. . . . I still couldn’t even approach that thought sideways without lunging for the bathroom without quite knowing why, except it was something so bad, so wrong that I thought I’d sooner die than remember.

  And I learned to gate as they did. While I knew that had happened—the Auphe wanted me as their weapon, and that meant they had to make me the same as them or at least think and act the same, what else would be the point? It might have worked. I didn’t know anything other than when I left through my gate I was naked and covered in blood. It hadn’t been my blood either. It had been Auphe blood, and it was my sire’s blood—I’d never call it a father. I’d torn him to pieces to make my escape.

  It was one more thing I knew, although I couldn’t picture any of it. All my memories of Tumulus were buried in my subconscious. My conscious had built a wall . . . a door . . . something that couldn’t be breached or open between the two. I didn’t complain. You tend not to when your brain comes up with methods to keep you sane. It hid the specifics of those two years away to let me hold on to my sanity. I knew about them in the way you know of your first Christmas. You could guess what went on, what had happened around you at the time—Santa, a tree, presents—but you couldn’t dredge up a mental picture, a memory of the genuine event. In this case, I didn’t want to remember, because if I did . . . Grimm, wouldn’t he be fucking pissed?

  If I remembered those two years, Grimm would watch me take his place—as an Auphe—true and the worst of the worst.

  Insanity and slaughter made flesh—and one who would consider Grimm an insult to the Auphe race, an abomination born only to die.

  Watching the Bae come after me the first time, seeing the speed of their moves, how quickly they could gate. I thought that they could fight just enough to be a challenge, but could they take a half Auphe like me? Were they capable? Who knew? That’s what I’d wondered at the time.

  I found out.

  No. Nope. Don’t bother calling. I wasn’t rolling out of bed for anything less than ten of the snakes. And I’d have to think about it long and hard at even ten.

  I’d gone from entertained at the challenge to pissed and offended when Grimm sicced his babies on me. Grimm could take me or I could take Grimm, depending on how much of my humanity I had left and was willing to sacrifice. Grimm and I, we were matched. We could battle to the death easily—winner or loser but most likely a tie.

  Grimm’s Second Coming, on the other hand? His Bae? His kiddies he said had evolved beyond the now-gone Auphe? No way. Maybe in fifty years when you have a few hundred of them and they’ve matured enough that they might have a chance. But a one- to five-year-old Bae, physically mature but not in the hunting sense, gating and claws aside, it couldn’t spell predator much less be one . . . not to me.

  I did know that the three Grimm had sent couldn’t. Three of them, what was he thinking? I could handle three while fighting with one hand and jacking off with the other. I was insulted as hell.

  Feeling the gate open behind me, I threw myself to the side and hardly saw the twin silver streaks in the air. Sitting up, I saw another Bae down, crushing the grass beneath him, each eye socket pierced by Nik’s poniards. “Nice. Blood, no matter the color, always looks better on silver.”

  “It does, I agree.” Niko went and retrieved his blades. “And thank you for the fashion advice.”

  My KA-BARs were as effective if not as sleek and bright. I got to my feet enough to crouch, no higher. “We can’t all be about the aesthetic like you, Nik.”

  “Finding out that you know the word ‘aesthetic’ makes this whole ordeal almost worthwhile.” Nik turned in a slow circle without seeing the third Bae. His eyebrows formed a disappointed V. One more kill, they said, was it that much to ask? “You said two, maybe three. You always underestimate to keep things interesting. Where’s the third?”

  The third chose that very moment to gate onto my back. He hit me hard enough that I went facedown for half a breath, the grass smell unimaginably green in my nose and lungs; then I flipped us over and somersaulted off the Bae, losing only a few stripes of skin to his ebon claws. I was back on my feet, crouching by his head and staring down at his face—white, scarlet, titanium fangs as long as my hand. “Hey,” I greeted cheerfully (the glee inherent in it carried such a shadowed psychosis I wasn’t certain I could admit it to anyone. I’d told Niko days ago I felt fine, hardly homicidal at all. I hadn’t lied. But now I wondered if homicidal was so normal for me that it did feel fine).

  “You fucked up, didn’t you?” I could see a faint reflection of myself in his eyes. “I don’t know what Grimm told you I was, but”—I laughed and snapped my teeth at him—“he left something out, didn’t he?” I knew Grimm had seen enough of me before I’d gated us away. Grimm didn’t miss a trick, and I knew he didn’t miss the physical changes in me.

  “Don’t you hate it when Daddy lies?” I leaned in even closer. “You’re Bae, right? But what do you think I am?”

  The crimson eyes were frozen on me while his arms and legs twitched, but they didn’t move at all beyond that, not aggressively at the least. “Your hair. Your eyes.” His black claws scrabbled at the bent strands of grass beneath him. “You are becoming the first. You will be Auphe.” For a Bae, he was pretty smart. “Father told us we were better, more advanced, the apex predator. Better than Auphe. He said it and so it must be.”

  I didn’t look away. Survivors don’t take their eyes away from their enemy . . . or their prey . . . but Nik said quietly, “Your hair became one-third white after you gated, while you slept. When you woke up your eyes . . . they shifted, from gray to red and back. They’re red now. Completely.” Too bad I hadn’t checked the mirror in the motel. I could’ve saved Nik the grief of having to tell me. I knew he wanted to say it less than I wanted to hear it. Saying it or hearing it, it didn’t change it, and that was how it was.

  Shit happens.

  “Yeah, I’m more and more Auphe these days, but forget that, as the true Auphe would’ve thought you Bae nothing but mongrel dogs. Nothing more than walking abortions.” My attention was immovable from the last Bae as I said that with all the philosophy in me—not my philosophy, but the Auphe one. Then again, mine too, except I had much more respect for a mongrel dog than I had for a Bae.

  I had one combat knife left in my left hand and it fit with artistic perfection in his ice white forehead. My movement was fast enough that while I was the one who’d made it, I didn’t see it, which meant I doubted the Bae did either or he woul
d’ve gated. Through his forehead and into his brain, the metal blade was embedded, instant death and less than a spoonful of blood.

  “Shit does happens little snake,” I murmured out loud this time, to the limp body. “You should’ve known that. Daddy isn’t teaching you right.”

  Removing the knife, with some crunch of bone, wasn’t entirely pleasant to hear, but you had to deal. That’s how our lives were. “Ready to go home?” I held a hand up to my brother and he pulled me to my feet. “Drive or gate? If we can hit a pharmacy, I’m more than ready. No lie.”

  “We’re stealing a car and do shut up about gating unless you include your concussion and too many gates turning you green and vomit-prone.” Niko, he was too observant, not for his own good, but for my own good. It was hardly fair.

  Niko stole a once turquoise but now faded blue Toyota? Why? They weren’t fast. The sound system was crap. They weren’t anything you desired in a stolen car, I thought. Nik said, ignorant criminal that I was, that Toyotas were the most stolen car there were. That meant much less chance of us being pulled over with one. Everyone had a Toyota. There weren’t enough cops in the world to pull them all over. Then he jammed a screwdriver into the ignition and twisted without mercy.

  Who was I to argue? I was expert at killing, less so at stealing.

  When we were in the car I tried to get the quickest of glimpses in the side mirror. It was for a time too small to barely measure, but I saw white-streaked black hair, at least a third white as Nik had said, and eyes that changed from red to gray and back to red. They were staying red longer and longer, gray less all the time. I hadn’t minded when facing the Bae. Now was different. The reflection in the mirror, it was not me. Yes, me. Not me. Yes, me. No.

  No. Not yet. I always thought I’d have more time. I’d fight for that time.