Downfall

  “I’m not sure. I think I might have saved Grimm’s instead.” A little gray behind his olive skin, Niko clenched the hand on his brother’s chest, fisting a handful of a T-shirt I’d bought as a joke not so long ago that seemed much less humorous now. “I think I might’ve saved them both. I think they would’ve killed each other. Grimm is Grimm and Cal . . . I heard Cal. He was talking about Tumulus. He remembered it. The worst parts of it”—he swallowed harshly—“and he was laughing. Robin, he was laughing.”

  Not like the first time at all, then. Not like when I had hypnotized him to remember and he’d screamed until I thought his throat would bleed. The Auphe had taken Cal at fourteen and they had kept him two long years before he escaped. There were times, great stretches of it, where a boy that young would give in and be what his tormentors forced him to be to escape the pain and horror of all that was being done to him. Maybe forget who he’d once been altogether.

  “Niko, he was fourteen when he was taken by the Auphe and sixteen when he escaped. That is not the type of kidnapping to which Stockholm syndrome can remotely be applied. There was a time at the beginning when he would’ve been Cal, but it wouldn’t have lasted long. Fourteen and at the mercy of the Auphe”—a joke as they’d had none—“he would’ve done and been whatever he had to be to survive what the Auphe were doing to him. He didn’t have any choice, and some parts of that will always lurk in him. Unfortunately Grimm happens to bring them out. But they are not the whole of him and not in any measure his fault.”

  I could not imagine what he’d gone through, and wasn’t that an amazing lie, even for me, that I had just told myself? Unfortunately, I could imagine it. I could imagine too much of it, and I knew I wouldn’t have survived it. Two years? After a week I would have chewed through my own wrist to bleed my life away. I could kill a true Auphe. Cal had been with over a hundred. A fourteen-year-old boy had survived what a million-year-old puck couldn’t have.

  “You are the bravest son of a bitch I have ever known in the whole of time, kid,” I said to his closed eyes and still face. I lightly slapped his cheek with affection; pucks had no brothers save for me, and my brother in Cal could not be equaled. I would fix this. Ishiah’s God was not my god, but if he had been I would’ve been his right hand of justice or, more appropriately, his sinister left hand of bloody vengeance. Watch me. I then said briskly to Niko, “Did you shoot Grimm as well?”

  “I had to. As I said, they would’ve killed each other. But the bastard gated away as soon as I hit him.”

  I groaned in spite of myself. “He would. As persevering as Cal when it comes to clinging to life. In many ways I almost wish we could save him as well.”

  Niko replied with an immediately wary tone to his accusation, “He’s evil.”

  “He was kept in a cage from birth until eighteen years of age. He was treated in a manner I don’t care to think about.” Electrocution, branding, starvation—both Cal and Grimm had let those slip, Cal in moments of self-doubt and Grimm in battle.

  “He’s what the Auphe made him. He’s not evil in that he chose it, but he is too far gone.” I tsked at the claws on Cal’s hand, unfastened and removed the hateful glove. “Of the three of us in this room, none of our hands are lily white or free of blood in this life. If you count my long one and the stream of lives of you and your brother . . .” I smiled carefully. I’d seen Grimm’s Auphe metal grin. I could make him seem as a toddler if I wanted with what I could exhibit in a show of my teeth, pearly white though they were, but I held back. “. . . Grimm is but a babe in comparison to the combination of who we are and what we’ve done throughout history.”

  Niko frowned and I could see the protest forming on his lips. I tapped his temple before he could. “You don’t remember, and I’m glad of it. I would have it no other way, but do know, Niko, this life is one of the true episodes of karma I’ve seen you show. This life wipes away a few others you have lived.” I let it go, as it made no difference, not in the end. How Grimm came to be was horrific, who he was inevitable, but no matter the why, the how, or the sympathy he might deserve, I wouldn’t hesitate to kill him and I wouldn’t regret it.

  I’d consider it compassion.

  I’d mentioned Grimm to Cal once when he was half-asleep after one of my smaller, but still quite alcohol-laden parties. Grimm and the other half Auphe kept prisoner in those cages, tormented by a sadistic jailer, more animal than Auphe or human. Unable to gate to escape. And Cal, who wouldn’t remember saying it now or wouldn’t have remembered it the next morning after the party, had said, “What is done cannot be undone. What is made cannot be unmade.” It sounded as if he’d said it before, if only to himself.

  It was true.

  Grimm could not be unmade. No matter how he came to be, he was here now and he had to be dealt with. “I brought the car. Let’s get Cal out to it and home.” Not that Grimm couldn’t find us there once he woke up from the tranquilizer wherever he had gone, but if he did, he did. We would deal with it if it happened.

  Niko’s hand wrapped around my ankle, gripping it tightly. “Thank you for this. There aren’t many people I know . . .” He shook his head. “There is no one I know at all who would come when I asked them to help me with my full-on Auphe psychotic brother with no guarantee he wouldn’t try to kill them. Promise would come, but take the time to arm herself thoroughly. More and more she passes the chance to see Cal.” I could see him wondering, unsure whether she feared his brother or feared the end. I thought it was both. “So . . . thank you.” He rested a hand against the side of my neck briefly and then he stood, bent, and managed to get the deadweight of his brother slung over his shoulder.

  “Someday I’ll tell you how you rescued me from a drunken Caligula in his stables with his brand-new stallion.” I grinned and slapped him lightly on the back of the head. “You probably would not consider us remotely close to even.”

  “You’re not joking, are you?”

  “Oh, how you wish that I were,” I answered gleefully. Niko walked, footfalls heavy, toward the door. Cal wasn’t too much weight to bear, but neither was he light, in all ways.

  Make of that what you will.

  “I never joke about the occasions when I am able to genuinely scar your psyche for a lifetime, Niko. Who do you take me for?”

  “The devil?”

  Please.

  The devil wished he had half my style and a fourth my schemes.

  * * *

  My phone beeped as I sat beside Cal still sleeping in the bed in his personal guest room. Niko was also asleep on the living room couch, as I might have drugged his tea—not enough to knock him out completely in case we were attacked, but enough to let him sleep if he needed it or I needed it for him. I was excellent in judging those sorts of measurements.

  I had taught the Borgias everything they knew.

  The number came up unknown, but I had all my sources working day and night and sources I didn’t personally know, difficult as it was to believe there were any of those left, so I took the call. “Goodfellow. The reward is still guaranteed, but my patience is limited and your life even more so if you don’t deliver. Go.”

  “Robin, you confuse me, and that really is something. It is!” There was a familiar voice and the laughter that is tears that is laughter again of someone who knows all that is to come and has no surprises left in their future. Wouldn’t that make you cry and laugh all in one?

  “You are the best of friends with Cal and Nik and the worst of enemies to anyone else and then you cover that up with the face—handsome—and words of a walking, talking, living celebration. You’re a party, Hob the first, one that will kill the moment someone’s back is turned with a knife in their spine, a smile on your face, and a song on your lips.” The girl laughed again, a little more full of cheer this time. “I should’ve read you much sooner, but I was naïve and young.” A soft-voiced exhalation that reminded me of ice cre
am . . . sweet and buttery on the tongue. I could picture her light brown skin, dark chocolate eyes, and curly red hair that fell to her shoulders.

  And yes, naïve and young she had been.

  “Georgina.” Now, here was a psychic worthwhile, not like the others. A psychic too good, in fact, as she served fate and fate had no mercy. The fact that she knew I came from Hob showed how good . . . and merciless she could be. I had been Hob, in a manner of speaking—the first puck who would’ve given any Auphe at least a small run for their money. Even after Hob had made a second puck, me, in our race’s parthenogenesis reproduction, I was still Hob, identical in thought and memories, as well as desires as twisted and murderous as those of any Auphe. It was only through time after Hob and I separated to roam opposite sides of the world that I eventually developed a personality of my own. To become Robin Goodfellow with more pleasurable and decadent desires. Who sought companions, good food, alcohol—I was a different puck. It didn’t change the fact. . . .

  Once I had been Hob.,

  To know that indeed made Georgina the Oracle of this generation. But she was one who refused to interfere with intended fate or assume it could possibly be interfered with at all, which made her not very useful. All the power in the world and she refused to use it, refused to think it could be used or that anything could be changed

  I gave Cal a quick check, but he was still under with no signs that the love of his life . . . one life, spare me . . . had pulled him to consciousness. “I thought you did not believe in the destiny that could be changed, that you spat on the history of Delphi, the Oracle you could be now if you truly cared.” If Georgina were more like them, I’d have spent the past few years with less pulling out of my hair and killing not quite so many people who might have only questionably deserved it.

  “Those were the days, weren’t they? But do you not remember the strife and chaos they caused with the simple truth?” She sounded wistful and far away, mentally if not physically. “And you know I don’t mind meddling in the smaller matters. Do you know that I met Grimm? Actually I did,” she exclaimed. “He’s scary, isn’t he? But so much like Cal I almost couldn’t believe it when he tried to kill me.” The laughter had gone to nostalgia to a faint giggle and then to a deep sadness. “I changed his thoughts. I was his teacher, not in New York. I couldn’t stay there anymore, not when I couldn’t do what Cal asked.”

  Look at their future and tell him it was safe for them to be together, safe for her. She simply would not—and her philosophy that fate was fate didn’t make me any more forgiving of her for it. And Cal couldn’t live with that, the thought that she could die because of him and his life, but she refused to give in. Genuine, holy psychics are a true pain in the ass.

  “But who shows up in my classroom no matter how far I go but Cal’s brother? Isn’t that the way it always is?” She didn’t sound surprised.

  “Grimm is not his brother, and you changed his thoughts?” I questioned, which wasn’t what I wanted to know, but the chances of George calling again were remote. I had to take what I could get.

  “I know. You couldn’t care less that he tried to kill me. Your heart has room for only three people, and I’m not one of them.” Now she was amused and too accurate, as always she’d been. “Moving on, Grinch, I was teaching GED students and I told him I knew who and what he was. I didn’t have to look. If anything, he impacts this world so strongly that he forced the visions to look into me. I knew how that would end.” Not well, I knew myself. “But he is so like Cal that I told him anyway that I knew him and was sorry for him, but . . . it didn’t matter. He remembers the illusion of killing me vaguely, but not who I was to Cal or where Cal lives due to some meddling with his thoughts on my part. As much as I could meddle and don’t ask if I could do more. I can’t. I do what I can do, and if I can’t, I can’t.”

  I truthfully thought that an enormous load of bullshit, not that I would say bullshit aloud but I would think it. Instead I passed it all by and asked something important, for once in this conversation, “He found Cal regardless as is our luck. What can you tell me, then?”

  “Oh.” She was quiet a moment. “Will you tell Cal I miss him?”

  “No,” I said flatly. Would I tell Cal the love of this miserable life determined to kick him in the testicles at every turn that she missed him? I knew the Marquis de Sade, but that did not mean I was a sadist. “You love him, but you do not love him enough to give him what he needs.” Reassurance. “Would you really want me to?”

  “If I was kind, I’d say no.” She was quiet a moment. “I’ll be kind. He deserves that, doesn’t he? Some measure of peace?”

  “More than that,” I said.

  “You’re right.” I heard her let it go. Let Cal go, as it was the most thoughtful thing she could do for him. Let the past be the past. Now, “I have an address for you. One in Canada I’ve sensed you need. Do you have a pen?”

  I had a photographic memory, not always, but when I needed it.

  Gods damn the pen.

  “I’m listening.”

  * * *

  Cal woke up.

  It was approximately half an hour after Georgina had called, not that I would ever tell him about that. He coughed once, blinked, opened his eyes to stare at the ceiling, then slant them in my direction. I’d rather hoped he’d be confused, but he wasn’t. “I fucked up, didn’t I?” he asked with complete misery.

  “You did . . . a little.” I’d removed the elastic band from his hair as efficiently as I did for Ishiah most nights, and had spread out the ponytail to a messy halo of his newly quicksilver hair on the pillow. I ran my fingers through it now in comfort and then commanded, “Audite me.” Listen to me.

  “Audio vobis,” he replied. I am listening. His eyes and face had gone blank, and did I feel guilty about that? Yes, I did, but it was done and it had to be done. Guilt was irrelevant.

  Audio vobis.

  Cal, who had thought English and Auphe were the only languages he could learn, had learned Latin quite easily under hypnosis. But that was my burden to bear and no one else’s. “Et Tumulum non record abitur ultra non erit.” You will not remember Tumulus and you never will again. It was a patch, at the very best, and one I could only hope would hold until Grimm was gone. “Obedite.”

  Obey.

  Cal’s eyes were on me, red without a hint of gray. “Ní bheidh mé ag déanamh.”

  Gaelic, before it had made its journey from what would be Ireland and Scotland. Gaelic, not Latin, not my hypnosis, and no, he was telling me, I will not obey.

  It was Cullen again and Cullen who had died at five years and yet was worse than any version of an Auphe Cal. Who could think it? Cullen was relentless. “We are done and over—Bhí muiddéanta.” The kid was hard-core as ever a kid had been. But then this kid had traveled lives until he’d landed in this one, a life where he would be Cal. I shouldn’t be shaken over it.

  “Mura bhfuil tú ag éisteacht le domunless.”

  Unless you paid heed to me. Unless you listen. Cullen was a bossy little shit too, no denying that, but I wasn’t surprised there either, was I? Hardly. No, I was not, and good for him, I thought reluctantly with my own rebellious trickster respect.

  “I will listen, Cullen,” I said. “I am a trickster, but tricksters need help now and again too. I will listen. I won’t discard what you have to say. This I swore, as before, times three over.”

  The unbreakable oath. This kid had me on the run, Robin Goodfellow, and wasn’t that something to put you in awe?

  “Grimm is better because Grimm cares for no one or nothing,” Cullen said, which was when my slightly optimistic mood faded somewhat, although I’d known it to be true. I’d been of the opinion that Grimm wasn’t better, that he and Cal were equally matched, but that could only be factual to a certain degree and I’d known that. If Cal considered Niko worth saving and not fair prey, which was tru
e or he would’ve attacked him at their apartment with Grimm, then Cal had weaknesses he wouldn’t give up. In that Cullen was correct. Grimm was better, as he had no Niko, no weaknesses. The only mind-set Cal could use to defeat him would involve denying his family, denying Niko, denying me, ending both our lives, and he wouldn’t do that.

  Could not do that.

  “Yes, Grimm is better, but it’s not the best who always wins. Not when I’m around. Not when I cheat. Trust me when I say that no one has cheating abilities are quite close to mine.” Normally I would’ve sounded smug when I said that, but now I sounded desperate. Never had I had so much riding on someone believing me. I could double-deal like no one that had ever been birthed or born. I had been banned from Vegas and Atlantic City forty years ago, and that was gambling and me not trying hardly at all at what barely qualified as a game. It had been nothing close to what we were playing here, and yet I could cheat all the same. I cheated in every aspect of life and always came out on top. I knew that. Everyone knew that. Cal knew that. I hoped Cullen trusted his future self to give me the benefit of the doubt.

  “Then cheat and make it work. Without you, they are dead. Niko and Cal are as dead as the one you called Phelan and me.” Cullen’s voice drifted to the higher birdsong pitch of a young child out of the grown mouth of Cal, but it didn’t stop the next words from being a killing frost. “Unless you stop it . . . this time.”

  As I hadn’t stopped it in his time.

  Or all the other times.

  As I had never stopped it.

  “Cullen . . .”

  He paid no attention. “Cal has a plan.” The Auphe red eyes turned to the dark of a starless sky. Cullen’s eyes. I’d not ever seen them, but I knew. “His plan will kill him. Him and Niko. If Cal dies, if we die”—as they were in many ways one and the same—“that’s all right. But my brother cannot die. Will not die. No more of this. No more following me everywhere, even into death.” His voice was getting louder and more fierce. The last thing I wanted was to have Niko wake up in the middle of this.