Slashback

  Sooner or later in this world, everything breaks.

  Everyone breaks.

  “Do you know how old Niko was when he first killed for me?” I hissed in the puck’s ear as I shoved him farther back out of range as a sharp sai flew over our heads. “Fifteen. He was fifteen when he killed Jack’s homicidal buddy. Why do you think he is the way he is? All Zen and so fucking bottled up? It’s because he’s a time bomb. He killed a man to save my life when he was fifteen, lived through dragging my ass back to sanity after two years in Auphe Hell, ran with me to escape the sons of bitches, and lost me again. And then again and fucking again. You don’t know what’s inside him and what he’s had to do to stay sane.” To watch out for me, but not lose it so much that everyone he sees is a threat? To know that it’s not necessary to bury his katana in everyone who walks within a block of me although that’s exactly what his instincts and our history told him he should do?

  Of all of it, what had happened when he was fifteen with Junior, it had been the worst. Over the Auphe stealing me away, it had been the worst, because I’d warned Nik about Junior and he hadn’t believed me. He wouldn’t forgive himself for that and I couldn’t get him over it as we didn’t talk about that time. We both thought we had our reasons.

  I would simply have to make sure mine didn’t come to light, but Niko’s . . . it was time for them to see the light of day. No more hiding for him. It had turned cancerous, poisonous, and it had to be cut away before he could heal.

  Because this? What was happening now? This was as far from recovery as you could get.

  Nik was now chopping viciously at the pummel horse with a sword. I couldn’t remember the god-awful jokes Robin had told when he’d first seen that piece of equipment, not with the raw snarl on Niko’s face. I knew what he was seeing and it wasn’t a piece of gym equipment. It was Junior. Given the opportunity Nik would kill Junior a hundred more times and it would still not be enough.

  He’d left a part of himself in that attic he had not gotten back and now he was back there, losing more of himself. That was not fucking acceptable.

  “Stay here.” I shoved Robin down on the floor between the couch and the table. “I don’t think he’ll know who you are.” He would know who I was. I didn’t question that, not as I sprang up from my crouch, ran across the floor, and tackled him from the side as he sliced a blade into a punching bag. I knew he saw me coming. I knew he was armed. I knew he was out of his mind.

  And I knew he wouldn’t hurt me.

  This brutality was aimed at himself, along with a stark self-blame that had his control so abruptly shattered. He held on to the sword like it was his only lifeline as we lay on our sides where I’d taken us down on the mat. “It’s me, Nik. It’s Cal. It’s Cal, big brother. Junior’s gone. He’s been gone a long time. It’s just us.” For a second, I thought I was wrong. I thought he didn’t know me, but then he turned his head back toward me and I saw the recognition, the blood from twelve years ago spilling behind his eyes. With the blood came sanity, although I couldn’t be certain he was happy to have it back. He dropped the sword and rolled over to wrap his arms around me, hurting too much to know how tightly he was holding on. He had to hold on, because he was lost. Nik, my brother—the man I’d thought of just days ago as fixed and unmoving as the North Star, was lost. He rested his forehead against mine and whispered one word for me alone. “Sorry.”

  Fifteen. He’d been fifteen damn years old. A kid. As if any of it could’ve been his fault.

  I lifted my hand to grasp his trailing braid and gave it a hard tug, that reassuring weight he was used to. He was sorry and I didn’t know that there was much that I could say that would change his mind about anything. I said something else instead. “We’re the reason Junior’s dead. You’re right, that’s Jack’s problem with our asses.” I said it, because Nik needed it. The problem spelled out for him. That’s how he managed to survive, to be able to take step after step, pretty much our entire lives, by fixing problems.

  Goodfellow’s voice was strained behind us. “Now that we know Jack’s issue with you, we need to discuss something else.” I lifted my head to see him standing now, only several feet from us with Ishiah behind him. Ishiah’s wings were wrapped around Robin. To protect. To comfort. Both maybe? From their expression something bad was coming.

  Could there possibly be worse than this?

  “We need to talk about angels,” Ishiah said.

  * * *

  Jack the storm spirit with wings who saved sinners, knew his Bible, raised the dead, had worshippers, and called humans his Flock. Goodfellow had been gathering the information and it had hit critical mass with “sinners,” hoodie-clad praying followers, and the sacrificial skins. Enter Ishiah stage right. I shouldn’t have been at all surprised by what my boss and Robin told us.

  It didn’t change the fact that I was.

  “Let me get this straight: for six or seven years now you both, and everyone who works in the bar, have been lying to Nik and me about angels not existing. Is that right?” Hearing the words, I was still having trouble believing it.

  I sat on the mat beside Niko, leaning against him. My ribs were screaming from the exertion, but they weren’t my concern at the moment. I’d white-knuckled my way through worse. Nik needed me there and visibly alive rather than stumbling around the kitchen looking for pain pills. I could’ve tried to pull him with me, but from the set to his shoulders, moving wasn’t part of his plan. Breathing was barely part of it. I wasn’t the only one white-knuckling it, but while I’d gone through worse than cracked ribs, Niko hadn’t gone through worse than this. Out of the corner of my eye I could almost see a short blond ponytail instead of a long braid, see a smaller frame, see eyes and a face that hadn’t yet mastered the art of hiding emotion that could be used against him.

  Niko looked much younger than twenty-seven right now. Younger and older and the misery and recriminations of twelve years ago so plain on his face that I glared at Goodfellow and Ishiah each time they started to glance at him. This was private and they had to be here, but they didn’t have to see this. He’d recover . . . and he would recover . . . at his own pace. He didn’t need them watching him like a lab experiment while he did it. Sympathy would make him feel only . . . lesser. Niko had stood firmly on his own two feet mentally before he could do it physically. He wouldn’t be grateful to know someone saw him stumble.

  “That whole ‘peris are the seed behind the myth that became angels,’ that was all bullshit?” I went on. I’d thought Robin lied as tricksters do, but that he’d never lied to us, nothing big at any rate. Well, he had and it was huge.

  “It’s only half a lie really.” Robin was back on the couch with Ishiah. “Peris aren’t angels . . . anymore. Peris are retired angels with most of their heavenly powers stripped away. They’re expatriates if you will. They’ve gone native. Earth is their home, not Heaven. So when you asked me if that first peri you saw was an angel I wasn’t technically lying.”

  “You’re a trickster. Jesus, take credit for it already, gloat, and go on. I’m used to watching your other victims be mortified. Why should I be any different?” And the other paien hadn’t told me there were angels in addition to peris or where peris came from because I’d never asked. They assumed I knew. They knew, everyone knew. Why would they think anything else when it came to me?

  “It’s not like that,” Robin protested, leaning forward to rest his elbows on his knees. “Although six years is a good record, and the fact you didn’t even try to find out from anyone else because you found me that trustworthy while knowing I’m a trickster, that is rather priceless—” An elbow, and a sharp one if his wince was anything to go by, hit him in the ribs. “But that’s neither here nor there. I didn’t lie to simply amuse myself. Think, Cal. Think how young you were when you came to New York, the kid who thought he was a monster, the worst one in the world next to the Auphe. Your self-loathing was epic. Your angst astronomical. The whole emo-thing . . . well, it was a c
ultural trend and I won’t go there. But if I’d told you that angels did exist, then you would’ve wanted to know about Heaven and then you would’ve asked about Hell. I knew precisely what you would think after that.”

  He was on the money, no doubt. Six years ago I’d have known there was a Hell. I’d have also known I was destined for it—no way out. “You’re right.” I leaned harder against Nik who hadn’t said a word about any of this. I was beginning to worry. Shit, I was already worried. “I’d have thought I was on the Hell-express for sure.”

  “And now?” he asked, the curiosity plain in the inquisitive tilt of his head.

  I gave him a black smile. “Hell? Let them lock the doors. They couldn’t fucking survive my ass.”

  “Out of curiosity, where do paien go as apparently you’re here to tell us Jack is an angel gone rogue and he cares nothing about paien souls?” It was Nik and better yet it was Nik with a pertinent Nik-style question and an instinctual leap that would be spooky if true. What the hell was I thinking: sinners, Bible, wicked, whores and thieves, raising the dead, judgmental ass—Jack was an angel all right.

  “There are hundreds of paien heavens, fewer hells though—we’re not quite so condemning. For every paien race there is at least one heaven if not ten or twelve. Anything you can imagine is out there.”

  I didn’t ask Goodfellow about Auphe Heaven and Hell. I imagined they were one and the same. If all you know is murder and torture, then you can’t comprehend wrong and if you can’t imagine wrong, you can’t conceive of a punishment for it. That didn’t mean I wanted to go to wherever dead Auphe went. Whatever they considered Heaven, I knew I’d consider Hell five times over. For the time being I let that go and waited on the Jack-the-angel question.

  Ishiah’s wings had disappeared once he’d sat down, but now, as they always did when he was annoyed, pissed, unsettled, conflicted—you name it—they’d reappeared. “Once Robin found out from you about the human followers mentioning praying and Heaven and put that together with Jack teleporting and raising the dead, he knew it had to be an angel, a particular angel. Pyriel. He’s one of the angels responsible for examining the souls for purity in Heaven. He’s also one of the very few angels and the only one missing that is entrusted with the power to raise the dead.”

  “That fits Jack. Judging all over the place and a fan of zombies, but what do you mean missing? Doesn’t someone keep track of that? Like, I don’t know, God?” I asked with caustic disbelief. Was heavenly bureaucracy truly that bad? Angels disappeared in the paperwork of it all?

  “Pyriel has been missing almost five hundred years,” Ishiah said. “The other angels are aware and have searched for him.” Now the wings spread and I wondered how I’d ever doubted warriors of Heaven walked among us. “God is always present but does not interfere.”

  “Does not interfere? What do you mean doesn’t interfere? You’ve got a psycho angel frigging skinning people for at least two hundred years. I think the time for interfering has long since come and gone and circled back to do a victory lap. What the hell?”

  “God . . . does . . . not . . . interfere,” Ishiah said in a tone as frozen as his eyes.

  Goodfellow leaned back again, this time with feathers draping over his hair. “Let it go. It’s a story for another time, one when peris aren’t around.”

  “Don’t you mean angels?” Niko substituted.

  “No. There are no angels in New York City. They were banned over fifty years ago when a fight between them and some demons managed to get way out of control. Humans were running about screaming about Armageddon. It was a disaster. From that time on paiens have banned angels and demons from New York. If you come from Above or Below and show your face here, we paiens will work as one to rip it off of you. Only peris are allowed as they gave up their powers and transferred their allegiance to Earth not Heaven.”

  “Except for this Pyriel. Except for Jack.” Niko didn’t sound interested, but he didn’t sound lost either. That was an improvement. Something this bizarre had to take his mind off the past—although Jack had in some part been involved with our past. I didn’t think he’d been there the night Junior died. Junior said his master liked to watch. I remembered that through a chloroform haze, but I didn’t think Jack had been watching or we might not be sitting here worrying about his angelic ass now.

  “That’s right. If Jack is this Pyriel and paiens stomp trespassing angels like cockroaches, why is he here? Why do none of you even know he’s an angel?”

  Robin shook his head, got to his feet, and brought me back a Mountain Dew to replace the one that spilled when Niko had grabbed me in the recliner. “Caffeine for your failing brain cells. You saw him. Did he look like an angel? Not that angels look like Ishiah, not all of the time—only when interacting with humans. But regardless, they don’t look anything like Jack. Whatever he was, Pyriel isn’t an angel any longer. Something has twisted him, mutated him. We keep thinking Jack is a storm spirit from the mist and the electrical activity. My best guess is that Pyriel was injured long ago and a storm spirit latched on to him when he was incapable of fighting it off. Some storm spirits aren’t very bright, but they can be powerful parasites. Pyriel is now Jack and Jack is both less and more than an angel. Angels actually aren’t that difficult to kill if you’re quick with a shotgun.”

  “Is that information you felt necessary to share?” Ishiah demanded.

  “Cal has already used a submachine gun on Jack. A shotgun is but a tinker toy to him,” Robin retorted. “It’s rather pointless anyway. As I said, we’ve tried that route on Jack. It was useless. The storm spirit, if it is one, surrounding him could stop the bullets from penetrating with wind, ice, who knows what else. What customarily works against angels isn’t going to work with Jack, it seems.”

  Nik took my Mountain Dew and swallowed several times from the can. I think he had been fifteen the last time he’d had caffeine. He’d always been serious about martial arts thanks to the Grend—the Auphe outside our windows, but Junior had been the tipping point to devoting every aspect of his life to being the best fighter he could and that included nutrition. It was a good thing that rice was cheap. It was a long time before he could afford a variety of health food. Without rice he might have starved himself to death back then, the stubborn bastard.

  I snatched my Mountain Dew back and said under my breath, “Okay, Nik, you’re really beginning to freak me out.”

  He ran a less than reassuring hand over my hair. It wasn’t the lightly stinging swat-and-tangle I usually received. It was the smoothing and affectionate motion you used on a child, that he’d used on an eleven-year-old me. He couldn’t pull himself out of the past and if I wanted to kill Jack for anything, it was for that.

  “Can the parasite be killed,” Nik asked, “leaving Pyriel behind to be dealt with using one of Cal’s guns?”

  “If the storm spirit can be killed, we might be able to save Pyriel.” Ishiah put his wings away again. It was like a Vegas magician’s trick that never got old.

  “Yeah, saving Pyriel isn’t at the top of my list of priorities,” I said. “It doesn’t even make the cut for second callback.” I drank the rest of the Mountain Dew, if only to save Niko from himself.

  “He could be an innocent in this, a victim.” Ishiah folded his arms, but I don’t think he believed Pyriel could be brought back to what he was. I know he didn’t believe I gave a shit one way or the other. If he did, his skills at reading facial expressions were sorely lacking. I couldn’t see my own face, but if there was compassion and hope on it, I wasn’t feeling it.

  “And a rabid wolf is a victim too, but it still has to be put down.” I tossed my empty can across the floor, if only to see what Nik would say or do.

  He heaved himself to his feet, picked it up, and went to the kitchen to throw it in the garbage. It was the same as when I was a kid, before he’d limited my mess to my bedroom. He’d cut me a good deal of slack then and I’d needed it. But then I’d grown up and I’d needed boundar
ies and discipline more if I was going to survive. I needed Niko to remember that and remember himself. A fifteen-year-old, emotionally and guilt-wise, wasn’t going to be able to handle Jack. Nik had to know that I could more than take care of myself now. If he didn’t know that, he wouldn’t watch his own back and Jack . . . Jack would take advantage. Jack would kill him in a heartbeat.

  Goodfellow had moved to squat in front of me while Nik was in the kitchen. “Why is he like this?” he whispered fast and low. “I understand that coping with a murderer and having to kill at fifteen would be traumatizing, but this is Niko—and this is not right.”

  I wrapped a careful arm around my ribs and dropped my chin on my chest, closing my eyes. Christ it hurt like a mother. “Sorry, Goodfellow, but it’s none of your business.” He was risking his life going up against Jack when he could easily walk away, knowing Jack would leave him alone. Normally that would deserve answers, but not this time.

  “Cal told me about Junior and I didn’t believe him,” Niko said quietly. I jerked my head up and opened my eyes to see him standing behind Goodfellow. “I only had to do one thing: believe my brother. But I didn’t and because of that he almost died. I might as well have held the knife instead of Junior.” That wasn’t true. It wasn’t, but before I could say so, he went on, relentless. “We don’t talk about it. We never have. I was too much of a coward then to believe and too much of a coward after to relive it. To answer your question: that is why I’m like this. Twelve years of cowardice have come home to roost.”

  “Nik, shut the hell up. You know that’s not right. I was a delinquent eleven-year-old kid. No one would’ve believed . . .” But it was too late. He’d already picked up his katana, turned, and disappeared down the hall into his room, shutting the door softly behind him. I would’ve preferred he slammed it. Anger was easier to deal with than blame.