“I smelled cooking vampire—charcoal and old blood, charred peri with their light bones and feathers flammable enough that I don’t think they burned. I think they incinerated instantly. Disappeared like a magic trick. Abracadabra,” I echoed him flatly. “I smelled Wolves, fur, wildness, gamey flesh a crisp on the bones. The frying blubber of vodyanoi. There were more paien, but here it is, none of them smelled the same. None of them smelled like roast pig or barbecue or any of that utter shit. For every scent I caught, I knew who or what was burning.
“Of everyone in there, there was only one human and only one puck. I could smell you both.” I rubbed a finger across the table until a splinter stabbed it, leaving a small drop of blood. “You smelled like grass, the trees, wild honey, blackberry juice crushed into wine, bucks chasing does, the smell of ever that surrounds you. Not forever. There’s no such thing. Everything ends. But the ever of stars. They die, but live too long for us to see it. It was how you always were to me, your scent.
“Over that was charcoal, carbon, ash, all still burning when I thought there was nothing left to burn, nothing other than a layer, no thicker than a hair, of charbroiled flesh.” I smeared the blood on his glass I stole, emptying it in one long swallow.
He was smart, Robin, had been all the times I’d known him. He didn’t have to be smart to not ask what Niko had smelled of. Conscious or breathing and anyone would be smart enough to make that decision.
“Then there was the second explosion. The real one. The first was pure destruction, but the second was fucking Armageddon.”
I flattened both hands on the table, looking at the scars around my wrists. I looked at the other ones that rippled across the backs of my hands. I looked at the black bronze ring on my right middle finger. You were given one by your Clan when you turned thirteen and became a man. The Vayash hadn’t given it to me. They kept tabs on Sophia, they knew what I was. My true family had presented it to me, way past thirteen, not that it made a difference to me. I knew I hadn’t been a man at thirteen. Sometimes I wondered if I was one now.
“I thought with the first blast that everyone was dead. They had to be. There were some tough sons of bitches in there, gargoyles—didn’t see them often. But the first explosion—I thought I’d never seen anything like it . . . nothing could’ve survived. I knew Niko was dead. I knew you were dead. Then there was the second one and you couldn’t see the end of it. It soared up to the sky and kept going. And I thought”—I couldn’t raise my eyes yet, using my left hand to circle the ring around my finger—“why a second one? Did they have that much of a hard-on for killing me they wanted even my ashes to burn? Or did they think some might have lived through the first explosion?
“That’s when it hit: Guess what, Caliban, you might’ve fucked up. They might’ve been alive and you didn’t try to get them out. You sat there, in shock like a goddamn pussy, ready to reach for your gun to blow out your brains—like you have any—and they could’ve been alive waiting for help. Waiting for you.”
An olive-toned hand landed on the tangle of mine, one twisting the ring and one clenching tight to keep it from being pulled off. “You know that’s a lie, adelfós. They were gone. If one of them had exhaled a single breath, you would’ve caught that scent. Neither did. They died as some holier-than-thou militia cult assholes, sons of pox-ridden whores, aimed for you and by stupid, horrible luck, they missed and took everyone else instead. I know you think it wasn’t good fortune—that it was the most evil of ill-fortune and you wanted then, more than you wanted anything, to have been there with them. To have died with them. Do you think I haven’t thought that times uncountable? To have passed on with you and your brother? In one night I drank three entire vineyards wondering why I am always left behind. Ah . . . and five whorehouses. It was an exhausting night, but one without an answer. Several STIs as it turned out, but no answers.”
Goodfellow had considered the same? I knew pucks were the most isolated and lonely among the paien. I knew he missed us, but we did come back. Did that make such a difference though? A hundred years without your friends and brothers is hell; a thousand years, I couldn’t comprehend.
He would’ve died with us if he’d had the choice? Robin who wasn’t human. Not in his most single part. He was a puck.
And reincarnation was not for pucks.
Where he went after death, if anywhere, I had no idea, but I didn’t think it was a place we’d see him again. Nik, I would find. I wouldn’t know our history and neither would he. It would be brand-new, a clean slate and I didn’t like that. But it was what it was. That I wouldn’t know Robin again, wouldn’t know who he was, wouldn’t realize he had been there with us, a constant presence, wouldn’t realize he wasn’t any longer . . .
I wouldn’t remember he died. I wouldn’t remember he’d existed.
They were both coming back. If the letters and the warnings didn’t do it, I would burn the world and keep burning until someone somewhere made it right.
Goodfellow’s hand gripped mine with enough strength to have the bones ache. “But you weren’t with them and you didn’t die. The second best you’ll try is to make your life a daily living hell as that’s what you think you deserve. You don’t.” He was raving on, not bothering to pause and indulge in that breathing crap Nik had forced me to learn. “They’re gone, but if you can manage to stop punishing yourself over it, you can bring them back. And I still say there is every possibility you already have. One letter to me. One to the pigeon. One to some vitamin-popping former blood-drinking ancient VILF. There isn’t a possibility, probability, or prospect that among the three that we would all be unsuccessful.
“I, personally, am infallible, we know that. Ishiah is unbearable with his judging and lecturing, but he is an efficient tactician and fighter. I don’t know of this Promise who could not conceivably be good enough for Niko, whom I cannot wait to meet and see how much Achilles shows in him this young. Twenty. Unimaginable.” I hadn’t decided if it had been a pep talk or a bitching out, but it was winding down.
“Trust me, Pee Wee Patroclus is where you’re going to run into trouble.” I lifted my head, pulled my hands free to slap him lightly across one cheek, a little cheered at the thought. “Cal is going to ruin your life and drive you to therapy without trying.”
“The true Patroclus was entertaining. He could keep up with me,” he said, eyebrows drawn together in confusion. “Every drunken fun-loving bastard in Greece loved him. If there was a party he was there or he was throwing it or he was burning it down. Every wine house, whorehouse, orgy, gambling house—they all knew him. He was the first human to make me work to earn my reputation in whoring, drinking, and cheating.” He folded his arms with rejection or disappointment either at what he believed a lie or wished it were. Whichever, he’d find out soon enough.
“One thing. Two,” I corrected. I took off my rite of manhood ring that Niko had given me, pried a hand away from Robin’s chest, and put it in his palm. His fingers automatically closed around it. “If I don’t make it home. If we save Cal, but Lazarus takes me down, give this to Nik in eight years. I don’t know if he’ll remember our life or some new version made from this one. I don’t know what will happen with this one either, two paths, two become one, physics can suck it. If I do die and you do get lucky, kick my dead body in the river or throw me in a Dumpster before these two see me. Tell them when Lazarus died, I went back home as soon as his heart stopped. If you could do that, you’d be my fucking hero—for the hundredth or so time. Otherwise those eight years are going to be miserable as they get for this Niko, knowing I might die in a little less than a decade, but am here, younger and so fucking emo, beside him now. Or I might not. Either way, he’d be in hell, not knowing what will happen.”
“It won’t come to that, but if it did, I will. But you know what he’ll do when I give the ring to him instead of giving him his brother.”
“What we always do,” I si
ghed. “You’ve been there, every life, every death.”
If a thousand lifetimes hadn’t changed that, nothing would. “Second, this”—I pointed two fingers back and forth between us with a grim edge to the motion—“talking about what happened. What I saw. What I smelled, what I thought, and what I almost did,” I said matter-of-fact as life and death. “We don’t talk about it again. Ever. Not now. Not in eight years if we fix it all and we’re celebrating, everything is wine and goddamn roses, you don’t say a word to anyone. Not to Niko, not to Ishiah and, first and foremost, not to me. It’s a memory I don’t want and I won’t keep.” It wasn’t one I could carry and function. I had to bury it deep, deeper than all the festive, bloody Auphe ones.
He frowned. “That’s a good deal to carry and not be able to share the burden. It could break you. You’re certain? Never again? Not at least once more to assure myself that while everyone else is safe and home, you’re not home and broken?”
As if I hadn’t been broken before.
“What’d your coffin fuck-buddy Poe say again?” I asked. “Oh, right. That’s it.” It was the perfect answer. If Poe hadn’t been underground, I’d have thanked him for it.
“Never-fucking-more.”
He wasn’t happy about it, but he’d keep his word, puck or not. “I so swear it, then.” He didn’t put on the ring, aware of the insult that would be. To wear what my only blood family had given me to prove our connection. No matter how it wasn’t complete humanity Nik and I shared on a biological level, it counted.
He took a breath, tucked the ring away safe and tucked everything said before that to a place inside where he wouldn’t have to think on it for a long time. All of us were beyond skilled at that. “Let’s talk about something less gloom and doom. All our past lives. You remember them? Why is baby Patroclus lover of all that is emo, and wasn’t that the trend seven or so years ago? The Pharaoh’s Divine Face-Painter, he doesn’t wear eyeliner, does he?” If his face could produce a more appalled contortion, I couldn’t picture it. “If you ever wore eyeliner and ironic T-shirts, Lazarus can get in line. I’ll do it as a mercy killing myself,” he continued, coming half across the table for a look at the shirt I’d taken a magic marker to for a saying of my own. “Once you go furry, you never—ha! That’s acceptable, not ironic, and often quite true. I approve of the saying if not the hideously cheap shirt it’s written on.” He sat back, but remained eager enough to all but vibrate off the chair. “Do you remember when I was pretending to be the High Priest of Ra and Niko, you, me, and three camels hid in the Temple of Isis with a barrel of unfermented honey wine—”
“Nope.” I reached for the pitcher of beer to top off Goodfellow’s glass that was now my glass as he huffed and went to fetch another. “If you don’t start, you won’t get in the habit of it. The only reason I remember this go-round is thanks to the Auphe having racial memory. This Cal doesn’t remember anything and won’t for seven and a half years. Believe me, waking up part of that racial memory crap early would be epically bad. As in the type of bad that we might as well finish our beers, break the glasses, and slit out throats right here. If he digs up anything from ye olden days now, it won’t be reincarnated good times like when we rustled Genghis Khan’s harem.”
Goodfellow laughed hard enough to bend over, the new glass in his hand wobbling wildly, but not lost. Collapsing in his chair, he laughed on, wheezing. “No food, no shelter, three heroes, and five horses for three thousand women. Never have so many women hated so few men with so much passion and so very many dainty, jeweled daggers.”
Daggers they had no problem using on us. Dainty or not, they were needle-pointed metal capable of puncturing any internal organ they were aimed at. I don’t think you can call yourself a hero if you abandon three thousand women in the middle of nowhere as you ride for your life. Or when you sell the jewels from the same daggers you slid out of your flesh as each of us had been successfully if not fatally stabbed two to four times each.
Goodfellow had run across us in all our different lives. He’d also partied with Buddha. He’d caught on even before Buddha though. We didn’t look the same, except once, but our personalities were similar if exaggerated with the past, being more lawless some times and more ruthless all times.
Robin was over a million years old. Unbelievable when first heard, but true. Pucks were the only ones who could live so long and there weren’t many of them. A million years of life, when everyone dies, so many you couldn’t begin to remember all you’d lost, that makes for a loneliness I couldn’t comprehend.
It was inevitable that when he found two people who kept living and dying then appearing again over and over and crossing his path in each of their new lives, he latched onto us. Goodfellow believed in the three of us, whatever bizarre fate was at work, he’d told me months ago when I’d asked. He had known and remembered us with each of our new lives, but we hadn’t. We forgot him with each death and rebirth. Clean slate. He hated that. He lost us, waited, and then had us again, but not entirely. You can’t have someone who doesn’t know you—all of you.
He had us as friends and brothers-in-arms, but he’d had only part of us. But in this life, where we wouldn’t burn him at the stake for blasphemy, the modern era of believe what you want, he knew Niko the Buddhist would accept it as true. I was an atheist and didn’t believe in anything about death other than you were worm food. End of story, my story. But Niko, as ever, had been right. We died and lived again. Or, I suspected, Niko died, dragged my dead ass out of peaceful nonexistence into less peaceful reincarnation. Sometimes as brothers, sometimes as cousins, blood brothers, brothers-in-arms, but always together.
Robin had been dropping hints for over a year, eventually throwing a little hypnosis in for a different reason involving saving my life from another half Auphe, Grimm, who was older, smarter, quicker, a better fighter, and a better gater. He’d been fully functional in all the Auphe ways for too many years longer than I had. I couldn’t hope to win against him.
But Robin could. There was no guarantee in a one-to-one fight, not with the gating, but in a con, the puck could defeat anyone alive. But that had depended on me not trying to take on Grimm myself. A little hypnosis, a few key words, and, in the worst of situations when I was already bleeding out, I would gate away from Grimm instead of toward him as I normally would have. Fuck the blood. I’d take his ass to hell with me.
Goodfellow hadn’t approved of plans he considered suicidal, but I considered standard. In this case, he made certain I couldn’t use any of them.
That’s when the puck and his hypnosis had brought down that enlightenment he’d wanted by bringing my Auphe racial memory online. That had then let me use it for human memories despite humans not having the ability for racial memory—the Auphe in me was inextricably intertwined in each of my genes. I could use what the Auphe had twisted in every part of me for every part of me. Human or Auphe.
And then Robin had us, not the puzzle parts to a whole he alone could see, but all of us. I recalled it all, slowly and bit by bit, but it had picked up faster and faster. Nik hadn’t remembered like I did, but he believed. That was enough. For the first time, he could say, “Do you remember . . .” whenever he wanted. Robin could relive all of our lives with us, or the less painful ones, and I could add the humiliating bits he left out. He was happy, euphoric, too goddamn so for me to bring up what he’d missed.
It had to be hard as hell for him to give that up, whether he hadn’t had it yet or not. Simply knowing it was coming, but he had to wait as he had waited the majority of his life. Could it hurt to have it sooner when he’d endured what had to feel like an eternity without it?
Fuck, yes, it could.
“Yeah, good times. Couldn’t get enough of the stabbing by tiny harem women who knew ten times the foul language that I did,” I repeated dryly. “Like I said that’s not what Cal Junior will remember. Mini Me has a lot of control to learn and his
memories will be those of some Auphe ancestor gnawing on the leg of a screaming Neanderthal, eating him alive. Starting, naturally, with the feet—always start with the feet—and working its way up.”
Robin wrinkled his forehead. “Why?” he asked, eyes narrowing either with curiosity or an uneasy widening of his pupils. He seemed suspicious—the same reason he was alive today after a million-plus.
“Why the feet or why will he remember that instead of swinging from chandeliers and pissing on the bouncing, over-yeasted breasts and beehive tall wigs of the flailing, screaming members of the French court when we were kicked out of the Musketeers?” I didn’t wait for him to choose, continuing on with playing teacher-knows-best.
“Let’s start with the last as, believe it or not, it’s less disturbing. For you. Both are actually.” I snagged a bowl of petrified peanuts and pretzels from the next table. “Racial memories one oh two. Despite humans not having the capability wired into their brain, I could remember my past lives and that Niko and you were there, in and out of them all. And I did it by using the racial memory from the Auphe. I just said that about three minutes ago, didn’t I?”
I picked up a peanut, studied it, then dropped it back in the bowl and pushed it away. It wasn’t meat, but it was food. Nik’s veggie pizza on the asphalt beside me didn’t have the scent of meat, but if I hadn’t forgotten it in its disgusting broccoli cheese glory, I wouldn’t be here now. Peanuts? No, thanks.
“I did say it, we both know that.” I tipped my head, wondering as I’d had since then—did he really miss it or was it everyone’s old friend, denial? “Here’s the thing, and I don’t know how you didn’t catch this, the racial memory I was born with? The Auphe racial memory? It was meant for their race and their memories. For each and every one of the sons of bitches, from first to last. It’s not all sword fights, whores, and stealing wagons of the Queen’s French wine. Just as he and I are not all human.”