He screamed. Didn’t he scream like a baby? First born—last torn.
It was a warm thought. He had tried to kill Niko and Georgina, a girl I’d loved. He had deserved to scream. There was no denying that, and most would scream their lungs inside out when ripped apart by the mass of unbelievably pissed-off Auphe I’d tossed him to. I had no regrets.
It didn’t change my original thought, though.
Hobgoblin—Hob to all others, as shorter names made it quicker in getting to the running part—was the first trickster and had been as much a murder-loving bastard as the Auphe. A combination like that we could use until the days passed and I could gate Janus onto the bones of those now-dead Auphe and the bones of the first puck as well in Tumulus. Good company for an ancient war machine. “Goodfellow.” I ran a careful thumb along the blade. “If he had to face Janus, what do you think Hob would do—to at least slow it down?”
Robin’s lips flattened. “I do not know.”
“You knew him better than most. You’ve said so. He was the first trickster. He would have a chance to put this bastard off for three days at least. What would he do?” Robin was one of the best tricksters out there, but he wasn’t what Hob had been—a blood-spilling psychopath created out of insanity and violence. He was violence, or had been, walking and talking, but so sly and slippery you didn’t see him coming until you wondered why your guts were on the outside instead of the inside. It would’ve been a challenge for him, but I’d seen into that bastard’s eyes. Pure poison was all that lurked in their depths. His tricks, they always ended in death. He would’ve known how, if not to take out the automaton, then how to delay it. I knew from personal experience that sometimes it took a monster to outthink a monster.
“I don’t know.” It was more that he didn’t want to know, didn’t want to go down that path. I didn’t blame him. I had my own path. I knew what it was like. Moving along the path slowly, controlling each step, but I was walking it all the same.
Halfway there now…
“Okay,” I said. I wouldn’t push him on it yet. I’d give him a chance to think about it before I brought it up again. “No big deal. We’ll just—”
That was when I felt it. Behind me. A gate. Jesus Christ, a fucking gate.
Once I would’ve thought, No. Not again. Not anymore. I was the last. I’d made sure of that. There were no more. No. No more kidnappings. No more threatening to kill my brother, my friends. No more red eyes, white skin, metal teeth. No more Auphe hell.
God, no more.
Of course, I was somewhat of a chickenshit then, not that everyone—or anyone—agreed with that. But I had been more human.
Not that I hadn’t had my moments back then, but they were Auphe moments, lost in a blind genetic rage. I wasn’t blind any longer. With help, I’d killed every last one of these bastards on the planet, culminating with eight half-breeds like me in Nevah’s Landing.
What were my thoughts now?
Shit, not again. And the emotion that went with it wasn’t fear. I was mad as hell. I’d destroyed our race. Our entire goddamn race. What the fuck did this out-of-thin-air, leftover asshole think he could do to me?
Arms wrapped around me from behind, steel bands. Stronger than me, stronger than Niko, who was hurtling toward us, but it was too late. The coldness of the gate swallowed us and the condo was gone. But I heard the words that floated behind.
An unfamiliar voice but with an all-too-familiar sarcasm, the same as mine—at someone else’s expense—said, “You could cover your windows, goat. I go where I see, and I saw far too many perversions through yours.”
It was bad when an Auphe thought your sex life—your monogamous sex life—was a perversion. Or it could be it wasn’t the sex but the emotion that went with it. Yeah, Auphe were creatures of few emotions and they were all malignant as biohazard waste filling their skulls. Hate, disgust, slaughter-glee, arrogance, ravenous hunger. No affection, though—that didn’t exist to them.
And we were gone, bodies and voice.
The gate dumped us in a dark basement with a concrete floor with one flickering bulb overhead and the rot of dead bodies—gone, but the decomposition lingered in the cold air, as did the taint of Auphe. I was used to my scent. I’d had it all my life, after all, but the smell of another Auphe was somehow different and repulsive. It…he released me and I whipped around, the xiphos between us. I missed my Desert Eagle as much as I’d miss my hand. “It was the feathers, wasn’t it?” I grinned, showing all my teeth, top and bottom. The predator’s grin—the better to eat you with.
If there was one thing I could say about an Auphe, it was that I didn’t have to conceal what I was in front of him.
Guard up, using every ounce of swordsmanship Niko had taught me, I drawled, “Spying, were you? I think that makes you the perv. Did you see the feathers flying around the bedroom as the peri”—he didn’t need to know Ishiah’s name—“spunked goose juice everywhere? Did he look like a pigeon that swallowed a grenade and exploded? That’s my mental nightmare.”
The Auphe. No, the half-Auphe, like me—I’d seen that at the same time as I’d smelled it—grinned back. He was even dressed all in black, as I was, although he had a leather jacket, T-shirt, jeans, and combat boots, whereas I was stuck with sweats and damned socks.
Ever had to face death while wearing a pair of socks? It’s somewhat humiliating.
He had human teeth, straight and white, until a second row of hundreds of hypodermic needles snapped down over the top of them. That made him more Auphe than me, as did the red irises he revealed when he took off and dropped dark sunglasses to the floor. His hair was white, the Auphe winter tint with the glitter of ice, but the same length and don’t-give-a-shit style as mine. It was on purpose, to mock me. I knew it. His skin wasn’t pale as mine was, though. His was a healthy human tint. Light tan. He was me, but the opposite of me.
“Peri and puck. I had to eat a pit bull to rinse the taste from my mouth after that show.” His voice was deeper than mine, with the faint grind of broken glass to each word. Semi-Auphe vocal cords. He shook his hand, the one that I had already seen gripping a black matte Desert Eagle, to show off the spiked dog collar wrapped three times around his wrist.
“What’s life without souvenirs?” I said. The gun he held was well-known, a black matte Desert Eagle with a scratch on the grip. Mine.
He saw my eyes flicker toward it. “Yes, Caliban, it’s yours. I picked it up off the street where that cattle you live with dropped it as he tried to save your life. I like it. It’s a good gun. I do like a good gun. In death I like all things. Guns, knives, swords.” His other hand clenched, then flared with fingers spread, silver bright. He wore black gloves over his hands, but over his empty one was a metal set of claws that encased his fingers and hand, a modern imitation of an extinct Auphe taloned one. When he made a fist, four to five inches of metal would extend past his knuckles to carve you apart. “But I like the old ways too. And if you’re not born with them, you make them. Or have someone or something make them for you.”
“You know my name? Caliban?” I asked without emotion, sword between us but closer to him now. No feelings—none human, at any rate. Others, though…they were there. But if I did let those come, it would get down and dirty before I was ready for it.
“All in the Nevah’s Landing prison knew of Caliban. The golden boy who would return the world to what it should have been. But you didn’t, did you? You destroyed the Auphe instead. Then you shot the failures and burned down the house until the bones were fiery dust. I didn’t see the others, years after I left, with the windows boarded, but I saw what you did to our keeper, our torturer—Sidle.”