3

“And please don’t cut off my head.”

That hasty addition wasn’t due to an unrealistic fear. The casual let’s-all-be-calm attempt had been for a reason. Niko was not a fan of the unexpected, especially not around his little brother. It made him twitchy, although he was a statue on the outside. It hit him internally, where he thought no one could see. No one did, except for me.

Seeing him turned out to be worse than hearing him had been.

I wouldn’t have thought it possible. I grinned anyway, one of my rare authentic ones. I couldn’t help it. I hurt, God, I hurt, but . . . it was Nik. It was Nik and he was right fucking here. It was my big brother who’d kicked my ass in sparring just yesterday without half trying, and yet now, like my younger self, he was a baby. Tall, muscular but flexibly so and one of the best in the world with any kind of sword. A deadly lethal MMA freaking baby.

All right, not a baby, but there’s a big difference between twenty-eight and twenty, especially in the lives we led. Rode hard and put up wet should’ve been stamped across our ass.

“Always your brother’s keeper. I’ve told you about that. That I can take care of myself,” I said ruefully. “Unfortunately that hasn’t proven true.” No, it had not. “But now you’re here, it’s a party.” The pressure of the blade increased, unimpressed with me, my words, my everything. My brother was not and had never been or would be an easy man to impress—that was a fact.

“I did ask about not taking my head already. You wouldn’t do that to me, your little brother, would you, Niko Pali-busno Leandros? It’s the only one I have and you’re always telling me even one brain isn’t enough to keep me alive. What would I do without one at all?” I didn’t deny the truth of it. I had done some sincerely stupid shit in my life.

“Then there’s the fact that I’ve come one hell of a long way, eight years to be exact, to see you and . . . shit . . . myself,” I added.

I studied him harder than I had Cal. At this point Nik was in every way more intelligent, imaginative, and reasonable than Cal . . . and me, Cal eight years later. We weren’t ever going to be as smart as Niko. He was also a better fighter than eighteen-year-old Cal, although that Cal was innately cunning. He was also genetically gifted or cursed in his juvenile opinion, but it worked or would in the future and that’s what counted. Cal, though, could wait.

Niko couldn’t.

And this was Niko, twenty or twenty-eight, I needed him on my side; I needed him invested. He was my best hope. Cal . . . the younger me . . . he was good with a gun, but he didn’t have our more lethal fighting abilities yet. The kind you can’t buy but are born with, and the ones you can’t use until Auphe puberty hits you like a sledgehammer. They were the same skills I didn’t want to use in front of the two of them if I could avoid it. They weren’t ready to see what I could do, no one else needed to know, and then there was the prospect of driving Cal into a flashback ending in a foaming psychotic split.

I could say from experience that a theme park waiting to happen, they were not.

For now I was waiting to see if Niko was the same as I recalled. I hadn’t bothered to guess. Big brothers are always giants in our memories. And at eighteen I had worshipped my big brother . . . in the same way I had at five . . . and at twenty-six. What had he been like though, not seen through the haze of that little brother reverence? What was the reality of him now when Cal was eighteen, he was twenty, and everyone in the world was assumed to be against us?

As most of them had been.

“You’re saying you’re Cal?” he questioned slowly, but I wasn’t fooled. After twenty-six years I recognized suspicion and surprise on my brother’s face when I saw it. He had a hundred masks to hide his emotions, but none of them worked on me. “You look almost identical, save for the scars”—Nik was more observant on that than the younger me as some things never did change—“but you could be a relative and you know the kind of relative I’m speaking of.” Not the human kind . . . not the all human kind at least. “Then again, you know my name.” And that wasn’t possible was what swam unsaid under those words.

“Yeah, yeah. Eight years changes you some, okay? I’ll invest in a skin care regimen in the future if it makes you happy. And, yes, I’m Cal. An improved, faster, sleeker, undeniably extra ass-kicking future version, but I’m Cal.” I didn’t pay attention to Junior’s offended rant at that. I stayed focused on Niko. As for knowing his name . . . “Little Billy-goat. That’s your middle name, because you were stubborn; from day one Sophia said you were probably the only baby who potty trained himself in three days from birth.”

Swiveling back to Cal, I made no further move to vault down from the countertop. Neither did I react to the edge of the blade of Niko’s sword following me. “And Caliban Beng-rup Leandros. The monster. The devil of silver.” Caliban for half-breed monster and Beng-rup for silver devil. “That describes an A—a Grendel”—because neither of them would know the word “Auphe” as they hadn’t met . . . hadn’t met the one who’d told them yet—“all over, doesn’t it? Sophia had a knack for being a hateful, hurtful but one damn well-read bitch.”

I laid down the final proof with a familiar and affectionate exasperation I couldn’t have stopped if I’d tried. Nik was careful in all our years. I was used to it. “Could anyone else know what I know and as a bonus be this annoying and obnoxious?”

He considered that for a moment as a very fair point, but gave a small negative shake of his head. “Killing you would be easier and safer than believing you,” he said as matter-of-fact as calling in a take-out order. Great. Nik would kill anyone to save his brother. I had never guessed it’d be me. That was serious irony there. I was about to gate my neck to a safer location—the hell with Cal’s possible psychosis. It wasn’t as if I could save them both if my own brother killed me first. But just before I did, Niko exhaled and let the katana fall down to his side. “Unfortunately, I do believe you. I know what could be my brother when I see him . . . and hear him and his tactless tongue.” How about that? Obnoxious and annoying finally paid off for me.

“Time travel.” He didn’t ask it, he said it—as if it were not simply the only option, but so obvious that he pitied those who didn’t know that. He was freaking smart as they came. That would never change with his age. “Hmmm. Interesting. However—” His voice sharpened.

“Say that word again, call him monster again, and I will go with the easy route. I’ll take your head and make a new future, not yours, for my brother and me. As no matter what you say, you are not him. You are not my brother. You could be, you might be, but right now you are only the possibility of one.” I’d forgotten about how touchy Niko came to that word when it was applied to the brother he had now. Fiercely, rabidly, intensely touchy.

“Okay. I’ll be good.” That made him twist the katana’s grip in his hand, more skeptically prepared than before. “Not good, that would be suspicious. I’ll be as good as I’ve ever been. How’s that? I’ll do my best to not kill me over the M word. Better?” I pulled the switchblade out of the scarred wood, retracting the blade, tossed it back to Cal, and slid off the counter back down to the floor.

“Heads up though,” I added. “I become used to that word down the road. You will too. You won’t like it, but you’ll get over it. You might want to try sooner rather than later on that, if you can, or you’ll be beating the living shit out of assholes right and left twenty-four seven.”

Niko was as I remembered him. Tough, willing to take out a threat to his brother without a second or first thought. He had no rose-colored glasses involving anyone except me . . . his version of me at least. Tough as hell when it came to anyone else, one protective son of a bitch when it came to his little brother.

He did look younger to me than I’d have thought. I didn’t know if he would have to anyone else. His face, too, was a tiny bit fuller, his build a shade less leanly muscular and iron-hard. In my imagination, Niko was ageless. In reality he was human. Mortal. Born with an expiration date. The Auphe lived a long, long time unless another Auphe had killed them for shits and giggles. I didn’t know about me, if I’d eventually age or not.

I didn’t know and I didn’t want to know.

Shaking off the thought, I concentrated on the rest. The long dark blond braid was there, the dark clothes and long coat, the forbidding expression now fading that said he’d fight to the death if you gave him a reason. He was Nik in all the more important ways. And he was here, right here . . . real . . . and that was something I couldn’t . . . didn’t . . . fuck. I dropped back onto the stool next to the one I destroyed, propped my elbows up, and let my head fall into my hands.

I had time for other issues but not time for a psychotic breakdown of my own. Accepting this Niko was correct was the better road to take, sanity-wise. I wasn’t his brother, simply the potential of one.

Cal, full of empathy as usual—because if Niko went into a box labeled NOT MY BROTHER then Cal went in one labeled NOT ME. It was the only way to survive mentally. “Me? How can he be me? You don’t believe this bullshit, do you, Nik?” Cal demanded, flicking the lever on the switchblade I’d just returned, and made an effort at stabbing my hand again. This being the hand that was holding up my head. At my count, this was the third or fourth attempt at profound bodily harm and I was done with it.

I had the switchblade out of his grip before he was able to trim a single strand of my hair. I’d done it with a trick, a twist, and a lift that Goodfellow had taught me, combined with a speed that had made it virtually invisible. I twirled it with one hand, fast enough that it was a continuous circle of silver; that was one Niko had trained me to do himself and had me practice endlessly. It showed Cal how slow he’d been in his currently second try at using it.

“Look at that. Nice, huh?” I said, admiring my moves. If I didn’t, who would? “Listen to your brother when he says practice makes perfect. He’s irritating as he never shuts up about it, but he’s right. I’ve damned sure improved from the fetus-years.” Cal growled. I wondered if I growled that often and had gotten used to it enough to not notice.

“As for believing me”—I shrugged and shifted the blade to my other hand without pausing its whipping rotation—“what would you rather believe? That I am you eight years from the future or there is another half-Grendel running around. Or maybe twenty of them. Maybe a thousand.” There was a piece of the coming days he wasn’t going to be happy about, but he didn’t need to hear it. Deserved to hear it, but we had plans to make and no time to waste on revenge. Justifiable as it was.

“Besides”—I watched the silver of the blade and ignored the flicker of imaginary flames reflecting in it—“the only way I would look so much like you and have the eyes of you, Niko, and Sophia would be if Sophia whored herself to another Grendel years before Niko was born. And if she had, I don’t think she’d have repeated the experience with you . . . us. She hated us more than she loved money and that is saying something.”

I could see that one hit home, but he went on to another subject as he, like me at his age, didn’t want to think about the monstermonstermonster. “Give me that back, you thieving son of a bitch. It’s my favorite switchblade, you asshole, and you don’t get to keep it,” he growled, going back under the bar, for . . . what was left? Nothing that I remembered. That had been— Ah shit, the shotgun. Rusty, older than not only Cal but Sophia too, and bought off a guy missing three teeth. Not sawed-off, but smaller, for a thirteen-year-old ready to slaughter his first wild turkey. It worked though. We’d tested it.

“Don’t be a baby,” I advised. “Naughty toys aren’t for little boys. You tried to stab me in the head, you dick. If I see a fucking molecule of that shotgun show up in your hand, I’m taking your cute little knife here and I’m cutting off your trigger finger. And as I know us and guns and what we can use to pull a trigger, that’s ten fingers and ten toes. I’m here to save your life, so stop acting like the fucking Grendel you wish you weren’t.”

He flushed to a murderous red, a color I didn’t know existed under my pale skin, but I let it go and went on, not caring Niko had moved close enough to take us both down if he had to. “I know we slept with a knife under our mattress since we were six,” I announced flatly. “I also know we slept with a T-shirt under our pillow. It was one we stole out of Niko’s laundry when we were too old to sleep with him anymore. We slept with it because we could smell him on it. He might have only been a bed or a mattress away in the same room, but we slept with that shirt for years. We slept with it when we were fourteen and he went to college.

“Not convinced yet?” I alternated the knife again and practiced spinning it in the opposite direction. “I could tell the story of the first time we jacked off and which of Niko’s mythology books turned to the page of a mermaid with naked boobs was collateral damage.”

“No. No stories,” he denied instantly, knowing the price he’d pay if Niko found out which of his favorite books that had been. “No mermaid b— No, I believe you. You’re me . . . only old.”

Twenty-six was old? I had been such a punk. Still was, but it was less fun on the other side.

“Glad you’re caught up, Mini Me.” I slapped the knife down on the bar to be instantly snatched back by him. “Take back your poodle-sticker, no way it could take out a pig, and try not to stab me again. I get annoyed easily. You, of anyone else in the whole goddamn freaking world, should know that.” Know thyself, after all.

“We’ve established who you are, but why are you here? How are you here?” Niko would be the one with the smart questions.

“I’d like to hear why first,” Cal added. “Because right now you’re my own personal number one hell.”

I ran a finger across my T-shirt, underlining the message for the second time. “I told you. I’m you, Tiny Tim, from eight years in the future. You’ve seen the movie. Get a fucking clue. You’re Sarah Connor, someone’s out to terminate you, and I’m here to save your ass.”

Reaching for the petrified pretzels, I made no move to eat them, but I spun their bowl lazily in circles. “According to some information retrieved by G—” My hand jerked, knocking over the bowl, spilling pretzels far and wide. I stopped before the name escaped, tasting salt from a viciously bitten tongue. Goodfellow—shit, I hadn’t meant to think his name. Niko’s younger reflection was in my face, no escaping that, but Goodfellow I’d hoped to keep a blank as long as I could. It was my only option in trying to hold back part of the flood that threatened to drown me in a guilt and grief I couldn’t show anyone.

“Faster, sleeker, and improved, my ass,” Cal snorted. Niko remained silent, but from the lowering of his eyebrows and the faint dip between them that would one day become a hard-earned permanent line, he suspected something other than poor coordination had been the cause.

“According to a friend’s contacts,” I started over, with caution and care on each word, “the assassin is called Lazarus. He’s genetically altered. Pumped full of a mixed bag of monster blood. Fuck knows what he can do with that.” I shook my head. I couldn’t begin to guess and didn’t particularly want to.

“He was named for the Lazarus Project as it’s about raising the dead. Bringing an entire organization of corpses back. Resurrection. Is the title a little too fucking cute or what? I haven’t decided,” I commented with derision and spite heavy on my tongue. Flipping over the bowl, I started filling it back up with pretzels. There was nothing on the bar that was any more toxic than what had been living on the pretzels for months. “Lazarus is arriving late tonight or tomorrow. He was sent to kill Cal by the Vigil. They were—loving the past tense on that—a human organization that considered it their fucking calling to keep humans from finding out about the nonhumans. They’d thought, and probably correctly, that if the world found out the bogeyman was real, it would be all-out war.”

Bowl filled, I pushed it away. “Humans aren’t known for being open-minded about those who are different. And sharing the planet? They’d sooner nuke the entire thing to a cinder first. Niko, I know you remember the Cold War when there was one plan that topped the list on both sides and both sides were proud to have it. Mutually assured destruction. Everyone dies, but they die satisfied that no one else won either. If your country wasn’t even involved? They’d take you as well. Why waste all that hard work and leave what’s left to the peace-loving slackers? If we lose, the entire world loses. That’s humans for you.”

He didn’t deny it, and Cal’s face didn’t show any more surprise than mine had when I’d found that out. Humans. What wouldn’t they do if they could fabricate a shred of justification?

“Is the information reliable? How did your friend’s contacts obtain it?” Niko questioned.

“Stole it.”

If stole meant gained by imaginative questioning methods that gave every member of Amnesty International a simultaneous nosebleed of unknown origin that had the CDC in a panic. The two of them didn’t need to know that though. We stole to survive as kids. I’d stolen a motorcycle with a side order of blackmail when I was four years old. It was nothing new. Interrogation, to put a very polite name on actions that in no way deserved that name, different story. They—Niko more so than Cal—would’ve had a problem with it, and Nik suspected. How the hell had we been so young?

“Our lives never changed, did they?” he asked. He didn’t want to know, but he had to ask. Big brothers, taking one for the team.

But he was wrong there. Could not be more wrong.

I could’ve been worse if we’d taken one wrong turn.

So much damn worse.

Our lives had changed. The difference was that it was a choice now. We’d always been warriors, soldiers, fighters, we always would be. Hell, we were paid to do it. It was our job, the perfect one for the adrenaline junkies a life of running would turn us into. Once the bogeymen chased us, now we chased them. It wasn’t as bad as he thought. Except for occasional cluster fucks like Lazarus, I couldn’t see doing anything else.

“That’s not true. They changed or it could be we changed. I like our lives. We both do. It’s not the perfect picket fences, golden retrievers, and PTA meetings. You didn’t expect that on a postcard from our future, did you?” I came close to laughing at the thought. “That isn’t us. It never was and it never will be. We’re Rom and I’m a little more than that. Could you imagine a life where you didn’t have a sword in your hand? It’s as much a part of you as the hand that holds it. Would you rather move to Jersey, mow your grass, and keep the pH in your pool at the perfect level?”

Niko blanched. It was subtle, but I caught it. “I wouldn’t want those things if I could have them. A Stepford life, no thanks.” I went with the bottom line. “You saved me, my life, and my sanity, Cyrano,” I reassured. “You always do. Give yourself credit I’m not wearing a jacket that ties in the back and, hell, I’m alive. Twenty-six and twenty-eight, did you really think we’d ever live that long?”

“I—”

“No, you damn well did not.” I answered for him. I knew my Nik, this Niko, and I knew neither would’ve wanted to tell the truth there.

And that was without knowing the hundreds of other species of monsters that roamed the earth. Thanks to the Vigil freak, Nik was going to get that cherry popped a little sooner, but only by a few months. This was when we’d been in New York a mere few weeks. It hadn’t taken long for the city to open our eyes to the fact we didn’t live in a single horror movie. We lived in all of them.

“But here I fucking am. We did good.” We had, too . . . up until Niko had been murdered, but that was a truth I didn’t want to and couldn’t tell. “Pat yourself on the back. You dragged us through some unholy, absolutely terrifying shit. You saved us. You saved me.”

“This is Hallmark as goddamn hell and all, but could we get back to the part where someone wants to kill me? And why?” The angry mask of Cal’s face tightened further. Sharing me with Niko, with his brother, was not number one on his Christmas list. “Methuselah the assassin? That ring a bell? Someone from the future? ‘Come with me if you want to live’ like the movie? You’re telling me the older I get the less taste I have? And I am not Sarah Connor.”

Big brother or not, Niko couldn’t keep a straight face at bitching of that epic proportion. It was a quickly smothered laugh, but it was there.

“Jehoshaphat. Jehoshaphat the assassin. Keep up.” I lied, as I invariably do, with a clear conscience. “And this is the most tasteful T-shirt I own, Junior, so prepare. And we’ve had monsters follow us our whole lives; you find a little time travel hard to believe?” I reached forward and flicked his forehead. “But you’re right about you and Sarah Connor. There isn’t a gym in the world that could give you her muscles.”

The switchblade came out again, and I promptly repossessed it to return to my jacket.

“You don’t look like you could take on any kind of Terminator, no matter how good you are with a knife. And don’t call me Junior, asshole.” Cal glared resentfully at me, then passed his palm down over his face and let his shoulders slouch, suddenly too tired to be eighteen. Realizing if he couldn’t take himself—that would be me, with several weapons—what were his chances with a genetically altered super-assassin? Reading my T-shirt one more time in a clear hope that the message had changed, he grimaced. “Come with me then? Like right now?”

“Thanks for the vote of confidence on my own terminating skills.” I checked the cheap watch I’d bought off a street vendor as the stolen cell phone was either telling the time in New Zealand or had a glitch somewhere.

“As for right now, nah.” I leaned back on the stool, suddenly exhausted in every part of me. “Not this second anyway. The Vigil didn’t know your home address as Niko was smart enough to fake all our IDs, names, addresses, ages, pictures. That means Lazarus doesn’t know, but he does know the address of the bar. He knows you work here as this is where we first ran into the Vigil, so this is the last shift you can pull until we get things straightened out.” By killing the Vigil bastard.

“For today though, yeah, we’ve got some time. As long as we’re back to your place before midnight or later, we should be good,” I assured. “The information was no sooner than three a.m. but a few hours either way to be on the safe side.”

Tomorrow was when we’d have to begin watching for the shit to start going down. “Since you have a problem with Junior,” I added, “call me Caliban and I’ll call you pretty much whatever I feel like. It’ll be simpler in keeping things straight. And I know if I call you Caliban, Niko will punch me in the face.”

I couldn’t let myself forget that these were the bad old days when I wore my human suit and held on to enormous angst, enough to haul around in a tractor trailer, about being part monster. And Caliban equaled monster thanks to Shakespeare and our mother’s constant use of it—Caliban the monster and Caliban the demon. Cal didn’t care, not enough to count, but Niko cared enormously. Call his brother that and he’d either gut you, decapitate you, or both.

“Oh, and one more thing, Tiny Tim,” I remarked.

“Cal,” he gritted as I heard his jaw begin to grind in frustration. “If you’re Caliban, I’m Cal. Use that, because if you use Junior or Mini Me or anything else again, I’ll rip out your eyeballs and use them as cocktail olives, got it?”

“Fuck if I hadn’t been a goddamn adorable baby psychopath. ‘Eyes as cocktail olives.’ Cute as hell with the nasty temper and baby face. If I didn’t think you’d bite my hand off at the wrist, I’d be tempted to give you a pacifier.” I settled for pinching his cheek grandma-style. That, too, had him trying to bite off my hand. I wasn’t surprised.

“Now, Niko, Cujo,” I said, “back to the one more thing I wanted to tell you.”

I had the switchblade out yet again, it was developing into a twitch. I started carving shallowly into the surface of the bar. Laz.

“We’ve got the who. How about we finally get to the why someone wants to kill me bad enough to freaking time travel? What the hell did I . . . oh. Not me. You.” The question became sharper, grew teeth enough to try to eat me alive as Cal snapped out the accusation while planting a finger forcefully in my chest. “What did you do? And stop with the graffiti. I don’t get paid enough to have my under-the-table grubby cash docked or I’d already have tore the hell out of this stupid bar myself.”

Beat.

Huh. I was smarter than I remembered when it came to blaming me. But not smart enough to realize naturally I was going to ignore him ordering me to do . . . mmm . . . anything. Niko should’ve put me in day care rather than letting me run wild at eighteen. I had not been ready to play with the big kids. “Aw, you want to do it yourself. You’ve hit the ‘me do!’ stage. What an independent little shit you’ll be.” He hissed silently—completely without words or sound, but the air between us vibrated unnaturally—holy shit, that was an accomplishment for anyone to inflict on either of us. I freely admitted it.

You. I kept digging the point of the blade into wood.

“What did I do?” I contemplated. “Why is the more pertinent question, but, all right. We’ll go with yours: What did I do?

“I broke a rule. I broke the fucking hell out of it.” I bared my teeth with dark cheer, as predators do. “No one in over a thousand years has broken these assholes’ rule anywhere close to how I did.”

Here.

“I told you how the Vigil wanted to keep humans in the dark about nonhumans. They said they didn’t want war. They wanted to share the planet, buddies, pals, Best Fucking Friends Forever, kindergarten all over again. Not for us.” I grinned lazily and without any guilt, entirely guilt-free. “Not when we were biting the normal kids to see if they tasted like hot dogs. Better than the kosher beef kind.” Which they had. Even at five years old I wasn’t into false flattery. So I’d told them. I’d thought they’d be happy. You have pretty hair, you have a cool lunchbox, you taste like the really expensive hot dogs. I was wrong. They were not happy.

No one was happy.

“But you get my point.” I would’ve forgotten the hot dog incident except for my Nik; he wouldn’t let me. The first few times it’d been just as funny to me as to anyone listening. I wished once in a while after the tenth or twelfth time he told it, his eyes gleaming with retribution for the therapy sessions he had to take me to during his lunch period, that he’d let it go.

Instead, he let go and fell out of this life. It wasn’t the same, was it? Letting it go compared to letting yourself go.

Not. The. Goddamn. Same.

Stole. I dug the knife in deeper with careless force, the wood splintering.

“The Vigil had one rule. Do not be seen in the light of day as the most oblivious humans will notice. Stay hidden. But they were not my god and One Commandment or Ten, I didn’t have to bow down to them and their one shitty precious rule.” Pride. Spite. Venom. Hatehatehate. “If I had to break it, I would. And I did. I just wish they’d had nine more to break.”

It was the truth. I’d not only broken their rule, I’d shattered it. I’d opened a gate, ripping and tearing a wound in the fabric of reality that was more than obvious as it circled in midair flashing in the colors and shades of a bruise. There wasn’t a human alive blind enough not to see that. I had done it in the light of day, fading light—but day all the same. I also did it in front of an abandoned church in the sight of the people passing by on the sidewalk. I’d then walked through it and disappeared.

Your.

With that, I had announced to the ignorant and naive: Here there be monsters. The nightmare with bloody claws living under your bed is real. The fanged creature in your closet that called your name in a hungry whisper existed outside horror stories. I showed a crowd of humans they were not alone. I hadn’t meant to, but I hadn’t meant not to either. I had one thought and one goal and hiding from sheep wasn’t it. I basically just didn’t have it in me to care by then.

Target.

People in the city didn’t notice much, too busy minding their own business, but that was something, average New Yorker or not, none of them could miss seeing. The Vigil, forgiving of nighttime slipups, were less forgiving of the ones that took place under the sun. They weren’t at all forgiving of the ones that took place in front of twenty or more people. Not a one of them had missed that magic show. I should’ve tossed out cards, gotten little kid birthday gigs.

When I broke a rule, I didn’t fuck around.

Stole.

“Why?” Cal challenged. “Why screw up by breaking a rule like that if you knew they’d want you, now me, dead over it?”

Your.

I could’ve said rules weren’t meant for lions, but that hadn’t been the reason. I let my eyes drift to a shadowy corner, deciding what to tell now and what to wait until later to reveal. There’d be more questions I couldn’t answer, but this one I could. Diverting my attention back to the younger me, I took in our differences. Physically we weren’t quite identical. Neither were we mentally, too many years of bad, bad experiences between us, but in this one thing, we were, without a doubt, the same. I turned half of my attention back to the switchblade and half to Cal.

Moral mirror images.

Toy.

Our native tongue had always been practicality—with all its different dialects of lying, stealing, violence. Arson and blackmail before the age of eight as antibiotics were hard to come by when you had no money, no insurance, no identity, and no parent who gave enough of a shit to take your brother to the doctor. Whatever it took to help Nik and us survive childhood, we’d done without thought.

What I had done several years from now was something he’d understand without any explanation required. “I broke it to save Niko’s life.”

He stared into the eyes of a remorseless reflection, searching for the truth or searching for himself. He must have found both as he let his finger fall and folded his arms as a good chunk of aggression melted away. “Okay. Good reason. I have no problem with that. You were—”

“Practical?” I finished before he could. He wasn’t a lion anymore, but he remembered, at least this once. I could see it.

One corner of his mouth crooked upward. It was the closest thing to a smile you’d get out of me at that age. “Practical,” he confirmed.

“The funny part is—funny, incredibly goddamn motherfucking funny.” I was tense with a rage I could barely control. After a few breaths to calm down, I started again. “The funny part is that I did it in front of around thirty people and not one of them believed it. They all thought it was a publicity stunt for some sci-fi or superhero movie. No one found out the big, bad monster secret, but the Vigil didn’t take chances. If I broke their rule once, I could again. They didn’t care about the reason—about Nik, I was stamped rabid and scheduled to be put down. For nothing. Which means the Vigil, they all died for nothing, with no one to blame but themselves. They were not practical.”

YOU. I went back to the knife.

Not care about Nik? No Cal would find that acceptable and every Cal would make you pay for thinking it. “No, they weren’t practical,” Cal agreed grimly. “And if they’re all dead, they deserve to be.”

“I’m glad you two agree, although I wish you, Caliban, would be somewhat less of a homicidal influence on Cal. We’ll discuss that later as I have a few questions as well. Important ones to which I want answers,” Niko said, and his orders, whether he was younger or not, I would tend to listen to.

“How did this organization send an assassin back in time? How did you come back after him? For that matter why didn’t they kill you in your own time?” Niko demanded, his habitual patience fading fast, evident by a jaw tight enough to grind molars to nothing. “And how many nonhumans are we speaking of that require an entire organization with access to science fiction such as time travel—” He closed his eyes. “Buddha, no. Tell me it’s not magic. I believe in too many unbelievable concepts as it is. I do not want any part of magic.”

I could’ve yanked his chain, his rational and logical chain that had been yanked since the day of my birth, but I didn’t. “No. There’s no magic. The Kyntalash is an artifact, but a technological one. We’ll get to that later, but not in here.” I tilted my head toward the dead-drunk patron who was still blowing bubbles in his vomit, but I was less trustworthy now than I’d been at eighteen as impossible as that seemed.

“Very well and don’t think I’ll forget. To repeat, then, why didn’t they kill you in your own time? And how many nonhumans are we speaking of that require an entire organization with access to technological artifacts capable of time travel when we only know of three?” At their ages, that was true. Vamps, Wolves, and Grendels. And with the exception of two Wolves, one a healer and no part of the Wolf mafia, they weren’t on speaking terms with any of them.

LOSE.

I laughed and if it sounded like the rasping bark of a feral junkyard dog, it was on the money. “They tried to kill me. They tried their gold-star, A-plus best. They tried enough times I lost goddamn count. But they never pulled it off. Meaning that now killing Cal is their only hope. In my time—hell, in this or any time—killing this me won’t repair the damage to the Vigil and we did an absolute shitload of damage.” If nothing else could make me smile, that did. Blackly satisfied, but a smile.

MOTHER.

“Resurrection, I said. Remember? Raising the Vigil’s dead because we wiped out every single one of those fascist fucking assholes except Lazarus. What they started, we finished. Lazarus could kill me a hundred times and they’d be just as dead and decomposing. Humans would win against nonhumans worldwide. But in this city we owned those bitches.”

Even Cal took a step back at the bile in that last line. Niko looked at me as he hadn’t before, not once, not even when I had wholly deserved it. His expression was the cautious, alert one you gave something dangerous . . . poisonous.

“Did we talk three minutes ago about humans being the only species capable of coming up with mutually assured destruction? I know you don’t want to hear the word, but this isn’t aimed at Cal. It’s for your kind, Niko. Not you, but your species. Some humans can be monsters worse than any others. Sophia, don’t tell me you think she wasn’t one. Being a monster was what she was born to do, and she was the best of the best.” I snorted, “Army Strong.”

FUCKER. I finished my love letter to Lazarus with a last twist of the blade.

Cal was getting it, I could see it in the sharper glint of his eyes—like glass that, if you had it coming, would cut you—human or not. But Niko . . . always ruthless when he had to be, always noble when there was an opportunity to be. He’d come around some day. Mine had. I cleared my throat and rubbed at tired eyes.

“I’ll tell the tiny down and dirty details that no one but your ravenous brain cares about as soon as we’re someplace safer,” I promised. “Outside. No one will hear us with everyone squabbling and squawking while they go out to eat or have coffee, the weird human shit. We’ll leave in a few minutes. Midnight will be here in a few hours or our people might’ve screwed up and Lazarus will show up sooner. Our flux capacitors didn’t exactly come with down to the second instructions.” And I was almost done with my scratched and slashed graffiti.

Done with the knife, I used my hand to gesture at the unconscious regular whose name I’d once known better than my own. “And I don’t trust the unconscious not to listen in and neither should either of you. You’d be amazed how many people can fake unconsciousness next to a puddle of their own vomit if they’re paid enough.”

Satisfied, I looked over my message to Lazarus, the lab rat Vigil Frankenstein monster of a freak. Laz Beat You Here Stole Your Target Stole Your Toy YOU LOSE MOTHERFUCKER. Carving graffiti didn’t make for great punctuation, but I was satisfied.

“Now,” I said, “I told Cal too damn long ago”—curious, they were so damn curious—“that I had one more thing to tell him.” Rapping the wood of the counter under my fist, I gave Cal the words that would determine the future. That would decide whether we, no games involved, lived or died.

If my world lived or died.

I tossed him a ten I’d had folded up in my hand to land on the bar and skitter toward him and gave him my hopefully perfectly human grin. Spreading my jacket, I gave him one last look at my T-shirt and hopefully his and our lifesaving motto written on it.

“Give me a real beer,” I said.

“And then come with me if you want your ass to live.”