Madhouse (Cal Leandros, #3)(16)

"Head?" I felt his fingers below my ears, checking the flow of blood. I didn't nod. I couldn't begin to imagine what that would feel like, but it wouldn't be pleasant. Luckily, Niko didn't need the confirmation. While one hand rested lightly on the back of my neck, he used the other to pull out his cell phone. Within seconds he was informing Sangrida Odinsdóttir that she had a dead sirrush in her basement as well as two wounded warriors and he would appreciate whatever help she could offer that fell short of a trip to Valhalla.

A half hour later we were back at Niko's and my apartment courtesy of Sangrida's private car. By that time, Goodfellow could walk, more or less, and I'd stopped bleeding. The headache hadn't eased any, though, and I let Niko lead me along as I covered my eyes with my hand. The thin glow of the hallway light was suddenly a hundred times worse than staring directly at the sun, and it felt like molten lava pouring directly into my eyes to fry my brain with laser thoroughness.

Inside our place, Niko steered me to the couch, pulled the blinds, and turned off the lights. "I'll dress Robin's wounds in my bedroom. Rest."

As a sign of how truly miserable he felt, Goodfellow didn't have a word, rapaciously sexual or otherwise, to say about being in Niko's bedroom. Fifteen minutes later Nik was back to settle onto the couch beside me. I'd slid and slouched down enough that my head rested against the back of the sofa and my legs sprawled wide. "Robin?" I asked, turning my head cautiously to look at him.

"It wasn't as bad as it appeared at first glance. Several penetrating claw wounds to his arms and legs, but they're fairly clean. No ripping. I believe traveling with you through your gateway affected him more. Pucks don't take well to it is my guess." He handed me a wet washcloth for my face. I'd cleaned it up as best I could in the car using the front of my shirt…just enough to get me into our building without people stopping to donate money to the axe-maniac survivor fund.

"Probably no one does." I scrubbed at my face, careful not to jostle my head too much. If it weren't for my Auphe half, the nausea I felt when opening and traveling through the gate would be a helluva lot more debilitating. "No one normal."

Niko frowned, a slight downturn of tightened lips. "You know better." He'd spent a lifetime, mine at least, telling me that I was normal, that I wasn't Auphe, wasn't a monster. Though he could save my life, my sanity, and everything in between, it was the one thing he couldn't fix, couldn't change. But I'd finally come to realize that as long as I could remain who I was, I could survive what I was. It was only bad genes. Alcoholism gene, cancer gene, monster gene, choose your poison and work around it. Thanks to Niko, I was doing that. And when I faltered in that belief, he was there to kick my butt back on the path.

I dropped the washcloth on my leg. In the past opening a gate would drain me, exhaust me. Goodfellow had once said that he thought that would pass with practice. He was right. I was tired, damn tired, but not like I had been in the past. But the headache…shit. What the hell was with that? And the blood? The last time I'd used the ability months ago, I'd opened a gate and kept it open for nearly a half hour. Maybe a full-blooded Auphe could do that with ease, but I didn't think so. Ripping a hole in the world or between worlds—it wasn't something meant to be long-term. "I think I broke something." I grimaced, massaging my forehead with the heel of my hand.

Niko picked up the cloth and pulled my hand back down to fold my fingers around the damp material. Steering it to the area on my jaw by my ear, he released me and agreed, "I think you may have." He waited until I'd wiped at my skin again for a few seconds, then took the bloody cloth from me and put it aside. "Or strained it. How is the headache? Improved any?"

We'd thrown some Tylenol at it. We may as well have thrown it down the toilet and flushed. "It'll pass," I evaded. "On the plus side, I can still hear." Through the open door in the hall came a nasal snore more suited to a constipated moose than a puck. "But on the downside, I can still hear."

"You didn't rupture your eardrums, then. Do they still hurt as well?"

"Let's write off the entire area above the neck. It'll save some time." I knew what he was thinking. CAT scans, MRIs, all the things that weren't possible for me. Our mother, Sophia, had never been one for doctors or anything that cost money. We got our shots at whatever local clinic we were living near at the time, but only because the schools demanded it. If I got hurt or Niko got sick, we toughed it out. And when we were older, Niko and I had come to the realization that hospitals…any place with imaging equipment, any place that would want blood tests…were out. I was human on the outside, but it might not be the same on the inside. We'd eventually met a healer and when he'd found out the truth about me, he'd confirmed it. I was different. Subtly, but noticeably different. I didn't ask how. I didn't want to know.

The bottom line was, no hospitals for me. And as our healer hadn't answered his phone in a while, we had to make do. This was another make-do situation.

"No more gates, Cal," Niko said uncompromisingly. "None."

"Maybe if I give it a few months," I hedged. I didn't like opening them. It only reminded me of a part of myself I'd sooner forget. But there was no denying that if you had your back to a wall with a giant serpent leaping at you, it came in handy.