Madhouse (Cal Leandros, #3)(56)

"Shit." I pulled up my knees and rested my forehead on them. "Sorry," I rasped roughly, "so goddamn sorry." The curse was for me, the rest for Robin.

"Did you kill him?"

Niko would've quickly realized that he'd assigned himself the wrong direction when the milling of the crowds and the yelling and screams started from the opposite end. My end. He'd caught up with me, but not in time.

"No." I straightened and leaned my head back. "A million volts and a train beat me to it."

"Dead is dead," he said with a dark satisfaction as he held down a hand to me. "And that, little brother, is quite thoroughly dead."

I shook my head and didn't take the offered hand. He was right. Dead was dead, but it wasn't enough. "Robin's gone." I looked blindly at the smoking rail. "That stupid, horny piece of shit is …" I dropped the gun beside me and rubbed hard at my forehead with the heels of one hand. I couldn't say the word. I picked the Eagle back up, threw it across the tunnel with as much force as I could muster, and didn't bother to care when nothing blew up from the careless tantrum. "In the back. Jesus, he got it in the goddamn back. He's supposed to be better than that. Smarter than that."

"He told us so often enough, didn't he?" Nik sat beside me. To keep it out of his eyes, he'd drawn the top half of his jaw-length hair back tightly and secured it just below the crown with a black rubber band. But without the weight of his braid to pull the rest of it straight, the damp bottom half that fell free had dried with a subtle wave where he had pushed it back behind his ears. That wave must've been there for months now, and I hadn't noticed. It seemed important, my blindness; it seemed almost momentous, because Niko was my brother. My brother, and I hadn't noticed. I couldn't begin to grasp the things I'd not taken the time to notice about Robin.

"Yeah," I said raggedly. "He did. Smarter than Socrates, quicker than Hermes …"

"With the stamina of Hercules and Priapus combined," the familiar voice croaked from several feet away. From the gloom, Robin appeared. He was leaning heavily on Promise, but he was moving under his own power. Moving, breathing, bragging…he was alive. The son of a bitch was alive. All those roiling emotions tearing through me finally had an outlet, and until I reached Goodfellow I had no idea if they would result in violence or something worse.

It was the something worse.

I'd jumped to my feet and moved in to push him hard. Then I grabbed a handful of his shirt to pull him back and shake him, and finally, growling as loudly as any wolf, I wrapped an arm around his neck and squeezed until his face began to turn vaguely purple.

Yeah, I hugged him. It didn't get any worse than that, did it?

Shoving him back again before he had time to blink in surprise, I demanded harshly, "Why aren't you dead?"

"At this rate, I soon will be." He raised a hand between us, wary at any further welcome. "I can tell you are overcome with relief at the reunion, Caliban, but, please, don't strain any hitherto unused emotional muscles on my behalf. I'm not sure my neck can stand it." Matted brown hair stuck to his sweaty forehead as he leaned back with a wince to give more weight to Promise's supportive arm. "And I'm not dead because of Boggle." His pale face became a little more animated beneath the discomfort. "Also because of that bastard Darkling. Wouldn't he have loved to know that, that wretched wad of lizard mucous?"

"I think this would be better explained in a location where our chances of being arrested"—Niko rested a hand on my shoulder—"and dissected are a little less." The hand gripped and then pointed. "Gun. Only rude little boys leave their toys lying about."

And I wouldn't want to be rude, would I? Or dissected. I walked over, avoiding the third rail that still sizzled with leather and flesh, and recovered the weapon with fingers that felt oddly clumsy. Hard fight, long night, friends dying and rising again, that sort of thing played hell on a person's nervous system. Understanding that didn't stop me from cursing my numb fingers, the suddenly much heavier than normal Eagle, and Lazarus frigging Goodfellow. After tucking the gun in my jeans, I pulled off my shirt, turned it inside out, and put it back on. I'd gone from a dark-haired maniac in a black shirt, to just an average guy in a red one. The difference was enough to fool any nonprofessional eye, and here was hoping that cop I took out was still unconscious.

We did make it out, blending into the panicked while taking turns helping Robin along. This time, we shelled out the bucks for a cab and headed to Promise's penthouse at Park Avenue and Sixtieth to recuperate. Promise had offered. I was beginning to think she was fonder of Robin than she let on. They were both long-lived, although he was much older by far. They had a common bond that Niko and I couldn't be part of. Actually, the jury was still out on whether I had inherited the Auphe longevity. It could stay out as long as it wanted. I wasn't outliving Niko; I wasn't outliving my only true family, not by hundreds or thousands of years. No. Just…no.

By the time we climbed out of the taxi and were ushered into the building by an imposing, silver-haired doorman with an equally imposing sweep of mustache in pure white, Goodfellow's cursing had grown louder, but his movements came with more ease. A bruised or cracked rib, that was what he'd managed to escape death with—a dark purple splotch on the left of his back…precisely over where his heart would be.