Slashback (Cal Leandros, #8)(50)

Jack wasn’t building gates. As far as I could tell, Jack was teleporting. He was here. Then he was gone and he was quicker than I was as I hadn’t managed to take any of him with me when I went. Now he was almost on top of Robin again who was fighting him off with his lighter version of a broadsword. He was having slightly better luck than I’d had with my combat knife on Jack’s first visit, but he also had hundreds of thousands of years of fighting experience with weapons. Millions with a pointy stick and a hefty rock. His blows were so fast they were a blur.

“Enough banter with the psychopath,” Robin spat. “Shoot the malaka and be done with it!”

The sirens were seconds away, lights were getting brighter and closer, I could hear the people collecting down in the park by the river. We were out of time, but we weren’t winning this battle. That left the war and for that we needed Jack’s attention on us and only us. “Got your attention with the bonfire, didn’t we, Jack? We’re bad, bad boys. If you don’t take care of us we’ll do the same tomorrow night and the next and the next. None of us are the Flock. We’re the pack and we’ll eat what you want before you ever have a chance to save it in whatever special Serial-Killers-R-Us trophy case you got from IKEA.”

The eyes transmuted from pale electric blue to nuclear white. “Fire is for the pure. Fire is for the punishment. None of you are worthy to use it.” While Jack waxed poetic on fire safety or whatever the hell he was talking about, I emptied the rest of the magazine. Lightning roiled in him and for a second in the mist I thought I saw something glittering. A vein of the purest white diamonds, the curve of a wing, but it must’ve been a trick of the dark cloud, the lightning, and the fact that Jack was gone. The same as if he’d not been there at all.

I could hear the voices of the police and firemen making their way through the smashed barriers and unless we thought we could survive a hundred-forty- foot jump to the water, which I didn’t, and wanted to swim the Harlem River, really didn’t, then there was only one way home. Niko was already running toward us, but still too far. I threw up a gate directly in front of him that swallowed him—a hole in the world—then grabbed Robin’s arm and took us through one of our own.

Then we were home and we didn’t know a thing more about how to take down Jack than when we started. Hell, we knew less if anything.

What a waste of a good fire.





10



Niko

Twelve Years Ago

“Give me the matches, Cal. I am not playing here.”

He handed them over, muttering under his breath, but I knew enough to know when he was playing at teasing the big brother. He wasn’t a budding pyromaniac. One fire didn’t an arsonist make. And that one had been an emergency. I couldn’t hold that one against him.

I was sure enough that he wouldn’t burn down Junior’s house, but while I more than still had doubts about Junior’s basement of dead bodies, it was true that people were going missing. It would be safer if Cal weren’t home alone after school while I worked, whether it was light outside or not.

“Why don’t you stay after school today and play a few games of baseball, football—whatever your gym teacher has planned? Then I can come by after work and we can go home together.” The students at Cal’s school had many parents with odd schedules who weren’t home in time for the bus to drop off their children. The principal had decided an after-school sports session was a good idea for those parents who needed two or three hours to come by and get the kids who couldn’t take the bus to be home alone. I’d met Coach VanBuren. He wasn’t especially bright and I didn’t think he’d volunteered for the job, but he did it. He might not be a patient man or a man who loved his job, but being there until the parents could be—that made him a good man.

“I don’t like sports anymore and they won’t let me play,” Cal finished without showing much concern. He hadn’t been a fan of team sports since he knew there were team sports. Except football. He liked football. He loved tackling. I was hoping when his growth spurt came it would be enough that he could play on the team of whichever school we were in at the time. Or I had hoped, but now . . . what was this?

“Since when don’t you like sports, and what do you mean they won’t let you play?” I frowned. Cal was small but he could outrun anyone his age. “Why not?”

“Since this year.” He started to scoop all his papers off the kitchen table and wad them into one big mass. “I got tired of faking it. I like to win. When you play games you’re supposed to win. That’s the whole point. If you’re not trying your hardest to win, then you’re not playing it right.” He began shoving books and wads of what I hoped was doodles but knew, knew was his homework in his backpack. “If you’re following ‘rules’”—he pulled a face at the word—“then you’re not trying your hardest. Games shouldn’t have rules, not if you want to win. They’re . . . um . . .”

“Mutually exclusive?” I provided.

He zipped up the backpack. “Exactly. If I’m going to play a game where I’m supposed to win, then I’m going to win. Coach VanBuren doesn’t understand. He says I have ‘poor impulse control issues,’ ‘the attention span of a frigging gnat,’ and I’m a ‘little psycho *.’” The three quotes, I could hear them as if that potbellied, balding, worthless excuse for a human being was standing beside me. I felt a flush of anger, but Cal was indifferent. He was snorting at the man’s idiocy. “For a coach he doesn’t know anything about winning.”