Slashback (Cal Leandros, #8)(62)

Grendels didn’t have the teeth they did only to play peekaboo through the windows.

“Did something happen? Next door? Cal, seriously, we have to go. I looked up that prostitute. . . .” I stepped into the bedroom and two prongs hit me in the side of the neck. I fell, convulsing. Every muscle locked, the pain hot and unrelenting through every nerve I had.

“Something did happen next door, neighbor.” Junior grinned down at me with dull yellow teeth. “And a f*ck’s sight more is going to.”

I hadn’t expected him to be in our house. It didn’t cross my mind. It should’ve. Every instructor I’d had told me the people who go down in attacks, the people who sometimes die, they weren’t watching. You watch every second and you don’t stop that, not for any reason.

The prongs and wire retracted into the boxy shape in Junior’s hand. “Your kid brother didn’t much like this either. He’s pretty small. I thought for a minute I’d killed him and that would’ve been a damn shame. I have big plans for him and for you, so don’t you feel left out.” A hand covered my mouth with a folded cloth as I tried to get up, but I couldn’t do more than twitch. “It’s chloroform, but it’s homemade. I’m afraid it’ll give you one helluva headache when you wake up or if I mixed it wrong you might not wake up at all. You’d probably prefer that, but I wouldn’t. Keep your fingers crossed for me.”

Yellow and black pools of hazardous waste began to puddle across my vision. It was almost dark outside. He had to wait fifteen or twenty minutes; then he’d be able to drag me over to his house and no one would see. I used all the energy I could gather to reach up a hand and claw at the rag across my face.

“Now, Niko, that’s the name your brother screamed when I was waiting for him like I waited for you. That must make you Niko. Don’t be that way, Nicky. Don’t you want to see your little brother again? Whole anyway? It’s harder to make them out once they’re in pieces, the bodies. You have to blur your eyes, you know, like at those crazy posters with the hidden spaceships.”

The hand across my face was unmovable. I thought Junior was fat and sloppy, but there was hard muscle under it. It was one more thing I hadn’t seen. I’d thought he was dim and slow. I hadn’t seen the cunning predator in his eyes or heard the lie in his words. And now . . . now I couldn’t see anything. I could still hear the mumble of his voice, dribbling on, but that too faded. I faded with it with five words echoing over and over in my mind.

Your little brother.

In pieces.





13



Cal

Present Day

Pieces of eight.

I’d wanted to be a pirate when I was a kid—after cowboy and before race car driver. I would rather have told a story about that kind of pieces of eight than the one I did have to tell. Eight men—eight pieces in a game—eight possible pawns.

I told Niko about the other men by the Ninth Circle, members of the same prayer circle as the ones in East River Park, and I told him exactly what I’d done with them—how I’d sent them away, how I’d brought them back. I was honest though—about how near a thing it had been to leaving them gone for good. All he had to say was we’d had this discussion and while unfortunately it had been after the fact, he wasn’t going to insult me by repeating the lecture. He also said that while I had done it, I’d also fixed it. I should give myself credit for that. I’d overcome a bad impulse when it would’ve been easier not to. He was proud.

Back in the recliner resting my ribs and my growing hangover, I thought about replying that he always enjoyed both insulting me and lecturing me, but I didn’t. I didn’t want to turn that pride into a smack to the back of my head. And he could be right. At the park I had asked Nik what the right thing to do was. I was trying. That I was trying less for my sake or the world’s sake and more for my brother’s sake, that didn’t matter. I was trying and the reason I chose to try was Niko. That counted. To me.

Considering Niko brought me a Mountain Dew to keep me from getting it myself and forcing me into another swipe at the codeine, which he would promptly confiscate as it didn’t mix well with alcohol, made me think it counted to him too. My boss, Ishiah—they didn’t come too much holier-than-thou than him—had once told me Niko was a good man, among the best of men, but his fatal flaw was that he’d burn down the world to save me.

That he was the sole reason that I wouldn’t burn down the world said something . . . we were the flip side of a coin. That kind of balance was something the Buddha-loving badass that was my brother could understand. It didn’t matter what you’d rather have or that things would be easier another way—the world was about balance. I didn’t give a crap about Buddha and yet I knew that.

Nik disappeared down the hall and returned without his coat. He shrugged out of the harness that held his katana and placed it on the kitchen counter. Normally he would’ve left it in the bedroom with his duster, but with Jack popping in and out, he’d want his preferred blade close. He had more than enough practice and nonpractice blades in the gym area, but your favorite was your favorite. If you were going to be prepared, you may as well be prepared with the best.

“Goodfellow should be here by now,” I grumped, “with my pizza.” We’d called him to come talk about this new development, if it was one. I knew coincidences were rare, but I wasn’t looking forward to admitting I’d been jumped by a bunch of homeless men in white who wanted me to pray to Heaven while they killed me and I’d casually chalked it up to that Cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs New York experience every tourist campaign told you didn’t exist.