Slashback (Cal Leandros, #8)(73)
“An Auphe can kill anything. You know that.” He did. He’d seen it often enough before.
As I finished gathering my weapons, he said tightly, “If they don’t care about surviving, that’s true. But I know better than to have this talk with you and I don’t know that I would do any differently. This once I won’t play the hypocrite. Start at the top of your list. Ishiah and I will begin at the bottom. If we find them first, we’ll call you.”
The air was air again and I felt more human than I had in a long time. Nothing brings out the humanity in you like sheer terror. “He thinks it was his fault. I tried to help him. I think I did, some, but what if he thinks he deserves this? To be to Jack what I was to Junior? What if he doesn’t fight hard enough? Shit, Robin, what if he doesn’t wait for me?”
He pushed me hard enough to have the pain of my broken rib slicing through my panic but not hard enough to actually injure me. “Don’t be an idiot. Yes, he feels guilty, but do you think for a second your brother would willingly transfer that guilt to you?” He pushed me again, this time in motion toward the hall and then the front door.
Robin was right. Nik wouldn’t do that to me. He would do anything to be there when I showed up, still alive . . . still fighting. I glanced at the door, then back at Goodfellow. “I won’t be needing that. Look for him. Find him. Call me.” I pulled the gate, a gate I thought about because Nik would want me to, around myself and left this world.
I reappeared at the location of the first church. I knew it, had passed it a hundred times. It was one of the locations I was familiar enough with to travel through a rip in the world and arrive at its step. I was wearing Niko’s long coat he’d left behind. It covered up enough weapons to take out the entire NRA. Nothing covered up that I’d appeared in broad daylight out of thin air surrounded by the violent purple and black oil slick of a wound that was reality torn around me. I was separated from the sidewalk by a chain-link fence, but it wasn’t much of one and people saw. I don’t know how many, but from the shouts and gasps it was more than one or two.
There’d be hell to pay for that later . . . if there was a later. I didn’t care about the consequences. I did care about finding Nik as fast as I possibly could. If I had to reveal every hidden paien alive to an unknowing human world, so f*cking be it.
This church wasn’t that old. It was that ugly, square industrial look from the 1950s with one of those steeples that don’t actually have a cross or a bell and you wonder why they stuck a steeple on it at all. What did I know though? Sophia and religion hadn’t gone hand in hand. As far as I remembered, I’d never been in a church. It had nothing to do with being Rom. Rom were the same as everyone else; some were more religious than others and religious traditions varied from clan to clan.
It was amazing the shit your mind could come up with to stop the mental images of your brother being skinned alive that ran through every thought like a garrote rusted red with old blood.
Time to go.
I shot the chain and lock off the door and ran into my first church. I searched the two floors and the basement, kicking down the more flimsily locked doors. I didn’t get what I was praying for. Except for rats the building was empty.
The next church called for a taxi. I had to gate back home to come out and catch it. I couldn’t flag it down at the church. From inside I could hear the people gathering on the sidewalk, the disbelieving voices. If I didn’t come out of the church, it was a little better. Not a lot better, but a little. They wouldn’t see more proof that someone . . . something had been there to begin with.
I needed the taxi for the second church as if I’d passed that address, I didn’t remember it. And if I couldn’t see it, couldn’t feel it, I couldn’t gate there. As the cab pulled up at the second address, I told the driver to keep going and gave him a new one. This one was already half converted into condos and workers were moving inside and out. If Jack was there anywhere, there would be a good deal more screaming and slaughter or a pile of cooling dead bodies hidden somewhere inside.
The next was the same, as was the next. Nothing stayed undeveloped for long in this city. The longer I searched, the more Niko’s chances declined. Unless . . . unless Jack didn’t kill during the day no matter how safe his lair. Junior had his attic, his skylight . . . for Jack to watch maybe, or maybe for another reason. Jack didn’t belong to Heaven anymore. At night under the stars and the moon might be the closest he could come to being home. I couldn’t see the stars in the New York night sky with so much light pollution, but Jack’s eyes weren’t mine. Neither was Jack’s mind. Jack’s mind wasn’t the mind he’d always had either. Maybe Jack was crazy enough to think the stars were the eyes of his fellow angels watching his work with approval.
If I wanted to lie to myself and grasp at straws, I would. In my life I’d learned one thing: the truth will kill you as often as it sets you free.
The next church was Jack’s. Not his one true church, but it belonged to him. The first floor was empty, but the basement was home to fourteen f*cking hoodie-wearing acolytes. If I never saw another hoodie or whoever had spread the fashion gospel on those goddamn things, I’d be happy as hell. The men had been sleeping when I came down the stairs. It was a small area, meant for storage, not a dormitory, but that’s the purpose it served now. They sat up on old sleeping bags, not one of them with a knife in hand. From the direction they were reaching they slept with them under flattened, ancient pillows. It was a good place if you were smart enough to sleep with your hand under there grasping the handle. They weren’t that smart. They did know me. I saw it in the set of their jaw, the disgust in their eyes. One stood up—the leader, ready to face me unarmed. That’s what a brave if stupid leader would do. The rest were all still reaching for those knives when I sent Jack a message.