CHAPTER FOUR

CALIBAN

Something else woke me up that night, or maybe it wasn't night…the cracks between the blinds lit up a dusky blue. The light wasn't what woke me even if it pulsed like early morning lightening. I felt it in my gut. The same way I'd felt Cassie briefly die when we were connected by her Claim on me. The same way I'd felt all those Auphe lives blinking out of existence a world away after the nuke touched down in Tumulus. The sensation was different. Violent. Like someone hitting the base of my skull with a rifle butt, then injecting my brain with Icy Hot.

I tumbled off the bed before I even registered consciousness. My bare knees scrapped against a jean zipper from the piles of clothes on my floor and my gun was already aimed at the dark corners of my room.

That was a gate. One massive, fucking gate tearing violently through a massive, fucking space.

"Connor," I whispered through morning-voice gravel and clamored over his crib. The little champ slept on, unaffected. I let out a few calming breaths as I turned around to see my affected son standing in my doorway.

His eyes were wild and he gripped the frame of the threshold. "Dad?"

"I don't know," I answered. "Connor's safe. Stay close."

Dante shook his head to deflect my assumption that he was just as clueless as me. "Outside."

Niko and Promise filed into my bedroom at the rush of movement between my crash from bed to crib and Dante's banging open my bedroom door. They were both still in their own sleepwear; Promise pulled her silk robe around her tightly as I yanked up the cord for the blinds as if she knew something would be there.

The beautiful view that Promise's financial and marital decisions had bought us wasn't what we expected. It wasn't just the usual morning cityscape with lights of early rush hour scattering throughout the street and colorful neon still shining in a slowly brightening sky. There was something there and I was left trying to grasp what it was exactly.

Over the airspace around Ward's Island I could see a dome of light, a net that looked knitted together with electricity. Hexagonal lines sparked vivid blue even against the brightness of a clear morning sky. In the negative space of each polygon a gate blossomed. One by one those rips in space ate away the electricity; used the power as a conduit to bleed the pieces together into a half globe of pulsing gray.

I doubted it was the wastewater treatment plant and if it was they were cooking more than shit over there. And the fumes opened a gate so extensive that it swirled like obsidian tar and cream. It felt it shut. It swelled as if it had breath, then imploded. Or sucked inward to whatever building it came from. I felt it shut almost like the stretch and flop of a lion sated after it'd just devoured its young.

"What the hell was that?" I whispered. Though I doubted anyone could answer. I glanced behind me, when I was sure the gate had closed. By the disquieted look on Nik's face and the way Promise had tightened her robe around her body almost twice over, they saw it just as clearly as Dante and I; even if they didn't get the whole cerebral effect.

"That woke you and Dante," Niko observed, which meant it hadn't woken the whole house, just the Auphe-bred side. Ergo huge gate. I nodded to assure his similar train of thought was accurate. Niko swallowed hard and peered out the window over my shoulder; his lover was keeping safe distance from the light as muted as it was, but refused to leave the room.

"Roman Ring," Nik whispered. "Shit, they rushed it because of us. They thought a full scale attack was coming and pushed this through." He looked at me, almost panicked. "Did it work?"

"How should I know?" Gate open, gate closed. I could give that much information, and granted this one was a much larger scale, but that didn't make it any easier to see where it went.

Niko abandoned the window rushing out of my room and guiding Promise backward with him. He let her go just outside of my doorway, which made it seem he just wanted her away from the morning light incase it fluctuated. I doubted it would, whatever had caused that pulse was probably drained for a good while.

Dante had already scooped up the still passed out Connor so I motioned for us to follow my brother. In the living space, Dante had left his laptop on the kitchen table. It was on, which left Niko no waiting time to get synced up with a Skype program. My brother did have to shove a light mocha-skinned púca out of the chair though.

I glared at the sixth body that should not have been in my house so early in the morning, especially not wearing my son's shirt. "Rio, what did I tell you about sleepovers?"

"I thought I could chance you in a better mood now that the little bundle was here," Riordyn countered. Dante had brought Connor over to the púca, who was making grabbing hands at the sleepy boy. Dante didn't relinquish him to his friend…boyfriend…the annoying púca certainly was spending a whole lot of time over here for one not getting laid. And he wasn't, I asked and Dante wouldn't lie to me. Of course…those were my son's boxers too.

Riordyn played with Connor's little feet, distracting Dante as well from the rather stressful situation. It was what he had been doing consistently for these passed few months; distracting Dante, keeping him sane where his father couldn't. It was the only reason I hadn't slammed the door in his face every time he came over. I did twice, but not every time.

"When did you get here?"

"Three hours ago," Riordyn replied calmly. Too calmly, I was going to have to strike a little fear in his heart later, but for now –mega-gate.

Nik had a direct link ringing to Salamandier's number. During Rio and my conversation, he was whispering the mantra every man whispered when making that one call before the jail cell closed. Pick up, pick up. Considering that the messed up science project lived in front of his six monitors if he didn't pick up, pick up some bad shit was going down worldwide.

Sal came through, greeting my brother distractedly with his yellow-ringed black eyes trained on several other screens. "Hey, Niko…how's it look on your end? Like Fourth of July? That's your holiday, right? It's hard to keep track sometimes."

"Salamandier, what happened? You said months!"

I watched the amphibian's bald, black head bob in a nod, but the spots of gold that dotted over his skull looked a sickly pale. If he could blanch, I betted he would have. His background sound track wasn't the usual easy jazz, but tinny sounds of an audio playback…one where a lot of panicked voices screamed and gunfire reported.

"Yes, well," Sal murmured. His attention was trained on whatever videos were playing on the other monitors in front of him. I could see his skinny arms twitching underneath a loose sweater as he fielded the images with the point and click method. His gecko-wide eyes tracked all six monitors it seemed; I swore they even moved interdependently a few times.

"Seems they stepped it up to today," the alchemic mishap said. His lipless mouth pulled back and he made a hissing sound through blunt teeth. The same way a guy would cringe when he watched his best friend get decked by some lunk in a bar fight. "It isn't pretty. The sonic waves are chaotic, the electromagnetic pulses were conducting in an unpredictable pattern—"

"Did it work, Salamandier," Niko demanded, griping the laptop like he wished shaking it would shake our tech-friend by proxy.

"Oh, I could never answer that. The only way to answer that is for the subject to return and report."

"Subject?" Niko clipped out. "As in singular? You said they had a team set up to monitor Grimm! To control him as he needs to be controlled! To drag him back on a leash!"

Sal's yellow eyes flickered over to our screen for a moment to give an awkward look that I assumed was supposed to be baleful. "Oh, he won't be returning."

My eyebrows shot up and I glanced over at Niko; that didn't seem to be a horrid concept as long as that meant he was dead and not rewriting history.

"So it didn't work?" Niko asked. Probably hoping for Grimm-scattered atoms as much as I was.

Salamandier's focus was off-screen again. The panicked audio had softened on his end so he either put it on mute or was checking something else. "It worked in the manner that the subject has been transported, but in what condition or where are variables unknown. I can say with certainty that the subject is stuck there…at least until they can get some live bodies in the Ring to operate the gateway."

"What do you mean?"

"He killed everyone," I explained for my brother. "Probably killed his escort team first."

"Yep," Sal replied. He peered at a screen to his left. "First ones, you got it. Though it seems he still has that collar on him. Safe to say the subject is stranded. I don't even know if the gateway can be reestablished after it was closed. The subject might have to find another means of interspatial…oh…oh no."

He trailed off and frantically worked his mouse and keyboard. I didn't like it when his eyes bulged out of his head like that.

"Sal," I growled. "What's going on?"

"I'm so sorry, Caliban. I was still rewinding when you called. I only saw the end of the movie, not the beginning, not the middle. This is not good news. Well, I suppose it might be if the Vigil actually managed to create a means to travel the natural—"

"Sal!"

"He took Castiella…with him." With that he swept his hand over the lens and an image took the place of our chat screen. It was a clear overhead view of the epi-center of a room. Three men in black fatigues and body armor were dragging Cassie away from the light that shown down. She was drugged, barely on her own two feet. While Grimm was amiably strolling down the opposite aisle, four more armed me surrounding him. His eyes were on her the whole time.

"Seems she was the original desired subject. She denied them and they moved on to subject two," Sal's voice intoned over the silent surveillance feed. "But they didn't take her out of the Ring. Not out of sight from Grimm…in the chaos he managed to get to her. And then they're both gone. I'm sorry, Cal…Dante…none of their records assigned a name to the subject. I didn't have any connection between Cassie and the Roman Ring."

As he spoke we watched it happen. The machines started up; created a net of visible electricity arcing between pillars that encircled the center. The camera vibrated from some sort of outside audio tremor we couldn't hear. Cassie was locked away behind the glass walls of an observation deck. Grimm's head never tilted away from watching her.

He opened a gate behind him and the pillars sucked it in like a vacuum to a quarter. It spread around them. I'd only seen the circlet pattern when Cassie had produced it; years ago when she saved me from her crazed uncles out for blood.

Grimm didn't wait for it to close around him. He grabbed the team leader next to him, killed him by snapping his neck, used his body as a shield and his weapon as a means to murder the rest of his escort team. He gated behind that paltry glass and slaughtered those inside so gleefully the glass was opaque red by the time he was done. Then he stepped out of the room through the door like a pedestrian. A pedestrian with a MP5 that mowed down scientists like a homicidal psychotic in a clock tower.

Cassie was drug one handed behind him and he tossed her into the center of the room. I watched her body tumble like a porcelain doll toppling from its shelf. Her limbs looked even more emaciated than before, there was still an IV tube taped to the back of her hand. Her hair cascaded in blond-kissed waves around her like a lamenting stage actor in crumpled form under a spotlight. The blood of the others would have pooled around her if not for the slats in the grated floors.

All this happened before the amplified gate even completed the circuit. Once it had, the power surrounding shorted out the camera. Through pixilated glitches, I could see him hoist Cassie up around the small of her back. She was so sedated that her upper body arched over his arm like a dancer, only her arms were limp and her fingers tapped against the grates as he dragged.

Then they were gone and the camera cut out to black. I stared at the screen in hopes they would pop back into existence. Like it never happened.

"That's it," Salamandier's voice cut in again. The black image slid off to the side and the pitch-skinned mutant returned with a sheepish expression. "The clean up crew is running around like ants in a destroyed hill, they're calling for the Bravo team, which I assume are the second string scientists involved in this project—"

"Can you get the blueprints of this place, Sal?" I interrupted.

His sliver of a nose wrinkled. "Now's the time for me to get everything from these bastards. The enemy just walked out their front door with the family jewels. They're not watching the back door. I'm already—"

"Do you have them?" I snapped, fist slamming to the kitchen table.

"Well, yeah."

"Give them to me."

"Caliba—"

"Now!"

Another second of hesitation, then a few clicks and drags on his side had the blueprints for a facility fifty feet underground just a stone's throw away from the water treatment plant encompassed the screen. That half of the subterranean building was hidden under the expanse of Ward's Park, a green carpet over a metallic secret. I stared at the levels, the corridors, the rooms cluster on the north end, the round auditorium that was the Roman Ring on the southern side.

I closed my eyes, felt Niko's hand graze my shirt to grasp it, but he was too late. When I opened my eyes again, my feet dropped down on the meaty frame of a dead Vigil asshole. Better than the grate on my bare feet.

All movement stopped the moment I appeared. I liked that. I bared my teeth in a smile I hoped expressed outwardly the imaginative deaths I created for each and every one of them. Several guns aimed at me. Inside this dome there were only grunts. No white coats.

"Seems I'm late for the party."

"Caliban Leandros," a big guy in a Kevlar vest greeted. He stepped forward, guiding one of his minion's submachine guns to the grated ground. Not that it would have helped much; shooting down would probably just have bullets ricocheting violently off the metal and picking off the guys around him like they had in the video. Grimm had killed most of them, but there were a few taken out by their own weapons. In a different situation I might have laughed at the comedy of death.

Big Shot approached me with his hands up. It wasn't so much surrender as it was a half-hearted attempt to keep me calm. "We are currently assessing the situation here. I assure you this doesn't involve you."

I tilted my head to the side. It was very difficult, resisting the urge to murder the shit out of this schmuck. I compromised and pummeled his face instead, gating him twice to avoid the rain of bullets sure to follow my attack. I held up Big Shot in front of me –after banging him against the metal pillars and floor. Lifted him high so his broad chest and shoulders would take in most of the bullets. I was impressed when the Calvary ceased firing before any of those shots sunk into their superior. I dropped his heavy and unconscious form to the ground. In nothing, but flannel pants and a tank I didn't have a firearm to answer theirs with, but I didn't really need one to have them pissing themselves upon seeing me step on the back of their commander.

"Next?"

Another idiot stepped forward, only one hand up for him. "Sergeant Matthews," he introduced. "There has been enough bloodshed today."

"What did you do?" I snapped. "I know about Roman Ring. What did you do?"

"We don't know yet. As Major Balline mentioned, we are here to assess the situation on a basis of threat. Until the Bravo Unit arrives we cannot tell you what has happened here."

"Bullshit." I pointed at the camera mounted over our heads on one of the pillars. "What. Did. You. Do?"

Sgt. Matthews frowned deeply, dark eyes flickering up where I pointed for a brief second even if his head or body didn't move. "It seems you have well-informed connections. I'll assume you know what this room was for."

"Assumptions are what got you this pile of bodies," I growled. "You fucking idiots. Trusting Grimm…believing you could control him. Any of us. Auphe can't be trusted. You humans should learn that quickly."

As if to emphasize my point, a gate peel open behind me. Larger than for one body. I spun in a heartbeat, then the organ took a flying leap into my throat when I saw my son and my brother standing amidst corpse on the metal grating.

"Dad!"

"No!" I shouted waving them back. "Go home! Now! Go back to your brother!" The soldiers around us were gaping at my lanky boy. It was his coming out party and this was far from anything I wanted. The Vigil may have known they'd shot Dante when kidnapping Cassie, not me, but they only had suspicions that he survived. They hadn't known for sure and I hadn't wanted them to find out. Not now. Not ever really, but that was stretching it. "Now, Dante!"

He hesitated; white wings peppered with black feather flickered into existence on his back. They stretched in the huge room. "Dad."

"You promised you would take care of him."

"Go," Niko prompted with a squeeze to Dante's shoulder. "I'll stay."

Dante conceded at Nik's word, but I wanted big brother in this mess as much as I wanted my son. "No, damn it. Niko, you have other things to worry about at home now!"

Niko's gray eyes narrowed. "Then don't make me choose."

One of the massive metal doors around the outer curve of the dome squealed open like a walk-in fridge in desperate need of some WD-40. Now the lab coats entered. Apparently, they hadn't gotten the cameras back up and running because there was no way they would let their second stringers in with me in the room. Further evident when the black-clad army boys went about guarding the scientist that were filing in, like I was going to follow in Grimm's sick footsteps.

"Oh dear, I warned them," one of them started muttering as soon he saw the carnage left behind. Except for that one, the nerd team stayed lined up near the door, petrified by the gore before them and probably under the impression that it was my handiwork. Fine. Fear was a great incentive for cooperation.

At least the soldiers were smart enough not to aim their weapons at Nik and Sgt. Matthews was a bright crayon for keeping his head.

"Start clearing out the bodies. Fugitive Alpha Tango 3 wants the same we do. He is a minimal threat if we considered him such." Matthews motioned for the lab coats to come down. "Bravo Unit, get to work. We need those answers fast." Then he panned his dark eyes over to me. As relaxed as his tone was his finger still itched at his trigger. "Alpha Tango 3 would you kindly remove your foot from my superior's neck? Without cooperation there is no hope of getting Alpha Delta 8 back."

"Castiella," I corrected as I kicked my heel to the Major's jaw, before stepping away. "Her name is Castiella."

The muttering king of the science nerds wandered over to a console that wasn't there a second ago. Lifted right out of the grate floor like a rock star's stage platform.

"I warned you." He shook a stubby finger at the closest solider and then used it to push up black-framed glasses. "This is exactly what I said would happen." A stereotypical lab rat, he was short in stature and bald as a cue ball. He looked like a younger version of that bald dude on Sex in the City and I felt a little less of a man for that comparison.

"Roger, keep it quiet," Matthews demanded.

"I'd just like it known that I told you Project Charlemagne was going to be an utter failure. A bomb," Roger complained as he tapped fingers to the console keys. "A bomb, I said. And look at this. All these people dead, all of my friends slaughtered."

Beady eyes fell on me from behind those thick glasses. "I told them to use the girl. Castiella was receptive. She had a conscience due to the natural receptors of the peri race. But Grimm is a homicidal sociopath."

"No argument there," I muttered in response. Roger nodded and turned back to the console grumbling about all the families now without a loved one. Unfortunately, I had much less of a conscience than my lover. I didn't give a shit about the corpse around us. I wouldn't have given a shit about Roger either, if he didn't sound like he knew what was going on. And sounded like he didn't agree with the boss' scruples.

"Your presence isn't necessary here, Fugitive Alpha Tango 3," Matthews interjected. I sneered at him when he dared a step closer. "We will need your assistance later. Once we understand the situation we will need you to open another Ring to retrieve the rogue subjects."

"Excuse me?"

"Or would you rather us ask your son? They come of age so quickly."

That set my teeth to grind. Niko felt the shift in my body. Sensed that I was about to give them a couple dozen more bodies to haul out of here. He grabbed my arm and pulled me back from the Sergeant.

"You will keep us informed," my brother demanded. "And I would suggest never approaching or speaking of my nephew again."

Matthews took in a deep breath. Judging by the tremble in his cheek muscles he knew what denying either of those demands would entail. Namely, his entrails splattered all over these pillars and amps.

"If communication and cooperation are obtained from your brother we have no need to involve anyone else."

I didn't believe him. Not one bit. He knew Dante was alive, knew he was older, and could easily be a new experiment for them. I glanced around at the dozen armed men collecting bodies and piling them on rolling flat beds to be sorted later. All of them saw. Anyone of them could speak.

"Nik, I'll meet you at home," I said and without waiting for him to reply gated his ass back to the penthouse. I stayed. Sgt. Matthews rolled his shoulders back, brow lifted, and hero-jaw jutting. I grinned. He knew, oh, he knew I'd just kicked my keeper to the curb. "Hey, there."

"There is nothing for you to do here," Matthews prompted, almost sounding like a little kid pleading for the monster to go back under his bed.

"Do they already know?" I asked politely, though my smirk probably read differently.

"What happened to your lover? No, I told you—"

"What happened to my son. Do your superiors already know?"

"Everyone has been informed that second Nephilim is in your possession."

I waited. He knew I wasn't talking about Connor.

His square jaw tightened. He glanced at his comrades. "Whether I say yes or no I am sentencing my men to death for what they saw."

The movement around us slowed, eyes fixed on us and hands inched toward guns strapped over shoulders. That comment said it all. It was always something I had wondered. If we had hidden Dante well enough. The Vigil might have known we busted him half-split open out of the hospital the night they shot him thinking it was me. They just hadn't known the condition of my son. They hadn't known he survived. Until now.

All I had to do was clean up here. Pop off a couple headshot, explode a few with a gate. The scientist could keep on working. They hadn't seen Dante.

"I have a daughter," Matthews said, calling my attention back to him. I knew the implication in those words. A proclaimed vow of silence. He would kill for his daughter and he knew I would do the same for my son. "The survival of the first Nephilim was assumed but unconfirmed. They would have seen him eventually, though. Enough families have lost a loved one today. Please don't increase the loss for the inevitable."

I stared him down. The Major's weapon was right at my feet. An MPK ripe for the picking.

"Prove to us you are better than him. Prove to us you're different."

Heat raced up my spine, hitting the base of my skull like a branding iron, but I kept the rage in check and grinned. "I am better than him."

"Prove it," Matthews countered, unflinching. Challenging me not to kill everyone in black in this room. It was a gamble and a plea and I had to respect him a bit for it.

"Word of advice," I said with a tilt of my head. "Transfer out of this outfit. Go to Boston and look up some douchebag named Josh Dent. He's your fucking soulmate."

I stepped back from the MPK as Matthews gave a perplexed look.

"Oh," I added. I gated next to the nerd king, who yelped when I clasped a hand to his shoulder. "I'm borrowing this."

Four-eyes blanched as he went from standing in front of his console to being shoved into the posh white leather of my living room sofa. Then he turned green, doubled over, and vomited on the carpet.

I grimaced and dodged the remains of a Mexican dinner.

"Damn it, Cal," Niko snapped as he rushed over to help the nerd upright. He actually shoved me back so I dropped ass down on the coffee table.

I couldn't help but laugh about it; albeit it sounded a little more than neurotic and slightly psychotic. "I thought we weren't supposed to be cursing in front of the munchkins." Both of mine were standing in the space between kitchen table and island, the big one holding tight to the little one.

"What did you do?"

"Why are you acting like I was the one that went Red Dawn in there? I didn't kill anyone."

Niko gave me a sharp glare. "Because kidnapping is a virtue."

"If we are comparing and the kidnapping doesn't include torture, I would much prefer that over death," Roger interjected, with that stubby finger pointed up.

I snorted and readjusted my seat on the coffee table. Satisfied that, other than dealing with the after effects of a gate, king nerd wasn't hurting, Niko stood to circle around me and sit on the matching leather chair.

"Can you tell us what happened?" he asked.

Roger's magnified eyes darted between me and Niko, assessing only us since he wasn't aware enough to realize we weren't the only ones in the room. Dante and Promise were giving us a wide berth. Rio was still at the computer…still in my house, the ballsy mule. I also noticed Dante had taken on my fatherly duty of feeding Connor, so I concentrated on the answers I intended to get from the lab rat.

"Without proper education in Roman's theories or any theory of particle physics, relativity, or spatial shifting it might be quite difficult for me to explain," Roger told us in that socially awkward way that implied he didn't realize half of that was pompous insult.

"Spatial shifting," I echoed. I tugged my spare Ka-bar out from under the cushion to Roger's right and started picking at the dirt under my nails. "Kinda like how you got here? Traveling, gating, spatial shifting…I think I know that theory."

"You know the practice, not the theory, and not to the spectrum that we were researching. Your 'gates', as you call them, tear the very fabric of space. You separate particles of this plane to pull in particles of a very different plane right up against it. It is remarkable and I would love to study it further if you would allow me to. You see my superiors don't trust your kind…"

I tapped the serrated edge of the knife to his khaki pants, causing him to trail off and swallow hard. He gaped at the blade.

"They have good reason, but I don't really care about theories. You can share lectures with Niko about it after all this is through." I lifted the Ka-bar, flipped it to my other hand, and set it to the coffee table beside me. There was no need to scare the piss out of this guy. One, I liked my couch piss-free and two, he seemed as capable of shutting his trap as Goodfellow amidst one of his puck stories –or anytime really.

"What I want to know," I continued now that I had Roger's undivided attention. "Is where you sent my lover and if you…how you can bring her back."

"Not where, hopefully, but when," Roger said. He even said it in that cliché sci-fi way. "Five years in the past."