A/N: Thanks for being patient! Here's the final chapter. Enjoy!

TWENTY ONE

A Brother For A Brother

"No shit," I growled at N'zen, who blinked lazily at me, like what I had to say about this didn't make a frigging bit of difference. I was just the property in dispute. No one listens to the property.

The Auphe turned to Niko, whose face had – impossibly – hardened further into a mask of stone. "Go to hell," he said placidly, his grip tightening on my shirt.

"Already here," N'zen smiled, walking forward on all fours like a cat getting ready to spring. "And we will stay here. Caliban will grow old with N'zen. N'zen will discipline Caliban, make sure he never runs away from home again. Make him a good little Aupheling. You, steel wielder, will rot into bones and be fed to our pupae so they will be strong enough to take back what was theirs."

Like hell that was going to happen. I was getting ready to build another gate. It was torture, like exercising a pulled muscle. I wasn't strong enough, and there was no guarantee that Nik and I would come out in the right place or come out at all, but anywhere, I figured, was better than here. Niko knew what I was doing, he could read it in the tenseness of my muscles, and he edged closer so our shoulders were pressed together. Getting ready for the jump.

N'zen, whose eyes had been unfocused, probably reveling in visions of my brother's bloody end and my eternal imprisonment, suddenly snapped back to attack mode. He felt the energy inside of me begin seeping out in cold gray light. The other Auphe down the passage, waiting for their cue like eager little walk-on actors in a battle scene, began buzzing and chittering nervously amongst themselves. They could sense it, as well. The boy who was not human or demon was building a gate, using their power against them.

Niko threw one arm around my shoulders, the other still extended with his katana pointed at N'zen. Physical contact was necessary. If Niko and I were separated in the few seconds of tumbling through a rip in the universe, who knew where he'd end up? I imagined him losing his grip on me and falling away, out of the gate, and slid my arm around his shoulders to keep the contact doubly as strong.

"Stop, Caliban!" shrieked N'zen, red eyes going wide with panic and anger as I wrapped my brother and myself in the macabre glow.

I smiled at N'zen as a raw, howling wind ripped through my hair. Always bowing out gracefully, that's me. Whether it's a kick in the ass, a knife in the back, or a grin as I disappeared into nothingness, I always made sure to leave with style.

The Auphe jumped for us, N'zen in the lead, screaming angrily, claws outstretched, metal teeth – stained with Niko's blood – bared, ready to sink into my brother a second time. Not likely.

Come on already, damn it! I squeezed every ounce of strength into creating the rip in space, but my reservoir of whatever the hell made me able to travel was rapidly running out. And the Auphe were still coming.

"Now would be a good time," Niko said quietly.

"You think?" I rasped, and pushed harder.

Something popped inside me. Red warmth gushed suddenly from my nose and rose in my throat. I gagged on it, struggling to keep my concentration. And the gate was completed.

Niko and I disappeared just as the Auphe from either end of the tunnel coalesced where we'd been a split second before. Listen to me, getting all literary and shit, now of all times, too. What started out as a good thing ended as a very bad thing, however, because somehow N'zen – that little piece of Auphe shit – managed to jump into the gate and attach himself onto me even as we were blinking out of their existence.

I'd never had to fight off an attacker in mid-travel before. It wasn't a very damn pleasant experience, either. It was like moving underwater. My brain – scrambled into one of Niko's stupid soy milkshakes – couldn't be bothered with things like coordination and precision. It was occupied with more important things, like finding the gate at the other end. Besides, both hands were occupied. One was still holding the katana, and the other was holding onto Nik, and shit if I'd let go of either.

N'zen hung on, burying his teeth in my neck. I tried pounding him on the head with the pommel of the katana's rubber grip, but like I said, my brain wasn't exactly playing along. I missed his head twice, succeeding in cuffing him on the shoulder blade and once missing altogether. I could feel the blood on my shirt, soaking threw it, running down my stomach and soaking my waistband. Shit, if he reached the jugular vein or the carotid artery, I was done for.

I know it was only seconds in the gate, but it felt like forever. Time screws up when you've got a monster's teeth embedded in your throat. Thankfully, that little Auphe GPS of mine took over once again, since the rest of me was pretty much preoccupied with the thought of bleeding to death. I didn't land us in the parking garage. My little internal Smartphone took us right back to maximum security – our apartment.

We crashed through the window and landed on the ground in a bed of shattered glass. All three of us. The minute I was out of the gate, my cognitive functions kicked back in and I jabbed the katana into N'zen's side in a last desperate attempt to get the damn thing off me. It worked – or at least it loosened his hold while Niko picked N'zen up from behind like some kind of rabid animal and threw him against the far wall.

Through a red fog caused by a happy and effective combo of after-travelling fatigue, a bruised brain, and blood pouring down my front, I saw my Auphe brother flop limply to the ground. I more than half expected Niko to go over and finish him off. It was the logical thing to do. But who said Niko was logical when it came to me? Little brother bleeding to death on the floor took priority – damn him. It was a mistake, as we were to find out.

Niko, dropping his katana within easy reach, grabbed my blood-soaked collar and tore my shirt open to better inspect the wound. There wasn't much pain yet – a vague stinging that promised to get a lot worse. Just blood. Lots of that dark sticky red shit that made my body function. And I was losing it, fast.

"Shit . . ." I gasped, the pain exploding as Niko ran his fingers along the leaking bite marks.

"The carotid and the jugular are intact," he breathed. He glanced up, then levered himself up to grab a pillow off the fifteen-year-old couch. He pressed it against my neck to stop the blood flow. "It's not like the upholstery could look any worse," he said breathlessly. He ran a bloody hand over my forehead, pulling away strands of hair away from my eyes. "Keep this pressed hard on the wound."

N'zen was up.

"Nik . . ."

"Don't talk, damn it, just press," Niko reached over for his katana. Too late.

N'zen jumped on Niko's back, scrabbling for a hold, long black talons punching through his sweat-slicked shoulder blades. With a grunt – a pretty big display of emotion for the silent killer, Niko reached over his own shoulder, grabbed N'zen by the wispy hair, and dragged the Auphe off him, flipping N'zen onto his back.

His katana stabbed the ground where N'zen had been a second ago. N'zen himself gated to the far end of the room. His side was bleeding black blood on the floor, and he was limping, licking his teeth to clean them of the Leandros brothers cocktail that currently stained them. "What right?" N'zen continued, rasping out his broken glass syllables as he pawed his way in a mewling circle in the corner by the TV. "What right do you have? Caliban is mine. My little brother."

Nik, just kill him now and shut him up. The words hurt worse than the bite. I didn't want to be associated with him. And what could he want with me, if he just tried to rip my throat out? I squirmed on the floor, tried to open my mouth to say something, tell the Auphe to go away, shut up, get the hell out. Niko said it for me. In three words. That bastard was always more eloquent than me.

"Caliban," Niko enunciated coldly, using my full name to get the point across to N'zen, "is mine."

My human brother and my Auphe brother went at it again. I watched, my grip on the battered katana tightening. It was like watching a reincarnation of the fight that went on inside me daily, the human and the Auphe battling for the upper hand. But in those fights I never was sure which side would win. This fight, I was sure. Niko might have been subjected to the Auphe for a day. He might have been beaten up, tortured, dumped in a cell, left without food or water in a cramped dark space not fit to piss in, but he was still Niko.

N'zen gated back and forth around the room, appearing on the wall, on the ceiling, like a frigging fly. Just get me a flyswatter. A damn big one. Niko intercepted him at every turn, twisting and twirling like some kind of lethal ballet dancer. With a big shiny weapon. He stayed far enough away from the Auphe so that N'zen couldn't form another gate around them and dump Niko back into Tumulus. N'zen lost fingers, a leg, half his face to the katana's whipping blade. Auphe bits and pieces scattered on the floor with the shattered glass and the black and red blood.

And then N'zen slowed down. Apparently even Auphe could only gate so many times before getting hit by the massive wave of fatigue I felt every time. Being all cut up and bleeding in half a dozen places probably didn't do too much for his stamina, either. He gated a final time, landing on top of me.

"Caliban," N'zen whistled painfully through metal teeth. His nails dug into my chest as he bent close.

"Get away from him . . ." Niko began, jumping forward to decapitate the Auphe.

"Cyrano, wait," I grated.

"Cal, he'll . . ."

"Just wait."

Niko fell back, breathing heavily. I could feel him standing, ready for an attack, right behind my head. N'zen, however, didn't seem to be interested in any more attacks. He just stared at me and breathed, his claws digging a little deeper.

I looked deep into the bloody orbs of his eyes – and shit, doesn't that sound romantic? – and I saw my brother in there. No, not N'zen. I saw my thirty-six year old brother, broken and bloody and dying. The Niko I didn't save. For a moment, all the helpless despair I had felt when I'd seen his body in the tunnel came back, and – unmanly though it was – tears burned my nose. N'zen knew what I was seeing. He grinned. He thought he'd won this round.

No. Damn. Shit.

I felt Niko's katana, heavy and hot and pulsing, in my hand. And I was going to use it.

An eye for an eye, I thought, as I lifted the katana and placed it under N'zen's chin. The Auphe tensed but didn't move away or fight it. I don't know if he was just giving up or didn't think I could do it. I'd been in this position once before, before the whole crazy shitting adventure, and I'd backed away. Not this time.

A tooth for a tooth.

I pressed the blade with a sudden strength and swiftness that I didn't think I had left inside of me. N'zen's eyes widened and I cracked a bloody grin. Like I'd said, not this time.

A brother for a brother.

N'zen's head rolled away across the floor as his body fell limp on top of me, pumping scalding black blood into my face from the stump of a neck. I choked on it, felt it filling up my nose and mouth with a sick copper tang. Niko kicked the body off me and dragged me into a sitting position, using his hand to wipe the gore from my face and clear my nose. I vomited blood onto his chest, the action tearing at the bite wounds in my neck.

He picked up the pillow I'd dropped and pressed it against my neck again. "I told you to hold the damn thing," he snapped, applying pressure that sent the pain throbbing into my head. I could feel the drain on my body seeping strength from my limbs. I thought that now would be a good time to die peacefully. In my apartment, in the present time, with my brother. "Open your eyes right now," Niko ordered me, and I realized I'd let them droop closed.

"Sorry," I croaked. "I'm a little tired."

"Don't even think about it." Niko repositioned himself behind me so he could reach around me and could more easily apply pressure while I leaned back against him. I could feel him tense up, the scenario too familiar.

"It's okay . . . I'm not going . . . anywhere," I assured him, one hand still clutching the katana.

"I know," Niko answered, not because of the faith he had in my words, but because he wouldn't let me. "I promised myself that years ago."

There was a silence. I stared at N'zen's body, the mutilated head, the black blood. It hurt to talk, but I had to ask. "Nik."

"Mm?" Niko rested his chin on top of my head and breathed out heavily.

"If I hadn't come for you right away . . ." I began, then rephrased the question. "You know I'd never just leave you in Tumulus, right? I mean, you'd know – even if it looked like I wasn't coming – that I was trying." I don't know why I was bringing this up again. I knew Niko would deny losing faith in me even if I knew he would. Maybe that's all I wanted to hear. Or maybe I wanted to make sure that if something like that ever happened again, he'd know.

"You must be delirious," Niko told me solemnly.

"I'd come."

"I know."

He knew. This Niko knew, even if the other one hadn't. And it was the most I could do. I glanced down at the weapon I had laid over my knees. That, and maybe take care of his katana. He'd have appreciated that.

"Can you teach me how to use this thing?" I asked, hefting the weapon.

"You're not even supposed to be talking, you know."

"Seriously . . ."

"Shut up, Cal."

"Stop bitching, already. Can you?"

"If you don't stop talking . . ."

"You're just scared shitless I'll be better at it than you."

"In your dreams."

"Then?"

"I've been trying to teach you swordsmanship for years. You lack motivation."

Lacking no longer. I had a feeling my Desert Eagle was going to have to cough up its place as priority weapon. "I promise I'll be a good student. And I'll eat my vegetables."

That clinched it.