Chapter Five

Cal

I'd never been a patient person, but honestly I could have sat there waiting for Goodfellow to respond all day. Mostly because his expression was fucking hilarious. The great and magnificent Pan, the self-proclaimed master of eroticism, king of the five finger discount, and emperor of the ever running mouth, sat speechless, shocked, and left in a stupor. Elbows to his knees, fingers intertwined at his mouth, and deep green eyes fixed on the little tot in front of him.

Ace was sitting between the television and the reassembled couch; we moved the coffee table when we were toddler-proofing the rest of the apartment, which was a whole ordeal all its own. I gave the kid the only 'toy' I owned that wasn't pointy and lethal. A deck of cards. He seemed to be having more fun turning them into confetti than actually playing any semblance of a game.

"This isn't possible," Goodfellow finally said. It was far cry from anything I expected. I thought he would come out swinging with a joke. Mocking me or Niko about adopting or picking up a stray. Or how if we were that lonely he would have dropped off a few of the hairless mummy cats that I dumped in his apartment a few months back. I was pretty sure he was down to three now. The puck could sell shit to a sewage worker and make a damned killing off it.

Robin lifted his chin from his hands and flopped back on the couch. I didn't see him slouch often and he didn't stay that way for very long, sitting forward again to peer at little Ace. "It's not possible."

We hadn't really told him much of anything when we asked him to come over the morning after our bundle of joy appeared. Promise stayed overnight to help and eventually Ace warmed up to her enough that he didn't growl at her whenever she came near. Niko and I proved to both suck at constructing furniture that didn't consist of chipboard and an Allen-wrench (holy hell, my brother actually sucked at something other than stand-up comedy), but eventually we got the crib together and stationed it in my room. Scruffy would not have it any other way. He kept whimpering like a lost puppy when we set him up in the living room. Standing in the crib, with his little fingers gripping the railing that came up just under his chin.

But we didn't tell Robin any of this, didn't even tell him we had a visitor. I didn't want him drawing conclusions from our stretched theories. I wanted him to see the kid and tell us what he was. If he was, as Niko hypothesized, related to me by more than a distant Auphe relative. I wasn't sure if Robin could dig that deep, but he certainly knew what I was at just a second glance. So to hear him speak in such a floored tone, shocked by this tiny creature as much as we had been, it made me shift with nerves and a little dread.

"Where's Cassie?" he asked all too soon. I also hadn't told him that. Hadn't really planned to tell him either. I dropped my eyes to Ace, clenching my jaw.

"What does that matter?"

He didn't reply, but his eyes sliding to their corners were glare enough.

"Not here," I evaded. Robin's gaze ripped from the kid to me, dark and searching. I met that bore into your soul look, hoping he could read me as well as my brother could. He could. Or at least I had to assume that was why his complexion paled and his green eyes shimmered. Good, because I didn't want to say it again.

"So it finally happened." The words sounded like they were grinding up from his throat. He licked his lips, steepled his hands and pressed them to his mouth. He looked back toward Ace, but I didn't think he was really focused on him. Scruffy was tossing the ripped up cards into the air, giggling as it fluttered down upon him. "Are you sure?"

I nodded, knowing he could see it out of the corner of his eyes. "Then you felt it." He said it with conviction. He wasn't asking. He knew I wouldn't lie to him. Not about the death of his best friend, whom he'd thought dead several times before. He'd asked me just yesterday if I felt her still. And I said yes, I had, just yesterday. "Was it Auphe?"

Ace froze at that word, gray eyes wider than saucers. He darted his head around the room, making sure everything was in place. Making sure there weren't any pasty clawed monsters crouched in the corner or fogging up the glass of the overhead windows. I stretched over my legs to ruffle his dark hair, distracting him from his fears. "Grendels."

Robin lifted his eyebrows, not sure if it was for the nickname we had for the Auphe or my somewhat affectionate gesture toward the kid. "It's what we called them before we knew what they had a name. He doesn't seem to like their true name. Not that I blame him. Sense a shiver up my spine sometimes too."

"You know already, don't you?"

Promise and Niko had been their usual quiet selves in the kitchen, standing near the island that separated it from the living area. Both paused in their soft conversation to watch us. They were also getting lunch together, but I was pretty sure they were talking about me and/or the scruffy little boy shredding the Queen of Spades more than they were working with the food. I ignored them and flicked a piece of playing card at little Ace. It landed on his foot and he kicked it with a grin. "Tell me what I already know, Goodfellow."

"That which is impossible, Caliban. By the unfathomable depths of my knowledge I don't understand how this could happen, but this child is half Au— Grendel and, well, you can smell him, can't you? I'm sure you can scent the difference in him."

I nodded again. I couldn't smell the Auphe, but then again I could never smell it on Cassie either. She just smelled damned good, all the time. I was in love with her woody natural perfume. Ace smelled a little more flowery sweet, but it was dampened. Like how a wildflower grove smells when you pass by it going seventy miles an hour with the windows down. Robin tilted his chin up to take in a long inhale. I didn't know if pucks had a heightened sense of smell, but he had enough expensive cologne that he could at least pin point the flower scent like he did Cassie. "Foxglove, if I'm right. And I'm always right. Fitting, considering the plant is poisonous. It's a peri scent...he has peri in his extensive bloodline as you might have gathered. I wouldn't be surprised if in a year's time he begins to form wings. It will be painful, when they first appear they actually part the skin, breaking through. It's a gory mess, but then, poof, they have the power to will them visible or tuck them away from the naked eye within a few days." Robin trailed off from his tangent; the first time I'd ever known him to do so without 'encouragement' from one of us. His hand touched my shoulder. His tone went sober. "I can't say with absolute certainty, but I think he's your son, Cal."

"So how is the impossible possible?" I asked. I sounded calm, but inside I wanted to shake something. I wanted fucking answers. I was never good at the thinking part. "How did this happen?"

"You had unprotected sex with her," Robin countered with a sharp pat on my shoulder blade. I glared. "And lots of it." He was trying for jokes, but his voice still wavered.

"She said she was barren," I snarled, challenging him and her honesty.

Robin sighed through his nose. "She was..." The past tense caused both of us to pause, then Goodfellow was off again. "Like humans, females of both the peris and the 'Grendels' are born with all the eggs they will produce in a lifetime, which, as you can imagine, means their ovaries are much larger than a humans considering their long lives. The similarities split from there. I could not tell you the mating rituals of the Grendels as that was never something I wanted in my vast expanse of knowledge, but to mate with your mother we would have to assume they have some form of genitalia and reproductive organs similar to humans. Peris mate the same as humans, but the gestation is more avian than Homo sapiens."

"I didn't ask for a history lesson, Loman." Cassie already told me peris laid eggs and that she couldn't.

Robin gave me a haughty look, waiting for me to sit back and listen before he continued. "Cassie had the hormones for both races which made it impossible for her to have a successful gestation be it through the womb or a hard-shelled egg. Point in fact, she wasn't born with any eggs, utilizable or otherwise. She'd seen several healers to prove this to herself and sometimes others." And just to see my challenge and stomp it down, he added. "She didn't lie to you, Caliban. She never wanted to risk it either."

I rolled my neck over the back of the couch and knocked my fist to the arm rest. "Which brings up back to how the fuck did she have my kid?"

"Cal, language," Niko snipped from the kitchen. I lifted my eyes to the rafters. Honestly, if this kid was sticking around he was going to learn the language of the uncouth sooner or later. This was New York after all.

I didn't ask about the fact that I'd only been without Castiella for eight months and that didn't even cover the nine months in the womb let alone the eighteen or so out. Cassie had been in Tumulus, nine months there was barely a few hours here. Even if he was here most of his short life it was no surprise the kid's age was all messed up.

"I don't know," Robin answered begrudgingly. "She didn't do it naturally that is certain. Something greater than nature took part in this."

"Science," Niko interjected again. This time making a slow loop around the kitchen counter as the gears turned in his head. "Could that have played a part?"

Robin tilted his head toward my brother as if discussing the literary angles of a new murder mystery at book club. The only reason I didn't interrupt them was because they might have been on to something. If there was one thing I trusted without fail in this world it was my brother's head and heart. "How do you mean?"

Nik paused behind me, dropping his hand to either side of my skull, which was still lolled back in exasperation. "You mentioned hormones. Her hormones balanced in the form of negation, but what if that balance was shifted, chemically?"

"A sound theory, but an egg would be needed. Cassie, as I said before, had none."

"Science as come a long way. It's possible an egg containing her DNA was inserted in her uterus."

"Artificial insemination? You think Cassie was injected with an embryo fertilized by Caliban's sperm. Even if it might be possible, how would all those elements..." Robin stopped, thank god, and a light bulb when off behind his green eyes.

"There was no need for pre-fertilization, my little brother was doing plenty of the real thing without urging," Niko said with an edge of annoyance. He tilted the recliner back so I could meet his eyes without craning my neck back. Even upside down he looked pissed off; hopefully it wasn't at me, because seriously he could notfault me for this. "And they let you."

"Who let me?" And then I got it. Good 'ol Cal ever so slow on the uptake sometimes. "The Vigil," I hissed out and sat up so suddenly from the chair that Ace fell back on his rump in startled fright. "Those fucking assholes."

"Cal—"

"No!" I snapped pointing a finger at my brother. "No, I'm allowed to curse as much as I goddamn want! They did this to us! Those bastards locked us up like lab rats and bred us. They fucking bred us, like a puppy mill. For what? Him? Did they seriously think they could control a half Auphe, quarter peri? And what did they want him for? More experiments?" Ace stared at me with those wide gray eyes and all I could think of was him locked up in that phobia-inducing submarine coffin. Nothing but darkness and a fluffy blanket to keep his heart still. Poked and prodded for blood and cells, all to create some indentured weapon of mass destruction. It would have been the same as the Auphe; those bastards were going to use him like their own person toy, like a bomb with a brain.

My rage continued to built, but it was a strange kind of rage. The kind I didn't normally get unless someone or something threatened my brother to get to me. Now they were using me to create something more. Not that I wasn't used to being a stepping stone to something wholly evil, but to purposely create a life that they had no intention of giving free will to... "How did they even know he would be all right? He could have come out claws first, teeth gnashing. He could have killed all of them before he even learned his first word."

"But he didn't," Niko said calmly. He stepped up beside me, forever at my shoulder supporting. "He turned out fine, from the looks of it. And he was born with a chance at freedom."

"At the cost of his mother's life." I stood there, staring down at this reckless ball of energy and curiosity and felt my anger turn to embers in the back of my mind. It would come back, like it always did, but at the moment it was cinders. "I can't do this."

"Not alone, I'll give you that," Robin said. "The poor thing would end up running through the apartment in his own filth as you would be too insolent and lazy to figure out how to put on a diaper. And with your outlook on education I would hate to see his boorish adolescent years. And then were he to become rebellious, why, the city wouldn't survive."

I wanted so much to punch him, but settled on taking the closest pillow and chucking it at his head. "Thanks for the vote of confidence, you dick."

"I'm not going to start lying to you now, we have such an honest and open relationship," Robin smirked. "Besides you aren't alone and you have nothing to fear. Your family will help you."

"We don't even know for sure if he's mine, ours..."

"Does it matter?" Niko's voice was soft, a hand clamping down on my shoulder. "Castiella sent him to us, that much we can be sure of. And she did so with reason. Whether he's your son or just another lost lamb, we can give him what Cassie never had. Protection, loyalty, and family."

I swallowed hard, looking down at the little boy who was offering me a piece of the three of hearts. "I guess this means you'll be teaching me how to change a diaper." Niko chuckled in a low hum and knocked his forehead to my temple.

"Among many other things, yes. And be it by blood or by bond from here on out, that is my nephew right there." Niko seemed far too happy about this. I regarded him with a blank look, not sure how to reply. It wasn't little Ace's fault. He didn't ask to be born from a scientific miracle. He didn't ask to be hunted by his dark and evil half cousins. Didn't ask to lose his mother and be thrust upon a father who had no freakin' clue how to raise a child. But that didn't change the fact that I was losing my mind here.

I had been so careful. Fear of what my 'seed' would produce always in the back of my mind. When George kissed me, when I went on a crusade to lose my virginity with a wood nymph, when I slept with Delilah and even when I had that highly awkward conversation with Cassie on our first 'date'. I always had that fear that the Auphe would get out, that by some unprecedented turn of events I would get some poor girl pregnant and my offspring would eat its way through her womb and take the world by vicious storm. Seeing the Auphelings in Nevah's Landing didn't help. All of them deranged and deformed, none of them looked completely human. Flaxen hair or blood red eyes, jagged teeth or gaunt bodies, tied and tethered to their cages. They thought I was coming to play...

And aside from the little boy looking, by human standards, adorable and being relatively well tempered even if a little destructive, my worst nightmares had been realized. I fell in love and something beyond us created an impossible child that in turn got his mother killed.

"So what's his name?" Robin asked cheerfully. "Since it seems you're keeping the puppy."

I shrugged. "I've been calling him Ace."

"We are not naming him Ace," Niko griped. I think he only let the nickname go because the kid seemed to like it.

"Well, what do you suggest? Romeo?" I countered. The side of Niko's mouth went up in a smile of amusement. I sat up so I could twist and glare at him. Granted it would be rather symbolic to name my potential son after a loved Shakespeare protagonist while my namesake was the monster of the Tempest, but there was no way in hell I was naming my son 'Romeo'.

"A child that's been through hell and back and probably will several times in his life?" Robin mused. "Orpheus? Sisyphus?"

"Sisyphus, what the hell? Are you trying to get him beat up on the playground?"

"Dante," Niko said suddenly.

Little Ace stopped pushing the bits of cards around the floor with spread hands and looked up expectantly at my brother. His little mouth opened producing a little "Aa?" as if replying "Yes?" to Niko's call. I lifted my eyebrows; he didn't even respond to Ace like that. And Dante was a decently cool name. Kinda bad-ass actually. I mean, the guy went through the nine levels of hell. I also wouldn't put it past Cassie to come up with the same name as my brother, they were alike in some ways, just a few which made the disturbing factor a little less.

"Dante?" I asked the kid. He looked at me next, not quiet as bright-eyed as he'd been an hour ago, but I think that more had to do with him getting tired. "You like that name? Dante Leandros." I leaned back on the recliner and smirked. "It does have a nice ring to it."

Dante just let off a big yawn, got onto his feet, and toddled off to find something else to destroy. Robin snorted. "Right, I take that back." Off went the cushions again, one of them slung at the side of the puck's head, just like I had earlier only this one hit. "He's definitelyyours."

Robin went home after a take out dinner from a restaurant of his choosing (and his paying) threatening to come back the next day with more fashionable clothes and pruning shears to tackle the mess that was my scruffy son. Though he did comment that Promise did a better job last minute than I would spending a week on Rodeo Drive. Not that I would ever be caught dead on Rodeo Drive unless I was being paid to kill something big and evil in one of the tight-ass, big-purse shops.

Promise was apparently staying another night, not that I minded at all. She could change a diaper faster than I could recover from gagging at the smell. The kid still remained attached to my hip, even with a gentle mother-figure like Promise near by. So when the clouds rolled in and the sky started grumbling, I figured he would be glued to my thigh.

No little kid liked lightening and thunder; at least, none that I ever met. Until now. I'd been scared shit-less by the crash and boom. I hid under my covers, huddled into Niko who was probably trying to read a book by candlelight. The freak. But Dante was fascinated. He sat on my bed and stared up at the small box windows transfixed.

I lounged beside him with my legs stretched toward the foot board, watching him. He didn't flinch at the flashes of light that made his gray eyes look stark white momentarily. He didn't shudder at the crack and roll of thunder. He just tilted his head like an inquisitive puppy, occasionally looking over at me with a goofy smile.

"You good?" Niko asked from the threshold of my room.

"He's changed and fed. I think we're good for a couple hours."

Niko smiled, the real kind that made him look his age instead of mid-aged man stuck in a mid-twenties body. He remained in the doorway, lingering. He'd been in surprisingly good spirits the entire night; he tried to hide it but part of him was ecstatic to have the little toddler in the house. Maybe he was in that mind-set finally, he was certainly old enough to have kids. He'd been looking after me for so many years he never got a chance to think about family other than his reckless, accident/death prone little brother. Maybe he'd secretly been thinking about it with Promise. They'd been going on three years now (counting the six months, Nik wasn't talking to her because of Cherish), that was damned long term for us.

I knew he had dates when we were younger, when he was in high school and I was dragging my feet through middle school. Because back then there had been four years between us, pre-Tumulus trip that shaved off two years of my life in the span of two days, literally. I never remembered it getting very far past the first or third date though. Girls that age didn't appreciate how thin my brother was spread between academics, work, vigorous physical training, and keeping his half-monster brother alive.

Nik shook his head slowly, eyes fixed on the newly dubbed Dante. "What are we going to do?"

I sat up, scooting back so I could prop my back against the headboard. "What are we going to do about him, about the Grendels, or about our current job?"

He sighed heavily and walked into the room. "All of the above. This really changes everything. You know the Grendel watching the Wendigo's house was looking for him. They'll hunt us again, more aggressively than before. This child, even if only the child of another unsuspecting human, is human enough for them to try to break through time again."

"Technically, if he isn't mine he might not be human at all," I countered. Niko tilted his head to one side in challenge. Yeah, I could deny it all I wanted, but one look into those round gray eyes and it was obvious who his daddy was…unless Niko was banging Cassie behind my back. Uh, that thought made me swallow back a little bile.

And of course considering the things the Auphe wanted Dante for had crossed my mind as well, or more like it zig-zagged like a pinball through my head. They didn't have Darkling anymore, but who was to say they hadn't found another way. These were the next generation Auphe, no limits because they didn't know history. Dante was like me, one of the few successful experiments. I didn't know if he could open gates now, or if he would ever be able to travel, but he was certainly just as 'human' as I was. Which explained why the Auphe had wanted him enough to take Cassie on. Which explained why they became so aggressive that they killed her to get her away from their new little prize. And they would probably attempt the same with me. No more games.

"You think he's too young to teach him to shoot a .38?"

"If he's anything like his father we should probably start early." I glared at Nik, but the scowl melted when little Ace started crawling over the bed toward me, then onto me. His little hands pressed against my stomach and chest and without so much as a spare glance he flopped down and made to go to sleep.

"Oh no," I laughed and awkwardly scooped him up. "You are not sleeping in bed with me." Dante whined a little, but when I put him in his crib he dropped on his rump, then his back and was out in the time it took me to tuck him in. I paused, un-tucked the bedding stretched too tightly over his little body, then tucked it in again. I grimaced. "Am I doing this right? It looks like I've wrapped him in a cocoon."

Niko walked over to stand beside me over the crib railing. "He's fine. Cal, you're doing fine. Not to say I expected to be having to encourage you through a situation like this."

"Well, if one of us was going to knock-up a girl out of wedlock we both knew it was gonna be me," I snorted and folded my arms over the crib railing, leaning my chin there. "He does look like me, doesn't he?"

"Yes, he does," Niko replied. He shook his head and snickered. "Exactly like you. It's like I'm looking at a photo of you when you were so tiny." I glanced over at my brother out of the corner of his eye. The expression on his face was damned near maternal. Gray eyes softer than I'd ever seen with a little twinkle in them and a little curl at the corner of his mouth.

"You're loving this, aren't you?"

"I wouldn't go that far. This still complicates things tremendously." That was an understatement. We had the supernatural community at our throats as it was; now we were adding a moving target in the shape of the tiny tot that couldn't even form the syllables of his own name, if he even had one. I didn't want to know what our enemies would do to him if they got their claws or paws on him, but I did know I would murder the shit out of them if they tried. Son or not, he was innocent and I intended to keep him that way for as long as I could. No whiskey driven whoring mother telling him he was spawned from the devil for a large purse for Dante Leandros.

A light clearing of the throat brought our attention to the doorway of my bedroom. We both knew Promise was standing there, watching us; she may have been light on her feet, but there was no way Niko didn't hear her and I smelt the subtle fragrance of her shampoo heighten when she drew closer. She was wearing modest pajamas made of silk, just thin enough to tease the imagination into wanting desperately to know what was underneath. Not me, mind you, I still valued my nether region and wanted to keep it in tack, but it certainly prompted my brother to draw away from the crib when she did the same from my threshold.

"I suppose, that's my cue," he said.

"Nn-hn," I teased, not even lifting my head from my arms. "Use a condom."

He smacked me over the back of the head in passing, but was gone before I could retaliate, not that I'd bother. I was fucking tired. Running around after mini-me was exhausting. I re-tucked him in one last time, leaving the blanket a little looser around his body, then dumped my own onto my bed. I was out for the count in minutes. Apparently, that was another thing Dante inherited from daddy; pass out in the face of confusion.