Chapter Fourteen

Cal

We got the calls that night. Three of them. The first was Promise -the vampire was holed up in her apartment recouping from her brush with massive, full body, third degree burns. Nik had gone to check on her while I was passed out. The jerk actually took Robin up on his suggestion and slipped some sleeping pills in my soda after we found the werewolves couriers dead in their home. I woke up five hours later, feeling hungover and a little more than pissed off at my brother. As emphasized by my refusing to speak to him through our dinner of vegetarian Chinese take-out. Of course, after the first call to his cell phone, my curiosity was piqued. I could tell it was Promise, but that didn't stop my leg from shaking under the table in anticipation of news, any news. Still I resisted.

"Being angry at me isn't going to do us much good, Cal."

I glared, stabbing a water chestnut with my fork and shaking it off into his white rice container. "You're beginning to develop this unhealthy habit of drugging your brother, I don't appreciate it. If you wanted a vampire booty call the roofies aren't necessary."

"You needed to sleep. You're no good to me or Dante injured andsleep deprived," Niko answered easily without one ounce of guilt. He plucked the tasteless block of vegetable I'd foisted on him, dunked it in soy sauce, and popped it in his mouth. I couldn't argue with his logic. I could rarely argue with his logic, because he was usually right. And I was usually reckless, thoughtless, and wrong. It was a happy marriage, really.

"What did Promise say?"

"Nothing new," Niko told me without hesitation. He snapped his chopsticks at my wrist, noticing that I was just shifting the noodles around and not actually eating. I wasn't hungry. Yes, that meant the world was ending, but who was I to stop it? Some people were stress eaters, hell I was usually a stress eater...or just an eater, but at the moment was stomach was churning with so much unsettled acid that the smell of food was starting to get to me. "She spoke to Robin, but no one seems to have noticed a suspect van. She said Robin followed a few leads he picked up from the patrons at the bar, but nothing panned out. I hate to say but I believe you might have been right to tell Samuel. We could use The Vigil's eyes right now." And if they tried to use anything more on Dante they would lose every limb on their bodies.

"Now that you're talking to me again, perhaps we could take the time to discuss some things I know you've been avoiding?"

I snorted, before stuffing a glob of lo-mien into my mouth. Niko watched me carefully as I chewed, waiting for me to continue. I didn't bother to finish; he hated when I spoke with my mouth full so the irritation was an added bonus. "Doubt it, whatever it is I'm avoiding it with good reason."

Niko frowned, munched on a little bit more of his sauce-covered rabbit food, then set his chopsticks down with purpose. I grimaced; that was never good. "We're going to get Dante back, there is no if, there is only when. So we need to talk about the future. What's going to happen? Do you want to move somewhere more child-friendly? Do you want to move out of the city completely?"

"Seriously," I growled. "Avoiding it."

"We aren't avoiding this, Cal." His tone was incredibly stern and his eyes were fixed on me. I wasn't getting out of this one. As much as I didn't like to use that lump three feet above my ass, sometimes it was just unavoidable around Nik. My shoulders sagged and I leaned back in the chair, glaring at my Chinese take-out containers as if they insulted me.

"I don't know what to do, Niko," I replied evenly and probably with a little more bite than needed.

"So concentrate on what you do know. We're keeping him?"

I sneered, appalled, before I realized Niko wasn't really asking, just prompting me to answer. "Of course."

"Which means we need to alter our lifestyle to accommodate a two-year-old. We need to stop taking such high-profile and dangerous cases. Perhaps we should end the agency altogether? If so we need to discuss proper jobs that will allow us to watch over Dante as well."

"Couldn't Promise just move in and be our in-house sitter/sugar momma?"

Niko smirked. "Well, need to move out of his apartment, so I suppose finding a place that would accommodate Promise's needs as well would be an option. She is fond of Dante." And they'd already been thinking about kids behind my back anyway. I sighed, thinking this through a little more than I'd allowed over the past few days. Moving from this apartment was necessary now that the Kin knew our location intimately, but would that solve anything?

The Kin would still find us. The dark and evil things that had a hard on for half Auphes would still find us. The Auphe would still find us. We could be happy as a puppy with a brand new tug toy in a fancy new apartment with Promise as my new sister and live-in nanny, Nik and I taking on new respectable morning jobs (well, Nik taking on a respectable morning job), and something would still go horribly wrong. The only reason Niko and I survived this long was because of our anonymity and now we had none, as proven by a random werewolf tracking us down to hand off friendly postcards.

"We should move," I said softly. "Out of New York." It was the reality. The Kin knew what Dante was. Even if we got him back they would probably target him again. New York was dangerous for a kid like Dante, I knew from personal experience. I groaned and dropped my head to arms folded on the table. "I don't want to move."

"Moving seems like the logical route, but then so does hiding Dante away from the world. I understand your fear, but you were right before. We can't shelter him for the rest of his life. If I had taught you how to defend yourself more, maybe they wouldn't have gotten you—"

I rolled my eyes; he was worse than a Catholic priest with this guilt crap. "Nik, I don't think Bruce Lee himself would have been prepared to defend himself against a midnight ambush from the Auphe."

"My point is I want to give him what we didn't have, and I know you want the same. This city...well, I think I might be our home now. You want it to be his too, don't you?"

I stared at my brother; the man who was constantly vigilant, always cautious, and never anything less than logical to the point of aggravating the hell out of me was debating on the side of sheer fantastical desire. He wanted to stay, just like me. "Can Promise still move in?"

He smirked, gray eyes crinkling a little more than usual at the corners.

His cell phone rang again before he could answer and I wanted an answer; that was a big step for him and Promise and I didn't want to be making that decision for him. He put the carton of vegetables down and snatched up the phone from the table before I could. The screen said unavailable number, making my heart give off a little flutter. I put my fork down.

"Hello?" Niko put this one on speaker.

"Niko." It was said in a gruff, quick-drawl tone that I hadn't heard for a year now. I frowned and sagged back in my chair, tapping the carton of lo-mien away with the tips of my fingers. Not that I wasn't glad to hear the werewolf healer was okay, I just hadn't wanted to hear from him at all until this mess was over. Until I had Dante back on my hip to show off like a proper father, not the kind that lets their son get kidnapped.

"Rafferty?" Niko question, but didn't wait for the response. "Where are you?"

"Home. Why? Has Cal been stabbed again?" That was also said with the utmost gruff, dry sarcasm. Ever the caring healer, he was.

I didn't have the energy to develop a witty comeback, besides the fact that I did have a fractured arm and was overcoming a concussion so he had a point. Niko sighed, put the cell phone on the table between us. "What are you doing here? I told you not to come to New York."

"I can handle the Kin. There was something I needed to drop off here that was a bit more pressing than running off with my tail between my legs."

"Well, if you've dropped it off, I suggest you skip town."

There was a heavy sigh on the other line, also the sound of puppies wrestling in the background which was pretty damned weird, then, "Tell me what's going on."

So we did. Or Niko did. He told him about Cassie, my relationship with her, and what happened with the Vigil shortly after we left him and Catcher in Yellowstone. How we found Dante and how I felt Cassie die. He told Rafferty about the Kin and Delilah's grand scheme and he told him how we lost my son to the wolves. When it was all said, the line was quiet save for the whisper of early spring insects that indicated Rafferty had moved outside.

"I want you to come to my place. Now."

"Rafferty, we don't have time," Niko started and as if in reply the screen of his cell phone flickered with the third incoming call. Georgina. "We have to go, Rafferty. I'm sorry. I'll call you when we have an update."

"Come to my place. Understood?"

"Understood, when we can," Niko cut the line with him and switched it over to the other call. Both of us were already on our feet, already armed and ready to roll. "Georgina?"

"The van stopped," her light voice replied. Not the usually sweet whimsy I was used to. More strained and shaking. "Crowne Heights, Brooklyn. Somewhere near the hospital."

"Thank you," Niko answered and hung up before she said anything else. We were out the door in seconds; me leading as a first. Today we had parked illegally outside of the converted warehouse. I didn't want to mess with subway lines if the van was lollygagging around in Newark or White Plains. So, Eldorado number two was our ticket through the city streets. Niko drove, mostly because he knew I would cut corners too close and possibly flip the car with my need to get to Dante. We didn't have much time to begin with. The van could have stopped for snacks, or juice for the little ones, maybe a potty break...if they gave them those luxuries. I felt my blood boil a little hotter at that thought.

"Faster."

"Driving faster would only succeed in signaling someone we are in a rush to get somewhere. I don't believe we would like the Vigil, or Kin, or even the human police to know where we're going," Niko intoned, not even looking at me as I sat in shotgun. I did catch a flicker of his gray eyes in the rear-view mirror. "We're almost there."

"We're also being followed," I informed him, tilting my head to watch the headlights behind us take another sharp turn to keep close. They weren't being too subtle about it.

"I realize this. It's Samuel. One of the cleaners from before is driving." I didn't want to point out that such wasn't exactly comforting. Sammy already said he might not be able to protect us from the Vigil if they found out. And the 'cleaner from before' was clearly one of the guys Niko and Goodfellow knocked unconscious; it looked like Stocky to me. I didn't think they would be as amiable with helping us after we beat the shit out of them and threatened their superior.

I didn't like it. I fished my cell phone out of my back pocket and dialed Robin. We needed back up. He answered before the first ring even finished. "Goodfellow. Found the van. Crowne Heights."

"Domiduca be blessed," Goodfellow breathed back to me like I would know what the hell he was talking about. "I'll be there. I'm close." The line cut as he hung up, possibly the shortest conversation I'd ever had with him.

We had to weave through traffic outside of Prospect Heights due to an accident on the bridge westbound, but the roads less travel were better for us anyway, because the van was still there on some glorified stretch of back alley near Kingston Ave. My heart started picking up speed as we coasted to a stop near the tail of the vehicle. We had to squeeze around the dismantled roof of a Jeep, where at least half a dozen bodies were strewn about in pieces. Niko didn't brother to turn off his headlights or try to hide or even veer around the body parts that jarred our wheels. The black van had been hit. Not by another car or truck, not by another pack of Kin or some other shadow-lurking parasite...I could handle those things. I could fight that, but this...

I think I whispered a couple of curses as I opened the door and clamored out before Niko even put the car in park. "Cal! Cal, wait!" I wasn't waiting. I jogged the rest of the way to the van, eyes darting around the scene to take it all in; to try and find anyway to explain what happened without the truth hitting.

The back of the van looked like it had been torn open like a soda can in the hands of Godzilla. Deep razor gouges turned the double doors, swung open, into something like an aluminum matchbox car after a fight with a garbage disposal. The rest of the van was no better off, from what I could see. Large wolf-sized dents ran up and down the sides. I couldn't see the front, but I could see glass littering the road in front of the bumper. Everything was painted with abstract red splatters and littered with tuffs of fur and bare-skinned human bodies along with a few wolf ones. Three of them near this vehicle; one on the sidewalk in a pool of blood from being cleanly halved, one curled up against one tire, throat torn out and looking like she had a fight with a garbage disposal as well, and one half under the carriage of the van...or rather the majority of her was under the carriage of the van. All females. The Lupa pack. Man, they were being decimated pretty quickly.

"Cal..." Niko was beside me, had a hand to my shoulder. The Vigil's van had rumbled to a stop behind the Eldorado; engine still on and headlights casting our shadows over the remains of the Lupa's van. They didn't come out; I didn't blame them, because I knew what had killed these werewolves. I knew what had pried open the two cages in the back and stolen away my son and the poor uninvolved Wenca kid.

I felt my knees buckle, but managed to ease down to them without bruising. Niko's hand never left my shoulder. "They took him." This was it; this was what I had feared the moment I knew what Dante was. The Auphe had collected their next pawn. Those bastards had gotten what they wanted. I closed my eyes as the rage bleed from my body into the broken asphalt beneath me. All that was left was guilt, black, like tar and just as drowning. "They took him, Nik."

"We'll get him back, Cal," Niko murmured, not arguing, not trying to encourage the false hope that I was wrong. But there was no way we could explain this away. The Auphe took my son. And the only one that could get him back was me. I was the only one. I had to go to Tumulus. I had to face my nightmares. The nightmare of all nightmares and I probably wouldn't come back sane, if I came back at all. "Cal, no." And Niko knew as well as I did.

"Oh, goddess Clementia you spit on us yet again." I didn't hear Goodfellow's steps approach, didn't smell the usual waft of a heady forest, I didn't even register his shadow as it joined Niko's in playing against the lights shining across the mutilated van. "Niko, please tell me this was the attack of a rouge murder of harpies and not the grievous scenario my astute mind has derived."

"Robin, not now."

Everything was a bit muddled. Sounds of distant traffic complaining about gridlock were like the waves of the ocean during a thunderstorm. Niko and Robin sounded like they were in a glass room. The clank and roll of the Vigil's van door seemed five blocks away. The smells were faint: the smog clouds dampened, the blood of werewolves mutely acrid, even the stench of fresh piss in the alley lost its ammonia sting. I couldn't feel the chill of the spring night even as I shook as if it were winter. The only thing I could actually feel was the steady pressure of my brother's hand to my shoulder.

"Cal."

I didn't look at him; looking at him would only dampen my resolve. "I have to go."

"No!" The hand on my shoulder tightened; my muscles twitched beneath it. Niko dropped to his knee beside me, trying to call my attention. I shook my head. I had to get to Dante. That was all there was too it. I was all he had left. When Castiella left me to fight in Tumulus, I'd thought about it. I'd seriously considered ducking into hell to help her or just knock her out and drag her back to the safety of my arms and my apartment, but I didn't. Ultimately I was too scared to. And Cassie could hold her own... or so I thought.

I was insane for this decision, but I couldn't let myself fail at fatherhood his epically. Cassie died to save our son. I had to at least be willing to face my fears to save him. Because if I didn't, I had no doubt in my mind that he would return –in a year in a month– fully grown and probably more than half crazed from torture and brainwashing. Cassie had killed three peri clans after the Auphe raised her. It took her centuries –no, millenniums– to recover from what they did to her, what they taughther. If I didn't try and save Dante, he would be back and he would kill me to spite me. He would probably kill all of us if the Auphe demanded it.

So I let my gate curve around the contact of Nik's hand, not even a little concerned about shaving off some of the fabric of my shirt or skin in sacrifice. I had to do this. I had to do this without him. His panicked shout was tinny and distant as I let my body slip into another realm, another world. The sensation wasn't the usually giddy lift, much darker and sluggish with my guilt, though it still created an impressive headache. And it was all for naught. I expected Niko to try and strike me. Expected the rise of his hand to snap against the nerves in my shoulder and force me unconscious, which was why I gathered the gate around me quickly.

Not quicker than a dart to my neck though.

I felt a little pinprick of the needle sniper-accurate into the artery. I tensed in surprise, then saw Samuel out of the corner of my eye, lowering the dart gun from before. The tranquilizer flowed through my nervous system and veins lightening quick, leaving me only enough time to reel in the gate and let it fizzle out before it took my unconscious body into Tumulus to be ripped apart before I even woke. I would have cursed the bastard out should I not have suddenly been in my brother's lap, unable to move and pretty much paralyzed in every way. Nik snapped something at Samuel, but I couldn't make it out. He sounded pissed; not sure if he was mad at me or the Vigil groupies closing in.

"You didn't want him gating, did you?" Sammy argued; he sounded like he was inside an echoing tomb. The reverberation trembled in my skull painfully as did the scuff of his shoes near my legs.

"That wasn't what I had in mind."

Their voices were becoming less and less discernible even though they were arguing just above my head. Weightlessness was taking over my limbs and my eyelids drooped with the drugs. I could barely make out the fuzzy black blot of the van's back end, let alone the details of the blood spattered plates and one slashed tire. Then nothing, but the rippling effect of influenced sleep.

Sleep and dreams. Interesting ones at that.

The place I 'woke' in was neither in the same state or same decade as when I went to sleep, which was how part of me knew this wasn't real. But it felt real. It felt bitterly nostalgic and impossibly real. I stood in the center of a bustling carnival. The one Niko and I had lived in with our mother who swindled bright-faced couples holding tiny stuffed animals because the huge ones were unattainable since the games were as rigged as my mother's tarot card readings. It was one of those traveling ones, lights strung over heavy poles stuck into the ground, kiosks on wheels for every food and game station. The rides were so rickety that after one ride on the mini Ferris wheel, Niko forbade me from ever setting foot near one of the contraptions.

I kicked at an empty carton for knock-off brand Junior Mints, letting it join the pile of spilled popcorn and discarded paper plates. The grass was brown in patches due to a dry summer and I could feel the heat of the night air against my arms and cheeks. I glanced around in search of my brother, but ten-year-old me couldn't spot a glimpse of him among the mingling crowd of joyful children and their weary families.

I started walking around, drawn to the smell of funnel cake, but my body veered my direction toward the trailer that was inaptly dubbed the Fun House. I remembered this thing; it was pretty disturbing if only because it rocked under the weight of the lightest footstep and it look like the mirrored walls would shatter under the pressure of a feather. Still dream-me decided he wanted to go there, so there I went.

Maneuvering around the kids running back and forth through the room where the floors fluctuated like a uneven sea, I slipped into the hall of mirrors. I stood before one mirror, staring at my reflection stretched out in a strange manner that almost reflected what I would look like in ten or so years. The head in the mirror tilted to the side, but it wasn't in that inquisitive puppy way, it was creepy, distant, calculating. I stepped back, fear swelling in my chest. Those gray eyes, darker in this minimal light, bled red from the pupil out until they were glowing like lava flowing from a ruptured volcano. A smile spread over those thin lips like a snake in the grass, cracking the mirror in a spider web pattern.

And then the plastic shards exploded outward, following the motion of something dark and shadowed from behind. I cried out, stumbling on young legs not yet toned with daily (or semi-daily) five mile runs. The figure behind the mirror hit me with surprising weight. It threw me back against another plastic warped mirror, lodged an arm under my throat.

I stood eye-to-eye with him now; the dream shifting me into a vision of my current self, which was better since I knew I could fight now and I could feel the weight of my Desert Eagle under my left arm. He smiled at me, a row of almost perfect, almost white teeth glaring in the black lights above. And then I noticed, his chin was a little rounder, his nose a little smaller and upturned, but his eyes...they were identical to mine, when I was all Auphe-crazy.

I shoved back on my mirror image, trying to wrench out my weapon, but the other me caught it. He grabbed my wrist in a strong hand, and squeezed. He tsked me, red eyes alight with mischief. "That's not nice, daddy. You never let me play with your toys."

Dread hit my stomach like a punch by the Hulk. "Dante..."

He grinned wider, extending long black talons from his fingertips and into my armed wrist. I could feel the pain, oh I could feel it. Fire from the razor sharp of it, stinging as it pierced the skin, and throbbing agony that radiated from the tendons as it tore through. The warmth of my blood seeped down my forearm and stained my jacket. My gun clattered to the ground. "It's time to play, daddy."

Oh, please, just wake the fuck up.