So, just for the pure hell of it, I did wait. Not for Niko, really – even I wasn't that damn pathetic. I waited for some kind of solution to hit me, hard, so that I could finally get my ass moving and act, and so there would still be a chance for my brother.

It was Promise. Promise, wife of quite a few wealthy bastards, who waltzed into our lives just a few years ago, after Nik and I had lived our entire lives together, suffered all levels of hell together, and she just decided to take him away from me. Her reason? She was lonely. Which was really just a load of bull, because that vampire didn't know lonely, not one damn bit.

When Goodfellow came outside I was sitting in the pouring rain. Again. Okay, so maybe I was that damn pathetic. I wasn't even conscious enough to know when the hell I was getting wet.

"Cal," Robin said, sounding tired and a whiny as he glanced up at the clogged black sky. "This is not helping anything."

Well, that was fairly obvious. I would've cracked a joke but my mouth was sort of fused shut. You know, trauma and all that. Slowly I pushed myself up on cramped legs and followed Robin into Rafferty's house. Which reminded me I didn't have much time. Promise would think of this place, she'd be here soon. I had to do something, fast. It was only when I was inside, dripping rainwater all over the floor and dabbing at my bloody arm with a rag when it slipped out so fast the thought didn't even have time to cross my mind. "Elysium!" I glanced over at Robin with wild eyes. Yeah, like that didn't make me look one fry short of a Happy Meal or anything.

"Holy Bacchus," Robin cried, horrified. "I didn't think it was this bad."

"No, Elysium," I said, a slow dribble of memory filtering through my brain. The female wolf, hissing through a mouth full of misshapen teeth, "The Nottinger woman … the Elysium …"

"What about it?" asked Robin, eying me warily.

"Is it a place … somewhere Promise might have gone …?"

"Promise did not go to Elysium, Caliban. You are delusional," he said, promptly injecting my wounded arm with something before continuing to rummage around in a medicine cabinet. "Do you even know what Elysium is? It's a paradise set aside for god-like figures and heroes, filled with prancing half-human animals with absolutely no clothes on and similarly dressed virgins strumming harps …"

"Loman, I was practically fed Greek mythology for breakfast, lunch, and dinner of my entire adolescent life. I know what Elysium is. I mean like an actual place – maybe a bar, somewhere Promise might have recruited Wolves."

"Your adolescent life, ignorant suckling, has barely begun," Robin scoffed. "And yes, there is a bar with that name, but I can't even imagine Promise going regularly to that place. It bears absolutely no resemblance to the fabled Elysian fields, I can assure you."

"The Wolf told me that's where she found them. Recruited them," I said, forgetting stitches and slapping a few bandages on my sword cut. It was hardly sanitary and Niko would despise my sloppy handiwork, but we didn't have time for any heavy clean-up. "Maybe that's where her friend is – the one who did this to Nik."

"Well, it's a lead, anyway," said Robin, looking slightly more pensive than before. "And about Promise's friend … I've been thinking about it –"

"What. What is it?"

"A riddler. I'm almost positive it's a riddler."

"A riddler?" I asked, tossing away the blood-soaked rag. "What the hell is a riddler?"

"Having been fed Greek mythology for breakfast, lunch, and dinner, you should certainly know this," Goodfellow asked, cocking an eyebrow. "It's more commonly known among as the 'sphinx'."

I gaped at him. "Holy shit, a sphinx did this to my brother? Complete with lion body and frigging eagle wings?"

"No wings. Technically sphinxes are only lions with the faces of women. They're such hideous oddities that the majority their race have lived and died in hiding. Underground caverns, abandoned subway stations, wherever they could find refuge, they took it. Legend says that if ever they were to go out of hiding, they'd dress in heavy cloaks to hide their bodies and act as old women, which would account, to some degree, for their odd, bent position. They're not exactly pleasant to look upon."

"But how did a sphinx hypnotize Nik? I thought they just sat around and … well … told riddles."

That remark thoroughly disgusted Goodfellow. "No," he spat out. "They riddle the mind. Hypnosis stronger than anything anyone can accomplish … unfortunately. If they have a view of your eyes for long enough they can speak to your mind from however far away, and you will be at their mercy. Promise must've tracked one down, paid it a tidy enough sum, and told it where to find Niko."

I absorbed this for a minute. "So you don't think there would be a sphinx hanging around in some bar?"

"Most likely not," said Robin. "But Promise has connections there, obviously. They might give us a lead. The real question is – how are we going to go poking around with an amnesia-stricken ninja breathing down our necks? And where will we hide him?"

"I don't know, I'm trying to think," I said, toweling off my hair.

"If only we could take him to your apartment … it might help him remember."

"Robin," I said. "If Niko remembers the apartment and not me, I don't even want him back." More bullshit. If only it were that easy.

"Does Rafferty have …?" I asked.

"I've scoured the property. No means of transportation in the garage or under the kitchen sink."

"Shit."

Robin then gave a martyred sigh and climbed to his feet. "I'll go hotwire a car," he said with mock reluctance. "Just add it to my unending list of good deeds. You may grovel at my feet later."

I decided not to comment on that; my finger said it all. He flipped me back one and then disappeared into the rain.

I did owe that puck. And hell, if I ever happened to stumble upon some massive fortune, I might even pay him for that stupid lamp of his I didn't break.

A sphinx. Damn it.

I cleaned up, shoving the medicines back into the kit, and making sure I wasn't bleeding horribly through the bandages. Then I returned to Rafferty's living room. Which was empty.

And once again, I said the word most likely to fit my emotional needs –

"Shit."

Niko was gone. And the duct tape that had previously bound his wrists was actually lying in a neat and unwrinkled sphere on the couch. How he managed that, I'll never know. Which wasn't even very important. I'd lost Nik. This was very, very bad.

I tore my gun from inside my coat and thundered through the house, yelling his name, fully expecting to impale myself on his waiting katana blade. When I found nothing, and remained un-impaled, I returned to the living room only to find to my utter stupidity that the window was open. "Niko, damn you," I growled, sitting on the wet windowsill and sliding out into the stormy darkness I'd just come out of.

Blinking in the rain, I could see the huge fence that surrounded Rafferty's backyard, and the woods that surrounded his house. And when I looked at the line of dark trees, I knew Nik was in there. So what the hell else could I do?

"Come out, you bastard," I said, entering the woods, crunching through fallen leaves, gun in one hand and knife in the other. It was dark out, and freezing, and I couldn't hear a thing over the roil of thunder and the chattering of my own teeth. Oh, yeah, and there was no movement. All in all, there didn't seem to be evidence of any living creatures for possibly miles around. But that meant nothing. Nik could've been standing behind me for all I knew.

Not a nice thought. I whirled around only to see more trees and the back of Rafferty's house. Where was Goodfellow when you needed him?

I was getting desperate. I had to up the stakes. "Come out," I called, gripping my knife tighter. "Or I'll forget you and find Promise instead! And I'll kill her … slowly."

"A pleasant idea," said Nik, as cold steel whispered behind my ear and down the back of my neck. He'd come up behind me without making a damn sound, and my back was turned. "In fact, I don't think anything sounds more appealing at the moment."

This could've been him shitting me. This could've been him filled with the ravenous desire to teach me a wildly humiliating and probably painful lesson after I'd done something particularly moronic. Well, it would still be painful, but this time it wasn't a lesson. This time he was going to kill me. And if that wasn't some hellish, thrice-accursed monstrosity of a thought for me to wrap my mind around, nothing was.

Slowly, I turned around, letting his sword drag lightly around my throat until it rested under my chin. He faced me, tall and unyielding, rainwater running through his hair and soaking his disheveled braid. "Drop your weapons," he commanded.

I didn't move. "Nik," I said, reasonably, as if I could use logic to straighten this out.

He stepped closer, pressed his sword hard against my neck. "Drop your weapons."

"Niko Leandros of the Vayash Clan," I continued, weapons still clamped in hands. I watched his eyes narrow suspiciously, and continued to talk – praying he wouldn't just screw slow, painful murder and decapitate me on the spot. "You were born to Sophia Leandros, gypsy deserter and fortune-telling whore who died in a fire that burned down your trailer –"

"Is this supposed to make me spare your life? I was under hypnosis for God knows how long. You could know anything about me."

"I didn't have you hypnotized so I could find out who your damn mom was, Niko. She was my mom too," I snapped through gritted teeth, fury rising when his expression showed only cold contempt. "DAMN IT! Can't you fucking look at me and know?"

"I am fucking going to slice your face off," he replied, swinging his sword in a heavy arc toward my head. I barely managed to block it with my knife, sending a ripple of electric pain up my arm, and then promptly fell backwards over his leg that was waiting to trip me. His sword slashed at me again and my knife skittered away.

Then his sword came down again and my gun went off.

The bullet hit him, and I was the one who screamed, grinding my teeth in fury as blood blossomed on his sword arm and started to flow down to his fingers. Fingers that were still firmly wrapped around his katana hilt. Of course it was never that easy with Nik.

I rolled to the side when the sword hit the ground, blocked it with my gun when it came down again, and made a wild reach for my knife. Then the fight was over in minutes – with the steel of our weapons mashed against each other and my gun held to his head once again. "I'm sorry," I gasped. "God, I'm sorry."

Then the world grew brighter. Headlights. "Robin!" I yelled, not daring to turn and look. In this light I could see Nik's face clearer – still cold, still hostile, but now there was another emotion. Almost like it had suddenly occurred to him that I might be telling the truth. One thing was certain – at this moment I definitely did not look like I was lying.

And then Robin appeared behind him. Nik's face drained of expression, his hold on his katana melted, and he slumped, unconscious, into me. I dropped my weapons and caught him, feeling his hot blood immediately soak my ice-cold clothes. "Nik," I growled, fisting his braid and yanking on it, furious with myself and with him and with just everything in general.

"Come on, Cal, let's get him into the car," said Robin, whisking Niko out of my arms and over his shoulder.

"He's wounded, Robin," I said, running after him toward stolen car which stood a short ways away, motor running, headlights on. He ignored me. "Hey. Loman. We have to heal him first."

He pulled open the back car door and let Niko flop into the backseat.

I grabbed his coat, whipped him around, and yelled, "Robin!"

"Get into the car," he said, not intimidated. "Promise could be here at any time. She's not going to play cat-and-mouse with us anymore, and you are in no condition to fight an entire army of rabid Wolves. I know places we can stay. We'll take Niko there and – Caliban –"

I left around mid-speech, headed back for Rafferty's house with Robin damning my departing back to some Greek place that definitely was not Elysium. I staggered in the front door, fumbled around for the first-aid kit and finally just seized the whole bulk of it. I needed everything for Nik. "Don't blow a fuse, I'm coming," I yelled, lugging it back out to Goodfellow's hotwired car.

I climbed in the backseat, and Robin slid behind the wheel.

"Your brother was ever so much more courteous in these types of situations," he groused, and drove us away.

. . . .

When Nik's wound was treated and tightly bound, and I'd injected him with something to numb the pain and something to keep him sleeping, I left him lying on the bench seat and climbed up front with Robin. "Drop me off at the Elysium," I ordered.

Robin looked at me like I was insane. "Drop you off at the Elysium? Like that?" He wide-eyed my ripped, splattered clothes, bandaged arm, and hands stained scarlet right up my fingernails with Niko's blood. There was probably more to add to that – things along the line of an anemically pale complexion and bulbous bloodshot eyes – but when he saw worn-out, I saw freaky-as-hell. Right now I did not look like the type of guy you wanted to hang out with.

"I'm pissed, Robin. I'm pissed as hell and I want some action," I said. "Take Nik to whatever place you had in mind. The smaller and crummier the better. Give me the address, and I'll find you when I'm finished."

"Finished doing what? Acting as volunteer soup bone for Promise's half-drunk and hungry Wolf goons?"

"I'm going to find that riddler, Robin," I said simply, watching the familiar gray and slummy parts of New York fly by my window. "I'll talk to whoever knows. And once I find out where this thing is, I'll track it down and make it do what I want. I'll use threats, bribery, whatever works. And then I'll kill it."

Robin ranted. Yeah, he's good at that – have you noticed? "Just like that? No planning? No emotional work-outs through meditation? No babysitter to make sure you don't accidentally eat an informant? And I hope you realize Promise could very easily have told them about you. You know, the brother-in-law no one really wants around? They'll smell the Auphe in you the moment you walk through those doors."

"And they'll fear me."

"Oh, beg pardon, did I say 'walk'? Perhaps 'limp' is a more fitting word. Or, even better – 'collapse'. Yes, you'll truly be a terrifying sight to behold."

"I'm Auphe, Loman," I said. "I can be terrifying."

To my credit, that shut him up. Or maybe it wasn't to my credit. In fact, that could very easily be insulting to someone with my grade-A personality. It was a good thing I wasn't easily offended. "Take care of Niko until I get back," I said.

"Take care of yourself, Caliban, or Niko will take care of me when he finds out what I let you do," he grumbled, slapping a few knives into my hands. "Here – you'll need more weapons."

Ten minutes and he'd located the bar, tucked away in one of those unmentionable streets where humans feared to tread. Hell, I wasn't usually very keen on treading them myself, especially one that was literally scattered with decomposing revenant parts and half-chewed skeletons. I pictured Promise daintily stepping over one on her way to the bar. She'd done this for her safety. That vampire liked her life to be safe and secure – that I'd known for quite some time. And in order to be safe, you had to have friends in low places as well as in high ones.

Robin gave me the address of the building where I would be able find them, and I clambered out of the car. "Hey," I said, standing next to the open door and staring into the darkened window at Nik's sleeping form. "If something happens to me –" oh, way to go with the cheesy euphemisms, genius. "– then just forget that any of this happened. I mean, forget everything. Get out of here. Let Nik wake the hell up, find Promise, and live happily ever after with the traitorous bitch. If I die, I don't ever want him to know."

"Cal," Robin said.

"Thanks, Loman," I said, and slammed the car door. Subject closed.

"I haven't promised anything," he answered briskly, and took off down the street, leaving me alone in the dark.

But, hey, I wasn't alone. I had my guns, and I had my knives.

Together, we went in.

Seven Succubi dropped dead on the stage where they'd been performing some kind of demonic dance. A fast dance, far too fast for your average trained mercenary. My bullets, however, made perfect targets of those slimy, painted faces. Down went the dancers. Heads swung in my direction.

I surveyed the spread of tables, pools of alcohol and vomit, and clusters of savage monsters that stank of both. A low growl swept across the room, and I grinned. "Sorry, folks, my aim was a little off," I apologized, pointing my guns upwards and shooting the overhead lights so that they exploded and plunged half the room into semi-darkness.

Then I leapt up onto a nearby table, covered in blood and stinking of Auphe and loving every minute of the attention, because by now the room was watching me. And someone in this crowd could be the answer to every damn thing I'd gone through tonight. "I'm a friend of Mrs. Nottinger," I announced loudly. "Is she here?" There was low growling. Wolves had slowly begun to prowl around my table. "No? Well, that's alright. I'll just speak to her riddler."

Silence. Well – silence as in nobody answering my request. However, there was a great deal of snarling, table-thumping, and throaty growling going on below me.

"A riddler? No? No one here knows a riddler?" I asked in mock dismay, flipping a blade over my head and letting it plunge through the chest of the Wolf that had slunk up behind me. It went down with an injured cry. "You know, I'm not a very patient guy," I said, stooping to swiftly dislodge my weapon. When I looked up, most of the room was crowded around the table. Hairy, distorted, half-drunk creatures that looked pretty damn hostile – but mostly just annoyed. I'd murdered the entertainment committee after all.

But annoyed wouldn't work. I needed terrified.

So I did it.

It was beyond risky. Hell, it was probably life-threatening. It had only been hours before that I'd last made a gate – if making another one now didn't bring me to near-death, I would definitely be feeling it. But near-death was doable. Without a gate, I might not be so fortunate.

"Ever heard of Tumulus?" I asked, stretching the gate as wide as I could as blood started to drip from my mouth and nose. It was behind me, a roiling hole of piss-colored sky and ice-cold wind and deep black caverns that led to the center of the darkest earth. "Auphe Hell?" I pushed it wider, wider, and it felt like ripping open an already gaping wound. It was so close, right behind me … and my brain was screaming at me to let it go.

The Wolves started shrinking away from me, terrified, their eyes locked behind me as I held open the gateway to hell, and felt the familiar wind whisper at the back of my neck. Nausea coiled in my gut, but I masked that with a smile – a grin of demonic glee complete with bared, blood-coated teeth. "I'll send it after you," I said just loud enough so they could all hear me. "I'll have it swallow you …"

Wolf pissed himself. A succubus at the other end of the room shrieked.

"… if you don't do exactly as I say."

. . .

. . .

Yes, Cal is officially pissed off.

Now, see that blue link down there that says "review this chapter"? :) :)