Fortunately I'd thought of that. Unfortunately that early in the morning the street vendor supplies had been skimpy. "Yeah, about that …" I looked down at the gun in my hand. Normally I didn't make a habit of giving up a weapon to a creature I barely knew and didn't trust, but I'd be fooling myself to think Wahanket would need a gun to try to kill me. Or to take me apart and put me back together in some sort of hideous parody of Cal Leandros. "Here."
The dark hand curled around the grip, and I felt the brush of skin harder than horn. "Ahhh, such a pretty toy. The modern equivalent of the flintlock." He abandoned the rat for a closer examination. "I have seen many images, but there are no examples of such recent firearms down here in my domain." The teeth gnashed in a grin. "Man's enthusiasm for killing his own kind still pleases me, even after all this time."
As my eyes drifted back reluctantly, behind him I thought I saw the rat twitch. No, I was sure of it … with belly still gaping half open and eyes blankly empty, it twitched. I looked away again and decided breakfast wasn't the way to go today. "Great. I'm glad you're happy. Sorry there's no bow and ribbon. Now can we talk about Robin?"
"Baboons were never one for patience." He pulled out the clip as if he'd done it a thousand times. "Interesting."
The rat squeaked. It was faint and raspy and nowhere near being on my list of latest frigging greatest hits. "Goodfellow," I emphasized sharply. Hearing my own voice was better than hearing the alternative. "Someone's trying to kill him. You know anything about that? You know who might be gunning for him?"
The clip was slammed back home and a tongue as weathered as beef jerky clicked against the teeth. "You ask much of me. I hold the secrets of Osiris, the knowledge of Thoth, the death rolls of Anubis, but a list so long? You request the impossible."
That was the standard line. Your poor, your hungry, your huddled masses yearning to kill me, that was Robin's motto. "How about you narrow it down to the top twenty or so? Think you could do that?" There was the scrabbling of paws and the moist thump of what I hoped was a tail against wood. "Come on, Hank. I gave. Now you give, and you can get back to your Franken-rat, okay?" Poor damned trash muncher. I was no rodent fan, but Jesus.
"Twenty?" The weapon was placed carefully, almost lovingly, on top of a glass case containing a stuffed baboon, which, by the way, did not look like me. "As I have said, impossible. You ask me to separate twenty grains of sand from the desert's mighty stretch. Such a task cannot be done." There was a hole in his chest. I hadn't noticed that before. A sunken hole and the shine of gold and turquoise deep within. "Perhaps I could thin the wheat from the chaff and give you a hundred creatures who wish death upon the puck." Arms of bones and ropy flesh wrapped with brown wrappings crossed. "Go. Return in seven days and I will have the information you seek."
"Seven days …" I started to protest as there was a louder thump, wet and horrible, and then the skitter of racing paws. I looked down; I couldn't help it. Hurriedly, I looked back up, tasted bile, and hoped I never saw a rat, dead or undead, again as long as I lived.
"Go." The glow was returning to Wahanket's hollows of bone.
I went.
A week … I only hoped Robin lived that long.
I went back into the maze, wandered far enough away from Wahanket that I felt a little more comfortable, and then I did it again…once more doing what I'd told Nik I wouldn't. I sat on the dusty floor, cross-legged, and held out my hand. I focused, twisted that focus, and it came. I kept it smaller than a full-sized gate as I had before, but went for just a little bigger this time. From the size of an orange to that of a basketball. And I then focused harder. The gate, nothing but the gate. No thoughts of Tumulus or the Auphe. No thoughts of feeding someone to them. No thoughts that weren't mine. It wasn't going to happen. I wouldn't let it. Maybe I wouldn't even admit to having them in the first place.
The gray light swirled and eddied like a particularly dangerous riptide and it glowed like flesh-melting radioactivity. It was still ugly as hell and clamped down on the base of my brain like a vise. It hurt, it felt cold and wrong, and here I was doing it anyway.
Why? Because like I'd thought before, it could save my life someday. It could save Niko's life. That made it worth doing. It made the pain, the blood, and the sense of teetering on a chasm hungry for just one misstep worthwhile. The Auphe had never given me a damn thing I wanted to have or know, but if some genetic trick of theirs could ever save my brother or anyone else I cared about, then some good would come out of the horror show they had tried to make of me and the world.
I really wanted that bit of good. I'd saved Robin and myself before. I wanted to be able to do that again if push came to shove. Niko lived a life of monsters and madness because of who I'd been born. And he held his own—we both did, but if I could have that emergency exit available, I'd feel better. I'd feel maybe a fraction less responsible for the mess the Auphe had made of both our lives.
If only I could get a little goddamn better at it.
Despite my determination, the chasm whispered at me. It said things…bad things. It wanted things too, things even worse. I could almost touch those things, taste them, feel them…