And I knew he wouldn’t hurt me.
This brutality was aimed at himself, along with a stark self-blame that had his control so abruptly shattered. He held on to the sword like it was his only lifeline as we lay on our sides where I’d taken us down on the mat. “It’s me, Nik. It’s Cal. It’s Cal, big brother. Junior’s gone. He’s been gone a long time. It’s just us.” For a second, I thought I was wrong. I thought he didn’t know me, but then he turned his head back toward me and I saw the recognition, the blood from twelve years ago spilling behind his eyes. With the blood came sanity, although I couldn’t be certain he was happy to have it back. He dropped the sword and rolled over to wrap his arms around me, hurting too much to know how tightly he was holding on. He had to hold on, because he was lost. Nik, my brother—the man I’d thought of just days ago as fixed and unmoving as the North Star, was lost. He rested his forehead against mine and whispered one word for me alone. “Sorry.”
Fifteen. He’d been fifteen damn years old. A kid. As if any of it could’ve been his fault.
I lifted my hand to grasp his trailing braid and gave it a hard tug, that reassuring weight he was used to. He was sorry and I didn’t know that there was much that I could say that would change his mind about anything. I said something else instead. “We’re the reason Junior’s dead. You’re right, that’s Jack’s problem with our asses.” I said it, because Nik needed it. The problem spelled out for him. That’s how he managed to survive, to be able to take step after step, pretty much our entire lives, by fixing problems.
Goodfellow’s voice was strained behind us. “Now that we know Jack’s issue with you, we need to discuss something else.” I lifted my head to see him standing now, only several feet from us with Ishiah behind him. Ishiah’s wings were wrapped around Robin. To protect. To comfort. Both maybe? From their expression something bad was coming.
Could there possibly be worse than this?
“We need to talk about angels,” Ishiah said.
*
Jack the storm spirit with wings who saved sinners, knew his Bible, raised the dead, had worshippers, and called humans his Flock. Goodfellow had been gathering the information and it had hit critical mass with “sinners,” hoodie-clad praying followers, and the sacrificial skins. Enter Ishiah stage right. I shouldn’t have been at all surprised by what my boss and Robin told us.
It didn’t change the fact that I was.
“Let me get this straight: for six or seven years now you both, and everyone who works in the bar, have been lying to Nik and me about angels not existing. Is that right?” Hearing the words, I was still having trouble believing it.
I sat on the mat beside Niko, leaning against him. My ribs were screaming from the exertion, but they weren’t my concern at the moment. I’d white-knuckled my way through worse. Nik needed me there and visibly alive rather than stumbling around the kitchen looking for pain pills. I could’ve tried to pull him with me, but from the set to his shoulders, moving wasn’t part of his plan. Breathing was barely part of it. I wasn’t the only one white-knuckling it, but while I’d gone through worse than cracked ribs, Niko hadn’t gone through worse than this. Out of the corner of my eye I could almost see a short blond ponytail instead of a long braid, see a smaller frame, see eyes and a face that hadn’t yet mastered the art of hiding emotion that could be used against him.
Niko looked much younger than twenty-seven right now. Younger and older and the misery and recriminations of twelve years ago so plain on his face that I glared at Goodfellow and Ishiah each time they started to glance at him. This was private and they had to be here, but they didn’t have to see this. He’d recover . . . and he would recover . . . at his own pace. He didn’t need them watching him like a lab experiment while he did it. Sympathy would make him feel only . . . lesser. Niko had stood firmly on his own two feet mentally before he could do it physically. He wouldn’t be grateful to know someone saw him stumble.
“That whole ‘peris are the seed behind the myth that became angels,’ that was all bullshit?” I went on. I’d thought Robin lied as tricksters do, but that he’d never lied to us, nothing big at any rate. Well, he had and it was huge.