chez_jae

Downfall by Rob Thurman

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Over the course of approximately 24 hours, I read Downfall, which is the 9th installment in Rob Thurman's "Cal Leandros" series. This time, the story is told in the alternating, first-person points of view of both Cal and Robin. Getting Robin's take on things was interesting and eye-opening.

Cal and Niko Leandros have met and outmatched every awful thing that life and the Auphe have thrown at them...except for Grimm--another half-Auphe who wants Cal to join in play time. At the moment, however, Cal is unable to gate, thanks to his battle with Spring-Heeled Jack. It may make him less Auphe on the inside, but on the outside he is becoming more and more Auphe. Cal's hair is turning white, his eyes are becoming red, and he's even gaining some of the natural weapons of the Auphe. Unfortunately, it's not only Grimm who's coming after Cal. The Vigil, a group of humans who want to make very sure that the rest of humanity has no idea that monsters exist, has decided that Cal is an out-of-control liability. They are now gunning for him, literally. Things seem pretty bleak, but Robin Goodfellow, the ultimate Trickster, is determined not to lose Cal and Niko at so young an age this time around, no matter how many bribes, cons, and tricks it takes. If he also has to con and trick the Leandros brothers to accomplish that, so be it. What they don't know won't hurt them, but it may save their lives.

Most of this book was bleak. Cal is horrified by the physical changes he's undergoing, mainly because he doesn't want Niko to recoil from him. Robin is pulling out all the stops, and throughout the narrative, he is thinking about Cal and Niko's past lives and how he failed to save them time after time. Niko is alarmed by the changes in Cal, but he's determined to stick with him no matter what. As for Grimm, he has some tricks of his own up his sleeve, but even he may be no match for Robin Goodfellow--born of the First.

There was a lot to like about this story:
- Cal's sheer stubborn will to hang onto his humanity as long as possible.
- Niko's acceptance of Cal's changes.
- The unwavering, unbreakable bond between Cal and Niko has now expanded to include Robin.
- The return of characters we haven't seen in some time.
- For me, though, the most touching scene in the entire book was when Niko fell asleep with his head on Cal's lap...which was after Niko had been scared spitless when he believed Cal had gone all-Auphe. The level of trust that Niko displayed did a lot to help Cal hang on to his human side.

There was also a lot I didn't like about this story:
- First of all, the author dropped her fudge and forgot her own plotlines. Admittedly, I have the advantage of rocking through these books in only a few months, whereas she wrote them over the course of years, but damn, lady. Ahem. Cal was 11 when confronted with a serial killer, not 10. When the Auphe killed one of the peris, it was Cambriel, not Danyeal. Also, if Grimm has the ability to "follow gates", why would the Auphe not have used that ability themselves back in the day? Or the ability to yank someone out of a gate?
- The entire scene where a 13-year-old Cal meets Ishiah was not only distressing, but it seemed completely unnecessary. What did it add to the narrative? And, when Cal remembered it in the present time, he was utterly vile to Ish. I didn't like that at all, because I've always sort of been amused at Cal's grudging, almost fearful respect for Ishiah.
- The scene with Georgina was equally baffling, although it did explain how/why Grimm didn't kill her when he meant to years ago. It also seemed to put paid to any sort of future for Cal and Georgina.
- Niko drinking as much as he did was completely out of character.
- Did we even "see" Promise? She was mentioned enough times, but I think she was always off-screen.
- Robin nearly losing his shit, more than once, was tough.
- During one of Robin's recollections of past Cal and Niko, he was thinking of the time he'd found Niko(Phelan) in a slave market, bought him and freed him, only for Phelan to grab a knife off a passerby and kill himself. Robin realized that meant the other brother was already dead. He was left grieving because he hadn't seen them in over a hundred years and then lost them again in a manner of minutes. Tragic.
- Finally (BIG SPOILER), Grimm should have been Cal's kill.

♦ "Fine," I spat. "You've been downgraded from ladies to bitches."
♦ "It wasn't my fault that she'd started a fight with a piece of glass and I was going to end it with a four-foot-long axe. That was purely poor planning on her part."
♦ "Don't let Robin wear leather pants," I told Ishiah. "I like my eyes. I need them. I don't want them to go Ark of the Covenant on me and melt down my face." // "You are not in the minority on that issue, trust me," Ishiah snorted. "You should've seen him back in the day in a toga. No, the kilt was the worst. No, wait. The worst was when he dressed up as a handmaiden with Loki when they were trying to pass Thor off as the fertility goddess Freyja. That was..." He stared past me with glazed eyes and a look more haunted than any house built over a Native American burial ground in the best cheesy movies. "I don't want to talk about this any more." // Shaking off the memories, the peri folded up his white-and-gold feathered wings. They instantly disappeared. They always came out if there might be a fight. He'd once said it was for flight, maneuverability, and another way of knocking weapons from people's hands. I'd called bullshit and told him he was the feathered version of a blowfish. He was trying to puff himself up to look more badass. // He'd replied that he was an ex-angel of the Lord and his levels of badass couldn't be measured by mere human means. I threw down the "I'm not human card", the "the Auphe were on earth long before you were" card, and rounded it off with the "my bad-assery had gotten me the nickname of Unmaker of the World and yours gets you anally perched on Christmas trees every year" card. And when I emphasized that yes, I meant anally, not annually, everything had gone downhill from there. // That no one knew that the resulting knock-down, drag-out fight would spill several bottles of common cleaning solutions that then could conceivably mix into an explosive that caused the temporary loss of part of the roof was a lack of education and not my problem. I never claimed chemistry was my best subject.
♦ Head wounds, no matter how minor, bled like crazy, and when you worked in a bar that catered to vampires, Wolves, revenants, vodyanoi, lamia, and too many other ghoulies to count, you didn't want to hang around leaking blood until someone finally snapped and fell off the wagon.
♦ "Kolo," I hissed, leaning back from the assault to fish the red-soaked white-and-gold feather out of my glass. "What is wrong with you? Do you attempt to poison all your customers this way?" It wasn't completely out of the question. "Or am I special?" // Naturally I was special, but that had nothing to do with my currently defiled wine. Still, I had been defiled by similar feathers frequently over the last year, defiled in the most positively carnal sense, and I went on to drink the wine with only a shrug. // "That was your orgy face," my attacker said with grim disapproval. "We agreed. You can look all you wish, you can reminisce about the good old days when there was no STD you didn't seek out, but you don't make the orgy face while you do it. Also, is that blood on your collar and a rocket launcher leaning against your stool?" // "Yes, it is a rocket launcher. You might want to dispose of it before Cal returns to work and humps it with the love that dare not speak its name."
♦ "It's time...or it will be soon." // "Are you certain?" // "Over a thousand lives watching them die now? Yes, I'm certain. Especially this time." // "Do they know?" // "Sometimes they sense it. Sometimes they don't. It doesn't matter if they do or not. They never fight to retreat from it. They always fight their way to throw themselves through it. Warriors. In almost every life, they are warriors," I scoffed, "and as such they have no brain cells, only skulls sloshing with honor and adrenaline-fueled death wishes."
♦ "It's your orgy face again." He grimaced. // "No, that face was for you and you alone." I gave him a sharp-edged grin. // He returned it with enthusiasm. I was proud. It wasn't everyone who could tempt an angel and then corrupt him thoroughly after he retired.
♦ Niko was only human--"only" meaning "the most dangerous human alive", a human who had, per a mouthy puck, lived a thousand lives, all of them warriors, one of them as Achilles himself. And wasn't that strange? Niko was not only reincarnated from Achilles, but he was also descended from him. He was descended from himself. It made my head hurt thinking about it.
♦ I'd been known to set Pop-Tarts on fire and not the kind of combustion that a fire extinguisher can put out, but full-on NYFD aiming hoses, firemen staggering out covered in blackened soot, and all looking at me horrified as if I'd walked out of the pages of a Stephen King book. I wasn't a fire starter. I was forgetful, and timers weren't worth my attention or they confused me. Whatever. Suck my dick.
♦ The man noticed if I said I was going out to watch a game with Goodfellow when I meant I was going out to get laid by a forest nymph in Central Park. And that wasn't lying...that was...ah...privacy. How'd I catch on that he knew? The small can of bug spray--termites aren't particular in choosing one type of wood over another more personal kind--and the condom--both hit me in the back of the head every time I was halfway out the door.
♦ "Don't give up on me, little brother. I don't give a damn what you look like now or might look like later. I'm not giving up on you no matter what a thousand healers might say." // "Because I'm your favorite brother?" // He gave me a glare that was the color of a perfect storm. "Because I'll kick your ass if you do. We don't give up. In our entire lives we haven't once given up when we had every reason to." // "I still think it's because I'm your favorite brother." Giving your brother, your only brother, a hard time was the law.
♦ When it came to Grimm, I had more motivation than the second-to-last member of the Donner party.
♦ There was no piece of cake. Not at all. Not unless the cake was microscopic and packed inside the first sniper round that missed my head by millimeters before I'd dived to the ground. That's right, things were so damn dire that I was forced to convert to the metric system to indicate how fucking close my head came to exploding like a blood-filled cantaloupe.
♦ I'd seen Niko leap up into a tree not far from me like a damn human jaguar. He was at the tree, up, and gone into the red-and-gold leaves before my eye could barely catch the movement.
♦ Niko was still out of sight among the topaz, ruby, and amber billowing clouds that made up the Autumn foliage. Knowing him, he was leaping from tree to tree like goddamn Tarzan, not caring if he got himself shot as long as he saved me. I wondered for a second if I could get an electric shock collar at the pet store for him for when he got that "no greater love hath a man than to lay down his life" gleam in his eye and give him a healthy zap. It would be in his best interest, honestly.
♦ "Aren't you thankful I taught you tongues are for more than talking, aetos-mou?" My eagle. He pretended that the name meant nothing, but he had yet to fail to smile when I called him that...as opposed to the time he cut me off from sex for a week when I called him my turtledove--in front of Niko, who understood Greek. Niko, despite his not especially vast sense of humor, had found it rather amusing, enough so to choke on his tea. Niko had been more entertained and me not at all when Ishiah stood firm on the no sex punishment.
♦ Niko's sideways glance at me was full of long-suffering patience stretched to a saint's limits and ten times beyond. It was the look that had me all but hearing the Vatican knocking at our door to give my brother the thumbs-up on miracles confirmed--canonizing is a go--and I folded instantly.
♦ Thanks to Robin I knew there were other lives. Different lives. That meant that back in ye olden times if my drunk ass had fallen off a horse and broken his neck, because that was absolutely how I'd shuffle off at least one mortal coil, then Nik would have had Goodfellow, probably a wife, and some little ninjas running around. He'd have had reason to go on. We wouldn't have had the cluster fuck of sociopath mother, packs of Auphe chasing us, and my monster genes to make our codependency stronger than gravity.
♦ Cats liked me. But then cats liked to play with their food while it was still alive. Not the best recommendation or reference, but it is what it is.
♦ He kept moving, climbing over crumbled piles of brick overgrown with thick masses of vine I was hoping like crazy was poison ivy, poison oak, poison anything that would make Niko sorry he'd engineered the assassination of my jacket. And he had; I knew he had. // "I only cared about how well it concealed my holsters." I regretted it as soon as I said it. It was a lie huge enough that the retaliation could only be the very same jacket with a rainbow and a glittering pony painted on the back. Niko would find it--he had his evil, sadistic ways. It would be less painful to admit to it now. "Fine. It was antisocial and hateful and that's why I liked it. You kill everything I love. Bite me."
♦ Where was I anyway? Oh. The usual postfuckup location. I was on his bed, where I most often ended up when wounded, as it was cleaner than mine.
♦ I wondered if Cal had any idea the cursing his brother was up to when he wasn't conscious to hear it and yet butter wouldn't melt in Niko's mouth when Cal could know what he was saying. I used to think that he was trying to be a good influence, but now I thought that Niko had a bit of trickster in him. He didn't curse when Cal would hear because Cal would enjoy it. It was the smallest of evils, but I approved nonetheless.
♦ I didn't fail to smile fondly whenever Niko threatened me with bodily harm. I'd convinced him on occasion to spar with me and he generally agreed if I swore a solemn oath to at least keep my pants on. He'd given up on the shirt and refused to listen to my lecture on the history of naked Greco-Roman wrestling. Clothed or unclothed, he knew who the better fighter was. Niko was one of the best, if not the best, human fighters alive today, but I was me. Niko knew what I could do. That didn't mean he would back down. That had been true before he was a nearly undefeatable warrior. Stubborn nothos. He hadn't always been the best among humans, and wouldn't that make him, highly offended, choke on his protein drink? It was true, as thoroughly as he would deny it. Niko, a grim child with little in the way of choice, had learned and relearned to fight in this life for Cal. As he grew, he also worked to be an honorable man. Every day he embraced it. Honor and conceit, he would say, do not go together. Yet, know it or not, he was so very conceited regarding his fighting skills that when I defeated him sparring, his face would go blank, lips pressed tight against each other, all holding back his enormous annoyance. He'd glare at his sword as if it were the one at fault.
♦ "You were talking in your sleep," Niko said, resting his hand on my forehead. "About riding sheep." He sounded tired but pleased. "Is there anything about your sex life you want to tell me about?"
♦ Didn't you have to love a life where being eaten was the least objectionable entrée on your goddamn menu of "I'm screwed with a side order of roasted fuck"?
♦ I opened my eyes, tangled a hand in Nik's long braid, and held on. I'd started doing this when I was around fourteen, as soon as his hair was long enough, to get on his nerves, as little brothers do, but it had ended up as a reassurance, a habit to check that he was with me.
♦ If the Vigil had any sense, they'd hire me instead of trying to kill me. That was quasi-military organizations, like the Boy Scouts, for you all over. They couldn't see the bigger picture. If they could, Boy Scouts would be selling cookies, too, not getting their asses financially kicked by the Girl Scouts, have more money, afford more camping trips, up their training, and then the Vigil could've outsourced this job to them.
♦ I didn't see Nik's katana anywhere in our room, nor did I see my shoulder holster or guns. I didn't remember it, but it looked like I'd probably gated us out while Niko was doing some first aid on me, our weapons in a neat pile on Niko's dresser. His anal-retentive neat fetish would get us killed yet.
♦ I twirled the knives in each hand and gave Niko a sharkish grin. "Two or three Bae at the most. One of us can handle them while the other one sits in a lawn chair and drinks a six-pack. Which do you want to be?" // Niko, the dick, flipped his poniards up in the air a bare half inch from the ceiling, spinning at least ten times, and then caught them on their way down without even glancing at their progress once. "Let's be nice and share. One for you and two for me."
♦ "Fuck me running with a smile on my face, that's a shovel." // "I have no desire to know what expression you would have if someone were to fuck you while you were running."
♦ Grimm had never fought an Auphe or he would've known his Bae weren't going to do the trick against those who had fought them and won.
♦ "Calling me over ten times during a car trip because you are bored and wish to whine about all the things your evil brother won't do is enough that I now consider you a seven-year-old girl."
♦ Niko, who had dropped into my overstuffed recliner, gave me a subtle, close-to-invisible concerned shift of his shoulders. That was Niko for He's traumatized. I'm letting him do as he pleases to distract him from it. Save me. The man could say a considerable amount in a shrug. // I gave Niko credit for recognizing whose skills at distraction were more advanced of the two of us. My viewpoint when it came to trauma was to offer a different and more horrifying trauma to put things into perspective. It hadn't failed me yet. // "About my phone you're smudging with your plebian fingers, word to the wise," I warned carelessly as Cal found the pictures on the phone and began scrolling through them. The warning was far too late, of course. How else would I inflict twice the trauma if the warning was in time? "Do not look at the pictures. They're mostly nudes, and not the tasteful kind either." I arranged a brocaded cushion under my head, then folded my hands across my stomach and waited for the trauma. It was bound to be intriguing, especially if he saw the several of Ishiah and me together, in all the ways there were to be together. For Cal personally the one of his brother might be best. That might scar him for life, especially if I didn't reveal that it wasn't voluntary and had cost me five hundred dollars to the cleaning company that worked Niko's dojo, including the dojo gym shower. I definitely considered that five hundred well spent. // "What's that?" Cal turned the phone from side to side and then upside down. His eyes narrowed and then widened. He fumbled the phone and then tossed it back on the table as if it were on fire and singeing his practically nunnery produced hands. "That was...and you two...in fucking midair! In midair, I mean! Just midair!" // "No, no, you were correct with the term 'fucking'. Wings aren't just for transportation." // "Who the hell else do you have naked pictures of besides Ishiah and the two of you when you were all...? Doesn't Ishiah mind it's not just him?" // "It'd be easier to ask whom don't I have nude pictures of." // "Niko? Tell me I didn't scroll past Nik," he asked in the way people do when they have no wish at all to actually know the truth. Cringing and wan. // "So you didn't get that far. Pity. A very nice shot. Artistic really. The wet hair falling to just above buttocks of marble, a true work of art." Niko would take it as a joke in the ongoing effort to transfer Cal's trauma, although it might be best for me to also do some transferring off my phone in case he, untrusting soul, checked. // Cal glowered at me, for the first time since coming through the door not avoiding my eyes, not wanting me to see what he was becoming. That was progress. "And me?" // "With your prudish fear of nudity in front of the same sex, you'd think not." I met his crimson eyes with a sly Cheshire grin and said while fetching my coffee off the table, "But you'd be wrong. The time the Titan injured you and you were bedridden, I obtained at least ten pictures off that. Then there's the spy camera I planted in your bathroom. Niko invariably covers it up with a washcloth, but I'm thinking he didn't feel telling you about it would be in his best interest. I have a Web feed on that one. Fifty dollars a hit, and five dollars each minute after. You should consider lengthening your shower time, paying thorough and exceptional care to certain areas." I sipped the coffee. "And if you could get your brother in there with you--" // "I don't know if I can fit that whole coffee cup down your throat," Cal growled, "but I'm willing to try." The fact that he hadn't noticed he'd met my eyes with the currently Auphe ones of his own made the rather sad threat worthwhile. // I slid a glance at Niko, who was far more relaxed now that Cal had different non-Auphe problems on his mind. With his eyes half-shut, he gave me a small, thankful nod. // I raised an eyebrow and sat up with my cup. I pointed at the whipped cream on it, then to Cal or more specifically his crotch, and finally to my phone. "If you happen to be in the mood, I'd be interested to see what sort of artistic composition you could come up with."
♦ His arm tightened around me and shook me with good cheer and excitement. "Achilles is coming. I've seen you looking at his ass too many times to count. He's bound to get drunk enough sooner or later during a war to get a little curious. You might get your chance." Patroclus had been one of the more devious humans I'd known. The most devious of the Cals to be sure.
Poor Robin, even as Achilles, Niko wouldn't indulge him.
♦ One cannot pick their family or, despite the saying, often cannot pick their friends when fate is involved, and one definitely cannot pick their karmic-bonded idiots. The proof was in my living room.
♦ "I expect breakfast is ready. I provided several thousand dollars of alcohol last night. The least one of you could do is cook." // "I don't cook. It's boring." // "You appear to be living with me with no invitation that I recall, and I do not customarily give out keys unless the person I give them to makes sexual areas of me thrilled to exist. Specifically my cock. There is that option or you can cook." I pointed at the refrigerator. "Pancakes. Blueberry. Now." I began to undo my belt. "Or there is this..." // Hopeful my temper and sexual demands in exchange for keys would subside, Cal dived into the refrigerator muttering the foulest of filth under his breath. Less than impressed, I gave him a wolfish grin, refastened my belt, and sat at the island to wait for the feast to be delivered unto me. I tapped fingers on the granite and glowered at him. I'd not seen a mostly Auphe hurry about to cook breakfast to prevent inducing further ire in me. Then again, my ire was fierce. It was entertaining to view his reaction to it. // "Orange juice," I demanded loudly, and Cal had it poured in a glass for me in moments. That was nice. I approved of that service. I hoped it lasted long enough for a meal before Cal decided strangling me with my own belt would be less embarrassing. // "Don't worry about the Vigil, Niko," I advised, passing him my glass of juice. The man was uptight to an unfathomable degree. Perhaps juice could aid him. Did Vitamin C reduce anal-retentive behavior? "The reason the Wolves are attacking the Vigil is that I paid them to do so." // Cal started to turn from the stove. "What...?" // "Pancakes!" I snapped. He reverted immediately to a cooking position. I could smell the blueberries and they smelled amazing. They'd smell better with bacon, I thought. "Caliban! Bacon!" He lunged for the freezer. "I rather enjoy him like this," I murmured, low enough that Niko could hear, but not his brother. "Terrorized by my sexuality and guilted into a cooking frenzy."
♦ "Let us pay you back for what you gave the Lupa." He changed the subject. Niko was excellent at that when he wanted to divert his train of thought. "What you paid to stop the Vigil." // I shook my head, drank more juice, and laughed. "No." // He was offended at that. It was Niko. I knew he would be with his unbending pride. He and Cal had both taken showers as I had. Niko's blond hair spread around his shoulders and down his back to his waist. It was damp yet, but that didn't stop him from gathering it up to braid it. I'd noticed Niko did that when irritated. He would either unbraid or braid his hair to keep his hands from fastening around your throat to choke the life from you. It was a polite coping mechanism. I approved. Cal would simply have, once again I mention it, just strangled you. // "Why?" he demanded. "We don't want to take advantage of you." // "Niko, first, it's kind of you to not want to take advantage. If I were less manly, virile, and brimming with machismo, I'd go so far as to say it's rather adorable that you think you could. Alas, adorable isn't in my vocabulary and I'll have to remain comment-free there. Second, no. No. You cannot pay me back. You never live long enough to earn three million. If it weren't for Ishiah, however, sexual payback would be on the table, but regrettably..." I gave a classic European shrug that meant I lust for your ass but it cannot be. // Cal whirled and slid a plate of pancakes and bacon in front of me. His eyes were gray this morning. "You paid that bitch Delilah three million dollars to keep me alive and the Vigil off my ass? You could've paid me that, and I would've gone off to live in Antarctica. They never would've found me." // "It was only two point five million, and I couldn't be responsible for what an Auphe-penguin hybrid evil overlord might perpetrate upon this planet." // Opening his mouth, he considered, and then sat on the other side of me, sulking. "It would have to be consensual penguin sex. Adult consensual penguin sex." // "Yes, I'm certain. There was not a doubt in my mind." I poured on maple syrup and took a bite of his breakfast efforts. It tasted like charcoal combined with blueberries and syrup. It was inedible. I chewed and swallowed with effort. "The best I've had, Caliban. You've ruined me for all other breakfast foods." He looked pleased, then suspicious and then pleased again. No matter the color of his hair or his eyes, he remained Cal yet.
♦ The trickster would sooner be found dead in superhero spandex than a common cotton T-shirt. Armani could have virgin sheep sheared of their wool by virgin sheepherders and woven into cloth by blind virgin nuns to be sold by virgin strippers in diamond-covered thongs and that wouldn't change the fact that he'd find it unworthy to wipe his puckster ass.
Um, does the author know that cotton comes from a plant, not sheep?
♦ Even so with me at my most careless, Niko didn't hear me as I came to a stop in the doorway of Cal's room. That meant Niko was not having the best of days. Blond head bent, his back to the door...back to the Zeus-forsaken door--Niko, who couldn't have been born breech, as he wouldn't leave his back unprotected in fetal stage...he was oblivious.
♦ "I never joke about the occasions when I am able to genuinely scar your psyche for lifetime, Niko. Who do you take me for?" // "The devil?" // Please. The devil wished he had half my style and a fourth my schemes.
♦ Niko had lost his shit, which hardly happened. I was a little more than in awe of it as I watched Robin and him shout at each other--and there was a huge amount of shouting. Not that I cared when Goodfellow and Niko sparred, mock fighting. But this was real. They were fighting like dogs in a pit. It was wrong. They didn't fight like that. Not for dead and gone and that's all there was, but I could see in Nik's set and cold face that's where he was now.
♦ Before it had always been Nik alone who had accepted the responsibility of taking me down if it came to that. Now the puck was throwing his money into the pot and showing his cards. If Nik couldn't do it, and for all the years he said he would--I don't think he could--but Robin would. "I'm fine with who you are and who you might be," Goodfellow said, guttural and not from the shouting, I didn't think. "And I know what I'll do in either case." What he was saying was unrelenting and reassuring all at once. I had no problem with it. As he said, he would do whatever needed to be done no matter who I was. Cal or Auphe or both. Mind? Hell, I was grateful he could be that and do that for me. And he'd be doing it for Nik as well. If Nik didn't have to do it himself, I'd be thankful. I didn't want to put that on him, to kill his own brother, and it had been on him for a long time now. Goddamn grateful didn't cover it. // "Nik." I looped fingers around my brother's elbow and jerked him back down to the chair beside my bed. "He'll stand behind me if I fight Grimm, and he'll stand against me if I fight the world. What more could I ask? Nothing. He'll put me down so you don't have to. That's a gift. He's a goddamn saint for that, okay? Now calm the fuck down, would you? Please?" // Niko, who sat beside me as alert and ferocious as any guard dog, was so many levels of screwed up, fucked up, and a thousand times done with this shit, I was surprised he had words for it all. He bowed his head, exhaled, and let it all go. Much more calmly, he offered, "He's doing what I should do. But what I don't think I can do, as often as I promised. I am the one who should apologize, to both of you." // Nik, who'd been my brother, my father, my mother. He'd seen me take my first breath, and that was no exaggeration at all--how could I expect him to be the one who made sure I took my last? Whether he thought it his duty or not, whether I needed it or not, I couldn't expect it. // "Do not say you are sorry or I'll swat you again." Goodfellow sounded serious on this one. "That is why I am here." Robin gave me another pat to my foot and then rubbed a hand across the top and back of Niko's head, pretty much destroying his braid. "To do what you cannot bear to do for each other." He stood and gave a full-body shudder. "Now this is becoming sickening. Embrace or hug or whatever perversion one must do between brothers. I have to leave before I vomit at the sight of so much emotion." // He was gone and I smeared carelessly at the few drops of blood that I could feel pooling at the base of my throat. "He'll do what has to be done, Nik. I'm not sure it's fair--hell, I'm sure it's not--but he'll do it. That's better than you having to do it. Let him, all right?" I swung my legs out of the bed. "You shot me and you hated that, didn't you?" // "You have no idea." I felt his fingers automatically wipe away the blood on my throat. "Despite that, you don't know what I could do if I had to." // But I did. I did know what Nik could do and what he couldn't, and Robin knew that as well as I did. Niko couldn't kill me...Whether it would save the world and all of humanity or not.
♦ "I have never fucked around, as you so tastefully put it"--like he hadn't said more than four hundred synonyms for fuck one night on a stakeout to prove he could and to drive Nik onto the verge of a stroke--"with an Auphe yet."
♦ "Kudos on an execution well executed, although it would have been somewhat nicer had you gotten to him before he obtained access to the building. On the other hand, Demeter of Grain and Harvest smiles on us, as we have pizza." He bent and picked up the three boxes the man had been carrying, miraculously unspilled. "I am famished. There is only so much death and destruction in one day I can be expected to handle without sustenance." He placed the boxes on the coffee table, opened the top one, and started to dig in. "Hmm, I wonder if poison was a backup plan, should shooting you fail." He handed the piece to me. "You try. You have all that Auphe resistance to most poisons and venoms. Somewhat. Enough that you'd probably survive. Hurry, would you? I'm starving." // At that point I honestly wouldn't have minded being poisoned, and I snatched the pizza, taking a bite. Swallowing, I said, "Still alive, no poison, and, seriously, is this how you've handled all your would-be killers, assassins, murderers...you know, anyone who's met you...in the past before Niko and I came along? Hire someone to kill them for you because you're lazy as shit?" I held up my hands, one still holding a gun and one with half a piece of pizza. "Hey, no judging, as this time it's saving my ass and I know you spent shitloads to do it. I'm just curious." // He took a piece for himself and smirked at me. "You wish you were rich, don't you, kid?" // "Hell, yes," I said fervently, sitting on the table and waving over at Niko, who appeared either mildly stunned at developments, comatose, or most likely hiding behind a stony mask a desire to kick my ass for eating possibly poisoned pizza. "C'mon, Nik. Pizza courtesy of assassin delivery."
♦ Nik and Robin were off squabbling. I was beginning to think all this forced togetherness was making the two of them worse than Nik and I could be...which was staggering to contemplate.
♦ The fact that I'd had to talk to Canadians...unholy. Human or paien, they were good-hearted and good-natured and everything good. Hearing a wendigo say "aboot" was horrifying all on its own.
♦ "You seem pretty damn happy," Cal said suspiciously, as of course Cal in the here and now was always wary of happiness...or drugs, sex, and rock and roll. // I bounced on my heels. "I wish I could've seen you at Woodstock. That would have been memorable." I searched for the word. "Epic. Jimi Hendrix was a fan of fire too, as you probably do not know, as you are an ignorant fetus." // "All right. Pizza makes Goodfellow high. Keep that in mind. Niko, you have the baby ready?" Cal asked. "She's temperamental. Treat her right." // "'She' is a flamethrower. They are sturdy, I promise you," came his brother's exasperated reply as he hefted the tanks on his back. // "Be grateful that I didn't name her. Sylvia. That's what I didn't name her. Sylvia, and if she has problems with fuel injection, whisper that non-name to her and she'll come around."
♦ "I've told you before you could speak, Cal, I will always be with you and I'll never give up on you. If that means dragging you back from the brink, then I will. If it means going with you over that brink, that I will do as well. Whether I'm afraid that most of you might already be gone doesn't matter. I'll be on your heels bringing what's left of you with me. Fear can't stop me. That the Cal I grew up with now has silver hair, scarlet eyes, and bear-trap teeth that come and go can't stop me. That will be true until the day we die. All the days we die, which as Robin keeps telling us are many. Now would you bring me two bottles of Robin's most dusty and expensive-appearing wine? I'm in an unaccustomed mood." Drinking. He was drinking again. My brother, who thought tea with caffeine was the equivalent of Jägermeister.
♦ I was sitting on the couch. Niko had forced me to. After a bottle of wine, he'd ended up with his head in my lap. He hadn't passed out; he wasn't that much of a lightweight. No, he'd gone to sleep, exhausted.
Oh, my heart!
♦ "I don't want to know where I was for all of this. Tell me and I'll destroy you both," Niko said with his eyes still shut. // I yanked lightly at his braid. "Paying bail? Breaking us out of prison, the gaol, stopping the execution, whatever they did to...um...high-spirited people back then?" // "High-spirited," he repeated with palpable scorn. "My entire existence spent as a babysitter." With a snort he sat up. I thought about that; how he'd rested his head in my lap without a thought for metal teeth, silver hair, crimson eyes, and flashes of homicidal mania. It was an unbelievable trust and an equally unbelievable lack of survival skills when it came to me. My brother, and there was nothing more that could be thought or said to encompass that.

Overall, it was as enjoyable and engrossing as the others in the series, but I was dismayed that Niko almost faded into the background. Some things seemed forced, including the tidy ending. It read like it should have been the end of the series. Now I am faced with a dilemma: There is a final book the author published. Note I said "published". She wrote two more, but only published the first of them. It's my understanding that one ends on a hell of a cliffie. *wibbles*

I hate to do it, but I'm giving this book a mere, average rating: 3 stars.

cal