Roadkill by Rob Thurman Read Free Book Online Page A

vegan head for the nearest McDonald’s and took a bite. It was every bit as god-awful as I knew it’d be. “Great.” I chewed with the best imitation of enthusiasm I could whip up as I crunched cardboard, soy chocolate like muddy asphalt, and fake marshmallow that . . . Hell, I couldn’t even think of anything to compare it to.
    The taste might not have been anything like when I was a kid, but Niko was the same, keeping tradition alive. When the only ones you had were the ones you made up, they mattered. They mattered a helluva lot.
    “Okay, convince me.” I sighed. The first time I’d needed Niko’s special brand of convincing was when I was five and I wanted my own bed. All grown up and wanting my own bed—same tiny bedroom, but different bed—because I hadn’t known then . . . hadn’t known there were monsters in the night. But Niko had known; he had seen it two years before and kept it a secret. Being in the same room wasn’t enough for him after that. You never forget your first kiss, and you never forget your first leering package of death grinning at you through a kitchen window.
    So, we had our version of s’mores back then and he’d said the one thing I couldn’t say no to . . . not even as a little kid. “I’d be lonely,” he’d told me, nine and solemn. “One more year, Cal. Okay? Just one more. When you’re six and I’m ten and we’re all grown up.”
    Five-year-old Cal never would deny his big brother anything. A twenty-one-year-old Cal wouldn’t either, but I didn’t have to make it as easy these days. This Cal would never be anything like that long-ago one. It was too bad; that had been a much better Cal. Ignorance was bliss and sometimes made for a much better person. But ignorance hadn’t been an option for me for long. The few years I’d been lucky enough to be that way had been all due to Nik.
    Once there had been an innocent, quiet, and good kid. Now there was me. I wasn’t innocent; I wasn’t good. I was quiet, but that was usually as I stood behind you a split second before I slit your throat. But that didn’t mean I didn’t remember. I did, and I remembered who’d kept me innocent as long as he could.
    “Never mind with the convincing,” I said around another mouthful. I might not have been the same, but Nik was. And I still couldn’t tell him no. “I’ll do it.”
    The absence of my usual stubbornness took my typically unflappable brother off guard for a split second. “That simple?”
    I shrugged. “Next year, when ‘we’re all grown up,’ I won’t help save the world. How about that?”
    “I think ‘all grown up’ won’t hit you until your mid-eighties, but, yes, it’s a deal.” He handed me another s’more and, God help me, I took it.
    “One thing, though,” I said. “This time I get to negotiate with Abelia-Roo.”
    He paused in cleaning up, wiping the counter with typical Niko antiseptic zeal. “Robin certainly won’t fight you for it, but why are you so eager to be cheated and molested to the point of post-traumatic stress disorder?”
    Because Niko could have died because of her. Because I don’t forget things like that . . . not ever. Because I wanted a little payback and I wasn’t talking about the money.
    For those she’d cheated in the past.
    For those she’d cheat in the future.
    For what she’d allowed to happen to my brother.
    For good old-fashioned revenge.
    I grinned with the same dark cheer Abelia-Roo had shown in the bar when bleeding the vampire half dead and added the last, equally valid, reason out loud.
    “For fun.”
     
    Niko called Abelia-Roo to let her know we’d take the job and would be upstate that evening to talk terms. By the time Niko disconnected, her voice had gotten shrill enough I could hear it across the room. “In a hurry, huh?” I yawned.
    “The entire devouring of the world, destruction of all living things, it seems to disturb her,” he said dryly. “But obviously not you.”
    Destroy the world?