“This fight is tiresome, brother.”
Qeenan’s nostrils flared. “And so’s your need to always show off. Look at me,” he mocked in a nasal falsetto. “I’m so futtocking special. I’m the best at all I do!”
Nibo was sick of being misjudged. “Don’t lay your hate on me. Or your sins. That be your mirror, Qee. Not mine. All I ever wanted was to play me music and be left alone to tend my flock and love me wife. Just like now. You’re the one seeking glory and to lead the fools what will listen to you into a quest that will be the death of all. Not I.”
“That’s what you say. But I see more than you think.”
“Nay, that you do not. You see nothing save your own stupid opinions that are colored by an ego so large it blots out the very sun above and casts a shadow over the entire world.”
Qeenan’s eyes turned bright red as the demon inside him rose up.
Nibo tensed and lowered his voice. “Go ahead, brother. Attack. This time, me back’s not turned. Just remember that when you do, I will defend myself.”
It was so eerie to see that amount of hatred in his own eyes. To stare at it in a face that was so close to his own. While Nibo held a healthy dose of self-loathing, Qeenan took it to a whole new level.
Right down to arguing over who’d had the prettier identical twin sister.
“You were ever a brat, you rank, filthy bastard. Maman should have drowned you in infancy.”
“Too bad she didn’t drown you first.”
Or leave him to strangle himself with that umbilical cord.
Qeenan exploded into fire. He rushed toward Nibo with a burst of energy and would have engulfed him had he not countered the attack with a wave of his crook. Instead, Nibo caught him with the edge of it and swatted him off like an annoying fly. The blow caused his brother to rebound off the nearest building with a resounding smack that was so loud it caused every spirit near them to turn and stare.
And Papa Legba to burst into laughter.
That did nothing to calm Qeenan’s fury. Rather it spurred it ever onward and made him cuss Nibo like a slow-walking dog. Which was fine by him, as he’d called his brother far worse things.
This was, after all, their own personal hell for their crimes against each other. Qeenan for the fact that he’d killed him and caused Aclima’s suicide, and Nibo’s for his well-noted arrogance that had made Qeenan hate him. He had been a selfish sonofabitch when he’d lived, and he had rubbed Qeenan’s nose in the fact that Aclima was more outgoing than her sister. Truth was, he could still be that prick.
He just tried to hide that sin a little more these days. But his brother continued to revel in his violence and wrapped himself up in the proud cloak of self-indulgent gore and mayhem.
Qeenan peeled himself from the wall and returned to his more human form. “One day, brother—”
“We had that fight already. You won, remember?” His brother had left him with nothing. Nibo glanced to Qeenan’s sleeves that were marked with red handprints. The signs of Nibo’s murder, and those that marked Qeenan as Baron Kriminal, the hit man for their nanchon. He was the one summoned to do their dirty work in the human realm. If they wanted someone killed, or worse, his brother was more than happy to do it.
No questions asked.
Qeenan spat at his feet. “You should have been left to wander in limbo forever. A forgotten shade.”
“Couldn’t agree more,” he said under his breath as his brother walked off. He’d never asked for either life. This one or his first. He damn sure hadn’t wanted to be tied to Qeenan in either of them.
But that was the way of things. Life was ever a gift. And never the one you’d really wanted and had hoped to get. Worse? It always came with a no-return policy.
Take it or leave it.
Disgusted, Nibo headed for the gates. He wasn’t sure where he was going. But he didn’t want to be here any longer. If he had to listen to fools bitch and moan, he might as well be among the humans. At least they had a reason for their blind stupidity and unhappiness. They were the pawns of the real assholes.
Qeenan watched as his brother walked off, and narrowed his gaze. He grabbed his right hand, Joseph Danger, the loa of justice who traveled with him. They were inseparable, as Joseph was the one charged with righting injustices of the righteous who’d been wronged, and he was the one who wouldn’t hesitate to shed blood in their name.
Indeed, he lived for such.
Unlike him and his twin, whom he loathed, he and Joseph were a perfect team. Joseph didn’t shirk at what needed to be done to balance the scales. He understood payback and hell-wrath. That not everyone deserved to live.
Or to be happy.
Nibo was pathetic in his sympathy for others and Qeenan cursed his twin’s bleeding heart. While Qeenan knew when to cull the herd, his brother was all about coddling the weak and wasting resources on those unworthy.
