Nightlife

by Rob Thurman

  Niko watched me silently as I finished up, rinsing my mouth and then pulling off my shirt. I slid him a glance, a little worried. "Okay, what?" When you've known someone all your life you don't need a neon sign to know when something is wrong. A faint shadow in his eyes, a slight flattening of his mouth—something was bugging Niko.

  He hesitated, then said quietly, "I saw one today."

  Four words. That's all it took to have the ground disintegrating under my feet. Just four goddamn words. I wadded up my shirt with suddenly clumsy fingers. "Oh." Articulate as always. Flipping the lid down on the toilet, I sat, tossed the shirt into the sink, and started to untie my sneakers.

  Niko moved closer, a solidly reassuring presence in the doorway. "It was in the park. I was doing my evening run."

  "The park," I repeated emotionlessly. "Makes sense." Grendels, as far as we could tell, didn't much care for cities; they seemed to be more prevalent in rural areas, the woods, the creeks, the silent and sullen hills. But New York was one damn big place. Of all the cities we'd run to, this was the one where we were bound to come across the occasional monster, Grendel, vampire, ghoul, boggle… whatever. One Grendel in Central Park should not a crapfest in your pants make, right? Right? "So we stay or go?"

  He knocked ruminatively on the sink. Once, twice. "I think that perhaps we should stay, at least unless we spot more. It's unlikely this one had anything to do with us."

  "Had?" I dragged a hand through my hair and fixed him with a suspicious look. "I'm no English major, Nik, but that sounds like the past tense to me."

  "It rather does, doesn't it?" he agreed mildly. Retrieving my shirt from the sink, he handed it to me. "Go to bed. I'll take first watch."

  We were back to that, then. We'd done it almost religiously for the first year after I had come back from… wherever. But after a while we'd reverted to a more casual routine, and thank God for that. I'd been perpetually sleep deprived that entire year. And I loved to sleep. That's the definition of a teenager, isn't it? A coma with two legs and an endless appetite. Certainly being deprived of my God-given right to ten hours a night made me cranky.

  I grimaced, then nodded. "Okay. Wake me in four." Hitting my mattress hard, I rolled up in the blanket and dropped off instantly, a skill I'd never had to learn. I could sleep anytime and anywhere. It was a good talent to have when you spent your life dodging monsters. Snatching minutes here and there was sometimes the best you could hope for.

  On the other hand sleep meant dreams, and dreams meant nightmares. Or memories. As far as I could tell the two were interchangeable. I had some sheet rippers, no doubt, and I was betting Niko did too. Of course he would claim he didn't, that his disciplined mind was too well trained for such subconscious antics. Begone nasty boogeymen; I, Niko the Magnificent, have spoken. Nik did have a way of making even utter bullshit seem noble.

  Yeah, I definitely took regular tours through nightmare city, and so far I hadn't figured a way to fool anyone about that… including myself. It was always the same, the dream. Maybe that should have given me some warning; even asleep I should've had a chance to prepare… to brace myself. Never happened. It started on the same note too, with the same feel, the same sweet taste of something bright and hopeful.

  Wasn't that a bitch?

  I woke up before my four hours were up. Catapulted out of sleep with a pounding heart and a sweat that would've done a malaria victim proud, I swallowed the taste of bile and gripped handfuls of the blanket as if it were the only thing keeping me from plummeting into the abyss. Swinging my legs over the side of the bed, I grabbed at the lamp and found it with practiced ease. Light bloomed in the room, but some shadows remained. Right then even one was too many. I lurched to my feet and hit the wall switch. Every time we spotted a Grendel. Every goddamn time.

  In the dream I was fourteen again. A punk-ass kid, but no worse than any other kid, I guess. I drank some. Shoplifted a few times. Skipped school once or twice. Usual shit. I didn't fight, though. Ever. You think you got it bad? Joe Junior whose daddy is an alcoholic? Well, screw your dependency gene. Try carrying a bucketful of monster DNA. While you were worried about having a tendency to have a beer glued to your hand, I was more concerned with pulling out the still-beating heart of the obnoxious asshole who sat in front of me in homeroom. It hadn't happened yet, but you never knew. I never knew. It was always there, the potential, whether I saw signs of it or not. I couldn't let myself doubt that. I wouldn't let myself doubt it.

  That day was different, though. A good day. Hell, a great day. Niko had found a good job and a place of his own, and we were moving out. Moving on. Niko was in his first year of state college; he'd gotten a full scholarship. He could've done better, a lot better. But he'd wanted to stay close to home. Close to me, the demonic albatross around his neck. That was a thought I kept to myself. I liked my ass enough to want to keep it in one piece, and Niko would have been all too happy to put a boot up it if he even suspected what I was thinking. But, hell, it was only what Mom told me time and time again. And if anyone should know demons, it'd be her.

  After all, she had screwed one.

  She wouldn't be sorry to see me go, my mom, Sophia Leandros. She wasn't precisely overflowing with maternal instincts, even for her human son. It was like those TV specials about animals born and raised in captivity. The mothers had never seen babies born, had never had babies of their own, and had no idea what to do with them once they did. They'd give the mewling wet little creatures a disgusted sniff and a wary and disbelieving look, and off they'd go without a backward glance. Sometimes I imagine good old Mom made it to the bar across the street before the nurse even finished toweling the birth blood off me. The same went for Niko. She might have found him more acceptable, being human and all, but she didn't shower him with love and affection either… just a little less revulsion.

  So, as they say, I was more than ready to shake the dust off my shoes. More than ready to get away from dark, dark hills and shadowy trees that could hide a thousand things. Grendels hadn't ever bothered us over the years; they'd just watched. But it was better in town; there you saw only a few once in a while. In fact it used to be only the one—Daddy dearest, I'd been betting—but over time that had changed. Dad had started bringing friends with him when he showed up to watch me. But out here in the country I saw Grendels almost every day. Sometimes, after the sun went down, there were as many rapt red eyes floating in the twilight as there were fireflies. It was… shit… creepy as hell. No matter that I'd seen them all my life. One or two were bad enough. More than you could count was enough to make the air freeze and fracture in your lungs.

  Yeah, the city had been better, but Sophia had lost her lease after running off most of her regular clients through boozing. She'd also racked up a few debts that made a relocation to the country suddenly seem desirable. And off we went to live the good life, the good life being a battered, rusting metal trailer squatting on a piece of land far from the nearest neighbors. I didn't know who owned the land or the trailer. I'm not even sure Sophia knew. But she'd found it with a sixth sense honed by years of scrounging, conning, and outright stealing. We'd been in the tin Taj Mahal now for almost two months. I was lucky it was summer because I had no idea where the nearest high school was and even if I had known, there wasn't much chance a bus came out this way.

  But today was the final day in the boonies. I was packing up the last of my shit in the best luggage garbage bag companies made when Niko shifted weight on my worn mattress and grimaced. "You can't want to bring that, Cal, honestly."

  "Caliban," I corrected automatically. I'd decided recently that I didn't want to be called Cal anymore. "Caliban" meant monster, and that's what I was. I had no intention of forgetting that, not for one minute. Looking down at the sweatshirt wadded in my hand, I demanded, aggrieved, "Why not? It's my favorite one. I wear it all the time."

  He let the name issue go for the moment. But I wasn't under any illusions that he'd give up. He'd give me some space and if
that didn't bring me around, he'd jump on me when I least expected it. I was never going to be the poster child for mental health, but Niko wasn't about to accept that. Returning to the sweatshirt topic, he leaned over and poked a finger through a hole in the shoulder of the shirt. "Yes, I noticed that. It looks to have been almost favored to death. Not to mention the color."

  "Purple? What have you got against purple?" I shoved the shirt into the bag and gave him a warning look. Love me, love my shirt.

  "Only everything in the world, and that particular shade barely qualifies as a color. It's more a visual assault."

  I grinned. "College boy with his big fancy words." I began to tie off the bag when the sound of shattering glass came from outside the tiny bedroom. "Mom's up," I said, matter-of-fact.

  "I didn't think there was anything breakable left in this forsaken pit." A hand landed on my shoulder, a steady and comforting grip. For the first time in a while I didn't grumble or try to shake him off like any self-respecting, full-of-himself fourteen-year-old who knew he was too old to be treated like a baby. I simply soaked up the warmth that sank through my shirt.

  "Probably just a plate. Breaking's easier than washing, right?" I pulled another garbage bag out of the box. The hand moved to my hair and mussed it without mercy.

  "Considering the way you wash them, it's probably more sanitary at any rate." He stood and moved past me to the bedroom door. "Once more into the breach," he exhaled ruefully. "Keep packing. We'll be leaving in an hour or so."

  And then we'd give the phrase "Don't look back" a run for its money. As I finished up with my things, I could hear Niko's quiet, calm voice and Sophia's slurred one coming from the kitchen. To be more exact, I heard every word spoken. Hell, the kitchen was barely twelve feet away; I didn't have much choice. "You two still here?" came the uninterested voice. Once it had been a smoky blue velvet; now it was a threadbare polyester, raveled around the edges and stained with cheap whiskey. I thought it had been one of the reasons she'd been such a successful fortune-teller. People paid not so much for what she said, but more for how she said it. Even the most stupid and inane "You'll meet a tall, dark stranger" sounded seductive and mysterious when Sophia Leandros said it. Or it had once upon a time.

  I had her voice. I also had her inky black hair and slate gray eyes. No olive-tinted skin, though. I was pale, Grendel pale. Mom had looked at me once when I was younger, about eight. It was a strange look, one of repugnance mixed with a reluctant pride. "You're a monster, but you're a beautiful one," she had said. Great, I was an evil, squatting thing wrapped in shiny silver Christmas paper. Even at eight I hadn't thought that was much of a compliment.

  As I gathered up a few musty, used paperbacks, Niko's voice drifted into the room. "We're leaving as soon as we get Cal's things loaded into the car. It shouldn't be long." There was a pause and then he added without any real enthusiasm, "Will you be all right?"

  There was a humorless laugh and the clink of ice in a glass. "Without you and the demon spawn? Shit, sweetheart, things could only get better."

  And just like that, before I even knew it, I was standing in the narrow doorway, my eyes on my mother… a fine upstanding woman whose reproductive system should've been removed at birth. She sat at the lopsided rickety table with her hand curled around a glass. Black hair untouched by silver spilled past her shoulders and onto a red silk robe that had seen better days, better years even. Eyes as polished and cold as steel studied Niko as she half emptied the glass in two swallows. "Where's my money?"

  I watched as Niko silently pulled a wad of bills out of his pocket and laid it on the table. He'd been giving money to Sophia since his first job at fourteen. I'd have been expected to do the same, but out here there were no jobs and since I was too young to drive, there was no way to get to them if there had been any. She scooped up the cash and counted it with nimble fingers. "Keep it coming, puss, or our nosy little monster comes back home with me. We all clear on that?" Her gaze pinned me in the doorway for a moment, and then I melted back into the gloom of the bedroom.

  I'd wondered why Niko hadn't stopped giving her most of his paycheck when he'd moved off to college and the dorm. But it was as I'd suspected. Sophia had us both over a barrel. I was only fourteen. She didn't have to let me go live with my brother, and the law would see it the same way. How the hell Niko would manage to pay for an apartment while giving her practically all his money, I didn't have a clue. Even with me getting a job there and helping out, it'd be tight. Real tight. But the dorm room… it had been part and parcel of the scholarship. No rent there. No younger brothers either.

  Sitting on the bed, the mattress bowing beneath me, I took a good look at my pile of "luggage." Suddenly every bag looked like a chain, a heavy one made exclusively to drag my brother down. He'd end up quitting school to get a second job. He'd have to. He was smart as friggin' hell but there were only so many hours in the day.

  Only so many chances in a lifetime.

  I pulled the nearest bag to me and began to untie the knot at the top. A hand looped around my wrist and squeezed tight enough to make me turn loose of the plastic. "Don't even think about it or I'll put your things up front and stuff you in the trunk," came the unruffled voice.

  Niko. And he was pissed. Niko kept his anger under rigid control and most people wouldn't have even known it was there, but I knew. I could smell it every time. And not once, in all my life, could I remember it ever being directed at me. Neither was it now.

  "You are not staying here. Not for any reason." Eyes uncompromising on mine, he released me and retied the bag. "It will be all right, Cal. We'll do just fine. I promise you."

  I wasn't too sure I bought that, but I did know one thing. Niko wasn't leaving me. For a year I'd made do with seeing him on the weekends, escaping Sophia only then. For a year we'd planned and saved. But the year was over and now, maybe, we would survive. Maybe it just took a little faith. And if I was short on that, it could be Niko might have enough for us both.

  "Yeah?" I said with less skepticism than I was shooting for.

  It didn't matter. Niko would've seen through it anyway. "Yeah," he repeated, the side of his mouth curling up faintly. "Of course, just fine means doing your homework, keeping our place clean and neat, helping little old ladies across the street, obeying my every sensible word…"There was more, but it was lost in the pillow I used to whack him in the face.

  That was when the dream always took a turn for the worse.

  It started with the car. It wouldn't start. Did that suck? Yes, it surely did. Was I surprised? Hell, no. That was life. You know that saying, right? "When life hands you lemons…" Well, when it does you might as well shove 'em where the sun doesn't shine, because you're sure as hell never going to see any lemonade.

  Niko worked on the car for almost four hours before he finally got the cranky engine to turn over. Slamming the hood down, he motioned for me to switch the engine off. Walking back to the window, he wiped his hands on a rag that had once been an old shirt of mine. "I think we'd better spend the night and leave in the morning," he said reluctantly. "It's running, but I would hate to break down halfway there at midnight. A long walk doesn't begin to cover it."

  I scowled and thumped the steering wheel with the heel of my hand. "Piece of crap," I muttered, sliding down in the seat a few inches.

  "Yes, well, two hundred and fifty dollars doesn't buy what it used to," Niko commented wryly. "I should've driven the Jag instead."

  So we were biding our time until the morning. It shouldn't have mattered; after all it was just one more night. But getting out of Niko's beat-up car and walking back into the trailer… it wasn't the best moment I'd ever had. It was like drowning and then being pulled onto the boat only to get booted off the other side. In other words, it sucked.

  Still, I tried to keep it in perspective. One night, just one out of my entire life, it didn't amount to much. I tried repeating that to myself a few times while I was brushing my teeth in the tiny, cramped bathro
om. I left the lights off. Our electricity had been cut off so many times, I'd gotten used to doing most things in the dark. As I bent down to rinse my mouth with water from my cupped hand, I thought I saw something in the mirror. Something behind me, a shadow against the shadows. "Nik?" I turned, but there was nothing but a wadded towel hanging over the rack. The wrath of the evil terry cloth… boogety, boogety. I snorted at myself and headed to bed. I lay on the field of lumps masquerading as a mattress and tried to doze off without success. Big surprise. Eventually, too wired at the prospect of escape, I rolled over, pounded the pillow a few times, and gave up on sleep for a while. I could hear Niko's slow, even breathing from the next room, where he was asleep on the couch. Laid-back to the point of coma—that was my brother. I was giving serious thought to getting a bowl of warm water and seeing if the legends were true, when another legend reared its ugly head. A darker legend, one that had shadowed me all my life.

  It looked like its shadowing days were over.

  There was a sound at the window. It wasn't terrifying; it wasn't supernatural. Hell, it wasn't even scary. It was just a polite tap. One-two. Light and restrained. Your friend for the summer, your best pal from school… just passing by, you know? Maybe you wanted to sneak out and smoke a cigarette or watch the stars. It was a rapping rich with familiarity and goodwill. Hey, buddy, whatcha up to?