Nightlife

by Rob Thurman

  So I looked up without alarm at the window that hung at the head of my bed. For a split second I forgot that I didn't have any friends since we'd moved. I didn't know anyone out here and no one lived close enough to be merely passing by.

  Nobody but family.

  The Grendel hung outlined in the window by a scrubbed and shining lunar light. One hand was splayed on the glass with long thin fingers and skin as pale as the moon. A narrow, pointed face grinned at me with a thousand needle teeth and the predatory cheer of a fox in a henhouse. Slanted almond-shaped eyes glowed with sullen reds, scarlet as blood. Tapered ears pressed flat to the skull, and long hair as fine as milkweed shimmered in the air like a corona. The finger tapped again, the nail a metallic ticking against the glass, and a voice spoke. It was a serpent's hiss wrapped around the wet crunch of gargling glass. One word. Just one. It was enough.

  "Mine."

  The roiling-lava eyes looked down at me with more pride than I'd ever seen in my mother's. Or maybe it wasn't pride so much as rabid avarice. I'd seen Grendels before, more times than I could count, but never like this. Never so close I could see the naked greed in the eyes, the poreless texture of the skin, hear the utterly alien whisper.

  Jesus Christ, my mom had fucked that?

  I tried to swallow, but the saliva pooled in my mouth as all my muscles gave up the ghost and turned instantly to overcooked spaghetti. My eyes were locked to the ones staring at me through the window as air stuttered in and out of my lungs. Breathing was pretty much all I was up for and even that was shaky. The Grendel tilted its head and rasped again, "Mine." Gloating and complacent.

  And still I couldn't move. This thing, this monster, was claiming me as its own and I couldn't move a muscle, not a goddamn finger. That is, not until a pallid hand burst through the glass and wrapped around my neck. Sharp nails sank into my flesh, fastening tight like barbed hooks. That was when I rediscovered movement in a big way. Yelling bloody murder, I threw myself back desperately. Flowing like water over the jagged broken glass in the window frame, the Grendel followed suit. It landed hard on my chest with a weight that belied its slender frame. It easily weighed as much as I did. Tiny slits flared a bare inch from my face as it inhaled deeply. It was sampling my scent, smelling me.

  "Blood of my blood. Flesh of my flesh. Breath of my breath." I felt the warm trickle of liquid on my neck as the shredding smile moved to my ear and murmured, "Time to go home."

  I didn't yell this time. I screamed. It was with pure, wordless terror as I tore at the hand at my throat and raised my knee up to push the Grendel away. I didn't budge it, not an inch. In fact its other hand snared my leg, and it felt like a bear trap. Suddenly, I was lifted into the air and then I was flying through it. I went through what was left of the window, glass and metal slashing at me. Hitting the ground hard, I felt the smothering sensation of the air being forced from my lungs by the blow. I gasped, trying to suck in a breath, as I managed to roll over on my back. The stars were out, dancing a duet with the brilliant moon. For a moment I lost myself in it, my thoughts slow and thick as molasses.

  Then I heard Niko call my name. His normally calm voice had knotted into a barbwire ball of anguish and fury. That cut through the fuzziness like a knife, and I managed to get my hands under me to push up to a half-reclining position. The world spun lazily, but I could still see the trailer. Yeah, I could still see and I would've given anything at the moment to have been blind.

  She stood in the doorway, Sophia… my mother. For one second, one moment outside time, she was as coldly beautiful as she'd always been. And then she was a bonfire. Her nightgown burned on her, a leaping red-and-yellow silk. Her flesh began to melt and blacken as her hair ignited in a glowing aurora. I think she was screaming or maybe I was. Then she disappeared, falling back into the raging inferno of the trailer. The screams remained; they must have been mine. Sophia was gone, but Niko… Niko, I didn't see. I couldn't see him, and I couldn't hear him anymore.

  I tore at the grass and dirt under me and managed to flip over onto my knees. I couldn't walk, but I could crawl. And I did. I'd gone barely a few feet when hands on my arms and legs and in my hair jerked me back. Grendels, they were everywhere, on me, loping away from the burning trailer, ripping a hole in the velvety night. I kicked and swung my fists at the ones holding me back from the trailer; I yelled for Niko until my voice cracked. Beside me two Grendels had done something to the air itself. It had split longways, a ribbon of pulsating, corpse-gray light. It widened, stretched, and elongated until the night itself had a ragged hole in it. I was still screaming Niko's name as they dragged me towards it. Screaming his name even though I knew he was dead. Knew my brother, the only one who'd ever loved me, ever gave a shit about me, was gone. He'd died not only for me, but also because of me.

  I gave up. There was no reason not to. I'd tried; I couldn't fight them. I couldn't get away. And now… now I didn't even want to. "My blood," came the crooning at my ear as I was pulled along. "My spawn. Mine." Skin as cold as bone pressed against my cheek as nails sank deeper into my arms. It wasn't a hole after all. It was a door, a door to hell.

  Daddy, true to his word, took me home through it.

  It was a dream maybe, but not just a dream. It had happened, all of it. Fortunately, or unfortunately, depending on your view, I didn't remember what had followed my being dragged through the gate. Niko had had to fill me in later.

  He hadn't died. That was a big one in my book, no matter how he glossed over it. The biggest. He'd managed to get out a window in the back of the trailer. He'd had some burns and some cuts from the glass, but he'd survived. He'd come running around the blazing trailer just in time to see me disappear in the midst of monsters. The rip had closed behind the Grendels and me, leaving Niko alone. I was gone; Sophia was dead. It was just Niko and what ended up as a smoldering pile of melted plastic and metal. He didn't leave, though. Didn't get in his car and drive away. Didn't cut his losses and realize there wasn't a damn thing he could do to help Mom or me. He stayed. God knows why. But he stayed, all alone. No firemen came, no police. I guess we'd lived so far out no one even spotted the fire.

  Niko had sat on the grass where I'd vanished and he waited. For two days he watched and sat vigil. He didn't give up on me. He never had, not from day one. So I guess it was no surprise he waited.

  The surprise was that I actually came back.

  On the second night in the same place at almost the same time, I came spilling out of the darkness. Limp and naked, I fell onto the grass, a panting, snarling mess. I'd growled like a rabid wolf when Niko dropped to his knees beside me. I might've taken a chunk out of his arm if I hadn't struggled past layers of confusion and a smothering blanket of disorientation. But in the end I'd recognized him. It took me only seconds even as whacked-out as I was. Took Niko a while longer to return the favor. It'd been only two days for him.

  For me it had been two years.

  That'd been our best guess, of course. Wherever I'd been, wherever the Grendels had taken me, time was apparently out to lunch. I'd dropped back into the world obviously older. My hair, once short, had grown to my shoulders; I was taller by inches, my shoulders broader. I was even going to bat with a little more wood than before. So there was one nice side effect to taking a time-bending trip through amnesia hell.

  But I didn't remember a single moment after having been shanghaied through the gate with the Grendels. Nothing. That time was a darkness so deep and vast that I was hard put to even know it was there. If I hadn't been so physically changed, I would've sworn I hadn't been gone at all. It was a memory loss so pervasive that I could barely recognize its presence.

  If I was having some problems, it was ten times worse for Niko. He'd lost his mother and brother in one fell swoop. Yeah, okay, Sophia hadn't been pulling down any mother-of-the-year awards. God knows, we'd been more than happy to move out and leave her far behind. But hoping you never saw someone again is a damn sight different from wishing them dead. There are ea
sy ways and hard ways to go; burning to death is in a category all its own. Then I come back, an amnesiac, howling loony who has no idea he's been gone for any time, two days or two years. Not a fun time for my brother. But he'd bucked up, sucked it up, and gone on. He'd put me in some of his spare sweats that he'd had in the trunk of his car. None of my clothes, which had already been packed into the backseat, fit anymore. After I dressed with clumsy, shaking motions, he checked me over. Pushing up the sleeves on my borrowed sweatshirt, he'd looked at my arms with a fixed gaze.

  "I saw blood," he had said quietly. "When they took you. I saw blood on your arms, your neck." With a finger he'd touched the scars on my arm and then the ones on my neck. The puncture wounds were ugly, but long healed. "Jesus, Cal, it really is you."

  Pulled into a crushing hug, I'd corrected numbly, "Caliban." Even Niko couldn't deny I was a monster now, right?

  "Cal, anything wrong?"

  Wrong. Even after four years of running from Grendels, Niko had never once called me Caliban. Never once given in to my darkest interpretation of self. Damn Pollyanna. I stood in the doorway, stood in the welcome light, and watched as Niko materialized out of the darkness in the hall. "Four hours?" I shrugged. "Who could sleep that long? Go on to bed. I'm up for good." I punched him lightly in the arm and grinned wearily. "Keep the snoring to a minimum, Cyrano. Can't hear the bad guys if you drown them out."

  Niko had the nose of a Roman general. His profile was classic and clean and women always had a spare look or three for my brother, but I wasn't about to ever admit that. Instead I came up with lots of interesting names for him ("Cyrano" being the least offensive), and he loved each and every one of them—if love could be expressed as a smack on the back of the head.

  This time he let it go, and he let my obvious nighttime lie go too. He knew as well as I what prompted it. Heading for his quarter-bouncing, hospital-cornered, anal-retentively made bed, he stripped down and climbed under the covers. I didn't comment on the large knife he slid under the pillow. We all have our security blankets in this world. Some are just sharper than others.

  Chapter Two

  When morning finally dragged its tired ass in, I was making breakfast. My watch had passed without incident. It'd been just me, an exceptionally bright apartment, and a lingering nightmare.

  "I'll take soy waffles with fresh fruit." Niko, already dressed, stepped out of the hall as he pulled his hair back into a ponytail that hung nearly to his waist. "And some freshly squeezed orange juice, if you please."

  "Scrambled eggs and beer it is," I said matter-of-factly. "I guess it's my turn to make a grocery run, huh?"

  "You could say that." Niko set the table with two plates, forks, and glasses. He also retrieved the ketchup from the fridge for me. "In fact you could say that for every week for the past two months." He raised his eyebrows mockingly. "Not that I'm counting of course."

  "Uh-huh," I commented skeptically. Moving over to the table, I ladled out the eggs between the two plates. Dumping the frying pan into the sink, I pulled a chair out, turned it backward, and straddled it. A nice healthy squirt of ketchup on the puffy yellow eggs and I was good to go. A glass of frothy white milk was placed firmly in front of me. Narrowing my eyes, I mumbled around a mouthful, "That doesn't look like a Bud, Nik."

  "Just think of it as white beer from a bovine keg. Maybe that will help." Niko sat and began to eat his eggs and drink his own glass of cow juice. After swallowing, he clinked his fork lightly against the plate. "I was thinking that after we eat we might go to Central Park and talk with Boggle, ask him about the Grendel."

  "Boggy?" I brightened and curled up the corner of my mouth with savage cheer. "Just talk? Couldn't we kick some muddy ass too? Doesn't hurt to stay in practice." I might not be the deadly, precision fighter that Niko was, but I could hold my own. Long gone were the days when I'd avoided fighting, afraid it would bring out the monster half of me. After the Grendels had taken me years ago I had finally figured it out. You can't bring out something that's already snarling in the forefront.

  Niko gave me a faintly reproving look. "As long as he's still only eating muggers there's no need to complicate matters." As I groaned in disappointment, he added casually, "Unless, of course, he doesn't cooperate with us."

  "Here's hoping." I saluted him with the glass of milk.

  Yeah, monsters were everywhere. Considering the world we lived in, that wasn't all that surprising. But it was astounding that most people didn't have a frigging clue. The monsters were there for anyone who just opened his eyes and looked. But ignorance is bliss and there were billions of blissful people in this world. Regardless, it was mind-blowing to be on the street and see a ghoul slinking along in the shadows or a werewolf cheerfully ignoring the curb law and absolutely no one noticing. Once I saw a grinning lupine half again bigger than any wolf on Animal Planet trotting down the sidewalk and checking out the nightlife. And nobody thought that was somewhat out of the ordinary? I even saw one pudgy animal lover chasing after it to check it for an ID tag. Maybe stupidity was a demon all its own.

  In the park the chill of last night's air had mellowed to a brisk autumn cool. Niko and I jogged along a path for nearly twenty minutes before cutting through the woods to a more secluded area—a grassy, marshy spot where thick pale brown sludge coagulated into a mud-hole only a pig could love. Or a boggle.

  I leaned against a tree, folded my arms, and whistled two notes. "Ding-dong, Boggy. You've got visitors. Rise and shine." The mud remained placid and unmoving. There was the sound of metal being unsheathed as Niko wordlessly drew a short wide blade the length of his forearm. He kept the sheath strapped between his shoulder blades under his clothing. "See, Boggy?" I drawled. "You've made Niko cranky. That's not a nice thing to do. Not especially smart either." Moving away from the tree, I stepped to the edge of the slime and crouched down, arms resting on my upper legs. "I know you're there, Bog. I can smell you. I'm like my dad that way."

  Two softball-sized yellow orange eyes blinked lazily from the mud. A deep voice rumbled and gurgled sluggishly. "You're an asshole that way too. Ain't that a coincidence?"

  I had no idea how long boggles lived, but I was betting it was a damn long time. This piece of land had been Bog's home long before it'd been called Central Park. I guess that's how he'd picked up his New Yawk accent—from the various joggers, in-line skaters, and mugger lunchables. Rocking back on my heels, I snorted. "No genetics involved there. I'm an asshole in my own right. Don't ever doubt that."

  The mud boiled and cascaded off massive shoulders as Boggle lurched upward. "Shit. When you bust my balls every time I turn around? Not friggin' likely." Upright he stood over eight feet, a massive hulking figure covered in oozing brown liquid and encrusted with petrified mud. Neckless, his head melted into his shoulders. His lipless mouth was full of large serrated teeth that angled backward like that of a shark. Each platter-sized hand was equipped with two fingers, a thumb, and thick black claws that stabbed outward to the length of nearly ten inches. Quite the specimen, our Boggy. A delicate dewdrop. A hothouse flower. A giant litter box come to horrific, murderous life. "What the hell do you bums want now?"

  "A little polite conversation." Niko tapped the blade against his knee. "You wouldn't have a problem indulging us in that, now, would you?"

  Soulless eyes, as empty of anger as they were of empathy, considered the bright glitter of the steel in Niko's hand for a long moment. Then the sloping shoulders shrugged indifferently. "Shoot the breeze. Yeah, living for that. So, whatta you want to know?"

  "A Grendel," I volunteered. "It was hanging around the park yesterday." Tossing a glance in Niko's direction, I amended, "For a while anyway. We're curious to know why."

  "Maybe you should've asked it before you chopped off its head," Boggle grunted. "Might've been easier."

  Niko's upper lip lifted a bare millimeter to reveal a microscopic slice of even white teeth. "Not quite as entertaining, however."

  Yeah, Niko talked a good sho
w. Tough as nails, cold as ice. But no matter the face Niko put on it, he'd done it for one reason and one only. No Grendel was getting near me ever again. Taking chances was not a big part of my brother's philosophy. "Did you really cut its head off?" I asked curiously.

  Touching the pad of a thumb to the blade's razor edge, he shook his head. "And dull the artistry of this on bone? I think not." Without missing a beat, he went on. "What was it doing here, Boggle? Merely passing through or was it something more sinister?"

  "Sinister." A rough, gargling laugh had flecks of mud flying through the air. "You got to be shitting me." Spitting a mouthful of slime, he rumbled on, "No matter what the little shit was up to, it's gonna be depraved and misbegotten. You oughta know that. That's just the way elves are."

  We hadn't known what Grendels were, all those years. Even after they'd made off with me, we still hadn't known. To me they were just monsters, demons, and I really didn't care to know any more than that. Niko was different, of course. He had a tireless mind that never ceased looking for the whys and wherefores. All our lives he'd wanted to know. He'd gone to library after library, he'd studied mythology and demonology until it was coming out of his ears, but he'd never been able to pin them down. It wasn't until we ran into Boggle that we'd been "enlightened."

  Elves. Grendels were elves. Maybe you thought elves had delicate features, long golden hair, mystical blue green eyes. Maybe you thought they glided along draped in filmy garments that sparkled with semiprecious gems, and rode on ethereal white horses. Could be you were more modern than that, though. Could be you pictured elves living urban lives. Dressing in leather, riding motorcycles, and hiding their pointed ears under helmets. That'd be just as good a fantasy, right? Because elves were good, well… not all elves. There was the occasional bad magical apple, to add drama. But as a rule elves were good, and elves were cool. Every D&D-playing geek drooling to be one would tell you so.