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satisfaction—anything but return to his home alone. Always alone.
    "Where’s the boy?" August asked without preamble or apology. He owed this woman no special treatment for her recent infiltration of his enemy’s strongholds—nothing but perhaps a peaceful death, which would come soon enough.
    The woman grunted. Her expression seemed grim, frightened, a little angry and worried, but she gestured toward the shadows from whence she came.
    A tall, thin, scarred boy—in human terms, a man, though August couldn’t see him that way—with raggedy blond hair stepped forward. He had on a blue suit and the odor of cigarette smoke clung to the cheap cotton—but for once, August didn’t detect the reek of marijuana, hashish, heroin, crack cocaine, or any other substance he had forbidden the boy to touch on penalty of tortures only August could provide.
    "Good," he said, hoping his approval would mean something to his son, though he knew that even with decent mental barriers in place, his natural energy was churning through the boy and the woman, too. "I’d prefer you give up tobacco. Bad for the body and in the end, the mind. If you treat yourself well, more of my gifts—the gifts that set you apart, raise you above—might make themselves manifest."
    "Cigarettes won’t send me back to jail." Color rose to the boy’s pallid cheeks as he spoke in the same brogue as his mother. His dull blue eyes showed a smidgen of the defiance so characteristic of his mother, of his species, but his voice issued forth in its typical whine as he looked away.
    August thought of his other children in cities all over the surface of this planet, and how none of them whined as insistently as this one. The boy couldn’t help his defiance, his quarrelsomeness, what with August so physically close to him, of course. August knew his energy engendered such behavior. He forced himself to ignore the smoke-smell and his own irritation, and he ruffled the boy’s greasy hair with something like affection.
    Then his hand paused at the boy’s crown and he squeezed, feeling the pitiful, weak bone beneath his fingers. Human bone. To August, little better than a brittle paste made of twigs and toothpicks.
    The boy groaned, but made no effort to physically fight his father. August knew that after these many years, the boy realized such a battle would be not only pointless, but fatal.
    He does learn from some past mistakes. I could crush his skull to powder, and he would allow it rather than face my wrath.

    If the boy chose to destroy the powers inside him with his drug use, so be it, but he would at least remain as well trained and loyal as any street mutt—or August would put him down.
    "Stop," the woman said from beside him. "I told you if you hurt the boy, I’ll see you dead."
    August let go of the boy, turned toward the woman, and smiled as he imagined human parents smiled at wayward children. "I understand that my presence stirs rage and discord, but don’t think to threaten me."
    "You promised never to raise a hand against him." The woman didn’t whine like the boy. Her voice had the sharpened edge of a lifelong felon, a con accustomed to getting what she wanted, when she wanted it. "You promised—"
    August kept up his smile, but let loose the slightest bit of his power to scold her for her impudence.
    The woman fell back as if slapped, clawed at her throat and burst into tears. She dropped to her knees, then rolled on the ground, sobbing and gasping "No" again and again.
    August felt the flick of the boy’s fist against his cheek.
    "Let her be!" the boy yelled. "I’ll—you—you let her alone!"
    Another brush of knuckles, this time against August’s gut.
    The woman’s agony didn’t stir August on any level, and the boy’s punches had no effect. Human strength—like butterfly wings. Yet he was pleased, and he stopped sending the woman visions of their son’s bloody, mangled corpse.
    "Good." August gave his wretched offspring a pat on the