Nightlife Read Online Free PDF Page A

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