Nightlife Read Online Free PDF

different from wishing them dead. There are easy 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