Nightlife

Chapter Five

The next morning I was dressed and out before Niko. As events went, unprecedented wasn't the word. Desperate situations… I didn't have any illusions that my brother had slept soundly through my leaving. I wouldn't have even wanted him to, not with the threat of the Grendels looming. As it was, I simply skipped out on the last fifteen minutes of my watch duty. I knew Niko would wake up the moment I opened the front door, and more than that, he would know exactly where I had gone, and why. A note wasn't needed. But I didn't understand why my feet carried me there.

Or maybe I didn't want to.

It was too early for the soda shop to be open. I knew that. I also knew it would be open anyway. And I knew George would be waiting for me. How I knew, I couldn't say, and the headache that analyzing it would cause wasn't something I aspired to. So, as with so many things in my life, I let it go. I let it go and walked on.

When I reached the shop the security gate was already up and George was standing at the door. In a slim sweater of jumbled golds, reds, and browns and the silky sweep of a dark bronze skirt, she watched my approach with her arms wrapped around her waist. She looked older. Such a short time had passed since she'd been giggling and drinking her pineapple shake, yet it could've been years, from the haunted quality of her eyes. Through the glass, the bright copper of her hair was muted, the gold of her skin tarnished… a shadow of the Georgina I knew.

I stood and looked at her, just looked. It was easy to picture my hand rising to grasp the handle and pull the door open. I could see it so clearly, yet my hand didn't move from my side. Maybe it knew what part of me didn't want to admit. The door was locked. If I tried to open it, it wouldn't budge. I knew that in the same way I knew George would be here.

She didn't say anything, my girl. Not a word. She only watched me in return with a smile so wistful and fleeting that I might have imagined it. Then she leaned a few inches closer and her lips grazed the glass to frost it with her breath. In the fog her finger traced a few curving lines, simple and spare. And then she was gone. Disappearing into the gloom of the lightless shop, she was the autumn glitter of dying leaves and then she was nothing. Nothing to hold in your hand, nothing to catch the eye. Nothing at all.

Her breath the only thing left behind, my finger followed the same path hers had taken. I frowned. A car. She'd drawn a car. What the hell? As the glass warmed, even that vanished, the same as its maker. Knowing how it would end, I tried the door anyway. I'd been right.

Locked.

By the time I made it home Niko was up and packing. It was a ritual for him, done in just the same way every time. As for me… we'd been on the run for so long, Niko and me, that I'd stopped putting our personal touches on the places we stayed. Because in the end, that's all they were… places. They weren't homes, just disposable living space. Forget that and one day you might slow down; you might take the time to regret your loss. And if that happened, if you took one second to mourn what you were leaving behind, well, your ass was grass. Devil takes the hindmost, but Grendels went one better. They took the middlemost and even the front-runners if there was the smallest misstep.

All this bleak and impersonal existence might scar the soul, but hey, it was a nice bonus if you were a chronically lazy bastard like myself. Packing usually consisted of shoving my dirty laundry in a garbage bag and putting on my shoes. Sixty seconds max. The excruciatingly efficient Niko tended to take longer. That might've been surprising had he not had so many sharp pointy things to gather up. We didn't quite need a U-Haul for all his weapons, but it was a near thing.

Walking into his room, I leaned around him to extend a finger and run it along the smooth, silver satin of an elegant dagger. "The acid of skin is detrimental to the metal," Niko said mildly as he rolled another blade in a length of dark green felt. He didn't mention my absence and I was grateful for the restraint.

"And all the blood is like mother's milk," I snorted, raising a different and more eloquent finger for his perusal.

"Actually…" He curved his lips in a contemplative shadow of a smile. "Never mind."

I lowered my finger before he took the notion to treat it like a wishbone. "So when do we pull out, Master? In the morning?"

"Patience, Grasshopper." Rapping me reprovingly across the knuckles with the swaddled weapon, he went on. "He who makes haste risks falling from the path of enlightenment."

And suddenly George's good-bye to me made sense. Swearing, I fell back against the wall, the mattress creaking and complaining beneath me. "It's your car again, isn't it? Your goddamn hunk-of-junk car." The same hunk of junk I spent more than my fair share of time moving from one side of the street to the other to save it from the wrath of the boot.

I would never see Niko looking sheepish. It simply wasn't in him. But he did shift minutely, almost a whole millimeter, and his nose somehow or another became more hawkish. "She runs reliably nearly seventy-five percent of the time. For the money that's more than acceptable."

Seventy-five percent of the time wasn't so great when you were on the run all of the time. And wasn't this a blast from the past? The last time we'd had this conversation, I'd taken a walk on the Grendel side. Here was hoping we didn't have a rerun of that little experience. Still, I had no real desire to bring up that nugget of ancient history, so I kept my mouth shut for once and quietly watched as Niko continued to pack.

Not fooled for a moment by my silence, Niko zipped up the long duffel bag and set it easily on the floor. "I honestly don't believe there is any desperate hurry, Cal. Boggle has his muddy ear to the ground. If he's not heard anything, chances are, that Grendel was a lone anomaly." His eyes narrowed. "A lone ex-anomaly, if you will. In any event I believe we comfortably have a few days to get things in order." Clearing his throat, he added offhandedly, "Perhaps buy a new car."

"You think?" I drawled sarcastically.

Niko was as deadly with a headlock as he was with a sword. He had me in one before I could blink. With his mouth close to my ear, he warned mildly, "Be careful, little brother. Any further comments from the peanut gallery and I may just purchase a motorcycle. Perhaps strap you to the handlebars when we leave town."

"Couldn't be any worse than that death trap we're rattling around in now." I feinted an elbow at his gut and then simultaneously hooked a foot around his ankle and bit him on the arm. Niko went down and I landed on top of him hard. Rolling off, I bounced to my feet and aimed a one-two punch at the air. "Put 'em up. Put 'em up. I'll take ya with one paw tied behind my back." It was faked, the humor, but Niko went along regardless. He wasn't one to let me stew.

Niko snorted through his long nose, sitting up with ease. "The lion? Hardly. Toto maybe. A member of the Lollipop Guild on your very best day."

Triumph over Nik wasn't something to be wasted, no matter how black my mood, and I gave him a faint grin. "Sore loser." Reaching down a hand, I heaved him to his feet. I was under no illusion that I'd actually taken Niko down. It was a simple move he himself had taught me and one he was more than prepared against. Every day in every way, my brother was testing me, teaching me. I rubbed my thumb over the faint bite impressions in the skin of his arm. "Maybe we should put some barbecue sauce on that."

This time I was the one who went down. And it damn sure wasn't a legal move. After all, how often is a Grendel going to give me an atomic wedgie?

An hour later we hit the streets in search of a good used car. We started in Brooklyn but kept New Jersey open as an option. A scary last-ditch option. Grendels had nothing on a Jersey car salesman. Emerging from the womblike darkness of the subway and a heavy nap full of copper and glass dreams, I blinked at the bright sunlight that spilled out of a piercingly blue October sky.

Grumbling incoherently, I fished in my jacket pocket for sunglasses.

"Fear not, night dweller," Niko said with mocking gravity. "It is merely the sun, something you would see more often if you would roll out of bed before late afternoon."

I would never know if my morning sluggishness was inherited (the Grendels had obvious nocturnal preferences), or just sheer human laziness on my part. Either way Niko was damn hard to take this early. Rolling my shoulders, I snarled silently and kept trudging down the sidewalk, brightening only when I spotted a hot dog stand a block down. Five minutes later I was happily buried face-first in a chili cheese dog heaped with onions and relish. Everything but the kitchen sink—just the way I liked it. It really was the simple things in life that kept you going.

Niko kept his distance, claiming the fumes were making his eyes water. Big baby. He wouldn't touch anything that was even remotely in the mystery meat family. "Do you have even the vaguest idea what is in that thing?" He eyed the dripping dog with distaste.

"Nope." I took another bite. "I've carefully avoided that knowledge my entire life just so I could enjoy this one moment. You mind?"

He folded his arms and gave me an exasperated look I was more than familiar with. "It does no good to survive the Grendels if you lodge a mass of shredded rat and chicken lips in your heart. Not to mention dissolving your intestines altogether."

There was more of the same, but I tuned it out and savored the bliss that only a New York hot dog can give. By the time we reached the tiny car lot I was licking the last of the orange chili off my fingers. While I might have been able to ignore my brother, he was incapable of ignoring me when I was at my Miss Manners best. Hissing between clenched teeth, he fished a clean napkin out of his own pocket and pressed it into my hands. "Do me the favor of rising from the preschool hygiene level." The gray eyes narrowed. "In fact you'd also be doing yourself a favor." Niko was good at threats, very good. I'd never seen anyone or anything not at least hesitate in the face of one of his chilling smiles or predatory stares.

Me, I just burped and tossed him back the now soiled napkin. "Come on, Grandma. Let's buy a car."

We wandered the lot with a slowly increasing sense of pessimism. It might have been a small one, but the cars were mostly new or older, immaculately expensive models. Quite a few convertibles were available for the consumer on the go who liked inhaling big chunks of pollution while idling in never-ending traffic. Good for building up your tolerance to carbon monoxide. Still, I couldn't deny my hand swept across the clean lines of a classic Mustang before I shoved it back in my pocket. "I think the only thing we could afford here is a pair of skates," I grunted.

"You might be right." Niko still had the napkin in his hand. Frowning in annoyance, he was looking around for a garbage can when we were nailed. A flashing charismatic smile, a pricey suit, sunglasses that cost more than Nik and I had to spend on a car—it all was aimed in our direction like a heat-seeking missile.

"Oh, damn," I groaned wholeheartedly.

"It's an unfortunate fact of life," Niko said with grimly amused resignation. "Where there are graveyards, there are flesh-eating revenants. Where there are cars, there are car salesmen."

"I'll take the flesh eaters any day. At least they leave you your soul." The guy was getting closer. "How about we make a run for it?"

His hand snagged my jacket before I could move, and he reproved smoothly in a line straight out of our childhood cartoons, "Honestly, Cal, are you a man or a mouse?"

"Neither, remember?" I grumbled under my breath. What a waste of time. There was nothing here we could remotely afford. It was bad enough to suffer through this crap when you actually got a car in the end. To do it for no other reason than to not look like a coward as you sprinted for safety—that just sucked.

And then it was too late. Mr. Gladhand Luke was on us like shark on chum. "Gentlemen, beautiful day, isn't it? Rob Fellows, at your service. What can I put you in today?" Cards were slipped in our hands with the quicksilver finesse of a Vegas magician. "Sports car? SUV? Maybe something thrifty with the gas? Foreign and domestic, we've got it all." He waved a hand. "You leaning toward a color? Red is popular, naturally, but you two…" He leaned back an inch and framed us with his hands. "I'm thinking simple black. Good color. Can't be beat. I have a brand-new Camaro over in the far corner. A jewel it is, a veritable glory. And, here we go. This way. Watch your step."

Okay, here was a man for whom caffeine wasn't an occasional indulgence; it was the actual fluid pulsing through his veins. He was a veritable whirlwind and it was distracting as hell, almost distracting enough.

But not quite.

He smelled weird. Different. Not human. He looked human, though, thoroughly. In his early thirties, he had short curly chestnut hair and revealed the cheerfully amoral green gaze of a fox when he pulled off his sunglasses to indicate a gleaming black car two rows over. His smiling, wide mouth was constantly in motion. He was the grown-up frat boy next door who'd conducted the panty raids, set up the keg, and knew everyone's name. Ex-BMOC. But in this case it stood for "Big Monster on Campus," because there wasn't a drop of human blood in him. The pungency of his scent was completely alien, oddly earthy, and like nothing I'd ever smelled before.

It didn't take much to tip off Niko, just the briefest of glances and a minute shift of my stance. He narrowed his eyes a millimeter in acknowledgment, and almost before Fellows could make his pitch, Niko and I were ready to sign the papers. He seemed pleased, not suspicious in the slightest, smugly secure in his position as salesmonster of the year. There was probably even a plaque on his wall.

Actually there were nearly twenty. I whistled lightly at the sight of them and settled into the chair on the other side of his desk as Niko drifted around the room. "Aren't you a regular Willy Loman?"

That ever-present blinding smile became pained. "I like to think I'm more successful than that, Mr… er…" He leaned across the desk to extend his hand. "I'm sorry. I didn't get your name."

I took his hand, then wrist, in an iron grip and bared my teeth in a wolfish grin. "Caliban. Nice to meet you, Loman."

The smile had melted off his face even before Niko ghosted up behind him, placing a knife at his throat. "What the hell?" He started to struggle against my hold but froze as a tiny thread of scarlet trickled down the line of his neck.

"Sharp, isn't it?" I said sympathetically. "Niko does like to take care of his toys."

"Not toys," Niko admonished, his blade as still and unmoving as stone. "They're more of a way of life. A philosophy." His mouth moved closer to Fellows's ear as he murmured serenely, "Perhaps even a religion."

That'd put the chills up anyone's spine. Hell, make those vertebrae get up and take a walk, for that matter. I tilted my head and suggested lightly, "Maybe we should have a chat, Loman, before Niko decides to baptize you. What do you say?"

I don't know what gave me away. He didn't smell the difference in me or he would've caught on much sooner. Maybe it was the way I quirked my head or my pale, pale skin? Could have been the near-murderous curve of my lips. Whatever it was, he knew. Somehow Fellows knew. The green eyes widened; the mobile face tightened. "Auphe. You're Auphe." There was wariness and a thread of sheer revulsion in his voice as the smooth cheer fractured into a hundred crystalline shards.

Elf. Auphe. Grendel. A rose by any other name would still draw blood if you didn't watch the thorns. Niko's tranquillity vanished in a heartbeat as he hissed coldly, "He is not." Lifting the blade away, he fisted his hand in Fellows's suit to yank him out of his chair and slam him up against the wall. "But he can kill you as quickly as one, and so can I."

Moving up shoulder to shoulder with my brother, I touched a fingertip to the small rivulet of blood on Fellows's skin and sniffed it. "Funny. It looks like human blood, but it sure as hell doesn't smell that way." I wiped it off on my jeans. "So, Loman, tell us… just what kind of monster are you? You eat children? Haunt graveyards? Drink blood and howl at the moon?" I shook my head before he could answer. "No. You don't smell like any of those things."

"Because I'm not any of those things." He put a hand to his neck, wiped the blood away, and studied me with suddenly appraising eyes. "No more than you're Auphe. Not pure Auphe. I was wrong about that. But part, yes? Half?" An automatic grimace shimmered across his face. "I didn't know anything would breed with an Auphe. Even other Auphe are probably loath to do it. It would have to be a tale even the Grimm brothers would find too grim. Shakespeare would like it, though. But with a name like 'Caliban' I guess you already knew that."

Niko lifted a disbelieving eyebrow in my direction. "He never stops. A creature that suffocates his victims with an unceasing flow of words. I don't recall that in any of the mythology books."

"Horrible way to go." I hooked a hip on the edge of the desk and exhaled, threading both hands through my hair. "Loman, why don't you just shut up with all your goddamn questions and answer just one of ours, huh? How about it? If we like what you say, we can get on with our lives and maybe, just maybe, you can get on with yours."

At that moment the door to the office swung open six inches and a bespectacled, wizened face topped by a lavender-tinted Albert Einstein do peered through at us with curious eyes. "Mr. Fellows, you have Steven Phillips waiting on two." Thin lips painted with a thick coat of bubblegum pink pursed as the eyes moved to Niko's grip on the monster's shirt. "Oh. You're… oh. Oh." She continued to blow bubbles like a confused goldfish until Fellows gave her a smooth, reassuring smile.

"Everything's fine, Dorothea," he said with a genial sangfroid. "Tell Steve I'll call him back and he better have that Lexus he promised me. And could you bring my guests some coffee and some of those cranberry muffins? That's my doll."

Dorothea gave him a flustered nod that had the glittering purple glass dangling from her earlobes ringing like wind chimes, and disappeared, closing the door behind her. And I had to wonder… when exactly did Niko and I lose control of the situation? Hell, did we ever even have it to begin with? I dropped my chin into my hand and groaned, "Ah, jeez."

Niko palmed his blade, sliding it back into concealment, and gave me a rueful look. "It is difficult to threaten someone who doesn't have the necessary attention span to register fear."

Fellows straightened his suit and ran a hand over his hair. "As if a pair of puppies like you could scare me," he snorted, but I noticed he gave Niko a wide berth as he moved back to his chair. Me… me, he kept in sight at all times, a combination of fascination and repulsion mixing in those cat eyes. Sitting, he placed his hands flat on the desk and made us an offer. The traditional one you can't refuse. "How about a deal, gentlemen? You tell me your story and I'll tell you mine."

"What the hell," I sighed. "Nik?"

He slowly nodded, and then gave Fellows an implacable order buried under a veneer of steel. "You first." Sketching a mockingly courteous bow, he added, "I insist."

"Fair enough." He gave us another smile. This one was genuine and somewhat sad. Pensive. Definitely not the high-powered ones he'd zinged our way earlier. "It's been a long time since I've been myself with humans. It's been a long time since a human has even believed in me, believed in my kind."

It was polite of him to include me in the human race, especially considering he still had half of me firmly chalked in the Auphe column. "Auphe," it suited better than "elf." It was a darkly acidic burst of taste on the back of your tongue… the whisper of scales sliding through the grass. The musky smell of a corpse filling your nose, sucking away your breath as clawed hands caressed the skin of your neck. Swallowing thickly, I forced my attention back to Fellows and decided to stick with "Grendels." There's comfort in the old childhood ways when monsters, even the real ones, were defined by you.

Clearing my throat, I asked, "How long's long?"

His eyes went dark and distant. "Long enough that the sky was more amethyst than blue. The moon hung closer, easily as bright as the sun some nights. The water was sweet and pure with the hint of honeysuckle in every handful. Butterflies were as big as blackbirds…" He paused, lost for a moment, then shook it off to finish slyly, "And there were more virgins than you could shake a stick at."

Niko folded his arms and snorted disdainfully. "I'm quite sure there were far less when you were through."

Fellows's smile moved into the scorching range. "You have no idea. Actually, however, I do remember a time when your kind was still picking fleas off one another for a nutritious bedtime snack. It was quite a while before the virgins were worth chasing. But I made up for lost time."

"Yeah, I'll bet you did." I was losing patience, not that I'd ever been long on that quality to begin with. "Enough with the trip down memory lane. Who the hell are you anyway?"

Leaning back in his chair, he linked hands behind his head and gave a good-natured smirk. "Robin Goodfellow at your service. Maybe you've heard of me? Shakespeare gave me lots of press. Mostly good, I have to give him that. But that was only one of my incarnations. Puck. Pan. All one in the same. Different cultures, different times… still, it was always me. More and less than the legend."

Niko lifted both eyebrows at once; he was that surprised. "Honestly?" Cocking his blond head, he peered over the desk with a reluctantly curious gaze. "Aren't you supposed to have the legs of a goat? Even the most talented of tailors couldn't hide that."

His eyes rolled cheerfully. "Fur chaps. I try and make a fashion statement years before its time and this is the thanks I get."

Luckily, the fashion commentary was interrupted by the lovely Dorothea and her plump and juicy muffins. Now, there was a combination that you really did not want to picture. I waited until she left and idly dug a succulent cranberry from the surrounding cake. Popping it in my mouth, I chewed and swallowed before saying, "You're famous, then, huh?"

His shoulders squared as the vanity he wore like a cloak became a shade threadbare. "No," he admitted grudgingly. "Not just me. My entire kind has provided a template, I guess you'd call it, for the myth. We're all Robin. We're all Pan playing our pipes in the endless green wood."

"Even your women?" Niko had finally deigned to relax enough to sit in a chair, although his hands were, as always, within easy reach of any number of weapons.

Fellows shrugged dismissively and poured a cup of coffee. "We don't have any females of our own. Never have." Eyes gleaming brightly, he sipped the hot liquid. "And don't ask me how we make little pucks. You're not ready for that lesson in reproduction."

Now, that was a statement I was wholeheartedly behind if there ever was one. "So," I started slowly, "you've been around forever and a friggin' day, longer than Dick Clark even. I'm guessing it's safe to say you could tell us a lot about Auphes, am I right?"

"The Auphe," he corrected grimly. "Singular is plural. Just like the Book says, call them Legion, for they are many. Or were at one time. They've dwindled over the millennia and there isn't a creature out there that's not grateful for that." The serious expression retreated slightly as he leaned back in his chair. "Sure, I know about the Auphe, but I think you gentlemen owe me a story first. A deal is a deal, and I'm all about the art of the deal. So shoot. I'm all ears." He cupped both to show just how ready he was and gave us a winning smile.

Goddamn, but he was annoying as hell. Maybe that had something to do with our so-called deal and maybe it didn't. Either way I wasn't waiting around to figure it out. Propelling myself up out of the chair, I muttered, "Think I'll see if Miss Dorothea has any more muffins."

Ignoring the fact that four of them still rested on the desk, Niko nodded, comprehension a hidden warmth in his eyes. "I wouldn't mind some tea if it's available."

"No problem." I didn't slam the door behind me, but it was a near thing. Leaning against the wall, I sucked in a deep breath, then pushed off. Whatever was said behind that door, I didn't want to overhear any of it, not one single, solitary word.

There was tea, not that green grassy crap Niko drank, but still, in his eyes it would be better than coffee, I knew. By the time I carted that and more muffins back, blueberry this time, Niko was done talking. I knew he would've only sketched the bare bones of my life story, but that didn't stop Fellows from visiting a look of sheer heartfelt pity on me. I could've been generous, could've called it sympathy instead. But it didn't matter; I didn't want either one. Not from him, not from anyone.

"What're you looking at?" I asked sharply. "I'm still a half-breed Auphe monster, same as when I left."

Taking the tea from my hand, Niko said softly, "Cal." Just my name, nothing else. It was enough. I sat down without another word.

Fellows had buried his empathy deep out of sight and now regarded me with only inquisitiveness. "Well, well, aren't you something to write home about? I've never heard of an Auphe-human mix. And you have no idea why it even happened?" He shook his head in amazement. "Damn, if it's not a puzzle."

Nothing like having your whole life summed up as nothing more than an interesting riddle. "Yeah," I responded flatly. "It's a puzzle all right. Almost as big of one as why we're sitting here listening to you. If you can't tell us about the Auphe, then you're just one big fat waste of our time."

At the f word a hand automatically went to his trim waist and Fellows scowled. That type of glower shouldn't have sat well on a foxy, blithely cunning face. But it did, perfectly. While I didn't know one-tenth of the mythology my brother did, it seemed to me that maybe good old Puck Robin hadn't been all game playing, piping, and flirting with virgins. There was a temper there, one that could be spiteful at times. And considering how we'd roughed him up even before I began sniping at him, it could be a temper we deserved.

Sliding down a few inches, I rested my chin on my chest and gave a reluctant apology. "Sorry. I'm being a dick. I haven't exactly given you much of a chance to talk." The frown stayed in place, as did the hand on his abdomen. "Oh. And those are abs of steel if I've ever seen 'em," I added lightly. "You could bounce a quarter off those babies."

Fellows's scowl faded as Niko's hand came over to tousle my hair. "That's a good boy," my brother said, amused.

"Gee, thanks, Wally." I reached for another muffin, not because I was hungry. I was about the furthest thing from it. I just needed something to do with my hands. Mutilating a pastry was going better than clenching my fists until my knuckles popped. Whatever we found out about the Grendels was bound to be less than a good time. "Okay, Fellows, A is for 'Auphe.' Clue us in."

He nodded, face still somber. "Call me Robin, would you?" he requested with a wistful note. "It's been a while since anyone has. I guess I rather miss it." He propped his feet on the desk, expensive shoes gleaming in the fluorescent light, and continued. "Gather around, children. It's time for a lesson in history. Ancient history."

Figured. I'd almost flunked my last history class. Hopefully this time I would do better. My life did seem to depend on it.

Robin did his best to talk well into the late afternoon. Not all of it was related to the Grendels. Occasionally he wandered off the subject to spin some tale about wine, women, and song. Sometimes it was about wine, men, and song. I had the feeling Robin was all about equal opportunity when it came to debauchery. I was just grateful he didn't stray into wine, sheep, and song.

I didn't really mind the change of subject once in a while even if it did revolve around him. It was a welcome break from the bottomless poisonous swamp of Auphe/Grendel history. You could swallow only so much murderous lust, freezing cold rage, and soulless torture before you began to choke.

It turned out that Grendels were more than mere monsters after all; they were part and parcel of a living nightmare. They seemed to live for only one purpose, one passion, one raison d'être: violence. Destruction. Mayhem. Working separately or together, they had considered the world their personal game preserve. They'd hunted and killed with gleeful abandon, mutilating, torturing, ravaging, living as wolves among the sheep. But wolves killed for food; Grendels killed for the pure love of the game. They killed for fun.

Around since the dawn of time, they'd been here before humans, even before Robin's people. There were no Grendel cities, though, not on the surface. They preferred living either underground in the feeble light of glowing cave fungi or in a place even colder and more barren. It was a place that existed side by side, in and of the earth, but distinct and separate. If you knew just where to look, you could find a doorway. And if you knew just how to walk, you could pass through.

Or could be dragged through as a screaming fourteen-year-old kid.

It was a place sterile of life except for the Grendels. At least so Robin had heard through the mythological grapevine. He'd never been there, actually paled at the thought. Tumulus, he called it. When Niko murmured that the word was Latin, Robin nodded in confirmation. "It seemed appropriate. It means grave. Tomb. Auphe hell. Whatever you want to call it. You'd be better off dead than there, trust me."

Now, there was some information to be filed in the "too little, too late" column. "Time runs differently there too, huh?" I said neutrally. It had for me anyway.

"That's what they say." He hesitated, then furrowed his brow and asked, "You don't remember anything at all? Two years for you and you don't recall even a moment?"

Ignoring the question, I silently dumped the abused muffin on the desktop and brushed the crumbs off my hands. He took the hint and commented briskly, "Probably for the best. I doubt it'd ever rank with Club Med for vacation hot spots."

"No. You think?" I challenged acidly.

Niko was ever the peacemaker, whether with reason or the ultimate in last words, the sword. He interceded, "While their history is fascinating, in a bloody fashion, we are more concerned with why the Grendels have done what they have done. Why did they approach our mother? Why did they take Cal? What do they want? It seems all too intricate for mere random maliciousness."

"Especially since you seemed to have nearly every Auphe living keeping an eye on you then." Robin rubbed a finger along his upper lip, lost in thought.

"Every Gr—every Auphe?" Niko repeated. "I thought you said they were legion. We saw many, far too many, but they were hardly countless."

"I said they were countless. That changed long ago." Robin stood and walked restlessly around the room, straightening sales awards on the wall as he went. "Changed for us all. Man." He shrugged his shoulders diffidently. It made me realize he had some memories he probably would've as soon forgotten as thoroughly as I'd managed with mine. The green eyes flicked toward Niko, excepting me from humanity without thought. "You breed like rabbits on aphrodisiacs. One moment you were the occasional star in the early-evening sky and the next, a smothering blanket snatching ownership of the very air itself. None of us had a chance, not even the wretched Auphe."

"Ah," Niko acknowledged with a philosophical regret. "Unfortunately, it is basic biology. When one only lives a short time, reproduction is a built-in priority."

"Every nine months versus every ninety years or so. It makes a difference." Robin blinked, then shook off the past to check his watch. "Sorry, compadres, it's been nice rehashing old times with you, but I have an appointment. There's still a living to make. Takes money to wine and dine the virgins nowadays. Devastating good looks and a big dick just aren't enough anymore."

I quirked the side of my mouth in dark humor as Niko sympathized with mock gravity, "Yes, a tragedy of epic proportions. However, the vast importance of your social life aside, I don't believe we are finished here. Do you?"

His knife might have been out of sight, but Niko was more than capable of making his point without it. Straightening his tie, Robin gave us both a jaundiced look and a reluctant promise. "We'll meet tomorrow, all right? Come by about eight p.m. That'll give me time to think on the situation anyway. I don't have my finger on the Auphe pulse, but I might know someone else who possibly could."

We were almost out the door when I turned and asked one last question. "Loman. Sorry… Robin. You seen any Auphe in the city lately?"

His hand, still on his tie, tightened involuntarily like the hand of the condemned on the hangman's noose. "Here? Auphe here? Katadikazo, no. Never."

Too bad for Robin, too bad for us all, but never had just gotten a whole lot shorter.