NIGHTLIFE: Book 1, Chapter 1

Names were funny things.  They meant things… no matter how much you might deny it, no matter how much you might want to believe they were chosen at a whim.  Niko had come up with Grendels.  It wasn’t enough he was a blond Bruce Lee, but he was smart as hell too.  Always had been.  One reading of Beowulf in the sixth grade and he’d labeled my stalkers Grendels.  I’d only been in the first grade myself, five years younger than Niko, so it hadn’t meant much to me at the time.  But Grendels they became, after all monsters were monsters.

Of course now I was just two years younger than my butt-kicking big brother.  Wasn’t that a trick?

Caliban was a helluva name too.  Nice label to put on a kid, right?  Mom might have lived in a dark, cramped one room apartment over a tattoo parlor.  She might’ve told fortunes for a living, ripping off the naïve, the desperate, the flat out stupid.  And she might have been as quick with a slap as she was to tilt a bottle of cheap wine.  But one thing you could give her credit for, she knew her Shakespeare.  The Tempest’s Caliban, born of a witch and a demon.  Half-monster… a slouching nightmare of a creature tainting everything he touched.

Gee, thanks, Mom.  You really knew how to make a boy feel special.

I locked the door and headed towards our bathroom, saying with a grin, “What’re you still doing up?  You know all good little ninjas should be in bed, visions of homicidal sugarplums dancing in their heads.”

With a grunt of resignation Niko retrieved my jacket from the floor.  It hung from the point of one of his many, many blades until he draped it over the back of our battered sofa.

“They’re not completely homicidal,” his lips twitched with amusement.  He followed me down the tiny hall, leaned with casual grace against the wall, and folded his arms.

“And I had a last minute scheduling for bodyguard duty.  An off off off Broadway actress who imagines herself the target of a literal army of sex crazed stalkers.  It was exhausting.”

“I’ll bet.”  I gave him a mock leer as I leaned over the bathroom sink.  As I pulled the rubber band free from my hair, the ruler straight black strands fell forward against my face.  Squeezing a generous dollop of toothpaste on my brush, I went to work, scrubbing and spitting.  Niko had a casual business relationship with an agency that provided bodyguards and security around the city.  Actually, the agency was one guy with a lot of contacts, some of which were even almost legal.  But it was fair money and the pay was strictly under the table.  No taxes.  No government.  No trail for the Grendels.  Not that I pictured a Grendel in a bow tie and spectacles climbing that corporate ladder or waiting on his retirement.  Still, Grendels weren’t above using humans, and most humans weren’t above being used.

Niko watched me silently as I finished up, rinsing my mouth and then pulling off my shirt.  I slid him a glance, a little worried.  “Okay, what?”  When you’ve known someone all your life you don’t need a neon sign to know when something is wrong.  A faint shadow in his eyes, a slight flattening of his mouth, something was bugging Niko.

He hesitated then said quietly, “I saw one today.”

Four words.  That’s all it took to have the ground disintegrating under my feet.  Just four goddamn words.  I wadded up my shirt with suddenly clumsy fingers.  “Oh. Articulate as always.  Flipping the lid down on the toilet, I sat, tossed the shirt into the sink and started to untie my sneakers.

Niko moved closer, a solidly reassuring presence in the doorway.  “It was in the park.  I was doing my evening run.”

“The park,” I repeated emotionlessly.  “Makes sense.”  Grendels, as far as we could tell, didn’t much care for cities; they seemed to be more prevalent in rural areas, the woods, the creeks, the silent and sullen hills.  But New York was one damn big place.  Of all the cities we’d run to, this was the one where we were bound to come across the occasional monster, Grendel, vampire, ghoul, boggle… whatever.  One Grendel in Central Park should not a crapfest in your pants make, right?

Right?

[Audio Excerpt] [EXCERPT: Prologue] [Buy This Book]

Also in This Series:

MOONSHINE, Book 2

MADHOUSE, Book 3

DEATHWISH, Book 4

ROADKILL, Book 5

BLACKOUT, Book 6