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

I locked the door and headed toward 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? "So we stay or go?"

He knocked ruminatively on the sink. Once, twice. "I think that perhaps we should stay, at least unless we spot more. It's unlikely this one had anything to do with us."

"Had?" I dragged a hand through my hair and fixed him with a suspicious look. "I'm no English major, Nik, but that sounds like the past tense to me."

"It rather does, doesn't it?" he agreed mildly. Retrieving my shirt from the sink, he handed it to me. "Go to bed. I'll take first watch."

We were back to that, then. We'd done it almost religiously for the first year after I had come back from… wherever. But after a while we'd reverted to a more casual routine, and thank God for that. I'd been perpetually sleep deprived that entire year. And I loved to sleep. That's the definition of a teenager, isn't it? A coma with two legs and an endless appetite. Certainly being deprived of my God-given right to ten hours a night made me cranky.

I grimaced, then nodded. "Okay. Wake me in four." Hitting my mattress hard, I rolled up in the blanket and dropped off instantly, a skill I'd never had to learn. I could sleep anytime and anywhere. It was a good talent to have when you spent your life dodging monsters. Snatching minutes here and there was sometimes the best you could hope for.

On the other hand sleep meant dreams, and dreams meant nightmares. Or memories. As far as I could tell the two were interchangeable. I had some sheet rippers, no doubt, and I was betting Niko did too. Of course he would claim he didn't, that his disciplined mind was too well trained for such subconscious antics. Begone nasty boogeymen; I, Niko the Magnificent, have spoken. Nik did have a way of making even utter bullshit seem noble.

Yeah, I definitely took regular tours through nightmare city, and so far I hadn't figured a way to fool anyone about that… including myself. It was always the same, the dream. Maybe that should have given me some warning; even asleep I should've had a chance to prepare… to brace myself. Never happened. It started on the same note too, with the same feel, the same sweet taste of something bright and hopeful.

Wasn't that a bitch?

I woke up before my four hours were up. Catapulted out of sleep with a pounding heart and a sweat that would've done a malaria victim proud, I swallowed the taste of bile and gripped handfuls of the blanket as if it were the only thing keeping me from plummeting into the abyss. Swinging my legs over the side of the bed, I grabbed at the lamp and found it with practiced ease. Light bloomed in the room, but some shadows remained. Right then even one was too many. I lurched to my feet and hit the wall switch. Every time we spotted a Grendel. Every goddamn time.

In the dream I was fourteen again. A punk-ass kid, but no worse than any other kid, I guess. I drank some. Shoplifted a few times. Skipped school once or twice. Usual shit. I didn't fight, though. Ever. You think you got it bad? Joe Junior whose daddy is an alcoholic? Well, screw your dependency gene. Try carrying a bucketful of monster DNA. While you were worried about having a tendency to have a beer glued to your hand, I was more concerned with pulling out the still-beating heart of the obnoxious asshole who sat in front of me in homeroom. It hadn't happened yet, but you never knew. I never knew. It was always there, the potential, whether I saw signs of it or not. I couldn't let myself doubt that. I wouldn't let myself doubt it.

That day was different, though. A good day. Hell, a great day. Niko had found a good job and a place of his own, and we were moving out. Moving on. Niko was in his first year of state college; he'd gotten a full scholarship. He could've done better, a lot better. But he'd wanted to stay close to home. Close to me, the demonic albatross around his neck. That was a thought I kept to myself. I liked my ass enough to want to keep it in one piece, and Niko would have been all too happy to put a boot up it if he even suspected what I was thinking. But, hell, it was only what Mom told me time and time again. And if anyone should know demons, it'd be her.

After all, she had screwed one.

She wouldn't be sorry to see me go, my mom, Sophia Leandros. She wasn't precisely overflowing with maternal instincts, even for her human son. It was like those TV specials about animals born and raised in captivity. The mothers had never seen babies born, had never had babies of their own, and had no idea what to do with them once they did. They'd give the mewling wet little creatures a disgusted sniff and a wary and disbelieving look, and off they'd go without a backward glance. Sometimes I imagine good old Mom made it to the bar across the street before the nurse even finished toweling the birth blood off me. The same went for Niko. She might have found him more acceptable, being human and all, but she didn't shower him with love and affection either… just a little less revulsion.

So, as they say, I was more than ready to shake the dust off my shoes. More than ready to get away from dark, dark hills and shadowy trees that could hide a thousand things. Grendels hadn't ever bothered us over the years; they'd just watched. But it was better in town; there you saw only a few once in a while. In fact it used to be only the one—Daddy dearest, I'd been betting—but over time that had changed. Dad had started bringing friends with him when he showed up to watch me. But out here in the country I saw Grendels almost every day. Sometimes, after the sun went down, there were as many rapt red eyes floating in the twilight as there were fireflies. It was… shit… creepy as hell. No matter that I'd seen them all my life. One or two were bad enough. More than you could count was enough to make the air freeze and fracture in your lungs.