Rob Thurman - Nightlife

Or I'd better run for my life.

I pushed the gloomy, defeatist thoughts out of my head. I'd come out on top. I always did. I abandoned the crate and curled up on the floor. There was no risking a hotel now, not on the last night. There would be no electric blanket, no champagne, no room service. What a world. It was the same world that would end tomorrow night.

Now, that was something to sleep on.

Sleep was something I'd always been fond of, in either halves of my whole. I loved the darkness, silent and still, wrapped around me with inexorable arms. There was a difference, though. Humans dreamed; I did not. I didn't need to. Life was all the wish fulfillment I needed, and as for subconscious fears… I didn't have any. I was the fear that ran rampant in dreams throughout history. There was no vice versa. No dreams, no nightmares.

And I refused to start now.

Memories, that's all they were. Just a swirl of memories… once mine, once his… now ours. There was a troll, huge and gloating, Auphe everywhere, and a trailer flaming to the sky. A bitter woman spit words as painful as any stab wound, and there was year after year of running. It should have been boring stuff to one as jaded as me, but it wasn't. There was terror, fury, despair, and a long-simmering anger, but boredom wasn't any part of the equation. Of course by our now-singular nature some of the memories were mine as well. The happier ones. Deshelling a smelly knight without damaging his armor. That had been tricky and, in the end, damn messy. But it'd still been fun as hell. Sinking a canoe of natives into piranha-infested waters. The fish at least had been grateful for that one. It was one of the good things about my vocation in life; it led to my avocation walking directly into my greedy hands. They all came looking for the treasure I was possessing at the time. It was like pizza delivery, only better because it was free.

Yeah, good memories.

The trouble was that now my memories were all mixed up with those others. I was the one wearing the armor as a thousand troll tentacles slithered into every crack and began to pull flesh from my bones. The Auphe were lifting me high and tossing me into turgid, muddy water to be devoured by shredding teeth. A deadly beautiful woman sang curses at me as she methodically ripped off my arms and legs, then ears, and finally my tongue.

But they weren't dreams and they certainly weren't nightmares. No. Mixed-up memories, that's all. Nothing but mental debris. It was all I would allow them to be.

Consequently, when I woke up covered in sweat with my heart racing, I was annoyed… extremely annoyed. My mood didn't improve when I saw one of the Auphe was back, crouching over me. He was balanced on a stack of boxes and gazing at me with an assessing glint in his eyes. It was the same look I hadn't been happy with the night before. "What are you looking at?" I snapped as I sat up and stretched stiff muscles. I was cranky and cold and in no mood to "boss" and bow and scrape. Not now. Not today.

"Don't test your luck, little lizard." Quiet words that nonetheless had a presence all their own. "You have a task to do. Stay in control and do it." He flipped and disappeared between the crates and the wall as fast as a silverfish into a crack. There were no more threats or attempts at intimidation. The Auphe had to have guessed what I'd been up to. Once the gate was opened, they would have other things on their minds and they just might forget how I'd displeased them. And I was all too aware of what the Auphe were capable of when displeased. I didn't need a picture painted for me. Not that the insinuation that I wasn't in the driver's seat didn't piss me off. Because it did; it pissed me off quite a bit. I was in total control. Total. We were one and I was in control.

Damn straight.

Standing, I rubbed a hand over my face and absently checked my watch. I'd slept the night through, past the morning, and well into late afternoon. It wasn't that long a sleep, not for me. There were times I'd slept months if left to my own devices. Years even. Not today, though, not on the last day. Time… a fluid word. Soon there would be all the time in the world and yet none at all. Soon it would be time to open the gate. Now? Now it was time for school.

The gate had a power that couldn't be denied. It was a black-winged harbinger, a shivering omen of things to come. But when I actually opened one myself, all that melodramatic mumbo jumbo faded next to the reality of it. It wasn't opening a doorway. It wasn't gathering every iota of inner force and ripping the fabric of space and time itself. It wasn't an act of will overcoming the physical universe. It wasn't any of those, yet it was all of them. But more than that, it was an orgasm. Light and darkness. Up and down. Life and death. Oh, and one other thing…

It kicked ass .

Just practice for the show of shows, but still a blast. Still, class was class and the Auphe were somewhat harsher with lessons than your average ruler-wielding nun. They'd never been long on the social niceties.

Going to school under them only proved that point. Luckily, most of the lesson was only review. They had taught Cal enough about opening gates in the two years that they'd had him, and he'd been an apt pupil. Torture is nothing if not a strong incentive. The half-breed had learned all right and learned well. After all, it was how he had escaped from Tumulus—that and killing an Auphe with his bare hands. I had to give him credit. Insert applause here for the little shit. He'd never known, though; he'd never been able to retrieve the memories of what he'd done and what had been done to him. He'd never been able to open a gate again. The memory was too buried and bound up in chains of utter denial. But though it was beyond Caliban from then on, it was not beyond me.

"Concentrate. Hold it." A sharp talon to my biceps punctuated the words in a way Miss Manners would have strongly disapproved of, but it did bring my attention back to the lesson at hand. "Ahhhh, beauuutiful. Now let it go."

Opening a gate had been difficult, even with the past and present coaching and the genetic tendencies. Wrapping my mind around the twisty cogitation necessary for walking that path was rigorous. And if opening it was a bitch, closing it was that much worse. It was almost impossibly hard to let it die. In the midst of the metaphysical whirlpool, past the physical pangs, there was an exhilaration that was addictive. Plum, gold, and burgundy lights danced behind my eyes as electricity raced through every cell. Sucking in a breath laced with ice and fire, I held on to the gate for another intoxicating second before finally releasing it.

The quivering oval of light shrank to a pinpoint, and then popped out of sight. Dropping hands that tingled with residual energy, I blew on my fingernails and raised my eyebrows at the Auphe at my elbow. "Good enough for government work?"

He didn't answer, but instead turned to a blood clot of several of his brothers nearby. All of them practically vibrated with excitement. Joining together, they laughed as joyfully as hellish children and swirled round and round each other like sharks in a feeding pattern. Their time had come again and they knew it.

I left them to it. Retreating to a far corner of the building, I did my best to suppress appetite pangs. I was starving. If there'd been time, I would have run out for a burger or Chinese, but there wasn't. The clock was ticking. Ignoring the grumblings of my stomach, I wiped the sweat from my face with my sleeve and pushed my hair behind my ears. Thanks to Niko and Robin, I didn't have a change of clothing or the chance to take a hot shower. They'd rushed me, messed up my time schedule, and left me rather cranky. I wasn't the clotheshorse Goodfellow was. For that matter, neither was Beau Brummell, and I'd seen that dude in diamond-encrusted tights. The puck had no equal in the fashion department, but that didn't mean I didn't like the finer things in life. All the world's a stage, they say, and here I was doing my solo in a pair of grass-stained jeans topped off with a ripped navy blue silk sweater. It wasn't what I'd planned and not the showmanship I liked to think I was known for.