Nocturnal

  Rex had been face-to-face with Alex many times. Alex had always sneered, smiled, looked angry, looked at Rex like Rex was nothing more than dogshit on the bottom of a shoe. But not now. Alex’s eyes pleaded for help from someone, from anyone.

  The shriveled man — Sir Voh — spoke. “We have been waiting for you all our lives. Now you’re here.”

  The warmth in Rex’s chest made him smile. Why should he be afraid of these people just because they looked funny? They were his friends. They were the ones who had made his dreams come true.

  “Waiting for me? Why?”

  Sly picked Rex up, then set him on his own feet. Rex’s legs wobbled a little, but he was able to stand.

  “We have been waiting for the king,” Sly said. “The king will save us, lead us to a better day.”

  I dream of a better day. Was that why he’d put that on the drawing?

  The pain in his belly remained intense, but it was already fading. “I’m only thirteen,” he said. “I don’t know much about that kind of thing.”

  All four of the somethings smiled in unison, even the tiny grapefruit head. The corners of Pierre’s long, hairy mouth shrank back like a panting dog.

  “You know,” Sly said. “You just haven’t realized it yet. You’ve been among the prey for your whole life, because you’re a ringer, like Marco was.”

  “What’s a ringer?”

  “Someone who looks like them,” Sly said. “But you are one of us. We have come to take you home. We will protect you.”

  Alex moaned, then reached out with a bloody, twisted hand.

  “Rex,” he said. “Please … help me.”

  Pierre kicked Alex in the ribs. It seemed like just a tap, but Alex’s eyes scrunched tight in pain.

  “You thut your mouth,” Pierre said.

  Rex looked down at Alex. How pathetic. “What do we do with him?”

  Sir Voh crawled out from under the blanket covering him and Fort, then used his spidery arms and legs to descend the mountain of flesh. The big-headed creature reached the roof, then scurried onto Alex’s back. He wrapped his tail around the boy’s bloody forehead. The tail contracted, pulling Alex’s head back until he grunted and made a little whining noise.

  “We killed your enemies,” Sir Voh said. “The bullies, the ones who hurt you. We made examples of them, so everyone would know your greatness. This one” — Sir Voh shook Alex’s head — “we saved for Mommy. Unless you want to kill him yourself.”

  Fort reached inside his blanket, then held out a massive hand as big as a side of spareribs. In his palm sat a long knife.

  Alex saw it. He moaned in fear. Sir Voh held him still.

  Rex felt his dick stiffen. Kill Alex kill Alex kill Alex. The bully now knew what it meant to feel helpless.

  Rex reached out and took the knife.

  Sly’s yellow eyes crinkled in delight. Rex wasn’t surprised to see a forked tongue sneak out of the face, trace across the left side of the pointy face, flick up over the left eye, then slide back inside.

  “Morning is coming,” Sly said. “We need to move. Do you want to kill this one, or take him home to Mommy?”

  Rex didn’t know who Mommy was, but the four seemed very excited about the prospect of giving Alex to her.

  “Rex, please!” Alex managed those two syllables before Sir Voh pulled back so far that Alex started to choke.

  So pathetic. So utterly pathetic.

  “We’ll take him with us,” Rex said. “But first, open his mouth.”

  Pierre knelt and forced Alex’s jaws open.

  Rex reached out with the knife.

  Pookie Gets His Friend to the Hospital

  Pookie raced down Potrero Avenue. San Francisco General Hospital loomed large on his left. He saw a parking spot, slammed on the brakes and angled in. The Buick’s front-right tire rode up on the sidewalk, but he didn’t have time to worry about that.

  He jumped out, ran to the rear passenger door and opened it. Inside, a confused-looking Bryan, his hand still pressed to his shoulder with white-knuckle intensity. Bryan looked around. “Uh, Pooks? The hospital is across the street.”

  “I know,” Pookie said. “We’re going, I … I just want to take a look at your shoulder first.”

  He heard a siren approaching — probably an ambulance with Black Mr. Burns and Erickson.

  “Your wound,” Pookie said. “Let me see it.”

  Bryan seemed to think about it for a second, then let go. He unzipped his bloody sweatshirt and slid it over his right shoulder. Finally, he hooked the fingers of his left hand under his right T-shirt sleeve and pulled it up high, exposing the wound.

  The bleeding had stopped. A small red circle of coagulated blood dotted his shoulder, ringed by a thin circle of pink scar tissue. Less than twenty minutes ago, Bryan Clauser had taken a .40-caliber round in the shoulder. The wound looked a week old, at least.

  The ambulance scream grew louder.

  They both stared at the wound.

  “That cut on my head,” Bryan said. “From when I fell on the fire escape. How is it?”

  Pookie looked at Bryan’s forehead. The stitches were still there, but the skin beneath showed nothing but a thin, faded scar. “It’s all healed.”

  Bryan sagged into the backseat, unwelcome realization washing over him. “That door at the mansion … could a normal person have kicked that in?”

  Pookie shook his head. “No. No way. I should have figured it out when you jumped up on that van with Jay Parlar, but … I don’t know. Maybe I didn’t really want to figure it out.”

  Bryan looked up. His eyes were watering. He looked like a man who had lost all hope.

  “I’m one of them,” he said. “Those things in the basement … I’m one of them.”

  What the hell was Pookie supposed to say now? Rub some dirt on it and get back in there? Hallmark didn’t make cards for an occasion like this.

  “It’s okay,” he said. “We’ll figure this out.”

  The siren’s scream apexed as the ambulance shot past the Buick, then turned into San Francisco General. Pookie watched as scrub-suited hospital staff rushed out of the emergency room door to meet it. The ambulance’s back doors opened. Paramedics wheeled out Erickson, an IV swinging in time to the rolling bed’s movement. John Smith hopped out as well and ran alongside Erickson and the others into the hospital. The emergency room door closed. Late-night traffic continued to pass by on Potrero Avenue, but other than that, the night’s silence descended.

  Pookie again looked at Bryan’s shoulder. “Wanna go in anyway? Have them look at it?”

  Bryan flexed his arm, rotated it. “No,” he said. “Call Robin.”

  “What for?”

  “You know what for. And call John. He’s probably got Erickson’s blood on him. Tell him to find a blood stain, a smear, whatever, and take it to Robin’s right away. Now drive me back to my apartment so I can change. I’ll just stay back here for the ride — I need a minute to myself.”

  Bryan reached out, grabbed the door and slammed it shut, leaving Pookie standing out on the street. Pookie stared at the door for a moment, at Bryan inside, then pulled out his cell phone and got in the driver’s seat. Pookie dialed Robin as he pulled out into traffic.

  Up on the Roof

  Rex flew.

  The damp night air whipped by his face and blew his hair back as he sailed over a city street. He was riding on the back of a monster, leaping from one building to the next. Rex kept one hand around Pierre’s neck. With the other he held his blanket tight. The end of the blanket trailed behind him, flapping madly as they descended.

  This made no sense, no sense at all, and yet it was actually happening. To him.

  Pierre landed, so light and agile his big feet made barely any noise. Sly landed to their right, Sir Voh and Fort to their left. They moved silently across the flat roof, hopping down to the roof of the next building, then crossed that to the wall lining the building’s edge. They knelt, tucking themselves into the
deeper shadows.

  They waited.

  Sly’s eyes glowed in the darkness. He leaned in and whispered. “What do you think so far, my king?”

  Rex laughed, then clamped his hand over his mouth — that had been too loud. He whispered back: “This is the coolest thing ever. Marco had us going through alleys and basements, this is way funner.”

  Sly nodded. “We take the roofs sometimes, but it is dangerous. Tonight we can — the monster is hurt.”

  Pierre shook his head. “No, I don’t believe it. The monther can’t be hurt, he’th bulletproof!” Pierre picked up a piece of tar off the roof and started drawing the warding symbol on the brick wall.

  Sly sighed and rolled his eyes. “No one is bulletproof, Pierre. Tard called and said they took him away in an ambulance.”

  Rex looked at the people around him, at Sly and Pierre and Sir Voh and Fort. They didn’t look scary anymore, not at all. “If the monster is hurt, why do we move so quietly?”

  Sly smiled and winked one yellow eye. “Because if we’re mistaken, it’s a mistake we only get to make once.”

  Rex could see inside Sly’s blanket. Sly wore normal clothes — jeans, battered leather boots and a ratty sweatshirt with a big hood. Fort also wore normal clothes under his blanket. Pierre was a little more odd — he wore blue Bermuda shorts and no shirt.

  It was quiet up here on the roofs. Quiet, and abandoned. Most of San Francisco’s buildings were three or four stories tall. Within a single block, Rex and the others could easily move from roof to roof. To reach the next block, all they had to do was jump. Sly led them on a path that avoided known cameras, but he constantly looked for new ones. If he didn’t think it was smart to go around a camera, he would come up on it from behind, rip it off and toss it down to the street.

  On those streets, there were cars and people and motion. Up here there was stillness — flat, empty roofs in all directions, as far as the eye could see.

  Rex heard a soft moan of pain. Alex. He was limp but alive, if just barely. Fort held him under one thick arm.

  Sly slowly rose up until he could peek over the wall’s edge. He looked around, then lowered himself just as slowly. “A few more minutes,” he said.

  Each time they leaped over a street and landed on a new building, they stopped and waited. If people were spotted on nearby roofs, Sly had everyone wait until those people went down or he found another way around. When it came time to jump to the next block, Sly would make sure no people were down on the steet below, then time a lull in traffic — no one had seen their crazy leaps.

  Rex had never felt so good, so alive. He clung tight to Pierre, smelling the delightfully damp richness of his brown fur, the pungent, sour waft of clothes that hadn’t been washed in weeks. A feeling of warmth radiated into Rex’s chest and arms. Not just the heat from the monster’s body, but a deeper warmth, a feeling of love that made Rex want to cry.

  They were taking him home.

  Sly looked over the edge, saw it was clear, then jumped. The journey continued, block to block. Rex recognized Jackson Street when they passed over it, as it wasn’t far from his house. Next, they crossed over Pacific and then moved silently from building to building until they stopped and waited at a roof’s edge.

  Below them was a narrow surface road. Beyond and below that, deep down, four lanes of traffic disappeared into a tunnel that ran beneath a boxy building.

  “Pierre, is that the Broadway Tunnel?”

  “Yeth, my king.”

  They waited. Down on the surface street, a man and a woman leaned on a car, making out. They looked old, probably almost thirty.

  Rex didn’t mind waiting, didn’t mind watching. None of them did. That was how things were done. He looked out across the city. He could see the Golden Gate Bridge off to the northwest, the Oakland Bay Bridge to the northeast. Behind him, high above the city, the six blinking red lights of Sutro Tower.

  San Francisco. His city. He would rule all of it. He would be king.

  After a while, the man and the woman walked away from the car and into the building below Rex’s feet. Pierre launched himself across the void. Rex sailed through the air, trying not to giggle at the feel of wind tickling his skin.

  The group landed atop the boxy building’s flat roof. Pierre knelt. Rex slid off and stood still. The sounds of cars echoed up from below.

  Sly moved to a hatch in the roof and opened it, exposing a ladder. He smiled his pointy-toothed smile. “Are you ready, my king?”

  “Is that the way home?”

  Sly shook his head. “You can’t go home just yet.”

  They weren’t taking him? But they had promised. “Why can’t I?”

  “Firstborn is dangerous,” Sly said. “If we don’t bring you home at the right time, my king, he may try to kill you.”

  Rex hadn’t expected that. He looked from Pierre to Sir Voh to even Fort. They all nodded solemnly — Sly spoke the truth.

  “So where are you taking me, then?”

  “We have many places under the city, so many that we can go for months without using the same one twice. Firstborn will not find you, my king.” Sly looked to the horizon, stared for a moment, then turned back. “Daybreak is coming soon. If you stay up here, I am afraid the police might find you. You need to trust us and leave all of this behind. Are you ready to start your new life?”

  Rex looked at the hatch, then at each of them in turn. He looked around at the glowing windows and twinkling lights of the city, then nodded at Sly.

  “I’m ready, brother,” Rex said. “Take me down.”

  Late to the Party

  Amy Zou held her Sig Sauer in her left hand, a walkie-talkie in her right.

  Rich Verde stood next to her. She stared at the eviscerated body on the embalming table.

  This was why she did what she did, because monsters were real. The one on the table, the creatures in the room behind her … Amy could only imagine those things reaching for one of her twins.

  A feeling of hopelessness filled her, dragged down her every thought. She’d spent nearly thirty years with this secret. Thirty years. Jesus, how time slipped by. Three decades of her life, and now it might all be over — if it was, many more people were going to die.

  Verde clinked the barrel of his gun against the creature’s shark teeth, tink-tink-tink.

  “You are one ugly motherfucker,” he said to the corpse. “How many people did you kill with your pearly whites?”

  How many indeed. “It’s not just the misshapen ones,” Amy said. “You see the guy out there with the crowbar?”

  Verde looked at her. “Crowbar?” He thought, then nodded as realization kicked in. “Liam McCoy?”

  “Yes,” Amy said. “Looks like we can take him out of the whereabouts unknown column.”

  Fifteen years ago, McCoy had been a suspect in four child murders. He’d gone missing before Amy could close in on him. He wasn’t missing anymore. Justice had been served.

  She walked back into the gun room. Verde followed. He holstered his Sig and picked up a five-seven, feeling the weight. No point in worrying about prints; they already knew who owned these weapons.

  “What about Clauser?” Verde said. “And that fuck-stick, Chang. Maybe firing them isn’t enough.”

  She watched Rich eject the magazine, which was loaded. He popped the magazine back into the weapon.

  “They were just doing their jobs,” she said. They had been doing what they were sworn to do, following the letter of the law — just as Amy had done thirty years earlier. “What do you want to do, Rich, shoot them?”

  He shrugged. “You’re the one who’s always talking about the greater good. At least put a BOLO out on their asses, bring them in. Maybe a few days in county will set them straight.”

  She couldn’t do that. Their careers were already over — did she need to publicly humiliate them as well?

  Her walkie-talkie squawked: “Chief?” Sean Robertson’s voice. He was up on the ground floor, making sure
everyone — including cops — stayed out.

  She lifted and answered without looking away from the shark-toothed nightmare. “I’m here.”

  “You sure you two are okay down there?”

  “We’re fine,” she said. “Just secure the grounds and make sure no one enters the house.”

  “Yes, Chief.”

  She paused, then thumbed the transmit button again. “Sean?”

  “Yes, Chief?”

  “Make a department-wide broadcast. Bryan Clauser and Pookie Chang are no longer employed by the SFPD. Make sure everyone knows — they’re civilians.”

  Verde held up his hand to get her attention. He mouthed the words: And Smith.

  John Smith. The man was afraid of his own shadow. As soon as Pookie and Bryan were out of the way, John would go back to his computer room.

  She shook her head and lowered the walkie-talkie.

  Verde clearly wanted to argue with her, but he kept his mouth shut.

  “I’m going to see Erickson,” she said. “Can you and Sean finish up here? Seal the house. No one gets in. We’ll figure out what to do about all this crap later.”

  “You got it,” Verde said. “You know you can count on me.”

  “I know I can, Rich. I know.”

  She walked out of the weapons room. She took one more look at a collection of nightmares that had once hunted the people of San Francisco, then headed upstairs.

  Tard’s First Time

  Out of all Mommy’s children, Tard could hide the best. That was why Sly picked him to watch the monster. It wasn’t fair that Sly made Tard miss out on all the fun, but now Sly was making it better.

  If the amberlamps took the monster, Sly said, then Tard could be free to hunt — just keep it quiet so Firstborn didn’t find out. Hunting! Tard had never been hunting. Sly was a great friend.

  Tard could hide good because he could look like other things. Right now he looked a lot like part of a gnarled tree trunk. Golden Gate Park had lots of gnarled trees on the sides of the dirt walking paths, trees that twisted into corkscrew-trunk patches with little spaces inside. In those spaces, especially in the dark, no one could see Tard. There was no light in the park other than a half moon filtering through the tall pines that stretched high above.