A/N Okay, first off – I'm sorry for the huge delay. My life has become so massively busy and I just haven't had the time to write anything. *sigh* Still, my second semester is proving to be much easier than my first, so hopefully from now on I'll have more time.

Secondly, everyone HAS read the exclusive excerpt of "Doubletake", right? As well as the book summary? I'm dying here … I don't know HOW I'll wait for March …

Disclaimer: And did I mention these characters are not mine?

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"You have to try and sleep, Cal."

Hell, I hurt. Body, mind, and soul … if I had one. Body mostly. I didn't need all those damn memories of Grendel hell to make me feel so cold, sick and nauseous, I felt all that anyway. That's how strong they were – hovering in the back of my mind and giggling, waiting for the right moment to jump into the light and steal away my last broken piece of sanity. It felt unnatural, twisted, and wrong.

Something definitely felt wrong.

"You can shut your eyes, I'm right here. Nothing will hurt you."

But I couldn't shut my eyes. Yes, they burned, but if I shut them – then they would come. The Grendels.

The Auphe.

I turned to look over at Niko, crouching next to me on the moth-eaten rug of our motel room. He was still there, he'd waited. Two years? Two days? Where were we? Not New York, not yet. Yet? Holy hell, why did everything feel so wrong?

"Nik …" I murmured, my voice sounding too loud in my ears. "… gone … bastard … I miss you …"

He didn't even seem to hear, just repeated – "Sleep. I'll stay right here. I promise."

Promise.

Holy shit.

"No."

The door of our motel opened. Only it wasn't our motel anymore, it was our apartment. And Promise was walking in, her brown and gold locks falling past silk-covered shoulders, violet eyes and milky pearls smiling at us both.

Niko stood up, his hand leaving my shoulder as he made his way toward her. The room was fuzzy. And my head hurt, damn it. "Nik, wait …"

Promise continued to smile, serene and peaceful and elegant as hell. My head continued to pound, and I vaguely could feel something moist and hot on my face. Niko turned toward me. "You're bleeding, little brother."

Then everything went out – like a light. I was pushing to the surface, reaching, and now there was nothing but voices.

"Little brother" now a woman's voice, close to my ear, uncomfortably so. "Big and strong and ever so brave."

Nik was gone. I knew that now. Every throb of pain behind my eyes reminded me.

"And I promise you … you will know how it feels … to be rejected …"

Niko was dead.

NO DAMN IT HE ISN'T

I opened my eyes and saw a broken table leg. And hell, my head still hurt, hammering away at my brain and sending lightning bolts of pain behind my eyes. I shut them, massaged them, then opened them up again. This time I saw the face of a Wolf, sneering down at me with brown dribble on its furry upper lip and my very own frigging gun in his paw-like hand. Well, hot damn. Hot holy shitty frigging damn.

Apparently someone didn't do exactly as I said.

I didn't try to sit up. I already had a headache – I didn't need a bullet messing around up there too. I reached up and wiped my face, and my hand came away red. Well, shit, what do you know, I was bleeding. And it was wet, so that meant I hadn't been unconscious for all that long since I made that gate. Half an hour? Possibly more … hopefully not more. Sometimes the bleeding went on a long time after making a gate, and that one little bitch was the one that finally did me in.

I'd had everything under control. Even after I'd released the gate, they were terrified of me, all but groveling at my damn feet, and then I had to go and make the biggest, lamest mistake in the book. I lowered my guard. Before that, it had gone smoothly enough – I'd called one of the Wolves forward who looked reasonably sane and wasn't pissing himself and rattled out my questions. He knew next to nothing except that there had been a bargain between Mrs. Nottinger and the riddler, and when the riddler got her payment, she left. No one knew where she was now, except that she was probably living it up with the money in a penthouse somewhere.

For lack of an interesting story, I gave him a bullet or two and turned to the next guy. The riddler. Mrs. Nottinger. Where the hell they both were. Especially the riddler. Go. And he went. Right towards me, taking a badly-aimed bullet in the shoulder and the slice of a knife somewhere moist and warm … before I was out.

Polite of him to leave me unconscious and not beat me to death with the body of his wounded comrade. It was also nice of him to leave me unharmed.

Right.

I felt like he actually had beaten me over the head with 300 pounds of Wolf, and shit, maybe he had. He'd also dragged me by my foot via jaws into the corner of the bar. The evidence of this was very telling. My right sneaker was tattered and bloody, and, well, I was in the corner of the bar. With a guard. Everyone else was communing at the other end of the bar … as far away from me as possible.

"Hey, Snoopy," I greeted the bastard with my gun. His eyes darkened and he growled rabidly, spraying drool in the air. I just smiled. Look at me: down for the count, no guns, too much blood, and smiling. I was one cool son of a bitch.

"So what exactly are we waiting for?" I continued, rolling my head to the side to relieve the crick in my neck. "Because I gotta tell you, I had much nicer things planned for the day." Very nice things … like kicking vampire ass. Although said vampire ass was probably hauling itself over here that very minute. It was the only possible reason I was still alive and relatively well. Because these Wolves or some of them worked for the Nottinger woman, and she wanted her boyfriend back. And I was supposed to lie here in a pool of alcohol-flavored vomit and wait with my tail between my legs. Well, the Nottinger woman seemed to forget that I also wanted someone back. I needed him back, God knows I did.

Still, I felt selfish, damn it. I really did. Was I doing all this for him or for me? It was the question of my life – Cal Leandros' never-ending dilemma. Me or him. Right or wrong. Love or duty. Hadn't Niko previously sacrificed our past just to make me happy? Damn, yes he had – and not just by letting well enough alone, either, but by somehow obtaining poisoned toothpaste for my damn convenience.

But we'd both regretted it. It had been wrong, and yet it had been more right than ever.

Damn. Thoughts like this were spoiling my current badass-ness. I slid into another evil grin and continued to watch the Wolf that held my gun. Slowly, I said, "I can smell your fear," which was just plain untrue, because frankly I couldn't smell shit over the alcohol and vomit I was lying in. I pressed on. "You know I can do it again," I whispered, cocking my head and letting the blood dribble freely down my face. "Open the air, the Auphe way ... maybe even inside of you." It was all complete bullshit, but it was working, and I could see his fear even if I couldn't smell it. His wet dog eyes were darting back and forth, his growl sounding more defensive than offensive … and his finger was no longer tense against the trigger. Finally.

I pulled a Niko move on him. My legs moved faster than he could blink, up in the air, kicking the gun straight out of his hand. He lunged at me, too late, as I lunged forward for the gun – and caught it. Twisting backward, I pulled another move – this time entirely and exclusively mine. Boom. Snoopy's sorry ass was grass.

Unfortunately, the commotion got the attention of the asses that had previously been drowning their sorrows in alcohol. Half of them saw that I was loose and tried crawling under the tables. The other half came for me – a snarling wall of Wolves, revenants, and one or two succubi. And I had to go through them to get to the door. Sometimes life just sucked.

My right hand held the gun, my left hand was disgustingly empty, because I couldn't find a knife. I was searching while I was running, but they'd stripped me of all my weapons. I'd just have to borrow one.

I ran right for them. My trigger finger was working methodically through the line of muscular Wolves, taking them out one by one. I was also screaming, a horrific Auphe war cry that sent another five to ten more unmentionables running back in the opposite direction. The first Wolf corpse I passed was holding a knife, and I bent to pick it up just in time to ram it into the stomach of a revenant. I was running, shooting, stabbing, screaming, feeling the cold steel and serrated claw of drunken monsters slide underneath my skin. I couldn't even feel the pain. I kept my eyes on the door. Unfortunately, several of the monsters in the corner were starting to muster up their courage and run into the ensuing confusion. It was noisy as hell, but that didn't mean I couldn't hear when my cell phone rang.

Now that ticked me off. Who the hell would call me while I was working? I listened in aggravation to the tinny ring that cut through the snarling, growling chaos of battle. Knowing that it was probably Goodfellow did not make it any less annoying.

The living wall separating me from the door did not seem any less impenetrable as it did moments ago, even though bodies dropped like rain onto the barroom floor. My knife hand was working magic, but the bullets in my gun were almost out. Just as a revenant lurched toward me in an attempt to chew my face off, my voicemail picked up. Seconds later, I heard Robin's voice.

"Caliban!" he was yelling, so I could hear him – but only slightly, over the growling and howling of the Wolves. "Where in all of unholy – you –" Damn, would the world just shut up for one minute? "I've … a problem …" Oh no. I could barely hear him, but I sensed it in his tone, and I just knew. He lost Nik. "… couldn't … skata." Great. Just great. I was going to kill that bastard. Both those bastards, for being so damn difficult! Not that I hadn't lost Nik, the first time, but Robin was supposed to be better than Niko. I'll bet he'd been drinking. I'd bet the world that the son of a bitch had been drinking. "Still … I have a lead … found …" he was breaking up.

I threw down my bullet-less gun and reached into my pocket for my phone – which was promptly knocked out of my hand and stamped into mechanical mash against the floor. "SHIT!" I yelled, caught off guard just long enough to get a scraping gash near the neck. Hell. Not that it mattered. I'd reached the door, and I was gone, baby.

Once I cleared the bar and caught my first whiff of cold city air, I started running. I knew they were behind me, but adrenaline combined with years of thrice-accursed early-morning practice made me much faster. Chased by man's worst nightmares and I was smarter, faster, and far scarier. A true abomination, there was no frigging doubt.

Death-tainted air whooshed past me as I careened out of the alley and toward the street – where Promise's limo was just stopping. She stepped out, her hair plaited backward, wearing the kind of kick-ass yet stylish get-up that in another life I would have silently admired her for. I hated her. I hated her so much I disposed of my only weapon – sending it shooting through the air like a bullet toward her face. She ducked neatly. I wasn't really surprised.

More of her cursed bodyguards came swarming out of the limousine and I was cornered. They grabbed me and I didn't resist. The wound near my neck was still rushing blood, and I was starting to feel dizzy. If I'd felt like letting go, I might've fainted.

Promise was there, her soft fingertips like acid against my chin. I jerked away.

"Where is Niko, Caliban?" she asked me, calm and composed. Her violet eyes, darker than usual, assessed my wounds.

I stared back and cracked a smile. "Where is Promise, bitch?"

She failed to react to that. Unfortunate. Instead, she lifted her eyebrows and said, "You are alone. Robin has left you?"

This time I said nothing. And I stopped smiling. Hell, wasn't I spending enough energy just standing still and looking alert? My damn blood was still flowing, and I was so dizzy there were now several Promises, all of them irritatingly serene. She didn't hit me or have me "encouraged" by her Wolves, as I expected. She looked completely at peace, which was as illogical as it was irritating. Finally she parted perfect lips and said, "You lost him, didn't you? He escaped you both."

My fingers twitched. I wanted steel.

"There's been a change of plans, you see," she said, touching my face again. "I came to demand Niko from you. Except, as of a few minutes ago, that is no longer necessary. Niko called me."

Well, damn.

"He found a phone, and called my number," she said with the slight curve of a smile. I knew that she was telling the truth. "You see, some things he hasn't forgotten." Her fingers left my chin, and she backed away slowly, saying simply, "Niko will be waiting for me," words she knew would cut deep. Then she nodded to her Wolves, turned her face away from me, and opened the door to her limousine.

Wolf hands gripped me tighter. "What?" I spat. "You're not going to watch?"

She didn't even look back, sliding into her limousine like she couldn't care less. I saw through it. She didn't want to watch. There was just the right amount of good in her to make her even more detestable.

"I would watch, if I were you," I continued to yell, even as the car door was shut between us. "I might show up again!"

But her fancy-ass limousine was already moving, tires spinning. She was a coward in retreat, unable to stick around long enough to witness what she was doing. Not long enough to see the Wolves cluster around me in anticipation of blood. Not long enough to see the brown-crusted knife that was jammed happily into my abdomen.

I barely felt it, and yet the pain was unbearable. They were smart enough not to let the knife wander too far in. They wanted to take their time with this. But lethal or not, it was just the straw that broke the camel's back, except I wasn't going to let it break me. I glanced down at the hilt, awash with red "you're bleeding, little brother" and then instantly my hands were on it. In whatever form or manner, they'd just given me a weapon.

They pushed it in, I pulled it out.

ENOUGH.

This had been one hell of a night, and I was more than ready for it to end. In less than a few hours the sun would come up – how it would find me I couldn't say. One thing was certain – I would not be getting pins stuck in me by a bunch of giddy, hormonal, blood-thirsty Wolf bodyguards, some of whom had barely passed puberty. I always fought. And when my time came and I finally went down, I would be fighting.

I fought now. I had reached that point where my wounds were immaterial. Their wounds, however, were everything, and I cut them deep, deeper, killing in between breaths, laughing when they ran. Dead, gone, did it really matter? Eventually, I was alone. My mind caught up with me with a jolt, and I realized I now had two knives, the sidewalk beneath me was scarlet red, and I thought for a moment that I was going to die.

But that would be anticlimactic, wouldn't it?

After all, this was neither the time nor the place. I knew where Promise's penthouse was, and when that sun finally came up, it was going to find more than one non-human biting the dust, because I sure as hell was not going down alone.