We both come up for air, our noses centimeters apart and our breath mixing hotly. She lets a finger stray across my cheek, circling up to my ear.

“Dark boy,” she whispers, “with your long black coat and downturned eyes…I don’t buy it.”

“No?”

She shakes her head, smiling. “Nothing poisonous can make me this happy. No way.”

I bite my lip and dive back in.

I SAID STAY DOWN!”

BOOM. I let my fist hit its head like a sack of dumbbells. The sidewalk ruptured around the monster’s frame, giving it a nice little smoking crater to rest its head.

Silence. It twitched a bit, and then stopped moving all together.

“Okay,” I panted, “okay. This needs to stop right-”

A massive claw slammed over my face and pulled me off my feet by my head.

So now this was happening.

For a second, between its fingers, I could see those eyes, bulbous and lifeless, staring into me, and then there was wind with intermittent moments of incredible discomfort. The thing wheeled me around by the skull like a rag doll, slammed me into something hard and rough, and then flailed me around again. Swoosh, BOOM, swoosh, BOOM, swoosh, BOOM, until it flung my limp form across the street and through a shop window.

I dragged myself to my feet, brushed off the broken glass and mannequin anatomy, and surveyed the situation. We were in a narrow shopping street downtown, where I’d managed to chase the grotesque beast. This fight had happened every night for the past couple of days. Every night since the El Dorado, it had been the same: I would find it, question it, fight it, and then lose it among the back alleys of the city. We’d grappled along 121st Street, terrifying pedestrians and sending traffic to a screeching halt before the creature had lurched its way to the rooftops and taken off downtown with huge, agile leaps and bounds. I had lost him for a while around Times Square, but finally caught him again in the West Village and went straight to the task of beating the snot out of him-which was, I admit, proving hard than I’d imagined.

It was changing. This was the problem. With every fight it was leaner, stronger, a little more unpredictable. Every night I lost a little ground with it, and it got a little more eager to see me… In fact, tonight it had gone right where I wanted it to. This thing’s human side had told me, screamed out to me, that this creature knew what I am. Whatever this beast was, it wasn’t right, wasn’t what I thought it was.

It hunched down across the street, bigger, more repulsive than ever. God, it was hideous. Trails of sweat and mucus trickled down its anemone-like tentacles. Jumping at it, tackling it again, would just prove even more useless. Face it, if you don’t reason with this thing, it’ll probably kill you. Take a moment and try again. Take a moment and try again.

“Whoever is inside this monster, please step out,” I barked, raising a hand in defense and praying that whoever was behind this mass of twisting fury could hear me. “You are more powerful than this, this thing that has a hold over you. I know you can break free of its hold. Please.”

The beast lumbered to its feet and tilted its head.

“Please. You have to fight it.”

There was a dry sound, like something slowly splitting apart, and then the monster began to disappear, drying up and rotting away. Bit by bit, the decay seemed to climb its way over the beast’s figure, every inch of skin drying, cracking, and falling to the ground as nothing more than ash. And when the beast was no longer a monster, just a silhouette in filth, a gust of wind blew away the last of the decayed body to reveal the bum from the park, naked, pale, and wide-eyed. He shook a little, made a soft noise in the back of his throat, and then tumbled to the concrete.

CHAPTER SEVEN

WHEN I COME into school Monday, I’m glowing almost as much as I was Sunday. Randall notices immediately and starts trying to get all the “scrumptious details” out of me. Most of the questions just get a big smile and a chuckle as a response.

“Did you guys hook up? Is that it? Oh my God, you didn’t sleep together, did you?”

I smile and chuckle. “No.”

“Well, what then? You’re about as bright-eyed as Martha Stewart on speed, Stockenbarrel.”

Smiling, chuckling. “I saw her naked.”

Randall’s eyes become like those of Sissy Spacek in the prom scene in Carrie. “What? You what?”

“I saw her naked for the first time.”

“You guys had sex? You’ve only know each other for, like, what, a couple weeks! You’re the man! How did I miss what a pimp you were?”

“We didn’t have sex. I just saw her naked, y’know?” Wow, that actually sounds a lot more stupid than it seemed at the time.

“But what’s the context? Did she put on some sort of show for you? Was food involved? A pasta show, was that it?”

“I don’t even know what that is, and you’re a terrible person. It was only for a moment, anyway. We just had a really nice time. She’s incredible, you know?”

He nods with a look of honest agreement. “Yeah, she is. You lucky bastard.” The rest of the walk to class is silent and heartfelt. We’re happy, Andrew’s nowhere in sight, everything’s nice. Until I open my big mouth.

“Renée takes a lot of pills, doesn’t she?” I ask, trying not to sound too worried.

Randall nods and glances at the floor. “Yeah. A whole bunch. It’s always one cocktail or the next, so the results are…inconsistent. It’s hard to describe.”

Yowch. “Why doesn’t she tell me about these things? What’re they for?”

He shrugs. “Some are for basic things. Her ADD isn’t too bad, but it’s bad enough that the meds are a necessity. Most of the rest are for depression, anxiety disorders, the occasional psychotic episode, things surrounding her parents…Basically, they keep her from going bugfuck.”

The venom gnaws at the back of my head. It’s there every minute of every day now, endlessly laughing, growling, biding its time. There seems to be no hurry for it to break free and wreak havoc now; it’s content to wait in the background, to brood. The Renée issue isn’t helping.

“You ever seen her go ‘bugfuck’?”

Randall nods and looks away from me. “I have. You don’t want to deal with that, man. The meds might weird you out a bit, but Renée’s much better off with them. Trust me on that point at least.”

“I want to help her, Randall. I feel so helpless about all of this. The medications, and…her parents…I dunno.”

“Just look after her. Take good care of her.” His smile splits open. “Or I’ll fucking kill you.”

Just wait, hisses the venom, it’s coming. You think things are getting better, you’re in for a surprise. You’re a part of something now, a cog in the works, which means so am I. This shitstorm isn’t going to get any smaller, and I know just how to deal with it. Just you wait. It’s gonna be huge.

When I get home from school, I hear voices in the living room, at least one unfamiliar. I carefully lay down my backpack, hang up my coat, and eavesdrop.

“It’s not that he’s mean or threatening, Laura, he just gets really emotional when he gets angry.” My mom.

“Does he get violent?”

This would be about me then.

“Yes. Sometimes way too violent. I get scared for him, but also scared for his friends…and sometimes, I mean…he’d never hit his brother.”

“Are you sure of that?”

Bitch, screams the venom, bitch, you don’t know a single goddamn thing about me, so keep your fucking mouth shut. I’ll hit who I want to.

The silence that follows hangs in the air, like a suicide jumper about to splatter.

“No. No, I’m not. I wish I was, but when he’s around his brother and he begins to get agitated, I’m scared that he’s…I can’t even say it. That he’s going to take it out on the nearest person available. These outbursts-”