We had escaped from Fairy Land — which was not as easy as it sounds. We had avoided being incinerated by Nidhoggr, the dragon the size of Rhode Island, who guards the back door to Hel's Happy Underground Party World. We had sold our half-a-satyr at a profit — we paid nothing for him to begin with. We'd created the first ever communications corporation, becoming the AT&T of Fairy Land, and we'd been paid off in a couple of big handfuls of diamonds.

We were rich, carefree, happy-go-lucky teenagers.

And gee golly gosh, life would have been just swell, just keen, just peachy, if not for the fact that Loki, Norse God of Insane Offspring, and Hel his half-dead, half-babe daughter, and his middle child the Midgard Serpent, (who makes Nidhoggr look like a tadpole,) and Fenrir, Loki's wolf son who's big enough to crap a sofa, and Merlin, who isn't Loki's kid and isn't probably evil but can nevertheless make dead sheep jump up and bite your throat out, were all looking for us.

And now, as my sleep-crusted eyelids fluttered open, and I was yanked unwillingly back across from the real world -- where I was convincing a girl in a chat room that I was a twenty-five year-old software billionaire -- I realized there was one other small matter, one other small complaint, one other tiny cloud to darken my normally sunny world view: we had wandered into Hetwan country.

I raised this matter calmly with David.

"Look! Oh, my God! Look up there. Oh, man. Oh, man. You know what those are? Those are freaking Hetwan. They're flying man, there must be hundreds of them."

David shook his head. "More like thousands. Jalil and I have been watching them for a while."

"Excuse me? You and Jalil have been watching them? And yet we're not running like the scared rabbits we are?"

The two of them were standing there in the dark. Calmly looking up at the sky. David striking a heroic pose, head back, hands on hips, defiant, unimpressed, unafraid — or putting on a good act at least, the jackass.

And Jalil, observant, contemplative, a frown of deep thought on his smug, I'm-just-so-darned-smart face, arms folded across his chest.

April was still asleep, using her backpack as a pillow, scrunched on her side and looking like she needed someone to come and offer her some body warmth.

It was a thought. But this was not really the right time.

"Which way you going to run, Christopher?" David jerked his chin back in the direction we'd come. "Fairy Land's back that way. I don't think we're real popular back there. We are 'friends and known associates' of Nidhoggr. We go back that way the little Leprechauns are going to nail about four hundred arrows into us in the time between when we say 'don't,' and when we say 'shoot.'"

He was right about that. The fairies are fast. And not nearly as cute as they are in fairy tales. These fairies were businessmen and we'd cost them a chance to walk away with Nidhoggr's treasure.

I looked up at the moonlit sky. Up through the dark tree branches. Up to vulture altitude, up to where the Hetwan flew silently by in neat, well-ordered rows, like obedient third-graders on their way to the lunchroom.

They're aliens, the Hetwan. Thin, wispy, about Calista Flockhart size. Maybe a Calista and a quarter. They have bug eyes and insect mouthparts made of three little arm things that never stop grabbing at whatever insect or imagined insect might be flying by. And they have wings.

They're creepy, disturbing things. Then again, 'creepy' and 'disturbing' were the two most frequently-used words at the local computer dating service. Everyone around here was creepy and disturbing.

The real problem with the Hetwan is that they serve some kind of boss god, some kind of Capo di Tutti Immortals, some kind of Bill Gates of gods, who eats other gods and spits out their god bones. He's called Ka Anor. He's bad. How bad? Bad enough that really bad, really violent, really hard, nasty, evil guys are scared of him.

Imagine Jeffrey Dahmer thinking someone else was really a hardcore psycho. "Hey, man, sure I kill guys and cut them up and put them in the freezer and cook certain body parts for lunch, but see that guy over there? That guy is crazy!"

Loki thinks Ka Anor is scary. Huitzilopoctli thinks Ka Anor is scary. And Huitzilopoctli eats fresh human hearts.

"Can they see us?" I asked, feeling the sudden, urgent need to pee. Preferably in a toilet far, far away.

David shrugged. "I don't know. Probably not. We don't have a fire going and they're pretty high up."

"They may have quite different visual receptors," Jalil suggested. "They may be attuned to movement, or see only in the infrared or ultraviolet range."

"Hey, I know, Jalil: why don't you stand there and stare at them a while, then write a paper about them for extra credit? 'Stuff I noticed about the Ally McBugs before they ate my face.' What's the matter with you, two?"

Jalil did his lizard-eye thing where he looks at you without moving his head. "Would it make you feel better if I was hysterical?"

"Yeah. Yeah, it would," I said. "I'd be very reassured if you would run around in circles tearing your hair out. At least that would make sense. What are we going to do?"

David shrugged. "I guess we should try and catch some Z's. We start running around down here we may just attract their attention. We're all exhausted. We need sleep. I'll take the first watch."

"Forget that, I'll take first watch," I said. "You two are way too calm, trying to out-macho each other. I'll keep watch. I want some honest, human fear on duty."

I heard something stir. April.

"Whas happen?" she mumbled.

"Nothing. Go back to sleep. We got Hetwan flying over like B-29's on their way to bomb Berlin in some old war movie. No problem. Go back to sleep. I'll wake you up if one of them starts to chew on your feet."

Evidently my sarcasm wasn't sharp enough to wake her up. She snorted a 'going to sleep' snort.

"B-25's," Jalil said. "B-29's were mostly used against Japan."

David handed me his sword. The sword he'd taken from the dying Galahad. "You cool, man? You okay?"

"Why wouldn't I be?" I grated. I hate David's penetrating, manly stare. His John Wayne slash Clint Eastwood thing. "Hey, there's only a thousand or so of them. And here I have your handy hero sword. Shouldn't be any problem, David."

He grinned, his teeth a kind of dashboard-saint white in the moonlight. "W.T.E., Christopher."

"Yeah. W.T.E."