For Nik, I picked the last option. I couldn’t have done anything else no matter how tempting another choice might have seemed for a second. Only the Auphe could make torture and death seem like a trip to Coney Island. Only they could make you wish that was the prize you won, being slowly ripped to pieces. That was the winning number and I could rip that lotto ticket up, because I’d lost big. But, hey, here’s the consolation prize. I got to be the last male Auphe in the whole damn world. Hybrid or not, pathetic half-sheep mutt that I was, I was all the Auphe had to rebuild their race. Which went to prove I didn’t know them quite as well as I thought I did. No suicide for them. The Auphe were mad, sure . . . join the crowd. But they were relentless too. They’d thought of a way to destroy the world before. Give them time and they might come up with another.

I was the time. Robin said Auphe lived nearly as long as he did, if not longer, but even twenty—no, eighteen now—Auphe might have trouble with world domination. But they could bide their time and breed. Build the race back up. And each successive breeding would slowly wipe out the human taint of the hybrid sire.

And Goodfellow thought he was a stud.

I bit back the jagged dark laughter. If I started that, then I would be in diapers when the Auphe came to drag me to Tumulus, and I didn’t want that. Because if they did manage that, then Niko would be gone and any promises I made would be gone with him. I wasn’t going to hell again, not to visit and not to live. The fact that I’d be insane the minute clawed hands threw me on ground glass sand under a dirty, piss yellow sky didn’t make a difference. I wasn’t adding to the Auphe population. I wasn’t making another monster, not a single one. Worse yet, I wasn’t making another one like me. Through Auphe arrogance I’d been left with Sophia for my childhood. Niko had raised me. What if the Auphe had instead? What would that baby have grown up to be?

The urge to laugh hysterically changed to the burn of bile against my throat, and I stopped thinking about it. Any of it. I had to focus on the here and now or I wasn’t going to make the next five minutes, much less long enough to come up with a way to save all our asses. See me suck it up. See me save my friends and brother. See me completely ignore reality so I didn’t lose my fucking mind.

I skirted my eyes around Niko’s blood on the floor as I kept scooping Auphe insides and tossing them in the plastic bag. Of all the blood I’d seen in my life, that was the blood I could never get used to—my brother’s. “If you think it smells, bring your deodorizer cat over here. That’ll fix it up,” I said grimly to Robin. “Maybe she could eat this . . . thing for us.” I didn’t even want to say the name. I definitely didn’t want to be touching it, but as I was the most mobile, I wasn’t going to let anyone else do it. And Niko had tried. He’d tried to push me into another room. Out of sight, out of mind. If he actually could’ve pulled the memory of the fight and the Auphe words out of my head, I think he would have. Hell, I know he would have. He’d suspected what those bitches wanted. Not that he’d told me. Never given me a single clue.

He was one goddamn good brother.

Niko wanted the truth in life. More often than not, I was happy with the lie.

“She’s dead,” Robin said with a snort at my ignorance. “Dead cats don’t eat. She only purrs, claws my furniture, and kills man-sized dogs.” He frowned at the last bit, then sighed. “What can you do? We are all true to our nature. It’s how Zeus made us.”

“Then Zeus can go screw himself if he’s responsible for this.” I knelt beside the body of the Auphe Niko had killed. She . . . it didn’t look any less against God-and-nature dead than it had alive. Empty red eyes and metal teeth slowly losing their mirror sheen, it gave death’s gaping grin. Against God . . . yeah, right.

“If I ever needed proof there’s no God”—and I didn’t—“here it is. No Zeus. No Allah. If there were, they wouldn’t let this kind of evil walk the earth.”

I heard the chair creak as Robin stood and walked away. Moments later he returned with a mop and bucket and slowly took care of the puddle of blood I couldn’t force myself to look at. When that was done, his hand braced itself on my shoulder as he squatted beside me, wincing as he did. “I don’t know. I did meet Buddha once, the skinny version, in India. He gave me half his rice, laughed at my clothes, and told me if I could stay celibate for an entire week I’d reach enlightenment.”

“In other words, he was screwing with you.”

“In other words,” he agreed, green eyes nostalgic. “But he made me laugh. I didn’t laugh much in those days, not and mean it. Maybe laughing is better than a god.” His hand squeezed, then let go. “Now, let’s do something about dumping this pasty bastard . . . ah . . . bitch in the river. I have a feeling Niko wants to pick up a LoJack while we’re out and strap it to your wanderlust ass.”

Robin had heard what I’d said about Nik letting me go, but he’d taken it at face value. He thought I wanted to leave in hopes the Auphe would follow me—the same idea I’d had earlier when fighting the eel. Probably for the best that he thought that. I didn’t need a twenty-four-hour suicide watch with someone holding my hand while I took a piss. Niko knew I wouldn’t break my promise. Goodfellow might not be so trusting. I didn’t clue him in, instead settling for a noncommittal shrug. And, truthfully, it still wasn’t the worst idea—except for the fact Niko would track me down faster than the Auphe, and we’d be right back where we started.

“Leaving might work,” he continued. “They may follow you and forget about us. And then again, they may locate you in a few weeks or months and dump our dead bodies at your feet. The Auphe have far more patience than you give them credit for. They don’t have to choose either/or. They can have their cake and mutilate it too.”

That was an option I hadn’t considered on the beach. Seems I wasn’t the only one who could think like an Auphe. But I was the only one who could breed like one. Good old science experiment Cal. A male Auphe could impregnate a female human, but apparently a male human couldn’t impregnate a female Auphe . . . or at least not as quickly as I could. Sure, I was better, being half Auphe, but it’d be easier grabbing a random guy with no gun, fighting skills, or lethal brother. Although good luck on him getting it up for a nightmare of pale skin, bone-cracking teeth, and eyes of blood. As for me . . . the Auphe and Tumulus would send sanity bye-bye on me. Madness, torture, the memories of probably the same from the past; the Auphe would get what they wanted from me. One way or the other. I just didn’t know if being insane would make it better or worse.

“Are you all right? You look like you might . . .” Robin made an obvious gesture with one hand, while patting my shoulder with the other and leaning away from me all at the same time. The guy had talent.

“Fine. I’m fine.” Frigging dandy. “I won’t run. Nik would find me and make me wish I was dead before the Auphe actually had the chance to do it.” It wasn’t a lie, just a rehashing of what Nik and I had talked about on the beach . . . before I knew what I knew now. We hadn’t told Robin and Promise that I’d understood what the Auphe had said, and when I’d told Niko I was the last male Auphe, it had barely been a whisper, and a garbled one at that. Robin and Promise didn’t know that while the Auphe still wanted them dead, they had different plans for me. And I didn’t want them to know. That kind of pity I couldn’t take. If I saw that on their faces every time I turned around, it would only make all of this more real. And right, now reality was the last thing I needed.

I stripped off the gloves, tossed them on the newspaper-covered table, and reached back to wipe a sweaty hand across the top of my back. My bloody back. Half dried, the sticky residue of Niko’s blood was rough against my palm. Before it had itched; now it burned. “Shit,” I said. I’d been unable to look at it, but here I was feeling it. The Auphe wanted me, but not yet. First I got to see the big show. Death and despair, and you want popcorn with that?