“Dying’s the easy part,” I muttered. As plans went, it was like most of mine—semisuicidal—but even I hadn’t come up with the damn nuke. And the Vigil knew the Auphe. They knew that even eighteen could one day, no matter how many hundreds or thousands of years it took them, take back what they thought was theirs. They still must have trusted the hell out of Samuel . . . and Niko. If they knew anything about the supernatural community, if they had investigated Nik, they knew he would keep his word. NYC would be safe.

When they’d investigated me, and I’m sure they had, they must’ve thought it was a good thing they had Nik to fall back on. I was one of those guys who didn’t look too good on paper, or while being possessed, or creating mass chaos going undercover in the Kin.

Or being the last male Auphe. Good thing they didn’t know about that. Even if a human male would do, just not as well, I was sure the Vigil would think long and hard about popping one in the back of my skull to be on the safe side and try to deal with the Auphe another way.

But there was no other way.

I didn’t want to think about this anymore, the pressure of not taking out NYC with me if I bit the dust. Thinking about if we did pull it off, I still might not be coming back—the rational part of me anyway. Really, really didn’t want to think about it. I rested my head and stared at the ceiling. A nuke. Goddamn spy movies. And why did our government have suitcase nukes? Weren’t only terrorists supposed to have them?

“How many followed you?” Great, a subject worse than nukes.

“Three.” I looked back down at Niko, my ass already complaining from the couch. I didn’t think it’d be any more comfortable when we folded it out, but it didn’t much matter. Sleep was going to be hard to come by until this was over anyway.

“Three,” he repeated grimly before adding, “fifteen more to go.”

I got up to check out the bathroom, because the thought of eighteen Auphe in one place—that’ll make your bladder sit up and take notice. “Shit!” I called out. “Is there such a thing as a giant supernatural cockroach straight from the depths of hell?”

“No. Be a man and deal with it.”

I could’ve shot it. It was that big. I kicked it in the toilet and flushed. Three times. Then I returned to Cat Urine Central. “Okay. The world is safe for pissing again. Enjoy.”

“And to think I worried about you today, being alone.” Niko drew his katana and looked it over. “Almost.”

I snorted. “I think I feel a tear coming on.”

He turned the katana over and laid it on the back of his hand. It balanced perfectly. “You are sentimental, I will give you that.” He sheathed the sword. “Your plan or not, you’re coming back, Cal. All of you. I won’t have it any other way.” I’d made it clear I wasn’t too damn sure about that, and it showed. I could hide a lot of things, but not that.

But what the hell? Sanity was overrated. What had it ever done for me anyway?

“I’m sentimental. You’re optimistic.” I dropped back on the couch. “Watch out, Snow White. There’s two new dwarves in town.”

He wasn’t distracted. “Are you ready for this?”

“I’ve been ready a long, long time.”

And I had been.

Before I was born. When I was nothing but a pile of gold in a whore’s hand, I’d been ready.

Waiting, like timing, can be a bitch.

I’d hoped it would be the first night. I wanted it over with, and I wanted it over with now. Of course it wasn’t. The next night, I felt five outside. My stomach tensed, I carried my gun with me the entire night, and didn’t sleep one minute of it. Five could be enough. Five might do the trick for Niko and me. But they’d tried four times before. Two times playing, two times in sincerity . . . although it was a mocking sincerity. I didn’t think there would be any mocking this time. I thought they were coming for Nik, coming for me, and game time was over.

The third time is the charm. Isn’t that what they say? It didn’t feel like a charm, but it felt like a chance, and that was the best we could hope for.

I’d been dozing on the couch off and on that night. Staying awake three nights in a row turned out not to be doable, but the feeling brought me out of the drowse instantly. Eighteen. Eighteen of the bitches were out there, and they weren’t going to stay out there long. All they needed was the time to catch a glimpse through the window, to see where they were going, and they’d be there. That’s why we kept the small window covered with a blanket, and it was the only thing that gave us the time we needed.

“Nik, now.” I bolted off the couch fully dressed, shoes on. It was the way we’d catnapped for the past days now.

I hit the door running, Niko right behind me. We were on the street in seconds and in a cab in minutes. We moved fairly briskly through the nighttime traffic and were at the warehouse district in less than a half hour. Delilah had given us the address—long abandoned by humans or Kin, and abandoned was what we needed. It was a hulk of a building with windows.

Huge, unobstructed if grimy windows. The Auphe had good night vision. They could see where they wanted to go—see the way in. And they were there, every last one of them, following us from rooftop to rooftop, maybe. From the top of a bus or truck. I didn’t care. They were there, and that’s what mattered.

Niko and I pushed through the front doors, then slammed them behind us. They were unlocked. Wasn’t that lucky? Yeah, right. Planning is better than luck any day.

It was a trap. The Auphe knew it was a trap. A paste-eating, booger-picking kindergartner would’ve known it was a trap. That was the Auphe weakness. They were strong, incredibly fast, fanatical, hard as fucking hell to kill, but they were arrogant.

Promise, Cherish, Robin, Niko, and me. What could the five of us possibly accomplish against their eighteen? Take one or two with us? Maybe. But other than that, not a damn thing.

But there were no Promise, Cherish, or Robin. There were others, though, those who wanted the Auphe gone almost as much as we did.

Niko and I made our way to the center of the warehouse. He didn’t draw his sword, one of the strangest things I’d seen in a battle—Niko without some blade drawn. “Samuel!” he rapped. From twenty feet away, Samuel tossed him a large metal briefcase that just happened to contain a nuclear device. Tossed. Okay, Nik had explained a suitcase nuke was much smaller in destructive power than the kind dropped from a plane that can take out whole cities. But it would take out a chunk, and they were tossing it like a basketball—even though Samuel had told Niko it weighed only about fifty pounds.

“Don’t worry, Cal. It’s not volatile. It has to be triggered, not dropped,” Samuel said.

Right. That guy should watch more TV.

I didn’t pull my gun from my holster, another first for an expected battle. I looked at my brother and wanted to repeat what we’d said after we’d fallen out of the sky. I wanted to ask if he was sure. He still had a chance to make a run for it. He still had a chance to live.

He anticipated me. “Together,” he repeated.

I barely had time to nod when the eighteen gates opened behind us, and Niko and I dropped to our knees instantaneously. That’s when the Uzis of thirty of the Vigil who had been waiting in the warehouse moved between the Auphe and us and fired. Just as Niko had planned it with Samuel and his companions four days before, they formed a shield for us, to give us time to do what was needed. They were a line of the best-equipped human assassins in, if at least not the entire city, definitely a fifteen-block radius.

They might as well have been carrying Super Soakers.

The Auphe had smelled them, smelled more than the five they’d counted on, smelled a far bigger trap than they’d been expecting, and they didn’t care. Nope, a shit they simply did not give. And if it had only been the Vigil, they wouldn’t have a reason to. They couldn’t have smelled anything in the air but a cloud of fear sweat. The Vigil had been around, and Uzis were fun and all, but this was the Auphe. The Vigil might be the only humans alive besides Nik who knew what the Auphe were and what they could do. They had every reason to be afraid, and the Auphe proved it. A blur of motion, they leapt from their gates, some up to the walls and some across the floor straight toward the men and into the near wall of bullets.