“No bar. No beer. Convulsions and beer do not mix,” Niko retorted. “And you always were normal.”

I cocked my head. “Cyrano, seriously, you have delusions only massive drugs could explain.”

“Normal to me,” he countered firmly. “As far as I’m concerned that’s all that counts.”

As we walked outside, the dizziness disappeared as did the headache, and I was good as new in record time . . . the sort of time that definitely wasn’t normal, no matter what Nik said or thought. I ignored the feeling and felt around for more Auphe out there. None. We were clean. Suddenly, I felt good. Right. This was right.

“You going to Promise and Cherish’s new hide-out?” I asked as we kept walking. A taxi might take you here, but it sure as hell wasn’t going to be cruising here for pickups. We could’ve called, but walking felt good and right too.

“No. This is our night. Tonight we go home,” he said as if there was no other choice. No hot vampire girlfriend waiting. He was right, though. It was our night. The Leandros brothers, who’d turned survival into an art form like nobody else ever had.

“Tomorrow I’ll see them. I especially want to discuss the Oshossi situation, which I’m finding more questionable as time goes on.” He looked back through the door at the dark stains of blood that were scattered across the floor. “It’s over.” There was an odd note in his voice, part satisfaction, but mainly puzzlement.

I knew he meant, How can it be over?

It was a good question, and one I could still hardly understand. One with an answer I wasn’t sure I could admit to. After all that had happened, after a lifetime of watching for, running, or fighting a nightmare, how could it really be over? It was almost unbelievable.

“You want a hug?” I drawled, just as unsure myself. “Will that bring you closure?” Normally he would’ve swatted me a good one on the back of the head, but convulsions gave me a free ride there for now. And I was bullshitting anyway, because I felt the same. Relieved, strong, yet . . . how? The Auphe were dead. They were gone. But I was like Nik. How could it be over? After all these years . . .

How could we be free?

But I knew one thing: Their whole race had nearly been destroyed in a warehouse. It was goddamn poetic we could send the last ones out in one just like it.

We went home, a place truthfully I didn’t think we’d ever see again. There was a new door and a bill taped to it courtesy of our landlord. Hell, I was relieved it wasn’t an eviction notice.

There we were with our battered couch, battered table and lamps . . . battered everything. Right then it was better than a mansion in my eyes. We didn’t have to worry about watching, waiting. We didn’t have to stay alert every second for death to come tearing out of the air. We could relax. We could sleep, not that half-assed dozing you do when something’s breathing down your neck. We could really sleep.

Neither one of us did.

We sat on the couch until the sun lightened the morning sky. Who wanted to waste the first real taste of freedom on sleep? I had my brother. I had my life. I was going to enjoy every damn second of it. All that was missing were the fish sticks and cartoons.

The sky streaked with tangerine, pink, and violet-blue, and the sun peered through the shadow-black buildings. It looked to be a damn gorgeous day.

One of the best of my life.

Robin called me that afternoon after Niko had already left to see Promise and Cherish. He wanted to meet at the bar and get the story up close and personal. We’d called everyone the night before to clue them in on the survival thing, but Goodfellow liked details. Lots and lots of details. It was the next best thing to being there. And he would’ve been there if we’d needed him to be, but I thought he was damn glad we hadn’t, especially once I mentioned the nuke. He’d taken that about as well as I had.

“So it’s over.” Reliving it all hadn’t been as tough as I’d imagined. Skipping one part of it had certainly made it easier. I’d managed it so thoroughly I kept half forgetting where I’d lost my dirks. Not the eye sockets of an Auphe, nope, and it was the end of the Auphe. How could that be bad? Forget it and go on.

I had a flash of a thought that the real end of them might not come until I was gone, but what we’d done the night before . . . it was good enough. I’d made the decision not to rain on my own parade, and I was sticking with it.

Despite Nik’s order from last night, I had a beer. Last night was last night and today was seventeen hours later. That was a long time—in my book anyway. I nursed it, though, as it was the single one I tended to allow myself. Sophia had been the type of alcoholic that would’ve needed a 112 step program. It didn’t pay to tempt fate.

“Thank Zeus, it’s about damn time.” Robin was working on a bottle of wine, fancy glass and all. “The Vigil came through, eh? I suppose Samuel is as remorseful as he says he is.”

“Sorry is sorry, but I think he probably considers thirty Uzi-armed Vigil and a nuke cleans the slate.” I took another swallow of beer.

“Nuclear weapons.” He shook his head and swirled the wine in his glass. “I’m not sure humans are too far from the Auphe in some ways.”

Being both, I wasn’t much in the position to make that call. “How was the orgy?” I asked instead.

“Actually, I picked up Salome and spent quality time with the shriveled feline.” He went on defensively, “I didn’t want her snacking on the neighbors.”

Sure. That was the reason. I grinned into my beer.

Halfway through my beer, Ishiah came up to the table. He hadn’t said a word when I’d come through the door. He’d looked at me briefly, then went back to serving a customer. It wasn’t an engraved invitation or anything, but I took it to mean I wasn’t banned. He didn’t mention Cambriel when I went up for my beer. I’m not sure he ever would. I wasn’t sure I wanted him to. Cambriel deserved better. To be remembered. But to think of him was to think of his severed head dangling from the hand of an Auphe, and I couldn’t. I couldn’t go there, knowing if it weren’t for me he’d still be alive.

I finished my beer in several swallows, nursing it be damned, but the memory didn’t disappear as easily as the alcohol did.

“So,” Ishiah said to Robin, “you survived the Auphe.”

“I did,” Robin said smugly, as if he’d actually been there. But I’d give him credit this time. It might not be lying, bragging, or his enormous ego. He could be referring to the entire crappy experience instead of only last night. “I was beyond brave, an unparalleled fighter, a morale booster with no equal.”

“And he didn’t get laid once,” I added, which seemed the bigger feat to me.

Ishiah raised a disbelieving eyebrow. “You’re saying after all these years you’re finally listening to me?”

“Listen? To you?” Robin scoffed. “If I listened to you and your thousands of years of bitching, I’d be a monk. A poorly dressed, destitute, horrifically celibate monk.”

“I simply wanted you to behave like a halfway rational creature,” Ishiah retorted.

Oh, this was going to be good. I leaned back out of the way.

“Behave? Oh no, what you wanted is for me to cut back on the drinking, the lying, the stealing, the conning, and the whoring about. The very things that make me the magnificent specimen I am today,” Robin said indignantly.

“Maybe if you had, you wouldn’t have ended up on the verge of being killed by descendants of former worshippers,” Ishiah pointed out, brutal but true.

Robin sputtered, “Please. As if you weren’t chased over sand dunes by a band of Israelites desperate for a holy souvenir. They plucked you like a chicken. You looked like a mangy pigeon when I found you.”

Looking less like Niko by the second, because where Niko’s anger was cold, Ishiah’s was red-hot, Ishiah said dangerously, “I did not.”