We spent the rest of the day into the evening discussing Oshossi, plans to track him in Central Park—nearly impossible—and any other information Cherish had about him, what I’d gathered from mythology books, and what little more Robin had provided through acquaintances. Once or twice more the vertigo returned, but my train of thought would shift and the feeling would eventually vanish. The time passed quickly and it was nearly two a.m. before I was home. I’d taken the PATH train into the city and ran the rest of the way for the exercise. It was cold, but unlike Cal, I didn’t mind the cold. It scoured your lungs, made you feel alive, aware, calm, and free.

And we were free.

The pound of the pavement under my shoes, the chill air against my face, it was a return to normality. As close to normal as Cal and I would come, and it was good. Up to then we’d had to search for the good . . . the light, but it was here and now. No matter how long it lasted, it was here and now.

I ran up the stairs in our building, the cold streaming away. Our hall was empty, and the walls were painted a battleship gray. The same as it always was. Normal.

Until I saw our door, partially open.

It was never unlocked and it was never open unless we were walking through it.

I silently drew my sword and slid into the apartment, only to see Cal lying on the floor. For a second I was annoyed. He’d ignored our safety protocols, leaving the door open. He’d ignored some of the most important rules of our lives. Defeating the Auphe was no reason to ignore the rules. Besides, we had work to do, finding Oshossi, and my brother was taking a nap. He was always napping. Lazy as a cat, had been his whole life. This time he hadn’t even bothered to get on the couch. He just lay there in a pool of dark red, staring at the ceiling as if he hadn’t heard me come in.

My breath burned my throat.

As if I wouldn’t notice the mess.

I felt the katana fall from my hand.

As if I wouldn’t give him hell.

As if I wouldn’t . . .

Wouldn’t . . .

“Cal?”

The floor was hard beneath my knees. There was blood on my hands, soaking my shirt as the heavy weight of his head rested against my shoulder, black hair covering his face . . . except the eyes. They were half open, the gray dull. Not the cocky and sly eyes that looked at me across sparring swords. Not the ones I’d seen as I walked him to the first day of first grade—clear and solemn. Or the roll of them with his first glimpse of NYC, combined with the sarcastic drawl: “One helluva roach motel.”

Not the terrified madness of them as I yanked the steering wheel under my hand to drive us away from the burned-out shell of our trailer—a teenage Cal curled in a fetal ball in the passenger’s seat, twitching whenever I spoke and pulling out of reach desperately if I unexpectedly tried to touch him. Months later I’d seen his first smile fleeting in the gray after being taken by the Auphe; a year later I saw his first laugh catch there. I saw his determined stare at his first gun, his grip uncertain. His first kill, a grip like iron and eyes just the same. I saw the ferocity in them the first time he’d saved my life; I saw defiance there the first time he had died.

The first time he had died.

This time, the very last time . . . I saw nothing.

Nothing.

The gray of gone.

My brother was gone.

Then I was in the hall, the katana I didn’t remember picking up back in my hand, my mala beads discarded. The blood seeped through my shirt, sticking it to my skin. My hands were covered with it. There had been ccoa around him . . . five dead. I knew who had sent them.

I was the gray of gone as well, but I heard a familiar whisper. Cal telling me the same thing I would’ve told him.

Wake up.

Telling me that, because brothers know you can fight like this but you shouldn’t. But waking up wasn’t an option. Waking up to his surviving the Auphe but not a South American immortal. No. If I woke up, I wouldn’t be able to do what I had to do.

Wake up and I’d know.

I couldn’t know. Not now. Not yet.

Not until every last one of them was a cooling corpse.

I didn’t listen to any more whispers, and I didn’t know anything after that. I made sure of it. I didn’t know how I made it to Central Park, but I was there. I didn’t know how long I searched for them. I didn’t know if I found them or they found me. I didn’t know if it was cold. I didn’t know if there was snow or grass beneath me. I didn’t know anything. There was only a whiteness in my head, an emptiness with only one thought. One concept. One word.

Death.

There were cadejo, slippery black canine shapes. They lunged and retreated. Came and went. I sliced them to pieces. They couldn’t touch the white void in me. Nothing could.

The ccoa were quicker, some on the ground, some leaping from the trees. They didn’t die as quickly, but they died. My hands, still covered with blood . . . now dried a red-brown, swung the katana and they died. Some with slit throats, some with open bellies. It didn’t matter . . . as long as they died.

The Gualichu came—the spider with a thousand legs. A thousand to avoid. A thousand to cut.

It was timeless in the void . . . the cadejo, the ccoa, the Gualichu. They were swallowed and gone in the whiteness. To note how long it took was to care. I didn’t care about anything anymore. Beyond death there was nothing.

Only the white.

Only the void.

My blade cut through the spider’s bulbous body. Thick fluid poured free. I moved through it to chop the creature in half. It may have screamed. It may have not. Everything was muffled, wrapped in layers of cotton—sound was distant, the moon an amorphous haze, the lifeless bodies around me meaningless shadows.

Only one thing was clear, one figure sharper than anything seen in my life.

Oshossi.

“All this for a thief.” He stood on the swell of a hill. “All this fury and rage over a common thief.”

Words. Meaningless words.

I walked toward him, unable to even feel the ground beneath me. Unable to feel the air in my lungs. I didn’t need air. I only needed this. Death. Vengeance.

I’d said I’d keep him safe. I’d told him that before he even knew what the word meant, and then I’d turned my back and this piece of dead flesh standing before me had made a liar of me.

A liar to my brother.

A failure to him.

A crack appeared in the void and the white filled with blood. My lips peeled back from my teeth. I had no words for Oshossi, because there were no words for what I would do to him. No way to express the agony in which he would die. There would be blood in my head, on my hands, and filling the air like a warm rain. After that, I thought that red-drenched void might then swallow me as it had swallowed everything else, and it would be a long, long time before I came out. If I ever came out.

I’d lied to him, I’d failed him, and I’d lost him.

I took another step, a double-handed grip on my katana. I met gold eyes and moved to extinguish them.

“Nik?”

It was the only thing as clear as Oshossi. The voice.

His voice.

I turned my head, so slowly—the air as thick as glue, and saw him. Impossibly solid, impossibly there, impossibly real.

Caliban Leandros of the Vayash Clan.

Cal.

My brother.

Whole. Not bloody. Not torn. Not dead.

How could that be? It couldn’t. It was impossible. A trick. Just another shard of broken glass that sliced my brain.

“Nik, what the hell are you doing here alone?” He had his gun in one hand and his cell phone in the other. The GPS tracker connected to mine. Beside him a white wolf whose back came as high as Cal’s waist snarled silently.

A trick . . .

I looked down. My hands were bloody but not with the dried blood of before, not Cal’s blood. This was fresh animal gore. My coat was streaked with it, too, but my shirt that had been stiffened and caked with the blood of his body held against mine, head cradled on my shoulder, it was clean cloth again.