As he came into the room, the man and the woman stopped their fighting, freezing with shock. And he got on with the tedious business of emptying the farmhouse of prying eyes.

His son was returning unto the fold. And the Omega needed to see him almost more than he needed to put him to use.

As the evil touched the center of his chest, he felt empty and thought of his sister. She had brought forth into the world a new race, a race engineered through a combination of her will and the biology that was available. She’d been so proud of herself.

Their father had, as well.

The Omega had started to kill the vampires just to spite them both, but had quickly learned he fed off deeds of evil. Their father couldn’t stop him, of course, because, as it turned out, the Omega’s deeds-nay, his very existence- were necessary to balance his sister’s goodness.

Balance had to be maintained. It was his sister’s core principle, the justification for the Omega, and their father’s mandate from his father. The very basis of the world.

And so it was that the Scribe Virgin suffered and the Omega drew his satisfaction. With each death wrought on her race she hurt, and well he knew it. The brother had always been able to feel the sister.

Now, though, that was even truer.

As the Omega pictured his son out there in the world, he worried about the boy. Hoped that the twenty-plus years had been easy for him. But that was a proper parent, was it not. Parents were supposed to have concern over their offspring and nurture them and protect them. Whatever your core was, whether it be virtue or sin, you wanted the best for what you had brought forth into the world.

It was stunning to find that he had something in common with his sister, after all… a shock to know that they both wanted what children they begot to survive and thrive.

The Omega looked at the bodies of the humans he had just laid to waste.

Of course, that was a mutually exclusive proposition, wasn’t it.

THE WIZARD HAD RETURNED.

Phury closed his eyes and let his head fall back against his headboard. Ah, hell, what was he saying. The wizard had never left.

Mate, sometimes you take the piss out of me, the dark voice in his head drawled. You truly do. After all we’ve been together?

All they’d been together… wasn’t that the truth.

The wizard was the cause of Phury’s driving need for red smoke, always in his head, always hammering about what he hadn’t done, what he should have done, what he could have done better.

Shoulda. Woulda. Coulda.

Cute rhyme. The reality was that one of the Ring-wraiths from The Lord of the Rings drove him to the red smoke sure as if the bastard hog-tied him and threw him in the back of a car.

Actually, mate, you’d be the front bumper.

Exactly.

In his mind’s eye, the wizard appeared in the form of a Ring-wraith standing in the midst of a vast gray wasteland of skulls and bones. In its proper British accent, the bastard made sure that Phury never forgot his failures, the pounding litany causing him to light up again and again just so he didn’t go into his gun closet and eat the muzzle of a forty.

You didn’t save him. You didn’t save them. The curse was brought upon them all by you. The fault is yours… the fault is yours…

Phury reached for another blunt and lit it with his gold lighter.

He was what they called in the Old Country the exhile dhoble.

The second twin. The evil twin.

Born three minutes after Zsadist, Phury’s live birth had brought the curse of imbalance to the family. Two noble sons, both born breathing, was too much good fortune, and sure enough, balance had been wrought: Within months, his twin had been stolen from the family, sold into slavery, and abused for a century in every manner possible.

Thanks to his sick bitch mistress, Zsadist was scarred on his face and his back and his wrists and neck. Scarred worse on the inside.

Phury opened his eyes. Rescuing his twin’s physical body hadn’t gone far enough; it had taken the miracle of Bella to resurrect Z’s soul, and now she was in danger. If they lost her…

Then all is proper and the balance remains intact for the next generation, the wizard said. You don’t honestly think your twin will reap the blessing of a live birth? You shall have children beyond measure. He shall have none. That is the way of the balance.

Oh, and I’m taking his shellan, too, did I mention that?

Phury picked up the remote and turned up “Che Gelida Manina.”

Didn’t work. The wizard liked Puccini. The Ring-wraith just started to waltz around the field of skeletons, its boots crushing what was underfoot, its heavy arms swaying with elegance, its black shredded robes like the mane of a stallion throwing its regal head. Against a vast horizon of soulless gray, the wizard waltzed and laughed.

So. Fucked. Up.

Without looking, Phury reached over to the bedside table for his bag of red smoke and his rolling papers. He didn’t have to measure the distance. He was the rabbit who knew where its pellets were.

While the wizard whooped it up to La Bohème , Phury rolled up two fatties so he could keep his chain going, and he smoked while he readied his reinforcements. As he exhaled, what left his lips smelled like coffee and chocolate, but to put a dull on the wizard, he would have used the stuff even if it had been like burning trash in the nose.

Hell, he was getting to the point where lighting up a whole fucking Dumpster would have been fine and dandy if it could get him some peace.

I can’t believe you don’t value our relationship more, the wizard said.

Phury focused on the drawing in his lap, the one he’d been working on for the last half hour. After he did a quick catch-up review, he dipped the tip of his quill into the sterling silver pot he had balanced against his hip. The pool of ink inside looked like the blood of his enemies, with its dense, oily sheen. On the paper, though, it was a deep reddish brown, not a vile black.

He would never use black to depict someone he loved. Bad luck.

Besides, the sanguinary ink was precisely the color of the highlights in Bella’s mahogany hair. So it fit his subject.

Phury carefully shaded the sweep of her perfect nose, the fine lashes of the quill crisscrossing one another until the density was correct.

Ink drawing was a lot like life: One mistake and the whole thing was ruined.

Damn it. Bella’s eye wasn’t quite up to par.

Curling his forearm around so he didn’t drag his wrist through the new ink he’d laid, he tried to fix what was wrong, shaping the lower lid so the curve of it was more angled. His strokes marked up the sheet of Crane paper nicely enough. But the eye still wasn’t working.

Yeah, not right, and he should know, considering how much time he’d spent drawing her over the last eight months.

The wizard paused in mid-plié and pointed out that this pen-and-ink routine was a shitty thing to do. Drawing your twin’s pregnant shellan. Honestly.

Only a right sodding bastard would get fixated on a female who was taken by his twin. And yet you have. You must be so proud of yourself, mate.

Yeah, the wizard had always had a British accent for some reason.

Phury took another drag and tilted his head to the side to see if a change in viewing angle would help. Nope. Still not right. And neither was the hair, actually. For some reason he’d drawn Bella’s long, dark hair in a chignon, with wisps tickling her cheeks. She always wore it down.

Whatever. She was beyond lovely anyway, and the rest of her face was as he usually depicted her: Her loving stare was to the right, her lashes silhouetted, her gaze showing a combination of warmth and devotion.