He exploded. Fourth of July again. This time it was one big-ass M-80, those brutes no self- respecting adult would let a kid have. We hadn’t known any self-respecting adults when I was at the age when blowing up things was damn cool. I was twenty-one now and it was still damn cool. There was nothing left of Suyolak but arms, one leg, and his head lying on the ground with the amputation marks cauterized to a crunchy bacon crisp. I’d never been the freak-the Frankenstein’s monster-who cared about the neatness of my kills, but this time I did a nice job. Good for me. A for effort.

My grin faded when I saw Rafferty drop to his knees, grab the head, and then lift Suyolak face-to-face. There was the moon, but moonlight can be deceiving. I saw it, but I didn’t want to believe it. So I blamed it on the night and the shadows cast by the gory moon. I didn’t see Suyolak blink… although he did. I didn’t see Rafferty’s fingers sink through hair, flesh, and bone up to his knuckles, but they did. He wasn’t only mentally in Suyolak’s brain-he was physically there too. And suddenly the good time of watching Suyolak go to pieces in the most literal way passed and I slurred, “That’s so… not… right.”

“No, it is not, but it might be necessary and that’s good enough for me.” Niko called sharply, “Rafferty! Now! We need you now!”

The healer turned and I could see red-amber eyes turn Rom black and then back. Suyolak’s own eyes filmed a solid white and his head tumbled toward the ground, dust before it made it there. Rafferty was done with him. He had what he’d wanted all along: Suyolak. That was what made him tick-what made him creation and death all tangled into one immense tidal wave of power.

He moved to my side and knelt. “Great. What did you do? Shoot yourself?” His hand replaced Niko’s.

“Yeah.” The word was wet, as soaked as the oxygen in my lungs. Where he’d saved me from drowning in my own mucus before, now he had to stop me from drowning in my blood. No matter in what you drowned, the sensation sucked. “Watching… you pretend… to fight… made… me”-I gulped air-“suicidal.”

“You did a good job of it,” he grumped, enough like his old self that I almost forgot the flash of Suyolak that had passed through his eyes. But monsters, we always knew one another. He was Rafferty, but he had something else in him now: a reaper. He was a healer harboring a grim reaper and he couldn’t live like that. But right then I didn’t feel like I could live at all. It might be better to concentrate on that. I’d told myself I wasn’t letting Nik down and I meant it.

His other hand rested on the side of my head. “And you went and built another gate. After I practically rewired you. Now not only are you bleeding out, but your blood pressure is all but liquefying your brain and making you bleed out even faster while your temperature would blow up a thermometer.”

“Like… Suyolak.” I closed my eyes and curled my lips. “Boom.”

“Boom all right.” Robin was on my other side now. All the Ördögs were gone. When their master had died, they’d given one last shriek that shook the trees left standing and had poured away into the darkness. “Please endeavor not to get drunk and try that as a party trick. I don’t wish to be a five- hundred-piece puzzle with four hundred ninety-seven pieces missing. I would greatly appreciate the restraint. But if you must, there is one piece I wish you to promise to leave in place. I believe you know the one I refer to. That would be the glory that is…”

“Mercy killing.” I shaped the words to Rafferty, to Niko… anyone who could get the job done. My head hurt, I couldn’t breathe, and I was racked with cold from the fever. And through all that, Robin’s voice was still able to cut like a knife. It was comforting. Locations change, enemies change, even my wiring changed, but Goodfellow, his mouth would never change.

There was a snort in the darkness. “Like you deserve a mercy killing. Not today. Sorry about your luck,” Rafferty sniped. Then the heat that flared in his hand on my chest arced through me to the one on my head. I didn’t know if I was glowing like Suyolak had when my gate had gobbled him up, but I felt as if I was. I felt like the sun… hot, intense, and far up in the sky. Floating. Not that the sun floated, but I did. And the air that I floated in flowed in and out of my lungs. The pain was gone too, as were the headache and fever. Rafferty had given me that last gate for free.

I opened my eyes and saw the blackness of Suyolak shadowed behind Rafferty’s eyes. “It’s good, isn’t it?” I said knowingly. “Being bad. Ironic, huh?” I coughed and was pushed up in time for the residual blood to spray on my jeans.

“He’s in there. In you.” Niko reached over and almost touched the healer’s forehead, but at the last minute decided against it. “You were supposed to cure the world by killing him.”

“Instead you ate him.” There was blood all over my shirt and, black cotton or not, the color wasn’t helping. I felt the warm stickiness of it everywhere. I peeled it off over my head, then wrapped my no- longer wolf-gnawed arm-Rafferty had healed that too-around Niko’s shoulder and we were up. I got my “living legs” under me again. “Did he taste good?” I asked as if I genuinely wanted to know. And, darkly… dreadfully, I did.

“I can’t imagine that he did. Death, any death, is not a taste anyone should want, crave, or have.” Robin hadn’t lowered his sword. “You were to be the cure, not the replacement.”

“It’s for Catcher. With what I took from that murderous bastard I can bring Catcher back. It’s worth it, and when I’m done, I’ll get rid of the rest of Suyolak. And that’s the way it’s going to fucking be, got it?” Rafferty snapped, a wolf snap-one with flashing teeth.

He started to stand until I caught him by the arm and caught him quickly-a little too quickly. I’d noticed that. I kept getting quicker and quicker. “Could you-” I ducked my head to swallow the growl that wanted out, but the Auphe in me could growl all it wanted. On this, I ruled. I pulled Rafferty closer and asked my question close to his ear-where no one could hear if the answer was no. So no one could feel sorry for me, because that’s the last damn thing I wanted.

He considered my request. “Yeah, maybe. I can’t guarantee they’ll stay that way, but I’ll try.” His hand came up to cover my eyes for a second. One second. He had Suyolak in him all right, a supernatural battery that could level this entire park if that’s what Rafferty wanted.

Dropping his hand, he leaned in for a look and grunted. “Good as new, but, like I said, that could change.” They were gray again then, no russet or scarlet marring them-but pure gray, the same gray Niko and I had shared all our lives. If someone looked at us, it was the only sign they would see that we were related. I wanted to keep that. I couldn’t keep the happy, I couldn’t keep the human, but I could keep part of my brother. In the end, that made this a win.

Rafferty had risen immediately after changing my eyes back. He was scanning the area for what it was that he wanted to keep. I hoped he was as lucky as I’d turned out to be. “Catcher? Catch?” He caught sight of the one red Wolf, flanked by a white one, in the middle of more dead Wolves. I’d had the feeling that Delilah wouldn’t let there be any survivors. She and the others or just the others had killed Cabal, and Delilah had put down the rest of them. She was born a killer, born a queen, and now she had crowned herself both. I’d known, whichever way that it went, she wasn’t going to lose. She never did.

Catcher lifted his head, although I didn’t know if he understood his name or not. He might have recognized the scent of his cousin; the call of the same whispering in his brain. He catapulted toward Rafferty, leaping over bodies, making a sound I couldn’t identify except for “happy wolf” roo roo. His fur was even more red under the moon and Delilah moving leisurely in his wake was now a nude human statue carved from amber, her white hair now the color of fire.