Giving himself up to the death, he waited for the door he had heard about to come through the light unto him… the door that ancient wisdom said you opened and stepped through, finding yourself in an eternity with your loved ones. Would his mahmen be there?

Would Jo be allowed there as a human?

Panic shot through him. He was leaving his female undefended; his death was not going to get her out of danger. Gigante would send someone else to kill her—

All at once, the light retracted, Syn’s vision cleared, and his ears came back online. Looking up, he wasn’t sure what he expected to see… but the Brother Vishous kneeling down with a torch was not it—

Wait. That wasn’t a torch. It was the male’s hand, the one that always had that black leather glove on it.

Maybe the illumination hadn’t been the Fade.

Maybe those rumors about V being the born son of the Scribe Virgin weren’t bullshit.

Maybe he should be nicer to the motherfucker, assuming he didn’t want to be turned into a s’more.

Syn pushed himself off the pavement, and as he cautiously got up on his feet, he expected the world to go around in circles again. It did not. And that was when he realized the Brother must have done to him what he did to Butch.

“You tackled the Omega?” V said. “What the fuck were you thinking, you crazy sonofabitch.”

Vishous punched Syn’s shoulders—and then Syn was being yanked forward against that huge chest, the embrace as unexpected as the Brother breaking into song with “Achy Breaky Heart.”

’Cuz V didn’t like anybody.

Guess if you saved his best friend’s life, it got you on his Good Guy list.

Syn felt himself get set back, and then both of his cousins were talking to him. Everyone was talking to him, the Brothers who were on site and all the other fighters. It was a blur, and he had some thought that they were making a hero out of him for no good reason. He just wanted to kill something, anything, and he wanted a good fight. The Omega was tailor-made for that shit.

“Where’s Syn?” he heard somebody demand. “Is Syn okay?”

Butch broke through the rugby huddle that had formed, and the former cop, former human, seemed to fall back into his role as civil servant. He was all about the Good Samaritan as he approached.

“Jesus, that was brave and stupid. But thank you. I’m serious.”

Syn met the hazel eyes of the Brother and shook his head.

Butch nodded, as if he knew what Syn was thinking, but Syn could guarantee he did not.

And to cut any further gratitud-inal shit, Syn tried to walk in a circle to get a sense of how steady he was. Yay. He didn’t weave. He didn’t throw up again. His body and strength were, like, five on a scale of ten.

Whereas before V had showed up with that searchlight of a palm? Try not even on the damn scale.

“Where are you going?” Butch asked.

Am I leaving? Syn wondered.

“I’m on rotation,” he heard himself say. “I’m going out to fight.”

Dr. Manello jumped in like he had a chip in the back of his neck that alerted him to dumb decisions. “Nope. You’re taking the rest of the night off.”

“I’m not injured,” Syn said as he motioned down his body. “And I’m not sick anymore. You have no reason to deny me.”

As V lit up a hand-rolled, the Brother looked over the cup of his hand. “Let him go. He’s more than earned the right to fight if that’s what he wants to do. Besides, I took care of him. There isn’t anything of the Omega left in him.”

Syn pegged the doctor in the eye. “I’m just going to go out anyway. No matter what you tell me.”

More conversations, especially as another round of Brothers arrived, Tohr, Z, and Phury needing to catch up on what had happened with the Omega.

Hoping to dematerialize out before his part in the story got more airtime, Syn took a step back from the crowd. And another. When Balthazar glanced over like he was going to put the brakes on the retreat, Syn glared at his cousin and dared him to get involved. When the guy just lit up one of V’s homemade cigarettes and cursed, it was clear the message was received.

His kin was not going to get in the way of him getting gone.

* * *

As the alley turned into a brother-convention, Butch went back over to the carcass of the lesser. He hadn’t gotten far into the inhale before Syn decided to play bowling ball with the Omega and there was a job to be finished.

And fuck no, he wasn’t going to honor that promise to the evil of stabbing the damn thing back to its master.

“You don’t have to, cop. You can take a break tonight.”

He looked over at V. The brother’s clear, cold eyes were like fresh air when you were sick to your stomach. And inside Butch’s head, thoughts started to spin, careening into each other, making hash of any logic.

“Cop, you just went through some shit.”

“Yeah, and the only way out of this whole thing is to do my fucking job.”

Butch dropped to his knees, and angled his face over what was left of the slayer’s mashed-in features. As he braced himself to take one of those long, strange inhales that he’d been pulling ever since the Omega had gotten into him, he thought—not for the first time—that he didn’t know how it worked. He didn’t understand the metaphysics of how he could drain the essence out of its vessel.

Then again, an explanation wouldn’t change reality and he wasn’t sure he really wanted to know the particulars. Besides, he had other issues to worry about…

“The Omega should have been able to kill me,” he said as he glanced up at V. “It was throwing shit at me… the magic should have blown me apart. And then there was its presence. I mean, I’ve been right up close with that thing before. I know how powerful it used to be. Not anymore… it’s dying.”

And you’d think he would have gotten a second wind—natch—from the bald evidence of his success. Instead? He only felt more exhausted.

V knelt down and exhaled over his shoulder. “That means it’s working. The prophecy is coming true.”

“Yeah.” Butch stared at the glistening mess of the slayer’s face, the cheekbones white under the inky stain of the black viscera. “I feel like a competitive eater in the last thirty seconds of Nathan’s Famous.”

V put his gloved hand on Butch’s shoulder. “We have time. It doesn’t have to end tonight. Send him back and let’s go home.”

Butch shook his head at the lesser. “The Omega should have been able to kill me.”

When another pair of shitkickers entered his field of vision, he glanced up. Qhuinn had come over, and the brother was white as a sheet, his hands trembling at the ends of the sleeves of his leather jacket. The male lowered himself down. His blue-and-green eyes were red-lined and watery, and he was blinking them like he had a fan right in front of his face.

“Butch, you saved my life,” the brother said. “And you’re spent. Let me stab it, and we’ll all go home.”

Butch wanted to do that. He was tired in a way unrelated to physical exertion. He wanted to call Marissa and hear her voice, ask her to cut work early, and just lie beside his shellan. He wanted to know that his brothers and the other fighters were on the mountain and behind the mhis, behind the thick stone walls of the mansion, behind the fortress Darius had built over a hundred years ago. He wanted to be certain that, if only until nightfall the following evening, everybody was safe.