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Vincent quickly gets back inside the circle.

“What else?”

“We’ll figure that out as we go along.”

He sings quietly to himself, but the wind is too loud for me to make out what the tune is.

I bark more hoodoo, a mix of hexes I learned Downtown, and shit, I’m just improvising.

A wall of fire explodes before the whirlwind. It

stops and shrinks back. Lightning smashes up the ground. Cuts deep black gashes in the desert floor until the bolts plunge into the fire itself. And sucks them up like a goddamn thousand-­foot-­tall shop vac. The flames swirl inside the dust devil. It glows like neon, and this time there’s no question. It illuminates McCarthy’s face.

The bastard is smiling.

He throws lightning bolts down at us. They explode around the edges of the circle, turning the air to ozone and making my skin tingle. Vincent flinches. He isn’t singing anymore.

McCarthy rushes across the desert floor, moving over and around and completely surrounding us in his whirling, choking body. Desert dust clogs my nose and burns my eyes. Vincent has his hands over his face. He turns in a circle like he wants to run, but doesn’t know where to go. He stumbles and falls. I pull him to his feet.

“Don’t let this guy get to you,” I say. “You’re Death and you’re as powerful as he is and you’ve been around longer. You know more tricks than him.”

“I still don’t know how to fight.”

“Everybody knows how to fight. It’s called survival instinct. I have it and so do you or you would have given up by now.”

Vincent looks up at the whirlwind that engulfs us, not impressed with my pep talk.

“Go get him,” I say. “This is all tricks. You’re the real Death. Reach up and pull his fucking heart out.”

Vincent wipes dirt from his eyes and walks to the edge of the circle.

“I am Death,” he says in a booming voice I never knew he had inside him. “Leave this place and these souls, liar. Usurper. You belong here as just another ordinary soul, nothing more.”

Vincent reaches into the whirlwind. And gets thrown backward like a crash-­test dummy. I try to catch him, but we both land in a heap.

He looks up at me.

“I’m sorry.”

I help him up.

“It’s okay.”

“I know I can do more, but I can’t remember how. My powers feel like they’ve been gone for a million years. This flesh has me trapped.”

“Let me do this,” I say, and take off running.

I manifest my Gladius and run to the edge of the circle, plunge it into the dust devil. The blowing sand feels like I shoved my hand into a garbage disposal. My skin feels like it’s peeling off in layers. Lightning bursts above my head. But McCarthy roils and convulses. Parts of the whirlwind shear off, man-­size whirlwinds that blow across the plain and scatter to dust. The wind howls, like a man screaming in pain. I pull out the Gladius and shove it into the wind again, deeper. In a second, I feel McCarthy begin to pull back. The whirlwind shrinks around the circle and moves away in a slow retreat. I keep the Gladius buried deep in its gut, feeling good, knowing I have McCarthy on the ropes.

Until I realize that the situation is the exact opposite.

A gust of wind and dust hits me. I look down. McCarthy retreated and I took the bait. Moved straight out of the circle. I’m ten feet into the open desert. Lightning flashes and I catch a glimpse of McCarthy’s face. I’ve used the Gladius to kill humans, Hellbeasts, and angels, but even an idiot like me knows that a burning sword isn’t going to take out Death.

A swirling coil of wind reaches down and knocks me over the packed earth. When I get up I feel something scraping in my injured shoulder. I run for the circle. McCarthy reaches down again, but I see him coming and shout some hoodoo, shattering the coil with an air burst of fire. McCarthy bellows and I keep running.

I don’t know if he’s playing games or if I get almost lucky, but I’m right on the edge of the circle when he comes at me again, throwing down a bolt of lightning that knocks me over. Then a cone of wind settles over me, crushing me into the desert floor. I can’t get up. Can’t breathe or see. All I can do is lie there while McCarthy grinds me down to my bones.

Then I’m moving again, dragged across the packed ground. The wind lets up enough for me to open my mouth and shout a stream of black Hellion magic at the sky. Old arena stuff, each phrase a killing curse.