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I sit down on the hard ground, lie back, and stare up into the sky. The earth is warm against my back. My shoulder hurts and I’m starting to lose energy. Guess the fight took a little more out of me than I thought. I wish Vidocq had left me more of that baneberry juice. That or a line of coke. I could use a pick-­me-­up right now.

The wind blows and there’s nothing else.

I get the black blade out of my boot and crawl to the edge of the circle, cutting into the ground, repairing the place where Vincent dragged me back inside. I wonder how long I can keep this up. The wind wears away the perimeter of the circle and I repair it. In theory I can stay safe and cozy in my dust pied-­à-­terre indefinitely. But I’m going to fall asleep sometime. Soon probably. How much damage will it take for McCarthy to snake an arm through a crack in the circle and drag me back into the open desert? Doesn’t really matter. There’s nothing else I can do. Vincent is gone. There’s no one to spell me. I look over at his corpse. There’s nothing left of him. It’s just Townsend’s dead meat now. The worthless skin of a Nazi coward who thought he could buy his way out of the party with a blue yonder and got trapped like everybody else.

So long, Vincent.

As I lie down again, a roar thunders down at me. The kind of sound you feel in your bones as much as hear. McCarthy is still perched above me, but the perfect cone of his body begins to distort. It stretches and pulls thin around the middle.

He howls again as a hand the size of a Sherman tank punches through the stretched spot. As it pulls out, it rips some of McCarthy’s swirling body out with it.

The dust devil shoots away from me, out into the open desert. McCarthy isn’t alone now. Vincent is there too. He’s almost as tall as McCarthy, his head scraping the bottoms of the black, rolling clouds. His eyes are blood and silver. His body is a bluish white, like polished stone. His arms are buried deep in McCarthy’s whirling body, and he rears back, ripping out pieces of it. They fall, tiny tornadoes that skid across the ground and fall to dust. McCarthy howls and Vincent rips him apart.

Lightning flashes into Vincent’s eyes. He stumbles back, blinded. McCarthy lunges for him, tearing away chunks of his skin. Vincent’s bones glow from the open places, but he charges back into the storm, ripping at McCarthy’s face. The storm returns the favor, slashing at Vincent’s belly, ripping him open. His glowing blue flesh blows away like sheets of burning canvas into the distance.

It goes on and on like that. Two Deaths slicing each other apart. They fly to pieces. Small tornadoes skittering across the sand. Huge sheets of angel flesh lifted into the air and disappearing.

They begin to shrink. No longer as high as the sky. They drop below the clouds. Then the mountains. Wind and flesh fly in every direction. Roars like thunder shake the ground.

Vincent and McCarthy lose form faster and faster. Become transparent.

A thin wisp of swirling sand and a glowing collection of bones, shredded skin, and muscles. They beat and howl until all at once they stop.

Neither moves for a few seconds. McCarthy comes apart first. The big bag of wind blows away like dust on the breeze, scattering to nothing. The black sky begins to clear to a purple twilight.

Vincent’s glow fades. His torn body takes a few painful steps backward. He goes dark and falls to his knees. His body sways, then falls, shattering like glass. And it’s dead quiet for a long time. I sit on the ground and look at what I’ve done.

We’ve gone from two Deaths to exactly zero.

The souls hanging in the sky are going to hang there forever. How many million more will join them because I couldn’t think of anything better to do than kill my friend?

After a while I drag myself to my feet and start walking. I need a drink and a smoke and a shave and a three-­hour shower to get this grit off me.

I’m moving slow. It takes maybe an hour to get back to the city, then another half hour through it to get to Tenebrae Station. I sit on the edge of the platform and wait. Soon I lie back and go to sleep.

I wake with a sharp pain in my side. I open my eyes and see Samael. He’s poking me with a stick.

“Oh good. You’re alive,” he says.

“What’s with the stick?”

“You’re a bit . . . well, filthy and as bloody a mess as I’ve ever seen you—­and I’ve seen you in bad shape.”

“You here to take me home?”

“That was the deal.”

“Do you know what happened?”

“Yes. So does Father. He’s not happy.”

“If he was so concerned, why didn’t he do anything about it?”

“You know how he is. Standing up for noninterventionist deities everywhere. Hip hip hooray.”

“So, what happens now?”

“I have no idea. We’ve never been without a Death before. I guess we’ll play it by ear.”