There had been a few moments through the years when pure loneliness had made him seriously consider turning around on her and telling her to sit herself down and listen to a story. This moment was one of them; but he only muttered something he forgot as soon as he’d said it, and nothing more until she dropped him off at his apartment building. Then she kissed his cheek and told him, “Come by for dinner tomorrow. Antoine will be home early, for a change, and Patrice just got to show his gam’pair something he drew in school.”

“Day after,” Arceneaux said. “Busy tomorrow.” He could feel her eyes following him as he limped through the lobby doors.

The knee was still painful the next morning, but it remained functionally flexible. He could manage. He caught the crosstown bus to meet Garrigue in front of Claude’s house, and they set forth together to search for a single man in a large city. Their only advantage lay in possessing, even in human form, a wolf’s sense of smell; that, and a bleak awareness that their quarry shared the very same gift, and undoubtedly already knew where they lived, and-far more frightening-whom they loved. We ain’t suppose to care, Damballa. Bon Dieu made the loup-garou, he ain’t mean us to care about nothing. The kill only. The blood only… the fear only. Maybe Bon Dieu mad at us, me and Rene, disobeying him like we done. Too late now.

Garrigue had always been the better tracker, since their childhood, so Arceneaux simply stayed just behind his left shoulder and went where he led. Picking up the werewolf scent at the start was a grimly easy matter: knowing Duplessis as they did, neither was surprised to cross his trail not far from the house where Garrigue’s younger son Fernand lived with his own wife and children. Garrigue caught his breath audibly then, but said no word. He plunged along, drawn by the strange, unmistakable aroma as it circled, doubled back on itself, veered off in this direction or that, then inevitably returned to patrolling the streets most dear to two weary old men. Frightened and enraged, stubborn and haunted and lame, they followed. Arceneaux never took his eyes from Garrigue, which was good, because Garrigue was not using his eyes at all, and would have walked into traffic a dozen times over if not for Arceneaux. People yelled at him.

They found Duplessis in the park, the great park that essentially divided the two worlds of the city. He wore a long red-leather coat over a gray suit of the Edwardian cut he always favored-just like the one we tear off him that night, Damballa, just like that suit-and he was standing under a young willow tree, leaning on a dainty, foppish walking stick, smiling slightly as he watched children playing in a sandbox. When Arceneaux and Garrigue came up with him, one on each side, he did not speak to them immediately, but stood looking calmly from one face to the other, as his smile broadened. He was as handsome as ever, velvet-dark and whip-lean, unscarred in any way that they could see; and he appeared no older than he had on the night they had spent whittling him down to screaming blood, screaming shit, Damballa…

Duplessis said softly, “My friends.”

Arceneaux did not answer him. Garrigue said inanely, “You looking well, Compe’ Alexandre.”

“Ah, I have my friends to thank for that.” Duplessis spoke, not in Creole, but in the Parisian French he had always affected. “There’s this to say for hell and death-they do keep a person in trim.” He patted Garrigue’s arm, an old remembered habit of his. “Yes, I am quite well, Compe’ Rene. There were some bad times, as you know, but these days I feel as young and vigorous as… oh, say, as any of your grandchildren.” And he named them then, clearly tasting them, as though to eat the name was to have eaten the child. “Sandrine… Honore… your adorable little Manette…” He named them all, grinning at Garrigue around the names.

Arceneaux said, “Sophie.”

Duplessis did not turn his head, but stopped speaking.

Arceneaux said it again. “Sophie, you son of a bitch-pere de personne, fils de cent mille. Sophie.”

When Duplessis did turn, he was not smiling, nor was there any bombast or mockery in his voice. He said, “I think you will agree with me, Jean-Marc, that being slashed slowly to pieces alive pays for all. Like it or not, I own your poor dear Sophie just as much as you do now. I’d call that fair and square, wouldn’t you?”

Arceneaux hit him then. He hadn’t been expecting the blow, and he went over on his back, shattering the fragile walking stick beneath him. The children in the sandbox looked up with some interest, but the passersby only walked faster.

Duplessis got up slowly, running his tongue-tip over a bloody upper lip. He said, “Well, I guess I don’t learn much, do I? That’s exactly how one of you-or was it both?-knocked me unconscious in that filthy little place by the river. And when I came to…” He shrugged lightly, and actually winked at Arceneaux. He said softly, “But you haven’t got any rope with you this time, have you Jean-Marc? And none of your little-ah-sculptor’s tools?” He tasted his bloody mouth again. “A grandfather should be more careful, I’d think.”

The contemptuous lilt in the last words momentarily cost Garrigue his sanity. Only Arceneaux’s swift reaction and strong clutch kept him from knocking Duplessis down a second time. His voice half-muffled against Arceneaux’s chest, Garrigue heard himself raging, “You touch my chirren, you-you touch the doorknob on my grandbabies’ house-I cut you up all over again, cut you like Friday morning’s bacon, you hear me?” And he heard Duplessis laughing.

Then the laughter stopped, almost with a machine’s mechanical click, and Duplessis said, “No. You hear me now.” Garrigue shook himself free of Arceneaux’s preventive embrace, nodded a silent promise, and turned to see Duplessis facing them both, his mouth still bleeding, and his eyes as freezingly distant as his voice. He said, “I am Alexandre Duplessis. You sent me to hell, you tortured me as no devils could have done-no devils would have conceived of what you did. But in so doing, you have set me free, you have lost all power over me. I will do what I choose to you and yours, and there will be nothing you can do about it, nothing you can threaten me with. Would you like to hear what I choose to do?”

He told them.

He went into detail.

“It will take me some little while, obviously. That suits me-I want it to take a while. I want to watch you go mad as I strip away everything you love and cannot protect, just as you stripped away my fingers, my face, my organs, piece by piece by piece.” The voice never grew any louder, but remained slow and thoughtful, even genial. The soulful eyes-still a curious reddish-brown-seemed to have withdrawn deep under the telltale single brow and contracted to the size of cranberries. Arceneaux could feel their heat on his skin.

“This is where I live at present,” Duplessis said, and told them his address. He said, “I would be delighted if you should follow me there, and anywhere else-it would make things much more amusing. I would even invite you to hunt with me, but you were always too cowardly for that, and by the looks of you, I can see you’ve not changed. Wolves-God’s own wolves-caging themselves come the moon, not even surviving on dogs and cats, mice and squirrels and rabbits, as you did in Joyelle Parish. Lamisere a deux… Misere et Compagnie-no wonder you have both grown so old, it’s almost pitiful. Now I”-a light inward flick of his two hands invited the comparison-“I dine only on the diet that le Bon Dieu meant for me, and it will keep me hunting when you two are long-buried with the humans you love so much.” He clucked his tongue, mimicking a distressed old woman, and repeated, “Pitiful. Truly pitiful. A tres-tres-tot… my friends.”