My position had changed; I was now on my side with a pillow behind my back supporting me. They might hate me, but they couldn't seem to bring themselves to hate what they still thought of as Cal's body. They were taking awfully good care of it. I immediately went to work trying to break the paralysis that held me. It was most likely pointless, but you never knew what the power of sheer rage could accomplish. And I was as coldly furious now as I had ever been. Locked like a falcon in the cage of my own body—it had long since passed irritating and was now just this side of unbearable. I wanted to rend; I wanted to shred; I wanted to kill. I bared my teeth and shook my head violently. But the most I accomplished was one absolute bitch of a headache. I tried to curve my hands into claws, tried to kick free of the covers. Nothing. I was as petrified as a centuries-old piece of wood. Dead and gone.

Yeah, they wished.

Soaked with futile sweat and panting with impotent rage, I heard it. Far down the hall, in the land of the light, came the explosion. It was Rafferty. "No! I won't. Goddamn it, Niko, I can't."

Niko's voice was low, audible only in part. "I know…" and "… sorry…" were all I could catch.

"No, you don't know. If you knew, you would never ask. I'm a healer. I can't kill. I won't kill."

Robin joined in then. "We've tried everything. There is nothing left to us. This would be painless. Cal deserves that. You would be saving him from further suffering. Can't the healer in you see that?"

"So you had me give him life only to turn around and take it?" Rafferty said bitterly. "Why did you bring him here then? Why didn't you just let nature take its course?"

"It was a mistake." Niko spoke louder this time, more firmly, but with as weary a tone as I'd ever heard from him. "My mistake. I thought I saw…" He let the words trail away. "It doesn't matter. It's the only way, Rafferty. If you don't do it, I will. My brother's blood is already on my hands. I'll finish what I started."

"Jesus," Rafferty said in a voice as weary as Nik's. "Sweet Jesus."

All right, this had better be a joke. One big, frigging mother of all jokes. Kill Cal? Kill this body? After all they'd gone through to avoid just that? Couldn't they make up their goddamn minds?

Apparently they could. After nearly twenty minutes of silence, the sound of footsteps reverberated down the hall. Any vestige of worthless humanity melted from me instantly. My lips remained locked in a snarl, and my eyes narrowed with a wrath that verged on madness. Humans. Sheep. Coming to take what was mine. Mine. Bastards. They had no idea what they were dealing with, even Goodfellow. Did they think they could make an end of me so easily? They were wrong. Fatally wrong.

"Cal?"

Niko stood in the door. The dark smudges circling his eyes gave mute testimony that it had been days, if not longer, since he'd slept. The lines scoring his face deepened as he stared at me. There was pain in his eyes, endless pain, but there was peace too. It was the same emotion you saw in the terminally ill. Acceptance. Letting go. Love.

Shit. They were serious about this.

He stepped into the room. "I let you down, Cal. I'm sorry." His lips curved sadly. "But you know that, don't you?" Standing by the edge of the bed, he bowed his head and rubbed knuckles over the surface of the blanket. "Kid brothers, they're a pain in the ass or so everyone says." The next words were softer, but I heard them nonetheless. "Everyone is wrong." Pulling up the covers higher on my chest, he smoothed the folds. "Good-bye, little brother."

Rafferty and Goodfellow had followed him quietly into the room. Robin moved shoulder to shoulder with Niko, a silent support. Rafferty moved to the other side of the bed and pulled the pillow out from behind me, dropping me to my back. He didn't look at me, couldn't look at me, if his clamped jaw and greenish white skin were any indication. "You two going to stay and watch me commit murder? Sure you don't want to make some popcorn first?" he spit with a near brutal antagonism.

Goodfellow's face solidified to ice. "If you cannot do it, then step aside." There was a knife in his hand, small but deadly. "If you won't help Caliban, then we will."

The anger melted away from his face, leaving only desperation and a numb despair. "No." Rafferty scrubbed his face hard with both hands. "No. You're right. I can set him free and I can do it without pain." Reluctantly, his eyes finally came to rest on mine.

"Touch me and it will be the last thing you do in your miserable life." Involuntarily venom began to pool and leak from the corners of my mouth. "And there'll be plenty of pain for you. Never-ending, soul-destroying pain." A thickly folded towel covered my mouth and kept me from dissolving the healer's face to a blood pudding. Niko. Always prepared. Always goddamn prepared.

Eyes still on me, Rafferty placed his hand on my chest and said soberly, "Cal… if you're in there… it'll be quick, I promise. I'll stop your heart. You won't feel a thing." Another hand, Niko's this time, was laid on my forehead in a wordless farewell.

I hated to lose. But if I had to lose, I was going to make these bleating sheep hate it every bit as much.

And just like that, it happened. I felt a coldness corkscrew through my flesh, icy fingers squeezing with a ruthlessly intangible grip. My heart staggered, skipped a beat, and shuddered to a halt. For a split second I was frozen, trapped between light and dark, life and death.

Then I split in two. Half of me ripped away, leaving a gaping, raw wound inside that felt large enough to swallow me whole. Darkling was in the air above me, looking down at me with round silver eyes. It was like double vision. I was me and I was him. I was half of a whole and God, oh, God, it felt like dying. I convulsed once and did… I died. I died and was sucked down an infinite whirlpool of blackness shot with radiant light. There was no air, but I didn't need any. There was no sound, yet it was all around. I was sound, a single note resonating throughout eternity. I was in a place utterly strange to me, yet I was home.

And then I was back. I shivered in waves, though I dimly sensed my heart was beating again. I screwed my eyes shut and tried to breathe. It was harder than it sounded. Every breath was thick and unwilling and my chest ached with an inner frostbite. But I was alive. And if I was alive, then I wasn't dead.

I wasn't dead?

I wasn't dead. Way to bluff, Niko. Too bad we never set up shop in Vegas. Nice acting, Rafferty, Goodfellow. You two get an Oscar. I slitted my eyes to see Rafferty's face close to mine with ill-concealed worry written all over it. "Cal?"

"Raff," I started before coughing weakly. "My 'magination… or… did you just… kill me?"

"Just for a second, I swear." His grin wobbled but was sincere.

I started to grin back instinctively, but the smile wilted away as my memory caught up with the rest of me. I remembered it all in one blinding flash… everything I'd said, everything I'd done. Darkling had been right. I'd finally learned what it meant to be a monster. And it was a knowledge I wasn't sure I could live with.

Off to the side, I heard Robin curse and Darkling cackle with maniacal pleasure. Fighting down the acrid bile that scorched my throat, I rolled over on my side. Avoiding Rafferty's hands, I tumbled off the bed and landed hard on the floor. The jolt cleared my head slightly and I focused on the scene only half a room away. Darkling was toying with them. He crouched on the ceiling, his head twisted at an unnatural angle. "Jump, doggies," he sneered. "Jump higher." Taunting them like a school yard bully, he could've left at any time. There weren't any mirrors in the room, but he didn't need any. Mirrors were much faster for traveling, but he could still swim through the atoms of the wall as if it were a river. But no, he was choosing to stay solid. Dissipate? Leave? Where would be the fun in that? He'd wanted them to pay before… prior to his rushing through the trapdoor in my mind. Now? Now that he knew how they had fooled him, tricked him? "Pay" wasn't even the word.