"No more gates." Then he flicked my ear and offered easily, "Haven't I said that all along? Although don't think I didn't know you chose to ignore me."

"Know-it-all prick." I rubbed my ear. "If only I listened to your wise and sage advice, we'd be … oh yeah…dead now."

"That doesn't change the fact it was wise and sage." His eyes gleamed. "And you'll only wish you were dead when I'm finished with you. Get your gear. We're going to the park."

Time for a class in Butt Kicking 101. I was never going to graduate from that damn class. "Give me two hours. I have something I need to do."

George lived a short subway ride away. I walked it. It took forty minutes. I still had the engagement ring in my pocket, the diamond and rubies of a dead woman. I had told myself I'd bring it up in the sun for her, but it might be better to leave it where her fiancé could find it, if I could find him.

It had gone from cool to cold, an early winter. There were scudding clouds and the icy bite of an approaching snow. I used to like winter when I was a kid. We'd traveled around so much I'd seen it all. Places where it was warm in January and never snowed and then places with three feet of it. I'd liked the snow best. No school. Not that Sophia cared if we went, but my brother did. Snowball fights with him…got my ass kicked there too. I'd also liked the stillness and quiet of the snow, not to mention the fact you could see the footprints of anyone who'd hovered around your window with red eyes and metallic grins. You could be prepared…ready.

But then the Auphe took me at fourteen, and I'd come back with a profound dislike of the cold. Tumulus, Auphe hell, the place they'd kept me from what we thought, was a dimension of rock, charnel stench, and searing cold. I might not remember my time there, but I remembered Darkling's few hours of cooling his heels there. Somewhat. Bits and pieces through a blurred and hazy lens. That was my mind trying to protect me. It knew. If I remembered what happened in those two icy wasteland years I'd spent there from fourteen years old to sixteen, they'd have to pour me into one of those straitjackets we'd seen in the asylum ruins. I didn't like winter anymore, and I didn't like the cold.

But, hell, it's New York. What are you gonna do?

Suck it up and tuck your face against the wind. The subway would've been easier, warmer too, but I needed the time. Not to think…the thinking had been done on this for a while. I just needed it. You might have to jump from the third story of a burning building, but you needed to take a breath first. Because this leap wasn't one of faith. This was one of endings and a bad choice over a worse one. I needed that breath.

Sooner than I wanted to be, I was in front of her building. The steps were empty this time. I stood at the bottom one in hesitation. Five inches of concrete and it seemed like a mountain, one I suddenly didn't want to climb. She would know. The instant she saw me, she would know. It wasn't what I wanted, but it was what I'd planned. Until George was no longer a part of my life, she wouldn't be safe. She wasn't a warrior like Nik or near impervious to bullets like Promise. She wasn't Robin, sly and better with a sword than all the goddamned Musketeers and Zorro combined. She wasn't us. She was George…stubborn, determined, but gentle and vulnerable as hell. She'd fight if she had to and do it with courage and an unbreakable will. The rest of her, though, was all too breakable. To something even far less deadly than an Auphe.

And then there was me. Tainted right down to my DNA. I couldn't be with her. I couldn't be with any human woman. She wouldn't believe that, but she would believe something else. She'd believe in Delilah. Charm had been a one-night stand. A onetime thing for one particular thing. But Delilah was different. With her there was the potential for something else…something that could snare my emotions, the more primal ones, for a while. Something real— probably not especially healthy, but something genuine. That was the betrayal. And George would know it the moment she set eyes on me. Wasn't that why I was here?

Then I saw the white flutter of an envelope resting on the stone balustrade. It was weighted down by a small piece of polished glass, dusky topaz like her skin. I picked it up and saw one word written on it: ring. I opened the unsealed flap and pulled out a small slip of paper. It too had just one word written on it.

Good-bye.

She already knew.

Mission accomplished. Good for me. That had to be relief that burned in my stomach and if I walked stiffly up the steps to the lobby, well, it was cold, right?

I fished out the ring with fingers just as stiff and cold and slipped it in the envelope. Sealing it, I dropped it in George's mail slot and it was gone. Just like George was. Just as I'd planned.

I didn't remember much of the walk back. My hand held tight to the bit of topaz glass in my pocket, but my mind was as frozen as the weather as I flowed with the sidewalk crowd. And that was for the best. I didn't want to think, not about my choices, not about George. Not thinking, that would get me through this day. Committing Niko's cardinal sin— not noticing the unforgiving and dangerous world around me.

But then it noticed me.

I felt the gates open. One after the other. One, two, three…ten…fifteen. I looked up, and there they were—on top of my building. Marble skin, white hair, gunmetal teeth, they blended into the winter itself. You wouldn't have seen them if you didn't know to look. But I knew. I saw them. Lining the ledge like gargoyles, Auphe after Auphe after Auphe.

All looking down at me.

Oh, shit.

About the Author

Rob Thurman lives in Indiana, land of rolling hills and cows. Lots and lots of cows. Visit the author on the Web at www.robthurman.net.