“They chafe. Too small and confining.”

“Fuck you,” I say.

“Dudes. Get over yourselves,” the kid says. “Roll us up. Do you want her to die?”

“You should never have taken her in there. I’m going to kill you for that,” I say to Ryodan as I help roll up a nearly naked kid with my girl.

“I told her not to touch anything,” Ryodan says. “I knew it would drop her out of fast-motion. I reminded her at every scene we went to. And bring it on, Highlander. Any time you think you’re ready.”

“And we all know how well she listens,” the kid says dryly.

Ryodan gives him a look that would make grown, armed, psychopathic men shut up. “There was no reason for her to touch anything.”

“Obviously she thought otherwise,” the kid says, completely unperturbed.

“I was right there with her. I figured I could get her out.”

“You figured wrong, dickhead,” I say.

“I didn’t think it would affect her so quickly if she did. It didn’t do that to me when I tried it.”

“She’s not like you. And shut up, both of you,” the kid says, and puts his face on hers again, breathing, cupping his hands around their faces to keep the warm air in.

“Why are you doing that?” I say.

“Warm air. Hypothalamus. Regulates internal temperature and will help raise her consciousness. I need her conscious so she can piss.”

“I would have rubbed her down to warm her. Restored her circulation.”

“Brilliant. You would have killed her. Her blood is too cold. It would have stopped her heart.”

“I don’t understand why she stripped,” Ryodan says. I look at him. He’s doing the same thing I am. Learning what to do if it happens again. Both of us would have sped off with her, trying to get her somewhere warm. And according to this kid, we both would have killed her.

“Blood vessels widen. She thought she was hot. Hikers get found all the time dead in the mountains, naked with their clothes folded nearby. They get confused. Brain tries to make order out of chaos.”

“How do you know all this?” I despise that he knows it and I don’t. Makes him the better man for her in this situation. I want to be the better man for her in every situation.

“Mom was a doctor. I nearly died of hypothermia in the Andes once.”

“I almost killed you,” Ryodan says.

“She can’t hear you,” the kid tells him.

“I wasn’t talking to her.”

“Give me more hot packs,” the kid says. “Bugger, she’s cold!”

“A few weeks back. I almost killed you.”

The kid gives him a look. I think, what the fuck gives a kid this young the balls it takes to snarl at me and give dickhead a look like that?

Ryodan says, “I stood in the shadows of an alley you were walking down. You wouldn’t have seen me coming. She would have died tonight if I’d killed you.”

“Is that, like, an apology?” I mock.

“Does she gasp in horror every time she sees you, Highlander?”

I unfurl wings that aren’t there yet and hiss.

“You both talk too much,” the kid says. “Shut up. Don’t make me tell you again.”

We shut up, which I find hysterically funny.

I suddenly see us from above. I do that all the time now. I think it’s because I’m losing my humanity and it’s my way of marking my descent into hell. I observe that there’s only one human male at this scene and it’s not me.

I see a radiant woman-child who has more curves under her clothes than I guessed, and from the way Ryodan is looking at her, he didn’t guess it either. She’s bloodless, blue-tinged, rolled up tight in the arms of a half-naked teenager that could have been, should have been, me. Keeping vigil over her are two monsters of very different breeds but monsters just the same.

Death on her left.

Devil on her right.

The kid looks like I did at his age, except for the glasses and a few inches of height he has on me. Dark hair, great smile, wide shoulders, the kid’s going to be good-looking.

If he survives past next week.

At the moment I’d wager strongly against it.

He’s in a sleeping bag with her, holding her. She has skulls and crossbones on her underwear. It charms me beyond reason.

The way I see it, if it’s not Ryodan in that next dark alley, it’s going to be me.

SIXTEEN

I fight authority and authority always wins probably always will