LITMIR.BIZ

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his Player.

      Simmer with rage.

      Burn.

       Burn.

      He could kill them, all of them, easily. They’re not expecting him to return. They’re not on guard. He could slip through Pop’s window in the dark of night, slit his throat while the old man snores in his Barcalounger, Honeymooners reruns droning on the ancient TV. He could break into the deli across the street from Molly’s apartment, aim his sniper rifle at her window, send a bullet into her head while she sips her morning tea. Or he could nestle an explosive in the brakes of Molly’s mother’s car, turn her into a ball of fire on the Queensboro Bridge. He could assassinate the High Council one by one. But first take out everyone they love, make them watch. Spatter them with blood.

      An eye for an eye.

      A loss for a loss.

      Declan’s blood is ice; his heart is a stone. He could do it. He could do anything.

      But he holds himself back.

      Not for the La Tène line or for the dying embers of family loyalty, not for the sake of his humanity.

      They robbed him of that, his father, his trainers. They made him a killer, and it’s only justice that they reap the benefits.

      He holds back for Aisling.

      Someday she will be old enough to know him.

      He will be a man she deserves to love. He’s come back here partly to prove to himself that he can be. That in the face of the greatest temptation, he can show restraint. That he’s not simply a soldier and a killer.

      Still, he burns.

      And now they will burn.

      They’ve posted guards in front of his old apartment; he knocks one out with an efficient choke hold and the other with a blow to the head, then lets himself in to retrieve what he needs: a bottle of Lorelei’s perfume, so he can breathe her in when he needs to remember. His journal, a record of every step of his journey from ignorance to acceptance, which he’d left behind in hopes that Pop and Lorelei might come to understand. A photo of Lorelei, so that Aisling will never forget her mother’s face. Then he sets the incendiary device and watches his past bloom into flame.

      Next stop: the High Council chamber. Hidden in the basement of what looks, from the outside, to be a dilapidated veterans’ hall.

      Declan disables the security system with a few simple clips of the wire cutters, picks the complicated locks on the chamber door, and lets himself in.

      It’s easy.

      They gave him all the tools he needs to betray them.

      The Falcata is hanging in its place of honor over the long council table. He takes it in his hands, presses his lips to the cool metal, a sign of respect for its deadly blade.

      Sitting in an ancient brass bowl in the center of the table is a small, polished stone.

      This is the mark of the Player. The symbol of responsibility and commitment to the line, of the promise made to the gods and to the coming apocalypse.

      Once, his birthright.

      Now, Molly’s.

      Soon, Aisling’s, unless he can stop them.

      He pockets the stone.

      Then he places the second incendiary device.

      Slips out into the night with the ancient sword, activates the device.

      Stands in the shadows, watching the heart of the La Tène line burn to the ground.

      It’s only a symbol. A message. Meant to remind them that he is out there, that he will destroy everything they have and everything they are if that’s what it takes to stop them, to prevent Endgame, to save Aisling.

      Destroying what’s precious to them doesn’t make up for what he’s lost.

      But it feels good.

      When he returns to the delta, the shack is gone.

      Razed to the ground.

      No Agatha. No Aisling.

      Declan turns his face to the sky and shrieks his pain to the heavens. His scream shreds the silence of the swamp. Birds scatter into the clouds. Coyotes sing back to him, and together they howl at the moon.

      Then, from the trees, another sound. Faint, but familiar.

      A child’s cry.

      He follows the sound, his heart thumping, lips moving in time with the drumbeat of his pulse, please, please, please.

      He finds them curled up together in the hollow of a fallen tree, Aisling tearstained and screaming, Agatha bleeding from too many wounds.

      “I don’t know how they found me,” she whispers, as Declan frantically tries to staunch the blood. “But they don’t know the swamp.”

      “Where are they?” Declan asks, panic flooding him. Has he just walked into an ambush?

      “They looked for a while, then gave up,” Agatha croaks. “Took their guns and their helicopters away. Outsmarted by old Agatha. Again.” When she laughs, blood froths at her lips.

      “You saved Aisling,” Declan says in wonder.

      “No more children should be sacrificed to this bloody game,” she says, gasping at his touch. Her forehead burns.

      “How long have you been hiding out here?”

      “I held on until you came back.”

      “We’ve got to get you to a hospital.”

      He can’t risk it, but for her, after what she’s done, he will.

      “No,” she croaks. Then: “No point.”

      When he was the Player, Declan learned how to kill, but he also learned how to save. And he learned how to know when people are beyond the point of saving. How to recognize the absence of hope.

      She wraps her fingers around his wrist. “Save her from this life,” she says.

      He nods. Promises. “Tell me what I can do for you,” he says. “Anything.”

      “Save me too,” she says, her gaze feverish but fierce. “Make the pain stop. Please.”

      He uses the Falcata, because she is a hero and deserves an honorable blade.

      An honorable death.

      Declan runs; the La Tène give chase. The line has spent a millennium sowing a global network of allies and informants—there is nowhere beyond their reach, nowhere to hide. He creates a labyrinth of dummy accounts, uses cash whenever possible, invents several fictional personae and sends them off on planes and trains to the ends of the earth. He lays careful bread-crumb trails leading to dead, and sometimes deadly, ends; he sets traps, drawing on his own networks and on mercenaries whose loyalty he can afford to leave in his wake, faceless men and women who alert him whenever the La Tène catch his scent and close in.

      As they always do.

      Sometimes he and Aisling are gone long before they show up, leaving behind hotel rooms scoured of prints, dingy apartments stuffed with a stranger’s belongings. Sometimes the two of them only just make it. He’s a former Player; he knows never to set up camp without formulating an escape plan, and so everywhere they squat, whether it’s for hours or weeks, he devises a hiding place for Aisling, somewhere she will be safe if he has to fight their way out.

      Most of the La Tène won’t dare attack if he has the baby in his arms—she’s too precious to them. But Molly, a Player herself, doesn’t see any Player’s—or future Player’s—life as sacred, and she’s all too confident in her own aim. She comes at him no matter who might get caught in the crossfire.

      They have been on the run for two months when they

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