The boy moved toward me, came to stand at the edge of the cage and wrapped his small hands around the bars. Beautiful boy. Dark hair, gold skin, dark eyes. His father’s son. His eyes are soft, warm.

And I’m Barrons, staring down at him …

His eyes say, I know you won’t let me die.

His eyes say, I know you will make the pain stop.

His eyes said, Trust/love/adore/youareperfect/ you willalwayskeepmesafe/youaremyworld.

But I didn’t keep him safe.

And I can’t make his pain stop.

We’d been in the desert holding this child, this very boy in our arms, losing him, loving him, grieving him, feeling his life slip away …

I see him there. His yesterdays. His today. The tomorrows that will never be.

I see his pain and it shreds me.

I see his absolute love and it shames me.

He smiles at me. He gives me all his love in his eyes.

It begins to fade.

No! I roar. You will not die! You will not leave me!

I stare into his eyes for what seems a thousand days.

I see him. I hold him. He is there.

He is gone.

But he’s not gone. He’s right here with me. The boy presses his face to the bars. He smiles at me. He gives me all his love in his eyes. I melt. If I could be someone’s mother, I would take this child and keep him safe forever.

I push to my feet, moving as if I’m in a trance. I’ve held this child, inside Barrons’ head. As Barrons, I loved him and I lost him. In sharing that vision, it became my wound, too.

“I don’t understand. How are you alive? Why are you here?” Why had Barrons experienced his death? There was no question that he had. I’d been there. I’d tasted it, too. It was reminiscent of the regrets I’d felt about Alina …

Come back, come back, you want to scream … just one more minute. Just one more smile … one more chance to do things right. But he’s gone. He’s gone. Where did he go? What happens to life when it leaves? Does it go somewhere or is it just fucking gone?

“How are you here?” I say wonderingly.

He speaks to me, and I don’t understand a word of it. It’s a language dead and forgotten. But I hear the plaintive tones. I hear a word that sounds like Ma-ma.

Choking back a sob, I reach for him.

As I slip my arms through the bars and gather his small, naked body into my arms, as his dark head floats into the hollow where my shoulder meets my neck, fangs puncture my skin, and the beautiful little boy rips out my throat.

42

I die for a long time.

Much longer than I think it should take.

Figures I’d die slow and in pain. I pass out several times and am surprised that I regain consciousness. I feel fevered. The skin of my neck is numb, but the wound burns like I’ve been injected with venom.

I think I left half of my neck in the child’s impossibly expandable jaws.

He began to change the moment I took him in my arms.

I managed to tear myself from his preternaturally strong grasp and stumble from the cage before he completed the transformation.

But it was too late. I’d been a fool. My heart had wed Barrons to a sobbing child and embraced sentimentality. I’d seen the chains, padlocks, and wards as Barrons’ way of keeping a child safe.

What they’d really been was his way of keeping the world safe from the child.

I lie on the floor of the stone chamber, dying. I lose awareness again for a time, then am back.

I watch the child become the night version of Barrons’ beast. Black skin, black horns and fangs, red eyes. Talk about homicidally insane. He makes the beast Barrons was in the Silvers seem downright genial and calm.

He bays continuously while he changes, head whipping from side to side, spraying me with his spittle and my blood, staring at me with feral crimson eyes. He wants to sink his teeth into me, shake me, and crush every last drop of blood from my body. The mark Barrons placed on my skull doesn’t do a thing to defuse his bloodlust.

I am food and he can’t reach me.

He rattles the bars of the cage and he howls.

He morphs from four to ten feet tall.

This is what I heard beneath the garage. This is what I listened to while looking at Barrons across the roof of a car.

This child, caged down here, forever imprisoned.

And I understand, as my lifeblood seeps out, that this is why he was bringing the dead woman out of the Silver.

The child had to be fed.

He held this child, watched him die. I try to think about it, wrap my brain around it. The child has to be his son. If Barrons didn’t feed him, the child suffered. If he did feed him, he had to look at this monster. How long? How long had he been caretaker for this child? A thousand years? Ten? More?

I try to touch my neck, feel the extent of my wounds, but I can’t raise my arms. I’m weak, dreamy, and I don’t really care. I just want to close my eyes and sleep for a few minutes. Just a short nap, then I’ll wake up and get busy finding something in my lake to help me survive this. I wonder if there are runes that can heal torn-out throats. Maybe there’s some Unseelie in here somewhere.

I wonder if that’s my jugular gushing. If so, it’s too late, way too late for me now.

I can’t believe I’m going to die like this.

Barrons will come in and find me here.

Bled out on the floor of his bat cave.

I try to summon the will to search my lake, but I think I lost too much blood too fast. I can’t care, no matter how I try. The lake is curiously silent. Like it’s watching, waiting to see what happens next.

The roaring in the cage is so loud, I don’t hear Barrons roaring, too, until he’s scooping me up into his arms and carrying me from the room, slamming doors behind him.

“What the fuck, Mac? What the fuck?” He keeps saying, over and over. His eyes are wild, his face white, his lips thin. “What were you thinking coming down here without me? I’d’ve brought you if I thought you’d be so stupid. Don’t do this to me! You can’t fucking do this to me!”

I look up at him. Shades of Bluebeard, I muse dreamily. I opened the door on his slaughtered wives. My mouth won’t shape words. I want to know how the child is still alive. I feel numb. He’s your son, isn’t he?

He doesn’t answer me. He stares at me as if memorizing my face. I see something move deep in his eyes.

I should have made love to this man. I was always afraid to be tender. I’m bemused by my own idiocy.