“Is it your birthday?” I managed to gasp out. “Because if so, I need to go back out and shop.”

The air was still knocked out of me, and I was able to offer only token resistance as they grabbed my weapons.

Page, as it turned out, was providing a significantly more impressive account of herself. As near as I could tell, they had never actually gotten a firm grip on her, and she had managed to fight herself loose before they could reapply it. She was standing with determination, her back against the wall—literally—and she had her sword out and was whipping it threateningly back and forth. One of the approaching men tried to engage her. She knocked his sword out of his hand in three quick moves, then kicked him in the crotch for good measure, doubling him over and eliciting a crunching noise that caused every man witnessing it to say, “Ooooo,” and wince in sympathy. After that display, no one was quick to be the next one to the attack.

I looked around, getting the lay of the land for the first time, to see where the supposed troops of our illustrious leader were. There were none to be seen. I did spy, however, Trevor and also Baron and the rest of that crew, along with a goodly number of men whom I didn’t recognize. They were all wearing the black colorings and crests of Warlord Droogan. Unable to keep the disappointment out of my voice, I said, “Seriously? You signed on with Droogan’s lot? After all the things you said?”

“He came up with decent money,” said Baron. “Sorry, Finn, but we go where the money is.”

“A loan from Reaver, no doubt.”

“Don’t care about money’s sources,” said Trevor as, even with one hand, he was able to haul me to my feet. “Just its spendability. Oh, and I also care when someone robs me of my property.”

“How about your lives? You care about that?” I said.

“What, you’re threatening me now?” Trevor said with a sneer.

“No, I—”

Apparently getting me to my feet was simply to give him a better angle so that he could knock me off them. He slammed his fist into the side of my head and sent me flat to the ground again. I lay there for a moment, trying to stop the world from spinning. Then I spotted, perched nearby, out of sight of the others but more than obvious to me, the gnome. The little cretin. He’d known exactly the reception we’d get, and yet he’d fabricated precisely what I’d wanted to hear so that I’d go riding blithely right into it. I thought he’d changed, but that was what he wanted me to think. He was still as anxious to see me die as he had ever been; he’d just been more creative in finding a way to bring that about.

I didn’t know whom to feel more disappointed with: the gnome because I thought he was changing and growing, or me because I’d been naïve enough to fall for it.

“Shut up and listen!” Page called. She was continuing to keep her sword between herself and her would-be assailants. We had to convince them quickly of the severity of the situation because sooner or later, someone was simply going to take a gun and shoot Page from twenty feet away. “Everyone here is in great danger!”

“What, from you?” said Trevor with a sneer.

“The Half-breeds,” I said. Putting my palms flat against the ground, I managed to push myself up to standing once more. It’s difficult to make your case for something when you’re lying facedown in the dirt. “Reaver’s half-man, halfanimal creatures. They’re on the way here.”

“What the hell are you talking about? You’re talking rubbish!” Trevor drew back his hand to knock me over again.

The blow didn’t fall. Instead, Baron caught his wrist. Trevor looked at him in surprise.

“Let him speak,” said Baron. “We’ve fought beside the man in the past. He’s earned that much.”

“He’s earned a quick death rather than a slow one if he’s earned anything at all,” said Trevor. “But fine if it’ll shut you up.”

Baron tentatively released Trevor’s wrist. I looked around the town square, and all I saw were men working for Droogan . . .

No. No, I was wrong. There they were. Citizens of Blackholm, peering out fearfully through windows of their homes. “You let the people here live,” I said to Baron. “That’s great.”

Trevor spoke before Baron could. “We’re not wholesale slaughterers, no matter what you may think of us. Yes, the civilians stayed. They work for us. Bring us what we need, act as our servants. Entertain us.” And he chortled in an ugly manner that made me want to pick up my gun and put a bullet in his brain.

But there was no time for that.

“Reaver,” I said, “has lost control of his Half-breeds. They’re out, they’re even more animalistic than before, and they’re coming here because apparently this was the last place they had been sent to overrun. Their most recent mission is embedded in their brains, and they’re determined to complete it.”

Droogan’s men looked at each other in uncertainty. They seemed to have forgotten Page entirely, distracted by this new and disconcerting piece of information.

One of them said, “Even if that’s true—”

“It’s not. He’s lying,” Trevor said. “That’s what he does. He says whatever’s convenient for him . . .”

“But let’s say that it is,” insisted the other man. “Even if they came here, we work for the warlord who hired them in the first place. So we’re all on the same side. The townspeople, they’re well and truly screwed.” And this prompted some laughter from the other men. “But not us.”

“The Half-breeds aren’t going to distinguish,” Page spoke up. “Reaver was quite clear about that. They’ll tear into whoever’s still here, and once they’re done with that, they’re going to keep on going and spread out through the countryside, leaving destruction in their wake.”

“It’s a miracle that we got here ahead of them,” I said. “You can thank Clash for that. But we have hours at best, and minutes at worst, before they come swarming over the walls.”

“That’s . . . that’s ridiculous,” said one man, who stepped forward and, from the way the others were looking at him, had a good deal of authority. “If that were happening, then Warlord Droogan would be here to tell us that himself.”

“Worked with him a long time, have you, General?” I said.

“ ‘Captain’ will do, and yes, I have,” said the captain defiantly.

“All right, then. If you know him—if you really know him, as you claim to, rather than just holding to some idealized vision of what he is—then which do you honestly think is the most likely? That upon learning from Reaver the seriousness of the situation, he would hasten here, hoping to get ahead of the oncoming wave of slaughter, so that he could die at your side? Or that he would accept Reaver’s offer to remain as a guest in his fabulous mansion until such time as this entire ‘unpleasantness’ blows over? Which sounds more like him, eh? Honestly?”

I had partly expected the captain to dismiss the disparagement of his warlord out of hand. Instead, he actually seemed to be considering both possibilities quite thoroughly. It had suddenly become deathly quiet in the town square, all eyes on the captain, curious to see what he would say.

He came to a conclusion.

“That bastard,” he said.

Apparently, he’d come to the right conclusion.

He was looking around, his eyes narrowed, and I could guess what was going through his mind. I spoke up quickly in order to nip it in the bud. “Running away isn’t going to help,” I said. “I mean, you could do it, yes. And the Half-breeds will come tearing through here, and you’ll be gone. But if they find little to no resistance, they’ll just keep right on going, like a horde of locusts. If you don’t stop them here and now, the damage they’ll inflict beyond this place will be incalculable. And they’ll catch up with you, sooner or later. We’re talking about creatures with human cunning and the viciousness of balverines. You really want them roaming the countryside, hot on whatever scent they happen to pick up on once they come rolling through here?”

Trevor kept looking from the captain to me and back. “You’re . . .” he finally managed to get out to the captain,

“you’re not actually thinking of listening to him, are you?”

Apparently, the captain actually was. He was a broadly built, intelligent-looking man with a bristling red beard. He raised his voice, and said, “Man the parapets! Hurry up! I don’t know how much time we have, but I’ve seen these things in action. I was there for one of Reaver’s demonstrations in the arena. Once they get going, there’s no mercy in them.”

“You’re going to need all hands,” Page said, seizing the opportunity. “Shouldn’t the villagers have the right to battle for their lives as much as you?”

“She’s right,” Baron said.

“She’s not right!” Trevor protested. “We conquered these half-wits. Put guns in their hands, and they’re as like to shoot at us as anything else!”

“Gather them together. Let me talk to them. You’ll be allies by the time I’m done, trust me on that,” I said hurriedly, addressing the captain and ignoring Trevor.

The captain nodded once, then pointed at Trevor. “You. One arm. Make sure it gets done.”

“But—!”

Clearly in no mood to be questioned, the captain said angrily, “If the man’s lying, we’ll find out soon enough, and he’ll pay for it. If we assume he’s lying, and it turns out he’s not, well . . . do you want to die later or die right now?” His hand hovered around the pistol in his belt.

Without further word of protest, even though he was clearly burned by the order, Trevor gestured wordlessly for Baron and some of the others to follow him, and he set out across the square.

Minutes later, all of the townspeople had been gathered in the square. A number of the warlord’s men were standing around them in a half circle, including the captain. The citizens were eyeing the warlord’s men warily, but then a number of them spotted me and quickly word passed among them. I was relieved to see that Russell was among the survivors. His eyes widened, and a grin split his face when he looked upon me. Many of the other men who had fought alongside me on the battlements were there as well although they looked downtrodden and frustrated.

Immediately, there were excited murmurings spreading through the crowd. I put up my hands to silence them. Page was standing next to me, watching me with interest. I think she was curious to hear what I was going to say.

“We’re about to be under attack,” I said. “You’ll notice the men already taking stations around the battlements. If some of them look apprehensive, it’s natural that they do, because it’s the beast-men who are returning. You remember them, I take it.”

The terrified expressions on the faces of the citizens were all the proof I needed that they most certainly did remember them. “These men,” I continued, “are out to defend this town from being destroyed by the beast-men, which I assure you is what they most definitely want to do. But there are not enough men here, not nearly enough. I need every one of you who can wield a gun with any accuracy—whether you fought earlier on the battlements beside me, or simply now want to fight for a chance to survive—ready to fight alongside these men.”

“They’ll give us guns?” said Russell.

“There are armaments aplenty,” said the captain. “But I have to know that you’re not going to try and avenge yourself on my men for taking over this town on the orders of the warlord.”

“It doesn’t seem an unreasonable concern,” I said. “Some people will elevate fulfilling grudges above their own best interests.”

There were uncertain looks among the townspeople, then Russell stepped forward, his shoulders squared, and when he spoke, he reminded me very much of his father. It was the first time I could recall that being the case.

“We wish to fight for our town,” he said to the captain. “And your men want to fight for their lives. Where our interests intersect, I don’t see any reason that we shouldn’t be battling side by side for our mutual interests.”

I saw the others nodding slowly in agreement and immediately looked over toward the captain to see his reaction.

He didn’t hesitate. In a loud voice, he called out to his own men, “Get them armed! Hurry it up!” Then, as his men hastened to do his bidding, he strode over to me. He held a warning finger up in my face. “If this turns out to be some sort of massive hoax on your part . . . an attempt to get these people armed so that they can try to fight back—”

“I almost wish it were,” I said. “Because then the stakes would be so much less than they are right now. But I think you’re a smart man, Captain, and I think you know when you’re hearing the truth and when you’re not. Truth always has a more positive ring to it.”

“There is something to that. Also”—and he glanced toward Page—“I am well aware of the involvement you had with the battle of Bowerstone, Miss. I happened to be standing in the back of the court when you presented your stands on certain issues in opposition to Reaver’s. You were most impressive.”

“Thank you, Captain—?”

“Thorpe,” he said with a slight bow. “Captain Thorpe.”

Page eyed him up and down. “Can’t say I understand why an obvious military man of your breeding is working with a rotter of a warlord like Droogan.”

“Can’t say I’m entirely pleased with the actions of the individual sitting on the throne in Bowerstone,” replied Thorpe. “Sometimes you just decide to opt for the lesser of two evils. But considering recent events, perhaps I could have made better choices.”

“Perhaps you could have.”

“All right, all right,” I interrupted, suddenly feeling a bit impatient with this newly blooming mutual-appreciation society. “Can we please stay focused on the impending fight for our lives?”

Thorpe cast me a casual glance, then shifted his attention back to Page. “Is he always this jumpy?” he asked.

“You have no idea. Now listen, I have a plan to deal with these creatures—”

I knew she was going to fill him in on the suicidal notion of blowing them to hell with all the grenades, so I didn’t have to stand around and listen to it again. Instead, I turned away and quickly followed the citizenry to the armory, where the soldiers were leading them. The citizens looked relieved once they saw me there, and I quickly took charge, however unofficially it might have been, of overseeing the distribution of weapons into the hands of the eager citizenry.

Trevor leaned in toward me, and growled, “If just one of these bastards so much as looks at me funny, I’m going to authorize my men to gun them all down. And if this so-called threat of yours fails to materialize . . .”

“You should be so lucky,” I said.

I walked among them, matching the weaponry up as best I could with the people who wanted to wield them. There were some children as well, goggle-eyed, clearly scared, not grabbing weapons but instead asking if everything was going to be all right. The adults were busy assuring them that yes, absolutely, of course it was all going to be all right. After all, Ben Finn was here, so how could it not be all right? I saw no reason to start listing all the ways that my presence could wind up with things most definitely not being all right.

I found refuge for the youngest children in a wine cellar at the tavern. We shuttered them in there and warned them not to emerge until one of the adults came for them. The notion of the Half-breeds finding them there was a horrific one, but we had done all we could to ensure their safety. Now it was just a matter of doing everything we could to make sure it wouldn’t come to that.

Emerging from the tavern, I heard the familiar voice of the gnome speaking from directly above me. “Did I hurt your wee feelings?” he asked.

I didn’t even bother to look his way. Instead, I kept walking. Seconds later, he was by my side, matching my stride and puffing out his chest so that he would be presenting an air of self-importance that I figured was intended to mock me. At that moment I didn’t care in the slightest. “What’s the matter, Finn?” he said. “Can’t take a joke?”

“You deliberately lied to me. You set me up in hopes that I’d come riding in, and they’d kill me on the spot.”

“I knew they wouldn’t.”

“You knew no such thing.”

He shrugged. “I figured if they killed you, good for me, and if they didn’t kill you, then good for you, and there’d certainly be plenty of opportunity later for you to be killed.”

I turned on him, and said, “Have you considered the possibility that just once, just once, it might be nice to actually try and befriend a human instead of treating us all like the enemy?”

“There are two kinds of humans,” said the gnome. “The kind who’s killed gnomes . . . and the kind who hasn’t killed gnomes yet.”

“Get away from me,” I said, then returned to my original path.

“Finn!”

I stopped. The gnome addressing me by name was an unusual enough moment that it caught my attention. I turned and stared down at him.

The gnome glared, and said, “I didn’t like that I was starting to like you.”

I tilted my head. “What?”

“I’ve being hating humans for more lifetimes than you can count. Hating pissants like yourself. It’s become . . . comfortable. A comfortable way of thinking, hating the lot of you. But you were making me uncomfortable. So I thought this was the perfect opportunity to get back to being what a gnome is all about.”

“And how’d that work out for you? Not so well as you would have liked? You could apologize, you know, if you’re actually feeling guilty.”

He glared at me. “Drop dead,” he said.

I walked away then. I was actually fairly sure that he would ignore me and follow me to the parapets, shouting insults the whole way. But when I glanced behind me moments later, he was nowhere to be seen.

“Finn!” came a sharp voice that I instantly recognized as Thorpe’s. His beard seemed to be pointing directly at me as if it had taken up some sort of personal issue with me. As he drew near, he lowered his voice, and said, “Page informed me of your plan.”

“My plan?”

“Trying to draw the creatures into the square. Blow the hell out of them.”

“Okay, first of all—”

He didn’t give me a chance to explain that it was purely Page’s idea, and I did not endorse it at all. “I think you’re not thinking big enough. I’m having my men seed the area with packets of gunpowder to create an even bigger explosion. Right now I’m having my aide inform the rest of the defenders that, if we’re not able to stop the monsters from getting in, then we should try to herd them to the center.”

“Any idea how we’re going to go about doing that?”

“There’s really only two ways, isn’t there?” he said mirthlessly. “Either we push at them from the perimeters. Or we find something to put in the middle to attract them in.”

“You realize,” I said slowly, “that Page is willing to provide that attraction for them. And there’s a very good chance that it’ll work. She was brought past them on the way to Reaver’s arena. They have her scent already, so they might well be drawn to her. Of course, you can say the same for me,” I added after a moment’s hesitation. “So either of us can lure them in if that’s what it takes.”

“Understand that that is merely the backup plan,” Thorpe said firmly. “My men are going to stop these things before they get over the walls.”

“What we need are vats of boiling oil that we could either pour down on them or even use to slick up the walls.”

“I don’t disagree,” Thorpe said. “Three problems with that. First, we don’t have enough of either the vats or oil we’d require. Second, oil-filled vats are incredibly heavy, and the parapets don’t look sturdy enough. And third, I’m reasonably sure we don’t have the time. Listen . . .” And he put up a finger to indicate I should be silent.

I listened.

There was no attempt at stealth this time. In the distance, I could hear their howling, their snarls, and their fury. They’d arrive within seconds.

I scrambled up the ladder to the parapets. As I did so, I glanced toward the main gate, where I saw that the soldiers and the people of Blackholm were working together to reinforce it. They were piling whatever barricades they could in front of it since the creatures had breached it so easily during the previous encounter.

I saw that Page had taken up a position on the wall. She had two rifles and a box of what I assumed to be additional ammunition at her feet. She was scanning the woods, looking for a target. Quickly, I moved down the parapet toward her, stepping past Russell, who looked up at me for what I could only think was encouragement. He reached up, and I clasped his hand once firmly, a power grip. One of the warlord’s men was alongside him, and he looked at the two of us with just the slightest trace of mirth. “You two want to be alone? Because I’m sure the oncoming monsters won’t mind waiting if—”

Releasing my grip on Russell’s hand, I said sharply to the soldier, “You watch his back. His father was a great man. He has potential.”

The soldier glanced at me mirthlessly. “Yeah? That’s what my father said about me. Look how I turned out.” Then he turned to Russell, who was angling his rifle into position. “Pick your targets carefully. Don’t rush. Make every shot count.”

“Yes, sir,” said Russell.

I scanned the horizon line. The sun had not yet set. The Half-breeds could have waited for the cover of darkness to make their assault that much more effective. The fact that they apparently weren’t doing so spoke volumes.

I drew near Page. She was watching the surrounding forest, and yet, apparently, she was aware of my approach without even looking. “Do you see it?”

“See what?” I wasn’t really thinking about having to listen, because the howls they were making were easy enough to hear.

“The trees. The trees are shaking. Get ready!” she shouted, raising her voice so that it carried all along the parapet. “Watch the trees! You can track their progress!”

She was correct. As the Half-breeds moved, they were simply shoving trees out of their way, banging against them, or ricocheting off them. The branches were shaking violently in response, making them easy to follow.

“Not exactly the most subtle bunch, are they?” she said, casting me a sidelong glance.

“They were before, actually. On their first attack, they snuck up on us. We didn’t know they were near until they fired arrows at us.”

“They were armed?”

“Some of them. That was probably their human aspect, or maybe Reaver’s influence, which caused them to approach us that way.”

“So the question is,” she said slowly, “does their lack of human control make them less dangerous . . . or more so?”

“Let’s hope we keep them at enough of a distance to find out.”

I took up position next to her. Any moment they would be bursting out into the open area between the edge of the forest and the perimeter of the wall.

In a low voice, I said, “You know, I think that Captain Thorpe fellow likes you . . .”

“Shut up,” she said.

“Right.”

I had my rifle aimed, ready to start firing shots at the oncoming horde. It was going to be seconds at most before I was going to have to contend with the biggest problem still awaiting me: How in the world was I going to be able to distinguish my brother from the rest of the oncoming wave of hostiles? For that matter, even if I was able to, what was my realistic option? Did I shoot to kill? Shoot to wound? They always say that there is no more dangerous creature than a wounded animal. Did I really need to make my brother even more dangerous than he already was?

Then, with what seemed like a collective roar, the Half-breeds burst into view, and the time for thinking and second-guessing was past.

I didn’t even bother to try to figure out which one was William. I just started shooting. Page did the same. From all around me, I heard guns blazing, soldiers and citizens shooting as one in defense of what had become, in however unlikely a fashion, a mutual home for them.

A number of the first wave of Half-breeds went down, then, to my horror, got right back up again. They’d been hit. I could see that they’d been hit. There was blood trailing from their legs, their chests. One had a piece torn away from his scalp and was shoving the freely flowing blood from his eyes. They were slowed, but they weren’t stopped, and there were more of them coming in right behind them and moving even faster.

“Stay on them!” Page shouted as she reloaded. She wasn’t talking to anyone in particular; it was just the sort of encouragement that embattled people called out to each other.

Wave after wave of ammunition rained down upon the oncoming Half-breeds. Meanwhile, I heard them slamming against the gate; they were trying to crash their way in through it, just as before. This time, though, we had been ready for them, and the reinforcements of the gate, as hasty as they had been, appeared to be holding steady.

Again and again we blasted away, and again and again we managed to knock back more of the Half-breeds. They couldn’t get any traction on the wall the way they had before because there were so many more people with small-arms experience firing away at them. We were managing to beat them back, and the bodies of Half-breeds were starting to pile up. They were able to take more punishment than any human foe could, but bullets were starting to find their hearts or their brains, and that was putting paid to them as quickly as it would a human being.

I heard concerted howls, barking, but it didn’t come across to me as if they were making random sounds. Instead, it sounded as if orders were being relayed.

Suddenly, they started peeling away, dropping from the walls and darting this way and that as if they had abruptly lost their taste for combat.

“It can’t be that easy,” said Page, “it just can’t be.” Yet the way she was saying it carried the implication that she was indeed hoping it in fact could be. The problem was that I didn’t think it likely either.

My head whipped around toward the gate, and suddenly I realized the one thing that we had overlooked.

The positioning of the parapets enabled us to shoot straight down at our assailants as they approached us.

But there were no walkways across the tops of the main entrance. To put them there would have impeded the ability of the main gate to fully swing wide.

“They’re going to come over the top of the gate!” I shouted, and started running along the perimeter of the walls. “Reposition! Get over there!”

And suddenly the men who were already on station on the parapets that came closest to the gate were shouting, “They’re here! They’re all here!”

They started firing like mad, but I knew even before I got there that it wasn’t going to be enough.

I could see it in my mind’s eye without even having to witness it in real life. The Half-breeds moving en masse, like a great sea of ants, crawling like one great gray shaggy carpet up the gate, sinking their claws into the wood. Our defenders would be able to shoot at them, yes, but only at angles. The creatures at the edges would provide natural cover for the ones toward the middle. It would mean that the entire middle of the swarm would be well protected and able to reach the top before anyone could stop them.

Page was right behind me, then she shoved me aside and was in front of me, moving faster than I would have thought possible. Impressively, she was reloading her rifle as she went. Even I couldn’t reload on the run. She was so dexterous of fingers that I had to think she missed out on her calling; she would have made a very credible cutpurse.

Just as we drew within range, it was too late. The Half-breeds came up and over the gate, roaring their defiance as they dropped down upon the soldiers and townspeople who had been attempting to maintain the blockade. The fact that the gate wasn’t opening was no longer a help to us. The gate wasn’t keeping the Half-breeds out; instead, the sturdy barricades were serving to keep us in with them.

We fired again and again, but accurately targeting the Half-breeds became a hideous problem as they poured over the gate and descended into the midst of the populace. We couldn’t shoot at the Half-breeds without hitting our own people.

It was now hand-to-hand below us. The soldiers, the citizens who served as soldiers, and even complete civilians—I spotted a man who poured drinks at the local tavern and a woman who I knew to be the schoolteacher—had swords in their hands and were fighting side by side with the soldiers of the warlord. Blood covered soldier and citizen alike, and still the Half-breeds were attacking.

Soldiers from the parapets were spilling down the stairs that led to the ground below to aid the others in their fight. Page was a few feet ahead of me, and she was shouting, “Once I’m down there, you drive them toward me! Even over all the bloodshed, they’ll pick up my scent!”

“I’m not going to let you sacrifice yourself!” I yelled right back at her.

“This isn’t up to you! It’s up to—!”

And suddenly my brother vaulted over the wall, landing squarely between Page and me. While the others had chosen to focus their attentions on the main gate, William had made his own way around and, during the distraction, had come right up the east wall, and none had been the wiser.

Page saw him, turned, and brought her pistol right up to his face. She pulled the trigger.

It clicked hollowly. Misfire. We simply had to start carrying a better class of weapons.

Her sword was already in her other hand and she started to bring it around, but too slowly, far too slowly in the face of the animal speed that William possessed. He lunged in before the thrust, grabbed her by the throat, and lifted her off her feet.

“William!” I screamed. “Not her! Face me!”

William spun and slammed her against the interior of the wall. It shuddered from the impact her skull made against it. Her eyes rolled up, and William released her. She slid down and lay on the walkway of the parapet, unmoving, her head slumped to one side.

He came right at me. I brought my pistol around and fired. Any other opponent would have been a dead man, but William moved with speed that was beyond human, beyond even balverine. He twisted around, dodged the bullet, then leaped through the remaining distance between us. Before I could fire again, he batted aside my pistol. It flew from my hand and off the parapet.

My rifle, Vanessa, was still slung over my back, my sword in its scabbard.

I grabbed for the sword, cleared it from the scabbard halfway, then William was upon me. He slammed into me, drove me backwards, knocking me off my feet. I fell heavily, and William pressed his advantage, landing atop me, snarling into my face, the foul stench of his animal breath washing over me with such force that I thought that alone was going to kill me.

His teeth were slowly descending toward my face. I grabbed at his throat, digging my fingers in, trying with all my strength to push him back.

It was not how I imagined this going at all. I was sure that there would be something of William left. That I would be able to get through to him, to convince him that he could be salvaged, that he could triumph over this monster that had been unleashed within him. Instead, I was fighting a losing battle against, not my brother, but a berserk creature that was going to tear out my throat inside of about two seconds.

His jaws and slavering teeth were right above me, and I knew that this was it, this was how the great Ben Finn was going to meet his end, ripped apart by a brother he had long thought dead, and suddenly William brought his jaws down and to the right of my head. His body was trembling as if he was physically fighting some sort of inner urge, then his barely human voice emerged hoarsely from his lips.

Then, just like that, the pressure was gone. I sat up, bewildered, unable to process what was happening.

William, still moving in a feral crouch, had gone over to Page’s prostrate body. He propped her up slightly and yanked the bandoliers filled with grenades from her. He started draping them over himself.

“No! William—!” I started to shout.

He turned toward me, and I could see the brutal struggle in his eyes. Every word he spoke was like a rock that he was pushing uphill. “William . . . not here . . . much . . . longer . . . don’t want . . . to live like this . . . let me die . . . a man . . .”

I had no idea what to say. There seemed to be nothing to say.

With the twin bandoliers slung over himself now, William leaped clear of the parapet, sailing in one long, glorious arc straight toward the middle of the square. I could see the packets of gunpowder scattered all over, forming a circle like a target. He was heading for the middle of it.

He landed in a crouch and tossed his head back and howled. It was an incredible noise, eerie and arcane and primal, like something that might have been torn from the very first humans ever to stand upright and bay at the moon.

Instantly, the other beasts stopped their assaults upon the soldiers and citizens.

Apparently, William was still their Prime, their leader. I suddenly had the feeling, although there would never be any way to prove it, that he had been the one responsible for the slaughter of the alchemist. His animal nature must have won over human reasoning at that moment, and he had seen, not the individual who might be able to rescue him from his bestial state but simply the human bastard who had tormented him and was worthy only of punishment and death. Perhaps by killing the one who had tortured him, William had managed to reestablish his position as leader of the Half-breeds.

William let out a series of snarls and howls, bounding around in a circle, as if celebrating a great triumph. The others started to converge around him, the attacks apparently forgotten. The soldiers, covered with blood that was either theirs or the Half-breeds’ or perhaps a combination of both, couldn’t believe their luck. They started to bring their weapons to bear and I shouted as loudly as I could, my voice carrying across the compound, “No! Hold your fire! Back off! Find shelter fast! Fast!”

Either they then realized what was about to happen, or else they simply decided that getting some distance from the Half-breeds was a solid idea no matter how you sliced it. Whichever one it was, they heeded my commands and fell back, dashing toward buildings or horse troughs or whatever covering they could get.

The Half-breeds were echoing William’s howling. He was calling them to him, as if they were engaged in some ritual that had its origins in the farthest dark times of mankind’s beginnings. He began to gyrate in place, and the others instantly copied him. My descriptions of it do not begin to do it justice. Trust me when I say that you actually had to be there to appreciate the spine-chilling strangeness of the entire thing. It was an undulating mass of flesh and fur, coming together, then moving apart, and they waved their claws in the air, claws dripping with blood from the victims whom they had assaulted and rent apart.

And in the middle of all this unholy insanity was my brother, once a boy whom I had admired and even revered, once a man whose absence from my life had been a wound that had never quite healed, and now the leader of a tribe of monstrosities who—within moments—no doubt intended to turn their attentions back to their victims and complete their slaughter.

I only realized belatedly that I had unslung my rifle. I didn’t have a target of any sort; it had just seemed the natural thing for me to do, to have it at the ready.

Now all of the Half-breeds had joined him, their howling and chanting sounding like some ancient rite that was long forgotten by modern man but easily remembered by creatures whose roots could be traced to humanity’s very beginnings. And then I saw William’s finger curling around the ring of one of the grenades.

He was about to pull it free. When he did that, within seconds, the grenade would detonate, setting off all the others, the gunpowder . . . the explosion would be massive. It would be the end of the Half-breeds.

It would be the end of my brother.

My hands were trembling, and I could feel tears welling up.

Then I became aware, out of the corner of my eye, of the last rays of the sun vanishing below the horizon line. And I remembered what Reaver had said about how much time was left before all traces of humanity were going to disappear.

At which point I realized the grenades hadn’t gone off.

I looked to my brother just in time to see his fingers slipping clear of the ring that would detonate the grenades. Then he let out a howl, and this was different from the rest. This one was pure, inhuman bestiality, and I knew that whatever there might have been left of my brother, it was now hopelessly and forever trapped inside this monstrous form, doomed to spend eternity begging for the one thing that only death would provide: release.

And I knew that within the next second or two, the Half-breeds would destroy anything and everything that stood in their path.

In one breath, I swung the rifle up, aimed it, and my hands were not trembling in the slightest, and whatever moisture there might have been in my eyes was gone. In the seething, jumping mass of fur and flesh that was the Half-breeds, I targeted one of the hand grenades and I fired. And as I did, I whispered, “I’m sorry.”

The bullet was across the distance in an instant and struck the sphere cleanly.

There was a brief glimpse of surprise on the face of the creature that had been my brother, then all the grenades erupted. William was blown apart instantly, and all the Half-breeds anywhere near him went up along with him. Seconds later, the fire spread to the pockets of gunpowder that had been layered just below the surface, and the detonations moved from one to the next with the speed of chain lightning.

The Half-breeds had been so caught up in their primitive ululations that it took them moments to realize what was happening and to react. It was those moments that cost them. By the time they started trying to get away, it was too late. They were being blown in all directions, enveloped in a huge fireball. Some of them were lifted up and carried by the impact, sent hurtling across space and slammed into walls with such force that one could actually hear the skeletons within shatter to pieces, and they collapsed to the ground, nothing more than dead or dying sacks of meat. Others erupted in flame and ran about screaming, as if that would somehow enable them to escape the fire that was consuming them; instead, of course, all that accomplished was to feed it faster. Some of them fell to the ground, trying to roll around and thus beat out the flames, but the damage was too extensive, and they would soon just roll to a halt and lie there while the fire devoured them. One of them actually managed to make it to a horse trough and fell in, enveloping himself in water. At that point I saw the captain, Thorpe, stride quickly forward, reach down, and keep the Half-breed’s head submerged. There was frantic splashing, with water cascading over the sides. It just caused Thorpe to bear down harder, and soon the thrashing ceased.

Then Thorpe shouted, “Tend to the fire and the remaining creatures!” as the explosions died off, but the flame kept going. It was a reasonable cause for concern. It would have been a hell of a thing if they had managed to destroy the enemy only to see the entirety of Blackholm reduced to ashes because the fire was burning out of control.

The people of Blackholm charged into action, sprinting out of the shelters they had taken and doing whatever was in their power to deal with the situation. Quickly, a bucket brigade was formed, and there was a line of men, soldiers and citizens together, passing buckets of water around as quickly as they could in order to douse the flames.

Meanwhile, some of the Half-breeds, astoundingly, were still moving. They’d been severely burned, but there was still some fight left in them. That wasn’t the case for long, though, as they were quickly dispatched by everything from bullets to the head from soldiers to an angry woman repeatedly staving in the head of one of them with a shovel while punctuating each blow with a lengthy torrent of abuse: “This . . . is . . . for . . . killing . . . my . . . husband . . . you . . . bastard!”

The entire process took about an hour. An hour of soldiers who had conquered the village working side by side with the people they’d conquered. An hour of hearing the final, pained, agonized howls of the Half-breeds. Every single one of the poor creatures had once been human, and it was quite likely that none of them deserved the hideous fates that had been handed to them. Certainly, my brother hadn’t. But nobody cared. Nobody gave a toss about the tragedy of these once-human monsters. All they cared about was that they were alive, and the monsters that had tried to kill them were not.

On one level, I could totally understand that mind-set. At that moment, though, I wasn’t thinking about understanding it at all. All I cared about was that my brother was dead; that I had killed him; and that all the people below were thrilled about it and celebrating with boundless joy.

I almost started shooting them because, at that moment, I hated them.

I hated them because their survival had come at my brother’s expense. I hated them because what had they done that was so marvelous, really, that they got to live while he died? What made them better? More deserving? Why did they get to be lucky and keep living, and have siblings they got to spend their lives with and know and love as adults?

All of those dark thoughts, all of them and more went through my head, as I sat upon the parapet, not having moved an inch from where I had been when I fired the shot that detonated the grenade. I had to think that even the townspeople didn’t fully understand what had happened. Perhaps they thought that one of the Half-breeds had simply been holding some hand grenades and accidentally set it off himself. They had no idea that one of them had still possessed sufficient humanity to want to sacrifice himself rather than become a monster permanently and was willing to take those like him along with him. They had no idea that I had been the one who had actually set off the grenade that triggered the rest of the explosions.

No, they had no idea at all. They were just so happy to be alive.

How I hated them all, and I felt a growling monster stirring deep within me that wasn’t all that dissimilar to the one that had overtaken my brother. It urged me to give in, to indulge myself, to make them feel some of the pain and sorrow that I was feeling, because really: Didn’t they have it coming?

Then a gentle hand was laid upon my shoulder.

I looked and saw that it was Page. There was a large lump on her head from where it had been banged around.

Once more, in that way she had, she seemed to gaze into my eyes and through them into my soul. Or at least she tried, because this time my soul was very far away, and she was staring only into darkness. She drew her head back in surprise, as if she’d been slapped across the face, then she looked at me with what seemed genuine concern.

“Are you all right?” she said.

I held her gaze, then, with great reluctance, released the pleasing mental image that had me picking off various villagers one by one with my rifle.

“I’m fine,” I said.

“Are you sure?”

“Yes, I’m sure. Are you okay?”

“I’m alive. And a little puzzled. What happened?”

There were a lot of ways that I could have put it, a lot of detail that I could have gone into. Instead, I boiled it down into four words.

“William saved your life.”

She took that in and nodded very slowly. “Well . . . that was a very decent thing of him to do.”

“He was a very decent man. I wish . . .” My voice caught for a moment. “I wish you could have gotten to know him better.”

“So do I.”

She draped an arm around me and pulled me close, and we sat there, leaning against the wall, not saying a word as the people below worked on cleaning up the mass of destruction and picking up with their lives. The remaining bodies of the Half-breeds were being dumped onto what was going to be a sizable pyre in order to rid themselves of the last of the creatures.

At one point, we turned and looked at each other at the exact same time. Our faces were inches away from each other.

I thought about kissing her.

She tilted her head and looked at me dubiously. “You weren’t thinking of trying to kiss me just now, were you?”

“Good Lord, no.”

“Because you know, back in the woods . . . I just did that to shut you up. You get that, right?”

“Of course.”

We went back to watching the pyre.