Author's Note: I'm a big fan of having fictional immortal/long-lived characters take a small part in historical events, just as a kind of cute li'l in-joke. Things like Duncan MacLeod's involvement in the Jacobite uprising, or Penance having a hand in accidentally cracking the Liberty Bell... or Nicnevin possibly being responsible for the Late Bronze Age Collapse of Western/Near Eastern civilization and its transition into the Greek Dark Ages.

Y'know, cute li'l stuff like that.

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"The Gloaming"

Trenton – 1984

Diùlt dutifully arrived in the room not long after Nicnevin departed. Measan, still guarding the iron door with Penance's little knife wedged in his waistband, took the opportunity to heap more insults and derision upon the boy. Diùlt, however, only focused on his work, laying out materials and arranging the room for the sacrifice. With neither Penance nor Diùlt paying Measan any attention the man reluctantly went back to his post after giving the boy one final slap to his face.

Penance watched Diùlt work, both of them silent as the man uncapped some vials of paint and put them beside Penance's body on the altar. He dipped a small brush in one of the bottles and it emerged with a vibrant blue tip. Diùlt somberly held it up before Penance and cocked his head at the boy; Penance answered the silent question by doing and saying nothing, which was good enough for the man. He set to work painting up the boy's face, neck and forehead with myriad gibberish symbols. Penance tried to follow the brush strokes in his head, but the resulting symbols he mapped out were as alien to him as ancient Sumerian.

Penance then realized there was a chance that that's exactly what the scribblings were. He found that rather funny, but he didn't smile.

When he finished Diùlt washed his brushes in the sink at the side of the room, sitting on a swivel stool with his back to Penance. The two of them were not alone, however. The man at the barred-up window still held his silent vigil there, but for now Penance ignored his presence. Instead the boy watched Diùlt work before finally speaking up.

"So how many of us have you brought to her, exactly?"

Diùlt's head tilted almost imperceptibly, but otherwise he appeared to ignore the boy.

"And how does it go, normally? Am I supposed to scream? Cry? Beg?"

Diùlt scrubbed his brushes; he said nothing.

"They do, don't they? We do, right?"

Diùlt wagged his brushes and set them to dry on a sheaf of paper towels. He still kept his back to Penance, and he still ignored the boy's words. That didn't sit right with Penance.

"Leanabh balbh!"

His shout brought Diùlt's head to center, but Penance had no intention of leaving it at that.

"I am a prince of the same court your mistress would be queen of," the boy barked. "You will speak with me!"

Diùlt carefully set the drying brush tips to one side on the sink. He lazily kicked one foot against the base of the sink, making his chair rotate to face the boy. The man leaned forward, one arm draped across his knees, and he stared down at Penance.

When Penance didn't immediately say anything Diùlt motioned with his free hand.

"What is it, exactly," he asked, "that you wish to discuss, Do-bhàis?"

Penance blinked at the man, then he looked off to one side.

"Uh, to be honest, I didn't really think that would work..."

Diùlt smiled; it was a joyless thing. He looked down at the altar Penance lay upon.

"To answer your question: yes. Some of them scream. Some of them cry. And beg?" Diùlt looked back at his drying brushes; he inched them together, making them into a perfectly ordered row. "Yes. Some do that, too. Some do nothing. Nothing but stare..." He looked back at the boy, and again he showed that joyless smile. "As to how many I've brought here? I don't keep track— 'score', if you'd call it that."

"No pride in it for you?" The boy sneered. "Not happy in your work?"

Diùlt crossed his arms.

"You didn't know her until she set her mind to this, did you? Didn't know her before, right?"

"Neither did you."

Diùlt shook his head.

"No. But I know enough. Enough to know this wasn't her first choice. Not her thousandth. There was a time she snubbed the Source entirely, you know, and went looking for her own answers. She walked the Earth, searching for a secret, and back then she figured the sword could dislodge it for her. That was apparently a time before swords were made of steel— hell, before they were even made of iron, I think. But from Thebes to Gaza she went, trying to 'dislodge' that secret. Her crusade brought her to the Egyptian delta— that was the final piece of the whole puzzle, she figured— but her sword was shattered there, and so the secret escaped her."

Diùlt played with fringe of his shirt, staring at one of his shoes.

"That's a story only spoken of by the fuadain," he explained. "Her old guard? They would never discuss such things."

Penance's brow ticked at that word; his brain cycled through all its half-dozen meanings before he settled on what was likely the proper translation, in context.

"'Strays'?"

Diùlt smirked.

"The two of you talked about me, did you? Suppose I should be flattered..."

"It wouldn't have ended in Egypt," Penance said. "Her 'campaign'. And I bet you know that—"

"What I know," Diùlt said, "Is that she didn't simply jump right into, well..."

"Serial child murder?" Penance tilted his head, teeth bared with his 'helpful' comment.

"'Harvesting'," the man countered. "The banal affairs of your deadly little 'court', remember? She doesn't care about the Game. Doubt she ever really did."

"Too bad," Penance grumbled, "'cause the Game cares about her."

Diùlt smirked at the boy's aggressiveness.

"You're a much better conversationalist than I imagined you'd be." he said. "You don't really have a reputation for talking."

"I've had practice speaking with people who've tied me up," the boy said. "You're not the first."

"I'm likely the last."

Penance drew a breath and rolled his eyes. He'd been so careful not to let that old Medici guy make a zinger like that, and now he goes and gift-wraps an easy line. Diùlt noticed the boy's frustration and it gave him a small chuckle.

"But if she fell to the Game? Well, that wouldn't bother her too much either, I don't think. Not as long as she accomplished her goal first. She'd sacrifice anything for that, immortality included."

"Give it to you if she could, huh?"

Diùlt nodded.

"I don't doubt it. A thousand years ago she'd likely have given her followers all her powers in exchange for a hundred years of youth. By the time she met you? I figure she'd have been willing to throw it all away for just a handful of years. And..." The man's smile fell, and in his black eyes Penance saw two oily pools of unease.

"And now?" Penance whispered.

When Diùlt didn't answer the boy answered for him.

"Hours? Minutes? Seconds? When does it stop being worth it?"

"The quest is always worth it," the man answered. "What does one have without it?"

"What's your quest?" Penance raised his head up, but Diùlt gently put a finger to the boy's brow and eased it back down, mindful of the setting ink.

"When she gave me my life," Diùlt said, "my new life, she gave me my quest, too. And it's hers. It's that simple."

"You get to just 'follow orders' and say you've got no choice, then?"

Diùlt cocked his head at the iron door behind Penance.

"Measan out there, well, he's not really such a bad sort," he said. "But he acts the way he does around you because he's obsessed with his past: correcting his ancestor's mistake. I put my past life behind me entirely, for her. That was a choice—"

"And now you're choosing to help her try to relive her past. Same thing—"

"After tonight we're all done spinning our wheels," Diùlt said. "That's all I know."

"And you really believe that?" Penance asked.

"She does," Diùlt said. "And that's all that matters."

When Penance's confrontational look made it clear he found that answer inadequate Diùlt cocked his head at the boy. There was pointed venom in his words.

"What was your quest, anyway?"

This caught the boy off-guard. He looked up at the ceiling for a moment before answering, his voice far more subdued.

"'Redemption'. At least I thought it was, once. Now I'm not really so sure."

"And now that you don't know," Diùlt said, "do you really have anything else left to do here?"

Penance frowned at this, but it wasn't so much a sad frown. He wasn't going to play along with the man's little game, questioning how many sunrises was really enough for one person, or when and if a life could ever be said to stop having meaning. He'd been asking those questions since before Diùlt's great-great grandparents learned to walk. No, Penance's frown was one of frustration, not sadness, because by now he was starting to understand something very fundamental about Diùlt.

At first he naturally considered weaponizing Nicnevin's little tidbit about Diùlt's pre-immortality, playing him against the woman in some manner that might somehow see Penance freed. At first he had been worried about how to convince Diùlt he was telling the truth, and that Nicnevin had been lying to him. He'd weighed all the myriad ways the man might take the information, and what he'd be likely to do with it. But now, by the fatalism of the man's words and the tone of his questioning, Penance realized that nothing he could say about the issue would really matter.

"You're not in this for immortality, are you?" The boy asked.

Diùlt didn't react to his words, but that was reaction enough.

"You don't really care about that at all, do you?" Penance said.

"I imagine it's hard enough holding on to a quest over the course of one lifetime," the man answered. "More than that? It'd require either a really feeble mind or unrelenting iron will, depending on how you look at it."

"I'm guessing you don't have a feeble mind," Penance grumbled.

Diùlt shrugged.

"I like to think that my occupation is slightly above the average creep trying to lure children into his panel van with candy. One does need a good head on his shoulders for my kind of work."

"I suppose you're right, then," Penance said.

"About what?"

Penance looked up at the ceiling. A bitter scowl marred his face.

"Immortality just isn't for you. 'Cause you've got no will in you at all, let alone an 'iron' one."

Diùlt gave the boy another little joyless smile. He sighed, rubbing one hand over his knee. Eventually he stood up. With a perfunctory bow of his head to the boy he moved for the iron door.

"For the record," Diùlt said, "I wouldn't ever call you 'feeble-minded' either, so..."

Before he could knock on the door Penance responded.

"I was wrong about my own 'quest', so there's that, anyway."

"Well, there's fools out there who say the steps of the journey mean more than the ends aspired. You can believe that, if it helps."

"Guessing you don't?" Penance said.

Again Diùlt flashed his joyless little smile.

"No. I do monstrous things as a means to an end. And if the end doesn't matter? Well, that would just make me a... you know."

Penance sighed.

"Yeah, I know."

Diùlt knocked on the door and called for Measan. Penance said one last thing to him before the door squealed open.

"To answer your question..."

Diùlt looked back at Penance, who craned his head back to meet the man's eyes, upside down.

"...I've got enough left to do here," the boy said. "And I won't stop fighting until I've finished it."

Diùlt wordlessly considered the boy's statement, again giving Penance a small nod. He moved over to the tabletop containing Galabeg and the carlancas and pushed the metal collar to one side, exposing the gleaming gold metal of Ikey Boggs' cigarette lighter. Beside that was Penance's last cigarette, somewhat misshapen from all the action in the park, but still intact. Diùlt held it up before the boy, his eyes questioning. Penance stared at it for a moment, but eventually he shook his head.

"That I'll have later," the boy whispered.

Diùlt put the misshapen thing back down and produced a cigarette of his own. He lit it and expelled a plume of smoke from his nostrils. He took the thing from his mouth and gestured at the boy, as if somberly lifting a champagne glass.

"Well: here's to the 'ends', then."

X

X

X

One night, around Christmas of last year, Russell and Tyrone had worked with Whip on a little plan to help keep themselves warm through the winter. It involved a dumpy little local movie theater and a broken door bar at its rear exit. Their plan didn't last long, and management got the door fixed in due time, but for a few weeks they were able to warm themselves up and sleep comfortably in the back rows of the place. The movies on the screen were just lights and noise to them, for the most part.

But one of them did stand out to her. It was a gangster picture called Scarface. She figured the title was supposed to refer to the protagonist— who did in fact have a scar on his face— but no one ever actually called him that. She wasn't a huge fan of the film, mind you, but the ending left an impression on her: the protagonist takes on a whole army of men in his palatial residence single-handed with a massive machine gun and a grenade launcher.

From the second Whip saw that wall of weapons in the basement she had visions of going all "Tony Montana" on whatever awaited her upstairs, moving room-to-room with a black automatic rifle in each hand and a bandolier of grenades dangling from her chest.

The first thing to put a damper on that notion— other than Whip remembering how that movie ended— was the padlock on the iron gate: it was a combination lock, not keyed, so the late Mister Slappy's keyring wouldn't avail her, and she figured she didn't have time to scroll through ten-thousand different iterations to get it unlocked. Briefly she considered the pistol in her hands, placing the barrel against the lock and eyeing the matchup in her head. It worked in movies, didn't it? But somehow the girth of that solid metal lock and the potential force of the handgun seemed mismatched to her. After further thought she came to the realization that even if she could shoot the lock off she'd most likely ricochet a bullet right into her belly.

Or somewhere even more unpleasant.

This was also around the time her head started to cool and she began to think rationally about her situation. Gearing up in military-grade weapons for an all-out assault on anything was a bad idea for a whole host of reasons, including the fact that the gear in question— ammunition included— likely weighed as much as she did. There was also the fact that, being wholly untrained in how to actually use any of this stuff, she was more a danger to herself than any enemy.

"Safest place to be with my fool ass workin' this stuff would be right in front of the barrel," she sighed.

Whip turned from the wall of weapons with reluctance and instead inspected the rest of her surroundings. The basement door seemed pretty heavy. It was metal, and a large bar and latch kept it secured on her side. She guessed that wherever she was the cult really didn't want just anyone to be able to go snooping around the place and discover that they had enough weapons to invade a small Caribbean country. Of course a heavily barred door was a double-edged sword in this situation.

"No worries about 'visitors'," she grumbled.

That was a fine thing, certainly, but holing up in here wouldn't help her save Penance. She set to pacing, trying to work out some kind of plan. At one point she accidentally bumped her shoe against Mister Slappy's pale body; she shuddered and turned away from the thing, resting her hands on the console bank. She bowed her head, eyes closed, and then she drew a breath and opened them. Her eyes lighted on a certain switch on the console and she read the words beside it.

The girl's sour frown slowly turned into a full-fledged grin, and it was wide enough to make even an angel smile.

X

X

X

Measan assisted in performing one last inspection of Penance's restraints. Although he wasn't particularly gentle Penance set his mind to ignoring the man's abuses, which only seemed to rile him up even more. And for the life of him Penance still couldn't see much family resemblance between Measan and Abhag. Maybe it was just too long since he'd seen the guy. A photograph was out of the question, naturally, and Penance doubted that Abhag ever sat for a painting.

But then who knows?

He was about to ask Measan about this (and no doubt receive another volley of punches somewhere particularly unpleasant) when the rusty ring of a telephone blared from beyond the iron door, out in that amber-draped 'Sunset Lounge'. Measan bounded out to catch the call as Diùlt snapped Penance's surgical mask back into place. He took a fistful of cotton balls and picked up a bottle of ether.

Measan moved back into the room and grabbed Diùlt by the shoulder; he'd barely dripped more than a teaspoon of solution onto the cotton balls before he was interrupted.

"Lobby boys have a problem." Measan whispered. "Fire alarm's just gone off on over a dozen floors— looks like they're false alarms, all of 'em— but they can't cancel it."

Diùlt squinted, setting the ether bottle aside.

"Well, the master controls are down in the armory, aren't they? What's Slaic got to say about it?"

"That's just it: we've got no contact with the basement. No radio or phone."

"Radio's always been wonky down there, but the phone?"

Diùlt again squinted, but then he blinked.

Measan tilted his head, processing Diùlt's reaction.

"You don't actually think..."

Diùlt arched his brow, a quizzical frown on his face.

"The gi—"

Measan socked Diùlt's shoulder and motioned to Penance. The next words he spoke were in Greek.

"We're not sure. The lobby crew is contacting police and fire, trying to call them off. And they're sending a team to the armory now."

Diùlt 'weighed' the cotton balls in his hand, absently raising and lowering them as he thought about this development. When he answered it was also in his native tongue.

"Does the Banr—"

"She's already started the recovery ritual," Measan shook his head. "They're pulling all the athames out of her body now, but..."

"That'll take time." Diùlt nodded, gears in his head working full-tilt. The man quickly flipped Penance's mask up and shoved the cotton balls underneath, laden only with that very small portion of ether.

This would not go without consequences.

"I'm going down to the armory," Diùlt said.

"But the team's already on the way."

"Worst case scenario that girl might be dug in there as snug as a tick," Diùlt said. "Although how the hell Slaic botched his job so bad I couldn't say. But if she is holed up there then she'll need some convincing to unlock that door. And I can be pretty convincing, all things considered."

"Luring kids with candy?" Penance asked. "Weighed in troy ounces?"

Both men quickly looked over at the boy, their eyes wide. They probably weren't focusing so much on the boy's perfect pronunciation and phrasing, but all the same Penance felt at least a little satisfied with himself. After all, he hadn't spoken any Greek for the better part of two centuries.

"'Beware Diùlts bearing gifts'." He gave his words a singsong cadence.

Measan grit his teeth, switching back to English.

"Polyglot little fucker."

He popped Penance in the temple with a closed fist. It didn't make the boy smell strawberries, but then Measan didn't quite hit the right spot, either. Penance was about to ask him to try again, but then he thought better of it.

Measan looked back at Diùlt.

"I'll guard this little shit while you're down there." He smiled, looking down at the boy. "And if his girl did do something stupid, see that the boys cut something very important off of her body. That way we can bring it up here to show little Penance the law of consequences."

Both Penance and Diùlt made the same initial face at this statement, but Diùlt brushed the comment aside and darted through the door. Measan had one last chuckle at the boy's expense before also leaving the room. The iron door squealed shut behind him with a resounding boom, leaving him alone, save for that silent man at the window.

Penance waited for the echo of the slamming door to fade. He stared up at the ceiling, motionless and quiet for a time. The ether he drew into his lungs was enough to drench his nerves in numbness, but not enough to addle his head. He lay there, his breaths slow and calm, until finally he had the courage to speak.

"How long were you planning on just standing there like a statue?"

The man at the window turned his head and looked over at the boy. A wry smile formed on his face.

"How long were you plannin' on lyin' there like a li'l babe in his crib?"

The man ambled across the room, coming to Penance's side. He walked slowly— leisurely— hands clasped behind his back, as if taking a pleasant stroll through a blooming garden.

"When a small boy comes across a powerful pagan's cult, well, the cult usually wins."

Uallas rested his hands on the board at Penance's side. Those long ropes of unkempt gray hair dangled like flotsam from his head, ever the eyesore. The man looked down at the boy, and the off-green hazel in his eyes seemed to burn with golden light from the barred window.

"Of course," he said, "some boys, well..."

The old codger smiled one of those smiles of his— that reassuring thing that Penance would've paid the world for all those years ago— and for an instant he felt himself a 'newborn' again: a rookie apprentice working the forge and learning his trade.

Well, trades.

He must've shown it— must've returned the man's smile wide enough to be detectable even under the surgical mask— because Uallas' smile widened in return and he scoffed, stepping back away from the altar and facing the iron door.

"Thought to call you 'flath beag'," Uallas said. The man shook his head. "I've neither the right nor the reason for that, anymore. Nothing 'little' about you now, is there? Not where it counts, at least."

"That's a reason," Penance answered. He looked over at the man's back. "And the right?"

Another scoff.

"How long was it that you were at Letterewe? Do you remember? Only two years, wasn't it?"

"A little less, I think," Penance answered. He again looked up at the ceiling. "That's not true. I know it. I could count the days. All of them."

Uallas looked back over his shoulder.

"Canaan, found." He smiled and nodded. "Memorable enough, wasn't it? And just two years out of my 600-plus?" The man wandered back to the altar and ran one hand over the side of the board. "But to me they mattered as much as the rest. More, even. But in the end all I ever did was bookend your own life with my sins, didn't I? Not much of a teacher, eh? "

Penance shrugged.

"Odds were always against me to live even one lifetime, weren't they? Anything I learned from you— and everything I learned from you— well, it helped to get me around half-a-dozen, didn't it?"

"I'd never any doubt of that, Penance," Uallas said. "None at all."

Penance blinked, looking to one side as he wrinkled his nose, inching the cotton balls away from his face.

"You doubted enough not to tell me about the Gathering, didn't you?"

Uallas' smile fell and he looked down at the marred board beneath Penance, gripping the slashed-up wood tight.

"It was never that I thought your life would be so short—"

"Then why?" Penance demanded.

Uallas sighed.

"None could know of the day or the hour," he said. "Not even Nicnevin. Although I always felt in my heart the truth of the Gathering— what it would be— I might have had an old fool's hope: the thought that a thousand, maybe ten thousand years might pass between Letterewe and then. Long enough for you to live your fill. Maybe I had a more childish hope, too: that somehow without me speaking of it, well..."

"I'd miss it." Penance looked up at the ceiling, a sudden understanding slugging his soul. "I'd... just avoid it?"

Uallas smiled. It was a sad smile.

"Well, now we both know how 'insistent' the Source can be, do we not?"

The boy nodded. He swallowed uneasily and glanced at the man before looking away.

"About 'living my fill'…" He drew a breath and looked down at his cocooned body. "The thing is that I feel old, Uallas. I am old, where it counts, at least. I don't know what 'living one's fill' is— I guess no one really does— but I've lived a lot longer than lots of people who deserved to outlive me, if they'd wanted."

Uallas lost his sad smile. He sighed and stared down at the floor.

"Cadha..." Penance swallowed, willing his voice to have strength. "Struana—"

"You'll not say their names," Uallas demanded.

Penance looked up at the man, startled by his harsh tone.

"You'll not say their names with any breath that lays blame where you've laid it, Penance: where it's lain for far too long."

"I—"

"Cadha and Struana's fates were not your fault, child." Uallas looked up at the boy. "They were mine, entirely."

"You're just gonna tell me things that I want to hear, huh?" Penance looked up at the ceiling. "That's being about as useful as an undigested bit of beef, isn't it?"

The man's somber face lifted with a playful smile.

"That Dickens fellow was a wonder, wasn't he? I'd like to have been able to read him, myself. Of course you always did prefer Oliver Twist to Christmas Carol, didn't you?" Uallas sighed. "But then sometimes the very notion of 'redemption' can be a harder a thing to swallow, can it not?"

Penance grit his teeth.

"Harder than a bit of beef, at least."

Uallas chuckled, slapping one hand down on the altar.

"So I'm still just a fanciful figment of your ailing gray matter, eh? Well, you heard Nicnevin mention the same kind of 'visitors', did you not?"

"And Nicnevin is completely bat-shit insane. Bad example."

The man arched one eyebrow and nodded, again chuckling.

"Well, I'd prove it to you if I could. Maybe unwrap you from that fancy swaddlin' cloth..."

Penance smirked.

"Do that, and then maybe get me an acetylene torch for the door, and then I'll be a believer."

Uallas looked back over at the massive iron door and sauntered over to it, looking it up and down. He put his hands to his hips, nodding in appreciation.

"She is a fine piece of craftsmanship, at that. Couldn't fashion much finer bolts myself. Not too much finer, anyway." He looked over his shoulder at the boy, a wry smirk on his face. "Should I unlock it for you, do you think?"

"Mmmm." Penance's smirk widened. "And bring up a squad of Marines to come get me, while you're at it."

Again Uallas chuckled. He ambled back to Penance's side.

"Even if I got out of here..." Penance swallowed, shaking his head. "Even if I got away he's still out there. I..." The boy grit his teeth and shook his head.

"That blackguard I cannot help you with, Penance. He's your affair, entirely. He has to be."

The boy furrowed his brow, drawing a stern breath through his nose.

"Implying you can help me here? What's the point?"

Uallas reacted to Penance's anger with a soft smile.

"To the point? Your situation does seem hopeless. Completely."

Penance looked over at the man, blinking. Uallas' smile widened.

"But then you know about me and 'hopeless causes', don't you?" The man again set his hands on the board beneath the boy's body. "No one alive or dead has the right to ask any more of you than what you've given in your life, Penance. And I know better'n most the ageing the comes with our immortality: the wear and tear that secretly sets into our bones, weighing us down. You coming to Letterewe took centuries off my life; it made my last years feel less leaden with that weight. But that weight comes to us all, and when it sets in it seldom lifts. Nicnevin calls us all 'shroudless' but that was never the truth of things. Time is its own winding sheet, and sooner or later it draws itself over all, immortal or not."

The man looked back over at the door, his eyes filled with sorrow.

"It cocooned her up in its folds many years ago. Long before you met her. Before I met her, I'd figure. She wrapped herself up in that impossible dream because that's all she's got left. And she thought that cocoon would mean 'change' for her, but it didn't. All it meant was death. Her immortality stopped being 'immortality' from then, on. Now it's more akin to 'undeath'."

Uallas ran one hand over Penance's wrapped-up shoulder; the boy felt nothing from his touch.

"I know that you're old, Penance. And I know that you're tired. But then you're not so cocooned, are you?"

The boy arched his brow. He wriggled his wrapped-up limbs around.

"Metaphorically, you little shit!"

Penance chuckled. He craned his neck and stared back at the iron door. Uallas kept his eyes on the boy.

"You meant it when you said you had at least something left to do here, did you not? Not vengeance; not revenge. That was never really you, was it? Because you used the monster inside you, and you used it well all your life. But you never let it use you; you never became it, entirely."

The boy's eyes grew more serious.

"You've a damsel in distress to consider, do you not?" Uallas asked.

"Sounds like she's doing better than I am," Penance grumbled. "At least for the moment."

"And if she escapes? Would not your blackguard make good on his threat to her?"

The boy narrowed his eyes.

"Yes," he whispered.

"Again, I can't tell you how to manage him," Uallas lifted a hand in the air, shrugging. "Such is not my place— cannot be. But your conflict here with Nicnevin is my doing, all things considered, and so I can tell you what you're going to need if you want to manage this, here and now."

The man spread his hands, motioning all around, voice rising. Penance looked back at the man, waiting while the booming echo of his voice faded. Uallas gave the boy his sad little smile. In the creases of his careworn face a thousand regrets stood guard on every fold and blemish. Through all that pain, however, he managed that small smile.

"You need the monster, Penance. You'll need it just this one last time, if you can manage it. Twilight's falling over all— the monster included— but you'll need to loose him from the pen once again."

Penance grit his teeth and stared down at his chest.

"I always hated that you needed it in the first place," Uallas said. "You deserved so much better from life than that. But the life you made— that you lived? I'm prouder of that than I ever was all the cunning and skill you needed to keep it."

Uallas reached out and set his weightless hand to Penance's head; he ran his fingers over the boy's scalp, disturbing not a single hair.

All the same that familiar warm shock danced along the boy's spine.

"We say 'there can be only one'," Uallas stepped back from the altar. "And we think we know what we mean with such blustering pablum. We do think so highly of ourselves, we immortals..."

"That's our law though, isn't it?" Penance turned his head away from the man. "That's what was going through my head on that day, you know? That's all I was thinking about when... when I—"

"I never saw hide nor hair of the monster, then, Penance." Uallas said. "Not on that day, when you claimed my head. Not when you—"

"Defended myself?" Penance scoffed, setting his teeth together to hold his emotions at bay. "That wasn't 'defense'. That was... I just could've... could've gone—"

"And you didn't. You didn't because of one key reason—"

"'Cause I was angry, and I wanted... I wanted you to—"

Footsteps. Uallas circled the altar and knelt down, meeting Penance face-to-face. The boy thought to turn his head back the other way and avoid the man's gaze, but Uallas set his fingers along the tip of the boy's chin, cupping it. Penance's head did not move.

He didn't exactly know why that was: his choice, or something else entirely.

"Well, now, we both know that's not true." The man spoke with a gentle tone, eyes locked on the boy like lasers. "You killed me because I told you to kill me, Penance. It was one last kindness, of a sort, and one of countless consequences of my own failings I've saddled you with. It's what I had to ask of you that no one should ever ask of the likes of you. Nicnevin and I— and all our ilk— we're like demons in the unholy fold. You've grit to spare on you but you're not of that sort. Stained, maybe, but a soiled cherub's still a cherub."

"You're the only one who'd ever call me that."

"We've each of us read enough of the Good Book to have an idea what a Cherubim really looked like, and what they could really do. Now, you don't have a flaming sword on you, or the like—"

"Or even a knife." Penance drew a weary breath and began rotating his right hand about in its wrappings, methodically twisting it about for any give.

"—but you've your wits and your grit. One figures that's always been enough for you. Why's it any different now?"

The boy arched his right eyebrow and smirked, giving off a wry chuckle. He wasn't presently in the mood to count all the reasons it was different. He could start by estimating the number of cultists that had to be lurking around whatever place he was being held. Words like 'battalion' and 'division' sprang to mind. Still he moved his right hand, twisting it about in greater circles.

"You'd think we'd all be so much smarter, being so much older, wouldn't you?" Penance asked. "That we'd stop making the mistakes we do. That we'd at least... be able to understand each other better."

Uallas leaned against the altar, arms crossed.

"'Supermen', flawless in form and function, huh?" He shook his head. "A fool's dream, as sure as Nicnevin's desire. We can only pretend that the centuries hone us into such creatures..."

"But underneath it all we're both just men, right?" Penance sighed. He found enough movement in his hand to twist it about and snap his thumb bone in two. "You'd think we'd learn to talk, at least. Communicate. Like with Clara: I couldn't tell her what I wanted to tell her— about Black Hat, and all that— and she couldn't just outright tell me... well, what she really wanted." Penance shook his head. "These past years I've thought of her as a snake trying to get the better of me, but really..."

"It was a perverse win-win for her, doing what she did." Uallas nodded. "But being driven to those lengths? No, she didn't have to make that choice, if she'd only been more forward."

"And me more open." Penance narrowed his eyes as he tried yanking his hand free of the straitjacket, feeling only unyielding resistance even with his snapped thumb. He started performing more 'dramatic' movements.

"All of us have done the wrong thing for the right reasons, at times." Uallas circled the altar, standing behind Penance's head. "We can say we play at villainy or at sainthood, but in the end we're as flawed and common as the average mortal rube. All of us bear our scars— our cracks. You've more than your fair share, but you're still who you are, and because of who you are you still have a chance."

"The 'Rabid Fox'?" Penance scoffed, shaking his head as he viciously twisted his right hand in its restraints, snapping more bones. "Guess I'm lucky I carry a fox's head and not a rabbit's foot around with me; the 'collective they' might've ended up calling me the 'Raging Rabbit'."

"The 'Hot-tempered Hare' has a nicer ring to it, I think."

Penance laughed, and Uallas joined him.

"The 'Bothered Bunny'." The boy winced as his hand dug into the leather cuff securing it inside the straitjacket; his skin began ripping off at the wrist like a shed glove, the blood as good as coating of WD-40.

"The 'Bilious Buck'."

The boy laughed through the pain, forcing what used to be his hand further out from the folds of the straitjacket. Still he laughed as the misshapen, bloodied mess of a limb emerged from the cloth cocoon. He splayed it out to one side, feeling the pins and needles in his upper arm even as the ruined hand below burned with an unholy fire. He panted through the surgical mask, sweat dripping down his brow and pooling in the small crevasses of his ears.

Uallas, standing over his head, whispered to him even as Penance kept his eyes screwed shut.

"You're who you are, Penance, and it's not the 'Rabid Fox'. That was never really you, and it isn't you even now. And what you are..."

The boy said nothing, still panting as he felt the skin of his hand 'resealing' itself around his finger's tendons and the bones of his wrist.

"Is tu mo flath beag."

Tears formed in the corners of Penance's screwed-shut eyes. He slowed his breaths, drawing a deeper allotment of air with each one.

"And over your destiny, lad," Uallas whispered, "you've proven that you always have been and ever shall be king."

The boy's shut eyes didn't shed their tears. He waited, patient, until the threatening clouds subsided, and when his eyelids popped open those tears merely added themselves to the watery surface of his eyes. That red bulb still dangled on its chain above him, and the room lay empty and quiet.

Penance reached up and grabbed his surgical mask, ripping it off his face and scattering the cotton balls in all directions. He worked at freeing his other hand, worming out of the top of his restraints and then working on his legs. When he'd finally finished that he moved to roll off the altar, and his numb muscles couldn't handle the task. He went crashing to the floor, thumping his skull against the hardwood surface.

"Strawberries." He chuckled, coughing on a sawdust cloud.

Eventually he managed to work his way to his feet. He massaged the needles and pins out of his legs, stretching to and fro with a groggy and clumsy countenance. Part of his restraints still clung to his body— a strap around his chest with a connecting piece running down around his waist, with another small strap that once ran up under his crotch, now dangling behind him like a limp and soggy tail. He ignored these, instead slowly moving to the table beside the door. He picked up Ikey Boggs' gold-plated lighter and the bent cigarette, looking at them as if in a daze. He touched the carlancas collar, feeling the point of one of its many barbs, then he reached out for Galabeg.

"Some help you were," he grumbled.

Penance stuffed the fox's head into his pocket and shuffled over to the iron door. He approached it and put one hand to the metal. He pushed on it and it swung open, just as silent as if its hinges were dripping with oil.

He stumbled out beyond the door, following the sound of a voice. A short way down the narrow hall Measan stood with his back to the boy, one arm resting on the metal frame of a workman's phone drilled to the wall.

"Well what about all the C-4 they used for the bridge distraction? Or the stuff in the safehouse? Isn't that still there? Just pile it all on the door and— yeah, yeah, I know. Well it's not my fault that police and fire aren't buying the story. That god-damned city council's had it out for us for years, now!"

Penance stumbled forward, moving toward Measan at a steady pace.

"And you say that all the welder's torches are— fuck, of course. Perfect. Brilliant. Fine place to put them all: the god-damned basement! Call me if anyone can make any actual progress down there, all right? Fine."

Measan grumbled and turned around, slamming the phone back down in its cradle on the wall.

Penance plucked his little knife from its place on the man's belt, deftly grasping it and then slicing upwards in one graceful, lightning-fast motion.

Measan barely had time to look down and register the boy's presence when he grabbed at his throat with one hand, his eyes widening to saucers. A funny look came over his face— some kind of supreme and ineffable puzzlement— and it lasted a good two seconds before he faltered to his knees and opened his mouth. He gasped like a fish for two whole empty breaths, and on the third the volcano erupted. He blew a hot mess of blood from his mouth and it cascaded down his chin and neck, although by then the fissure across his neck had opened and sent its own river of crimson rushing out.

Penance's face and neck took a healthy coating of that barfed-up blood but the boy reacted as if he'd just been misted with a light spray of good cologne. The hot blood blurred those blue symbols on his face into a haphazard mess. Penance drew a long breath and tilted his head, considering the gurgling man on his knees before him.

"You know something?" Penance pointed at Measan. "I think I'm starting to see that family resemblance, now."

Measan's panicked eyes lost their focus and his hand slipped away from his neck. The river of blood broke from him in full as he fell to one side and collapsed on the floor. He made one last hard, gurgling cough before finally going still.

The boy stepped over the dead man as if walking over a fallen log. He wandered out into that wide corridor with its amber-draped windows on either side. Penance went to one of the windows and pressed his face to it; he could barely see through the tarp covering, at least enough to know he was a good twenty stories or so above the ground. He checked the telephone Measan had been using, but it didn't look like it was able to reach an outside line. The only other point of interest was what looked like a sound system in one corner, near the entrance to the altar room. Someone had taped a note to one of the controls, and it was written in an angry hand:

"This system broadcasts through all the cathair's speakers! Get permission before using!"

Penance turned his attention to the far door at the other end of the corridor. His mind pored over a thousand different things at once, and when he felt his blood grow hot he willed his body still. He set to pacing back and forth, head bowed in concentration, struggling to lift the fog from his head and get his thoughts all together.

At one point his foot caught on a small hole in the floor and he stumbled. Penance went back to this little hole and looked down into it with a forlorn frown.

And from that hole another frown met his.

The boy blinked. Slowly he looked up, first to that lone door across the corridor, and then back at the sound system. Then he looked back down at the little hole in the floor, only this time he wasn't frowning.

This time he wore a smile that would scare the legions of hell, itself.

Nothing blasphemous about that, he reckoned.