Coyote kept mostly apart from the old gods, save for Cronus. The Titan had risen from beneath ruins in the Latin Quarter, destroying what remained of those buildings. Though a lumbering, mad giant, Cronus nevertheless was excellent company. He spoke in a low murmur, gazing into nothingness, rattling off stories about the days before days and the glory of the creation of Olympus. From time to time he spoke to gods and Titans who were not present, as though reliving scenes from his ancient life. He had come along because Ares had summoned him, as though he was some kind of attack dog, and Kitsune wondered what would become of Cronus when they joined the war.
A smile touched Kitsune’s lips-rare, these days. The gods had descended from Titans and they from beings born out of chaos. Perhaps by bringing these faded things to war, chaos would be the result. What a gift to Hunyadi that would be.
Then again, what were she and Coyote but tricksters? It might be that chaos was all that they could ever give to anyone.
Kitsune turned her back on the camp and continued along the river, breathing in the cool night and letting the sound of the Atlantic carry her where her legs, at the moment, could not. It brought her a little peace, and she could ask for nothing else-deserved nothing else.
“Evening, cousin.”
She paused and glanced around to find Coyote behind her. Kitsune could not be surprised that he had caught up to her so quickly, and without her hearing a step. It was their nature.
“Lost in your head again, I see,” he said.
Kitsune nodded. “I cannot seem to escape the predators in there. They wait for me every time I close my eyes.”
Coyote sighed and shook his head. His eyes were mischievous as always, but strangely gentle. “It isn’t healthy for our kind to think so deeply. Caprice is our great fault and our great salvation.”
“Trickster-philosopher, that’s a new one.”
“One of us has to practice a bit of awareness. Usually, I’d rely on you. But you’re not yourself.”
Kitsune couldn’t argue with that.
“How strange to have come to this moment,” she said. “Once, I despised you as the most devious, most cowardly, and least honorable of our kin.”
Coyote executed a courtly bow, half mockery and half sincerity. “And in those times, I worked hard to earn your scorn. But you and Blue Jay put aside caprice and whimsy to focus on the threat to all of us, and though it frightened me, I could no longer deny the truth.”
“Which is?”
“If I let the world die around me, I would be alone.”
A silence fell between them, full of understanding and sudden longing. Coyote wore his lopsided grin, but for once she did not think it foolish.
Then his eyes widened. His nostrils flared and he snarled, gaze locked on something just beyond Kitsune. Coyote bared fangs, ears pricking up, transforming even as he leaped past her.
Kitsune spun.
The Sandman stood on the riverbank, an arm’s length away. Terrible lemon eyes glowed sickly in the dark and the moonlight. His gray-black cloak seemed to swallow the night. The sound of shifting sand filled the air and she saw the way the grit of his substance undulated beneath his cloak. And then he flowed toward her, long, dreadful fingers reaching for her, jaws opening, tongue rasping across his teeth.
Coyote flew toward him, meaning to drive him away.
A hand darted up. The Sandman gripped his throat and Coyote lashed out with his paws, clawing the monster, digging furrows in him.
The Sandman pulled Coyote to him, long, rough tongue poking out, and sucked one of Coyote’s eyes into his mouth.
Coyote’s tortured scream echoed along the riverbank. The monster tossed him away like garbage and turned on Kitsune. His soft, insinuating laughter crept under the fox-woman’s skin, and she felt despair take hold of her heart.
“You turned my brother against me,” the Sandman whispered. “You and Bascombe. I have hunted you, trickster-bitch. Now you die. You, and then Bascombe. And I’ll bring him your eyes so that he knows that you are gone, and that you died screaming.”
Kitsune shook her head, terror shuddering through her. “I saw you die.”
“Destroyed. Not dead,” he rasped. “I cannot die. Not as long as children fight when sleep comes to take them.”
He extended a single, knife-thin finger. “Come. Your eyes are the loveliest green. I hunger for them.”
Coyote struggled to rise, laid back his head, and howled to the moon and to the gods. Kitsune heard shouts from the camp and the ground shook as Cronus began to move. But they would be too late. If she pulled her fur around her and became a fox, the Sandman would catch her easily. As a woman, she could fight for a few moments. They would be all that remained of her life.
I’m sorry, she thought, but couldn’t have said who the apology was meant for. Sand skittered toward her along the ground and then began to rise in a dancing breeze around her, scouring the exposed skin of her hands, face, and throat. She could feel it in the fur of her cloak. And she understood. He would strip the flesh from her bones.
First, though, the eyes.
Kitsune showed her tiny pointed teeth in a snarl. She hooked her fingers into claws.
“Take them,” she dared him.
The Sandman came toward her. She tried to fight him, tore at his body and his cloak, dragged fingers through his sand-flesh, reached for his eyes, but he batted her arms away. His knife-fingers tore her hood back and twisted in her long curtain of hair, and Kitsune screamed.
She hated herself for it, but she screamed.
Halliwell hid deep inside the Sandman. He had a tactile awareness of a body he no longer possessed. Still the sand seemed to flow over and around him. Nearby he could sense the presence of the Dustman, cold and angry and grim. When he had first learned he had become trapped behind the Veil-that he would never see his Sara again-he had felt like Alice down the rabbit hole. But this was far, far worse. This was a churning, rasping Hell.
His hands were stained with blood. Perhaps the Sandman’s murders had not been committed with Halliwell’s own hands, but the difference mattered little to him. He was a part of this barbaric, murderous thing. There in the maelstrom at the center of the Sandman, he was sure that he had felt their souls crying out as they died, felt their spirits brush against his own. As vicious and brutal as their murders had been, some part of him had been envious. They were free, while he was trapped with those eternal monsters.
The Sandman’s hands. The Dustman’s hands. Ted Halliwell’s hands.
He hated himself, now. Show a little backbone, Detective, he thought. There was a cruel bit of humor in there somewhere, but he hadn’t the heart to find it. Hadn’t the heart. There you go again. He hadn’t a heart or a backbone now, of course. But these were spiritual as well as physical things. Heart. Backbone. Courage.
There was a major disconnect in his brain. Courage wasn’t the absence of fear, he reminded himself. It was action in spite of fear.
Ted Halliwell visualized himself standing on the riverbank. He saw through the Sandman’s eyes, watched the water stream by, watched as they slipped toward the woman in the fox-fur cloak-Kitsune-and the man with whom she spoke.
He knew what would come next.
The Sandman had been looking forward to this moment ever since the three of them all rose together in this single form-sand and dust and bone, three beings in one. Kitsune had to die. Then the Sandman would travel to the dungeon where Oliver Bascombe was imprisoned, and in that darkened cell, they would murder the helpless man.
Halliwell stretched out his fingers. The ground felt solid beneath his feet. But there was what he saw through the Sandman’s eyes and what he saw in his mind. The sand still shifted around him as though he had been buried alive. He felt its weight and warmth and texture on skin he no longer had.