“I’m not sure,” Thanatos says, “but you won’t kill her.”
“I hate this,” Osiris says. “I’m out.” He leaps back into the earth and disappears.
Pluto takes a bit longer to process, but within five minutes, he’s gone, too.
Whitney’s still hiding under my arm, but she emerges when Thanatos is the only one left. “You’re really my ancestor?”
He bobs his head. “I am. I’m the reason you’re equal parts light and dark energy, or at least, I’m responsible for the dark half.”
“Then can you break this champion bond that Xolotl formed? Then I’d be free, and so would he.”
“I can certainly try,” Thanatos says.
A snarl rises up inside of me, clawing its way out. “You can’t have her.”
Both of them stare at me.
“She’s mine,” I say. “Not yours. You won’t terminate the bond.”
“But she’s not a good champion,” Thanatos says. “The light energy pulsing through her would keep her from ever understanding our role. She’ll always want to protect the humans, not harm them. She’ll wreck the balance you’re meant to create.”
“We’re working it out,” I say.
“No, you’re at least fifty percent diametrically opposed, which isn’t as bad as Lechuza and me, but just as doomed.” Thanatos beckons to her. “Come with me, girl. We’ll figure out what to do with the bond.”
I grip my broadsword and angle it toward him. “You will not take her.”
“How about you let her decide where she goes?” Thanatos turns toward Whitney.
I’m paralyzed for a moment. If she really is his child, he has a claim, and his magic would call to her. Could he take her from me? And if she wants to go, should I try to keep her anyway? The image of her slumped over haunts me. If she has a choice and I take it from her, I could be creating a slumped-Whitney. I can’t risk that—even thinking about letting her go makes me feel unsettled and strange, but slumped-Whitney’s worse.
The idea of handing her to Thanatos just makes me so angry. Angry, and also something else I’ve never felt before. I think humans would say I was scared.
I hate it.
It’s the worst feeling I’ve ever felt in my entire life.
But I sense that if I don’t let her choose, I’ll lose her anyway.
“Whitney, would you like to leave with Thanatos? Or stay with me?” For some reason, it feels like my entire future’s wrapped up in this one answer.
15
Whitney
Xolotl’s one of the fabled horsemen of the apocalypse.
His primary directive is to kill, and he won’t veer off course for me or anyone else. I thought maybe I could change him, but I know now that I can’t.
I made a plan with Leonid to be with him over the next few days, so they can assemble the witches who are willing to fight and all the shifters they can muster, so they have some hope of putting him back to sleep before he can lay waste to most of America in some misguided attempt to balance our society into a healthy one.
Or at least, I think it’s misguided.
The more time I spend with him, the more confused I find myself. I’d have sacrificed myself without a thought in the first few days that I knew him. I’d have done anything to stop him.
But our world is sick.
What if he’s right? What if humans need something dire, something terrible, so that they appreciate what they already have? What if it’s the lack of suffering amongst humanity that’s causing all the depression, anxiety, and other mental illness we’re all struggling with? What if we really will only savor the first amazing bite of ice cream when we don’t have a whole bowl sitting in front of us?
