Of course, if Death awoke, perhaps it was God who woke him. I cannot recall what woke me, only that it was time.
Ana murmurs in her sleep, then shifts. Without intending to, I move over to her and kneel at her side.
I brush her hair back from her face, my thumb stroking her temple.
I didn’t know it would be like this. That it could be like this. I had seen humans’ hate, and I had felt the depths of it, but I never imagined they could love this deeply. That I could love this deeply.
It’s frightening and it’s making me obsessive.
“Nothing will happen to you,” I breathe. “On my very existence, I swear it.”
Death can come, but he will not take my Ana.
My brother doesn’t come that day or the one that follows—or even the one that follows that. It takes him two weeks to arrive in Taubaté. But the moment he does arrive, I know it.
His power detonates, the force of it so strong that I drop the dagger I was sharpening.
In an instant, the entire city of Taubaté is just gone, humans dropping dead where they stand. I sense their lifeforces all snuffed out like a candle. Thanatos doesn’t have to touch them to kill them—he doesn’t even need to make their flesh wither away as I must. He simply wills their souls to leave their bodies, and they do.
It’s that easy for him.
I’m still reeling from the display of power when I realize—
“Ana.”
All at once, I rise to my feet, the kitchen chair clattering to the ground behind me.
“Ana!” This time I shout her name. And then I’m racing through the house, panic rising like a swell within me. “Ana!”
What if she’s dead? What if he took her and—
She comes running out of our bedroom. “What’s wrong?” she says, breathless, her eyes wide with worry.
At the sight of her, alive, my legs buckle, and I fall to my knees.
“Famine?” Now she’s the one who sounds afraid.
She runs over to me. I catch her by the waist and hold her close, my face pressed against her stomach.
Alive, I remind myself again.
“I thought he took you,” I say against her.
“Who?” she says, her fingers slipping through my hair. She tilts my face so that I’m looking up at her.
“Death.” Even as I speak his name, my fear begins to rise all over again.
If he didn’t kill Ana, it’s because he has some plan for her. A plan I want no part of.
“He’s here?” she says.
I nod.
Even now I feel him like a pulse off in the distance, though I can’t sense precisely where he is. He must be keeping to the sky, where he knows I can’t pinpoint him.
“And he’s close,” I say. I don’t bother telling her that everyone else is gone.
The expression is wiped clean from her face.
I take a deep breath and stand. I’ve gone over this moment every day for the past two weeks. What to do, what Ana’s to do.
“Listen to me carefully,” I tell her now. “I want you to hide far away, beyond the fruit trees.”
“But you said—”
I said a lot of things in the last two weeks, some of them lies and some of them truths. Amongst them all, I told her that running and hiding were pointless, which they are. Death knows all souls. He’d find us. He’d find her.
“Fuck what I said. If you stay here, he will kill you,” I say. “That is what he does.”
It’s not the complete truth. Thanatos could just as easily kill her here as he could several kilometers away. The actual truth is that I want Ana to be far away when I face my brother because I want his focus to be on me and me alone.
“What will he do to you?” she asks. Her voice wavers.
“I’ll be fine.” Now I am telling the truth.
“Can he kill you?” she asks.
Can Death himself remove me from the face of the earth?
God help me, but—
“Yes.” I wouldn’t die, but it would be the end of my existence in this form.
“I’m not leaving your side,” she says fiercely.
I feel a swell of love so sharp it’s almost painful.
“Damn you, Ana,” I say, “don’t make me force you away.”
Emotions flicker across her face too rapidly for me to follow.
“I’m not leaving you,” she says stubbornly.
This woman of mine.
I pull her in close and kiss her, my mouth rough on hers.
“I’m not going to die,” I tell her. “He’s my brother, and I know how to handle him. I cannot, however, face him while worrying about you.”
“I am not a liability, Famine, and I’m not going to let him …”
She keeps talking, but I don’t hear her words.
She’s not going to back down. Damn her and her stubbornness.
Before Ana can finish making her point, I scoop her up and carry her outside.
“Famine, put me down.” She tries to wriggle out of my arms.
Only once we’re outside do I set her back down.
Ana huffs, pushing a stray curl out of the way. “Do not manhandle—”
Before she can finish, I flick my wrist. In seconds, a soft, waxy-leafed bush bursts from the earth, twining itself around her as it grows.
Ana’s been a victim of this trick often enough to know she’s not going to like it.
“Famine,” she hisses. “What are you doing?”
“Hiding you,” I tell her, “because you won’t do it yourself.” As I speak, a line of plants burst from the ground, creating a road of sorts from Ana all the way to the nearby forest’s tree line.
Ana’s eyes flash, and the look of betrayal she gives me nearly makes me waver. If I wasn’t such a cold-hearted bastard, I might’ve actually lost my nerve.
Instead, I flick my wrist again, and the plants begin to move, each one systematically grabbing her before handing her off to the next bit of foliage in line. It’s a strange and unnatural sight, watching the flora spirit away a grown woman into the forest beyond. It’s the thing of human myths.
What’s not so mythical are the curses pouring from her mouth.
“You goddamn bastard!” she shouts. “Let me fucking go! Famine, I swear upon your God, I will kick you in the dick so hard you’ll feel your balls in your throat.”
Normally, the sadist in me gets quite a bit of pleasure from her protests. But right now there’s no joy in it. I stare after her until even her voice fades away.
I go back inside the house long enough to grab my scythe before returning to my front yard. My gaze goes to the heavens, where thick storm clouds have amassed.
He’s still out there. Still circling. And damn me, but I cannot pinpoint him with my senses and I cannot clear this sky enough to spot him with my naked eye.
If I had been level-headed, I would easily blow away the incoming storm. But my feelings are inextricably bound up in Death’s arrival, and my anxiety cannot do more than intensify the already thick cloud cover.
So I stare at the heavens and focus as best I can on where he might be.
Minutes pass.
“Come on, brother,” I murmur. “Let’s end this.”
As though he heard my words, I sense him lowering himself from the sky. I still can’t spot him.