“So, I’m sitting here,” he said finally, real soft, “thinking to myself that somebody dug up Jo’s body recently, ’cause the ground’s so loose and the coffin’s gone. Not even leaving me the lining to sniff. And I’m thinking I only told one person I was coming here to dig her up, and that person’s standing in front of me, wearing a shield she thinks I can’t get through.”

I stared at him in silence.

A long time passed.

“Ain’t a fool, woman,” he said finally.

“I never thought you were.”

“So, I’m thinking, considering I told that person exactly what I meant to do to the fuck that killed Jo, she came here because she wants to die. Do you want to die, honey? Is that why you brought your sweet little ass here to me? Because deep down you crave death, hunger for oblivion from your many motherfucking sins?” His gaze whipped to mine and I gasped. There was nothing left of the Lor I knew in those eyes. The laughing playful Viking was gone. Something ancient, dark, and sadistic was all that remained.

“Right. Talk to me about craving oblivion for my many motherfucking sins. How many people have you killed, Lor? Thousands? Tens of thousands? Who cries justice on you?”

He surged to his feet in one fluid motion, vanished, then was there, right on the other side of my barrier, as close to nose-to-nose with me as he could get. “Nobody fucking cries justice on me. We are the law. Always have been. Always will be, babe.”

“I don’t see it that way. I see a man who’s going to die if he kills me. Is that what you want, honey? To die?” I mocked. “Is that why you brought your sweet ass over to me? Because that’s what you’re headed for if you think you can exonerate yourself for the deaths of so many innocents yet fail to extend mercy to me for killing someone while I was possessed by the Sinsar Dubh. At least I have the excuse of being possessed. You don’t have an excuse. You chose to do those things. Who punishes you, Lor? God? Oh, wait, you’ll never die. I see—that’s why you think you’re the law—because you never have to answer for anything you do. But you’re not. None of us are. We fuck up. Over and over. And we get back up and try to do better. That’s all any of us do.”

Tears stung my eyes, my heart burned in my chest, because seeing the cold marble of Jo’s grave, and the inscription of her name beyond his shoulder, made it all too real. Pain and grief morphed easily to fury. “You big dumb son of a bitch,” I growled, “I loved Jo. You didn’t. She mattered to me. She was only a distant possibility of mattering to you. I killed her. You didn’t. Who do you think is suffering the most here? ’Cause it. Ain’t. You. Babe,” I said with such vehemence that spittle sprayed on the force field between us.

His eyes flared infinitesimally and he opened his mouth to say something, but I’d gotten started and couldn’t stop. “Did you think you were going to find a victim when you looked at me? A woman, torn by self-loathing and pity, castigating herself for every wrong she’s done someone? Wake the fuck up. That’s not me. It’s a hard world and I’m harder in all the right places while still being soft in the important ones. You, my friend, are the one who’s fucked up. You skip the whole self-loathing part and flash right into the loathing everyone else. You shuck every soft part that matters and take your pity-party to a whole new level. You get stuck in the idiot phase and never evolve beyond it. Oh, poor Lor, who can’t love anyone because they all die! You want to look at it that way? Fine. Be a baby. Or you could realize that you get to love so damn many people, forever. But, no, welcome to Lor’s pity-party—a woman got killed that he might have loved—not even did love, just might have—so he’s going to wipe out the whole motherfucking planet because he’s pissed off and doesn’t—”

His hand was around my throat, choking off my words. The bastard had reached right through my supposedly impenetrable barrier, grabbed me by the neck and was squeezing.

I suffered no hesitation. My brain instantly processed: Barrons said try a rocket launcher/Lor will always come back/I’m not anybody’s victim and never will be again/the world has to be saved/this prick needs to learn to fear me because yes I killed Jo but I’m not dying for it nor am I putting up with his shit for the rest of my very long life.

Then there was an automatic machine gun in my hand, manifested by power I hadn’t even realized I was tapping into.

I jammed the muzzle into his gut and let it rip.

Lor went flying backward through the air, roared, and lunged for me again.

I kept firing until he hit the ground and didn’t move anymore.

I watched him until his body vanished, then ground out, “I trust I made my point,” and sifted back to BB&B.

When I returned to the bookstore—Barrons hadn’t dropped the wards but I’d given it wide berth this time, appearing well out in the street—he was sitting on the Chesterfield in the dark, waiting for me.

He assessed me and relaxed minutely. Things went well?

As well as could be expected, I suppose, I told him with a shrug.

His eyes narrowed. He heard you out?

I joined him on the sofa and snorted. “Oh, he definitely heard me out. I was nearly done by the time he started choking me.” As I stared at him through the low light, a wave of raw, desperate lust flooded me. I needed. Him. Now. Kneeling on the cushions, I grabbed his head and kissed him, falling on top of him, taking him back to the sofa beneath me. My body was bristling with energy and savagery and frustration because I’d really wanted to come to a meeting of the minds with Lor, not have to resort to killing him, but I suspected anything less than killing him simply wouldn’t have gotten his attention. And killing him had left something wild in me that needed to be let out.

Barrons understood and met it in kind.

Later, I lay in his arms, head on his chest, listening to the peculiar sound of absolutely no heartbeat, and knew he’d leave before long.

That was okay. I’d dumped a pent-up storm of emotion on his body, punished him with it and let him punish me in return. We ran the full range of sexual appetites in bed, from tender to tortured, white bread to dark, nutty stuff, and it was all good. We were young, strong, and unbreakable.

I was fairly certain Barrons was drifting in that deeply inward meditative state he sometimes sought and was just about to drift off myself when he jolted me awake by saying softly, “Lor choked you?”