Too late.

Ah, hell, that was okay, though. He was going to be dead soon, and after that nothing mattered. The white light that had come for him before, when he’d coded on the operating table a couple of times, was going to stick around this time. He didn’t think it was Heaven. The shit was probably a figment of some ocular malfunction, just another part of the mechanics of dying—

Isaac appeared in front of him, standing tall and strong, his sweatshirt open to show a bulletproof vest.

When he was certain he was seeing correctly, Matthias started to laugh . . . and the pain in his left side abruptly eased.

“Son of a . . .” He didn’t get out the bitch as a round of coughing shook him up.

After it had passed, he could feel blood leaking out of his mouth and down his cheek as his heart started to bang around in his rib cage like an animal thrashing in a cage.

As Isaac got down on his haunches, Matthias thought about that tattoo on the man’s back. Grim Reaper, indeed. He wondered if the soldier would go and get another notch tattooed on the bottom.

How much you want to bet it would be the final one, too?

Isaac shook his head and whispered, “I have to let you die. You know that, right.”

Matthias nodded. “Thank . . . you . . .”

He lifted his frozen hand and, a moment later, felt it encased in something warm and solid. Isaac’s.

So weird how things worked out. Back in that desert, Jim had set out to save him, but here and now, in this kitchen, Isaac was giving him what he’d wanted all along.

Before Matthias closed his eyes for the last time, he looked over at Alistair Childe. His daughter had freed him and he was embracing her, holding her safe, his head down next to hers. As if the man felt the stare that was upon him, he glanced up.

The relief in his face was epic, like he knew Matthias was dying and never coming back—and that even though that wouldn’t resurrect the son he had lost, it would protect his and his daughter’s future for evermore.

Matthias nodded at the guy and then shut his lids in preparation for the great nothingness that was coming. God, he was hungry for it. His life hadn’t been a gift to himself or the world, and he was looking forward to not existing.

As he waited out the stretch of neither here nor there, when he wasn’t really alive, but not quite dead, he thought of Alistair the night his son had died.

“. . . Dan . . . ny . . . boy . . . my Danny boy . . .”

Matthias frowned and then realized he hadn’t just thought the words, but spoken them aloud.

They were the same ones he’d said right before he’d put his foot on that bomb trigger.