I should have killed him. Like Santoro a moment before. I could have killed him. Both of us had made the mistake of succumbing for the need to use our blows as punishment and as a lesson. Know this, understand this, be aware of why you are being beaten. That’s its own kind of arrogance. The price I paid for that was him slipping away and then coming after my family. Their deaths were on me.

On me.

I completed my roll, and for a moment I was on top, straddling him, my hands free.

And the Darkness tried to own me.

It rose up like a tsunami of utter blackness. It wanted Santoro punished. It wanted to dominate, to own, to humiliate, to educate. I could feel it spreading through me like a jar of ink poured into a gallon of water. The tendrils uncurled along the paths of least resistance, filled every nerve ending, every muscle fiber. I could feel it behind my eyes, and I wondered if they had turned as black as the Fixers’ eyes turned red. I believed that if I opened my mouth, I would vomit out a cloud of stygian horror.

It wanted to steal this moment from me.

And in doing so, give Santoro a chance. In the past, he’d proven that all he ever needed was a chance.

The Darkness was so powerful that I was becoming lost in it, just as I was aware that all of this was happening inside the bubble of a millisecond.

I was the Darkness now, and an awareness stabbed through me, whispering awful truths.

If I gave this moment to the Darkness, then it would have all my moments henceforth. If I became the Darkness, then everything that I was—that Joe Ledger was—would be gone.

Nicodemus would win. Kuga would win.

Rafael Santoro would win because he would have eradicated, however indirectly, the entire Ledger family for all time.

If I yielded to the Darkness, then that would be where I lived forever, and there would be no other home to go to.

There would be no Junie.

There would be no joy, no love.

No light.

The millisecond stretched and snapped.

Santoro and I were just coming out of the roll, I was only then straddling him, looking down at him. In the next moment, he would react.

And so I struck him under the chin with my left palm, tilting his head back, exposing his throat, and I slammed a full fist punch down. I put every ounce of my rage, my hurt, my loss into that punch. Crushing his throat, breaking his neck, ending him. I gave everything I had to that punch.

I killed him, goddamn it. Not the Darkness, goddamn it.

I did.

Joe Ledger.

EPILOGUE

-1-

Even the longest night ends.

After darkness, there is light.

-2-

They medevacked Harry Bolt to the best hospital in the region.