Death does not discriminate 

DAKOTA 

I can't stop staring at - at him. At Lucky, a sagging weight in my arms, his face devoid of its usual thoughtful expression and colored a sickening white.

Black smoke still curls away from his skin in faint wisps, a miserably inadequate remnant of the darkness he shrouded around himself just minutes ago, when he'd launched himself at Luke with murder in his eyes and the most wicked snarl I've ever seen.

I look at Luke now, dragging my eyes away from Lucky's lifeless form. The amber-eyed man is rising to his feet with aching slowness, each movement calculated and the consequences of it endured. He grits his teeth, baring fangs, and finally, once he's confirmed that his knees won't be giving out on him any time soon, meets my searching gaze.

"Lucky's so much more than you were expecting, huh?" he asks, a hint of bite in his words that does nothing for my fraying nerves.

"He's not normally like that." It's weak and I know it, but what else is there to say?

Luke snorts, rubbing his bleeding lip into his arm. Even as I watch, though, the wounds are closing, sizzling with a heat I can't feel; the blood stays, a reminder of the pain, but Luke doesn't seem to mind it.

"No," he says humorlessly, "Lucky's not. Like that. Boss keeps a tight leash round their neck most of the time. This just... got under their skin."

"The owls," I murmur, sinking to the ground, Lucky still cradled in my arms. I'm not sure what I'm supposed to do with him; I'm half-expecting, half-hoping Luke will reach for him, probably with some derisive comment attached about my unfailing incompetence, but he doesn't make a move to do anything like that. Instead, he turns in a slow circle, taking stock of the warehouse Lucky dragged me into hours ago.

The charred flesh along his neck and chest has turned pink and tender, from what I can see through the burnt remains of his shirt.

"The owls are..." Luke waves a hand, as if searching for a certain word. "They're Lucky's favorites. He likes 'em even more than us wolves. Something about 'em... I'd wager it's their wisdom that makes Boss so enamored with them."

"So one of them... dying--"

"Yeah. It kinda broke them."

The pure hurt in Luke's voice catches me off guard, and I tighten my grip on Lucky reflexively. I understand so little about Lucky, about Luke, about their world, and while I already knew that - knew that I was rushing headlong into dangerous waters, because I don't have a choice, because of Lucky - it's a shock to my system to see this side of things. When Lucky sprouted the Devil's horns and a fallen angel's wings, I thought I was getting it, just a little - that he's more than I ever could have bargained for. But I haven't even scratched the surface of who he is, and all that he's done and had to do.

He's surprisingly light, is what I notice when the adrenaline has begun to fade and I'm left with my shoulders curled inwards and Lucky's head against my chest. He's breathing, thank God, but it's shallow and quick, puffing out of him in time with the frantic beating of his heart. I'm grinding my teeth so hard I'm afraid they'll be powder if I don't quit any time soon. I don't know what I'm supposed to be doing in this situation, and Luke's glaring is anything but useful; I wasn't even supposed to be here, let alone trying to nurse a dying primordial deity back to life--

He's not dead.

I blink, the realization sinking down into somewhere deep and dark inside my chest.

He's not dead - but is he really... dying?

From what he's told me, I hadn't even considered the possibility of him having mortal limits. I didn't think he was bound by the same rules that I am. Death can hardly touch Death - isn't that how it should work? But there's no denying the lifeless weight in my arms, no denying the frail flutter of breath that ghosts across my collarbones. And the cold in him is - it's like a living thing, breathing when he breathes, its life force devouring his as it ebbs away...

No one should be this frigid.

Not even the dead can be this mind-numbingly cold.

I nearly jump when Luke crouches at my side, knuckling away a strand of inky hair from Lucky's forehead to better see his flickering eyes, hidden beneath the lids but frantically searching for something just out of reach.

"Boss... lost control," Luke says, like it's some huge secret. It wasn't hard to tell that Lucky had snapped in that moment when he lunged for Luke, growling like nothing I've ever heard before. Or ever want to hear again. "Their grief must have torn them up worse than I was expecting and let out a trickle of that power they keep locked up inside themselves. That doesn't happen often. Lucky hates giving in to that power. They're not used to it, so it probably burned them up quicker than it should have."

"Isn't he going to need it?" I ask carefully. "Uh, his power... with... Nike?"

"Yes. Yes, and no. Because it may come down to brute strength between Lucky and Nike, and Lucky may need to drop their barriers for once but... I don't see it happening. Lucky has kept themselves in check for millennia. They aren't going to waste eons of self-control for Nike's sake."

"What about for the world's sake?"

Luke looks at me sharply, that feral light in his eyes returning with an even greater intensity. The mid-morning sun catches his elongated canines and makes them terrifyingly beautiful until he turns his head, lips pulled back in the beginnings of savage snarl.

"How much do you know?"

"I know there's a war coming. Lucky's said as much, to me and to you. And Lucky's damn powerful from the little I've seen of him. If Nike's like him at all, then a war between them isn't going to just pass over the rest of the world."

"...we're hoping it doesn't come to that," Luke says, softly but with enough bite to warn me away from speaking out against him. "Lucky will try to minimize the damage done to you humans, like they always have. It's their duty."

He says it like a curse, dripping venom from those wolfish canines, his tongue sharpening the word until it makes something bleed within him.

Clearly he doesn't approve of his boss' work ethics.

I swallow thickly, cinching my hands tighter around the folds of Lucky's jacket. This is ridiculous, that I'm actually worried for this asshole. Sure, I've come to realize he's not the devil I thought it was in those first moments, when I saw the black gun in his hands and the dead-eyed gaze he trained on the bank hostages, and I've even accepted that he has a reason for being so... vague about everything. But I've known him for all of a day. I've seen him kill creatures with nothing more than the darkness in his own sapphire eyes. I've realized that he is so not human, so other, and that I am an insignificant speck in comparison to whatever's trapped inside this mortal body he chooses to wear.

I shouldn't care about anything beyond how the hell I'm supposed to get to Philly.

He listened to me, though, when I told him to stop. Stop killing. Stop being that monster that wasn't him. He shouldn't have given me a second thought, because Luke had been screaming for him in those few seconds between when the fire burst from Lucky's skin and Lucky had his flaming hands around Luke's throat.

Luke, as if he can read the thoughts chasing one another around and around inside my head, sighs heavily through his nose and retracts his hand from where he's been feeling Lucky's sweat-soaked forehead, fixing his attention on me.

"You're human."

I stare at him blankly, because surely this can't be all he has to say.

"You're human," he says again, with emphasis. "Lucky is hardwired to protect, protect, protect when it comes to natural, earth-born life. Humans especially, for whatever reason. It clouds their focus, mostly, makes them have to separate their fixation on life from whatever they're doing at the time. You haven't noticed they've been keeping closer to you? You're practically reeking with Lucky's presence, and it's a helluva warning to Nike's followers."

We've known each other a day. That's not exactly enough time for me to discern just how much space Lucky normally gives people. But I keep my mouth shut as Luke goes on.

"It's... fortunate, though, that you were here." Luke in no way sounds pleased about this turn of events, and I swear his fangs have grown even longer in his mouth, though he gives an admirable effort at keeping them from puncturing the skin of his lower lip. "Because even when Lucky's lost inside themselves, you being human... called to them. Demanded they recognize you and protect you. And Lucky is nothing if not a stickler for the rules."

Amusement kindles in Luke's amber eyes, softening them, and turning back the clock on his ageless face, until he looks younger than me. Looks like a man laughing at memories he's shared with his brother, his friend. Until he looks as lost as he claims Lucky must have felt.

Like with everything going on today, it shouldn't have an effect on me. But I find myself hauling Lucky into my lap all the same, brushing aside his damp hair to check his temperature myself. I nearly recoil at the icy burn that latches onto my hand the moment I make contact with his skin. He's sweating and yet he's like a goddamn icebox. Of course this isn't normal, but seeing as Luke neglected to mention anything about this unearthly temperature paradox, I don't see a point in bringing it up. I turn my attention to Lucky's pulse instead, two fingers pressed to the inside of his wrist; slow, fractured, but still there.

"He's not going to wake up anytime soon," I murmur. It's mostly for myself, because I've seen this kind of sleep before, know just how difficult it is to crawl out of. Luke nods his agreement and stands.

"We'll take them to the Woods," he says. "Lucky can breathe easier there. It's made entirely from their own energy, so it's like coming home for them."

The Woods. I've heard them both mention it a few times, but until now I haven't given it much thought. Made from Lucky's energy? Like the gun he crafted and disintegrated into thin air? Is that how he walks around as he does, dressed in human skin? He just... makes things?

This realization pales in comparison to the relief swelling up in my chest, though, so I only flatten my lips into terse acceptance and make to stand as well, wondering for a heartbeat how I'm going to carry Lucky - or if I'll even be asked to.

Then Luke goes suddenly still. Preternaturally still. His muscles go taut beneath his skin, pressing bulging veins to the surface. His lips peel back and he does growl now, the sound thick and deep and dark. He's quick to signal to me, a quick hand motion telling me not to ask questions, to sit and wait while he arches his neck and sniffs.

The answering scent must not be to his liking because the growl deepens and spreads throughout the warehouse, rattling my bones and putting an unhelpful stutter in my heartbeat.

"We've got company," is all he says, before dissolving into shadow and vanishing from existence.

Leaving me all alone with an unconscious not-god and an unknown threat on our heels.

I'm going to kill that goddamn wolf.