Epilogue

"You're finally up."

"What… happened?" Jeremy asked, trying to focus on anything around him. The kinfolk had no recollection of anything past his collapse in the warehouse, but if the bright lights and silvery blurs around him were any clue, he was no longer in that building.

"We managed to put Rajah Baltazo down," Tanya said from somewhere nearby. Jeremy managed to move his head enough to finally see the galliard sitting next to the bed that he occupied.

"Ra… what?" Jeremy asked, confused. Tanya smiled, but winced as she aggravated a huge bruise across most of the right side of her face and a set of stitches in her lip. Jeremy finally realized that Tanya was sitting in a wheelchair and dressed in a hospital gown, and that her arms were wrapped in heavy bandages from just above her elbows all the way to her fingers. As the galliard noticed Jeremy's shocked expression, she tried to shrug.

"We got beaten, badly," Tanya explained. "Matt was unconscious, and couldn't heal anyone. Gerald's two rooms down the hall, I'm one floor up, and Jack and Alex are on the floor below. Of course, you're the worst out of all of us. Six broken ribs, two broken legs, severe concussion, a few burns… you were in surgery for eight hours. I can't even figure how you got out of the car to shoot Nigel."

"What… what about Matt?" Jeremy asked, growing rapidly concerned. "What happened to him?"

"He got broken out last night," Tanya replied. She tried to reach forward to pat Jeremy's arm in reassurance, but her injuries and bandages forced her to stop. Jeremy breathed out a sigh of relief as he heard that his cousin was still alive. "Some of the older Glass Walkers are pulling strings to get us released before someone starts asking questions. Then it'll be up to Alex to finish covering this up." Tanya hesitated for a moment, then continued. "I don't know how he's going to do that, but he always manages."

"Oh," Jeremy said, leaning back on his pillow. "What about Brooke?"

"She… didn't make it," Tanya said, hesitant. Jeremy knew that there was more to the story, but the normally talkative galliard simply put her eyes on the floor, and said nothing more.

"So, what happened?" Jeremy asked. Tanya looked up at the kinfolk, seemingly reluctant to answer. "I mean, did we stop those Black Spirals, or what?" Jeremy clarified, seeing her unease.

"Nigel managed to bring a Zmei into the warehouse through Brooke," Tanya explained. "And, before you ask, a Zmei is a big Wyrm spirit, the ones that spawned the original legends of dragons. Fortunately, we… managed to keep it from gathering all of its strength, but it still mauled all of us. Your cousin managed to kill it."

"Matt?" Jeremy asked, trying to turn his head. Pain shot up and down the kinfolk's body at the sudden movement, forcing Jeremy to drop his head back to his pillow. "How… but he couldn't kill a fly!"

"We would have said that about you, before you put six rounds in Nigel's chest," Tanya said with a touch of humor. "But, it was Matt. We roughed it up first, especially Gerald, Alex, and Jack, but Matt managed to get the spirit of the warehouse to commit to a last, suicidal attack before it died."

"You're telling me that a warehouse committed suicide," Jeremy said. "Do you know how stupid that sounds?"

"Everything has a spirit, Jeremy," Tanya said. "You live with Matt. You should know that. Anyway, Matt managed to get into the Umbra while we kept the Zmei distracted, and bargained with the warehouse to kill the Zmei in a collapse."

"You don't know how crazy you sound, do you?" Jeremy inquired flatly. Tanya laughed slightly at the comment, but quickly brought her mirth under control as she irritated her myriad injuries.

"Truth is stranger than fiction," the galliard finally explained. "Anyway, we were lucky. The Zmei was never able to get to full strength."

"It sounds like it did to me, if you had to collapse a building on it to kill it," Jeremy remarked.

"I talked to Alex before," Tanya said. "He said we got really lucky. It was only at about ten percent strength."

"Ten percent," Jeremy repeated. "You serious?"

"Dead serious," Tanya answered. This time, there was no humor in her voice. For a long moment, the two sat in silence as Jeremy tried to fathom the power of a Zmei at full strength.

"So, are there any more of these things?" Jeremy finally asked. Tanya hesitated for a long moment.

"A dozen, or so the stories say," the galliard replied at last. "And these days, they're stronger than ever."

"Well, that makes me feel so much better," Jeremy said, gingerly turning his head to look at the Shadow Lord.

"You asked," Tanya reminded the kinfolk. "I have to get going. I'm getting out of here tonight, so I have to say goodbye to my doctor. Twenty-nine and single. I could live with that. He got me this remote control wheelchair so I could come down and say hi to you."

"Goodbye, Tanya," Jeremy said, waving the Shadow Lord away with his one uninjured arm before she could tell him anything else about her doctor. Tanya gave the wounded kinfolk one last smile, and then carefully nudged the controls of her chair.

"Try to get better soon," Tanya called out over her shoulder. Jeremy watched as the galliard disappeared into the hall, then turned his eyes back to the ceiling.

"I need better friends," the kinfolk decided.