I didn't have much in the way of family - Thomas was my only living relative, and I knew that he'd spent the majority of his life trapped in the machinations of the White Court. He'd lived day to day through catspaws and feints, maintaining the illusion of his own foppish incompetence while trying to maneuver the White Court towards the downfall of his monstrous progenitor. I had run through what meeting my brother might be like a million times since the night of my coronation, imagined flying down into Chicago in a space ship and freeing him from living in fear of his father, the White King. It had mostly been an idle thing, I was too terrified of paradox to risk actually doing it, but the image of appearing on the lawn of Chateau Raith with a small army of Jaffa to put the hurt on Thomas' violent, manipulative, incestuous, rapist, dickhead of a father was a common fantasy of mine.

But the fantasy always sort of fell apart when it came time to talk to him. What possible combination of words could I say to him that would explain what was going on? Would he even be willing to deal with a man who'd done the things that I'd been forced to do over the past year. I'd killed men. I'd killed lots of men. I'd even liked doing it to some of them. And I didn't know which possible reaction terrified me more, him rejecting the monster I'd become or him embracing it entirely.

Thomas, like all vampires of the White Court, was a killer. I loved him dearly. He was my blood. He was the most important person in the world to me. But Thomas was a murderer, like all Incubus of the White Court. He hadn't known that he was going to kill his first partner, the vampires of the White Court didn't warn their young of the danger until after they managed to devour their first sexual conquest, but without question he had done so. And while he'd done his best to feed responsibly in the time since I'd known him, there was always that potential for darkness haunting him - the desire to give in to his demon and feed indiscriminately upon mortals.

In a very real way I'd been his link to his own humanity, the person who he used to anchor himself against the urges of his demon. If he embraced me now, as the creature I had become and in knowledge of all it implied, he would be anchored not to the mortal man who'd always tried to do the right thing but instead to the fledgling god who'd devoured another thinking being to survive. I didn't care to consider what effect that knowledge might have upon Thomas - what choices he might feel were justified in context with that. I knew how it affected me, and I didn't have the burden of Thomas' hunger.

I took care not to look directly into Thomas' eyes as we spoke, I was reasonably confident that we couldn't actually initiate a soul gaze given that I'd already looked into Thomas' eyes in my past, his future, but I didn't dare risk seeing into my brother's soul before the appointed place and time. My mother had left both of us a message in our souls, a way to confirm that we were who we claimed to be if ever we met. If I triggered that before Thomas brought me to see my mother's portrait in Chateau Raith my past self might never believe his story, and I might lose my half-brother from my life out of a stubborn and bull-headed refusal to accept his identity. It was easy to avoid - Thomas was in no hurry to look into the soul of anything that needed to be kept in the Brute Squad's equivalent of supermax.

Thomas didn't actually want to talk to me, he just wanted to do something that was both annoying to Pietrovich and not an actual violation of his rules. That was why he'd asked me a question he didn't expect me to be able to answer, intentionally using pop-culture references and jokes in an apparent attempt to frustrate both me and my captors. And while I might have been the Lord Warden Dre'su'den the Ha'ri for a year, I'd been Harry Dresden for my entire life. I was not going to be outdone in any game of words created for the specific purpose of annoying the Wardens.

I smiled widely and gave the only real answer to that question. "Sean Connery of course. Always go with Scotland."

Thomas tilted his head in surprise. "You've watched James Bond?"

"Most of them." I replied. "There were a couple that I didn't quite get through. That whole Dalton plot line with the Cocaine dealers annoyed me and I couldn't stand the one with the News Agency that was causing disasters so they could report on them."

"I didn't know that gods regularly indulged in contemporary cinema. You seem like you'd stand out in a theater." My brother laughed. "It seems a bit out of line with the whole 'dominion over mortals' shtick."

"What? I can't have hobbies?" I shrugged. "I generally prefer to read the book, but going to movies is fun. Get some popcorn and a soda, and it's a night worth of fun."

"Mr. Raith." One of the Brute Squad wizards who wasn't veiled interrupted our conversation. He spoke in a rough voice, gravely as though he smoked a great deal. "I must caution you against speaking to the prisoner. He has a reputation for being slippery with his words."

"The Archive was explicit that his powers would not escape the circle." Thomas replied.

"He is extremely dangerous, Mr. Raith." Interjected the wizard. He wrapped his hand around the hilt of his enchanted blade reflexively, finding comfort in the presence of his weapon. "Even without magic, it's best not to listen to the things we keep here. They say things sometimes - terrible things, true things. Wise men do not speak to them."

My brother mirrored an expression of innocent bafflement, as though he were too dim to understand the wizard's implication. He indulged fully in his mask of foppish incompetence. "But he seems just so friendly."

The wizard closed his eyes and counted to five, clearly praying for patience, before replying to Thomas. "Yes, Mr. Raith. I know he seems pleasant."

"So why shouldn't I speak to him?" Thomas asked, his face the utter picture of innocence. "We both like movies after all, and I'm painfully bored. This is the first real diversion I've had since getting here."

The man's body quivered with rage, clearly dying to shout some variation of the phrase "because he's an evil immortal demon god you blithering idiot" but choking it down in light of the rules of hospitality. The rules of Host and Guest were serious business in the supernatural world, and one only violated them at their own peril. I had actually started the war with the Red Court with one such faux pas. Verbally insulting one's guest likely wouldn't incur a serious retribution, but Thomas wasn't going to let something like that pass without abusing it in his own favor. So, in spite of clearly thinking that Thomas was barely smart enough to feed himself unaided, the wizard replied in a voice of forced patience. "He's a god of magic Mr. Raith. Until we know how to kill him I'm not taking anything for granted."

Thomas laughed. "I'm not going to cower from some forgotten deity trapped in a circle like a bug in a glass." He pointed to the bigfoot. "Especially given how it seems to have kept tiny over there in check without too much trouble."

"I'm going to eat you little phage." Replied the bigfoot. "I'm going to eat you and use your ribs to pick my teeth."

"Nice to meet you too tiny," My brother dismissed the creature from his mind as quickly as the beast had entered it, pointing from the bigfoot to me. "And he's just so much smaller than Tiny is."

I snorted in amusement at the bigfoot's apoplectic rage at having been dismissed so utterly. "Hey, big things come in small packages."

"I wouldn't be so quick to declare your small package there Darth Warden." My brother jabbed back. "People might start getting the wrong idea."

"That is Doctor Darth Warden to you, Raith." I replied. "I worked hard for that title and I will be addressed as such."

"You see? Even the bad guy has a better sense of humor about this than you do, and we're trying to kill him." Thomas put his hand over his face in an exaggerated stage whisper towards me. "Oh, sorry. I hope that wasn't a surprise. You're here for us to kill you. Sorry if that ruins your day. well, no. not really. But it's polite to say stuff like that."

"Mr. Raith, please stop provoking the dark god of sorcery." Begged the wizard.

Thomas never got out his snarky reply to that. The floor shook, casting me painfully against the transparent barrier of my prison as a screeching howl of warning sirens sounded across the compound. Without the benefit of being able to move my arms, my face hit the transparent wall with the full weight of my body - leaving me dizzyingly concussed. Thomas managed to stay in his seat as the floor rumbled, but he'd gripped the arms of his chair with sufficient force to crack the arms.

"We're under attack." The Wizard swore, turning his back to me and facing the only entrance to the library. "That alarm means that someone breached the tower's outer defenses."

"That's not possible Dominic," Replied the other unveiled wizard, her voice painfully overconfident in context with the dangers I knew to be coming. "Pietrovich set the wards himself. Nobody could break through those without taking horrific casualties. If they actually tripped that alarm they're probably just smears on the property line."

There was a rumbling sound of thunder as the cheery sunlight that had been streaming in through the stained glass melted into a grey-black morass of storm-clouds. A tempest too sudden and too dark have been brought on by any natural pattern of weather suddenly pelted the windows with rain and hail, booming cracks of sorcerous lightning setting my teeth on edge with their crimson glow. The Red Court had summoned a storm to allow them to assault Archangel in the light of day when the Wizards were least expecting it.

I cringed. It was one thing to intellectually reconcile myself with not affecting the past. It was another thing entirely to watch the consequences of not preparing the Brute Squad for what was coming. These were people, living breathing people with hopes and dreams. The overconfident woman was a young woman who didn't even look old enough to drink, let alone fight in a war. And while her companion seemed to understand the danger, how many other young Wizards would be similarly convinced of their own invincibility? How many were too confident in Pietrovich's ability to ward off any dangers with the magic he'd tied to this fortress?

These idiots had already wasted seconds dilly dallying around waiting to find out if this was some sort of false alarm. Had we truly been this arrogantly convinced of our own superiority in the early days of the war? These people were going to get themselves killed by virtue of pure arrogant confidence in their own wards.

If they were relying upon the wards to slow the advancing vampires, their strategies were going to be woefully ineffective. I remembered this attack. The Wardens didn't know anything for sure, but their leading theory was that someone on the inside let the Vampires in past Pietrovich's wards. It wouldn't take them long to realize that the attack was real, but might be long enough for a Red Court warrior to injure or kill my brother in the crossfire.

Screw it, the Brute Squad already thought I was a dark god. I might as well play off that assumption. I closed my eyes and started speaking in angry nonsense syllables, hamming it up with my metallic voice before opening my eyes as wide as I could make them go. I was pleased to discover that the spell work robbing me of my ability to use magic did not affect the natural bioluminescent eyes of the Goa'uld. The warden's snapped around to focus on me as I made my eyes glow, their faces growing worried as I spoke in a voice of command. "The Red Court does not agree with your assessment, Wizard, and are coming to provide you with an object lesson in the dangers of arrogance."

"Why should I believe you, 'Warden?" Snarled the female wizard.

"I'm trapped in a cage, unable to defend myself." I replied, listening as the sounds of battle drew closer and closer to the great library. "You can either fight off the threat that's going to get us both killed when it shows up, or you can focus on me and give the court the opportunity to devour us, your choice."

"He's not lying. I can smell them." Thomas stood up from the chair, his face contorted into an expression of disgust. "Red Court Vampires - Black Court too."

"Damn it." Replied the wizard. "Defensive positions. The prisoners must not escape!"

"Yes, Wizard Dominic." Replied the female wizard as she pulled her blade from its scabbard. The sword shimmered with etheric energies as she did so, small bolts of lightning kissing the cold steel whipped forth. The veils of the hidden wizards shimmered and flickered, illusionary spell work briefly disrupted as they pulled out their own enchanted weaponry.

Wizard Dominic walked over to the library doors and placed his hands upon them, muttering incantations under his breath. The elaborate baroque artistry of the door shimmered with a flickering spidery pattern of green and blue energies, wards. I recognized them immediately, even without having looked at them with my wizard's sight. I'd seen wards like those, exactly like those, a thousand times before. I now understood why the White Council had been so quick to suggest that I'd been responsible for bringing them down when first I'd found out about the fall of Archangel. My own protective wards back on my apartment door in Chicago had been almost a mirror image of what Wizard Dominic was activating. It made sense I supposed. Wizard Pietrovich had, after all, been the mentor to my own personal Palpatine – Justin DuMorne. While that boded well for my prospects at escape, it boded ill for the defense of this room.

If there was one thing that my experience fighting the Kemmlerites over Halloween had taught me, it was how myopic the defensive structure my mentor had taught me could be. I looked up and around the room as shadows flitted across the colored patters of light dancing across the floor, confirming my suspicions as I shouted. "They're not going for the door! Look up! Look up!"

It was only a moment's notice, but it at least allowed the Wizards a hair's breadth of warning before the stained glass shattered inward casting knife-sharp daggers of multicolored glass down upon them. Some of them were quick enough to raise their shields. Some, but not all. Those too slow or too focused upon the warded doors were pelted with the razor-like rain of shrapnel. Paired with the swirling winds and pelting hail, it provided an immaculate distraction for the vampires as they descended upon us.

Black Court Vampires are your standard Bram Stoker types. Weak to wooden stakes, sunlight, fire, garlic, and holy symbols – there aren't many of them left since "Dracula" was published and "how to kill black court vampires 101" became part of the common cultural knowledge of the world. Unfortunately, those who've managed to survive since that stuff became common knowledge tended to be the ones smart enough and dangerous enough to keep on living in spite of that. And the black court vampires, minus their specific weaknesses, were scary strong, scary fast, scary durable and just downright scary when it came to combat.

They glided down from the air, fifty strong desiccated corpses worth of dark magic and furious hunger, and launched themselves into the wizards. Claw and fang met blade and spell in the library as the vampires of the Black Court attacked the Brute Squad wizards. Thomas pulled a pistol from the corpse of a dead Wizard, a WWII Luger, and put a bullet into the head of a Black Court Vampire as it charged him. My brother couldn't afford for any of the Vampires to survive, one of them might report back to his father than he'd been here. And if Thomas couldn't afford it, neither could I.

I struggled with my bonds, trying to force my way out of them with sheers strength rather than magical power. My blood boiled as I listened to the Bigfoot's pleased cackle at the violence unfolding around us, his sheer ecstasy at watching his captors trapped in a life or death struggle was galling. There was a wild look in his eye. It was a madness that told me that were he to be free, he would happily slaughter everyone in sight. I shuddered as I watched a Wizard's head ripped in half by a vampire's talons, his now eyeless husk of a mouth opening and closing in horror as the corpse dropped to the ground.

"A chance will open," I reminded myself as I watched my brother's eyes flash silver, his demon granting him the strength to pull a Vampire from one of the Brute Squad. "Just wait for a chance to open."

It was two full minutes of horrifying slaughter till it did, in the worst way possible. One of the vampires bit into a Wizard's neck, slaying him and unleashing the man's death curse. A horrible pulse of flaming green energy ricocheted from vampire to vampire, setting the five nearest creatures ablaze with eldritch energies that peeled the flesh from their bones and boiled the marrow. Four of the five died nearly instantly but the fifth vampire, an apparently older and more powerful creature, flailed around mustering a counter spell. He summoned a glowing ball in the palm of his hand as the flames consumed him, sucking the vitriolic blaze into it. Though it was insufficient to save him, it quite effectively concentrated the spell into a single point of focus so that when he died the offensive spell was honed into a beam of pure spite. It collided with the wooden pillar depicting the life of Jesus, ensorcelled flames charring away the Christian messiah's image from totemic icon and scourging the keystone into charcoal.

In an instant the barrier separating me from the rest of the room was no more and I felt the muggy heat of the ensorcelled tempest, I gasped with relief as I stepped off the bloodstone disk and felt my magic once again within my grasp. My arms were bound to my sides, but I could actually do something.

Unfortunately, so could the bigfoot. The first thing I felt after the sensation of recovering my magic was the impact of a massive fist into my ribcage and a sudden impact as I flew across the room and into one of the bookshelves. Ancient tomes toppled down onto my bound form as I stood up groggily and tried to liberate myself from my bonds as a Black Court Vampire slashed at me with his razor-sharp finger tips, drawing blood from my shoulder as he did so. I moved back from his slash, shimmying out of the confining garment where he'd cut it, as the vampire instinctively licked his fingers.

There was a moment of shock as the vampire tasted the blood of his hand, his desiccated blue-black tongue coming into contact with the inky fluid. His expression was outright orgasmic as the milky white cataracts over his corneas shimmered, taking on a vibrant shade of pale green before reverting to the desiccated cataracts they had once been. His skin likewise took on a more vibrant pink, seeming to revert from its prior desiccation in an instant before reverting to the hollow husk of a Black Court Vampire.

He froze, looking from me, to the blood on his long fingernails, and back. His face took on a hungry expression beyond anything I'd ever seen on a vampire before, even in the fit of a blood rage, and he charged me with utter abandon, his jaw unhinged like that of a serpent. I managed to pull my hand from the straight jacket, holding it up in the vampire's path as I bellowed "Fuego" at the top of my voice.

A pillar of silver-white flames erupted from my outstretched hand, consuming the vampire utterly. He continued flying through the air, impacting with me as a mess of ash as I rolled to the side avoiding the massive hairy foot that crashed into the place I'd been only seconds before. The bigfoot was grinning hungrily, the madness in his eyes in full bloom as he cackled in horrible joy. I wasn't even sure if he was entirely aware of who he was fighting or why he was fighting them. The monstrous Forest Person was excising hundreds of years' worth of solitary confinement upon all those foolish enough to wander into line of sight. His hands were already wet with the blood of a Brute Squad wizard, whose crumpled body the bigfoot was using as an improvised cudgel upon wizard and vampire alike.

I suspect that he would gladly have smashed me with another kick had a wizard's blade not found the small of his back, ensorcelled blade piercing him from spine to belly as the bearer pulled out and to the left. Suffice it to say, it did not work. In retrospect, it should probably have been a tell that the creature had been kept in confinement for the past several centuries. It turned around to face its attacker even as it's innards knit themselves back together, grabbing the wizard's head with massive fists and squeezing as hard as it could. The wizard's head burst under the pressure, spreading blood and viscera across the room.

The creature rounded on me, clearly intent upon doing me grievous bodily harm, when something odd happened. It fell to its knees, gasping. Its eyes bulged as it vomited out a stream of serpents that slithered across the ground and up his body, biting at every scrap of skin they could get to. Asps, cobras, and rattlesnakes, it seemed as though a new type of venomous serpent was spewing from his mouth with every agonized regurgitation. I scooted back across the floor, eager to avoid becoming collateral damage to one of the more inventive death curses I'd yet seen. I wasn't sure if either suffocation or snake bites were going to kill one of the Forest People, but they seemed to be a more than adequate distraction.

I ripped off the straight jacket and became painfully aware that I hadn't been wearing anything beneath it as I hopped over shards of glass, taking care not to slice open my feet as I hugged the wall to get to the decapitated corpse of a black court vampire. I cast aside a charging black court vampire with a yell of Forzare as I bent down, stealing the corpse's shoes. They were a size too large and smelled of god knows how many years of rot, but they would at least be something between my feet and the shards of glass littering the ground.

I spun my body up and away from a wizard's blade with a gust of summoned wind, falling awkwardly as the ensorcelled blade broke control of my magical gust of wind. I landed just shy of where he'd swung downward with his blade, and grabbed him by the shoulders. Using his momentum, I drove his face down into my knee. Not hard enough to kill him but hard enough to discourage him from trying anything like that until he caught his bearings.

It was then that I realized my brother was in front of me, pointing the Luger directly at my forehead. I arched an eyebrow. "Really Thomas? You're going to try to shoot me? You think if it was that easy that the Archive wouldn't just have done it while I was unconscious?"

"It's a matter of principle." Replied the Incubus, smiling at me with a roguish gleam in his glowing silver eyes as he lowered the pistol and advanced on me, a sultry, smoky lilt entering his voice – something between whiskey and quicksilver. "And a distraction to keep you talking for long enough that it sets in."

And then a wave of thoughts and feelings hit me that no living man should ever even begin to feel about his freaking half-brother. They were indistinct, ephemeral things. It was more like hearing the idle musings of someone in another room than having a fully formed thought on your own but I got the distinct image of Thomas and I interacting with each other in a way that was most decidedly not fraternal love between brothers. I gagged in disgust as I realized that Thomas was trying, and apparently failing, to hit me with the full on White Court whammy. I'd seen it once before when his half-sister Lara had begun to feed on the White King, Thomas was allowing his demon out fully in the hopes of consuming my will.

I let my brother get in close enough to try and kiss me before I sucker punched him in the gut. In my anger, I didn't pull my punch either – hitting him with enough force that it probably cracked a couple ribs. It was petty, but there were some things you just didn't do to family even if you didn't know that they are family. He staggered back from me in shock, looking down at impression my fist had left upon his belly. His skin curled and peeled where I'd touched him, the outline of my fist seared into the flesh though the black mesh of his shirt.

"Thomas Raith." My voice shouldered with anger and I did something that I would never have considered myself capable of prior to that day. I used a measure of power as I spoke his full name, using the exact intonation and intention behind it that I'd learned when he'd first given it to me. "You will cease this rudeness."

Using someone's name, their true name freely given to you, is a powerful brand of magic in and of itself. For more spiritual entities it allows you to summon them or banish them at will. For more corporeal entities while the applications of one's true name are not necessarily as showy, they are no less powerful. A White Council Wizard can do some pretty nasty things with someone's true name if they want to, and I was a league beyond where I'd been to gain membership on the council. When I put power behind his name, he knew it instantly.

I remembered how unsettling it had been when the Dragon Ferrovax invoked my name at Bianca's party but judging by how Thomas actually dropped to his knees in pain, I suspected I'd put a little bit more mustard behind my invocation than Ferrovax had used on me. Well, that was fine with me. I'd just been a bit insouciant with the ancient being – I hadn't tried to get in his pants.

"Empty Night!" Thomas swore catching is breath and looking up at me. "Who are you?"

"Someone your mother knew." I replied, casting a vampire away from me with a discharge of telekinetic energy. "Someone she cared about greatly Thomas." I invoked his name again, causing him to devolve into another fit of swearing. "Someone Margaret would have been greatly troubled to discover that you'd treated so offensively."

"You knew my mother?" Thomas looked up at me in shock. "How? Why?"

"How do you think I know who you are? Margaret LeFay told me. She told me that I am responsible to your welfare." I replied. It actually had been my mother, or rather a vision of her implanted in my brother's soul, so wasn't lying so much as I was creatively applying truth. I was really spending far too much time with my Godmother.

I blinked as a thought hit me. My mother was the sort of woman who traded favors with the Lenansidhe to ensure that I was protected into adulthood. If I need a reason for a scary powerful being to know things about my sibling that would make sense to him, the answer was obvious. "Thomas Raith, I owe your mother more than I can ever afford to repay. I owe her my very life. I am beholden to protect you. Another is responsible for your brother's wellbeing but I promise you by my power, by all that I am, by my magic and blood, by all that I am and all that I shall ever be, I have come here with the intention of saving your life."

The air between us sizzled with the static discharge of my oath. The Incubus' eyes narrowed in confusion. Oaths of power were not entered into lightly, certainly not by beings with power in abundance. I could not break that oath without damaging that same power, possibly even destroying it. And to do so in the midst of battle would be suicide.

He flinched as I summoned a sphere of protective energy around us to divert a wave of sorcerous lighting. I was an NBA sized, bare-naked, ancient god, who knew his true name, was immune to the effects of his vampiric magic, and apparently capable of causing third degree burns just by touching him. It wasn't the family reunion I had hoped for, but at least he seemed to have accepted that killing me wasn't going to be a viable option as he looked up at my towering form, the silver glow to his eyes dimmer than once it had been,

He stood up nervously within my summoned shield, flinching as a stray bullet pinged off the screen of energy. "You know about… him?"

"Harry?" I smiled widely. "I know more about Harry than he knows about himself. Trust me."

"If my mother hired you to protect me, why haven't I seen you before?" Thomas asked.

I gestured to the ongoing chaos around us. "Have you done anything this stupid before?"

"Not… quite this stupid." Thomas agreed nervously.

"Good, now are you going to attack me if I turn my back on you or are you going to help me kick some Bram Stoker looking mother fucker's teeth in?" I held out my hand to him. He grasped it nervously looking me in the eyes before I had a chance to stop him. I needn't have worried, I felt no tug of a soul gaze. His eyes met my own, silver disks staring into starry void, without any shadow of connection between us.

Relief washed through me as he shook it nervously, "For now we fight the Black Court. For now."

"Good," I replied turning back to the chaos of battle around us. "Because I've got enough to worry about without making things more complicated."

It was at roughly that moment that one of the Brute Squad Wizards misjudged his attack on a Black Court vampire, cutting through empty air of the vampire's illusion. The ensorcelled blade came down hard, clanging against the thick iron cooking pot in the room's center with a resounding ring of metal on metal as the blade severed the bonds of braided hair and silver. The Wizard dropped his blade in shock, backing away from the cooking pot in pure, atavistic fear as the pot's top burst from it – spewing bilious orange smoke from it. An old man emerged from the smoke, tall, pale, and almost inhumanly thin. He was ancient and ugly, his patchy hair and beard barely hanging from his liver spot covered skin. His flesh was odd, hanging from him as though someone had just stretched healthy skin across a skeleton without bothering to fill in the space where his innards ought to be. The pale gold band of his crown sagged across his skull, dragging down flaps of malformed skin.

Something tugged at the edge of my senses when I looked at him, the same sort of nagging touch of cold I felt whenever Queen Mab entered a room. It was a sensation that I recognized as a memory of the power of Winter that had been in my soul when I'd ascended to godhood, a sort of spiritual phantom limb syndrome.

"Oh, come on." My eyes flashed in irritation. "What else could possibly go wrong today?"

Thomas groaned as the man held out his arm, reaching into the Nevernever to pull out a wicked looking curved blade made from jet black stone. Mordite, the man had just summoned an entire sword made from weapons-grade Deathstone and was handling it with his bare fingers. My brother scowled at me and asked, "You just had to say it, didn't you? You just had to say it?"

"Strap in pretty boy." I replied, taking a defensive stance and standing back to back with my brother. "Things are about to get interesting."