The Forever Man

Prologue

HE WAS SPECIAL, you dig? Even before he died that first time. So don't get it twisted. Don't dismiss my characterization of him as something as simple as a teenaged girl's doe-eyed vision of a much older man-because it's not. And don't say anything profoundly stupid, like: "Special? Well, hell, kid, ain't everybody special?" Because no, reader, they ain't.

Y'see, most cats in The M.D.'s former line of work-murder for hire-they don't often make it to a kind, ripe retirement age. They're much more likely to self-destruct, either by doing something so stupid that they get themselves pinched; by eating a white-hot bullet on a cold, black night; or simply because they're not good enough, not special enough.

Of course, being special isn't everything. He'd have been the first to tell you that he was lucky, too. Lucky to have survived nearly three decades of spilling blood in back alleys and taking tea with mob wops, all the while keeping body whole, mind more or less intact. Lucky to have made it out whiled he was still breathing. But then, lucky him, he met me.

And then he went and killed a god.