Chapter Twenty

BELIEVE ME, CAYENNE once said, you do not want to see what happens when Constance and I get in close proximity. Later, they’d told Ravi that what happens is the timestream gets very messily fucked.

Apparently, what that means is Ravi gets flipped inside out, shattered into a million pieces, stretched paper thin, then the next second completely restored and set back on his feet, blood rushing through his ears louder than a crashing waterfall.

Blinking, he looks around. He’s not even sure who he is for a second, much less where, but then it all comes rushing back. All of it. Even the memories he’d started losing his grip on, to his enormous relief. Ravi remembers.

And he’s fucking furious.

A storm still rages outside. The agony of his headache has disappeared, and the crippling nausea with it. He looks for Nate. The relief at seeing him still standing nearby, alive and unscathed, is so all-consuming that Ravi can’t help but grin. Nate smiles back, wan but supportive.

The Harbridges and Eatons are still around, as is Mihika Bhagavati and her entourage. The seers are yet recovering from their fit, by the looks of things. Ravi isn’t sure what that means, but he doubts it’s good. Both Constance and Cayenne have jumped back away from each other, Constance shaking her hand with a pained wince.

“Mon Dieu, qu’est-ce que tu croyais?” Cayenne pants heavily, rubbing their wrist as if it had been scorched. “You completely fucked everything! Months of work for nothing, you plouc. You’ve collapsed the timeline back on itself. You could have collapsed reality itself, you idiot! You have no idea how danger—”

Ravi twists around and grabs Cayenne’s hands, trapping them up in the small of their back in a secure control hold.

“You selfish asshole,” he fumes, “you were going to make me forget everything?”

Making a deal with a demon to go back further in time, helping that demon gain power in The Trust, all so Cayenne could try again to seduce Ravi without him ever learning about their true nature? Ravi can barely think for how unspeakably angry he is. He’d thought there were still some lines Cayenne wouldn’t cross, ways of taking advantage of him even they would balk at.

“Oh, merde,” Cayenne grumbles, sagging into Ravi’s grip. “You were going to do the same, dearest.”

“It’s not remotely the same.”

“So, I’m going to fucking find and kill a demon, if nobody minds,” Harry declares, urumi in hand.

“Let’s,” Ravi agrees with feeling. “Where’s Val?”

As if this was an answered prayer, Val snaps into being at Harry’s shoulder with the sound of fluttering feathers, sunglasses gone.

“Harry,” she says, a hint of relief hiding behind her implacable tone. “There you are. I have received word from my superiors. A dire event is about to—” She stops to glare at Cayenne, her face cast in white-blue light from her suddenly flaring eyes. “What is this chronomage doing here?”

“Where have you been?” The urumi blades slither metallically as Harry throws up her hands. “Constance’s demon was here and I was dancing with him! Chronojerk had us in some bullshit timeline, I think? I’m fuzzy on that.”

“They did,” Ravi growls.

Harry cocks her head at him. “You okay, Rav? This is supremely fucked up. I remember being there, but not exactly what happened in it.”

“Be grateful you don’t,” he hisses, practically in Cayenne’s ear. They huff in annoyance, shifting into a nonchalant lean against his chest.

The flame of Val’s eyes flickers with distress. “A demon, here? You texted me that you had urgent need for me back at your apartment. I would never knowingly leave your side—”

“No, I didn’t!”

“Fucking…” Nate shakes his head in disgust, his fists clenched so tightly they tremble. “Tricked again.”

“Wasn’t me,” Cayenne says with a Gallic shrug. “I thought she was trapped in Hell with the witch.”

Suddenly Nate swings forward with a right hook aimed straight at Cayenne’s face. Automatically, Ravi pulls back out of range, dragging Cayenne with him as the punch whiffs harmlessly by. Not only does he suspect Nate would regret this impulse later, but the last thing Ravi wants is for Nate to draw Cayenne’s ire. They don’t believe in turning the other cheek.

“You evil fuck!” Nate spits out, moving himself out of the temptation of striking range. “How could you do this to Ravi? Don’t you care about him?”

“Ooh, yes, lecture me, Professor. Is that what you like about him, my sweet? I can see the appeal,” Cayenne says with a derisive laugh, resting their head back on Ravi’s shoulder.

“I’ve had it up to fucking here with this time travel bullshit,” Harry storms. “Where’d that fucking demon go, Cayenne? Don’t you motherfuck me on this. I want the truth.”

“I shall rend this demon in twain.” Constance picks up Griswold and sets him hissing on her shoulder, his striped tail puffed out like a sheaf of wheat.

Cayenne sighs. “As irritating as it’s going to be taking yet another stab at this, you know what they say.” They duck and twist their arms. Ravi curses and grasps tighter, but Cayenne slows time, simply there one second and not there the next, spinning just out of his reach. They turn back with a sharp smile, reaching for their tattoo. “Third time’s the charm.”

The ground rumbles. A line of crimson light shines up from the floor in a curving, spidering arch. Cayenne stumbles, glancing around in confusion. The scarlet line swiftly creeps out under the feet of the increasingly unsettled crowd until it marks a glowing sanguine circle taking up the center of the massive ballroom. Jagged, cramped runes and arcane shapes scratch themselves into being along the circle. Red light pours up from the ground, and with it rises a growing swell of unearthly heat.

“They’re backwards,” Constance whispers, eyes wide. “The runes. They’re being drawn from the other side.”

Ravi aligns his shoulders into a firm line. The knot of his reeling emotions levels out in the face of imminent battle.

“Asura,” he calls out to the crowd, to his aunt. Demons. The first of their foes. Durga’s ancient enemies, the ones The Trust had been made to stand vigilant against. Ravi wishes more of the consortium were seasoned fighters. This is likely to be bloody.

“Val,” Harry says calmly. “Weapons, please.”

Without hesitation, Val winks out, bamfing back with a bulging bag Nate rushes to take. While he throws a quiver of arrows over his shoulder, Val’s maul appears in her hands. She hefts it, her mouth set in a grim line.

Meanwhile, Ravi circles around Cayenne on the balls of his feet, watching them warily, keeping his team behind him. Cayenne looks up from the incipient hell portal with a calculating purse of their lips. They catch Ravi’s eyes and smile.

“Right! The timetable has moved up, I see what he meant now.” They take in the crowd, now shouting and milling at the edges of the glowing circle, and tap a finger to their chin.

Mihika Bhagavati takes charge in leading a cabal of other casters into some kind of counter-spell. Padme shouts directives to anyone who looks able to fight.

“Eh bien. Maybe I can still make things work in this timeline. You’ll be fine, sweetheart. That was the deal. You’re not allowed to die before I’m done with you.” Cayenne blows Ravi a kiss.

The portal finally splits open with a deafening rumbling roar that shatters the windows. Glass blasts out into the sky as the storm rages in, rain and wind flooding the ballroom as a swarm of leathery-winged imps pour up from the portal with ear-piercing shrieks.

Cayenne disappears only to reappear at Mihika Bhagavati’s side, and in the next breath they easily fling her through the nearest window, then disappear again. Ravi lurches forward, but it’s done; she’s already gone, plummeting to her death. There are cries of dismay as magic fizzles in the remaining spell-casters’ hands, the counter-spell failing.

Ravi spins, trying to spot Cayenne, but a cloud of baboon-sized imps crash through the champagne fountain in a deluge of glass, liquid sizzling as it runs over the brightly glowing runes. A few imps snatch up people from the crowd standing too near the shattered windows and take them screaming over the edge. Ravi leaps toward the nearest one, a woman wriggling in the long, curved claws of the shrilly giggling imp pulling her into the air. He’s too far away—he’s not going to make it.

A red and white fletched arrow neatly clips the imp out of the air before it can carry its victim out past the shattered windows.

“Ravi!” Nate lowers his bow and tosses over the weapons bag. Ravi catches it.

Large talons clasp the edge of the open portal a few yards away, and a hellhound clambers up from the stygian depths, snarling through thick ropes of saliva dripping from impossibly wide jaws. It looks nearly identical to the one Ravi had fought before; a warped, skeletal humanoid hideously walking on all fours, face elongated on a vaguely canine skull. This hellhound wears a thorny chain around its neck and, crawling up behind it, a lesser demon holds the leash in one hand. The other wields a wickedly curved sword.

The demon lifts its many-horned head, grins tusklike teeth, and raises the sword with a roar, sounding a thunderous call to battle. A cacophony of howls and war cries spill upwards from below.

More incoming. Many, many more.

Harry’s voice rings out clarion clear. “Val, Ravi, and me on the front line. Nate and Constance, you got range. Stay behind us. Val, reserve as much of your strength as you can. We gotta hold out for as long as possible.” The urumi flashes, cutting a handful of squealing imps out of the sky in one blow.

Val’s wings snap out wide. She spins her maul in an arc, catching a wiry hellhound in the skull as it scrabbles up from the rim. “Agreed. I shall teleport sparingly.”

“I don’t have infinite arrows,” Nate calls out, shooting another imp down while Constance slaps together some dust and a handful of brambles. At her feet, Griswold hisses ferociously as a wall of thorns rises from the ground, slowing the demons’ advance.

Ravi looks at his Glock, then up at the leashed hellhound fast approaching, flame curling through its jagged fangs.

Between battling demons straight from the pits of hell and dancing with Nate in front of the entire Trust, the dancing had been by far the more terrifying undertaking. And Ravi had emerged from that unscathed.

He drops his gun and slides it away, polymer skittering over hardwood until the backstrap bumps against Nate’s shoe. Ravi flicks his cuffs straight. He walks directly toward the hellhound.

Harry screams, “What the fuck are you doing, Rav?” Nate’s desperate shout echoes behind her.

“Getting something that doesn’t run out of bullets.” The hellhound yanks against its chain, eager to attack. Grinning with bloodthirsty glee, the demon gives the hellhound enough slack to leap.

It lunges. Jaws snap inches from Ravi’s face. The beast lands on all fours, shaking its head in confusion.

Ravi waits, breath held, standing firm.

It growls and goes for another bite, jaws opening far wider than physics should allow. Again, its teeth close on nothing, and the worst that happens is the unholy heat of its breath makes Ravi’s eyes water. The hellhound cocks its head with a whine.

Ravi gives it a lupine grin. “Untouched and whole, huh? That was the deal.”

He springs into motion, slamming a foot into the hellhound’s face, cartilage grinding under his shoe, to launch himself right up into the demon’s reach. The demon rears back its sword, snarling through a jagged grin.

Ravi really hopes he’s right about this.

At the zenith of the sword’s arc, the demon’s sinewy arm locks in place. It roars with frustration, straining as if stuck on flypaper.

Oh, this is going to be fun.

He digs a jab into the demon’s fleshy wrist tendons, following with a hammer fist that wrenches the sword free. He tosses it up, catches the hilt, and with a single well-placed strike severs the demon’s head from its shoulders. The body crumples, lifeless, and the head rolls, protruding eyes bugged even wider with astonishment, almost cartoonish.

Twisting into a serpentine chuvadu, Ravi pins the hellhound straight through the spine, the blade going deeper than expected all the way into the wooden floor. This sword cuts through bone easily as hot butter. Useful. He wrenches the blade free, both bodies already smoldering into bare skeletons.

Ravi rejoins the team, who’ve shifted around to shield the majority of the crowd, each of them embroiled in a well-orchestrated multi-staged resistance; Nate and Constance whittling demons’ defenses down before they even get close enough for Harry and Val to cut them down.

“Cool sword,” Harry laughs wildly, her hair flying. One of her sleeves is torn at the elbow, but her skin is whole and unblemished. “Did that dumbass demon prick make it so we’ve got two invulnerable assholes on our side?”

“You’re really okay?” Nate adds with a worried frown, Ravi’s gun tucked into his cummerbund.

“Told you I’m bulletproof,” Ravi jokes. He swings the demon sword overhead, slicing the wings off an imp as it dives toward Constance. It crashes to the floor with a screech, writhing in a puddle of oily blood on the floor until Val finishes it off with her stiletto heel, her eyes flaring holy blue.

He likes this sword. It’s surprisingly light and well-balanced, for its shape. Ravi resolves to keep it when this is all over.

More demons in all different sizes and shapes pour up from the portal like scum bubbling over a sewage drain, a varied assortment of horrors. Some look nearly human, most emphatically do not. A few lead or drag hellhounds on spiked leashes, while others keep smaller enslaved devils on chains instead. Most are armed only with talons and teeth.

It’s a flood of enemies—far more than they can keep separate from the crowd. Ravi resigns himself to inevitable casualties, especially if Cayenne is sneaking around picking off key members of The Trust.

“Constance, can you close this?” Harry leaps up a big demon’s double-bearded axe to slice its head off, then jumps back lightly to the ground. Even as he cuts through a few more swooping imps, Ravi indulges in a moment of pride. The two of them practiced that move together a few weeks ago.

“Nay. Not without…” The witch hesitates, as a thickly thorned vine sprouts at her feet, creaking as it grows to the size of a tree in less than a second. The vine wraps around several hellhounds just as they open their maws to unleash scorching hot breath on Val, then lifts them up and pitches them shrieking back down through the portal.

“Now’s not the time to hold things back, Constance!” Nate snaps off three arrows in quick succession, each one finding its mark buried in another demon’s heart. Ravi wishes he could stop and take video; it’s incredibly fucking hot.

Hissing and spitting, Griswold blinds a hellhound with a claw swipe before circling back to Constance. Mushrooms erupt from the living skin of the enemies nearest her, blooming over them like a sped-up time lapse until they each slump down lifelessly in a sea of withered husks wearing a rippling coat of fungus.

“’Tis not my casting. I cannot shut the way without a great deal of power. Blood would do it, but t’would take more than any one of us can spare.”

“How much do you need?”

Ravi’s never been happier to hear his aunt’s gunpowder rasp.

Padme cuts through a pair of imps with a slash of a gupti, which she must have concealed as a walking cane somewhere close at hand. Flanking her on one side, Callum Harbridge wields a small, concealable pistol, and on her other side, Jihan Kataraju has turned a table leg into a glass-encrusted club.

Callum breaks off to guard Ikshana, plugging a few demons as he goes. Though his eyes are wide with fear, Ravi marks the steadiness of his hands, the accuracy of his shots. The kid’s going to go far.

Jihan slams his club into a hellhound’s open mouth and kicks the creature back into the hell portal. “It wasn’t supposed to be like this,” he says bleakly, eyes haunted.

“How was it supposed to go, Jihan my dude?” Harry whips the urumi into a slavering demon so thin as to resemble a reddened skeleton. The multiple blades leave a series of long cuts so deep and hairline-thin it’s not until the demon’s next heartbeat that blood wells into the wounds. “Your boy Mason promise you a nice, big piece of the pie?”

“He said we could make changes. Defend tradition.”

Nocking another arrow, Nate snorts. “Which is it, make changes or defend tradition? You can’t have both.”

“Sure, you can, if you’re a huge fucking hypocrite.” Harry slams her shoulder into a grotesque, lumpy demon, knocking it into Nate’s sight line for it to be sniped cleanly through the throat with a red-and-white fletched arrow.

“Nice shot!” Ravi yells, grabbing the whip-like tail of an imp and swinging it into a hulking mace-wielding demon. The imp shrieks, clawing at the demon’s eyes, and the resulting chaos gives Val the chance to smash the demon’s knees out from under it. She rears back her maul and mashes its head into a gooey puddle. Demonic gore splashes into her fiery eyes and hisses as it burns away. Wings spread, Valiance grins, looking like something a very particular type of guy would airbrush on the side of his van.

“Aw, thanks, sunshine. Better than a hockey stick, right?” Without hesitation Nate sends another arrow into a demon’s shoulder as it leaps free of the portal, any nerves he might have had swept aside by intense concentration.

Practically made for archery. He could watch Nate all day.

Callum shoots an imp through the wing and pushes a still-reeling Ikshana into cover behind an overturned table. “I really liked your dance,” Callum blurts, reddens, then turns to shoot another swooping imp.

“Do you usually let your team waste time with banter, McAllister?” Padme cuts in. “The ice sculptures have been made with holy water.”

“Ah.” Val perks up. She teleports on top of the buffet table and slams the head of her maul through one of the massive translucent tigers. Splinters of ice rain down.

Imps fall from the air with hideous screeches, fighting with each other to get out of the way. Hellhounds and devils recoil, demons howling as their feet steam and bubble when they step on the fast-melting holy ice.

Taking advantage of the distraction, Ravi ducks in to dispatch as many of the horde as he can. He weaves easily through enemy ranks, none of them able to land a single hit on him. A dance of its own, the ebb and flow of advance and parry, keeping his steps swift and sure as asura after asura falls before him, each one snarling with impotent rage until he cuts the breath from their throats.

“Nice!” shouts Harry, kicking ice into a demon’s face. “Any other dope security measures I really should have been apprised of?”

“The ones I haven’t kept to myself have all been dismantled,” Padme says acidly, joining Jihan to exterminate a brace of grounded imps.

“I didn’t know,” the man bleats, a vein ticking in his forehead even as he bashes imps into paste with his improvised club. “We wanted to make things better.”

“Then you can bleed for the witch,” Padme snarls, her posture even now as imperious as a queen’s. She winds her way to Ravi as he clears a space by felling a pair of collared devils and their goading master with a savage chain of efficient strikes. “You’re unharmed, bhanja?”

Every atom of him sharp and thrumming, Ravi nods as he whirls around in a tight circle, on high alert for more demons. Or worse, Cayenne.

Constance instructs Jihan to kneel in front of her and hands him a small silver knife She points at glowing runes. Blood already drips from her fingertips, a deep slice through her palm.

Harry yells, “Constance, we can’t spare you weakening. Keep your blood on the inside, dollface!”

Constance’s chin juts stubbornly. “My demon, my fault. Hartnell’s presence here is of my doing, time wizard’s meddling or no. I’ll not let others bleed for my mistakes and stay whole myself.”

Val smashes the second sculpture into icy shrapnel, then sweeps into the mess of screaming demons to take them down in wide violent swathes, all the while wearing a joyful, animated grin.

It’s almost unsporting, how demon after demon falls before Ravi’s agile advance. Each one dies with a comically frustrated look on its hideous face when it discovers it’s unable to strike back at him.

Despite everything, Ravi feels at peace, a deep sense of connection to everyone who came before him, to all the men and women who lived and fought and died, who just like him, had hopes and dreams and struggles, had family they wanted to protect.

Chosen or no, he’s always been meant for this.

A massive cadaver-gray hand emerges from the portal, looming up high enough to cast a shadow before it slams down onto the ground and cracks the floor into splinters. Heaving its gargantuan bulk up over the edge, the demon is as tall as two Vals, nearly brushing the vaulted ceiling with a pair of twisted horns. It growls like boulders rolling downhill. Gripping an entire dead hellhound in a meaty fist, it wields the corpse like a club, smacking it threateningly against the ground. Ravi has to take a step back to get the whole creature in his field of vision.

“Big boy,” Nate says with a slightly hysterical laugh. His arrow lodges deep into the demon’s cheek, right below one pure-black eye. The demon doesn’t appear to notice, looking around and sniffing. Nate reaches for another arrow and grabs only air, his quiver empty. He swears in Québécois and draws Ravi’s gun.

“Do the spell!” Harry leaves Constance and joins Ravi’s side, Val following close behind. “Thoughts?”

Ravi takes a flicker-fast assessment of the chaotic battlefield. Enemies everywhere. People dying. “Buy her time to finish the spell.”

“Exactly what I was thinking, look at us on the same wavelength and shit. Doc, cover her!”

Nate nods and tips over the buffet table, shielding Constance and Jihan from direct view of the crimson circle as he takes position behind it. Ravi jerks his chin at his aunt, who nods and joins Nate on the defensive line.

The demon’s nostrils flare wide as it swings its massive head toward them. Ravi steps in front of Harry, shifting his sword into a backward grip along the length of his forearm.

“Dude, you’re not a human shield,” Harry tells him. Behind her, Val’s wings spread wide.

Balanced in that particular state of battle-calm and savage elation he only experiences in the heat of a good fight, Ravi says, “I kind of am, right now. None of these demons can hurt me. We can use that to our advantage.”

Sure enough, the massive demon swings its makeshift corpse club down on them quicker than something that size should be able to move, but the blow stops as if halted by an invisible wall inches away from Ravi’s skull. The demon snarls in confused rage. Ravi slashes his blade into its vulnerable armpit, while Val wends sideways to slam her maul into its ribs with a sickeningly loud crunch.

Ligaments snap as Ravi digs the sword in, widening the wound. Demon blood rains down on them. Coughing at the foulness, Harry leans around Ravi and flicks the multi-bladed urumi over the demon’s wrist, nearly slicing its hand off. It roars, dropping the hellhound’s body, hand clinging to the knob of wrist bones by only a few tendons and scraps of skin.

“You know what I’ve been thinking?” Harry asks as calmly as if she were having a stroll through a garden instead of kicking aside a dead hellhound that rapidly disintegrates into smoldering embers. Val teleports to the other side of the demon and smashes the back of its knee, staggering the behemoth forward into their ready blades.

Ravi huffs a laugh, leaning in with feet braced to try to pierce the thick cartilage over the demon’s heart with the point of his sword. “What’s that?”

Harry ducks the demon’s wildly thrown fist as she strikes at its eyes, catching one in a savage rake that leaves the creature blinded and roaring. “You must give the best head in the world, dude. I can’t think of why else your ex would go through all this trouble.”

Ravi sputters a laugh. “You’re such a romantic, McAllister.” The demon’s heart is too well protected by a tangle of gristle, so he switches tactics and goes low, opening as many holes in the demon’s body as he can manage.

Synchronizing her strikes, Harry goes high, puncturing the demon’s throat. “Hey, which one of us banged his way into an apocalypse? I’m just saying.”

Falling to its knees, the demon gurgles through bubbles of blood. It manages a backward swing that throws Val off. She skids over melting ice and shards of glass, perilously close to the portal’s edge.

Ravi bisects an imp as it dive-bombs Harry, clearing her path for the demon’s jugular. “This isn’t an apocalypse, Harry.”

“Yeah, yeah,” she says as she cleaves the flexible blades of the urumi through the giant demon’s neck, releasing a great gout of thick, foul-smelling blood. “Just a Tuesday.”

They back away as the demon lurches forward, lifeless even before it hits the ground with thunderous impact.

The hordes of hell pause, giving the trio a wide berth as they stand over the smoldering corpse. A few heartbeats to catch their breath. Ravi’s blood sings, alive and exhilarated with battle. He instantly seeks out Nate, with his rumpled tuxedo and disheveled hair. In this moment, Ravi wants nothing more than to stalk over, push Nate to his knees, and take him right there on the floor.

Nate’s already watching him, so he catches Ravi’s look and immediately flushes up to his eyebrows. Later, he mouths, and the weight of the promise, of his utter certainty that there will be a later, tips Ravi’s heart into wild, reckless flight.

“Just there, if thou please,” Constance instructs Jihan, and together they dribble blood onto another set of runes. The markings hiss as the blood falls, the air acrid with the stink of copper. Jihan leans on Constance, unsteady on his feet. “Aye, that’s the last, my good fellow. This is going to hurt quite a bit,” she says apologetically.

Keeping one hand on the back of Jihan’s neck, Constance stretches the other outward over the edge of the portal, the sanguine light painting her ink-stained hand stark red. With one finger she traces the shape of a circle, then clenches her hand into a tight fist. Jihan crumples to his knees with a pained hiss.

Bloody light flutters like a candle about to go out, and the remaining imps shriek in one deafening voice. Most dive back into the hell portal, while the rest scatter from the room through the broken windows out into the night sky, heedless of the raging storm. Any demons and hellhounds close enough to retreat do so, slipping back into the circle to their own realm. Stragglers will be easy enough to mop up by surviving members of The Trust. Or so Ravi hopes.

The air wavers like a mirage over a desert, and the portal winks out completely. The lines and runes all go dark, the massive hole now simply scorched, broken floor. A few late demons scratch at the floorboards until Harry dispatches them with practiced flicks of her wrist.

“I’ve gotta admit,” she says, all tousled hair in a torn gold and black suit, “I’ve actually been to worse parties.”

Ravi scans the room. No telltale flash of red hair, no sign of Cayenne anywhere. He pads over to Constance, cleaning greasy blood off his sword with his sleeve. “Stay sharp,” he says grimly. “Cayenne will be back. Can you still do that spell to keep them from jumping time?”

“Oh, aye. Or I shall after a little something to top up mine mystical well.” Constance pulls an alarmingly green spotted mushroom from her handbag and tucks it into her cheek. Her pupils expand into black pools as Griswold twines stiff-legged and hissing around her feet. “The last Shaw stands ready for anything.”

“The sky is on fire,” Ikshana calls out softly, as if in wonder. Ravi extends a hand to pull an exhausted Jihan to his feet while Callum fires a shot into a lingering hellhound that Padme finishes off with a stab of her gupti.

Val shakes torn links of spiked chains off her maul while the storm still lashes through the shattered windows. “Harry.”

“One sec, big gal.” Harry stalks toward Jihan. Ravi gives her space; she looks furious, and if there’s one thing Harry doesn’t need his help on, it’s making her displeasure known.

Instead, he sidles up to Nate with a crooked grin. “Mighty fine shooting, Doc.”

Nate scoffs, blue eyes bright. “Nah. Well, with the bow, yes. I had a good teacher, and I’ve been practicing. But this?” He offers up Ravi’s gun. “Your record’s still secure, tough guy.”

Ravi snorts, shifting the sword to his other shoulder to take the gun. An imp frantically wheels around a battered chandelier until he picks it off with a single shot, the body ash and bone before it even hits the ground. With that, the clip is spent, so Ravi tosses the gun aside.

“Ravi…” Nate moves close, a line of concern drawn between his eyes. “Are you okay? Not the fight, I saw how that went down. Incredibly distracting, by the by, like dangerous levels of sexy. Jesus Christ. But I mean before that. What Cayenne did.”

Ravi draws in a long breath. Before he can answer, Val’s voice rings out loud and bell-like, her white wings still unfurled.

“Harry.”

Harry looks back mid-yell, her hands upraised. “Yes?”

“It is not over.”

The team all straighten up, share glances, and reconvene. “I’m listening,” Harry says, eyes hard as flint.

“After I was lured away from your side”—Val’s eyes flash, incandescent with fury—“I was urgently called to the celestial plane. The war in Hell—”

The ground shifts, the skyscraper shivering under their feet. When Ravi catches his balance, he realizes the storm has gone quiet and still, like a great indrawn breath before a scream.

At the edge of the building, glass crunching underfoot, they all stand side by side looking out over the city with dawning horror. Red lights ooze up. First in one spot, then another, then more and more and more until all of Atlanta is bathed in a bloody glow.

Val hisses, her wings arching back. “The war in Hell is spilling onto Earth.”

Hollowly, Constance says, “He’s been a busy little prince.”

Hell portals are opening up all over the city. All over the world? No way to know. Twisted shapes wing up into the sky, shrieks and howls ringing out among the honking of car alarms and the screaming of sirens.

“Harry,” Ravi says softly, his shoulder brushing hers.

Harry’s knuckles go white and bloodless on the urumi. She looks at him with a terrible crooked grin.

“Now, that’s what I call an apocalypse.”