Chapter Twenty-One

“JESUS FUCKING CHRIST,” Nate rasps thickly, sliding a palm to the small of Ravi’s back. “This is… What do we do? How do we stop it?”

“Great question, Doc,” Harry says. “Like maybe Constance sends me to Hell and I stab that motherfucking demon in the face?”

Constance shakes her head, still staring out at the city as screams ring out in an increasingly steady cacophony. She picks up Griswold and hugs him tight to her chest. “Would that even end something of this magnitude? I know not. I cannot do such a thing.”

“You did before!”

“That was a summoning!” Constance blinks rapidly, fighting tears. “Pulling a thing through in our world, not the other way round. ’Tis leagues of difference.”

“I don’t know, reverse the polarity or something!” Harry stares out at the chaotic vista, hand clenched in her hair like she might rip it all out.

“Harry, this isn’t Star Trek.” Nate scrambles for his phone, and bites down hard on his lip as he stares in horror at the screen. “Oh, God. My family—everyone’s families. What do we do?” The look Nate turns to him holds such agony that Ravi feels it as if it were a stray bullet.

Sword in hand, Ravi turns and surveys the aftermath, considering the tools they have available. Bodies everywhere. People he’s known his whole life lying strewn among fallen crystal chandeliers and the bone-shard embers of dead demons. Padme and Jihan lead some survivors to pick through the carnage, helping the wounded. Ravi presses his lips into a tight line. They’ve got only a handful of able-bodied fighters, but at least one surviving seer.

Ravi heads toward Ikshana, still guarded by Callum, shaky but alert. He might be the only adult Harbridge left now. Ravi didn’t see any other survivors.

So many dead. More down in the city every second he wastes. Civilians with no idea what’s going on or how to combat the threat. There will be time to mourn later. Now, Ravi does the job that’s in front of him.

“Ikshana, we need your vision. Are you—”

Cayenne appears next to Callum, fiery hair windblown. “A seer would be helpful, wouldn’t it?”

Callum jumps in alarm, turning quickly, but Cayenne slips under the young agent’s arm, plucks the gun out of his hands with a practiced twist, and tosses it over their shoulder.

“Mon Dieu, would you look at this one!” Cayenne gives Ravi a cute, scrunched-up grin even as they hook an ankle around the back of Callum’s knee and smoothly pull him off his feet. “He’s like a little you. That’s adorable. I can’t possibly kill him.” Quick as a mongoose, they snag Callum by his collar and the two disappear, only for Cayenne to pop back alone a mere split second later, Callum lost somewhere in time.

Cayenne approaches Ikshana. The seer leans heavily against the wall while holding their skull in both hands, as if the weight of it is too much to bear. “You, however—oh, that hair, darling, j’adore. Such a shame.”

“Cayenne, no!” Ravi dashes forward, but as quick as he is, he’s not faster than someone able to control time.

Unsurprisingly, Cayenne pauses instead of vanishing the instant the seer’s wrist is in their grip. They’ve always loved having the last word. “Don’t worry, mon tigre, I’ll be back to take you somewhere safe where we can wait out all this unpleasantness. I’ll be seeing you.” They wink.

Val snaps into being behind Cayenne, throwing her muscular arms around their middle to pluck them up off the ground. “He said no.”

Cayenne wriggles eel-like in her grasp, but her implacable grip doesn’t loosen in the slightest. “Oooh, harder, maman,” they manage through breathless lungs. “We’re not on a speeding train this time, I think you’ll find.” Cayenne curls their fingers around Val’s forearms and they both wink out of existence. Ravi skids to a halt where they had just been, spitting curses until he runs out of Hindi and has to borrow from Tamil.

Harry calls out, “Constance, you ready?”

“Aye,” Constance answers resolutely, her hands poised at shoulder height.

Cayenne reappears alone some distance away, almost where the portal had been vomiting out demons, a few feet midair above the floor. They land lightly and spin on their heel with some leftover momentum.

“Putain de merde,” they laugh, brushing grass from their jacket, “those Confederates really don’t like surprises. Good thing she’s got wings, no? That should keep her busy for a few hundred yea—”

Constance raises her hands, slams her fists together, and tears them apart.

Ravi braces for the overpowering lurch, but Constance has had ample time to refine her work since the airport. Instead of wrenching them all back in time, a ring of green seedlings springs up around Cayenne’s feet and grows before their eyes, each plant starting from a tiny sprout and stretching into a full-grown flower before it withers and dies, only to rise up again as that little sprout. The pace quickens faster and faster until the flowers seem to be a flickering zoetrope, and a translucent field oozes up from the ground and closes over Cayenne like a bell jar. Staggering as if the wind has gotten knocked out of them, Cayenne bends over with hands braced on their knees.

“Stay,” Constance says with tremendous satisfaction. She moves to check on Ikshana, sliding a hand over their pale cheek with a murmur of concern.

Harry sighs, raking bedraggled hair out of her face as she approaches the circle of flowers. She pulls herself to her full height and looks Cayenne up and down, sucking on her teeth.

“Normally, the way we do things on this team is we toss back and forth some gallows humor when the shit really hits the fan. Keep things light, keep our spirits up. But I’m really not feeling it right now, so I’m gonna get straight to the point. You bring back my ass-kicking angel, and then you rewind this whole goddamn fucking apocalypse back to the pregame show. And you do it right. Fucking. Now.”

Standing shakily, Cayenne looks at Harry sidelong through their foxy mop. “An interesting proposal, Angharad. If I say no?”

Her hand convulses tight on her urumi. “We make you.”

They dissolve into peals of laughter. “Oh fuck, that’s a good one. There is nothing you can say or do that will make me your obedient little servant, Angharad. You can’t kill me if you want to have any hope of undoing this whole Hell-on-Earth thing, and even if you noble hero types could bring yourselves to threaten me with torture, believe me, I’ve survived far worse than anything you could think up.” Cayenne’s fingers slide through their hair, and Ravi notes the intentional slope their shoulders carve, painting a tableau of someone small and defenseless, in need of protection. “I’d learned to survive just about anything before I even lost my baby teeth, sweetheart.”

Harry snorts scornfully. “Boo-fuckin’-hoo, you had a shitty childhood. Guess what, Red? Ravi’s was no picnic either, and I can one hundred percent guarantee you mine was as bad or worse than yours. And I didn’t come out of it a murdering, narcissistic psychopath who keeps torturing the one person I claim matters to me. You are going to help us. My job is to end apocalypses. I didn’t sign up for it, and I’m extremely underqualified for it, but fuck me if I’m not gonna do it. You can reverse this. So, you’re going to get on board, one way or another.”

“Hmm,” Cayenne pretends to consider, running a finger over their lip. “Go jump in a portal yourself, Chosen One. I wouldn’t place high odds on your survival, but that’s what you types are picked for anyway, isn’t it? Both cannon fodder and sacrificial lambs.” Their green-glass gaze softens as it slides to Ravi, their pose shifting into something less confrontational. “Who’d be next in line, darling? Can’t be you, oui? If it is, I’ll go back, put that fucking sword on a rocket, and send it to space this time.”

“It can’t be me,” Ravi breathes, realization cresting over him like dawn. “It never could have been.” He drops the demon sword with a clatter to grasp Harry by her upper arms. “Harry! I know how to fix it.”

She blinks, then inspects him shrewdly. “I’m not going to like this, am I?”

“You are not.” He spares Nate an apologetic, lopsided smile. Then he straightens, shoulders back, utterly sure of himself. “You have to kill me.”

A beat of heavy silence.

“Uh,” Harry starts, “what now?” Then she glances down at the urumi, opening her hand so its hilt lies in the flat of her palm. He can practically see her putting the pieces together.

Nate says, “Whoa, now, what are you talking about?”

Harry slides her speculation from the urumi to Cayenne, whose hands drop from their insolent cross over their chest into an artless posture of bafflement. She locks eyes with Ravi.

“It’s a big, big gamble, dude.”

He knew she’d get it. “What do we have to lose at this point?”

“Doth anyone care to explain?” Constance pipes up from her ministrations over the dazed seer.

Harry doesn’t look away from Ravi. “What if it doesn’t work?”

He gives her a shrug and a crooked smile. “Punarjanma. Maybe in my next life I’ll be luckier.”

Nate inhales sharply, and Ravi releases Harry’s shoulders. At some point during the fight Nate had discarded the tuxedo jacket, his bow tie undone, white sleeves rolled up past his elbows. An angry red mark from the snap of the bowstring mars his left wrist.

“Ravi, no.” Nate steps near, voice breaking. Ravi runs a thumb lightly over that welted wrist, drawing Nate closer, and lays a cool palm over the heated skin to soothe the burn. Nate bites down on his lip so hard it’s a wonder it doesn’t bleed.

In their cage, Cayenne scoffs, “Whatever lunacy you’re planning, it won’t work. I’ve run across several necromancers throughout the years. You think there’s any possibility that I won’t find a way to keep you safe and alive, mon amour? Whatever moronic martyr routine you’re devising, it’s pointless.” They flick their gaze back and forth between him and Harry, pointedly ignoring Nate.

Reflexively Nate rubs at his own breastbone, pained lines around his eyes. “The urumi is one of the few ways to kill someone so necromancy can’t bring them back.”

“Quoi? No, no, what the fuck are you—” Cayenne surges forward but the forcefield acts like a solid wall. They stumble back, hissing.

Ravi nods slowly, eyes on Nate. “Only the urumi can do it. No type of magic can bring me back from that. Except one.” Probably. There’s no real way of knowing if even time travel will be effective. As Harry said, it’s a gamble.

Nate winces, hand still rubbing his chest as if to stem a spilling wound. Ravi takes it, stilling the restless movement to cradle both of Nate’s hands between his own. The breath escapes Nate’s lungs in a hoarse rush. “And the urumi can never harm the Chosen who wields it,” he grates, fingers closing tight over Ravi’s.

“Fortuitous,” Constance hums. She pushes back her hair, dark braids fallen and tangled into a Pictish crest. “I hath long since ceased believing in such a thing as coincidence.”

Harry rubs a palm over her face, further smudging her makeup. “You need a minute?”

“Please,” Ravi answers with a grateful sideways bob of his head, not bothering to anglicize the very Indian gesture. Harry beckons to Constance, and together the ladies form a wall as best they can, blocking Nate and Ravi from view.

Nate shakes his head, chewing his lip nearly bloody. “This… Ravi. I see what you’re trying to do, but there has to be something else, some other—”

Ravi takes Nate’s face between his hands and kisses him. Nate gasps sharply against his lips, then melts into the embrace, clutching desperately at Ravi’s torn shirt.

“Nathaniel. You’re the kindest, most generous soul I have ever met. You make me feel like…like there’s whole chapters of myself I’ve only turned the pages to because of you. One smile from you is better than a hundred from anybody else.” Ravi’s pulse thuds painfully in his chest, as if his heart were too big for his ribcage to contain. “I should have said yes. When you asked if it was a date, back when I wanted to take you shooting. I’m so sorry I—”

“Don’t,” Nate whispers, head bowing to rest their brows together. “You don’t have to apologize for anything.” He pulls back just far enough to meet Ravi’s eyes, a core of resolve settling in to banish fear. “If this is what you think is best, I’m…I’m with you.”

“Do you trust me, jaan?”

“Course I do. What’s…what’s jaan mean?”

Ravi cups Nate’s cheek in his hand, thumb grazing golden stubble where Nate’s dimples hide, and sends up a prayer he’ll get to see them again. “I’ll tell you on the other side.”

It’s almost impossible to step away, his touch lingering until Nate gives him a small, supportive nod.

Ravi walks as close to Cayenne as the spell circle allows. At his feet, petals unfurl and wither in strobe-like flashes.

Cayenne gives him an unimpressed roll of their eyes. “I suppose that saccharine display was for my benefit,” they drawl. “Teaching me a lesson?”

“Cayenne.” Ravi keeps his voice steady. A mingled riot of destruction and terror rises up from the city, an unsettling backdrop. “Do this for me. Undo this and help us stop this apocalypse, and we’ll be even. All debts repaid.”

Cayenne crosses their arms over their chest, lifting their chin to a haughty angle. “You expect me to fall for this, mon beau? Threatening me with this ludicrous ploy is, what? Supposed to make me fall to my knees and promise to be a good little pepper? To bring back your angel, to serve up the head of that demon? You want me tamed, is that it?”

“No. That ship has sailed. That ship has sunk. I can’t trust any promise you make. You’ve broken every one you’ve ever made me.” Ravi shuts his eyes tight for a heartbeat. Dredging the next words up from underground is one of the hardest things he’s ever done, every syllable gravel and dry soil. “Do you truly love me? Do you honestly want me to be happy?”

Cayenne clasps both hands over their heart, nothing but emerald earnestness and fervent fact. “Yes, Ravi, bien sûr! Mille fois oui, if you believe only one thing, you must believe that.”

“I do,” Ravi whispers, “that’s why I know you’re going to do the right thing.”

Cayenne presses their palms to the barrier. “Darling. This isn’t going to work. Just come with me, leave this wreck behind you. You expect me to believe that you’d rather die than—” Cayenne looks as though they’ve been struck across the face, like the floor just shattered out from under them.

So, they do get it, after all. Ravi crooks into a rueful smile. “If you don’t think I’d rather die than let you hurt people, Cay, then you never really knew me at all.”

Their fingers form panicked claws against the barrier. “This is another trick,” they insist. “It’s… I can’t take this many back, anyway. Not all of you, not without ages to set it up. It wouldn’t even work.”

“Constance will help.” Ravi glances back over his shoulder. “It’ll work, right?”

Constance has one arm around Harry’s waist and the other slung across Nate’s back, all three heads bowed together. She looks up with a startled blink.

“Ah…yes?” Her attention drifts, lips shaping silent calculations. “With enough will, we may. I think.”

Cayenne slams a futile kick into the translucent partition. “Ravi, you goddamn selfless, noble idiot, don’t you fucking dare do this to me! You aren’t allowed to die until I am done with you, you can’t—” They clap a hand over their mouth, tears brimming.

Ravi reaches out. He places his palm opposite theirs, only a thin shield of magic between their hands.

Cayenne subsides, going as still as an animal in a snare. They’re so beautiful, even still—wild with fury, destruction all around them. Ravi leans close, the tumble of his hair brushing the barrier. He wants to tell them a hundred things—a mad, contradictory tangle of words that stick under his tongue. Maybe someday Ravi will be able to unknot it all: rage, betrayal, guilt, sorrow, grief, regret, even gratitude.

Without the storm, nothing new would ever grow.

“Looks like you get to be a hero, after all, Cay.”

Cayenne pounds a furious fist against the barrier, snarling. “You’re all crazy, this isn’t fair, this is…this is… Angharad McAllister, don’t you fucking dare! Anyone who helps him, who hurts a fucking hair on his head, I will destroy everything you’ve ever loved! I will salt the fucking earth!”

“I’m ready,” he tells Harry.

Something bumps Ravi’s leg. Griswold’s yellow eyes shine up. “Thou shalt travel far, valorous one, across the very veil of death itself!” His striped tail twists into an approving loop. “May fortune favor us, that thou shalt not be lost beyond reach for ever and always.”

“Thanks, Griz. Hey…can I pet you? I never have before.” Allergies are currently the least of Ravi’s concerns.

Griswold stretches into a long, lean line, forepaws on Ravi’s knees. “A fine final request, indeed!” He quakes with a mighty purr as Ravi scratches behind tufted lynx-like ears. His fur is even softer than it looks.

When Ravi straightens, Constance offers him a watery smile and the hilt of the demon sword. “No warrior should face death without blade in hand.”

The sword is a very welcome weight, and Ravi takes it with gratitude. “Can you imagine the look on Hartnell’s face when we go back and know who he really is?”

Constance’s tremulous smile spreads into a savage grin. “Vengeance hath been ages coming. The wretched slime shall not wriggle free this time.” She glances over at Nate, standing aside with his shoulders hunched and his fingers pressed over his mouth. “I’ll keep our favored scholar under mine eye, nephew-to-be. Give him a shoulder, should he need it.”

“Thank you, Constance.” Ravi fights the need to go to Nate and offer comfort, but he’s drawn this out long enough. He wonders briefly what Val would say, but he’s fairly certain she’d suggest they hurry up and get it over with.

He gives Harry a nod.

She shakes herself like a wet dog and demands, “Nobody watch this, okay? I mean it.”

After making sure the other two have their backs turned, she glances around at the scattered upturned tables and points at the clearest spot of the floor. “Your aunt’s going to kill me,” she says matter-of-factly. Cayenne’s frantic yelling is already drawing attention from the other side of the ruined gala, surely bringing the surviving Trust members over before too long.

“Sorry.”

Harry snorts a graceless laugh. “Yeah, you should be apologizing to me.” She lets the urumi unfurl from her hand. Its beauty strikes him, many rivers pouring out from one central source. No matter what happens next, no matter what fruits his actions may yield, in this moment Ravi feels whole; a pure, clean clarity of purpose, as true to his nature as it is the urumi’s nature to be sharp.

“Rav, listen. Between you and me, are you sure about this? There isn’t any other way to…” She stops and digs thumb and forefinger into the inside corners of her eyes. “No, I get it. Being a private eye and social worker means I’ve seen obsessive, predatory relationships play out a hundred times, and there’s depressingly few ways they end.” Harry attempts a smile. It’s almost convincing. “This should send a pretty clear message. But if it doesn’t work, I’m going to be absolutely furious with you. I’ll call off the wedding, even. I’m serious.”

“Completely fair.” Ravi squares his shoulders, sword at his side. Unflinching. “And Harry? Thank you.”

Her throat moves a few times before she rasps, “Yeah, well. Love ya, you big jerk.”

As last words to hear before dying go, it’s not the worst sentiment to go out on.