MAGIK’S portal opened onto a dark alley between two of the houses, next to a clump of garbage and recycling bins. To their right was a line of tall, browning hedges. Nico spoke protection for the Suns as they stepped out, careful to glamour the spell’s power draw. She didn’t call for the Staff of One—it was loud and proud, and right now they needed sneaky.
Spell accomplished and holding—it would deflect demonic energy, as well as hide them from notice—Nico looked around, searching for the house that was collecting soul energy. She could feel darkness swirling in the air, like the very faintest of breezes…
“It’s one of those,” Blade whispered, and nodded to the houses behind the hedge. The one on the left was a two-story, pale-yellow cracker box facing the tree-lined street. It was slightly bigger than its neighbor, a tan ranch-style home on a heavily landscaped lot.
Nico observed for herself. The energies she sensed seemed to be going to the larger house, but it was hard to say. The entire block was humming with shifting power.
“I’ll take a closer look,” Blade whispered. “Wait here.”
He flashed away, silently. A dog barked a block over, a car started up, someone was taking out the trash. It was weird to be in a regular neighborhood after so long at the Abbey, surrounded by normal people doing normal people things. The air was cool but unpleasant, heavy with darkness; the feel was mildly oppressive, like the mugginess before a thunderstorm.
The smell doesn’t help. The garbage cans weren’t new, and the summer had been hot.
Blade flashed back to them. “It’s the yellow one. Windows are all blocked, there’s one person downstairs. I can’t get anything except that his heart is beating, but there are a lot of machines running inside.”
Nico frowned. The steady flow of psychic energy seemed to be stuttering, like something had interrupted it.
“I think they might be moving,” Nico said. “Something’s different, the draw is losing coherence.”
“Best time to kick in the door, then,” Blade said. “A third of the Triumvirate is better than none, and we can get one of those shields for Banner to look at. I’m going to grab whoever’s in there and then we’ll reassess. Robbie, Magik, come in through the front when you hear us. Nico and I will go in through the back. Let’s be cool—there are a lot of civilians around and we already know this guy’s a bomb-maker.”
Nico nodded along with the rest of them, maintaining their protection as they cut through the hedge. She was glad for all the practice Caretaker and Agatha had pushed, teaching her to divide a part of her focus to maintain a spell while turning her attention elsewhere. It wasn’t exactly second nature yet, but she was getting better all the time.
Blade and Nico split off from Robbie and Magik, who circled around to the front. Blade flashed to the low back steps next to a tattered rose bush and waited for everyone else to get into place. He held up a hand to Nico, reaching toward the back door’s knob with the other.
“On five,” he breathed, and held up a finger, then two, then three. Nico reinforced the strength of her cloak deflector, ready to manifest the Staff at the first sign of trouble.
Blade pulled the door open. It had been dead-locked, but the wood splintered around the metal bar with a splintering crunch, and they were inside, moving through a bare kitchen that smelled like disinfectant and was daubed in eerie green light. The light gave off a magical flavor, faint but palpable.
Through a hall and into a living room, where a lone man sat on a couch in front of a broken coffee table. Blade was on him in an instant, picking him up and pushing him against one of the bare white walls, faintly lit by one of the green-light machines. The guy didn’t resist at all. He was hot, looked like James Dean with better hair, but his eyes were vacant and somehow flat and his energy…
Soulless. His energy was as blank as his gaze, flat and threaded with darkness. Like an empty room full of squirmy shadows. Nico instinctively put her right hand in her hoodie’s pocket, touching the taped bit of razor she had brought along.
Blade held the soulless up easily. “Check the other rooms, and watch out for—”
BOOM!
* * *
FENN had commissioned a detection web for a block in every direction of the rental house. He hadn’t been certain the spell would work—the mystic who’d made it was still learning—but it was triggered less than an hour after their return from Transia. The breach was less than a second long, and he only knew because his sensor bracelet flashed red; he had no magical power of his own, but he more than made up for the lack with technical prowess.
Fenn quickly gathered his important papers, sorry to let go of the workshop, but the bulk of his designs were safe; he’d planned all along for unexpected visitors, although he’d hoped to avoid them until farther along. No matter, his resources were in place. He had rented three other houses and had lines on a dozen empty ones suitable to their purposes. There were alarms and escape plans for all of them; he’d placed a mechanical sensor in the Transian vault chamber, jammed into a crack in the floor, so that the Triumvirate would be aware of intruders. He’d financed the entire Triumvirate plan himself, his not inconsiderable life’s savings were invested, and while Zarathos’s first attempt to open the vault had been unsuccessful, Fenn knew it was going to pay off. The vault was sealed by a degrading spell. He’d taken measurements; with a bit of consultation, he’d be able to work out exactly when it was due to expire, certainly well before the alignment… and he had two powerful, committed teammates to help hurry the process along.
Zarathos was still on the floor in the remains of the coffee table, but seemed to be asleep now rather than unconscious. Satana had refused to move him to his room. She was in a terrifying mood, but she acted promptly enough when Fenn told her the enemy had arrived. For all her faults, Satana Hellstrom had quality survival instincts. She transported them to the rental van parked a block away, along with a hefty box of equipment. At Fenn’s request, she left her servant behind, the better to lure their attackers in.
Fenn plucked his detonator out of the box of toys and crawled into the driver’s seat, leaving the succubus and the groggy demon in back. His portable shield bathed the stuffy space in warm green, hiding them from the invaders. He put his key in the van’s ignition and waited until his phone alerted him that the rental property’s doors had been breached. It didn’t take long.
Satana appeared in the passenger seat, her arms folded across her ample bosom, her succulent lower lip pushed out. “Now what?”
Fenn smiled and flipped the switch on the side of the detonator. “Now, this.”
He pushed the small red button on top of the box, and the earth trembled. A beat later, the roar of a massive explosion cut through the night. It was actually six separate explosions, including four of his marvelous hybrid gamma shields, but the blast was a perfect harmony, a sustained note of deadly destruction.
Still smiling, Fenn started the van to drive them into the city, to their next sanctuary. The Triumvirate would prevail. Fenn had dreamed it. He’d been called crazy and worse through the years by those who’d dismissed his righteous ambition as unattainable, who’d dismissed him, his pain, his loss, his visions of vengeance and chaos. He’d been cheated and lied to, underestimated, laughed at, but he had persevered, never lost sight of his purpose. Fenn would have his vengeance, and the last laugh. And he would laugh loudest and longest.
In his rearview mirror, Fenn could see the glow of new fire, and was satisfied.
* * *
THE explosion was thunderous, a deafening crash of destruction. Magik was standing next to Ghost Rider when the house around them became a tornado. Metal, wood, concrete, plaster, pulverized and splintering debris flew, igniting, a hurricane of pressure and sound blasting Magik’s senses.
The Suns were slammed off their feet. Magik spun through the air, blind and lost, slashing at a giant piece of burning couch that tried to take her head—
“Usporiti!” Nico’s voice cut through the chaos of disaster, purple light flashing like a strobe—
—and the spray of smoking debris seemed to freeze all around them.
Not quite frozen. Magik hit the floor, looking up wide-eyed at a thousand broken bits and pieces hanging in the air. The house was still coming apart, but at a crawl. Billows of dust and smoke inched larger, and chunks of wall and flooring sprayed in extremely slow motion from the blast sites, radiating outward. Flames painted what was left of the walls.
Magik rose, saw Nico holding her staff, scratched and bleeding from a dozen small wounds, surrounded by the suspended rain of smoking, flaming matter. Blade had been launched headfirst into the wall and came up holding the dead soulless, the creature’s flesh slashed by shrapnel; its blood ran freely—Nico’s spell had not affected flesh. The Daywalker was also bleeding, but his wounds were already healing closed. He dropped the corpse and ducked a tangle of flaming wire a handspan from his face. Ghost Rider lurched to his feet and spun through the destructive rain, knocking bigger debris out of the air with his chains.
The night sky was visible through the gaps of the expanding house. Flames had erupted all around them, but like the rest of the chaotic destruction, the fires crept ever so slowly, lighting the collapse with strange shadows and banked heat.
“Here!” Magik called, and cut a portal through the morass, the familiar light of Limbo like fresh air in the choking ruin.
“It’ll go back to normal if I leave!” The Staff of One seemed to float in Nico’s bleeding fingers. “It’ll blow up the other houses!”
“I’ve got it!” Magik called. She put her right foot in Limbo and let its power flow into her. In her mind’s eye she extended a heavy umbrella over the exploding house, a wet blanket of gravity. All around them, the arcs of ascent and descent halted, every particle weighted to fall. It wouldn’t stop the fires but should keep the blast radius confined.
“Go, go!” Blade pointed at Magik’s portal and Robbie ran through, his Spirit’s face grinning. Nico sidestepped for the disc, concentrating, and Blade was at her side in an instant, lifting and carrying her to the portal. Blackening splinters and ragged, flaming drywall gently descended all around them, floating like the lightest snow. Blade weaved them through it in a flash, small pieces pattering against his whipping coat.
As soon as they were on the bridge, Magik stepped into Limbo after them. She narrowed the disc but kept its visual window open.
“We’re clear,” Blade said, and Nico let go.
The Suns watched the explosion return to speed. A house’s worth of fiery, floating debris slammed into the ground, flames and smoke billowing upward, sparks soaring. The homes surrounding it didn’t seem to be damaged.
“What was the spell?” Magik asked Nico.
“Slow down,” Nico said. “In Croatian.”
The Staff of One didn’t like to repeat spells, often redirecting Nico’s energies. The witch was continually looking up new ways to ask for useful things. She could say open in hundreds of languages.
“They went somewhere,” Blade said. “We’ll find them.”
“Damn straight,” Robbie agreed.
They sounded far more confident than Magik was feeling. So far, the Triumvirate had stayed ahead of them and the Suns had yet to land a blow, besides denying them a few resources. She wondered if Mephisto knew that one of his most unwilling servants was on Earth, seeking an amulet that could control him. She had not faced Zarathos before, but Mephisto had delighted in relaying stories of the rebellions he’d quelled; the inter-dimensional demon had been a favorite, as Zarathos had been so easily tricked.
For a fleeting instant, she considered letting Mephisto know. The Hell Lord would fetch Zarathos back to his prison, the Triumvirate would be dissolved… but of course, Mephisto was never an answer to any problem. He was petrol to flame, always, and might take such a message as proof that she felt anything about him, which she did not.
Magik cut a portal back to the Abbey, suddenly tired in spite of the power flooding her system, the resuscitation of physical contact with Limbo. She vaguely hoped that the Triumvirate would lay low for a few hours. In Transia she’d been brutally reminded of the horror of her existence, of the apocalypse she could become, and she very much wanted to walk the Abbey grounds, clear her mind of everything but the salted wind and the cool darkness. She was proud to fight alongside the Suns, she trusted and respected them, but solitude was what she craved most when she felt this way. The blackness that lived in Magik’s soul was always looking for weakness, a way to get out, and for the first time since she’d come to the Abbey she could feel the Darkchilde clawing the walls of her prison, eager talons gouging at the tiny cracks in the stones. Emotional pain created those cracks. The evil would never get out again, ever, but the Ghost Rider’s penance stare had stirred Darkchilde all the same and Magik needed her mind to be clear and steady. She needed some peace.
Perhaps the others felt the same. They walked to the Abbey without speaking. When Ghost Rider became Robbie Reyes again, he had lost some of his earlier enthusiasm, his shoulders slumped. Nico reabsorbed her staff and held her hand over a deep scratch on her arm, her eyes red from smoke. Blade’s expression was unreadable, as it so often was, but Magik thought he might be tired, too.
Caretaker opened the front door. She looked them over, assessing their condition at a glance.
“They got away and tried to blow us up,” Nico announced.
Caretaker nodded, stepping back so they could file inside. “I’ll need more time to research the vault’s mechanism and prepare our spell. You should all rest. You’ve done enough for today.”
“But the Triumvirate’s on the run,” Robbie said. “We should hit them before they have time to get settled.”
“And track them how, if they’re moving?” Caretaker asked. “The Midnight Sun is just beginning. It’s a marathon, not a sprint, and you’ll be no use at all if you don’t take care of yourselves. We won’t always have the time, but we have it now. Take it.”
She turned and walked away, back toward the war room.
“She’s not wrong,” Blade said. “I want to do some more digging, see if I can find anything on whoever owns or rented that house. Unwind, eat, get some sleep. We’ll be back at this bright and early.”
Magik didn’t wait for Robbie or Nico to protest, or argue again about which movie to watch. She nodded at the other Suns and turned, the cool night welcoming her with open arms, soothing, uninterested in who she was or the things she’d done. When she was a thousand years in her grave, the ocean would still beat against the lonely cliffs, the moon would still shine on the whispering trees. Magik embraced her insignificance and was comforted.