BLIGHT MARKED

Ethereal Earth

Book Three

By Josh Erikson

Blight Marked by Josh Erikson

Published by Josh Erikson

www.Josherikson.com

© 2020 Josh Erikson

All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be reproduced in any form without permission from the publisher, except as permitted by U.S. copyright law. For permissions contact: Josherikson@gmail.com

Paperback ISBN: 9781658117753

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Cover art by Tyler J. Rinne

Edited by Kaitlyn Johnson and Steph Warren

Table of Contents

Title Page

Copyright Page

Blight Marked (Ethereal Earth, #3)

AUTHOR’S NOTE

PROLOGUE

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

ELSEWHERE

CHAPTER THREE

ELSEWHERE

CHAPTER FOUR

ELSEWHERE

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

ELSEWHERE

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

ELSEWHERE

CHAPTER TEN

ELSEWHERE

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

ELSEWHERE

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

ELSEWHERE

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

CHAPTER NINETEEN

CHAPTER TWENTY

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

ELSEWHERE

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

CHAPTER THIRTY

CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

For Jonah and Marie, my two favorite reasons.

AUTHOR’S NOTE

YOU’RE GOING TO GET tired of me thanking you by the time we’re done with this series. Ideally I could deliver this book personally and tell you all the specific reasons why I think you’re awesome for sticking with me, but until we develop transporter technology, I’m stuck with this.

Thank you. You took a chance on a series, and then you came back again. That means I get to write and narrate more of them, which is no small thing for me. A few years ago (as I’m writing this) I was working in a job that was slowly killing me. (Most of us have been there, right?) It was actively eating my patience and sense of humor and lust for the unknown, and the stress was causing all kinds of health problems. And worse, I had very few prospects for anything better. That made writing Hero Forged a kind of escape—like a secret tunnel I was digging at night when nobody was watching. It was therapy and hope at the same time, and it got me through some tough moments that otherwise might have gone badly. So if I ever come across as a little too grateful, it’s only because when I finally worked up the courage to crawl through that tunnel, you were waiting on the other side with a grin and an idling car. So whether you’ve been with me from the first day or are just discovering these now, I think you’re pretty darned cool.

As for the state of the series...oh boy, there’s so much yet to happen. The original plan was for ten books total, and the story would comfortably fit in that space. But there are a few other ways it could be done too, resulting in fewer or more books by the end. And there are a bunch of little side stories that keep whispering to me, so some spin-off novellas aren’t out of the question either. In all, this is a world that could keep going for a very long time. And I’m glad, because I love living in it.

But you’re here for a story, not to hear me babble. Blight Marked is another slight change of tone from the last book, but I feel like I steered it right down the middle between Hero Forged and Fate Lashed this time. So if you liked either or both, hopefully this one will work for you too. All I can say is that I had a ridiculous amount of fun writing it. Thanks again, and I hope you enjoy it.

- Josh

PROLOGUE

IT WAS SO DARK.

He’d become accustomed to the light, whether he liked to admit it or not, and too much time away had made him forget what real emptiness looked like...what it felt like. The uncaring hollowness. The unquenchable hunger.

Phillip knew he was supposed to have been an echo of that, the fingers of it reaching toward earth, and he knew that his “self” had only been a mask to make his efforts more efficient while he tended to this one sliver of the greater mechanisms. He wasn’t “real” despite how he felt. Not any more than the countless others who’d come before him, nor more than those who would no doubt come after. Cycle upon cycle, it was always the same. And though he had no memory of those previous iterations, he had thought he’d been doing an admirable job of it. Until the end. Until he’d been torn apart.

But no matter how frantically he tried to remind himself that he was technically home and there was no reason for him to be experiencing fear, he couldn’t help but squirm under the scrutiny of that alien emptiness writhing against the backdrop of the Ether it was consuming.

“Diverged,” it said, the voice coming from everywhere but sounding more like the space where one should be.

Phillip raised his hands and tried to find anything like a face in that abyss, though he knew better. “No...” he began. Then he felt his mouth forming a singular personal pronoun, and he had to work hard to squash it before it could immediately make him a liar. “We were succeeding in our task, moving pieces into natural positions that would all fall in succession at the touch of one. And it was going as planned. Elegant, orderly, and balanced.” The darkness waited, and Phillip raised his chin just a fraction. “Though, admittedly, there were a few variables that...we did not anticipate.”

“Tainted,” it said.

There was no emotion in the voice—there couldn’t be—but it still sounded disdainful to Phillip’s ear. He knew better than most how much weight even the absence of something could carry, and this absence by its very nature could carry every bit of it.

“We have done nothing but fulfill our purpose,” he said. “We remained true to the design. But it was difficult to account for such disorder, delivered so sharply. The cycle was not equipped for such resistance, let alone such awareness of our endeavors. And it has required some creative strategies that may appear to be, on the surface—”

“Changed,” it said right over him.

Phillip stopped and felt the word hit him at the core of his being, and he let all the rest of his justifications run out of his head like water. There was no use for them. Not here. He instead focused on trying not to think about resistance or escape, since there was nowhere he could go that it couldn’t reach. There was little point in grasping at hope when facing something designed to swallow it whole.

“Perhaps you are right,” he replied finally, dropping the plural pretense. “I am almost certainly changed from my time on earth and the material plane, but how better to manipulate the system than to become a part of it? I have learned the rules and beats of existence, and I have adapted to use them to my benefit. Our benefit. So who better could there be than me to see this through?” The darkness wallowed in silence, and Phillip couldn’t help but continue to fill it. “Send me back. Give me more time to wrest these rogue elements into the familiar patterns. And then when all is again quiet and pure with your passing, I will submit to being...unmade. But do not throw me away so easily. Not yet.”

“Unmade...” it said, drawing the word out like a question. “No.”

Phillip couldn’t help the relief at hearing that. “Very well. I will return to earth and ensure the Iglas are accounted for. Our purpose will not be slowed or altered in any way, I assure you. I will redouble my...” He let the words trail off as he felt a sudden weakness pass through his body, and he looked down to find a void at his feet already pulling him in. “But...” he began.

Then a face did emerge from the abyss.

“Not unmade,” it said, its mouth just a slash of shadow beneath indistinct features. “Absorbed.”

Phillip tried to back away, but he found in horror that his legs below the knees were already gone. He reached into himself for the threads of silvery magic he’d cultivated over centuries of existence, but every grasp passed through like mercury between his fingers. He called two shadowmen up, his faithful servants, and the creatures formed to either side of him with blades made from their own substance. And then they too fell away, dispersing like dust in a gale next to that deeper, truer dark. He felt the panic clawing its way up from his gut, and for only the second time in his life, he had no idea what to do. None of it would work. He knew that. There was no way to fight nothing.

He concentrated instead on holding himself together while the void rose to his waist. “You need me!” he gasped. “I am the only...iteration of us who knows...the ways of humanity!”

The face in the black melted and became another, slightly better, version. “You are lost to us,” it said, its mouth moving in a parody of real speech. “Too broken. Too real.”

Phillip growled as the void inched up to his stomach, and then his chest. “No! That is why...it must...be me! Only...I...can function outside...the pattern. They do not...respect...the balance!”

The face again melted and reformed, then collapsed and reformed once more. “They will be made to. As it has always been.”

Phillip felt the void consuming him, absorbing everything he was and everything he knew. He was being cleansed. The way prepared for a new beginning. As it had always been.

“You are...no better than me,” he spat. “No longer...pure.” He tried to laugh, but the void inched up just beneath his chin and turned it into a wheeze. “They call you...us...Endless Dark. They...know. They...will...fight. You cannot...imagine the...chaos...of them.”

Another face formed, this time looking more recognizably human. “Names,” it said with a new hint of emotion. “Names are useless.” The face collapsed and reformed, slightly better. “But it is true that we have been tainted too many times to claim we remain untouched.” The face was swallowed and replaced by another. “Too much individuality absorbed.” Another face. “Too many mistakes.” And again. “Too much time passed.” Its voice almost sounded natural now. “The humans will fail, as they always do. It is why we are, and why we will always be.”

Phillip felt the last of himself draining into the abyss, filling its nothingness with the scraps of personality and solidity he’d managed to scavenge over the centuries. It took the panic with it, and he stopped fighting. The void crept up his chin toward his lips. “You...underestimate...them...”

Then a new and final face emerged in the darkness, and it was like looking into a mirror. Another appeared behind it. Then another. “We think not,” they said with his voice. “The details change, but the patterns remain. No one is exempt.”

The void consumed his mouth and nose, and he was left with only eyes to stare back at three duplicates of himself climbing out of that darkness. It was stretching itself to produce them, he knew...maybe too thinly. The first one looked down at its new hand and flexed it, puzzling over even the illusion of physical presence, and Phillip pitied the thing for when it would discover pain.

“So much struggle,” the First Iteration said, shaking its head in a pale imitation of human sincerity as the last bit of the Phillip version was absorbed and made clean again. “The ways are open now. The facets are there for the taking. You were not strong enough. We are. We will endure this...singleness for a time. As long as it takes to fulfill the purpose. Your knowledge is ours, and we will use it to cleanse all things to be made new.”

“Be made new,” the other two repeated.

They stepped into the world.

CHAPTER ONE

“Well, here we are again. Another section in this meandering journal, and another chance for me to empty my head of all my best nonsense. Hwei-ru says we have only enough downtime for me to heal before acting on her plans, so I’ll try to get it all written out while I can. Who would have guessed I’d ever wish to keep bleeding for as long as possible?

Before starting this portion, I went back and read everything that came before, and...yikes. Not that it was poorly written; my compositional skill has always been a pretty steady baseline of ‘good enough’. But I was shocked at how much I’ve changed in such a short time. In the beginning, I think we can all agree I was basically a doofus. Just doing what I thought needed to be done and most of it poorly. I look back at that now like I was ten years younger, though it’s been scarcely six months. And even the stuff I wrote a few weeks back seems like years ago based on how I feel today.

I can really only blame that on my childhood. Most people get to make their stupidest mistakes in a safe environment when they’re young, but I’m one of the lucky few who didn’t get those safety nets. Which made me grow up faster than I was ready to. So for most of my life I’ve basically been a big kid, all selfishness and angst and living moment to moment. And my responses to most changes and challenges have largely hovered around that maturity level. Just me fighting for me...and even then reluctantly. But now I finally feel like I might be knocking on the door of what it means to be a real adult. I’m finding reasons beyond today, and finding paths that are wide enough for more than just myself. And what’s worse...I kind of like it. It’s nice not having to convince myself to get up in the morning. It’s nice having a little hope. And it’s really nice to finally be smart enough to recognize this stuff when it’s there.

I won’t say I’m going to be mature about everything from now on, because I know myself better than that. And I can’t promise this new section won’t still be a meandering journal, because my writing skill is only barely ‘good enough’. But I will say that if I end up releasing this book and you’ve made it this far, I think the darkest days are done. I feel lighter now. Happier. Ready for whatever comes next. And if somehow we do screw up this whole world-saving thing and you’re reading this from a post-apocalyptic hellscape in the hope of gleaning the knowledge to save your people from further doom...please feel free to use the first two sections as toilet paper with my apologies.”

-Introduction to Part Three, CONscience

GABE GLANCED AROUND the musty basement for anything resembling hope, then looked back down into the hole with a sinking feeling. It was too deep for even his magical dark vision to pierce to the bottom, and the edges of the concrete were ragged and cracked as if something very big had burrowed directly through on its way up...or down.

“This can’t be the only other entrance,” he said.

Heather finished tying her hair back with a little black band before responding. “It isn’t.” Then she picked up the rope and gave it another tug to make sure the knots would hold. “But it is the only one we know about that isn’t trapped or controlled by scary people. And it’s close to where we need to be, so we won’t have to walk miles.”

He glanced around the basement again, trying to decide if he could actually feel the evil soaked into the walls and floor or if he was just imagining it. “How did you even know this was down here?”

She shrugged. “I cased the whole house last fall, remember? Before dragging those pretas out for you to play with?”

He glanced up to the unfinished ceiling where he knew there was a kitchen above with long-dried bloodstains. “Yeah. That second part is burned pretty well into my nightmares. Thanks.”

“So dramatic,” she replied. “You might also recall that it was how you learned to use magic and why either of us are alive enough right now to be having this conversation. Plus, you’re the one who didn’t want to risk going down through the library again, so these complaints really aren’t hitting too hard for me.”

He took a step back and tried to make it look totally casual and incidental. “Sure, but that’s when I assumed we’d just be looking for another staircase or some kind of magic elevator. I didn’t know we’d be voluntarily dropping into the Great Pit of Carkoon.”

She put her back to the hole, then pulled the rope until her heels were just brushing the edge. The glare she sent his way was only mostly serious. “What did I say about Star Wars references? You get two a day, max, or we’re breaking up.”

He held up his hands, happy to have anything to think about other than pretas or a long fall into the abyss. “First of all, you technically said that about Lord of the Rings.” She started to roll her eyes, so he pressed on with a little smirk. “And second, does this mean we’re going steady now? We haven’t even had a first date.”

Her answering expression started as a quick flash of confusion that eventually landed somewhere between amusement and disinterest. He’d seen it often enough to know it as her default emotional shielding, but even after two weeks of acclimation, it was still odd to watch it show up on the new face. Lorelei’s face. And now Heather’s.

Her fingers worked the rope into her safety harness and she shrugged unconvincingly. “Whatever. No need to label anything right now. We can’t have sex until I can be sure I won’t accidentally suck out your soul, so we might as well just have fun while we can and see where it goes.”

Gabe crossed his arms. “Really?”

“Really,” she said. “I’m fine with casual.”

“Really?” he repeated.

Her expression melted into annoyance. “Really. And getting more so by the second, actually.” She looked over her shoulder into the pit and nodded. “I’m not here to lash anyone down if they don’t want to be.”

He heard the trap in the statement right away and congratulated himself on that. Not long ago, he probably would have bumbled right through that kind of comment without hearing any of the alarms, but being in a relationship for a few weeks had obviously done him some good. He was finally growing into an adult and learning how to be a partner in something—if roughly fifteen years late. He weighed trying to sidestep the verbal trap or trigger it harmlessly with a joke, but eventually he settled on confronting it head on. Nothing seemed to befuddle Heather quite so much as plain honesty.

“This is a test, isn’t it?” he asked. “You’re trying to see if I’m willing to be vulnerable enough to admit that I want to make our relationship official? And then that’ll make you happy for my having said it out loud, and it’ll prove I’m ready to have a relationship in the first place. Right?”

She stared back at him in the dark, giving him nothing.

“I’m right,” he replied to himself.

She pursed her lips and cocked her head to one side, weighing him in that way she had. The measurement didn’t take quite as long as he might have liked, and he could just barely feel a bit of irritation from her through their weird bond. That connection seemed to be getting stronger every day since coming back from the Ether—sometimes almost bordering on telepathy—but he still wasn’t used to incorporating the data into his assessments of her. And that was always assuming, of course, that what she was sending at any given time was actually the truth.

“...right?” he asked again. “Or...” He ran back through the conversation and suddenly realized he probably shouldn’t have broken it down so clinically. People didn’t tend to like their motivations dissected and splayed out on the table. He knew that, and yet he’d said it anyway. It was funny how he could bilk a rich old moron out of a few hundred dollars in two minutes flat, but for some reason talking to his girlfriend was giving him no end of trouble. It was like his own mouth wasn’t always on his side. “No,” he said finally. “That wasn’t a test.”

Heather sighed and bent her legs. “Does there always have to be a test, Gabe?” Then she hopped back and dropped into the hole.

He leaned forward and watched her rappel down the inside wall, and he couldn’t resist whispering down before she disappeared, “Okay, that question definitely feels like a test!”

Heather had estimated that it would take her a solid minute to rappel to the bottom—assuming the hole stopped where they wanted it to—but it felt like much longer before the rope stopped wriggling around. He stayed close to the edge to ensure he could get a signal over the radio on his belt, but he could do nothing more than stare down into that black as he waited. It was supposed to be two beeps for danger, one for all clear, and the silence was heavy as his imagination started spinning up to full speed. There could be anything down there waiting for her. Especially here. Especially now.

Suddenly Heather’s voice came through the radio, and Gabe had to fight against yelping as he scrambled to pull it from his belt.

“Totally clear down here,” she said. “Looks like a busted-up warehouse. Maybe a smuggling operation once upon a time. Or maybe this is where those pretas kept their victims.”

Gabe brought the radio to his mouth and pressed the button. “Great news. Glad you’re not being digested by a space worm. What happened to the beep system?”

Her voice began going a little fuzzy as she apparently moved away from the hole. “Changed my mind. I do that. You can come down now.”

He eyed the rope and his harness and tried to remember how she’d told him to put it all together. For all his worries about relationships, this was the part of the day he’d really been dreading. Some rope things were supposed to go through...other things, he was sure, but suddenly that was the extent of what he could recall. Though he refused to take all the blame for that. Heather’s instructions had mostly consisted of reaching around him from behind to tug on buckles and straps, drawing him into her body far too many times to be accidental. So his focus on the tutorial had been far from optimal.

“Okay, okay...go over the whole rope situation again,” he said.

She sighed and it came through as half static as the radios finally began failing with the amount of ground and magic between them. “You’re already set up. Just wrap...block around...rappel line and clip it closed. And don...get the...loves.”

He gave the radio a little shake despite knowing better. “Sorry, I’m losing you. Stop wandering around. What was that last part?”

There was a pause, then her voice came back clear. “I said not to forget the gloves. I was just scoping the place a bit. We can get maybe ten feet from the hole before losing signal to the surface. Same with my phone. A little worse range than we thought, but it makes sense. Nobody who lives down here is doing it for the great reception.”

He gazed into the black and shuddered. The idea of being trapped in that alien world and unable to call for help wasn’t great, but even that wasn’t quite as bad as the prospect of getting down there in the first place. He tried not to panic. “So...I just clip on the carabiner thing? Then what? I feel like maybe we didn’t think this all the way out.”

“Gabe,” she said, her voice coming calm and slow now, “we’ve been through this. You clip onto the rope and back up to the hole, then you slowly lower yourself down. Keep the weight on the harness and your legs, not your arms. You can do this.”

He took a deep breath, then reached down and retrieved the rope. That was fine. An easy first step. Then he clipped the radio back on his belt and searched for what he was supposed to do next. He imagined Heather’s arms around him as they had been earlier that night, her hands working with his to wrap the white rope around the black, to clip it closed, to pull it hard and ensure it would take his weight. Then his mind drifted on, continuing to when he’d turned to face her and meet those familiar eyes in that new face. The little bit of magic that had sparked. The way they’d smiled together and stayed there for a bit, just snatching a moment of contentment before life swept them back up again.

He’d never had an oasis that existed outside his own mind before, nor anything to look forward to beyond the next challenge, but Heather was all of those things. A challenge in particular. And that was the only reason he was even there. He’d somehow found a little slice of happy, but in order to keep it, the universe was making him do a really unfair amount of stupid stuff.

Suddenly Gabe found himself backed up to the edge of the hole and already dangling over at a deadly angle. He felt his arms straining as they refused to entrust his life to a little harness, and he knew at once that he only had a few seconds of stamina left in them before he’d start to slip. He needed to either commit or chicken out, otherwise gravity would gladly decide for him.

Heather’s instructions came back again, and he slowly let the rope begin to take his weight. It creaked and shifted as he fought with himself to relax his arms, but soon he felt the blood pumping back into his muscles as they slackened. She was down there, waiting and watching and almost certainly poised to catch him. And at that moment, he was pretty sure she’d have to.

He thought of what he’d been through in the last six months, and of what he’d become—or was becoming—and it was hard not to shudder at the replay of it. He’d faced down monsters and gods that should have crushed him, and he’d used magic to play with the fundamental laws of life and death. He’d looked into the twin faces of Eternity and Oblivion, and he’d stolen from between them a linchpin of reality that they both really wanted to play with. He’d done amazing and impossible things, albeit reluctantly, and it all added up to a fairly easy conclusion that a little minor death-defying should be no big deal for him.

But the problem, as always, was that he didn’t feel anywhere near as bad-ass as he knew he should. He had built his life on false confidence and pretending competence, which didn’t leave much room for the real versions of either. He was Gabe. Just that. And the few cool new tricks he’d picked up along the way did little to change the picture of himself he held in his head. That guy didn’t do self-sacrificing garbage like jumping down into scary holes to look for monsters. That guy walked away from profitless crap. That guy did only what needed to be done, and nothing more.

And yet...that guy had also never been happy. Not really. And the bit of it he’d finally found was now waiting for him, expecting that he’d be able to do this.

He held his breath, then jumped.

By the time his feet hit the ground, Gabe was proud of three things. First, that he hadn’t screamed once, despite really, really wanting to. Second, that he’d somehow avoided bashing into the walls as he’d frantically struggled to keep his balance. And third, that he’d landed with entirely dry pants. As far as he was concerned, they were his greatest accomplishments to date. Now the only thing left was figuring out why anyone on earth would ever want to do that recreationally.

He carefully unclipped his harness and gave Heather every ounce of nonchalance he could muster. “Not too bad.”

She watched him for a second, then shook her head and laughed softly as she came to help him get free. “I saw when you hit the halfway mark, Gabey. You looked like Pinocchio coming to life on his strings.”

He chuckled and gave her that point. “Yeah, okay. But, at least that makes me a real boy now, huh?”

She smiled and pulled the last strap free to let the whole thing slump to the floor while her hand lingered at his side. “I guess so.”

He looked down at her. She was an inch or two taller than she had been, with straight black hair now instead of loose curls, and skin that was the perfect pale olive of sunlight filtered through new spring leaves. But she was still so completely Heather. Her eyes, her smile, the way she stood, and the way she looked back at him. It was all her. Today she smelled like vanilla and citrus, and he had to fight back the urge to pull her in closer.

“We can’t all be effortlessly great at everything,” he said finally. “Where did you learn to do this anyway? Based on your other stories, I’m expecting to hear you studied under ninjas or something.”

She tilted her chin up and the magic just behind her eyes was dark and sparkling. “I am very old and mysterious.” Then she kissed him gently and made a happy little noise before breaking away. “Okay, you passed the test. Let’s go, real boy.”

The room they’d dropped into had obviously been a warehouse of some kind once, just as Heather had said. But what she’d failed to mention was how completely destroyed every inch of it was. All around them the charred remains of crates and shelves and furniture littered the floor, and Gabe’s darkvision was just good enough to pick out cartoon shadows of creatures burned into the walls to every side. There was a massive gap in the wall where a door must have once been, and a little light spilled in from the hallway beyond. But otherwise there was nothing to look at that wasn’t dark and terrifying.

“Cripes,” Gabe said as he took it all in.

Heather followed his gaze, then nodded. “Yeah, looks like they saw some battle in here. Makes you wonder what happened, huh?”

Gabe idly reached up and ran his fingers over the half-full pockets of his bandolier. “I’d say it looks more like they got bombarded from freaking orbit.”

Heather reached over her shoulder to check her new sword in its sheath, then brought the hand back in front of his face with two fingers raised.

Before she could elaborate, he caught them and gently pushed them away. “Hey, that’s not from Star Wars specifically. I still have one more today. I’m saving it for something special.”

She gave him a skeptical stare, but then turned and headed for the hall out into the Warrens. “Don’t worry, this is not the warehouse we’re looking for,” she said, waving a hand through the air and tossing him back a smirk. “Our target is supposed to be three hundred yards east of this entry point, and Hwei-ru claims we’ll know it when we get there.”

“Helpfully cryptic, as usual,” he replied as he followed.

She nodded and nimbly hopped over the debris littering the hall outside. “I never expect anything less from her. I’m just thrilled she’s talking to me now. Or, at me, at least.”

Gabe pulled out his phone and brought up the texts he’d gotten from Ken with the images of the door they were supposed to find. “Hard to blame her, I suppose,” he said. “It’s not exactly a normal situation. Add that on top of moving away from her base of power and shouldering the weight of saving the entire universe, and she’s probably allowed to be a little cryptic and cranky.”

“And losing her granddaughter,” Heather added. She’d clearly been trying to say it without any telling inflections, but Gabe heard the layers of them all the same. The situation wasn’t exactly normal for any of them.

“Yeah,” he said, trying not to add any layers of his own. “Probably that too.”

They walked on in silence for a few yards, and Gabe finally found the picture of the door they wanted. The runes on it apparently represented some kind of combination address and description of the occupants, but to him they just looked like a bunch of stick figures doing yoga poses. Fortunately, Heather and Hwei-ru had seemed to know how to read them, so Gabe hadn’t bothered learning.

“I don’t know why we can’t just rent a house or something,” he said. “Seems way easier.”

Heather had apparently been lost in her own thoughts and visibly rose back up through them. “Oh sure. Let’s settle into the suburbs with a millionaire antiquities collector, a translucent Chinese grandma, and a conman wanted by pretty much every bad guy in the universe.” She pulled her hair back over one ear. “When the succubus is the least conspicuous member of your team, maybe pick a better hideout than a split-level on Walnut Street.”

He scratched at the stubble on his jaw. “Fair point. But I still don’t understand why we had to come back to Lincoln. And why the Warrens?” He slowed as they passed a big set of double doors inscribed with some brutal script in dripping red ink. “And why in any god’s name are we the ones claiming this place? Hwei-ru could probably float down and do this job in thirty seconds.”

Heather slowed with him and read the door, then tugged his shirt to get him moving again. “Looks like harpies. Not dangerous per se, but I wouldn’t just stand around waiting to be a nest warmer either.” She held on for a few steps until they were well clear. “And you know exactly why it has to be us. Hwei-ru doesn’t have anything like her full power since leaving Chicago, and if we were going to send Ken down here by himself with nothing more than a deed and an eviction notice, we might as well baste him in gravy to save the bad guys some time. Like it or not, we’re the muscle of this little A-Team.”

He lifted his phone to begin comparing the picture to the doors they were passing. “Generous of you to say we.”

“I’m a nice person.”

He toyed with an acerbic response to that, but thought he’d better stop while they both technically had compliments on the board. Good banter was all about balance. “So why do we need this place specifically?” he asked instead. “Couldn’t we have picked one that was already vacant? Maybe with a recently renovated kitchen?”

She nodded and pointed vaguely to the right. “Hwei-ru picked it. Apparently it’s on a pretty significant ley line, and she thinks that’ll come in handy for us. This is actually prime spiritual real estate for those who know about such things.”

Gabe searched back through his memories for any real information he had about ley lines, but could only scrape together a few references from video games. “Like a magical river?” He ventured, knowing she’d pick up the thread.

“Basically,” she said. “The Lorelei part of me wants to say that’s a gross generalization, and that the term ‘ley line’ itself is actually used in this particular case colloquially to denote a seam along the veil where ethereal energy can be accessed more readily than would otherwise be possible in any other physical location. But...” She stopped, and for a moment she looked like she wanted to let her hair fall across her face the way Lorelei had often done. Then she reached up and tousled it all loose again as if defying the impulse. “But the Heather part of me says ‘magical river’ sums it up about as well we’re ever likely to need. So take your pick, I guess.”

He pretended not to notice her little moment of existential struggle. “Fine. So what? We just knock politely and hand over a thirty-day notice?”

She smirked. “You’re adorable.”

“See, this is the kind of stuff I hate,” he replied, not willing to give up a good gripe now that he had it in his teeth. “Ken bought this place, right? There should be some kind of system to deal with Umbra squatters.”

They rounded a corner to find yet more polished tile and soft lighting. “There is.” She reached over and grabbed the hilt of the jian at his hip. “This.”

Gabe started to reply again, but Heather yanked him to a stop and pointed toward a rickety wooden door set deep into the wall about a dozen yards away. He lifted his phone and looked between them, then sighed heavily.

“Relax,” she whispered, moving cautiously forward. “It’s probably something minor in there. The big bad things don’t tend to stick around the Warrens. This place is for Umbras who want to hide but also want close access to the finer things like fast-food and internet. It’s tough to imagine a werewolf pack caring too much about checking their e-mail for BOGO pizza coupons.”

“That’s very reassuring,” he said, following a step behind. “So why are you suddenly whispering?”

Her expression flickered as if she was considering a lie, then she shrugged and nodded toward the door. “Don’t you feel that?”

“Dread?” he asked.

She shook her head. “Deeper.”

Gabe concentrated hard and was surprised to catch a whiff of something in the air around him. He was used to being mostly blind to that sort of thing, but this time the sense of the energy came as a thick oppression that made him want to take a few steps away to get out from beneath it. The feeling was like the ethereal equivalent of toxic fumes, and his brain wanted to seize up before absorbing any. It felt like a warning. He looked down at the image again just to be really, really sure.

“So what are the odds that we’re about to go in there and find a kindly old woman just petting a bunch of kittens?” he asked.

Heather drew the huge, two-handed dadao from her back and briefly checked the edge. “Petting? No. Eating maybe.” She stepped back and set herself. “Ready?”

Gabe stashed his phone and drew his own blade, then pulled out a flash charm before sighing again. “Do I have a choice?”

“That’s the spirit,” she said.

He pulled up his magic and shaped it to ignite the charm. “I have a bad feeling about this.”

She snapped and pointed at him. “That’s definitely number two!” Then she kicked down the door.

CHAPTER TWO

“Heather really doesn’t like to talk about her past. She’ll toss me a tidbit here and there, or a quick story when it’s relevant, but otherwise she prefers to live in today. At first, that bothered me. I thought opening up to someone was about dumping it all out for them to sift through, good and bad. But now that I’m smarter, I respect the hell out of it. I’ve certainly done things that I wouldn’t be proud to talk about, even to her...and maybe especially to her. So it doesn’t bother me anymore that I don’t know her whole backstory. She’s Heather. She’s amazing. That’s more than enough.

Sometimes the end result of a thing is so much better than the component parts that it really doesn’t matter what it was before it fell into your lap. People are the same...except they can continue to improve. I have to believe that’s true, and that we can all become what we want without being held back by what we were. There’s darkness in all of our lives, right? That doesn’t mean we should have to wallow in it.”

-Excerpt from Chapter Twenty-One, CONscience

HEATHER CLAIMED SHE wasn’t quite as strong or fast as she had been—it apparently took time to grow into a new body—but that didn’t stop her from kicking the door right in half. The wood splintered at the impact, with one side slamming open on the hinges and the other hanging precariously from a single deadbolt, and she slipped through the gap with her oversized dadao sword. The thing looked like the impractical lovechild of a claymore and a machete, and with her black tactical gear and perfect hair that never seemed to need a brush, she might easily have been an anime character come to life.

Gabe fought down the urge to stay out in the hall and safely continue that daydream, and instead slipped in behind her and did a much worse job at being graceful about it. The remains of the door clipped his shoulder as he tried to edge through, and the whole mess finally gave way with a crack to fall against his leg. With both of his hands full, he could do little more than take the hit and stumble away as he entered the open space of the room, and the distraction was enough that he momentarily forgot about the dark miasma of energy suffusing the place. He lifted his flash charm, ready to light up the dark and blind whoever needed it, but then stopped as Heather held up a hand.

The space was massive, more like an airplane hangar than a single room, and it was full of an anemic fog that hung at thigh-level and seemed to flow around them like a lazy river. Black curtains of some heavy material floated randomly in place to break up the open air and block most of the sight lines, and everything smelled of long disuse and the dank of forgotten places. The nearest walls appeared to be made of rough-hewn stone for some reason, and the unlit sconces spaced evenly around looked like wrought iron torch holders. And at the center of the room, rising up like fingers from the grave, were five massive pillars of something Gabe tentatively identified as black onyx. The whole thing felt exactly like walking into a crypt...which actually helped explain the bodies stumbling toward them.

“Zombies!” Gabe shouted as the five desiccated corpses emerged from the shadows a few steps away. They were in varying states of dress and decay, but they shambled forward with surprising speed, and it was all Gabe could do to bring up his sword before the first two were on him. He slashed the blade out in a flat arc intended to warn them back and buy himself some space, but they simply walked into it and lost several fingers each from their outstretched hands. They barely seemed to notice.

Gabe scrambled backward and hit the wall with his shoulders, then slid to the right and brought his jian back in a messy chop that embedded into the meat of the left zombie’s arm. The force pushed the thing into its companion and bought Gabe a few inches to pull the blade free and spin away, but the monsters merely followed the movement and were instantly coming again.

Heather, in the meantime, had reacted faster and engaged the remaining three. She danced in among them with her big blade flashing to gouge a long slash across the first monster’s torso, then she flowed directly into a pommel strike into the next one’s forehead. Both creatures stumbled back and nearly overbalanced beneath the strength of her strikes, and it gave her plenty of space to move on to the third and deliver a spinning kick that sent the thing sprawling straight to its back ten yards away. She barely stopped to see the landing before twisting with her sword out wide to fall into a low stance that looked more dramatic than effective, then she vaulted back in, swinging.

Gabe would have loved to emulate that same easy deadliness, but his style was slightly more...improvisational. He moved quickly, trying to keep his distance as he slashed and ducked and thought frantically through his options. He had the few hexes Hwei-ru had been able to supply him, but most were geared toward living creatures who were fussier about stuff like breathing and getting their parts cut off. And given that these particular monsters seemed to only have one functioning eyeball between them, he was pretty sure his half-dozen flash charms wouldn’t be much use either.

One of his slashes went a little too wide and a zombie stumbled into his guard with its dead arm swinging like a club. Gabe reflexively intercepted it with his blade, and the edge bit right through the rotted flesh to strike bone, sending a painful shiver of force into his hand that nearly made him drop the jian right there. Then the second monster was pushing in too, grabbing with clumsy fingers and trying to pull him down to the ground. It was probably their signature move, and it was exactly where Gabe didn’t want to be.

He cried out as he yanked the sword free and stumbled away, but the zombies stuck right behind him, taking every slash and thrust without any visible concern. He moved toward one of the big black curtains and ducked behind, hoping it would give him a second to set up a defense, but the monsters pushed through relentlessly to drive in close again until both were nearly on top of him. His only choice was to skitter away with yet another wild slash that took more fingers, and he couldn’t help but feel like he’d be there all night trying to julienne the stupid things to death.

Instead he turned and broke into an unabashed sprint that let him steal another quick glance to Heather. In his scrambling, he’d accidentally traveled farther from her than he’d intended, but he could still see that she was doing just fine—even then neatly severing an arm as if this was just another day at work. And that gave him hope that he might just need to buy some time until she could provide an assist. Without any other great plans forthcoming from his fickle brain, waiting for back-up felt like a pretty decent one. The trick, of course, would be to make a good show of it and not lose too much of her respect in the meantime. He hit the back wall and turned with his sword up to make a dramatic stand.

The zombies, however, clearly weren’t impressed. They split apart as they caught up to him and came from either side, finally showing some semblance of intelligence to sandwich him in and force him to make a dangerous decision. So Gabe picked at random and turned toward his left, bringing his blade around in a tight arc that ended wedged halfway into the monster’s neck. He immediately caught a heavy fist to his ribs that nearly doubled him over, but he pushed through and past the creature, dragging his blade as he went. He sucked in a painful breath as he came around the thing, then he yanked hard to pull the sword through the rest of the way. The extra bit of force drew the edge nearly to the spine and it came free with the sickening rasp of flesh that was far too dry to be moving around, then he spun in place and brought the jian with the momentum, swinging it like a baseball bat for a coup de grace that connected with the zombie’s head just as the thing began toppling backward. A chunk of skull and worse went flying off into the darkness as the carbon steel proved its mettle against bone, and the creature landed hard on the ground at his feet with a very satisfying thump. One arm was still lurching in the socket as it grasped for him, but he was pretty sure it wouldn’t be getting anywhere soon.

Gabe nearly whooped as he whipped around to face the second zombie, but the space there was now empty and there was no sign of the thing. All he saw in that moment was Heather forty paces away and still facing down her own final enemy amid the severed remains of its companions. She surged forward and kicked through the pile of pieces, then brought her dadao in at waist level with all her strength behind it. For a moment it looked like the two might simply crash straight into one another, but then she suddenly ducked to one side while swinging the blade hard, and the weapon met the zombie’s gut with what must have been the force of a speeding car. The blade split cloth and flesh and bone with shocking ease to come straight out the other side as she slid to a stop, and an instant later the two halves of the monster hit the floor with twin thumps.

Gabe nearly applauded before realizing in horror that he’d lingered too long watching, and he turned to search for the last monster. The zombie at his feet was still frantically grasping at nothing, but its companion had somehow vanished. He spun in place, leading with his sword and growing more confused by the second, then every thought in his head collapsed as the thing rose out of the mist and drove him straight back into the wall. He hit sideways, his right shoulder slamming hard against stone and his breath rushing out in a violent cough. And then he was pinned solid, with dead arms around him and rotting teeth gnashing in to bite off his face. He tried to wriggle free, to twist or push or even fall, but the monster had him, and it was far too strong to throw off. Heather was across the room, too far away to help, and all he had was the flash charm in his left hand and the jian pinned against the wall in his right. He strained to push the creature back, to buy himself even a moment or an inch, but the teeth only got closer until he could feel them grazing the skin of his cheek. The thing’s breath was hot and vile, and he knew he only had one second left before becoming food. So he did the usual thing and just made something up.

Gabe twisted his right wrist to bring the tip of the jian up to his left hand. He had no leverage to do more than poke the monster in the stomach, but he hoped desperately that it would be enough. He caught the top of the blade there against his palm, snagging the wad of cotton even as it split his flesh, and he guided it up and forward until it pierced the zombie’s gut. With so little force, it barely went in a few inches, and he immediately felt his own blood running freely down the blade to the wound. But he couldn’t spare the time to care. The teeth were pressing into his cheek, working frantically up and down, and it was all he could do to give one last huge push with his left shoulder to buy his face an inch of space from them. Then he loosed the magic he’d been holding and sent it sizzling along his blood like a fuse down the blade and straight to the tip.

“Boom,” Gabe growled, just as the flash charm ignited.

Bright arcs of light spilled from the wound as the charm went off, and Gabe could immediately feel that it lit with far more power than it should have. The undead thing suddenly stopped pushing at him, standing still as it realized something was wrong, and then a great whoosh of heat enveloped him as the creature went up in flames like a pile of oily rags. Rancid fat and dry flesh embraced the magnesium flare from within, and in a moment the monster was lit like a jack-o-lantern and wailing from between its teeth like an agonized tea kettle. The thing looked like it was about to explode.

Gabe had a brief moment to consider his terrible mistake as the flaming zombie pinning him to the wall continued to burn hotter and hotter...and then the monster was flying to the side and Heather was standing there staring after, daring it to get back up. To its credit, it did try. Then the fire began spreading outside its body, catching dry clothing like tinder until it was awash in flames and the thing could hardly be blamed for giving up.

Gabe took a deep breath of mostly zombie smoke and quickly reached up to check his face where the teeth had been. He remembered his bloody hand too late and then couldn’t tell where the wetness was coming from. Heather noticed and caught his wrist, and he let her inspect his palm as he worked to catch his breath and slow his speeding heart.

“Did it get me?” he asked, angling that side of his face toward her. “I definitely don’t want to turn into one of those things.”

She glanced up, then quickly shook her head. “No, your devastatingly acceptable looks are still intact. Plus, I’m pretty sure these were some flavor of draugar, not your regular movie zombies.” Then she slipped her dadao under her arm to use the free hand to open a pouch on her vest. She came away with a roll of yellowed bandages. “Hold still and watch for any more of those things.”

Gabe obeyed and eyed the room over her shoulder as she worked to first wipe away the worst of the blood, then wrap the whole hand tightly. “I didn’t know you brought that,” he said. “Good thinking.”

She smirked as she searched for a way to secure the wrapping. “Seemed like a good idea. You tend to bleed when we go places. How did it happen this time?”

He considered embellishing the story to make it sound more heroic, but of all people, he knew she would know better. And the bond was making it even harder to lie to her these days. He shrugged. “Got myself backed into a corner. So I stuck the flash charm to the tip of the sword, then used my blood to light it. I figured it was worth a shot if I was about to get eaten anyway.”

She hissed and squeezed his hand too tightly, and a little bit of horror came through the bond. “Of course it did. That’s just straight blood magic, Gabe. Basically the oldest form there is.”

He ventured an easy guess. “And, that’s a bad thing?”

She replaced the roll in her pocket. “It is if you’re the good guy.”

“Never said I was,” he replied, shrugging again.

She tugged his hand hard and shot him an annoyed glance. “You know, it is possible for a person to talk without moving the rest of their body. Hold still.” Then she pulled out a self-adhesive bandage to use like tape to secure the wrappings closed. “And this whole ‘I’m no hero’ shtick is wearing pretty thin even for me. Kinda hard to take it seriously coming from someone who keeps saving the day to no apparent profit.” She held his hand up and inspected it, then let it drop. “Good enough for now. This is some kind of Israeli military stuff with embedded coagulant that Ken found, so it should make your freakish healing even...freakisher.”

He held up his palm and inspected it, then nodded. “Not sure that’s a word, but thanks all the same.”

Heather waited a beat, as if expecting to hear more, then she gave him a look that made it clear she knew perfectly well that he’d just avoided responding to her accusation. He could feel it coming from her. No words needed. It really was a weird thing, their little bond, and Gabe had yet to come across anything like it in his studies of all things mystical. But he had to admit that he was also growing to appreciate the ability to communicate such complex thoughts without needing to fumble with imperfect words, and he returned a look that acknowledged her acknowledgment while conceding that she could maybe bring it up again later if she really wanted to. She nodded once, and that was that. Hard to argue with that kind of efficiency, however creepy it might be.

“Do you think we got them all?” he asked, testing his left hand and finding it mostly useless.

Heather turned and lifted her chin as if searching for a scent on the air, then her eyes widened and she pointed with her sword toward the pillars at the center of the room just as the mist there began parting. “Yeah. Though that lich seems pretty annoyed now.”

The thing was seated in a high-backed chair in front of something flickering with blue energy, and even as they turned toward it, the creature began to rise. It hovered up out of its seat with its dark robe billowing in an unfelt gale, then it floated toward them with arms out to either side as if gathering its eldritch powers. It was skeletal and terrifying, with long bony limbs and a crown of some dark material wreathing its skull. Heather slipped into a ready position, to guard or charge with her big blade swinging, and Gabe reached for all his magic in preparation to empty his bandolier of every hex he’d brought. The thing drifted back down to the ground twenty paces away, and Gabe heard Heather’s shoes grinding in the dust as she searched for traction. He had a feeling this fight was about to make the zombies seem minor.

“How dare you!” the skeleton screamed as it landed, and the high voice boomed through the room before fading oddly like a bad recording. Then the thing’s outstretched hands suddenly rose above its shoulders as if preparing to call down lightning, and the fog began swirling ominously to make the dark curtains shake and snap all around them. “You will pay for this transgression!”

“Try me!” Heather said, lifting her dadao and tensing to sprint forward.

Gabe knew immediately that he wasn’t going to be a huge help in this. And that was even assuming he didn’t just die in the first seconds of the fight. His magic was minor at best, and his sword was just as likely to get in Heather’s way as it was to be useful. The safest bet would be to let Heather run in and take care of the situation while he tried not to screw anything up...but then a bit of fabric slipped and he spotted something...and it was weird enough that he quickly took another glance around the room. He caught another odd thing...and then another. And in the space of that one dangerous instant he was suddenly forming a weird little picture of what might actually be going on. It was obviously crazy, but then, so was everything else these days.

He quickly moved up to stop Heather with a glance just before she sprang. She had to do a double-take back to his face to get the message, and she knitted her brow in questioning annoyance. But eventually a flicker of trust came through their bond and she rocked back slightly while nodding for him to take the lead. Which was another weird thing. That trust. Though it was definitely something to appreciate more when he wasn’t staring down the end-boss of this ridiculous level.

Gabe took another step forward to take the symbolic position of authority, and he tried to hold his sword as innocently as possible. Then he squared himself up and dug deep for something clever to say. “Hey, Skeletor,” he said instead. “How’s He-Man these days?”

A pale green light began building in the creature’s fists, and its dark eye sockets seemed to dim further as a scowl somehow formed on that gleaming skull. “How dare you enter my domain and damage my servants with your insignificant weapons of—”

“Oh, come on!” Gabe said, breaking into what had been shaping up to be a pretty boilerplate evil monologue.

“Gabe...” Heather said, the note of caution clear in her voice.

He nodded toward her, but went on. “Can I just quickly answer your threats so we can speed this up?” He lifted his injured hand and started painfully raising fingers to tick off points. “No, we don’t intend to pay for our transgressions. No, we don’t have any idea who we’ve crossed. And, yes, we are prepared to perish. Pretty constantly lately, to be honest, but I seriously doubt you’re the guy to nail us down. Does that cover it? Or did you want to call us ‘fools’ a few times before we move on?”

The green light of power built further for a moment, filling the space around the lich with a sickly aura of decay and the promise of damnation. Then all at once it collapsed, falling to wisps that dissipated into the air while the skeletal thing sagged with it. Its arms actually clacked a little as they came down, sounding like broken wind chimes.

Gabe nodded and glanced back to Heather who looked even more confused, then he slapped together an expression of sympathetic authority from his mental wardrobe and let it consume his features.

The lich studied him for a few seconds, seemingly waiting for someone else to make the next move, then it let out a breath from its hollow chest cavity and shuffled uncomfortably. The room visibly grew brighter. “How did you know?” it asked.

Gabe grimaced. “A couple of things. First, the spooky ambiance you’ve got going here has to take a pretty big chunk of power to maintain, and ditto for that welcoming party at the door. Summoning those things wouldn’t leave much in anyone’s tank. And second,” he said, using the sword like a baton to punctuate it, “I know people...even dead ones. And nobody who feels great about themselves hides away in the magical basement if they have the power to avoid it. You’re not down here hatching the next great evil plot, no matter what you tell yourself. And finally...” He gestured to the thing and then shrugged as if it was reason enough by itself. “You’re wearing a bathrobe, man.”

The lich’s bony hands went to the robe’s ties that had slipped down, and it cinched them tighter as if that would fix anything. Then it shuffled forward in what turned out to be bright green flip flops, and it reached up to pull the wireless headphones down from around its skull. It glanced back over its shoulder to the five pillars at the center of the room, toward what Gabe could now see was a pretty impressive computer gaming setup with the wrap-around monitors now flashing a kill screen and a big question mark asking if the player would like to continue.

The lich sighed at seeing that, then turned back to face them. “What do you want?”

Gabe turned to Heather and gestured for her to take the reins, and she had to shake off her astonishment before doing so. “Uh, yeah. We’re here to take possession of the property.” She reached into her vest and pulled out the deed, which was so thoroughly covered in wards and scrawlings that it had only taken a few seconds of Gabe trying to decipher it before the headache had started creeping in. She let the thing unfurl on its own in what looked like a comical bit of aesthetic magic, and then cautiously moved forward to show the lich.

The creature leaned in and inspected the paper carefully, growing more agitated as it read, then it suddenly threw up its hands and harrumphed. “Well, what the hell?!” it said, slapping the paper with the back of its hand. “I was supposed to have this lease for another eighty-odd years!”

Heather casually backed away, clearly trying to appear in-control when what she almost certainly wanted to do was just swing her sword really hard. “Don’t know what to tell you, bud. This is legal and this is our property now, including all fixtures and...” She glanced between the massive black curtains and the huge stone pillars radiating that dull throb of malevolence. “...appliances.”

The lich’s skeletal face somehow screwed up in contempt. “Do I get thirty days, at least?”

Gabe watched Heather as she very carefully avoided looking back at him. Her face went stern and her hands tightened on both the deed and her hilt. “No. You know full well that’s not how this works.”

The lich stared back at her with a stormy expression, and for an instant, Gabe doubted his read of the situation. The thing might have more power than he thought, and maybe things could get violent after all. Then the creature tossed its headphones to one side and turned to stomp back toward the pillars. It gathered power to itself as it went, and Gabe could actually see the negative energy flowing out of the stones toward the thing. In a moment, they were drained and the monster was full to bursting with that dark magic. It was a terrible sight to behold, though the rhythmic slap of the cheap rubber sandals did do a little to mitigate it.

The lich raised its hands and sent arcs of power out to the desk to gather up several loose items into a backpack that floated up to meet him. Then he turned back toward them as a portal of some kind opened in space behind him. “I suppose I should thank you,” it said as it snatched the bag from the air. “My intention was to wallow for my remaining years and to suck what marrow I could from that time.” He shouldered the bag and took a step back until he was half-consumed by the portal. “But you have so kindly reminded me that I have been squandering myself here. And perhaps there is more yet for me to do in the world after all.” He glanced toward the computer. “I was getting bored killing things digitally anyway.” Then he lifted his right hand to give them a bony middle finger before he vanished.

They waited there for a moment as the portal collapsed and the room began brightening further. “Well,” Gabe ventured, “that wasn’t so bad.”

Heather turned toward him as she let the deed roll back up. “Oh sure. Great job, Gabe. What is it with you and loosing massive evils onto the world?”

He shrugged and fumbled at his belt with his bandaged hand to sheath the jian. The reminder of Aka Manah only stung a little these days, but it did sting. Some wounds healed faster than others. “Nobody’s perfect,” he said. “I just happen to be an exceptional example of that.” Then he glanced around the room to take it all in. “So this is supposed to be our home base from now on? I guess I call the circle of doom in the middle for my room.”

She sheathed her own sword and stuffed the deed back into its pocket, then turned toward the door. “I assume Ken will be customizing the place, so don’t go claiming top bunk before we know what’s going where. And we should really get back to the hole to call them down so Hwei-ru can change the metaphorical locks. The last thing we need is for that lich to come back and decide he wants to call your bluff after all.”

Gabe followed and ran his hand over one of the curtains as they passed, finding it surprisingly soft now that he had the time to pay attention. He thought it might actually be real velvet. “Good call.” Then a funny thought struck him and he grinned. “Hey, this is actually our first time back out in the world together. So I guess you might call this our first date, huh?”

She looked over her shoulder at him, and her eyes were dark and glinting over her smirk. “Not if you want there to be a second one.”

He nodded curtly and did a quick-step to pull alongside her. “Right. Obviously.”

ELSEWHERE

AS SOMEONE WHO’D SPENT far too much time crammed into hot vans, crawlspaces, and underground hideaways, the meeting room was uncomfortably spacious for Black Lan. It had been a last minute thing, getting the invitation, but even on the flight over it had quickly become clear that this might be one of the most important events in the history of the Maerrywell Clan. Possibly in the history of the world, depending on how things went. And yet he still had no idea what it was all about. Though, based on his own rather high-profile losses lately, he didn’t imagine it would be anything good.

He sat back in the deep leather chair and feigned his usual disinterest by playing with his tin of chew—while wanting nothing more than to pop it open for a little pinch. But he didn’t dare. While the mixture of tobacco, betel, and khat was sufficient to explode the heart of a normal man, it was no worse for him than a nice cup of coffee. But it did make an awful black and red mess of his mouth that wasn’t particularly appropriate for polite company—let alone the extraordinarily impolite kind. So he distracted himself with surreptitiously studying the faces around him.

There was his own small coterie from the Maerrywells, including his steely-eyed commander, Sute. Of all those present she might be the one that liked him the least, and yet she’d forced him to come as if she’d had no other choice...which was a puzzle. Then there were the representatives from the Twenty Brothers, a formal militia of mostly elves who liked to think of themselves as the noble defenders of all things Umbra. As far as Lan was concerned, they were idealistic bullshit artists in fancy dress-up uniforms, but they were also too powerful to be ignored outright. Seated next were several members of the Chamber, consisting mostly of random Barons that had climbed higher than was good for them and who were almost certainly not there in any official capacity. Those kind of opportunists tended to show up whether anyone liked it or not, so their presence wasn’t much of a surprise.

What was shocking however, were the three members of the Jade Host sitting serenely at attention, with no hint of a glamour or embarrassment at its lack. One was feathered, one furred, and one was scaled so thoroughly in iridescent hues that she practically shone with her own light. But beyond that, he knew nothing about them. He’d never bothered studying enough Chinese mythology to learn, and that made them just as mysterious and beautiful as he might have expected from a group who only appeared in public every hundred years or so. At their side were the Fangshai, the Chinese in-house Material Plane defense unit. The four women sat serenely looking at nothing, but all were nursing scowls as if they were actively thinking of all the places they’d rather be. And next to them were the American off-brand in the Knights of Solomon. Lan had tangled with both human groups enough to know neither was worth messing with, but he also knew neither was exactly scary either. Not really. Not at the bone-deep level. Certainly not like the group they were both trying to emulate...and the whole reason the ridiculous mix of strangers and enemies were sitting nicely together at a conference table in the first place. The door opened and the tension palpably ratcheted up as the Templar entered.

Enoch Cavallero wasn’t large by any stretch, possibly among the shortest and lightest there. And, with his messy steel-gray hair and tweed jacket, he looked more like a professor than what he really was. But everyone in the room knew better—some by personal experience—and the size of the place seem to diminish drastically when the little man began to fill it. No one so much as cleared their throat as he walked to the head of the long table.

“Thank you for coming,” Enoch said, his voice soft and worn and lightly spiced with a Spanish accent. “I am pleased to see that we have been able to put aside our differences for the sake of this...problem.”

Next to Lan, Sute’s second mouth on the back of her head suddenly spoke up. “Fucking understatement.”

The room somehow went even quieter, and Sute herself looked a little white around the eyes past her ever-present stoicism. The futakuchi-onna couldn’t always control that mouth beneath her hair, and she clearly hadn’t meant to let it slip then. Two thick tendrils of black hair slowly wrapped around the back of her head as if gagging the thing.

But Enoch merely nodded and pursed his lips. “Yes. The tendency is to trivialize the things we wish were not true. But that will not serve us well in this. Quite correct.”

Then the Templar reached to his side and casually drew his sword. There was a murmur of discomfort through the room as metal chair casters rolled slightly back and leather arm rests creaked under tightened hands, but Enoch simply held the silvery thing out like a tool he was presenting to a classroom—though Lan had never felt so much deadly magic pouring off of any screwdriver. It was a beautiful weapon, as befitted its reputation, with gold and silver touches on the pommel and a blade so polished it might slice light itself. And a silvery glow seemed to emanate from deep within it, leaving traces on the air as the man moved it. But the handle was old and worn, and the crossguard was only lightly adorned beneath countless nicks from what was likely an equal number of battles won. A tool indeed, and the man held it there for a moment, gazing as if seeing an old and not entirely welcome acquaintance. Then he placed it on the table just at the edge of his reach. The Knight of Solomon nearest visibly held himself back from picking it up, and the elvish member of the Twenty Brothers on the opposite side visibly held himself back from throwing it across the room.

Enoch looked up from the sword and didn’t appear anything like a man who had just disarmed himself in a room full of enemies. “I did not prepare any presentation, so this is my only visual aid.” He gestured to the sword. “Two weeks ago, this was the deadliest weapon of which I could conceive.” He let his hand drop as he leaned down on the table. “But today it is essentially garbage.”

There was a long pause and the man’s face passed through a series of emotions that Lan wasn’t quick enough to read. But soon he straightened again and began pacing slowly around the table. The Templar moved within arm’s reach of people he might have been hunting under different circumstances, and he absolutely did not appear to care.

“Many of you already know about the recent events in China,” Enoch went on, “but for the sake of collective clarity and expedience, I will sum it all up. The Igla...is a powerful artifact considered by many to be the single most dangerous item in existence. And indeed, perhaps a key to controlling reality itself. There was an effort by the Chamber recently to secure it.” He glanced at the representatives seated there. “Without consulting us, I might add. And it failed rather catastrophically.” The Chamber members all wore different expressions ranging from chagrin to defiance, but none met the man’s eyes. “This is all old news,” the Templar continued. “But what many of you may not know, is who actually ended up holding the prize when the smoke of that debacle finally cleared.”

Lan suddenly realized why he was there, and his heart did a little double-skip as he recalled his mission to secure the Igla...or at least to make sure nobody else did. It had gone particularly poorly—mostly due to the surprise interference of a rogue god that nobody seemed to know anything about—and Lan’s career as a cell commander in the Maerrywells had basically died with the brutal loss of his entire team. The same team he had gladly run from when given the chance... It was about as far as he could get from his proudest moment, and his inclusion on this trip seemed inextricably tied to it. This had to be about that god then. The one who’d turned his men into a carnival of horrors at a glance. He slowly sat forward as he fingered his tin and fought hard to not flip it open.

Enoch rounded the end of the table and began pacing behind the chairs on Lan’s side. “It was initially unclear to us as well, until we started questioning the Hags and other Chamber members involved, but we believe strongly that we have now pinpointed the person who walked away with it.” The Templar slowed and then stopped behind Lan. “And two of you here have even met the man.”

Lan’s heart began thumping hard in his chest, sending a tangible pulse through his whole body and down to the fingertips gripping the tin. His throat suddenly felt like it needed to be cleared, and a treacherous bead of sweat started sliding down his forehead toward his left eye. The sword was still lying safely on the table, but for the life of him it felt like it was hanging right above his head. The gazes of twenty-three of the most dangerous people in the world slowly found him and lit with little sparks of comprehension.

Enoch started moving again. “This is why we have brought you here today. Because an attempt at an official recovery of the Igla under the authority of a single organization has already been tried and failed. We could have used our own resources to go after the artifact under the ancient terms of the Templars, but I have made the case to my peers that multi-faceted cooperation would be far more useful and effective given the nature of this threat. You are all defenders, in one form or another, of your people and ideals. The danger presented by the existence of the Igla is unparalleled in human or Umbra history, and everyone present here has as much to lose with its abuse. So I believe we can all agree that no one man could, or should, ever be trusted with its stewardship.”

“What about the Hunters?” A gravelly-voiced Knight of Solomon suddenly asked. “I won’t work with those shits, no matter what the stakes.”

Enoch nodded slowly and gestured to the Knight as if to thank him for the question. “No need to worry, Knight Deminov. They have refused to take up this mission. Several times from several sources, in fact. And they have curiously refused to say why.” The Knight of Solomon nodded and Enoch continued. “And the rest of you?”

There were murmurs of assent all around the room, and Lan began to pity any of the bastards who thought they’d be able to face down that god. Though at least it now made sense why the Templars were trying to collect such an imposing coalition. It was always useful to have some cannon fodder.

Enoch reached the head of the table again and stopped to face them. “So we are at least that allied in our opinions,” the Templar said, nodding. “We have a collective duty to find this...Gabriel Delling.”

Lan started to lean back in his chair again, then dropped his tin into his lap. “Wait, what? You’re talking about that guy?”

Enoch’s answering frown was a little sad, but undeniably resolute. “As the only two here who have met him and lived, you and Knight Leopold Deminov will be assisting us in creating a psychological profile of the man.” He looked to the Knight of Solomon who shrugged and nodded.

Lan scoffed. “I talked to him one time!” He lifted a hand up and rubbed his face hard to slosh his thoughts into some order. “He walked away with the Igla? How?!”

Enoch spared a quick glance to Lan, promising plenty of questions later, then he looked down to the table and his sword. “An important first step. Common ground. Now I can admit that we may know where he will be next, but that there are six distinct locations and too much space between them for any one of our groups to cover. Hence...” He spread his hands to encompass the room. “...why we are here.” Then he suddenly looked tired, and he finally sat in the chair waiting for him. “Now, let us continue by talking about how, exactly, we must go about killing him.”

CHAPTER THREE

“I wouldn’t say I’ve embraced the ‘hero’ thing, but I’ve definitely redefined it for myself. I used to think heroic actions had to be selfless and noble and stupidly grand, but I’ve come to realize there can be just as much profit in being a good guy as a bad one...as long as you keep your head on straight. Fight, sure, but not when you don’t have to. Run into the fray, but not without the full story. And go ahead and sacrifice yourself a little, but only when you’ll lose something bigger if you don’t. They’re not perfect, but if you follow those rules you’ll get close enough to being a ‘hero’ that most people won’t be able to tell the difference. And they work even better if you can avoid complaining too much while you’re at it...though, I’m admittedly not quite ready to give that up yet myself.”

-Excerpt from Chapter Twenty-One, CONscience

GABE DROPPED THE LATEST round of bags with a grunt and knuckled the small of his back to work out a kink that had developed there. Then he groaned and stretched more dramatically while cradling his injured hand just for the show of it. With Heather up at ground level lowering their baggage down, she wasn’t there to give him even feigned sympathy, but it also never hurt to make it known exactly how hard you were working. People tended not to notice otherwise. He looked first to Hwei-ru, who was still busy studying the stone pillars and probably wouldn’t care much about his discomfort anyway, then he caught Ken’s eye and got a satisfying little grimace in return. Good enough.

“A few more loads should do it,” Gabe said, moving over to where the bigger man was setting up a line of folding tables to form the basis of what he was already starting to call “The Command Center”. Both Hwei-ru and Heather had tried to disabuse the guy of that, but Gabe had been secretly supporting it. He liked the innocent little flair it gave the whole thing—like a comic book. Life was getting plenty dark enough without actively suppressing any naturally-occurring comedic relief that might pop up.

“Thanks for doing the grunt work,” Ken replied, sounding only a little embarrassed by it. “Eighteen years sitting at desks, poring over computer code and system designs, haven’t exactly left my back in a combat-ready state.” He snapped a table leg into place, then flipped the thing over to set it next to the others. “And the gut doesn’t help,” he admitted sheepishly. “Though I am working on that.”

The man had lost a little weight since they’d first met a few weeks previous, and some of it had been the ponytail he’d lopped off sometime in the last twenty-four hours. Which, Gabe had to admit, had turned out to be a pretty good choice.

“Hey, no big deal,” Gabe said. “Gives me a chance to be good for something other than target practice. And it makes a nice change of pace to be carrying stuff around that isn’t actively trying to kill me. Nice haircut, by the way.”

Ken absently raised a hand to the back of his head, then turned it into a scratch and a shrug. “Uh, thanks. Still getting used to it. But Lor...” He stopped and shook his head in annoyance. “Heather said it was good idea.”

Gabe nodded. “Yeah, it’s generally wise to listen to her.”

Ken smirked and leaned in a little closer. “Actually, her exact words were that the ponytail was ‘a stereotypical abomination that was actively draining the sex appeal around me in a five-mile radius.’”

Gabe tried to fight back a bark of laughter and was only mostly successful. “Yeah, well, not wise to listen too closely.”

Ken raised his eyebrows knowingly as he nodded agreement and gave Gabe a little slap on the shoulder. And Gabe used the moment as a natural breaking point in the conversation to head back to the hole and ferry another load. But just then, Heather appeared at the doorway with easily three times Gabe’s carrying capacity held casually in her arms, and she began offloading it in every available spot near their new steel door.

“I could tell you where that stuff goes if you want,” Gabe called over as he moved to help. But by the time he got there, everything had already been messily dropped in lines leading from the entrance. “Or that’s fine too.”

Heather took one deep breath and exhaled loudly, her version of being winded, and then she stretched in a way that looked designed to be much more evocative than effective. Gabe caught himself watching and held the stare just a beat long enough for her to catch it before looking away, and her satisfied smirk said he’d played it exactly right. She wanted to be wanted but not needed...but also needed a little. It was a careful balancing act. Fortunately, juggling dichotomies was starting to become one of his specialties.

“That’s the last of it,” she said to the room as she took a seat on one of the many hard plastic cases. “Though if you wanted to order in some real mattresses I certainly wouldn’t mind fetching those down too.”

Ken came over and started sorting through the new load, kicking aside the soft bags to get to the hard cases that held the bits of his collection he hadn’t parted with. “Mattresses are in phase three,” he said without looking up. “That’s the first wave of personal comforts, but it won’t happen until phase two is finished and we establish a basic level of security. Gotta keep to priorities.”

Gabe was about to agree when Heather jumped back in. “I suppose. Safety first...or, second in this case.” She tossed her hair and leaned back on the case like she was preparing to sun herself on a rock. “Though if I have to sleep on an inflatable bag for more than a few days, it’s hard to say if you’ll be any safer in here with me.”

Ken looked up finally and stared with an expression that wanted to somehow simultaneously be fear and amusement, and he didn’t seem to know quite what to say next.

Gabe sympathized with that feeling so completely that he decided to bail the guy out. “Yeah, let’s forget that our next-door neighbors are now harpies and there’s probably a nice family of cannibals on the other side. And that we’re trying to save the universe from something none of us seems to totally understand, and that everyone wants to kill us for it.” He reached down and gently brushed a strand of hair from her face to make sure she knew he was joking. “Next on the docket definitely needs to be your lumbar support.”

She looked back up at him while his hand was still there and awarded him a little point with playfully narrowed eyes.

Ken, in the meantime, could only laugh awkwardly and go back to picking out his cases. “Right, well, I’ll make it as quick as possible. This is the bit where I get to be useful...and having a crap-ton of money to toss at the problem certainly won’t slow anything down.”

A week ago, the man had started selling off most things of value in his life to raise funds for Hwei-ru’s plans, and it had turned out that he was quite a bit wealthier than any of them had initially given him credit for—which was already pretty crazy rich. His ownership stake in his company alone was netting an obscene amount of money that was even then being filtered through the layers of regulatory and financial systems, and that didn’t include any of the properties and antiquities that were now going up for auction. The whole process was a mind-boggling testament to how thoroughly convinced the guy was that Hwei-ru was right about everything she was telling them, and it had actually gone a long way to convincing Gabe to get on board as well. If a smart guy worth that much money was swallowing this bait whole, even without seeing all the ridiculous crap Gabe had seen, then Gabe himself didn’t have much room to hold on to skepticism. Or, at least, that reason sounded way better than saying he was just doing what his girlfriend told him to.

“Yeah, I find there’s very little that money can’t solve,” Gabe said, moving over to help Ken sort the bags. “And screw those people who say it can’t buy happiness. They just aren’t creative enough. I’m sure if I was sitting at a pie buffet in my throne room overlooking my personal arcade, I could probably crack a smile or two.”

Ken chuckled and moved a bag to one side. “That is extraordinarily close to my actual life when I first stumbled into wealth.” He glanced around at the dozens of cases. “If that wasn’t already apparent.” Then he stopped to knuckle his back with a grimace. “Though, I will say it’s a different kind of happiness. A bought kind, instead of freely given.” His expression slipped a bit and his eyes went distant. “To tell the truth, I spent my whole life collecting and digging and hoping to find something bigger than me and what I could conceive of. And for a long time all I did was gather artifacts and disappointment.” His face brightened a little. “Then you guys came along and busted my world right open, bringing the very thing I’d been looking for. Funny, that. A little magic. A little purpose.”

Gabe watched the man from the corner of his eye as he pretended to continue sorting. They were treading dangerously close to a real conversation, and he wasn’t yet comfortable enough with Ken to share anything like an intimate, honest moment with him. “I mean, technically you did buy the thing we were looking for, so you could still say that money...” He caught himself and waved the thought away. “But, I get the point.”

Ken shook his head. “No, no, you’re not wrong. I’d rather have money than not. Obviously. I’m just saying...it gets surprisingly boring once you’re used to it. There’s only so many times you can be delighted by your full-size replica bridge of the Enterprise D before it just becomes that place where you ate pizza in your underwear last night.”

Gabe grinned and moved over to help Ken shift a particularly large case. They both grunted as they set it gently to the floor, then they settled into a comfortable silence while they worked on the rest of the mess. His hand barely twinged with any pain after the several hours of mystical healing and the super-special bandage, and he found himself able to use it more and more as they went. He didn’t think he’d ever get tired of that. He might complain about magic loudly and often, and with the kind of vitriol he normally only reserved for people who took up two parking spaces, but he had to admit that magic did always seem to be there to kiss his boo boos better.

The room had actually turned out to be decorated entirely in the same gothic style, heavily featuring stone and wrought iron where drywall and plastic would have probably sufficed. And they quickly discovered that the big velvet curtains partitioned the vast space fairly neatly into something like seven smaller areas. They had yet to decide on what all of those would be, but one whole section was clearly being devoted to Ken’s remaining collection. And given that the man owned pretty much everything down there, including all of their new wardrobes, amenities, and the room itself, it was tough to begrudge the guy a play room.

Gabe gently placed a case in its proper color-coded line, then turned to go fetch another and give Heather a fresh dose of guilt for not helping. But before he could get there, a massive wash of energy filled the room and stopped him cold. His hand immediately went to his hip where his sword would have been had he been prepared, then he reached up to his bandolier and snatched out a hex. He couldn’t immediately tell what kind it was just by feel, which was a problem he definitely needed to fix, but he reached for his magic anyway and it came begrudgingly to the call. The power filled him, warm and sharp and more real than almost anything else he’d known, and he forced it into the hex until it filled like an injection mold and the magic came to life in his hand. An instant later, he was holding a spell that would do...something. Hopefully useful.

Gabe edged around the curtain with his hand drawn back and ready to throw...and then he stopped when he only saw Hwei-ru standing near the onyx pillars in the middle of the fading energy. He glanced over to Ken who was still blithely sorting through his things, and then to Heather who was still reclining, albeit now more stiffly and with her eyes open.

“Anybody else feel that?” he asked, having finally learned better than to keep weird feelings about magical nonsense to himself. “Like the Ether just sneezed or something?”

Heather giggled and closed her eyes to recline fully back again, and Ken looked utterly confused.

“Stand down, Mr. Delling,” Hwei-ru said, not looking at him but still pointing exactly to where he was standing. Her slight translucence made it that much creepier. “What you felt was me purging this artifice of its remaining negative field and ensuring that the previous tenant could not drop in as he pleases. It was a sort of harmless static. Nothing more.”

“Kind of like a degaussing?” Ken asked, sounding hopeful that he might be grasping some of the conversation.

Gabe knew that feeling too. “That’s a pretty deep, nerdy cut, Ken. I don’t think these ladies know what degaussing—”

“Yes, Kendrick,” Hwei-ru cut in. “A similar process, though vastly more complex.” She turned to Gabe and leveled that thousand-year stare at him. “Do not presume what I do or do not know, Mr. Delling. Like us all, the former is far less than the latter, but not, I think, in so drastic a ratio as in your case.”

Heather giggled again, her eyes still closed.

Gabe shook his head. “Well, that was a pretty sick burn. Point taken.” He bled the magic from the hex in his hand, and only then looked down to find that he’d drawn the smoke powder. “Though maybe give us a warning next time. My main weapons are basically bright lights and a mild cough, so an occasional heads-up might lower my blood pressure.” He stuffed the packet back in its pouch.

She nodded once, which on her looked more like a regal bow of acknowledgment. “Fair enough. Though you would do well to learn to adapt to your limitations. You are unlikely to see any further hexes or charms with the only Hexen we know in a coma.” She turned back toward the pillars, which did indeed now feel much cleaner. “That is Phase One complete. We are now safe from the most obvious and immediate threats, and our belongings are here and...I assume all accounted for?”

Ken did a quick scan of the room and nodded reluctantly. “I think so. Probably. I’ll feel better when we’re unpacked and I can inventory everything properly, but yeah. I, uh, think so.”

Hwei-ru accepted the answer without comment and slowly spun in place. “This will do. It is not an ideal location geographically, nor are our resources as robust as they were when we were affiliated with the Hags...”

She paused at that, and Gabe thought he knew which hole her thoughts were dropping into. Esme was dead. Her only friend, as far as Gabe could tell. And Lorelei, her granddaughter, was dead too...mostly.

Then she rose back out of it just as quickly. “But it will certainly do better than nothing. Far better, in fact. Reality will owe you a great debt for your faithfulness, Kendrick—though ideally they will never know it.”

Ken grunted and mumbled something before turning back to his crates, and Gabe jumped in again to save the guy the embarrassment of any more weird compliments from the ghost lady. “Don’t say ‘faithfulness’ like that,” he replied, moving toward her. “It makes this sound like a cult or something, and I’m already having a hard enough time justifying why any of us are here without that extra baggage. I’m telling you right now I’m not shaving my head. Though I wouldn’t say no to some Kool-Aid if anyone’s been holding out on me.”

Hwei-ru stared at him for a beat longer than was comfortable, then she turned back to the pillars. “These are actually quite a lucky feature of this location. Your lich friend must have been canny indeed to have installed them here. The stone itself functions as a kind of sponge to absorb negative energy, drawing from the ley line running through this physical spot to catch wayward sparks and store them. For the lich, that functioned as a kind of battery from which he could draw. Cunning.” She reached out and ran a translucent finger down the outer edge of the nearest pillar, following a single line etched into the larger carvings. “But for us, they will function as a kind of firewall against hostile scrying and attack. A valuable thing indeed. And had I known they were here, just waiting for us to waltz in and claim them, we certainly would not have wasted any time considering other locations. This is almost too easy a prize.”

Gabe watched her finger trace for a moment before following the line back up into the organized mess of runes, pictographs, and indecipherable geometric patterns covering the thing to the top. “Easy as waltzing for the people making the plan, maybe,” he mumbled, vaguely waving his injured hand.

She followed his gaze to the tip of the pillar, where it narrowed to a pencil point and just kissed the stone ceiling thirty feet up. “Do you know how to waltz, Mr. Delling?” she asked.

That was fair. And his palm did feel mostly healed anyway, so he could hardly ride it much further for sympathy points. He cleared his throat and moved his eyes back down to Heather, who was now apparently taking a full-blown nap. “Okay,” he said. “So what’s next, fearless leader? A little reconnaissance? Some warm-up hijinks to get a few steps closer to the next goal?”

Hwei-ru smiled tightly. “Not this time, Mr. Delling. Next, we steal another Igla.”

Gabe waited for her to elaborate, but quickly realized it was in vain. “Seriously? That’s it? Just go grab one?”

She nodded. “That is it.”

“What?” he asked, barely keeping the shock from injecting an embarrassing break in his voice. “What about...everything leading up to it? Don’t we need to do research and planning and put a whole team together first? I know you’re relatively new to the whole mastermind thing, but I’m pretty sure there’s supposed to be several more levels where I get incrementally more beaten up before we face the end boss.” He spread his hands. “We don’t even have a lovable comic sidekick yet!”

“When you awoke after the temple,” she replied, “I informed you that allies would be in short supply. That was not an exaggeration. Many Umbras in the world will not know about you or the Igla, but the most powerful certainly will. And they will fear and hate you for it. As far as they are concerned, you are equivalent to one single man entrusted with the codes to every nuclear device on the planet. They do not know what you can or cannot do with the power, and that uncertainty makes you a target unlike any other. That the Igla is essentially useless to you will not matter. They will not believe it. So we cannot waste time while those enemies amass. And there will be very few allies forthcoming to help us. At this point, only the wisest or craziest would dare get near you.”

Gabe waited several beats as he absorbed that. “Yeah, that sounds familiar,” he said finally. “So which does that make you?”

She lifted her hand in her version of a shrug. “It is possible to be both simultaneously.” Then she sighed. “There is one potential asset who has reached out...though that may be less than useless.”

Gabe crossed his arms. “Well, as long as it’s not someone who’s already tried to kill us, it seems like we shouldn’t be turning down help.”

She raised her eyebrows and dropped her hand. “All things considered, you may need to lower your criteria for friends.” Then she turned back to the pillars. “As far as the research goes, this location was critical for more than one reason. Our safety net of allies may be broken, and I may be incapable of traveling the world as I wish, but the ley lines provide a unique opportunity for someone like me. Just as the earth has continental plates and fissures, so too does the veil have seams and scars. The ley lines are fractures that run along the barrier between reality and the Ether, and they allow a certain amount of power and information to be funneled and gathered along their network. For individuals like myself who exist more as energy, it can even act as an extension of my own senses.”

Gabe thought he knew where this was going, and he experimentally probed for the ley line with his will. At first he found nothing more than the background thrum of magic he’d been feeling since the moment he’d entered the Warrens, but a moment later he suddenly got back a mild buzz of fast-moving power somewhere far beneath him and a sliver past reality. It felt familiar, but it also felt far more dangerous the closer he got—like a river coursing with fresh mountain snowmelt. So he decided not to push any harder.

“Perfect,” he said. “So you can hop on this Spectral Super Highway and get us information from the comfort of home? Sounds pretty great. Do we need a modem or something?”

She dropped her hand and pursed her lips. “I was trying to avoid a direct comparison to the internet, but if that helps you...”

“You didn’t like that one?” he asked. “How about the Weird Wide Web?” Then he snapped his fingers. “Ethernet! Ah, how did I miss that?”

Her eyes narrowed. “Amusing. But you cannot ‘connect’ in any way. It would be far too dangerous for someone with your limited understanding and disproportionate importance—especially given that you are still mostly human. Umbras are creatures of rules with defined abilities, and the Ether is accordingly ordered for us. But human minds and spirits are far too volatile, always changing, always evolving, and the Ether and veil and earthly manifestation of magic are all consequently made more volatile at your touch. You do not know what you can or cannot do, and so the Ether allows you to do practically anything. Whatever is needed. Whatever pops into your little head. Your only limitations are the amount of power at your disposal, and the amount of imagination you can bring to mold it. And, of course, the amount of control you can exercise on the catastrophic result.”

He started to make a joke about being god-like...but then caught himself and closed his mouth. That wasn’t the most comfortable topic these days.

Hwei-ru waited a beat for him to reply, then went on. “Which is why I will spend the rest of the night searching the length of the veil for any indications of where we must go next. It is not a direct picture of the world, not as easy as logging in, but I believe I may have advantages that few others do.” She spread her palms toward the ground and an energy rose up to meet them. “I have given much of my life to the study of these artifacts and the theories surrounding them, and it is my hope that I will be able to find the characteristic anomalies surrounding the next Igla before anyone else does. Anyone who doesn’t already know, that is. Speed and efficiency will be our allies this time. With luck, we may have a location by morning.”

Gabe blew out a long breath and tried to keep his voice calmer this time. “But we just freaking did one of those. Having the location is great, but you of all people should know we weren’t able to just wander in and grab the first one. We barely made it back out.” Then he stopped just before saying the next logical line. She knew it well enough, and he didn’t need to hurt her to make his point. Not all of them had made it back out.

Hwei-ru turned toward him and clearly let some of her facade drop to show exactly how well she understood. “I wish more than anything that our situation was not as it is. More than you know. However, wishing is not the same as doing—though it does scratch a similar itch and is therefore a dangerous habit to take up. There is no time because our enemies are leaving us none. There are limited resources because none exist to be had. Few foresaw this event, and fewer did anything to prepare for it. Esme and I, as far as I know, were the only two of our kind taking this seriously before it became obvious. And even then we thought we had another decade to prepare. So when I say that our only advantages in this wild endeavor are speed, flexibility, and a certain singularity of purpose, please understand that I am not exaggerating for dramatic effect. We would be foolish to squander any advantage we have, regardless of personal safety or...” She glanced to where Heather was sleeping, and tried to hide it from him. “...potential heartbreak. We must not hesitate. Not for your sake, not for mine. Not for anyone’s.”

Gabe opened his mouth to say something, to argue or sympathize or even agree, but nothing came. Heather’s comments about his hollow refusal to bear the mantle of a hero echoed back over his thoughts, and he couldn’t bat them down fast enough. Paying lip-service to logical self-interest really did mean nothing if he was just going to go do stupid hero stuff the next day...which gave him very little left to say just then. If he really did want to be better and do the right things, then none of his self-preserving instincts were good anymore. And if he wanted to go with his gut and balk at every selfless act shoved in his face, then he likely would never get to live the life he wanted. The real life, with the real future.

But instead of voicing any of that, he simply sighed and watched as the woman drew the curtain of impervious poise back over herself.

“Follow your friend’s lead and get some rest, Mr. Delling,” Hwei-ru said as she closed her eyes. “Like it or not, tomorrow we are probably saving the universe again.”

ELSEWHERE

LAUREN SHELVED THE last book and checked her cart to ensure nothing else had escaped her notice, but it was empty. It was even miraculously free of the trash the kids sometimes stashed there on their way through the hall. That was always a nice surprise—finding notebook paper wadded around gum or an empty soda can in a sticky puddle right next to an out-of-print book. It was one of the more annoying parts of her job, but she certainly didn’t blame the kids themselves for it. They were just products of their environments. And when they weren’t given boundaries or good examples at home, how could they be expected to demonstrate decent manners anywhere else?

She wheeled the cart back to the front of the library and just behind the drop box slot in the wall, then turned back to her desk and the little mountain of book reports waiting there. The fifth graders had done remarkably well this year, and only a few had blatantly copied from the internet. Which meant fewer calls home than usual and many more scratch and sniff stickers given out. She jotted a quick note to order more of those for next year—maybe the ones that smelled like pizza this time. That would be fun. Then she reached for her mug to finish her morning ritual with a fresh cup of coffee from the lounge and a little chat with the cute new P.E. teacher.

“Excuse me,” a man said behind her.

Lauren jumped a little, then whipped around with a smile already forming. “Oh! You startled me. What can I do for...”

The man wasn’t exactly tall, but he certainly wasn’t short either. And his features were pleasant enough without actually being all that remarkable. His hair was longer than she might have expected on someone his age wearing a three-piece suit, and the cane he held was a bit ostentatious. But none of that was what made her breath catch and her legs tense to run.

“Alexander,” she said, hissing the word like a curse. “What...what are you doing here?!”

Alexander leaned on his cane and glanced around the room as if considering buying the place. The posture very nearly made him look like a caricature, but that ever-present confidence he exuded smudged it just enough to pass as genuine. “I’m doing quite well, thank you very much for asking,” he said. “And you?”

Lauren gripped her mug hard and slowly brought it up to her stomach as she edged a step back. “You can’t be in here. The school is supposed to be locked down during the day. How...” She shook her head and fought back the angry snarl that wanted to form on her face. “How did you even find me?”

Alexander sauntered in then, moving vaguely toward her but still not bothering to make eye contact. “I’m so glad to see you’ve found such a nice little life.” He lifted the cane and pointed to the pictures on her desk. “And a happy home. Two lovely daughters, I see. And a good man.” He squinted, probably just for the show of it. “Handsome fellow, isn’t he? Very white teeth. Though that level of tan isn’t terribly good for the skin health. And for goodness sake he could put on some socks beneath those adorable little sailor shoes. I’m guessing...insurance salesman?”

Lauren’s fingers started to tremble and she felt her face getting hot. The old feelings that she’d buried long ago began bubbling back up and were no less putrid for the time they’d spent rotting in the dark. Just his face had been enough to bring it all back. Three decades gone, and yet there it all was. So much changed to the better for her, and all of it suddenly so fragile. She wanted a drink for the first time in years.

“What do you want, Alex,” she said. “I’m a different person now.”

His eyebrows went up. “Ah, that is a feeling I can certainly identify with.” Then he smiled and it was even more predatory than she remembered.

“Just leave me alone,” she snapped, hoping it would somehow work—hoping she’d earned enough good karma back from the universe to grant this one wish to let everything keep going right for her. She edged toward the phone on her wall and tried to think of who she could call fastest.

But Alexander followed her step for step, never getting too close nor letting her get any farther away. “I was afraid this might go poorly,” he said, his voice nothing like she remembered it...like he was doing a character. “But I just couldn’t bring myself to call ahead and spoil the surprise. Is there any chance you’d see your way clear to stepping out to fill that mug and have a little chat with me? For old time’s sake?”

Her resolve finally broke and she felt her face bend into a snarl. “I will never go anywhere with you, Alex. Not again.” She stopped retreating and squeezed the mug as if it could anchor her there. “And you have some nerve showing up here, where I work, to try to suck me back in to your twisted little life!”

He stopped and his eyes finally climbed to meet hers. They locked on with a breathtaking intensity, and she was surprised to see that they were now different colors. One was the familiar soft brown that had helped fool her into believing him a lifetime ago, and the other was now a shocking blue that felt like it might burn her if she looked too long. So many things different. Too much of it the same.

He took a deep breath as if thinking hard about his reply, then he tucked the cane under his arm and grimaced. “I don’t actually need you,” he said, looking at her with some insane mix of disdain and curiosity. “And I certainly don’t claim to fully understand the impulse that brought me here. I’ve had hundreds of partners over the years, of all types and dispositions. And each time the parting has been acceptable to me for one reason or another. Perhaps I’ve had my fill or sense that they’ve had theirs. Or perhaps the loss has gained me something of even greater value.” He lifted a hand and waved it a bit, like he was trying to find an errant thought. “But then...I have this memory etched into the back of my brain like an old wound that refuses to heal, and it’s all I can do most days to get about my regular business without dwelling on it. It’s like forgetting the words to a song you once knew.” He chuckled. “And I have to admit it is driving me a bit crazy. The woman who left me.”

Lauren could barely follow what he was saying as her mind raced for a way out. She saw herself running past him and out of the room, or running to the phone to call for help, or even landing at his feet to beg him not to take what she’d built here. She flicked her eyes to the door and wished for someone to walk in just then...and she also hoped desperately that no one would, lest they discover her secret shame.

Lauren felt the tears coming, and she knew there was nothing she could do to stop them. “You know exactly why I left. Are you here for money?”

He recoiled and slapped on a wounded expression. “Heavens no! Funding is the least of my challenges these days. I’m here for peace of mind—mine and yours.”

She had to fight back the urge to throw the mug at him then. “Peace?!” she spat, just barely keeping her voice low enough to stay within the room. “Of all the lies you dealt in, that was never one of them. All you ever gave me was pain, broken promises, and one hell of a bankruptcy. And it’s taken me years to dig my way out of that. And now you’re here to, what? Make amends? Chat about old times?” She laughed bitterly. “I don’t want anything from you. Least of all your version of peace!”

Alexander nodded thoughtfully. “Yes, I can see why you would believe that. It is a pity how that played out. Though I can assure you I would have done things differently had I been...the man I am today.”

“Get out,” she hissed, finally finding that spark of desperate anger again that had propelled her away from him the first time.

But he simply shrugged. “Soon enough.”

“Get out!” she repeated, this time raising her voice loud enough that the surrounding rooms would surely hear it.

He raised his eyebrows slightly and waited several beats, then glanced over his shoulder to the door before turning back to her with a little knowing smirk. “Were you expecting someone to come running? Because I should tell you they can’t hear anything inside this room.” He laughed then, low and long. “That would be quite embarrassing!”

The anger boiled over suddenly and she screamed wordlessly as she sent the mug flying toward him. It barely clipped the top of his shoulder but then went careening out the door on a direct course for the big window opposite her room. And for a moment, she felt a surge of terror that she had just let him destroy another version of her life. Five minutes back and he was already playing her all over again.

But then something hazy and uncomfortable passed through the room and lashed out into the hall, and the mug suddenly stopped an inch from impacting the glass. It hovered there for a second, twisting in the air as if all natural laws had just winked out around it, and then it slowly drifted back into the room to land gently in Alexander’s outstretched hand. He lifted it and studied the bright red heart painted on with an apple stem at the top, turning it from side to side as if inspecting a fine piece of art. Then another wave of that hazy unease rose up, and the mug simply dissolved in his fingers. She noticed through her shock that the skin of his right palm was stained with streaks of something impossibly dark, as if the hand remained in shadow even in full light. Her breath felt like it had solidified in her throat.

He looked up at her. “If that was intentional, I’m quite impressed. Trying to get outside the bounds of my glamour isn’t a bad tactic at all. Not that anyone within a hundred miles could have done anything to help you, but the instinct was good. I forgot how clever you were. Where some of his talent came from.” His smile crept back onto his face. “The boy, I mean.”

The boy.

The words hit like a hammer, and everything she’d erected around herself over the last three decades suddenly fractured and began falling to bits at her feet. She was a girl again, barely out of college and stupid in love with exactly the wrong man. Then she was pregnant and still so full of hope despite already knowing better. Then she was a mother and stuck, finally wise to the lies but too scared to do anything. Then she was drinking to make it all go away—her own fear, cowardice, and the mistakes that had driven her so low... And then she was running. Free. But at such a cost...

The boy. That was her shame. All of it. He had been the sacrifice with which she’d bought a new life, the limb she’d gnawed off to get loose of the trap, and ultimately why any happiness she’d scraped together since never felt truly deserved or appreciated. And he was why Alexander Delling still held any power over her.

“Gabe,” she said, barely pushing the word past her lips.

“Ah, you do remember,” Alexander whispered, suddenly somehow right there in front of her.

He reached up and gently brushed a tear from her cheek with his night-stained fingers, and there was nothing she could do to stop it. His touch felt cold and hollow.

“That is why I’ve come,” he said. “It is lovely to see you, of course, but that wouldn’t have been enough reason to uproot the pleasant little fantasy you’ve concocted here. I’m not a monster, after all.” Aka Manah laughed softly.

Lauren tried to run or scream or push him away, but there was nothing left in her to fuel it. Thirty years of repressed sorrow was suddenly catching up at once, and it was all she could do to stay standing. It was like the man was actively draining her through that too blue eye, and despite herself, she was letting him.

“I’ve seen the many paths and forks the future might take,” he said. “In truth, it’s much less helpful than I envisioned it might be. But one theme has remained constant in all of them, and it is why I am here.” His expression slipped into that familiar openness that invited the prey to fall in. “Whether he likes it or not, our son needs our help. Specifically yours. Or I am afraid he is doomed.” A little concern touched his eyes and set the hook. “And you wouldn’t abandon him, would you? ...Not again?”

She broke.

CHAPTER FOUR

“Being with Heather has recently had the weird and unfortunate effect of making me think about my relationship with my mom...or lack thereof. And that hasn’t been great for my goal of moving onward and upward from my little den of self-pity. I only remember flashes of the woman, snapshots of moments that may or may not have been manufactured from years of wondering where and why she’d gone. And I can’t help but feel like Heather is slightly filling a hole in me left by that absence. Which is...I know...a Freudian nightmare. But it honestly has nothing to do with weirdness, and everything to do with missing out on that basic level of affection. And finally finding someone who gives it. And who wants to stick around. Even when it’s hard.

So dredging up those old memories has actually been really positive. I feel like I might finally be able to dismiss the notion that I missed out on this other life, and just enjoy what I have while it’s happening. That would be a first for me. I think I’m ready to let go of the people who I wished would care about me and make room for the people who actually do. Plus, then I don’t ever have to think about this again, and we can all just pretend this psychoanalytical minefield never happened...okay?”

-Excerpt from Chapter Twenty-Two, CONscience

GABE CROSSED HIS ARMS and stared straight ahead, ignoring the drizzling rain, early spring wind, and pretty much everything else trying hard to annoy him.

Heather moved in to block his view, then slowly exhaled as her hands went to her hips. “Quit being a baby,” she said, layering on a little sweetness to make it go down easier. “Just because the last one fell out of the sky, doesn’t mean this one will.”

Gabe cocked his head to the side. “Do you hear yourself? That’s not how you reassure someone.” He gestured with both hands to the little chartered airplane sitting on the tarmac, waiting with the ridiculously small door propped open. “Last time we had a big fancy jet complete with a whole team of people who knew what they were doing, and it still almost killed us. Now we’re taking Jimmy-Joe-Bob’s hobby plane made out of styrofoam and tin foil, and I’m just supposed to scamper on up the stepladder? How many seats does this thing even have? Or are we crouching on an overturned bucket?”

She smiled despite herself. “It’s a six-seater Cessna, Gabe. It’s actually pretty nice.”

He opened his mouth to continue, then he watched her eyebrows drift upward as the patience in her practically creaked with strain. He felt the same through the bond, so he dialed it back a bit. “Why can’t we drive? Or, I don’t know, teleport or something? When is this magic crap going to start making my life better?”

She nodded along, conceding every point but still not exactly siding with him, and her expression was softer than it strictly had to be. “You already know these answers, Gabe. Driving would take too long. If we’re going to save the whole universe, we at least need to get around this one little planet at a reasonable speed. And this plane isn’t nearly as bad as you’re making it out to be.” She pointed back to the thing like a spokesmodel showing off a new car. “See? It’s all shiny and everything.”

When the comment failed to elicit a laugh from him, she sighed and moved closer, bringing her hands up to his waist and pulling him in by one involuntary step. The rain was starting to stick her hair to her face, and yet it looked exactly as she probably meant it to. Like she’d just emerged from some tropical pool.

“As for teleporting,” she said, “I don’t know anyone personally who can go from one physical location to the next, but I’ve heard of those who can. We saw that lich do it. Though it’s definitely not as simple as he made it look. My guess is that they skim along or within the veil, sort of the way ley lines work, if that helps. Or maybe they use some kind of nexus in the Ether that’s linked to various set points on the material plane. It’s all just an extension of several precedents we’ve already witnessed or set ourselves, but the power needed to physically traverse in those ways would be so far beyond...” she paused and shook her head with a little laugh. “Ah, there’s Lorelei again.” Her expression went wistful. “I admit to appreciating all the extra knowledge, but I’m still not used to managing it.”

Gabe smirked. “Remember when we first met and you kept insisting that you weren’t a scholar? Now look at you all brainy and stuff.”

She narrowed her eyes. “Are you saying I wasn’t smart before?”

He chuckled and shook his head. “Nice try, but you’re not going to guilt me onto that deathtrap either.” Then he reached up with both hands to cup her face and wipe away a bit of wet there before sliding his fingers down to her shoulders to squeeze gently. “You know perfectly well how amazing I think you are.”

Her answering smile was like a sunrise cutting through the gloom of the afternoon, and suddenly the world smelled like lilacs and the green of growing things. She moved her face closer to his. “Well, see?” she said, brushing every letter against his lips. “Magic has made your life better.”

He groaned as she kissed him, and it only took a moment for it to turn into a little laugh between them.

She pulled away a bit but left her forehead pressed against his. “You have to admit, that was a pretty good one.”

“The kiss or the blatant manipulation?” he asked.

She shrugged.

“Yeah, masterful.”

She made a contented little noise. “One or both?”

He shrugged back. “Let’s go before this wears off and I start thinking rationally again.”

Hwei-ru was still seated in the large town car that had brought them, and when Gabe turned back that direction, he spotted her politely not quite looking at them. Heather volunteered to take their bags from the trunk and cram them into the few inches the plane boasted as cargo capacity, and Gabe reluctantly took on the duty of getting the final briefing. He walked over to the window and made the universal rolling down motion, and a moment later the glass descended.

The gui po continued staring straight ahead, then glanced at him indirectly as if making some kind of concession to propriety. “I see you have wasted no time in advancing your...relationship,” the translucent woman said, her words coming as if from across a room.

Gabe felt his eyebrows go up and he couldn’t help glancing back at Heather as she moved toward the plane. “Yep. Gotta carpe that diem while there’s still some terra firma to do it on, you know? Is this just small talk, or did you want a goodbye hug?”

She pursed her lips and carefully folded her hands across her lap. “Nice to see your Latin is as sharp as your wit. I was merely intending to point out that such emotional entanglements may cloud your judgment now that we have been thrust so completely into this race against time. Take care to remain aware of the greater priorities.”

Gabe stuffed his hands in his pockets and found his new phone and the credit cards Ken had set up for them. “Hey, that ‘emotional entanglement’ is the only reason I’m still here. In more ways than one. So maybe don’t treat us like we’re a couple of dumb kids who have no idea what we’re doing. I’m still going out to save the day, right? Just like you want. Who cares if I’m doing it for my own reasons?”

Hwei-ru stared hard at him. “All I ask is that you stop treating this like it is some favor you are doing me personally. Every life in existence is at stake, and we cannot afford to prize any one—or even any thousand—above the rest.”

Gabe almost wanted to take a step back at that, but he managed to keep his stance casual. That mastery of his emotions still occasionally came in handy. “Wow. That’s ice cold.”

She nodded once and dropped her gaze to her hands. “And there is colder still, if necessary. I am not here to play games, Mr. Delling. At least one of us must take this endeavor seriously if we are to emerge with anything resembling a victory.” She looked up and past him then, following Heather as she loaded their bags. “And you are essentially children in this, Gabriel. Both of you are flailing in the dark with your preconceptions while burning these new feelings for light as if they will never gutter. You two are only now learning how to love and commit like regular humans, but I fear the trials ahead will test you far beyond even that scope. This is why I urge caution. If your reasons falter along the way, we will all suffer for it.”

Gabe studied her then, using that moment of openness to read the finer details of her expression. He’d known from the moment he’d woken up in Ken’s mansion that Hwei-ru had been crushed by Lorelei’s death, and they’d all been shocked by the betrayal that had seemingly come from nowhere. But her face wasn’t so completely desolate as that anymore, as if she had started recovering a bit. And occasionally he thought he could even catch the hint of something older perhaps being reborn there in the ashes of her expression. But it was always hard to tell with her.

He wavered for a moment, then figured he might as well carpe the diem all over the place. “This advice... It’s as much for you as for me, isn’t it?”

He’d worked hard to keep his voice free of accusation, but her eyes still snapped up to him with her thoughts playing out clearly within them. He watched as she first considered denying it, then deflecting it with an insult. Then he saw when she decided to accept it, and she sagged in her seat, looking every year of her supposed age.

“Of course it is,” she said, speaking through a long sigh. “Despite the many evolutions I have endured and crafted for myself over the years, I am still, at my core, made to serve a family. That is my legend. My curse. And to my great dismay, it did not fully die with my granddaughter.”

Gabe had to hold his tongue to avoid replying that it was likely because Lorelei hadn’t fully died...and then he suddenly understood. Why she was here, why she seemed so tired, and why she’d been so cold to Heather. It wasn’t just about the constant reminder of that face. The woman was trapped.

A dozen snarky replies came to mind to poke at her while she was down, but he dismissed them all and went for a rare bit of sincerity. “You...love her,” he said, turning it midway from a question into a statement.

She breathed in slowly, then nodded. “And despise her. She is both the living proof of the demise of all I’ve lived for, and the last vestige of it trapped in those memories and mannerisms. Her face is...at once familiar and alien. And I cannot stop looking for the glimpses of the girl I helped raise. She is still in there, whether any of us like it or not. An imprint that will color Heather forever, and serve as a reminder to me of what I have already sacrificed to this world.” She sniffed once, then flinched as if showing even that emotion was far too much. “Had I only known how alone she truly felt, perhaps she would not have been so...influenced.”

Gabe swallowed hard and shuffled as he took all of that in. And then the second wave of it hit and nearly dragged him under. It was too familiar. Too close to his own losses. He had to clear his throat twice before he could speak again. “Would it help if I say I understand? Love and hate in one person and never knowing when to call them gone?”

Hwei-ru raised her chin and turned to look forward at her reflection in the tinted glass partition. “Does it help you if I say my advice was never intended to be only about her?”

He took a long breath and glanced up to sky, getting a facefull of drizzle in the process. Just when he’d thought things were finally getting simpler and falling into place to form something like a linear progression for his life, a sage old mentor had to pop up and open another dark cavern for him to go emotionally questing into.

His phone buzzed in his pocket, startling him, but he ignored it. He hadn’t thought of Aka Manah or his dad since finding the first Igla, and that time off had been incredibly nice. It had almost been like a honeymoon with Heather, forging their relationship into something real and blocking out the rest of the world. He’d even opened himself up to get to know Ken and Hwei-ru better, and two weeks had proven to be just long enough to make him forget about the terrible things still waiting for him out in the world. But now they were all coming back at once, and he could feel the weight of them already pulling him down.

“Everything okay?” Heather asked as she came up behind him.

He jumped a little, but turned it into an awkward quickstep toward her to deliver a peck on the cheek. “All good! Perfect, really.” He stopped himself before the rambling built up too much steam. Then he scrambled for something to whine about to make it sound more convincing. “I mean, we’re still off to go do the stupidest thing imaginable, but, you know, perfect for that.”

She stared at him in amusement and he clearly felt her probing their bond for further clues. But after a moment, she left it alone.

Hwei-ru was much more graceful about the transition. “Everything is in order. Six locations came up as possible Igla sites in my search, but this one is slightly stronger, leading me to believe it is primed for retrieval. You are flying to Galveston, Texas, where a contact will then take you to the exact coordinates. The power there is similar to that which flowed through the temple beneath Huainan, and it is only recently awakened from what I can tell. I know very little else about it, but my hope is that the same can be said of any others who may wish to oppose you. This should leave your way relatively clear. We would be foolish to believe we are the only ones who know the other six Iglas exist, but there cannot be many. And we would do well to go quickly while that is still true.”

Gabe squirmed where he stood, suddenly not struggling at all to find something to whine about. “So the plan is to just keep unlocking new levels as we go? There’s really no team out there digging up intel for us before we rush in head-first? That seems pretty reckless.”

Hwei-ru adjusted her shawl against the bit of rain coming through her window. “We have already discussed how diminished our resources are now that we no longer have the support of the Greater Circle.”

Gabe intentionally screwed up his face as if confused, and she sighed in annoyance.

“The Hags,” she clarified. “But whatever you wish to call them, they can no longer be counted on for assistance. With Esme cast back to the Ether—or...wherever she may be—the group has essentially split along even lines behind Morgan and Lilith. The former favors a much more warlike posture and was never one for careful planning in any case. And Lilith...” she paused and seemed to roll the thought in her head for a moment, “...tends to favor peace at the cost of practically anything. Neither are good allies for us now.”

“Well, that sucks,” Heather said, coming in close to Gabe against the chill.

Hwei-ru let her eyes linger on Heather’s face for a moment, then pointedly turned back into the car. “Yes, it does.”

She reached out with a shaky thread of her ghostly green power and rolled down the other window to wave to the driver where he stood talking to the pilot under a nearby awning. The man threw down a cigarette and pulled up his collar as he jogged over, and she flexed her magic again to roll the window back up. Then she took a long breath as if that small thing had exerted her. She’d seemed so strong near the ley line, but at even a few miles away she was vastly diminished again.

“But it does not change what we must accomplish,” she went on. “I still have a few friends scattered here and there, and we are lucky to have a benefactor. And even more so to have the knowledge we do. In fact, if any of our meager pieces were missing, I fear we would stand no chance whatsoever in this.” She sighed and the holes in her ragged facade showed for an instant again as she smiled. “Almost as if Esme knew, and planned for it.”

Heather slipped her arm around Gabe’s waist. “Well, then I guess we owe the old crone more thanks than I thought.”

Hwei-ru turned back to them, and the moment of vulnerability clamped down hard. “Undoubtedly. And some more than others.” She stared at Heather as if trying to see inside her. “You have been gifted with the knowledge to guide this task, and with the strength to see it through. Were it not for an accident of fate, you would be the hero of this story.” The gui po lifted her chin like a queen about to deliver the order for execution. “See that you act like one and do not fail us, succubus.”

The word came out like a curse and Heather’s face went carefully blank as she searched for a way to defuse the moment. Gabe knew how much she secretly wanted Hwei-ru to like her, and how much she didn’t want anyone to know about it—least of all Hwei-ru herself. And he could feel hints of those emotions through the bond while she struggled. Layers upon layers in this mess. But even with the confusing mix of Lorelei coloring her thoughts, there was still far more Heather inside her mind running the show, and it quickly overwhelmed that nascent bit of sentiment to form its own response that didn’t give a damn what some see-through old lady thought about anything. He saw the change in her eyes even as he felt the anger build, and he knew it likely meant something unpleasant was inbound. Chances were good that it would also be really funny, but still...

“So Galveston, huh?” Gabe said, cutting in an instant before Heather could speak. “I bet they have pretty good barbecue there.”

There was a long silence as the women stared at one another, then Hwei-ru finally broke it to look at him. “It is doubtful you will have the time to find out. Your contact has assured me she will be waiting for your arrival, and the boat will be ready to depart immediately.”

Gabe felt Heather relax a little and breathe out her annoyance instead of voicing it, but then the words repeated themselves in his head, and any relief he felt immediately evaporated. “Boat?”

The driver got to the car and shook off his jacket before slipping inside, and Hwei-ru glanced over to ensure the glass partition was safely up. “Of course, Mr. Delling.” She began rolling up her window too. “How else did you expect to get to the middle of the Gulf of Mexico?”

Then the car pulled away.

Heather gave his waist a squeeze. “More fun. Let’s get out of the rain, huh?”

He nodded and patted her hand, too overwhelmed to complain anymore. “Sure. Ladies first.”

She smirked and pulled away, heading toward the plane. “How gallant.”

“Not really,” he replied as he followed. “I’d just rather be the second one in if this thing turns out to be made of cardboard.”

“Fine,” she replied, “but I call dibs on picking lunch. You had me at barbecue.”

Gabe shrugged. “Be my guest. It can’t be as good as Kansas City style, but it’ll do.”

She laughed and went ahead. “You’re going to get us murdered before we even get to the boat.”

Gabe suddenly remembered the message he’d received during the conversation, and he pulled out his phone. Given that he was just talking to two of the three people who had that number, he assumed it must be from Ken. He carefully shielded the screen from the rain with his free hand, then froze as he realized he didn’t recognize the number. Thoughts of telemarketers and misdials tried to calm him, but as soon as he opened the text, he knew better. The voice practically spoke the words in his head as he read them.

“Just thought of you out of the blue,” it said. “Big news coming. Hope you’re working hard. See you soon, kid.”

Gabe swallowed and deleted it, then shut off his phone before slipping it back in his pocket. His hands were suddenly shaking. Nothing simple. Not anymore.

ELSEWHERE

AKA MANAH PUT HIS PHONE away, then lifted a plump cherry from the dessert plate and rolled it between his fingers. He was careful not to make eye contact with the man across the table. Not yet. “Tell me why not,” he said.

His dinner companion was sharply dressed in an expensive suit and well-made Italian shoes, and he carried himself with the unconcerned ease of someone both very competent and very comfortable in his powerful friends.

“It’s not that your story isn’t fascinating—it is,” the man said as he moved the cloth napkin from his lap back up to the table. “People love a good redemption arc. But you need more than that. You can’t do it on story and charm alone, right?” He laughed and glanced around at the other diners as if any would join him, but quickly stifled it beneath an awkward cough as the other three around the table refused to meet his eyes.

“There’s certainly precedent for it,” Aka Manah replied calmly. “And I do have a bit more than the conventional portion of charm.”

The man cleared his throat and nodded, then he slipped the easy smile back on his face. “Of course. I wouldn’t be here otherwise. But the big question is money, isn’t it? You want big results, you have to have big investment. I just don’t see that happening.”

Aka Manah took his turn to smile, and he held the cherry up to inspect it. Several tiny strands of fate stretched from it, each one leading to different ends but only a few important enough to matter. His eyes drifted to the stain on his hand where he’d struck the creature Phillip, and he reinforced the glamour over it. The emptiness was still spreading, despite his best efforts, and he was starting to feel the ache in his bones. “Money is not an issue. Tell my associate how much you need and we’ll...” He waved vaguely at Reznick. “Manifest it.”

The man scoffed and sat back, then looked to Reznick and seemed to find something in the bokor’s apathy that made him pause. “Our research said you hardly had anything to your name, Mr. Delling. Where do you intend to raise this manifested money?”

“Does it really matter?” the god asked as he found one strand in the weave he liked and followed it. It was tiring to do it for more than a minute at a time, but sometimes there was nothing for it but to practice a thing. He often regretted not asking the old Fate Witch more questions before getting rid of her.

The man watched him carefully, then pushed his chair back. “Look, I may not always be completely above board, but I don’t go looking for ways to drop beneath either. Whatever this crazy thing is you’re trying to do, I don’t think I’m the guy for it.”

He made as if to leave, and Aka Manah raised his free hand. “I wouldn’t make a decision just yet. Something...improbably unfortunate might happen.”

The man’s eyebrows went up. “Really? What’s that mean?” he asked, his voice rising. “Is that a threat?” He slapped a hand to the table and leaned forward. “I didn’t know you from Adam until two days ago, and frankly I don’t know why I even accepted this meeting. But if you think you scare me even a little, well...” He chuckled menacingly. “Then you obviously don’t know much about me.”

Aka Manah watched the little thread of fate as it meandered across dozens of branching paths that each frayed and crumbled as they were passed. The eye started hurting. “Possible. But, I believe the issue at hand is what you do not know about me.”

The man frowned angrily and shook his head. “Fucking perfect.” He pulled out his phone and unlocked it with a code, then stabbed a finger back toward the god. “One thing you’ll learn about about this business, asshole, is that you gotta be careful about who you piss off. And today, you made the wrong—”

And just as the word was forming, Aka Manah flicked the cherry forward on a tiny stream of power, sending it straight into the man’s mouth and down his throat. The fat fruit lodged there with a fleshy thwack, and the rest of whatever the man had been about to say stopped with a small sound like a hiccup. His eyes went absurdly wide and his phone hit the floor as both hands went to his throat.

The god sat back and finally met the man’s eyes. “I get frustrated when people refuse me. It’s a quirk, I suppose. But I especially dislike being threatened—which is apparently something we have in common.” Then he rose and slowly circled the table to come up behind the man. “The difference between us, however, is that I am capable of delivering on every ounce of wrath I promise. Whereas you are mostly...wasted breath.” He rested both hands on the man’s shoulders. “But we would like your help to kick off our little project. So to avoid any further unpleasantness, I will leave you in the moderately capable care of my associate, Mr. Reznick. He will tell you all of what we desire to happen within the next few days. Time is always of the essence, obviously, but something tells me it is particularly so in this endeavor.” The man’s face was already darkening to red. “Do you understand?”

The man tried to push himself out of the chair, but the god saw it coming an instant early and wove a quick geas to numb his legs. The man fell back into the seat with a hard thump and his hands grabbed for the tablecloth to keep himself upright. The place settings all shifted noisily, but nobody in the restaurant noticed or cared. His face darkened further.

Aka Manah leaned in closer, but his eyes went to Lauren where she was sitting in perfect silence. She obediently kept his gaze. “I often wish for gentler ways to accomplish my ends, but these situations are seemingly thrust upon me. Humanity made me in this image, but then they balk when I am what they designed me for. A bit unfair, really. Don’t you think?”

The man’s face was turning purple by then and his whole body was stiff with terror. Lauren’s eyes were wide.

Aka Manah stood straight and gestured for his Hound and Reznick to take the man. “Preferably alive, but if you have to resurrect him, please find something with a decent vocabulary. We do need him for his savvy, after all.”

The two nodded and moved to either side of the man to lift him from his chair. The glamour held, and the other patrons paid no attention.

“And no vampires,” the god added. “With all the varied legends saturating their fiction today, there’s no telling what kind of ridiculous nonsense we’d end up with.”

Reznick chuckled as they dragged the suffocating man through the kitchen door and out of sight. Then Aka Manah stood back to look at the skewed tablecloth and scattered place settings before returning back to Lauren’s side. “Not too evil, I hope? I wouldn’t want your opinion of me to drop anywhere below rock-bottom.”

She took a quick breath and seemed to collect herself, then rose calmly to put the chair between them. “I suppose it depends on your definition. Do your ends always justify your means?”

He held out his unstained hand for her to take and she did so with only a small hesitation. That was getting better. “Nearly,” he replied. “I’m sure I could find an exception if I tried hard enough. Have you not yet been convinced of the need from what I’ve shown you? I could take you back into the veil for a second look at our impending doom, if you’d like?”

A spark of real fear lit in her eyes before she could smother it, and her pulse quickened in her fingertips. “No!” she said quickly. “I mean, yes. I’m convinced. Don’t take me back there. I just...”

He could see that she was teetering again, possibly thinking about her family—which was an irritating habit she had. No matter how many times he led her thoughts from them, those memories always seemed to worm their way back into her mind. He considered telling her that he’d taken the liberty of faking her death to avoid any complications, and that her family had likely buried the body by now, but instead he pushed another thread of power into her and reinforced the geas. No need to rush anything yet. Soon enough she’d follow him because she wanted to. Or thought she did. They all came around eventually.

Her eyes cleared and she visibly relaxed. “I...maybe I’m just worried about Gabe. When can we see him?”

Aka Manah smiled and pulled her in close as they made for the exit. His right hand and forearm ached, and he could feel the emptiness already creeping up to his elbow. For all its pleasures, flesh was such an inconvenience sometimes. “I believe he is indisposed at the moment,” he said. “But I’m fairly comfortable in predicting that we shall see him quite soon.”

CHAPTER FIVE

“I’m slowly getting used to working with other people. Heather feels like an extension of myself these days, so I don’t count her. (And I’d like it to stay that way, so I definitely don’t tell her either.) But all the other people buzzing in and out of my life would have majorly bothered me six months ago. Today, I’m handling it. And not just because I have to. Sure, people will fail you and betray you and sometimes fart in a room without warning you, but they can also surprise you in good ways. And those moments just might make it worth putting up with all the other crap they throw your way.

Obviously you should phrase that sentiment differently if you ever have to repeat it to someone. I’m not writing greeting cards here.”

-Excerpt from Chapter Twenty-Two, CONscience

“THAT WOMAN HATES ME,” Heather said as she shed her soaked jacket and slid into the seat. She threw the thing hard and it hit the floor with a loud thump to send a fine spray of mist over pretty much everything, and the pilot looked back in alarm. But without missing a beat, Heather smiled coquettishly with a new veneer of innocent bewilderment atop it, and the combination hit the guy square in the limbic system like a sack full of potpourri and pot iron. “Oh my, I’m so sorry,” she said, sounding like she meant it more than anything in the world.

The pilot stared at her for a moment, then shook his head and turned back to his controls with visibly renewed vigor. “No big deal, ma’am. Let me know if there’s anything I can do to make your flight more...comfortable.” Then he seemed to think of something and reached behind his seat to produce a rolled-up towel. He tossed it into her lap and Heather gasped as if the thing was made of gold. The man returned a cocky little smile like he’d just dispatched a whole gang of ruffians at high noon outside the saloon.

Gabe cleared his throat theatrically as he stepped in between them and started vigorously peeling off his own jacket. He knew better than to act too possessive of Heather for doing what she was essentially born to do—especially since he often asked her to do it—but that didn’t mean he had to love seeing it every time. They were still hammering out their boundaries, but it was a little tough when your girlfriend was technically a sex demon who needed desire from strange men to stay alive. So there were plenty of kinks to work out yet...and too few were the good kind. Though all of that was still much nicer to think about than the implications of the text he’d just read.

“She doesn’t hate you,” he said, finally getting one arm free of the soaked nylon. “There might be a general absence of what you’d typically think of as affection, but...‘hate’ is probably strong.”

She leveled a dark stare at him, then began wringing her hair into the towel. “How could she not? I took her beloved granddaughter’s body, memories, and whole life, basically. And now the old woman has no choice but to work with me every day to prevent all of existence from going splat. I frankly don’t even blame her for hating me.”

Gabe considered asking why she cared so much, but he knew better than that. When Heather had taken Lorelei’s body, she’d absorbed pieces of the woman and incorporated them into herself. And that very likely included whatever familial affection there had been. And there was no way to know how that would incorporate into Heather’s broader personality now. It wasn’t a hard thing to diagnose, but treating it was a whole other matter.

He pulled his coat free and dropped it with a wet slap, then began searching for a towel of his own. “I honestly think she just needs time to get used to it.”

“You didn’t need time.” she said through the fuzzy fabric as she ran it across her face. Then she bent forward to let her hair cascade down nearly to her shoes before whipping back up dramatically, suddenly looking as fresh-faced as if she’d just spent an hour putting herself back together. Her shoulder-length hair looked completely dry, and her make-up showed no signs of having even heard of rain.

Gabe stared back at her, trying to get a grasp on the fleeting little sparkle of magic she’d just summoned. “How do you keep doing that without...” He shook his head. “No, I didn’t need time. But Hwei-ru isn’t in love with you, either. She’s grieving, and I honestly think she’s just as scared as we are. Her way of dealing with it is being cold and distant. So my suggestion would be to keep trying and not let her stew in her own... What?”

He stopped as he noticed Heather’s eyes going wide and amused, and he played his own words back until he realized what he’d done. “I mean, not that I’m necessarily in love!” he said, forcing himself to chuckle and slow his words down. “We’ve agreed that this is totally cool and casual...right?” He blew a bit of water from the end of his nose. “Though, not that I’m not either... I don’t want you to think that... Okay, hypothetically if we’re talking in really broad strokes here—”

“Gabe,” she said, holding up a hand and smiling wide. “I think we covered this when you tried to die to save me. The L-word isn’t quite the same milestone in our case.”

He chewed his bottom lip and winced. “Yeah. I did probably come on a little strong there, huh?” Then he gave up looking for a towel and flopped into the seat next to her with a sigh. “They say not to bend reality to resurrect a girl before the first date, but I guess I’ve always been a romantic.”

She laughed softly and tossed him her damp towel. “I’m obviously a big fan. But this Hwei-ru thing isn’t something you’ll likely be able to fix for me. Magically or otherwise. So all I’m really looking for here is a sympathetic ear. No solutions necessary this time.”

He nodded and began drying himself. “Fair enough. My advice is usually crap anyway, so that actually works out.”

She winked at him before turning to face front. “Thanks.”

The pilot had clearly been waiting for a break in their conversation and he jumped right into it. “Everybody ready? Should be less than three hours, and it’s supposed to be nice and calm once we get past this weather.”

Heather smiled at the man again, which was apparently more than enough response as he turned back to the controls and fired up the engine.

“What do you think we’re headed into?” she asked quietly as she leaned back in the chair and closed her eyes.

Gabe rubbed the towel through his hair, then tossed it to the floor with his coat as he searched for his seat belt. “I thought you were supposed to know.” He did his best not to make it sound like a complaint.

“I think it’s more of an ‘I’ll know it when I see it’ situation. But I was kind of hoping you’d gotten some sort of helpful vision or whispers from that thing in your hand. Some convenient bit of exposition to keep us narratively up to speed.”

He glanced down at the Qi Dragon branded into the palm of his right hand, and at the tiny spark of amber light that somehow represented the massive power of the first Igla. It was all locked away in there, close enough to touch, but apparently useless...though not for his lack of trying.

“I wish,” he replied. “I keep hoping we’ll get some kind of glowing line to follow, but life just keeps on disappointing me.” He closed the hand into a fist. “There’s really nothing about a boat or the Gulf of freaking Mexico knocking around in Lorelei’s memories?”

Heather shrugged and then continued the motion into rolling her shoulders as the plane began to taxi to their runway. “Maybe. But it’s not like a book I can just reference at will. There’s no appendix or search engine. It’s more like a room full of post-it notes that occasionally fall off the wall to land at my feet. Some are relevant in the moment and others aren’t, but it takes a long time to actually incorporate it all into something like one coherent identity. Why do you think I took so long to come find you in the mountains after our last adventure in Lincoln?” She sighed. “I needed some me time.”

Gabe suddenly remembered the point Hwei-ru had brought up, and he decided it was as good a time as any to broach it. He slapped on several layers of casual tone as if it was nowhere near the big deal it was, then he leaned back in his seat to cover any inadvertent body language. “Hey, do you have any lingering thoughts about why Lorelei betrayed us?” She snapped her eyes open and turned toward him, and he quickly elaborated. “I mean, we know Phillip used some kind of magic to bind her, right? Like a geas. And we know it had something to do with the ring she wore—whether it was by design or just a convenient access point. But we don’t know all of it. In the end, when she was basically herself, she still tried to give up the Igla to the bad guys.”

Heather held his eyes for two more beats, then blinked and slowly looked away. “I don’t know, Gabe. I can tell you she was scared, and very hurt. And that she felt like there were too many promises in her life going unkept. When I entered her body there was this overwhelming residual sense of wanting to reclaim a little slice of the home she felt had been taken from her. The family. And I guess she might have made some bad decisions in the pursuit of that. People have done worse for less.”

“Hmmm,” he replied.

“I know that’s not a great answer, but it’s what I have.” She leaned back in her chair and closed her eyes again. “Maybe more of her motivations will come to me as I settle in. We’ll see.”

He thought of the desperation in Lorelei’s voice as she’d begged him to come with her, then the hurt in her eyes as he’d chosen Heather instead. He thought of how she’d seemed so broken at the end, and how she’d still jumped in front of him to try to save him from Phillip’s dark descending hand. Layer after confusing layer. She’d had two warring sides inside her, hidden beneath the surface all along, and that hit a little close to home for him. And ostensibly, all of it was now resting somewhere inside Heather.

“Yeah,” he said, but didn’t finish with, “that’s what I’m afraid of.”

The flight was as quiet and uneventful as Gabe could have hoped—after he’d been told for the fourth time exactly where the parachutes where, at least—and their drive from the airport to Galveston Island was equally so. They’d even convinced their driver to stop for take-out at a place called Pit of da Spare...with the promise that they wouldn’t actually eat it until they got out of his back seat. And Heather had delightedly put three-quarters of the menu on Ken’s shiny new credit line before Gabe had finally reeled her in. So when they pulled up to the front edge of the docks to be dropped off, they were left standing with twice as many bags of food as actual luggage. Gabe started looking for any signs of their contact while Heather searched for any signs of a picnic table.

“Hellooo! Hello, hello!” A sing-song voice cried out, carrying over the ambient noise like a shrill piccolo. Gabe turned and found a lithe Hispanic girl in pink shorts, dark pigtails, and a rainbow tank top bounding barefoot across the docks toward them. She looked no more than six or seven, and she was waving excitedly as she dodged between other boaters as if barely seeing them.

Gabe clicked his tongue. “Alright, this is new.”

Heather came up next to him and slipped her sunglasses on, then she froze as the barbecue-induced smile melted from her face. “Oh crap.”

“Do you know this kid?” he asked.

She shook her head and rearranged the bags to free one hand. “Not specifically, but if she’s our contact, I can see why the old lady didn’t bother telling us exactly who we were looking for.” She sighed. “Nobody likes working with faeries.”

The girl bubbled up to them and stopped just before colliding, then stood bouncing on the balls of her feet. “Oh, it is you!” She lifted her hands to her mouth and squealed. “This is going to be soooo much fun!”

Heather quirked her lips into a little frown. “Yeah, a real treat for all of us. Where’s the boat?”

The girl did a little skip in place and pointed toward a row of smallish yachts farther out. “All ready to go! Miss Hwei-ru said this game was about hurrying!”

“Well, it’s not a game,” Heather replied, clearly already trying to hold onto her patience, “but hurrying would be smart. Are you supposed to take us to the captain?”

The girl giggled and did a little spin in place as if trying to twirl a dress she wasn’t wearing. “I am the captain, silly! I’m a water spirit!”

Heather’s brow furrowed further, and Gabe jumped in. “Like a Naiad or a Nymph?” He caught Heather’s annoyed exhalation and he shrugged. “Sorry, I know that’s not super polite to ask, but I’m still basically an intern in this mystical mojo. Just trying to match names to faces...so to speak.”

The girl let out her tinkling laugh again and leaned forward to poke him in the stomach with a long finger. “You’re funny! Not a Naiad, no. Nothing so fancy. Just a sprite! But you can call me Penny. Like what you throw in a fountain? Get it?”

She looked at both of them expectantly, as if the joke of her name was devilishly clever. So Gabe obliged with a slow nod and smile. “Ah ha! Nice one, Penny.”

She dashed forward suddenly and gave him the quickest hug he’d ever had before skipping back to where she’d been. It was so fast he’d barely seen it, and he wasn’t at all sure he could have stopped her if he’d wanted to.

Heather started tapping her foot hard and glancing around. “Okay, this has been cute, but now it’s time to get the rest of the crew and get moving. We’ve got hours to sail and ribs to eat, and neither are getting done by standing around here.”

Penny cocked her head to the side and wrinkled her nose up in amusement. “Crew? There’s no crew, grumpy lady! I’m all you need! Find a Penny, pick it up, all the day you’ll have good luck!” She lifted her hands quickly into the air as if tossing imaginary glitter over herself, then she posed there like she was waiting for the last bit to fall.

Gabe could feel Heather’s annoyance ramping up, but he decided not to intervene on this one. There were only so many times he could jump in front of that speeding train before it eventually refused to stop for him anymore, and he did secretly like it when Heather got all worked up. It was one of the few times he could really be sure she was being herself.

“Now listen here, Tinkerbell,” Heather said, taking a step forward and bending down like a mom scolding her daughter. “I’m hungry, tired, and I just got this new body that I’m still breaking in. So let’s skip past all these giggles and rainbows and start moving, okay?”

Penny’s eyes went wide—a little too wide, really, out there among humans—and her face fell in innocent hurt. She slowly shook her head. “That wasn’t very kind.”

Gabe had to force back the laugh that tried to bubble up at the ridiculous scene, and he instead shook his own head in mock-sadness. “It really wasn’t.”

Heather shot him a glare and he had to fight down the laugh again. He couldn’t see her eyes behind the dark sunglasses, but they were almost certainly darker still...and probably promising retribution. She straightened suddenly and pulled her bags in close to assume an air of wounded dignity. “I’m not sharing my cornbread with you anymore,” she said, before moving past them toward the yachts.

“That’s not very kind either!” Gabe called after her.

“Noooo,” Penny agreed, seriously. Then her little face lit back up as if resetting, and she started skipping down the long dock, leaving Gabe to trudge behind with his amusement and the remaining bags.

Their ship turned out to be a nice rental that Penny had already prepared for departure, and it was only a matter of minutes before they were getting underway. The boat sat fairly high out of the water and had a second seating platform above the enclosed bridge, and it looked plenty fast and stable for something that was taking him away from his beloved solid ground. The sprite called it a “sedan bridge boat” which was interesting, but Gabe was far more focused on the cherry red paint and the name painted on the back in rolling white letters.

“The Classic?” he asked as he he dropped the bags on the deck. “I feel like they were going for hot rod, but this thing looks more like a giant can of pop to me.”

“You mean soda?” Heather called as she set herself up in the tiny galley.

“I really don’t,” he replied as he joined her. He plopped onto a plastic seat and watched for a moment as Penny joyfully bustled around the controls to back them out of the berth. Then he turned back to the mountain of food on the table to find his one entree among the dozen. It was the best way he had of distracting himself from all the ways this trip could go wrong. “I don’t know why everything has to be so hard to get to,” he grumbled as he pulled his styrofoam box from the pile.

Heather nodded thoughtfully while plucking a whole habanero from a container and popping it in her mouth like a cherry. “I’m sorry we can’t save the world from your living room, Gabey, but at least this time the traveling should be relaxing.” She lowered her voice. “And if it’s any consolation, there’s all this beautiful sun out here and I didn’t bring a bikini.” She smiled wickedly as she crunched down on the pepper.

That was quite a bit of consolation, actually, and Gabe started constructing a joke about it sounding pretty spicy. Then he remembered little Penny several feet away and he jerked his head toward her meaningfully.

Heather glanced over her shoulder, but turned back with a sneer. “Oh, she’s way older than she looks, and she probably can’t hear us anyway.”

“I’m forty-two and yes I can!” Penny trilled from the bridge controls.

Heather shrugged and went back to unpacking lunch, but it was too weird for Gabe to continue in the same vein. Instead he pulled a hard turn in the conversation. “So what do you do, Penny?” he called up. “I mean, when you’re not gleefully speeding strangers into mortal danger?”

The sprite flicked a series of controls on the console, then danced quickly to one side and slid open the window there. The Gulf breeze filled the space with the smells of damp and plankton and warm salt spray, and her face looked absolutely rapturous as she breathed it in. “As much as possible, Mr. Gabe! This is only my second time out of the Ether, and I just want to soak up as much of reality as I can.”

“I hear that,” Heather mumbled before tearing into a full slab of ribs.

Gabe watched Heather work for a few seconds, admiring how she could abandon all pretense at being dainty and still somehow be so adorable, saucy mouth and all. Then he turned back to Penny. “No, I mean what does a water sprite do? Are you handing out lots of swords from lakes these days, or has that mostly moved online now?”

Penny looked back at him in confusion, then seemed to get the reference and giggled hysterically. She looked to Heather. “How do you ever get anything done with such a funny friend?”

Heather swallowed but didn’t look up. “It is a struggle some days.”

Penny spun in place suddenly and grabbed the wheel to turn the nose of the boat toward open water. “All sprites are different. Some prefer to guard bodies of water, and others, yes, enjoy meddling in human affairs. But I like just being among you. Living like a human and enjoying all the wonderful hijinks you people get up to. My glamour isn’t perfect, but most people don’t pay much attention when you’re small. So I slip in and out wherever the fun takes me! I guess you could say I’m a professional fan of humanity!”

“Okay,” Gabe continued, “and are you helping us today, or are you just here as a guide?”

Penny turned back toward them and clasped her hands together. “Oh, there’s lots of fun things I can do to help you! Miss Hwei-ru didn’t specifically say anything beyond getting you to a certain place at a certain time, but I’ll gladly accept your invitation! Thank you!”

“Well, I didn’t...” he began.

“A real adventure!” Penny went on, hopping in place and getting high enough to nearly bounce through the ceiling.

Gabe looked to Heather in exasperation. “Now, I’m not sure if we’re exactly supposed to be recruiting, so—”

“She thanked you,” Heather cut in suddenly, a new light of mischief in her eyes. “Aren’t you supposed to say something back? Do be kind, Gabey.”

He opened his mouth to argue that a little girl had no place in what they were headed to do, but then he remembered that she wasn’t a little girl, and that he didn’t really have a great idea what they actually were headed to do. He looked to Penny and she was suddenly staring at him hopefully and silently encouraging him with her hands as if to say “you can do it!”

He let out a loud breath and popped open his box to get at the sandwich within. “Yeah...you’re welcome, I guess.”

She squealed and actually floated off the floor for a moment before landing gracefully back by the controls. “This will be soooo much fun!” Then there was a surge of magic and the whole boat felt like it lifted in the water. Penny reached over and yanked hard on a silver lever, and the ship suddenly rocketed up to speed.

CHAPTER SIX

“Six months into this new world and I’m finally getting to the point where I’m not terrified of everything all the time. Part of that is me getting better at defending myself. A pointy sword and fistful of magic does do wonders for the self-confidence. Another part is just the natural tendency of the brain to settle into whatever the new normal is...however abnormal it may be. But as with so many other aspects of human nature, the biggest chunks of my fear seem to be tied directly to my own ignorance. And as I continue to dig into the secrets of Umbras and the Ether, my understanding only improves that situation. I mean, I’m still scared crapless every time a new nightmare steps out of the shadows, but at least now I’m starting to learn specifically why I should be. It weirdly helps.”

-Excerpt from Chapter Twenty-Two, CONscience

IT TURNED OUT PENNY’S magic could do all sorts of neat things with the water, including forming a little bubble around the hull of the ship that allowed them to skim over the waves at twice the engine’s recommended speed. And the power also seemed to give her a preternatural connection to the sea itself, letting her guide the ship around hidden obstacles and point it unerringly toward their destination without glancing at an instrument or map even once. But the benefits apparently stopped just shy of being able to smooth out the choppy waters at that speed, and after a few minutes of holding on for dear life, Gabe spent the rest of the trip being a sailing cliché noisily over the port side. He’d barely been able to touch his food as a consequence, and so Heather, in a great show of compassion, had moved to the top deck before eating it for him.

“How much longer?” he asked, happy to be stringing intelligible sentences together now that the motion sickness pills from the first aid kit were finally kicking in.

Penny squinted out at the vast blue of open water and then closed her eyes to take a deep breath of sea air. “Just a few more minutes!” She tapped the wheel as if to make an imperceptible course correction. “Yep! Then we’ll be where we’re going. To do...whatever we’re doing!”

Gabe shook his head. “Glad to know you’re as well-informed as we are. Let us know when we hit the sea monsters.”

“Will do!” she called back cheerfully.

He shook his head and moved back to the ladder leading up to the top deck, reluctantly climbing up to join Heather there. “Almost time,” he said, panting a little as he pulled up the last rungs. He tried to haul himself the rest of the way up, but stopped to wince at the residual ache in his gut. “I’d better have an awesome six-pack after all this involuntary core exercise.”

Heather held out her hand and helped him up to the seat next to her, then casually intertwined her fingers with his. “Are you ready?”

He couldn’t help but laugh. “No! We don’t have a clue what we’re doing this time. I’m hoping it’ll be less about slaying and more about riddles or something, but I fully expect a complete nightmare. And honestly, have I ever been ready for anything since we met?”

“Fair point,” she replied. Then she pulled his hand into her lap and turned to him with a serious expression. “But all jokes aside. How are you?”

He opened his mouth to bulldoze over the sincerity with another joke about puking, but stopped himself just in time. Even if he hadn’t been able to feel the hint of her worry, it was written pretty obviously on her face. She wasn’t just asking if he was ready. She was also asking him to ask her. “Well,” he said, not knowing quite where to begin, “I guess I’m scared. Everything else we’ve been through has felt like a mad rush, but this one has a kind of brutal efficiency about it, you know? Like we’re just pieces being ushered into place in a game whose rules are still being made up. I don’t even totally remember agreeing to be here.”

Heather squeezed his hand and turned to look out at the water. “I feel it too. Though, in my case...” She stopped as if wanting to hold back, then visibly pushed to keep that door open. “...I guess I also feel like I’m on borrowed time. Like I’m not supposed to be here anyway, so I might as well go out with a bang. Does that makes sense?” She shook her head. “I know it sounds stupid. I probably shouldn’t have brought it up.”

He heard a hint of something in there he didn’t like, so he leaned forward to catch her eyes. “Hey, don’t do that. That’s Lorelei talking, okay? She was the one who did the whole defeated hopeless victim thing, not Heather. Not you.” He smiled, trying to infect her with it. “You’re supposed to be equal parts bravado, sex, and kick-ass, remember?”

She did smile then, but it couldn’t quite reach her eyes—though she seemed to realize it and lifted her free hand to his cheek in consolation. “I know. I mean, I know, logically. But even though I’m totally aware of it in my brain, I still feel what I feel. For better or worse, I am a little bit Lorelei now.”

He didn’t have a great response for that, and in the pause he felt her sinking into herself until her emotions went fuzzy and eventually blank. He knew she was right, and he could only guess how complicated the situation had to be for her. But he suspected that agreeing would only reinforce whatever negative thoughts she was nursing. Depression was cannibalistic that way, and he knew the cycle well himself. At the same time, arguing wouldn’t be any better. Denying a thing didn’t make it go away, and there were very few ways to rationally disagree with emotions. Which, unfortunately, left him with little else but sympathy. It felt akin to giving up, but with nothing else, he silently pressed it into the bond anyway and left it for her there.

They sat like that for a minute, listening to the engine and the slap of the waves to either side. Then all at once she seemed to resurface with a more genuine grin and a sense of something like amused contentment. “Just give me a minute,” she said. “I’ll probably snap out of it. I guess I’m getting more complicated now that I’m growing into my third dimension as a person, so you can add moody and unpredictable to my bravado, sex, and kick-ass. Lucky you!”

He nodded and didn’t have to construct any artifice in his expression when he replied. “Been telling myself that every day since we met.”

She quirked her lips into a smirk and leaned in. “You adorable liar.”

Her lips brushed his, bringing along a sudden scent of berries and blooming things. But before he could fall into the kiss, he looked past her ear and spotted something distantly bobbing on the surface of the water. It made him pause long enough that she did too, and then there was another thing out there...and another. Little black spots popping into view on the horizon.

“Oh crap,” he said against her lips.

“Oh,” Heather replied, pulling back and searching his eyes for the problem.

Gabe jumped up. “No! Not that. That was wonderful. Let’s do it all the time.” He gently turned her by the shoulder and pointed out the window. “That is the crap.”

Just then Penny piped up from below. “Are there supposed to be more people here? Or is this a surprise?” She asked it like there might be balloons and cake involved.

“Definitely a surprise!” Gabe replied as he clambered back down the ladder. “But probably not the good kind.” He moved up to join the sprite at the main window, and he could suddenly see a fourth ship resolving in the distance. “Any chance you can get the water to whisper who might be on those boats?”

Penny nodded vigorously and opened her mouth to say something, then she stopped and looked chagrined. “I mean...no. Sorry. I just love saying yes so much!”

Heather came up behind them carrying the largest of her bags, and already she looked much more like herself. Her eyes were clear and focused. “I don’t think we need to know exactly who they are. They’re out in the middle of the gulf, precisely where we need to be, and in force. Unless Hwei-ru decided to give me a late birthday present by sending competent back-up, I’d guess they’re here to put holes in us.” She unzipped the bag and withdrew the back half of a sniper rifle.

“What?!” Gabe said as he watched her calmly pull out the barrel and snap the pieces together. “When did you pack that?”

She retrieved a short clip from the bag and slapped it into place just in front of the trigger. “Probably when you were packing your extra underwear. There’s no way I’d come out on open water without a way to defend ourselves. Swords are cool and all, but they’re not terribly useful for battle on the high seas in the era of speedboats and satellites.”

He gawked at the weapon, unable to even guess what caliber it was, let alone a model. “First of all, I have the exact right amount of underwear, thank you. And second, you don’t know how to use that thing! Unless...do you?”

Heather shrugged. “I watched some videos. These days, with enough time on the internet, you can become an expert at pretty much anything.” Then she pulled out a smaller assault rifle and handed it to him. “Or a close enough approximation. That’s basically your whole shtick, right? Pretending until you get lucky?”

He took the weapon on reflex and had to fight hard not to hold it out away from his body like a feral badger. “This is not the same as pretending to be a district manager to get free pie. You can’t bluff a bullet into somebody! And this wasn’t the plan!”

Heather flipped down the built-in legs at the front of her gun to create a bipod, then she slid open the side door of the cabin and edged out to rest the weapon on the rail there. “Nope. It’s the contingency. I know how squeamish you are about guns, so I just took care of it.” She slid back the bolt and chambered her first round. “You’re welcome.”

Gabe glanced at the door on the other side, then bent quickly to their bags and retrieved his sword. The jian clipped easily onto the tactical belt Ken had found for him, and together with the bandolier he rarely took off these days, it made him feel a little better...useless or not. Heather gave him an indulgent look that carried amusement through the bond, and he spread his hands, swinging the gun out wildly across the cabin. He quickly pulled the thing in and pointed it up, but not before Heather’s stare soured considerably.

He carefully checked the safety, then slipped the strap over his head. “I hate guns,” he said.

Heather turned back to the fast-resolving ships. “Well, let’s hope every bad guy in the entire world suddenly feels the same way today.”

Penny slowed the boat while the sense of her magic around it diminished at the same time, and The Classic came to rocking halt roughly three hundred yards from the nearest ship. It was just close enough to make out the shape of some kind of fishing trawler roughly four times their size, and it looked innocuous enough sitting out there in the water without any black helicopters or undead sailors crowding its decks. Though it didn’t take much imagination to turn even that lack of obvious threat into a bad sign.

“What are the chances these are just regular fishermen?” he asked, adjusting his volume down midway through as the engine noise died. His question fell into air crowded only with the sounds of slapping waves and creaking fiberglass.

Heather leaned into her scope and panned the gun slowly to the side. “Not impossible, but—”

Suddenly the radio came to life behind them, and they all turned to it as one. The voice came through gruff and low...and oddly familiar. “Respond please, or we will begin firing.”

Gabe glanced to Heather who had gone right back to carefully scanning through her scope, then he took one frantic step toward the radio...only to find Penny already there.

“Oh, hello!” she said cheerily into the transmitter. “What’s your name?”

There was a long pause, then the voice came back even sterner. “Nice try. Gabriel Delling. Now.”

Penny smiled brightly and giggled. “That’s amazing! I know someone else with that exact name! You two should meet!”

The man on the other end seemed unsure what to make of that for a moment, but in the meantime, the big ship began turning laboriously toward them. The voice came back a few seconds later. “This is Leopold Deminov of the Knights of Solomon, and I’m the commander of this little armada. Shut down your engines and prepare to turn Mr. Delling over to us, or we will blow that pretty little boat right out of the water.”

“Oh sure!” Penny said, then turned to hold out the microphone toward Gabe. “It’s for you!”

Gabe suddenly remembered the voice and the name from the Knight who’d captured them back in Lincoln almost six months prior. The man had hauled them in to meet his boss, Catherine, in the back room of The Smoothie Criminal under threat of blowing them up with what had turned out to be a busted video game controller. And the following day Gabe had been largely responsible for getting nearly every Knight in a sixty mile radius killed by a handful of Hunters. So it was fairly unlikely the man was calling just to catch up.

Gabe took the transmitter and stared out at the oncoming vessel with a growing sense of dread, then pressed the button. “Hey, Leo!” he said, trying to get somewhere close to Penny’s saccharin cheer. “What a great surprise. I was just saying to all my well-armed and terrifying friends over here that I wondered what ever happened to that nice Deminov boy. You know, while we were cleaning our torpedo launchers.”

There was barely a missed beat this time. “Wonderful to hear you’re still just as irritating as I remember. We’re reading one succubus, one sprite, and one...whatever the hell you are. So you’ll have to excuse me if I skip past the part where I quake in my boots.”

Gabe glanced to Heather again and saw her dialing in her scope. “Yeah, well, don’t say I didn’t warn you.” He moved back from the tinted glass to slip behind a bit of the boat’s frame and block an easy shot. “What do you want, Leo? I kinda thought we were done with each other after last time.”

The Knight chuckled and it carried through with a bit of static behind it. “Not a chance. We’ve been trying to find you since the first day after the Lincoln Massacre, but we only recently got a good lead. And it turns out you’ve managed to piss off way more people in the interim. What a shock.”

“People are drawn to me,” Gabe replied. “What can I say?” The static in the transmission was growing even as the ship got closer, and Gabe cranked the volume down for a second as he turned to Penny. “Can we run?”

The sprite smiled brightly and shook her head. “Nope!”

Gabe waited for more, but finally had to prompt her. “Why not?”

She seemed surprised by the question. “Oh! Because Miss Hwei-ru said to bring you here at maximum speed, so I used up most of my power to do just that! We could certainly turn and accelerate faster, but that ship has a rated top speed of nearly twice what we can manage without magic. So they’d catch us in about a minute.” She watched his face for a moment. “Does that help?”

Gabe sighed and turned the volume back up to hear Leopold already in the middle of his reply. “...your ass all across these waters until you’re mine.”

“Oh, sorry,” Gabe said. “I only got the second half of that and it sounded hilarious without context. Here, I’ll wait so you can try to threaten me again. Go ahead.”

The line was only static for a moment. “Are you coming quietly or not? I’m already goddamned tired of you.”

“Can I have a few days to think about it?” Gabe asked. “Maybe call you back?” Then he turned to Heather. “What are we dealing with?”

She kept her eye on the scope, but it was clear from her body language that she wasn’t happy. “Five ships, all the same type and size, possibly ten to fifteen people aboard each one and the glint of at least three other scopes pointed back this direction. It’ll be thirty seconds until the nearest one is on top of us, then another minute until we’re completely swarmed. Not great. I’d say—oh! Down!”

Suddenly a flare of fire came from the oncoming ship and it streaked across the distance in an instant to strike the water fifty feet in front of them. The weapon exploded on impact and threw up a gout of spray and steam nearly the size of their entire boat.

Gabe growled and turned back to the radio to listen to Leopold’s response already in progress. “...know I don’t have any respect for you or your little friends over there, so I normally wouldn’t hesitate to just fry your ass from a hundred yards away and call it a wonderful day. But a lot of people have their sights on you these days, and that means I can’t just drop you in the middle of the ocean. So your choices today are to come quietly and stand a chance of making it out of this alive, or to come draped over my shoulder in a series of squishy trash bags. No more warnings. Your call.”

“What do we do?” he asked Heather quickly before lifting the transmitter back to his mouth. “That is some vivid imagery, man. You ever think about writing a book?”

Heather adjusted her aim a fraction. “I don’t know. I caught a glimpse of the one with the rocket launcher and I might be able to take him out next time he pops up, but the others would definitely return fire before I’d get a second shot. Maybe we should try running anyway and buy some time to...” She stopped and sat back from the scope then, letting the stock droop and barrel lift toward the sky. Gabe started to go to her, but she held him back with an upraised finger. “Wait,’ she said quietly. “I’m...remembering something.”

Suddenly she dropped the gun and vaulted from her crouch to slap at the boat controls. She turned the key and flipped the same switches Penny had, then pulled down hard on the throttle until the engine roared back to life. Gabe nearly toppled backwards as the boat shot forward, and he grabbed onto the radio as his stomach tried to bury itself somewhere in his groin.

“Weeeeee!” Penny said, sliding effortlessly back up next to Heather. “Where are we going?”

“Good freaking question!” Gabe added.

The wind was whipping through the open door and adding to the engine noise to make all but the loudest voices imperceptible. Still, Heather’s manage to carry over it. “I have an idea!”

Gabe looked out the window to find that the ship barreling toward them was suddenly coming twice as quickly, and it was now possible to see the people on deck without magnification. They were scrambling as if moving into prearranged positions on the prow, and there were at least ten of them arrayed there by the time they were less than a hundred yards away.

“I don’t think playing chicken works when you’re the size of a—” but Gabe didn’t get to finish his observation as Heather yanked the boat hard to one side to send up a spray of water as she angled for a course around the bigger ship. In the distance, the other four boats had already turned and were converging as well, but they were still far enough away that they wouldn’t be a concern until the far-flung future of thirty seconds or so. The immediate worries, of course, were all the bullets.

The first shots rang out with soft cracks that barely made it through the engine noise, and Gabe let himself believe they weren’t real. But then the ragged holes started appearing in the acrylic windows, and the danger was harder to ignore.

“Penny! Drop!” he yelled as he tried to do the same without being tossed to one side by the rough waves.

The sprite only giggled at the pun. “Oh! Are you trying to take us to the final coordinates?” she asked, her shrill voice easily cutting through the noise.

Heather made a conciliatory attempt at hunching over the controls just as another bullet punctured the wall next to her, and she gritted her teeth as she visibly fought with the wheel to cut through the water. “I think something will happen once we get there!” Another bullet suddenly slammed into the console a few inches from her fingers, and she gasped and let go for an instant before reclaiming the wheel even more firmly. The big white trawler loomed next to them as they passed it, and bullets began raining in from above. “I think we might be able to use the Ether again! Maybe like a back door out of here!”

Gabe suddenly felt something hot and painful graze his arm, and he slapped his hand to it to find wetness there. It hurt, but didn’t feel serious, and his magic was already moving there. Then he suddenly understood what Heather meant, and the pain vanished beneath the implications. When they’d retrieved the first Igla, they’d had to enter the Ether to do so. And Lorelei had insisted they leave at their precise entry point or risk coming out somewhere unexpected.

He quickly wiped the blood on his pants. “The teleporting thing? That was a joke!”

She scanned the waters ahead of them and strained against the wheel while visibly trying not to rip the thing right out of its mount. “I’m sorry, I must have missed your brilliant plan! Please, repeat it for me!” Then the wake of the other ship caught them and tossed their boat hard to one side.

For a moment, it seemed like they would be flipped through the air like a paper plate, but then he felt a surge of magic come from Penny, and their small ship stuck to the waves as if glued there.

“That was fun!” the sprite said as she floated back down to the floor. “But I think we should probably take this seriously now.” Then she moved to the wheel and shouldered Heather aside just as another wave rocked the boat in the same direction as if assisting. Heather stumbled with the combined forces and let go of the wheel, and an instant later they were slicing gracefully through and among the waves. “Almost there!” Penny called.

Another bullet tore through the cabin and smashed into their table before disappearing through the floor, and Gabe suddenly worried at how much water they had to be taking on below. He thought the ship already felt a bit more sluggish, and he wondered how much longer they could stay afloat with new holes coming every second.

He crawled over to Heather. “Okay, I’m game. How do we do this?”

She dropped into a crouch and helped pull him up into one too. Then she opened his right hand to find it flecked with drying blood. “I’d guess you use this again,” she said, tapping the imprint of the Qi Dragon. “It worked last time, right?”

Suddenly the engine died and the boat began coasting to a halt, and Heather took Gabe’s hand to haul him to his feet. “We’re here,” she said, just as Penny exclaimed the same thing much more excitedly.

“Feel free to surrender if there’s anything left of you over there,” Leopold’s voice came through the speaker above.

Gabe rose and did a quick turn to get his bearings, and he saw to his horror that they were now surrounded by the five boats. The first was slowly turning back toward them, angling in to complete a fairly neat pentagram, and the other four were already drifting in to pincer their little ship. It felt like being in the center of a summoning circle...and the thought made him glance to the water. There was nothing obviously different about the location, and no helpful instructions loaded into his mind just from being there. He opened his hand and stared down at the amber light of the first Igla, but it wasn’t doing anything more than normal as far as he could tell.

“This is usually the point where the disembodied voice tells me what to do next, so I’m absolutely taking suggestions,” he said.

Penny just giggled unhelpfully and Heather was already settling back into a crouch with her rifle. “This is your part,” she replied, then calmly started returning fire back at the first ship. The sound was shockingly loud in the cabin, but she barely flinched as she chambered the next round. “I’m going to make these guys think twice about popping above the railing. You feel the force, or whatever. Just do it fast.” She fired again.

So...he tried. With no other ideas, Gabe dropped within himself to the quiet hole in his mind left there by Aka Manah. It had been scoured clean by the passing of the first Igla as it had settled into the Qi Dragon, and it was a place he loathed visiting. And yet, he’d found himself drifting to the edge almost constantly—like a tongue absently probing a wound at the corner of a mouth. It was dark and empty, and it seemed to stretch down like an elevator shaft into the lowest parts of him without actually providing a safe way to use it.

Without another thought, he fell in.

The first few moments of the drop were terror. All control slipped away from him in that instant, and he could do nothing but flail at glass-smooth edges as he fell. Then he suddenly reached a depth where time and distance seemed to lose all meaning, and the sensation actually became familiar enough that he was able to focus on where he was. He looked up just in time to see the landmarks of his own psyche flashing by, imprinted there for him to study while he dropped. He passed the ragged scar where the god had opened a door from the Ether to try to take his body, and then the broken ruins where an older version of himself had been shattered and reborn. He fell past the conceptual waiting room of semi-consciousness where both Aka Manah and the creature Phillip had spoken with him directly in his mind, and then further to the place where his magic sullenly hunkered like a self-righteous teenager. And then deeper still.

Down and down into that darkness of self he went, rappelling into it like the hole he’d been terrified of just a day ago. And in the same way, he tried not to think too hard about what he was doing as it happened. He knew it wasn’t real. And he also knew that it was perhaps more real than any other part of his life. It was a mess of concepts and belief that he hadn’t spent nearly enough time contemplating, but just then he hardly had the luxury of resolving any of it. His only consolation was that he realized he had the power to land without breaking or losing himself at the bottom of this hole. Which was a good thing...since that was where the dragon slept.

Gabe drifted to a stop as he found the curled mass of power there in the depths, and he could suddenly feel it both in his hand and mind, but also enormously distant in a way that threatened to snap his sanity if he tried to grasp it too firmly. He swallowed hard, realizing that it meant nothing there, then he took a useless fortifying breath for the same reason. No matter how acclimated he got to this place, he was still meat and bones in the end.

“Wakey wakey,” he said to the key to eternity. “Time to work.”

The Qi Dragon stirred and stretched against the edges of reality, pressing at the bounds of its own essence until Gabe could feel the walls of their impossible connection warping with the pressure. It was, itself, such a small and simple thing. Basically just a conduit. But the enormity of what it contained gave it a weight that threatened to unravel their little universe without effort. Then it suddenly settled back down like a cat in the sun as the amber glow of the first Igla began pulsing up from within its crest. Gabe stared as that keystone of reality started flowing along the scales there, lighting only a portion of the dragon like lapping waves caressing a beach before rolling back out. It was mesmerizing really, watching that heartbeat of the power to alter space at a whim as it danced like warm water over smooth stones. And Gabe suddenly wanted nothing more than to linger there and be entranced. It was so much bigger than his one little life. There was so much more he might learn from it. There, in that quiet place, he was blissfully insignificant.

Then all at once the power rose and pulsed out, surging up through him into his own well of magic and triggering something there that he couldn’t control. He felt the crude physical mechanisms of his body far above lifting his right hand involuntarily and holding it out to the sea, then his magic rose of its own volition to trace the lines of some vastly complex pattern. Immediately Gabe began rising back up through the layers of himself, passing the ruins of forgotten memories and the shells of personae he’d constructed to clothe his essential emptiness over the years. And all the while he couldn’t help but chase that pattern as it built and rose and grew until its countless whorls and threads left him nearly lost within his own brain.

Then it fired.

Gabe was thrown back up into regular consciousness just as he felt the surge of magic leave his hand, and all the physical sensations of reality crowded back in at once to overwhelm him. His shoulder hurt. His stomach ached. His thoughts felt slow and human, and a gunshot sounded to his left just as he watched the azure spark of his magic sink into the waves at his right. The cabin smelled like gunpowder and panic. Then everything went very still.

“Did you do it?” Heather asked, breaking the moment as she chambered another bullet. Gunshots sounded all around them.

Gabe took a deep breath as he settled back into his physical self, and he flexed his right hand several times to wipe away the pins and needles the magic had left behind. “Uhhh, sure,” he said, feeling even less confident than he sounded.

Heather fired again. “That’s not a great answer!”

A bullet hole suddenly appeared in the prow of their boat, and Gabe looked up to find all five ships now much closer to them and still coming. The pop of distant gunfire echoed from every side as they all came within range at once, and Gabe finally found his footing in the present.

“Well, I don’t know what to tell you!” he yelled back, reaching for his bandolier. He emptied the middle pouch, then tore off the tops of all three packets at once. “Nobody wants to teach me how to swim before tossing me in the ocean, so excuse me if I drown a little!” Then he stabbed an oversized spike of magic into his fist and threw the contents out the door above Heather’s head.

The smoke powder ignited at once, feeding off the excess energy he’d fed into it until the hexes were cascading against one another and expanding in a plume five times the normal size. It swallowed their little ship in a great wash of sunlit gray, then rolled out further like a plush blanket until the sea in every direction beyond their small circle was nothing but murk and shadow. The cloud of fog seemed to dampen even the sound of the waves, and suddenly all went quiet around them as they floated in a dim oasis of calm.

Heather and Penny gasped simultaneously—one in shock and the other in delight—and Gabe moved to the controls to try to start the engine. It didn’t take him long to wish he’d paid better attention to how the thing worked.

“What’s this supposed to do?” Heather asked, rising to join him at the console. “You know we can’t run now.”

Gabe turned the key and got only an anemic click in return. “I know,” he said in annoyance. “But your plan of single-handedly head-shotting everyone wasn’t working fast enough, so I had to try something before the stormtroopers out there got close enough to actually hit us!”

Heather bent to their bags and retrieved a new clip for her rifle, then discarded the old one to the side. “Not entirely stupid, but now they’re just as likely to crash into us as shoot us! We need to get into the Ether. The Igla is the whole reason we’re here!”

Gabe tried flipping a few switches that frustratingly did nothing, then he flipped them a second time, harder. “I agree, but I don’t know how! And you’re supposed to be sniping at them, not me!” He slapped his hand on the console in defeat and gestured to Penny. “Would you start this thing? We need to be gone when they all...” Then he stopped as he saw the look on the sprite’s face, and it drained all the anger out of him at once. It was the first time he’d seen her expression fall anywhere near fear.

Gabe followed her gaze out the window and into the haze of smoke obscuring everything around them, and just then a spray of water splashed against the hull and rocked them to one side. Then another came at the prow...and another at stern. One bubble rose in the water just in front of them and nearly swallowed the prow as it popped, rocking them violently before vanishing in salty spray against the front window. Another sounded somewhere out in the gray..and then there were too many to count. They came quicker and quicker, bubbles bursting on the surface as if the sea was boiling beneath them, and behind it all Penny started keening low in her throat.

A massive shadow darkened the gloom.

“Hey, Heather,” Gabe said softly.

“What?” she replied as she settled back into her sniping position behind them.

He cleared his throat. “Uh, you remember how we got into the Ether last time?”

She chambered a round and began scanning the fog for a target. “Sure. We fought through a bunch of undead crap and got into the temple, then we went in through the dragon’s mouth where...” She stopped and her eyes slowly went wide as she saw the shadow too. “Oh.”

“Yeah,” Gabe replied, as the kraken rose from the deep.

CHAPTER SEVEN

“Nobody really knows what to do in any given situation, and it’s the people who claim to that you have to watch out for. Confidence is so easy to fake. And while it’s entirely possible that you happen to be talking to an expert in that given field...statistically speaking, you’re just way more likely to be dealing with a liar or a moron.”

-Excerpt from Chapter Twenty-Three, CONscience

“START THE ENGINE,” Gabe said softly.

Nobody moved.

Then a tentacle the size of a radio tower came whipping through the fog and cut the air above their ship with the whoosh of a falling redwood, and the shadow out in the murk rose to the height of a four-story building.

“Start the engine!” he growled, then reached back to propel Penny up to the console.

The sprite stumbled forward and began absently flicking switches, then Heather slid back into the cabin and snatched Penny’s wrist the instant before she could turn the key. “No!” Heather whispered. “We don’t want to be the loudest thing in the water right now!”

Gabe started to argue just as another tentacle flailed through the smoke and slammed into the ocean with a great blast and spray that sent them careening hard to one side, then he heard the engines of the other ships roaring closer and he realized what she meant. This was their way out. This was what they’d come for...insane as it was.

He tore his eyes away from the window and turned to Penny. “What can you give us? Can you...talk to it or something?”

“This isn’t a Disney movie!” Heather hissed.

The sprite shook her head violently. “No! It’s not natural. Not an Umbra, nor anything of human make. It’s...” she started backing away toward the stern. “It’s alien.”

“Another construct,” Gabe said, hoping he was wrong but knowing better than to count on it. These days, the horrible monsters were about the only things routinely exceeding his expectations. He looked to Heather. “So, same as last time? Look for the crystals and bust them up?”

She turned and squinted at the huge shape looming above them. “From here there’s no way to know if it’s anything like the last one. We need to see it. Get closer.”

Gabe gestured at the window. “Gotta say, that feels extra stupid.”

Another tentacle emerged from the sea and rolled upward, this time passing close enough for them to make out the iridescent blue of metallic skin as water sheeted off and down it. It was marred only by a few small spots of something inky black.

“What did you honestly expect us to run into out here?” Heather snapped back.

He shrugged, then grabbed hold of the wall to keep from falling as the boat rocked with the waves. “Oh I definitely expected something this horrible! But would it really have been too much to hope for sexy mermaids? Maybe something pirate-themed?”

Heather bent and held Penny by the shoulders. “Do you have enough magic left to float us in closer without the engines?”

The sprite hesitated, then nodded slowly. “It won’t be fast, but I can move with the waves. How close?”

Heather studied the shadow. “Close.” Then she straightened and turned back to Gabe. “And you need to dispel this fog. We won’t know what we’re dealing with until we can get a good look.”

He stared at her incredulously. “I don’t know how to do that!”

She spread her hands. “Well, what a fun opportunity for you to learn.” Then she bent to retrieve the big dadao from her bag. The sword had only barely fit in, and she had to yank hard to unwedge it. The huge thing looked even more ludicrous in the cramped quarters. “Okay you two, go on my mark.” Then she raised her free hand and turned to look to the port side.

The sprite nodded and closed her eyes, and the strain on her little face was immediately evident. Gabe started to protest that he wasn’t ready, but just then the engine noise of the first ship came up quickly behind them, and the smoke split to reveal the big white hull passing them by just a few yards. The waves of the wake caught them up and pitched them away, and Heather’s hand came down. Penny’s magic filled the air as she used the momentum to redirect them straight toward the giant monster in the dark, and Gabe was left standing there with nothing to do but try.

He closed his eyes, committing to at least making a decent show of it, and he tried to cast his mind out into the fog. He felt the boat moving beneath him as Penny worked her mojo to surf them in closer, and he could suddenly feel the sprite’s power more clearly as it surrounded them and manipulated the water. He’d sensed a variety of different magics since being thrust face-first into this weird world, and hers was a new flavor altogether. It was like someone had sugar-coated a lightning bolt and wrapped it in some very flimsy paper before handing it to a wide-eyed toddler, and he had to skip immediately over it for fear of getting pulled right in. It was strong. He passed Heather’s familiar and enigmatic aura without looking too closely and getting lost there too, and then he was out past the ship, over the water.

It wasn’t so hard, he realized. Six months ago, it had been a challenge for him to believe any of this was real, let alone to see or sense it. But after the Qi Dragon and coming back from the Ether, somehow it all fit together more cleanly. He’d ripped magic apart and put it together in new ways, and though he still had no idea how he’d done any of it, the process had given him a glimpse of the inner workings. It was like he’d gone up a level, and it also explained why his bond with Heather was so much stronger. He suddenly wondered what else he might be able to do if he tried.

Gabe reached out and immediately felt the energies around him, fanning out in countless layers and types and strengths, and the rush of it all coming at once threatened to overwhelm him. Then by pure chance he stumbled over the passive pulse of the smoke hex he’d cast, recognizing it by the sense of his own magic out there in the unfamiliar cacophony. He grasped onto it like a lifeline, following the web of fine threads as they spread for a hundred yards in every direction, and for a moment, he could only marvel that he’d actually done that.

But before he could finish studying how the magic was put together, the other energies began crowding back in. He could feel the people aboard the boats, all human and devoid of magic except for the bits of it festooning them in the form of charms and puzzling devices. And their auras were so very plain compared to the vibrant rainbow of the Umbras. They all had to be Knights of Solomon. No surprises there. Then he ran up against the massive form of the monster in the sea—the kraken just then fully emerging and scanning to determine why it had been summoned. He leaned in to probe that huge aura, then immediately fell back as it threatened to evaporate his own tiny spirit. It was exactly like the dragon with the first Igla, a power like looking into the sun and a presence that made fighting it seem just as foolish. He pulled his senses away from it, scrubbing out the mental burn of that brightness as he struggled to concentrate back on the smoke...and then the thing turned toward him.

Gabe quickly retreated back to the web of his smoke hex and tried to ignore the sense of that massive scrutiny. He remembered the feeling from the temple, and he didn’t dare engage with it for fear of inciting the same attack. Instead he focused frantically on his magic, and almost immediately he found a nexus near his physical body where all the threads came together in a knot he didn’t remember tying. He felt the kraken push at the edge of his mind, asking for the reason it had been disturbed, and he could only ignore it as he hurriedly slashed with his will at the magic binding the smoke together. He knew he couldn’t answer the thing. He knew full well he wasn’t the hero the creature was looking for.

He struck at the knot again and again, trying to snap it loose like a rubber band, but it stubbornly resisted every attempt as if it was somehow reinforced. He pushed against it, wrenching at it with raw magic behind the force while keenly aware that the kraken’s great eye was even then angling down at him through the haze. It was wondering why he wasn’t responding. Why he wasn’t providing the right proof of his reason to be there. But he could only use that growing fear to sharpen his attacks on his own hex. He’d done the same thing with a geas before, stretching Gwendal’s magic taut and muscling through to send it snapping back onto her. But he’d never done it on himself, and it was proving frustratingly hard.

The kraken tried again to push into his mind, to find the worth of him, and this time the weight of that monstrous gaze was more than he could repel. It slipped into his head past every one of his defenses, and instantly he felt the familiar sensation of the thing worming through his thoughts and utterly failing to be impressed by what it found. From deep inside him the Qi Dragon pulsed, sending something like a rebuke out into the fog, and Gabe felt it connect like a lion tamer cracking a whip. The air out on the sea split with a colossal shriek of defiance.

“Gabe!” Heather said next to him.

“I’m trying!” he growled. Then he threw himself even harder against the hex. Again it bounced him back, and again he went at it with every bit of what he had. But no matter what he tried, it seemed like any force leveled against it was returned in exactly equal...

“Oh, stupid!” he yelled at himself.

He relaxed his will. Of course he couldn’t just snap something he’d created, because he was also the one resisting. It was probably the kind of rookie mistake any decent mentor could have helped him avoid, but he’d long since given up on finding his own personal Yoda.

He again reached for the knot, but this time instead of pushing, he pulled. He opened the vast hole inside him the same way he’d swallowed Phillip’s power and called pure potential to himself in the Ether, and he willed his magic out there to unravel and return. The knot resisted at first, wanting to stay in the comfortable pattern of the hex where it had purpose and order, but then it relented and came loose all at once, surging like a jet of steam back to his hand. The web began to sag and decay, and the magic lighting its lines faded until the entire thing fell to shreds.

Gabe opened his eyes with a grin and watched as the smoke all around them began to roll back from their ship in a neat circle. It first revealed the big hull of the fishing trawler a few dozen yards away, and then another similar ship just beyond.

“I did it!” he said with a laugh...then he choked it right back down as the rest of smoke blew off.

The kraken was enormous.

The monster filled the horizon as Penny guided them ever closer, and it dwarfed the five fishing ships that were then seeing it for the first time too. The skin of the thing was all metallic iridescent blues and greens, similar to the glistening coils of the dragon in the temple, but this time the monster was mottled with black splats of something dark and organic—as if a nasty fungus was slowly taking over. The eight huge arms rolled through the air as if tasting it, and the giant arrowhead of its body was arced to one side to position a single glistening eye the size of a swimming pool. That ragged pupil contracted against the sunlight streaming in, but the glowing blue orb was no less focused on their little red boat that now felt distressingly like a bath toy. Everything went still out on the water as the Knights seemed to take in the new situation too...then the monster lifted its body to reveal a maw with five interlocking chitinous beaks, and it spread them all wide to screech out another echoing roar. The inside of the mouth was spiked and writhing, and it looked like nothing short of wet murder.

“You want to go in that?” Gabe asked, as the roar finally died away.

Heather clipped her sword onto her back and snatched up another assault rifle from her bag of seemingly endless weapons. “Is it really worse than a dragon?” she asked as she moved to leave the cabin.

“Yes! A thousand percent!” Gabe followed her to the door leading out to the small prow deck, watching as the five white ships beyond began turning frantically away from the monster. Then he looked back to that huge, alien maw. Their own ship was nearly to the body of the thing, and behind them Penny was groaning with effort. He grabbed Heather’s arm before she could go outside. “Let’s think of something else! There has to be a better way that doesn’t get us sacrificed to Cthulhu!”

Heather casually pried his fingers loose, but gave them a quick squeeze by way of reassurance. Something similar came through the bond. “Gabe, I like you, but you’re terrible at this decisive hero stuff.” Then she turned and sprang onto the prow in two quick leaps that left her standing at the front edge of the railing—hair whipping in the wind and stupid big weapons drawn to slay the beast or die trying.

“Why do you people keep acting surprised about that?!” He shouted back. Then he turned to find Penny doubled over with sweat pouring off her little face, and he immediately felt her magic wavering around them. The boat stuttered in the water as it missed catching the right part of a wave, and a moment later it rocked back as it missed several more. The water was getting far choppier as they got closer, and the sprite was breathing so hard she looked like she might pass out. They hadn’t quite made it, but she was clearly spent. He looked back out at Heather, standing ready and defiant against the massive form of the kraken rising nearly a hundred feet above them.

And then, all at once, the monster attacked.

One of the kraken’s arms suddenly slammed down into the water near a white ship and sent it tumbling hard to one side. The trawler scraped across the waves and spun uncontrollably until it finally righted itself violently in a spray of water and passengers, and immediately the sea was filled with screams. A dozen or more Knights were instantly flailing in the water, scattered by that single blow, and then gunshots began arcing out from the other four ships. The kraken seemed to barely notice.

And still Heather stood, waiting. She looked so small out there alone.

Gabe growled and reached back to turn the key, this time successfully firing up the engine. “Every freaking time!” he shouted at himself. Then he pulled back the throttle before running for the prow.

The stupidity of his non-plan caught up to him about two steps over the wet, fiberglass deck, and he nearly flipped right over the side as they crashed headlong into the first of the huge waves surrounding the kraken. Then Heather was there with him, hooking an arm through his and hauling him back up just as another big swell crested five feet above them. The water arced down toward them and Gabe started to scream a curse, then he and Heather were clinging to the rail desperately as the boat swerved into a hard turn that skated them up the side of the wave instead of directly into it. They rode the water up at a sharp angle, slicing along its length until they found the thin curl of the crest and blasted out through the other side, and the water that poured over them was a thin spray instead of the deluge he’d expected. The next instant they were coasting down the other side.

Gabe looked back to find Penny behind the wheel again, her shoulders slumped in exhaustion, but her fae face taut in hard-edged concentration. The tough little sprite gave a playful little wave that looked halfhearted at best, then her eyes went right back to the next swell threatening to drag them under. He could see scaly skin and black pupils now peeking through her glamour.

He used Heather’s help to haul himself up into a crouch by the railing, and he anchored to it with his left hand. The boat again sliced up the side of the next wave, straining its engine to reach the top, and then they were sliding down the other side once more. He doubted the motion sickness medication had ever been put through quite such a grueling test.

Suddenly an explosion sounded above them, and Gabe turned to find the remnants of a fiery blast dissipating against what might generously be called the monster’s forehead. It didn’t leave behind any obvious damage, but the kraken still sent a lazy swipe toward Leopold’s ship just as another rocket blasted from their deck. This time the RPG slammed into the oncoming tentacle and exploded in a wash of flame and smoke that sent the huge arm reeling back, and the water around the kraken surged even more violently as the thing finally turned its entire body toward the threat. Another rocket came in from behind to slam into its back, then another two came in quick succession from either side. Gabe started to wonder aloud how much freaking ordinance the Knights had brought to capture one mediocre conman, then he remembered he wasn’t interested in looking anything in the mouth just then—least of all gift horses.

The kraken screeched and thrashed in fury as the explosives pelted it from every side, and Penny rode the resultant waves like an artist to bring them within several yards of where the monster met the water. The Classic’s engine whined and sputtered, then they drifted to stop just before ramming into that glistening hide.

Heather got back to her feet and scanned the monster, then stopped and pointed at the massive eye twenty feet up. “There!” she said over the roar of water around them. “It’s glowing! That’s where we need to be!”

Gabe struggled to his feet and joined her, trying not to look as drowned or reluctant as he felt. “Okay. Did you happen to bring a catapult too?”

She dismissed him with a wave and turned to watch the nearest tentacle as it passed, as if she was judging the distance for a jump. Then all at once the arm lashed out and away, rolling along the water toward one of the fishing ships and striking it with enough force to crumple the hull like an aluminum can. The ship folded around the big blue arm and lifted out of the water, and passengers spilled from it like blood even as an errant rocket went sailing off into the sky. Then the tentacle lashed hard and dislodged the ship, tossing it straight down into the water and atop the flailing crew. Everything there was sinking an instant later.

Gabe wanted to complain some more—quite a bit more, actually—but he knew it wouldn’t do any good. They were too close and too screwed from every direction to do anything but push forward anymore, so his best bet at survival was to be helpful. If Heather thought they needed to get to the eye, that’s probably what they needed to do. Two of the tentacles connected to the monster right beneath the eye, but the trick would be first getting on them, then getting up. What they really needed was a grappling hook...

“Anchor!” he blurted, surprising even himself.

Heather’s face lit in understanding as she sprinted toward the aft, reappearing a moment later hauling a thick coil of rope and a galvanized chunk of steel shaped like a plow. She dropped the thing onto the deck, then started tying the free end of the rope to the front docking line. Another explosion sounded above them, and the water rocked as a huge arm lashed out at another ship.

“How fast can you shimmy across a tight wire?” she asked.

Gabe glanced across to the nearest tentacle, roughly fifty feet away, and tried to imagine himself climbing over to it. The thing was twice as big around as a tanker truck and much less hospitable-seeming to his sneakers. “I don’t know! Whatever the slowest is. Maybe worse!”

She nodded as if expecting no less, then hefted the anchor in both hands. It looked every ounce of a hundred pounds. “I’ll have to go first and pull you over. No other way.” Then she turned back at the waist and took a deep breath before heaving the anchor across the distance.

The silvery metal arced through the air, dragging the line behind it and easily crossing over the nearest tentacle before pulling taut and whipping beneath to wrap back around the rope on the near side. The line went tight against the railing and the ship creaked alarmingly, but by some miracle, everything held.

Heather waited another beat to make sure, then she reached over and gave it a firm tug. “Good enough,” she said, looking back at him. “I’ll wave once I’m over, and—”

But Gabe never got to hear the rest of the plan. Penny screeched something from inside the cabin, and when they turned to look, they noticed the monster had gone oddly still. Gabe glanced up at the kraken and his breath caught at the sight of the giant, unblinking eye staring right back down at him. There was a twinge in his right hand as he looked into that pool of primal magic.

Then the boat was spinning through the air as the creature yanked hard on the rope.

Gabe reached out for Heather or any handhold, but all he felt was the opposite rail hitting his ankles as he went tumbling over into the water. He hit the sea full across his back and the air went out of him in a rush. Bright red fiberglass shattered into a thousand pieces above him...

Then the world went dark and quiet as he sank beneath it all.

ELSEWHERE

BLACK LAN PINCHED OFF a little chew and stuffed it into his lip before snapping the tin shut and quickly stashing it back in his pocket. Commander Sute hated the stuff, and there was no reason to make it easier for her to dislike him more than she already did. He used his tongue to work the sticky mix into its familiar place, then casually turned back to keep watching the empty field. Predictably, nothing changed with the stroke of midnight.

“Must have been a dry winter,” he said as he bent to pull up a single knee-high stalk of wheat.

Sute mumbled something into her radio, and one of the patrols answered with a quick affirmative. Then she leaned back against the tailgate of the truck they’d borrowed from the local Ukrainian cell. The work light they’d rigged in the bed jiggled with the movement, and the shadows on the field danced in response. She gave him the barest hint of a glance. “What?”

Lan tore off the roots and began stripping the thin leaves from the stem. “The color, see? They don’t harvest here til mid-summer, but this crop is already turning golden. A bad sign, that.” He sniffed the end of the unripe stalk, then stuck it in his mouth anyway. It would be a good excuse to spit occasionally.

She whispered something in Japanese and rolled her eyes, then she touched the places on her hips where her guns rested beneath her jacket. It was something she did every few minutes or so. “How and why do you know that? And more importantly, why do I give a shit?” Her face was suddenly lit as one of their patrol trucks passed behind them on the little dirt road around the perimeter.

Lan chewed on the end of the stalk and smiled around it. “All kinds of reasons to know all kinds of things. I come from farm country myself—from back when that was a point of pride.” He paused to spit to one side, making sure the dark color wasn’t noticed before it vanished in the wheat. “And I may have passed through this neck of the wide woods once or thrice.” He narrowed his eyes a fraction but kept the smile just as friendly. “You might be surprised what you can pick up when you talk to people instead of at them.”

The futakuchi-onna finally turned toward him then, her expression going from apathetic to dangerous in an instant. “If you have something to say, don’t talk around it,” she said. “Fucking coward!” her second mouth added.

“No!” Lan replied, painting his face in concern but secretly delighting in the reaction. He took any chance he could get to make her seem irrational. “Not you personally, of course! ‘You’ in general. People. The world at-large, like.” He held up his hands. “Obviously I meant present company all the way excluded.”

Her eyes narrowed to pinpricks, then she turned back to staring into the empty field and the two dozen blobs of light surrounding it. They’d brought everyone they could muster at such short notice, and Lan hadn’t met most of them.

“I will say, however,” he continued carefully, “that Mr. Delling is unlikely to wander into quite this obvious a trap. It might be wise to put out a light or twenty if we want to actually net him. He is ostensibly a con artist, after all.”

Sute tapped her guns absently and swatted an insect from her face. “He’s not coming.”

That stopped Lan short. “How do you mean?”

This time she was the one with the falsely friendly smile. “The only way I can.” She patted a vest pocket that bulged with the shape of phone. “I just got word that the Knights of Solomon have him pinned down in the Gulf of Mexico. It’s done.”

Lan let out a breath and nearly blew the wheat stalk from between his lips. “Then what the fuck are we still doing here?”

Sute looked up to the stars, mostly invisible with so many bright lights around but still there in ones and twos. “Following instructions. I have been ordered to obey Enoch for the duration of this charade, and you have been ordered to obey me. So for now, we stay until—”

The ground suddenly rumbled beneath them, and their light tipped over in the truck bed to plunge their area into darkness. Shouts of alarm sounded all along the perimeter, joined by bellows and inhuman shrieks for those whose glamours weren’t quite up to the task of masking them. Lan reached over and grabbed the side of the truck while Sute’s hands went straight to her hips.

Then all at once the field in the center of the circle split in a nearly perfect cross, and the earth began to buckle upward. Great sheets of wheat and dirt and rocks lifted before cascading to every side, and a cloud of dust rolled out from the upheaval to envelop them. Lan spit everything from his mouth and threw an arm over his face as the leading edge hit...then he stopped and slowly lowered it as he saw the cause.

“What in the sweet merciful flying fuck-all is that?” he rasped.

“I...don’t know,” Sute whispered next to him.

It towered above them, rising like a skyscraper suddenly sprouted there in rural Ukraine, far above the range of their lights. But even with his night vision, Lan couldn’t say what the thing was. One moment it almost resolved into something like a massive centipede, but then the edges of it faded and folded back in on themselves until the thing was little more than an indistinct smear of power against the night sky. It shifted briefly into a huge stone troll, all boulders and shards and lichen, but it immediately began melting away again until nothing of it was recognizably part of any greater whole. Over and over again in the space of those few moments it slipped into different forms as if it couldn’t quite crystallize into one, and all Lan could do was watch in horror.

Sute suddenly moved next to him, and he turned to see her leveling her guns toward the beast. “No!” he hissed...but too late.

She moved forward and opened fire, emptying her pistols in moments as she advanced. Others in their company—surely already on hair triggers themselves—heard the shots and quickly joined her, and soon gunfire was pouring in from every side.

Lan frantically reached into the truck bed and grabbed the radio. “Stop, damn you! Stop!” he yelled into it. But by then it was clear it would do no good. Nobody could hear him. And Sute just kept advancing.

Lan considered running out to grab her, to pull her down and somehow salvage whatever this had become...and in that instant the monster above turned its great head right toward her. Lan opened his mouth to shout a warning, but the vast creature suddenly became something snake-like, and arced down fast toward the ground until its half-formed jaw closed around a huge mound of the dirt and rocks it had displaced. Then it raised back up, trailing tons of the stuff out of the other side of its unfinished mouth, and it breathed.

Lan put the pieces together an instant before it happened, and all he could do was pitch himself beneath the truck. Then a geyser of earthen debris erupted from the creature’s mouth like a volcano, and the first blast of it flattened Sute as if she hadn’t ever been there. And it just kept coming. The monster turned and sprayed the deadly stream around itself, wiping out a fourth of the Maerrywells there in a single blast before it finally lost its shape again and melted back into unformed Ether. The remaining dirt dropped all at once to the base of the thing, and it lifted another cloud of dust that rolled out toward them to briefly dim the field. But Lan could only stare in shock at the place where his commander had been standing, and at the arc of lights that had winked out so suddenly. It was all he could do to keep himself from shifting into a dog and bolting into the night.

Then out of nowhere, the monster suddenly screeched and bucked as if in tremendous pain. Its shape stuttered between dozens of forms from legends and nightmares, never settling on one for more than an instant before ricocheting to the next, and all the while it writhed and whipped through the air. One moment it looked like it would go right back to attacking them, and the next like it wanted to attack itself. Then all at once it froze in place, stopping mid-transformation between a giant serpent and the amorphous non-thing, before suddenly collapsing to the ground in an immobile heap with all traces of its animating energy gone, just like that.

Lan waited and watched for a long count of ten, then slowly crawled out from beneath the truck and raised the radio back to his mouth. “Nobody...fucking...move.” There were too few replies, but all of them came quickly.

He slowly crept forward, keeping his eyes firmly on the massive corpse of the creature as he moved to the place where Sute had been buried. The pile came nearly to his chest, and it was more rocks than dirt. There was no way she’d survived it.

In the end, he had to dig down nearly four feet to get to her, and even then he’d only found her by the buzzing. He brushed some dirt from the pocket and pulled the phone from her vest. It was a video call.

“What?” he answered.

Enoch’s face appeared on the screen, and somehow he was no less intimidating at five inches tall. “Report.”

Lan started to fight down a bitter laugh and surge of anger—then let it all come. “Oh sure! I have a few fucking reports for you. Here’s number one:” He held out the phone and panned the camera across the carnage, making sure to linger on the giant corpse of the beast. “That come through clear enough on your end?” Then he turned the camera back to himself. “And report number two is that we don’t goddamned report to you anymore. I just got a bit of a field promotion, you might say. And I’m pulling us out.”

Enoch shook his head and let his eyes drift to one side. “Shouldn’t have happened without a catalyst. And why only three?” He turned suddenly and said something to a blonde Templar woman passing behind him, and she nodded and changed direction while the man looked back into the camera. “The Fangshai were attacked as well and the Knights of Solomon have stopped responding, but the other teams were inexplicably spared. I’ve already dispatched the Twenty Brothers to another location, so do what you can to muddy the details of what happened there, then gather those who remain and report back. We have much to discuss.”

“Didn’t you hear me? We don’t work for you. Shouldn’t even have been here! Slay your own damn monsters from now on.”

Enoch stared straight into the phone. “That is exactly what we will do.”

Lan heard the threat in that without needing the addition of the dead-eyed stare, but the combination certainly did wonders for his common sense. “I’ll tell you what. I’ll report back to my superiors and let them get back to you. Considering how quick we were to respond the first time, I’ve no doubt they’ll have me scampering back to your base double-speed with my tongue primed for your boots. How’s that sound?”

The Templar nodded again, then ended the call without another word.

Lan sighed and stood there for a moment, fantasizing about dropping the phone and then dropping this human form and sprinting out into the night. He could run to where few could find him. To the Fae places, maybe. To one of the worlds a half-turn from this one where time was slow and danger was more of a suggestion. Even Elfhame would be better than this. But he knew he wouldn’t. Once you’d had uncut reality, it was hard to trade it in for any kind of imitation...no matter how fast the real thing was killing you.

He looked out into the field at the giant half-formed corpse and the bodies of his comrades. This was not what he had joined for all those years ago. Not by a long shot.

But he wasn’t stupid either.

“Find some shovels and get to burying,” he said into the radio. “All of it. Before daybreak. We’ve got places to be.”

He found his tin and stuffed a double portion of blend into his lip, hating the bitter taste just as must as he always did but loving the creeping hit of life it filled him with.

Then he made his calls.

CHAPTER EIGHT

“One inescapable conclusion from this living legend nonsense is that all the big deities must actually exist somewhere. Maybe there really is a Heaven or Mount Olympus. I don’t know. But about the only one I really believe in is Lady Luck. She’s seen me through more scrapes than I can count, and she’s honestly the last hope I turn to when I’m out of other options. Heck, I’d even build an altar to her...if I didn’t suspect it would immediately burn down on top of me. She’s funny like that, my goddess.”

-Excerpt from Chapter Twenty-Three, CONscience

IT ALL HAPPENED SO fast.

One moment Gabe was standing on the deck, rocking with the waves and waiting for Heather to make her move, then the world was flipping around him and the water was everywhere. He saw his boat vanish in a horrifying spray of foam and fiberglass...and then it all went quiet as he began to sink into the dark.

The first surprise was how calm he felt. He was aware that he should be panicking and trying to fight back to the surface, but everything in him seemed to have seized up as if a mental seat belt was holding him back from injuring himself further. Shock, probably. He couldn’t remember if that was good or bad. But then the second surprise came and snapped those safeties right in half: the forest of tentacles all around him.

His brain turned over once like a cold engine trying to start, and he took in the field of spindly arms waving like grass in the wind beneath the kraken. Each one was churning hard to keep the monster afloat above, and Gabe was already drifting in that wake and being pushed down further. It was almost beautiful, really, staring up at them as he floated down. There were thousands...all blue and shimmering and fading...

Then his brain turned over again and warned him that he was a few seconds away from drowning. His chest was already burning and he could feel his throat wanting to open up and pull. And still he dropped. His thoughts fired once more and gave him a series of conflicting commands, all wanting to be executed immediately and all jamming up inside him as he tried to find the best one.

Look for Heather.

Save yourself.

Find Penny.

Swim hard.

Go!

Or...give in and let this be an end...

But none of those were right, he knew. They all might satisfy a part of him for a moment, but every one ended the same way. Loss. Death. Just at different speeds. So as usual, he wrote in his own answer.

Gabe slipped inside himself, moving into the place where time in the real world slowed and his magic was just a thought away. He pulled down the wet cobwebs clinging to his mind as he went, and suddenly he was thinking clearly again in that quiet place of his own...which only made everything so much worse.

Back outside, his heart pumped once.

The problem was impossible. Ghostly tentacles filled the sea all around him, moving almost imperceptibly to his eye now in that slow place, but still creating the downward force that would kill him. The kraken above was almost too dark to see, but the shadows of its arms still crept across the waves as they worked to destroy whatever remained up there. Gabe thought he could still make out one or two of the boats on the water, but they looked to be mid-turn as they finally began trying to run. He tried to extend his senses to search for his bond with Heather, but the reach simply wouldn’t go out beyond his insulating shell. He could watch things happening from there and live much longer on the few moments of air he had left, but he couldn’t actually do anything. It was just another way of running. Which was...wrong?

His heart beat again.

He understood that he’d changed. You couldn’t go through what he had without coming out a different person on the other side, but his old instincts still wanted control. They wanted him to take the fastest and most logical path out of this mess, regardless of collateral damage, and they wanted it now. In fact, they wanted him to have foreseen this, to have planned for it, and to have avoided it entirely like the old Gabe most certainly would have. He should have run weeks ago, they screamed. He shouldn’t have gotten attached. He could be safe right now if he’d stuck with those old wisdoms. And this massive problem would belong to some other poor bastard.

Another beat.

But those, he knew, were fantasies. And the old Gabe had been excellent at constructing those for himself in place of more difficult realities. For years he’d formed personas instead of a personality, living as a shell filled with the right characters for the right moments, but never really as himself.

Beat.

He’d taken money from others instead of earning it, and then never even fully committed to his identity as a con man either. Always shifting, always changing to avoid what couldn’t be charmed or ignored. Umbras were spirits inside a human shell, but Gabriel Delling had almost been less.

Beat.

And worse, what little identity he had possessed, had been tied entirely to the inane hope of reclaiming something he’d been denied—of healing a broken family instead of trying to build something better for himself. And that, despite being smart enough to know how little there really had been to salvage. A father who wasn’t...and then couldn’t be. A mother as good as vanished. And a boy just as empty as both.

Beat.

All illusions. All shadows he’d slowly had to dispel as he’d tried to figure out who and what he was. And the ultimate irony, of course, was that his life was more real now that he lived it among a cast of terrifying mythical creatures. So yes, he realized, hiding was wrong. He couldn’t run anymore. And if he didn’t figure out a way to settle in to his new life without constantly trying to backslide into the old, someone was going to come along and rip them both from him. Soon.

Beat.

Beat.

Beat...

Gabe looked up to find that the shadows above had barely moved. Just an instant gone. He considered using his magic to propel himself back up somehow—possibly in a poor imitation of what he’d felt Penny doing—but that would only be solving one immediate problem without addressing any of the others. He needed to breathe, sure, but he also needed to give Heather a chance at surviving. And to get up to the giant scary eye. And to somehow grab a key to the universe from inside it. Lots of issues without solutions, and he definitely didn’t have enough power to just slay his way through it all.

“Any suggestions?” he asked of his magic—and of the Qi Dragon, and any other mythical nonsense currently sleeping inside him. Typically, none of it was anxious to help. “Figures,” he said. “Well, then I hope everybody’s okay with breaking some rules.” Then he reached down through his bubble and slapped the Dragon awake before dropping back into reality.

The pull of the water hit him first, dragging him down in a sudden surge almost to the tips of the tentacles, then the pain in his lungs came next and his brain began sending urgent signals for him to swim hard for the surface. But he ignored it all. Instead, he held up his right palm toward the kraken and willed the Qi Dragon to open. He pushed to make it unfurl as it had in the temple when it had absorbed the power of the first Igla, and he felt the brand burning on his skin as he pitted his meager power against it. Still, it didn’t come.

But then, that wasn’t the point.

“Look at me!” Gabe thought as he tried to pull the Dragon to the surface. “Come on!”

He felt the Igla within him sending out the barest fraction of its power with which to resist, and it brought with it the impression that he was doing this wrong—that he needed to go through the motions and follow the formula. Kill the beast, draw the sword, win the kingdom.

“Screw that,” he thought back at it.

And amazingly, it turned out to be enough.

The Igla sparked in his hand as it pushed him away, and just as it had before, the kraken noticed. Gabe fought off another powerful urge to pull in a breath of water to quiet his lungs, and he ignored the darkness creeping in around his vision. Then the sea above him roiled and split as that great blue eye pushed down and through to spotlight him. He held up his hand as his chest convulsed, and the massive pupil above him expanded in a ragged black circle.

“Please work!” he screamed inside himself.

Then something heavy and hard hit him from beneath and dragged him violently up through the water, rolling him along its length until he was at the end and it coiled around his waist. He grabbed at it to pry it loose, but felt immediately how much stronger it was than him. And then he was breaking through the surface, back into the sun and the glorious air.

Gabe sucked in a desperate breath as the tentacle lifted him high above the water, and with each new inhalation the burning in his lungs and foggy vision began to clear. He heard gunfire to his left and saw Heather miraculously still clinging to the rope that had somehow stuck to the monster, then she was gone again as the massive arm brought him up and around to the eye.

He felt the glow of the magic wash over him as the construct peered at and then into him, and he held out his palm in response. The power of the first Igla echoed that of the second, and he could feel how thin the veil was there between them. A portal through, within the monster. Just waiting for him.

But again, the Qi Dragon refused to muster. He wasn’t following the rules. The guardian was still alive.

“Fateless...” a titan boomed in his mind.

And then the moment was passing and he was suddenly arcing back toward the water.

“No, no, no!” he screamed as he descended away from the eye. Then the scream turned wordless as the tentacle brought him toward the mouth.

All Gabe saw at first were those five huge beaks drawn together like chitinous fingertips. Then they opened to reveal a maw full of beckoning barbs and wet darkness. He screamed again as he tried to draw the sword pinned at his waist or get to the gun that might still be strapped to him...then suddenly he was in and everything was closing around him.

Gabe felt something scrape against his back and tear his shirt to leave a hot line of pain there, then the tentacle dropped him in and he was being pushed forward into a meat grinder. The fleshy floor beneath him undulated powerfully as the mouth began working to swallow him, and the giant barbs to every side closed in to rip him apart. He screamed once as he drew the jian and swung at the nearest barb in the same movement—and then again as the blade shattered in his hand. In panic and rage he threw the hilt down the throat, hoping to trigger some kind of gag reflex, but it simply vanished in mid-air before flying ten paces. He reached for the gun only to find it gone, lost somewhere back in the water. And then at last he reached for his magic.

His fingers went to the bandolier as the mouth tried to suck him forward and impale him, but even in his panic he knew there was nothing useful in there. Flash charms and smoke powder. Not enough. Tricks. He needed something more powerful, like what Mutambe had carried.

Another barb caught him at the back of his left thigh and yanked him deeper in, drawing another scream from him as the mouth narrowed and he was forced into a crouch. He needed something big, like what he’d used the last time he’d been desperate and pressed from all sides. Back with the homunculi. He needed Mvuto—the gravity charm. But it was gone. A barb pushed at the back of his neck, forcing him down before it could pierce him, but leaving him curled into a ball with razors on every side. His fingers crawled up the bandolier as he hoped desperately that he’d somehow missed something, but finding no little miracles waiting for him there. Just what he’d come in with. Just him.

Suddenly Hwei-ru’s voice filled his head.

“You do not know what you can or cannot do,” she’d warned. “Your only limitations are the amount of power at your disposal, and the amount of imagination you can bring to mold it.”

Maybe...

Gabe cast his mind back to the temple and to the swarm of homunculi closing in around him. He remembered the feel of the little apple charm in his fist and the flow of his magic as he’d summoned it. He’d pressed the power in, pouring it into that mold like molten metal until it had filled every crevice and formed a shape in his mind. A pattern. One that he could copy.

He dropped into himself and let that image burn onto the surface of his mind, cutting deep furrows and filling them with magic until it overflowed. Then he dragged the whole thing by brute force up out of his imagination and into the light to rip it from his brain and slam it into reality. He slapped his palm against the ground between his feet...and the world exploded in thunder.

Gabe felt something tear along his shoulder as a barb was wrenched violently to one side, and when he looked up, the mouth had been forced open into a tunnel that ended in a familiar nothingness hanging in the air. Right where the sword hilt had disappeared. The kraken bellowed deep inside the throat, and the floor beneath him turned as the monster changed position. Then the charm suddenly winked out and the mouth began to close again. Gabe glanced back to find the beaks barring his way back out into the real world, making the decision that much easier.

He jumped up and dived for the portal.

CHAPTER NINE

“I always start with a plan. I just wish I could ever finish with one.”

-Excerpt from Chapter Twenty-Three, CONscience

THE SENSATION OF PASSING through the veil was less disappointing the second time, but it was no less creepy. Gabe felt the world around him shift slightly, bending like plastic wrap under pressure until it gave with a slight pop and dropped him on the other side with the vague feeling of having just shaken off an aborted sneeze. Then he was standing in an empty bubble, surrounded by unrelenting white.

The Ether was just as beautiful and terrifying as he remembered. It swirled outside in vast clouds of pure potential that slowly caressed his invisible sphere to describe the outermost borders of it, and even as he watched, he could see the turmoil intensifying. The power outside his little cyst of reality began to spin more aggressively as it found no purchase with which to snag the imagination it could sense within, and in moments it was already building into a storm. He reminded himself that he’d been expecting that, but he still couldn’t help the shiver.

Gabe turned toward the empty bubble and was just wondering why it had happened differently this time, when a memory suddenly surfaced unbidden and imprinted itself on what felt like a waiting template. He blinked once...then he was standing in a living room. His living room, to be exact. The one in the cabin in the Canadian Rockies. The one where he and Heather had spent a few months recuperating and training and getting to know each other. And no wonder. When he looked back at all the places he’d lived over his life—houses, apartments, hotel rooms, and cars—this was the one he thought of most fondly. Home.

He turned and took it in, stifling the urge to flop onto the couch or run to the front door to see how far the illusion extended. It looked flawlessly real, but despite the twinge of calm and happiness it gave him, it wasn’t remotely why he was there. The cabin was just an interface, he knew. It was only there to keep his physical body alive in a place utterly hostile to it. So he glanced one last time at the room he’d likely never see again, then got to work.

The first Igla had been buried in the ground outside Lorelei’s childhood home, though there was no reason to believe that was how it always worked. The Ether could become anything at all, given the right shapes to take, and the Igla could be anywhere or anything by definition. Lorelei had seemed to be able to sense it, but the how of that was back with her memories inside Heather...who was probably even then fighting a big wet god-beast with her bare hands. So he’d have to improvise. Gabe held out his right palm like a metal detector and started mentally calling the second Igla like a lost puppy.

“You are trying too hard,” a familiar voice said behind him.

Gabe whipped around, going for his sword but only slapping an empty sheath at his side as he fell into a defensive stance. Then his stomach dropped as he found Phillip standing just outside the bathroom.

“You have to let it come to you,” the man continued. “A lesson recently learned, correct?”

Gabe slowly raised his left hand to the bandolier and the flash charms there, and Phillip didn’t seem to notice or care. Gabe’s first reaction was to ask what the man wanted, but that was really just to fill the air and keep a dialogue going. He knew perfectly well why the creature was there. The storm outside began to roil.

“Last time we talked you ended up smeared across the sky,” Gabe said as he slipped two fingers in a pouch to pinch a bit of cotton. “So you’re either indestructible or there’s more than one of you. Either way it’s a little cliché to keep bringing the same bad guy back, don’t you think?”

Phillip smiled vacantly and spread his hands, then started circling to his left toward the kitchen. “Both and neither are accurate, if that helps your nascent understanding. Though it doesn’t really matter to us, truth be told. We’re not ultimately interested in ensuring you people grasp the coming end. Only that it happens. Our...” He paused for a beat and seemed to go utterly still during it, even stopping mid-stride before suddenly picking right back up as if nothing had happened. “...predecessor was more concerned about encouraging respect for himself than for the process in which he was to play a part. Which led to an unfortunate attachment to his individuality. And to an inexplicable fondness for certain tangibles such as you. Inevitable given his charge, perhaps, but unacceptable all the same.”

Gabe slipped the flash charm out of the pouch and palmed it, then began moving step for step with the man to keep the distance between them. “You’re not actually him then? Wow. If that was his way of showing affection, I’m fine with keeping our relationship more professional from now on.” He edged toward the front of the couch. “So what happens now? We both know why we’re here, and there’s no sense pretending we don’t. Any chance you want to settle this with a few rounds of Rock Paper Scissors?”

The thing that looked like Phillip paused again as if accessing some internal database, then it nodded. “A joke. He was fond of those too. Academically. Along with intrigue and unnecessary complications. Part of what he liked about your species above some of the others.”

Gabe had to stop at that. “Others? What does that mean?”

The Phillip thing fabricated something like a smile on its face as it stopped at the kitchen door. “Again, we do not require that you understand, only that you comply.” The voice was similar, but not quite the same the longer the conversation went on. It was less dramatic, and had a hollowness to it.

“Fine,” Gabe replied as he reached inside himself for the rime blade and tried to feed it enough of the lingering desperation and panic to get it to manifest.

But it wouldn’t come.

He shook off the few slivers of ice and fell into a bare-handed stance. “Let’s get this over with. You’re not enough fun to risk getting melted by Ether for.”

The man only stood there and cocked his head as if confused. Despite the growing storm outside and a key to the universe at stake, he didn’t seem in any kind of hurry. “We have no intention of fighting you. Why would we? You and your allies have already proven adept at damaging the shells we are forced to inhabit just to speak with you on this narrow level, and we are not in anything like the same rush you are. You with your concerns and your lifespans.”

Gabe kept his hands up all the same. “Great! So you’re just here for...what? To cheer me along? Maybe to drop some enigmatic hints you have no intention of explaining?”

The Phillip thing shrugged mechanically, the way an alien might after only reading about it. “It does not matter. Even now, further iterations of us are gathering the remaining facets of the complex elemental concept you call ‘Igla’, and our timeline for fulfilling our purpose extends far beyond your little life. We could kill you here and set your portion free to sink back into the wilds, but that would only lead to more uncertainty. Further fools trying to take it up again and further required excursions for us to intervene. You have opened the ways now. Started the process long before its time.” He stopped and went still once more, then snapped back with a dismissive wave of his hand. “As long as you have one facet—or two—we know where they are. Where they can eventually be collected.”

Gabe had to suppress a shudder at the darkness behind the last word, and he began slowly funneling magic into the flash charm. “You know, for someone who claims to not give a crap, you’re sure doing an awful lot of talking.”

The creature stopped again, then sagged as if literally deflating. “So we are. Disappointing. Perhaps absorbing the Phillip iteration has done more damage to us than we suspected. I will...we will remain vigilant for that. At least until the cleansing is complete and we can rest once more in the bliss of oblivion.”

“You do that,” Gabe replied. “In the meantime, since you don’t care, I’m just gonna grab this Igla and be on my way.”

Phillip spread his hands. “It is not my intention to fight you here. I would have taken this facet had you not arrived, but this result is acceptable for now. So long as you cannot acquire all the others, which...” He held up a finger.

Suddenly Gabe felt a sharp pain in his right palm, and it was so shocking and overwhelming that it drove him to his knees. He nearly dropped the flash charm as he stopped himself from collapsing to the floor, and the Qi Dragon inside him roared in what he could only describe as horror. He lifted his hand to see the brand there writhing on his skin, twisting and pulling as if trying to tear itself free. And then, as he watched, two of the six remaining holes began to fill with black. The amber glow of the first Igla seemed to dim at the same time, like the light from it was being consumed, and then the brand settled back into his skin and he was left staring at two tiny voids burned into his palm.

“As I said,” the Phillip thing continued, “we are collecting them even now.” Then he waved his hand through the air toward the top of the bubble, and the Ether storm there suddenly parted as if someone had simply wiped it away.

Gabe couldn’t help but watch as those vast swaths of potential power split above them, pulling back like a series of velvety curtains to reveal the main event...but he sincerely wished he hadn’t. When the last bit of Ether faded back to melt into the surrounding storm, it did so in pieces that continued to fall apart. It frayed and split like old linen, disintegrating from the center until nothing was left of it and all that lay beyond was a vast, impossible darkness.

And it looked back...

His heart stopped. He’d seen this before. Several times. But never so close.

And it was growing closer...

“This is your end, human,” the thing said, its voice now changing disconcertingly with every word...as if it was speaking from dozens of mouths. “But there is no reason to fight it. Reality is dying by design, and we are the cleansing wind. The cycle will begin again. As it always has. As it always will.”

“No,” Gabe said, staring helplessly into that nothingness. “You can’t.” But even as the words fell from his lips, he knew they were wrong. It absolutely could. And it absolutely would. There was nothing else in it but hunger, and it would consume them all if it wasn’t stopped...though right then he couldn’t imagine the force necessary to do so. Even Aka Manah, who claimed to be standing against it, seemed pitiful by comparison. And the whole of the planet with every creature, monster, and hero in it seemed little better. The thing was swallowing galaxies in its passing. That was all it did.

The Endless Dark.

But worse still, he couldn’t find any malevolence in it. Not like the real Phillip, or Aka Manah, or even himself for that matter. It wasn’t like anything that had a semblance of sentience. No feelings, no justifications. It just was. And even as he hated it, he could feel it swallowing the emotions with nothing to give in return. It was a wildfire clearing out an overgrown forest, and it was only there to do its job. Infinite. Implacable. And there was nothing anyone could ever do to stop it. This, he realized in horror, was what Lorelei had seen—what Phillip had shown her. She’d known the futility of it, seen how useless the struggle would be, and had only been trying to buy what happiness she could for those she loved while some still existed. What a choice. The poor, poor woman.

“Ah, then you do understand,” the thing said, slipping back into the Phillip voice. “We never endeavor to make it so, and yet they always come around. Always turn away from foolish futility.” It started moving toward him. “So, you may leave from this place with another facet, as you intended. And when the time comes for us to call on you again, you will be bound to relinquish them to us. In return, your slice of reality will be saved for last. Possibly years by your reckoning. Not something we typically do, but then things...apparently...change.” It said the last word like a curse.

And that was it. That was the bargain. Gabe stared into that darkness and knew, knew the thing was absolutely right. It was a natural process of the universe, and there really was nothing to be done to stop it. He felt that in his bones now. They were struggling against a nothingness that was far more integral to the universe than the entirety of their little speck of a planet, and the idea that he would do anything but take the offer was laughable. It was better than humanity probably deserved, after all.

But then...he never could turn away from a good joke.

“Nah,” he said, finally wrenching his gaze away from that abyss. “I think we’ll go ahead and try the stupid, futile thing, if you don’t mind.”

The Phillip creature froze in place again, this time seemingly taken aback. And it was a long few seconds before it snapped back into motion. “That is...unanticipated.”

Gabe couldn’t help but laugh. “Yeah, I do that. I’ve been told I’m the wild card in this game, so I think we’ll stay at the table for one more hand. You never know, right?”

The creature stumbled a step and had to catch itself, and the clouds of Ether above began creeping back over the void. “This is...unanticipated,” it repeated, putting an emphasis on the word as if the idea of spontaneity itself was giving it trouble. “You cannot...”

“Ooooh,” Gabe said, cutting in. “Don’t tell me what I can’t do. That’s a rookie mistake. The trick to a good con is letting the mark hook themselves. If you force it, you’re just pushing me farther away.” He closed his fingers around the Qi Dragon to hide the tiny holes there. “Who knows? Maybe next lifetime I’ll be evolved enough to see the wisdom in your offer.” Then he smirked. “Though obviously I wouldn’t count on that.”

The Phillip thing began to shake. “Unantici...un...un...” Then it froze as if reaching back to the void for further instructions. “I... We cannot risk further complications.” Its face began to melt to reveal the congealed darkness within. “We will acquire these facets... NOW!”

It lunged for him.

Gabe brought up his left hand and shunted magic into the flash charm, throwing it forward just as the creature reached him. But the Phillip thing had clearly expected that and was already bringing up a hand to intercept. The skin split away from its fingers to its forearm and a sphere of pure black poured out to swallow the light an instant before it went off. The thing shuddered once as it absorbed the power, then it reached for him.

But Gabe wasn’t done. He copied over the pattern of the charm just as he had before and tripled it in his mind while shoving in a few pieces of the gravity charm for good measure, then he poured in ten times the power. He felt the construction creaking in his mind as it tried to come apart under the pressure, but he held it together from all sides with nothing but his will as he forced all of it into his right hand. The monster saw Gabe’s palm come up and it reached for the amber light of the first Igla there, ready to rip it and his soul from his body...then it froze in place for the last time as it noticed the ethereal fuse burning down.

Light blasted from Gabe’s hand with the force of a grenade, scattering everything in a twenty-foot arc and shredding the body of the monster apart into wisps of shadow plastered to the walls. Gabe fought with the afterimage of that side of the cabin burned onto his retinas for a moment, then he stared down at his hand in disbelief. It had worked again. He was doing real magic. He almost whooped with joy at that victory and at being alive in general...then the shadows started coming back together.

The panic flared back to life, feeding on the knowledge that he wouldn’t be able to surprise the monster with that same trick a second time. He needed to leave. He started climbing back to his feet, ready to run out into the yard and dig for the Igla so he could collapse this bubble and get the hell away...but then he stopped and gave himself a moment to consider.

Lorelei had been a scholar, studying these things for much of her life. So of course the Igla in her world had been buried and waiting to be uncovered like a relic. She had expected to have to work for it. But this was his world. And past the cynicism and paranoia and penchant for researching jobs to death, he really didn’t expect to have to work for much. Sure, that attitude was literally biting him in the ass lately, but for most of his life he’d skated by on charm, wit, and the occasional gross breach of social mores. But even those things didn’t feel right. If this was truly his place, and the Ether had responded to his essential core to construct a physical interface for him to access, then there was really only one way to find the Igla here. Pure dumb luck.

Gabe reached out blindly to his right and shoved his hand beneath the couch cushion, latching onto the first thing he found there. He pulled it out just as the Phillip thing came back together into something like a man and turned its eyeless sockets toward him. The creature dropped its jaw far too low and its mouth began to grow into a sucking vortex while ropes of inky darkness burst from its back to lash at the walls and ceiling. Then Gabe opened his hand and found...a dark blue guitar pick. It was glowing faintly and playing the memory of a sad refrain on his dad’s old acoustic.

“Huh,” he said.

The Phillip thing howled.

Gabe summoned the Qi Dragon from the deep, and for once it came right to the call. “No bullshit this time!” he thought at it as it passed. And an instant later, the second Igla was flowing in.

All of creation hit him like a bomb.

The process was quicker this time now that he knew what to do, but every moment of it was no less an agony. He opened the void at his center to let that vast power pass through and collect safely into his palm, and immediately he was stretched far too thin as the whole of reality surged through his one small mind. It grew and grew as it crowded in from every corner of the universe, threatening to rip him apart and scatter him like him like stardust...and then, just as suddenly...it was over. Eternity rushed by in an instant before collapsing into itself and settling neatly into the space made for it. Then he looked down to find a tiny blue light joining the amber one. They seemed to strengthen against the two black flecks, balancing, and the pain in his hand subsided. He closed his fingers around them.

The Phillip thing was still growing. The tendrils had stretched across that side of the cabin to form a terrifying web with it at the center, anchoring the creature while the vortex of its mouth expanded and started drawing in loose objects. Gabe felt himself being pulled in too, and he knew immediately he needed to leave. Through the portal. Now.

And it was only then that he realized he had no idea where.

He pitched himself behind the couch as the black vortex began tearing apart the room around him, and he quickly cast his senses through the Ether and the veil to the only point of reference he had back in reality. It was a slim hope, considering he’d never done anything like it before, but he certainly wasn’t spoiled by other options. There was an open door somewhere just waiting for him to pass back through, he just needed to know where it was. Leaving from the wrong place could send him anywhere, in theory, and he absolutely couldn’t let that happen. He had too much to lose back where he’d started.

The ceiling above him creaked and buckled inward. So when the vague impression pinged back to him, he could do little more than trust his gut that it was right. There was no time to check again.

Gabe dived out from behind the couch just as it went flying into the vortex, and he rolled to the left until he felt the one small spot that seemed to resonate with where he wanted to be. He immediately felt himself being sucked up into the air and pulled into the darkness, then he pushed with his magic and the door through the veil opened with the barest touch. He jumped through just as the portal and cabin collapsed behind him, and the Ether immediately swarmed in to swallow every atom of fabricated reality along with the screeching Phillip monster. The darkness smeared across the storm...

Then Gabe was falling.

“GAH!” was all he had time to say before dropping twenty feet through the air to land in the sea. The water swallowed him, instantly cutting off his scream and all sound entirely, and all he could do was take a fraction of a moment to re-acclimate himself to reality. He looked to his right to see the vast body of the kraken falling limp and broken back down to depths, and while that was definitely a relief to see, it wasn’t where he’d wanted to be. Then he felt the familiar twinge and looked to his left.

Heather had tied herself to the rope, probably to free her hands for fighting, but now she was hanging limp from it as the snagged line dragged her down with the dead monster. Already she was deep beyond where he thought he could safely reach, and she was only getting farther. Fast.

But then he’d done a whole series of stupid things that day, so he wasn’t about to balk at one more.

Gabe kicked hard and raced down toward her, somehow diving faster than he’d expected to in the wake of the massive kraken, and in only a few moments he was grasping her limp hand. He tugged at the rope around her waist, then slapped at the empty jian sheath only to curse its absence again. She needed air. They both did. He searched his magic for something that could slice the rope or burn through it underwater, but nothing came to mind in his growing panic. The only two spells he knew would be useless, and he’d stupidly neglected to bring anything as simple as a pocket knife. So he bent to the knot instead, pulling at it first with his fingernails and then his teeth to undo her hasty mess of lashings. One knot came free at once, then another. And slowly, agonizingly, it began to loosen.

His lungs were burning again as the last loop finally let go and he was able to yank Heather out of it while the Kraken dragged it further down. He pulled her first against his chest, then quickly moved her body over his shoulder as he kicked and flailed with his free arm toward the surface. It was dark above him and seemed so far away.

Much too far, really...

Then again he was suddenly swimming like a fish, racing inexplicably fast up toward the light as if the sea itself was urging him on. With aching muscles and a pounding heart Gabe finally burst to the surface and sucked in a huge breath—then was immediately clobbered back down beneath a cresting wave. He nearly lost Heather in his frantic fight to get back up, but snapshot memories of movie scenes flashed in his brain and he got behind her, slipping his arms beneath hers as he kicked with his last bit of strength to get her head above water. The choppy waves shoved back down at them, only letting their faces surface for moments, and all Gabe could do was cling to Heather with one hand as he flailed with the other in search of anything that might help.

By one last bit of luck, that actually worked.

Gabe’s fingers suddenly scraped against something solid, and he kicked with everything he had left to move close enough to get a grip on it. He pulled the thing in, glimpsing the bright red and broken edges. It was flat, and it was floating. It was everything.

He awkwardly pulled down on the thing to tip that side enough to move Heather into position on it, and the thought flickered in his mind that he had no way of lifting her limp weight atop it without some kind of leverage. But then the water again was doing the work for him, seeming to rise up to practically float her the rest of the way there. And in a moment, she was safe atop it. It was a testament to his desperation and exhaustion that he didn’t question that, happy just to have any solution. Then he nearly ruined everything by sinking the raft as he tried to clamber up behind. He fell back into the water twice before finally finding a good balance point to climb up, and he still had to move carefully atop the wreckage, inching himself onto it by bits until he was mostly out of the water.

Suddenly he heard a gurgling sound next to him, and then Heather was turning her head and violently spewing water back into the sea. He held her arm tight to keep her from blindly rolling off, and after a few more retches she started coughing and spitting between frantic gasps of air. A few seconds later, she finally seemed to understand where she was and what was happening, and she began weakly helping herself to slide into place to counter his weight on the other side. He gave her arm a desperate squeeze, and after several more breaths that each seemed slightly easier, she at last nodded that she was mostly okay.

When Gabe saw that, he finally slid a little farther toward the side to better balance their ragged raft, and from there he realized he could still read the bright white letters of “THE CLASS” before they ended in a messy tear at the edge. And all he could do in that moment was slump down onto them, too exhausted even to hold up his own head. He pulled in breath after glorious breath as he settled his face right over the C and the L.

A few seconds later, Heather took in a breath that didn’t gurgle or end in hacking, and she cleared her throat. “Two down,’ she panted, “five to go.”

Gabe groaned and slid his right palm up to his face to see the tiny spark of blue now lit in the brand there. It seemed so peaceful like that. There was no sense telling her about the other two just yet. That would come.

“Hooray,” he said weakly.

She slid closer to him and their little raft wobbled dangerously, but then their faces were only a few inches apart. “Might be hard to get back to shore like this,” she said, her voice holding a little quiver of both exhaustion and fear. “What do you think we should do?”

Gabe turned his neck to the side and cracked it in a dozen places, and the relief that washed through him made him let out a little grunt of pleasure. “Quick power nap? Maybe find some of those sexy mermaids?”

She smiled and reached up to close his hand and take it in hers. “Genius.” Then her face went serious, and he felt a bit of genuine trepidation through the bond. “Can I ask you something and get an honest answer?” She seemed to barely have any voice left.

Gabe searched her expression and nodded as best he could, sensing another one of those defining relationship tests he kept expecting. “Anything.”

She swallowed and pulled in a deep breath as if steeling herself for it, then met his eyes. “How do I look?”

He laughed then, long and hard enough to make his throat and head hurt. Their raft shook with it, and when he finally got himself under control, he actually looked at her in mock consideration. Her hair was plastered to her face in a very un-Heather way, and whatever make-up she’d been wearing was long gone. Her olive skin was pale and damp, and a bruise she’d earned at some point was already beginning to darken the right side of her jaw. There was a bit of blood at her temple and at her nose, and the sun was setting behind her to leave her features in shadow.

He frowned. “Unfairly pretty, considering how many times over you should be dead. Also like someone who just went a few rounds with a god-beast. Is that okay?”

She smiled weakly. “Good enough.”

She leaned in to kiss his forehead, but something suddenly broke the water next to them and Gabe sucked in a breath. He tried to push himself up to get ready for an attack, but the movement nearly toppled their raft and forced him to flatten quickly back down to avoid spilling them both back into the sea. He reached for his magic instead, finding a few remaining scraps to pull together into something...but then let it all go when he saw what had joined them.

“You people are exhausting!” Penny said brightly as she swam effortlessly next to them.

Gabe thumped his head back to the fiberglass and let out a long sigh. “Yeah. We all had an equal amount of fun. Good to see you, Penny.”

She giggled and rolled over in the water like a dolphin, then somehow stood still as if on a platform beneath the surface. “Sorry I could only give you a little help in the water. It’s been a long time since I’ve used so much magic at once! And I would have been back sooner, but I had to dive for this!” She reached down and pulled up a bright yellow box with a big black antenna sticking out of the top, then flicked a rubberized switch to make a red light come on at the front. “Should have a ride home in a little bit!”

Gabe stared at her in disbelief and joy, but she merely dropped the beacon onto their raft before dipping back under the surface with barely a splash. A moment later, she reemerged floating on her back and spitting out an arc of water that split midair to cascade to either side of her body. The sun began falling below the horizon.

Gabe cleared his throat. “So, as I was saying about my plan to get us out of here—”

Heather cut him off with a little laugh, and then her eyes closed peacefully and she was asleep a moment later.

“Of all your magic,” he whispered, “I’d really love to know how you do that.”

Then he turned his head so he could see the beacon that was hopefully about to save them. He tried not to think about all the bad news he was going to have to deliver when Heather woke up, and again when they got back to Lincoln. But for now, it was enough to know it wasn’t all bad news. And with any luck, it might not even be a boat full of monster pirates that came to pick them up.

ELSEWHERE

LAUREN GATHERED THE fabric of her dress and crept down the hall. She could have changed clothes for this, choosing from the whole wardrobe Alexander had given her, but something felt wrong about taking more from him than she had to. It wasn’t guilt exactly, but it also wasn’t not. Just another of her confused emotions these days, to go along with the buzz of anxiety and constant impression that she should be much more upset about getting back to her family...if only she could muster the energy for it...

She tried to push that out of her mind as she moved across the plush carpet. Sleep had become impossible for her after learning everything she had, and exploring the big empty rental house was one of the few ways she’d found to calm the whispers inside. One of the few ways of avoiding the same nightmare of the vast darkness he’d shown her. There in that dream world. Where he was apparently a god now...

She tried to focus on the exploration. For some reason she enjoyed looking at the pictures of strangers on the walls and the décor picked by some absent family. Rooms that obviously belonged to children. Bright colors. Items left out as if the owners were just outside. Those made her heart hurt for daughters that she could barely remember...

Her thoughts felt so fragmented. Why...

A sudden noise down the hall pulled her from her reverie and she ducked into a dark bathroom just as a door closed and a bobbing light winked on around the corner. She considered closing the door and putting her weight against it, but quickly realized how stupid that would be in a house visited by monsters who could turn wood to kindling with their bare hands. No, she hadn’t been hurt yet and there was a reason for that....even if she had no idea what it was. Her best defense was to go unnoticed, but a close second was being seen clearly. She seemed to be important to Alexander somehow, and he seemed to scare everyone else around him at least as much as he did her. Those strange and terrifying creatures who called him Aka Manah.

The light stopped in the hall right outside the door, and she held her breath.

“I saw you go in there,” a male voice said, sounding like it belonged to the man called Reznick. “So you can either come out or you can close the door and be sure to courtesy flush.”

Lauren pulled herself up straighter, trying to affect unconcern, then she stepped out of the bathroom into the little circle of light. The man was about her height, and he was holding a silver tray covered in a red napkin that was stuck in places with something darker soaking through. He wore a feathered cloak that looked like it was barely holding together, and the glow emanating from the gnarled twig stuck behind his ear was bright enough that she had to squint against it.

“Oh, sorry,” he said, reaching up to adjust his lank hair over it and dim the glow. “Every fucking thing around here has dark vision except me.” He paused and gave her an appraising look that lingered a touch too long. “Well, and you I guess.”

Lauren considered turning around and going straight back to her room, but the idea that the man would be following her even part of the way changed her mind. So she only nodded curtly and moved past, turning nearly sideways to avoid touching him. There was a laundry room down the hall that was always empty, and she knew she could stay there for bit until she worked the courage up to head back.

“He’s busy, you know,” Reznick called after her. “I wouldn’t bug him.”

She stopped and turned so that her body was still mostly faced away but she could see him from the corner of her eye. “I wasn’t going to.”

Reznick shrugged, making his feathers rustle. “Hey, it’s no skin off my dick if you do, but I’m just saying...” He carefully adjusted the concealing napkin. “I wouldn’t.”

Lauren almost turned to go again, but suddenly something brushed against her leg and she saw a flash of white bone near her foot before the thing vanished. It had looked like something the size of a cat. She pressed her back against the wall and sucked a breath to scream, but then caught herself just in time to make it come out as a high gasp. “What was that?!”

Reznick was already waving a hand to calm her. “Don’t worry!” He snapped a couple times to get her attention. “Hey, it’s harmless. To you, anyway. Just something I’m working on. A prototype.”

“I...saw its spine,” she said, numbly.

He nodded and glanced around as if the thing might still be lurking nearby. “Yeah, probably. Makes it easier to transport if you’re not hauling a bunch of spare flesh around.”

Lauren didn’t know what to say to that. She wanted to turn and rush down the hall, away from the man and his secrets and monsters...but then something whispered that she should be asking more questions and taking more chances. She had to believe there was more to her life than just hazy impressions and this one unfamiliar house, and here finally she had someone who was actually talking to her like she was a human being. She knew she had a family out there...she just couldn’t remember why she wasn’t with them. Maybe he knew.

She gathered her dress and reluctantly peeled herself away from the wall. “Why shouldn’t I bother Alexander? Hypothetically?”

The man blew out a breath and shook his head. “If you don’t know that by now, you’re pretty fucking stupid, lady.”

She nodded, remembering the impossible things she’d seen Alexander do so far, and the hints of how much deeper it had to go. Remembering the darkness he’d shown her...

“So are you his butler or his high priest?” she finally asked.

Reznick made a noise of disgust and squared his shoulders, then suddenly stopped all at once and glanced absently to one side. “Shit. How the fuck did that happen?” He mumbled the question to himself, but he didn’t seem to mind that she’d heard. A moment later, he straightened again. “He’s a crafty bastard. Really sucks you in.”

Lauren watched the man through it, reading his face and seeing something there she might understand. She turned fully toward him then and took a chance. “If you don’t like it, why do you stay?”

The man seemed to think about that for a long time, then he shrugged. “I’m a member of the fucking Chamber, which, if you don’t know, is a big deal. And I’m one of the more powerful people you’re likely to meet. But he’s...him. And if you’ve gotta stand in somebody’s shadow, it might as well be the biggest motherfucker around.” He reached up with one hand and scratched his stubble. “Plus, I’m pretty sure the guy’s gonna save the fucking world. So I might as well be at the front of the line for it.”

Lauren didn’t quite know what to do with that, but it sounded to her like the first bit of plain truth she’d found in a long time. She stepped back toward him, feeling her eyes go wider. “How? From that darkness? What’s going on? And why can’t I remember how I got here? I think I have a family somewhere, and—”

Reznick held up his hand to cut her off, then quickly slipped it back under the tray when it began to tip. “Naw, hold on. None of that’s for me to say. Most days I don’t even know what’s really going on, frankly, but I wouldn’t tell you even if I did. He gets real excited about all his little plans, and he likes to do this big reveal thing at the end. Fucked me over good a couple times that way, actually.” He chuckled as if betrayal was just part of the job. “So it’s enough for you and me to know that he’s the smartest, toughest guy in any room. And for whatever reason, he wants us around.”

Lauren took another step toward him. “But—”

“No,” he said, raising his voice a little. “No buts. At least, not tonight.” He smirked but it only lasted for a second. “If your choices are between one piece of shit or a pile of it, take the piece and say thank you. You try to find a third way and you’ll just end up spreading it all around.”

Lauren stopped and took a breath, then let her eyes drift to the ground. “You’re not very pleasant, are you?”

Reznick barked a short laugh. “Never saw the point!” Then he turned and made as if to leave. But before he got more than a few steps, he stopped and called back over his shoulder. His voice was somehow softer. “I’m serious, lady. Just...do whatever he wants.” He started walking down the hall and the light faded with him. “It’s easier.”

Lauren watched the horrible man leave until his light faded down the hall. She could go back now. She could obey. She could get undressed, get in bed, and stare up at the ceiling until exhaustion won or the sun came up again. It would be easier.

She looked back over her shoulder. Or she could hang on to this rare moment of clarity, when she at least felt like she could muster enough energy to question instead of drifting wherever she was pointed. And she could go searching for some real answers.

Alexander’s door was ajar when she got there.

She thought about pushing straight in and demanding her answers, asking why she was there, and why she couldn’t remember her husband’s face, and what any of this had to do with a son she hadn’t seen in three decades...but something told her to wait. And to watch.

The room had been cleared of furniture and left bare, unadorned walls and hardwood floor completely empty except for a single chair off to one side. And Alexander was standing in the middle of the space, just as bare himself except for a thin white cloth wrapped around his waist. His body was painted with dark red symbols of some kind, many still dripping where they weren’t yet dry, and he was staring off into the air as if seeing something hanging there that she couldn’t. The inky black stain on his hand seemed to be creeping up nearly to his shoulder now, as if an impossibly dark infection was slowly eating the arm. But beyond those things, she was only able to register how much more muscular he seemed to be. Taller too, somehow. And except for the alarming number of surgical scars on his skin, he looked younger than he had any right to. Almost beautiful, she realized.

He was mumbling to himself as she watched.

“...never be simple. Never leave us alone to work...”

She almost gasped and backed away, but then realized he wasn’t talking about her. From the distant look in his eyes, in fact, she wasn’t sure he was anywhere near that room just then.

“...more than expected...too many to fight...negotiate or redirect? ...No.” He spoke in fragments while slowly turning and moving his fingers through the air as if plucking strings. And though his eyes passed over the door where she was standing, his expression didn’t so much as flicker. “Perhaps if I...ah...too many variables. They are close...good defensive location...not underestimate him again, but not enough...send Reznick?” His lips quirked in a little smirk. “...kill him sooner than accept him...Paul? Too messy...send a team...all out war. Too soon. What then? Go myself...complicated...waste... not allow him to be taken there...who could...”

He stopped suddenly and turned back a few degrees to find something in the air and gently poke at it. “Oh! Surely not...but there...yes...” Then he was picking at the air with both hands, moving slowly and delicately like a man looking for a contact lens in thick carpet. “Two pieces...never guessed...first the bait, of course...”

Lauren watched him come back to himself as if rising up from hypnosis, then he drifted over to the chair where a phone was perched atop it. He rolled his head as he dialed, then matched the motion with his shoulders before bringing the phone up to his ear.

“It’s me. I need you to find another phone number,” he said.

He exchanged a few mumbled instructions she couldn’t hear, then waited several long seconds as the person on the other end replied. He hung up and dialed again. This time he waited only a few rings before placing the phone back on the chair and turning on the speaker.

“...questions.” The man on the other end was already saying. “Who the hell are you and how did you get this number?”

Alexander stretched his arms far to the sides and raised himself onto his toes, bunching the muscles in his back and legs and cracking some of the few symbols that had dried by then. “Oh, have no fear,” he replied. “I won’t keep you long enough to trace your call.”

“I know you won’t,” the man said. “Answer my questions or I hang up now.”

Alexander finished his stretch with a groan of pleasure. “I’m only contacting you because something unfortunate is about to happen, and I believe you may be able to prevent it.”

The man on the other end laughed. “And why the fuck should I want to help you? I have my own problems.”

“Oh, it’s not for me,” Alexander said. Then he turned that bright blue eye directly to Lauren and dropped her a wink. “You see, you and I have a mutual acquaintance.”

CHAPTER TEN

“Here’s something they don’t tell you when they hand out instructions for life: things move much slower when you hate where you are. Which means people who don’t like their lives end up feeling like they get so much more of it. I was there for a lot of years, dragging through the days until I ran out of money and did something I disliked to someone who didn’t deserve it just so I could carry on supporting a man I loathed in the life I didn’t want. And back then, every day seemed to take forever. But since meeting Heather...I don’t know. The time just flies by. Even when we’re not actively being chased by demons or thrust into the cosmic games of gods, it still seems like we barely have time to catch our breath. Which is a filthy piece of irony, really. And one of the reasons why I suspect there isn’t anyone good up there authoring destiny for us. What kind of deity would design an hour of sex to go by in a complete blur, while ten minutes of an opera feels like the slow gasping death of a thousand galaxies? A monster one, that’s what kind.”

-Excerpt from Chapter Twenty-Three, CONscience

GABE NEVER THOUGHT he’d be excited to drop down the hole into the Warrens again, but as they pulled up to the abandoned house that sat atop it, he was almost giddy. This morning, anything dry, stable, and not trying to eat him definitely qualified as paradise.

“What are you going to tell her?” Heather asked as the car came to a stop.

He pulled out his brand new phone and finalized the payment for the driver with a healthy tip from Ken’s account. “Hwei-ru? I figured I’d warm her up with a few jokes, then creep gently into the obstruction of justice stuff.” He glanced up at the driver who was carefully not paying attention, then he doubled the tip. “I’m kinda hoping she’ll forget to ask how we got home, honestly.”

“You know what I mean.” She flicked her eyes down to his hand.

He sighed. “Still working on that. Any chance you picked up some sweet fingerless gloves for me at the airport?”

She raised her eyebrows and opened the car door, then reached down to take the lone duffel bag they’d bought and stuffed with gift-shop clothes to avoid being suspected as drug mules. Gabe watched her go, but stayed behind a moment to collect the bits of trash they’d accumulated from their driving breakfast.

“You live here?” Penny asked excitedly as she pressed her nose to the window. “It’s...amazing! So much bigger than the docks I usually sleep under!”

Gabe wadded up a paper bag and glanced up at the dilapidated five-bedroom with peeling paint and partially collapsed porch. Then he shot the driver a quick grin and shrug. “It’s, uh, a fixer-upper.” He opened the phone again and tripled the tip. “Come on, girly. We’ll show you around.”

They’d traveled under the guise that Penny was their niece, which helped smudge the fact that she looked and acted nothing like them. But, they’d soon discovered that the ruse really only worked for about ten minutes until the sprite’s personality became too weird to ignore. The constant shushing and shrugging on the eight-hour trip back had been exhausting.

Gabe got out and gave the driver a little nod as Penny bolted out the other door to start doing cartwheels in the weedy front lawn, then he joined Heather on the sidewalk as the car pulled away behind them. “You know,” he said, “even though this place is still filled with blood stains and the stench of inhuman depravity, I could actually see this working for us. A little paint, maybe a picket fence adorned with the heads of our enemies...almost like a picture book.”

Heather looked at him, then to Penny and the house. Her face flickered in a barely perceptible moment of panic, then she smirked and shook her head. “Very funny. I can talk any man on earth into doing pretty much anything I want, but there is no way I’d convince Gabriel Delling to settle down in suburbia.”

He almost started arguing that they’d already lived a shadow of that life in the cabin, so it wasn’t that crazy. But then he caught a hint of warning through the bond and pushed the thought aside. It had been a joke, sure, but the best jokes often had a bit of truth in them. Though so did the worst ones, really.

“Obviously kidding,” he replied. “It is tough to imagine you being happy filling lunch boxes with peanut butter and jelly sandwiches.”

But instead of relief, the bond carried back a hint of annoyance this time, and her eyes narrowed. “I have literally made you a peanut butter and jelly sandwich for lunch. Several times, I think.”

He spread his hands. “No, I’m not...disparaging your cooking here. I just mean the home thing. I can’t picture you settling down either. Getting a real job, having a family, building things instead of breaking them. Yuck, right?” He stopped as the feeling and her expression only got worse. “Right? I’m agreeing with you.”

She shrugged and started toward the house, suddenly broadcasting nothing but manufactured disinterest. “Right. Obviously. Now let’s get inside before the neighbors start to get crazy ideas about us being some kind of ridiculous family or—” She glanced down toward the end of the block and suddenly froze with shock. “Hunter!” she hissed.

Gabe’s hands went to his empty bandolier and missing sheath before he could stop them, but then she was already relaxing and talking through it.

“Wait...no,” she said. “It’s okay.” She pointed to a figure two blocks down on a busier street. “He’s following some guy in rough clothes. Didn’t get a good look.”

Gabe let all the tension drain out in a rush, and his arms dropped back to his sides like lead weights. “Cripes! Welcome freaking home, I guess. Though better him than us for once, huh?” When she didn’t respond, he turned and found her already climbing the broken stairs to get into the house. She didn’t so much as glance back.

He watched her go and considered where he’d messed up this time. She clearly hadn’t wanted him to talk about serious commitment...but she hadn’t wanted him to joke about the lack of it either. No right answers there. It was like she wanted the conflict but didn’t want him to want it, and recently that seemed to be putting him on the wrong side of all the big conversations. By trying to make her happy, he was apparently making her less so. In his previous life, that kind of mess would have meant it was long past time to get out. It’s just what happened when you got too close. But now...it probably meant he needed grow or mature emotionally or something. That didn’t sound so hard.

Penny saw Heather disappear into the house and she quickly followed with a little yelp of excitement, and Gabe went right behind—if only to see how the sprite would manage to put a positive spin on the den of horrors she was about to enter.

“...making matters more complex,” Hwei-ru was already saying as he came in. She was wearing a deep scowl as she faced Heather, but when he and Penny entered, the expression softened considerably.

“Miss Hwei-ru!” the sprite exclaimed before throwing herself forward to embrace the gui po. “It’s lovely to see you again!” Then she leaned back and crinkled her nose as she studied the translucent woman. “...or mostly.”

Hwei-ru laughed lightly and her face bunched up into a rare smile. “Thank you so much for your assistance, Pennigera dear. We could not have done this without you.”

Penny smiled brightly and went in for another hug. “It was so much fun! I got to meet new friends, go on a real adventure, I saw an actual kraken—which was scary—and then we told lies to a whole bunch of Coast Guard people!”

Hwei-ru’s expression dropped and she shot Gabe a look.

He held up his hands. “It’s...a little more complicated than that! Listen, we were basically dead in the water surrounded by wreckage, okay? And we had this beacon. But the Coast Guard who picked us up obviously wanted to know what the crap happened out there. So, I had a few fake IDs in my wallet and this dumb idea from an old con called ‘pig in a poke’ where—”

Hwei-ru suddenly vanished and reappeared directly in front of him to snatch his right wrist in a surprisingly firm hold. He tried to pull away on reflex, then closed his fingers around his palm. But by then it was too late.

“What...is this?” she asked, the color draining from her. “Tell me now.”

Gabe looked to Heather who only returned a sympathetic grimace, then he sighed and slowly reopened his hand. The two tiny black holes were still there and were still just as terrifying. “It happened all at once,” he replied, letting his voice lower with the fresh memory. “I was there, getting the second Igla and about to win. And then...Phillip.” He shook his head. “No. Not him, but something like it.”

Hwei-ru swallowed and it almost felt like her hand was trembling where it touched him. “The Endless Dark,” she supplied softly.

He looked to Heather again and anchored himself on her, then nodded.

Hwei-ru dropped his hand. “Then all is lost.”

She said it so matter-of-factly that Gabe almost thought it was some kind of sick joke, but then the look on her face immediately put the lie to that.

“What?” he asked.

She took a step back and sagged. “Just as I said. Our single thin hope was entirely predicated on retrieving all seven pieces of the Igla before our enemies could. And if two have already been lost so easily, the other three will likely not be far behind. Either we have badly misunderstood the way this conceptual construct was both built and secured, or something significant changed upon your capture of the first fragment. Perhaps the doors were thrown wide at that very moment and we have been foolishly slow in our pursuit...or perhaps I have been foolishly secure in what I have believed to be true.” Her whole body appeared to fade several shades, and she looked like she might simply drop through the floor. “Fate does seem determined to teach me humility lately.”

Gabe lifted his other hand to his forehead and rubbed hard. “Okay, there’s a lot to unpack there. But mostly what I’m getting is that you think we’re just...screwed? The scoreboard seems tied to me, but now you’re saying it’s basically as good as a loss?” He waited for an answer, but she only pursed her lips. The frustration and fear of the last twenty-four hours reignited in his gut, replacing any relief he’d been feeling, and he spread his arms wide with it. “Well, that just...can’t be right! If this freaking mechanism was put in place for us to stop the bad guys, then there has to be another way through. Right? Otherwise what the hell was any of this for? These Creator bastards can’t have expected a flawless performance or nothing. That’s insane! There’s always a loophole or a back door or a trick nobody’s tried.” He looked around the room and saw only blank faces. “So hit me with it. What’s next?”

Hwei-ru now looked older than she ever had, and she didn’t respond. And though Penny still didn’t quite seem to understand what was happening, her little face was somber as she stared back at him.

Gabe took a deep breath and collected up some of the errant emotions swirling through him until he found the quiet center where he could think clearly again. “Because if we’re just calling it a foregone conclusion that they’ll get all the other Iglas, and mine are the only ones left to grab after that...” He paused and let the thought settle. “...There’s really no reason for me to be alive anymore, is there?” He let his voice go dead. “They’ll be coming for me next, so why fight it?”

Hwei-ru met his eyes, but it was Heather who spoke up first. “We won’t let that happen, Gabe. We’ll find another way.”

Hwei-ru turned toward her with a sad scowl. “You have no idea what you are—”

“Yes I do,” Heather cut in, leveling a glare at the older woman. “I have her memories and skills—the ones you taught her—whether you like it or not. And I genuinely believe there’s a path we haven’t thought of yet. Maybe somewhere in our assumptions of the Igla and the structure of space/time, or maybe somewhere else entirely. But we certainly won’t find it by giving up and fading away.”

Hwei-ru’s eyes narrowed and her face darkened as she began to re-solidify, and Gabe could feel her ghostly power coalescing around them. Heather slowly moved her right foot back and subtly shifted the duffel bag in her hand until it looked ready to be used as a shield or weapon. But then all at once the power dropped and the moment bled away, and the older woman was once again standing straight and placid and comfortably aloof.

She stared at Heather for another long moment, then inclined her head. “Just so. Thank you for...the perspective.”

Heather didn’t seem to quite know how to react, and there was a mixture of tension and relief in her as she shifted out of obvious combat readiness. She nodded back. “No problem. We all need it sometimes.”

Hwei-ru’s eyes lingered a moment longer, then she turned toward the basement stairs. “This leads me to believe the three remaining Iglas are already in jeopardy, and we must move even more quickly if we hope to secure them. I will make arrangements to get you to the next site before beginning work on theories to explain how our enemies were able to best us.” She glanced to Heather. “I will pull the pertinent research. Should you have the inclination...” She started slipping down through the floor. “...I would welcome your input.” Then she vanished.

Gabe let out a breath and exchanged a glance with Heather, but Penny was first to break what was left of the tension. “Do you think she was talking to me? I mean, I don’t know what ‘pertinent’ means, but I could try!”

Heather smiled despite herself and held out a hand to the sprite. “Come on, we’ll show you how to get down.”

The basement was no less creepy the second time down, but somehow Penny’s running commentary really did cheer the place up. “Ooh, fun basement!” she said as they passed a human-sized cage. “We could turn this into a dance club. Oh! Or we could store canned pickles!”

Gabe looked to Heather in disbelief, and she shrugged. “You said she could come,” she whispered.

He nodded slowly as they hit the bottom step. “Yeah, Penny, we’ll think about those ideas. In the meantime, there’s a big, dark, scary hole we need to go down.”

“Okay!” she said, moving right for the edge and bending over it like it was a fun puddle and not a straight shaft halfway to hell. Then before anyone could so much as speak, she took a step forward and dropped in.

“Ah!” Gabe yelled, lunging three long strides to the hole just in time to see Penny’s face pop back up. Her little hands were clinging to the top rung of a ladder now bolted to the inside wall.

“Yes?” she asked.

It took Gabe a second to fully process what had just happened. “I, uh...” he waved vaguely at the darkness below. “Just be careful, is all.”

The sprite tilted her head to one side. “Awww, you too Mr. Gabe! Last one to the Warrens is a silly goose!” Then she giggled and vanished back down.

Gabe took a step back and tried to pretend like he hadn’t just suffered a minor panic attack. He rubbed his hands together and gave Heather a weak smile. “They...put in a ladder.”

She nodded. “Looks like.”

“I didn’t know,” he said, trying and utterly failing to make it sound anything but sheepish.

“Probably not top of the briefing list with all the Armageddons popping up lately,” she replied.

He toed the steel bracket bolted into the concrete and nodded knowingly as if he had any clue about the quality of the installation. “It’s a good addition, huh? Certainly better than a rope. Seems like we’re really moving up in the world.”

Heather sighed and adjusted the duffel strap across her shoulders to free both hands. “I feel like you’re setting yourself up for some kind of elevation pun, and I’m not really—”

“Though I suppose it’s more of a ladderal move,” he cut in.

She nodded sadly and bent to start down the hole. “Yep. Good lord.”

Gabe waited until she was several yards down before carefully following. “Hey,” he grunted as he lowered himself in to find a rung with his foot, “that’s what happens when you limit my pop culture references. It’s gotta come out somewhere.”

They all made it easily to the bottom, though Gabe’s various wounds did start throbbing again somewhere around the halfway mark. And it was only a few more minutes—and a quick intervention with Penny to keep her from “seeing what the harpies were up to”—before they were back at the new steel door Ken had installed.

Gabe knocked with the side of his fist as he looked to Penny. “Okay, we should warn you that this place is a little rough around the edges. I mean, maybe not sleeping-under-a-dock rough, but still.” The door opened. “I wasn’t joking when I said it was a fixer...oh...” He trailed off when he saw the room. Or rather, the command center.

The place had been transformed. The stone walls and iron fixtures were all still there around the edges, but the huge empty space had been filled with hundreds of prefabricated wall panels that now segmented the room into something like an office complex. Some of the nearest panels already had pieces of art and antiquities hung on them, and the whole setup was carefully arranged to draw the eye straight to the massive stone pillars still dominating the room like a central atrium. Ken was standing by the door with a harried but delighted expression on his face, and he looked like he hadn’t slept in days.

“We were only gone one day, right?” Gabe asked as they stepped in.

Heather scanned the room with the same disbelief. “Thirty-five hours, technically, but...yeah.” She tossed the duffel bag down near the feet of a suit of armor. “Ken, how in heaven’s name did you do all this?”

The man chuckled and closed the door behind them. “More like ‘how in hell’s name.’ Well, just the first circle, but...” He paused and shook his head. “No, that joke might be a stretch. Maybe offensive even...I guess. I don’t know. God’s, I’m tired.” His muddy British accent was even more slurred than usual, but he was still wearing a giddy grin. “Anyway, I had lots of help. Let me show you this!”

He moved farther in, past a row of shields apparently waiting to be hung, then stopped as the line of panels broke to form a branching hallway. “This leads to the armory—or what will be once we get stuff sorted and some more orders come in. I thought it best to have it right up front so we’re not hauling big bloody axes all through the place. Bloody bloody axes,” he said to himself with another chuckle. Then he started pointing. “We've also got a security room up here to monitor the cameras and proximity alarms outside. That’s how we knew you were coming. Then there’s some miscellaneous rooms there, a big sparring and workout area a bit beyond that, kitchen next, bathrooms, and sleeping quarters all the way in. Plenty of space for more stuff as we think of it too. None of it’s actually installed and working yet, obviously, but the bones are here!” He turned back to them with a grin. “Eventually I’d like to do all these walls up in stone and really lean into the whole castle vibe, maybe do a second floor around the edges and use the vertical space too, but for now...what do think?” He seemed almost out of breath at the recitation.

“I think...” Gabe began.

“Wowee, wow!” Penny interrupted, pretty well summing his thoughts anyway. She ran down the hall and started touching everything she could reach. “This is like a fairy tale! Like a...business...fairy tale!”

“Well there you go, Ken,” Gabe said, working hard not to start touching stuff himself, “a fairy tale endorsement from an actual fairy.”

“Sprite!” Penny called back as she started spinning in place for no apparent reason.

“Sprite,” Gabe corrected. “But how much freaking help did you have, man? I thought the whole idea was to keep this a secret underground lair.”

Ken slapped his forehead and immediately seemed to regret it. “Right! I was supposed to tell you that first. Pretty much all of this can be credited to Hwei-ru’s friend. I would’ve had trouble getting just one of these panels down here, let alone one hundred and seventy-five...eighty? Can’t remember what we’re up to now with all—”

“Ken,” Heather cut in gently. “What friend?”

He grimaced and nodded again, then turned and wandered off. They followed him deeper into the new maze of half-built rooms and halls, and Gabe was able to recognize what only a few sections were destined to be by their stacked contents. He saw one area that was laid out like a conference room, and another that might eventually be a computer and technology lab complete with several 3D printers and laser engravers already buzzing away and filling the place with the smell of melted plastic. Then they began hearing the sounds of muffled working coming from the far corner of the facility, and Penny bolted ahead and around the bend, unable to contain her excitement anymore. Gabe glanced to Ken to make sure it was safe for the sprite, but then she exclaimed in surprise and answered the question.

Gabe and Heather both broke into a run at the same time, leaving a confused Ken behind them, and they came around the corner just in time to find the little sprite standing in front of roughly four hundred pounds of muscle and fur.

“You’re big!” she said, craning her neck all the way back to look up.

“And you are small,” the minotaur replied simply.

“Dante!” Gabe said as he moved forward with an outstretched hand. “You’re Hwei-ru’s friend?”

The minotaur stared curiously at Penny for another moment, then set aside the wall panel he’d been working on to free up a huge hand to envelope Gabe’s. He snorted skeptically. “That would be a significant stretch, but she did accept my offer of assistance. And for that, I am grateful.”

Gabe mastered his face to avoid wincing at what the minotaur probably thought was a gentle handshake, and he leaned in closer. “Grateful? Really? You know the kind of stupid crap you just signed up for, right?”

Dante nodded and lowered his voice to a dull rumble. “There are two paths to follow when seeking redemption. You may fade away and find it with time, or you may face your devils and go out and seize it.” He dropped his hand. “Neither is more correct than the other, but with time potentially in short supply, my choice was rather made for me.”

Gabe watched the minotaur’s eyes flicker to Heather for an instant, but it was enough to remind him what “redemption” the man was referring to. “Yeah,” Gabe said, dropping his voice further. “Hey, look...I wanted to tell you that I did try...to save her, I mean. Everything was so crazy and we didn’t know who—”

A massive hand fell on his shoulder and nearly crumpled him to the floor. “I know,” Dante rumbled. “I would not be here otherwise.” His eyes went a little distant. “And perhaps you did save as much of her as was possible.”

“Guys, I am right here,” Heather said, stepping in to break up their close conversation.

Dante immediately bowed his huge head. “My apologies.”

The minotaur tried to take a respectful step back, but Heather was already moving in and waving her hands. “No, no. You don’t wriggle out that easily. Lorelei didn’t quite know how to feel about you, drifting between burning hatred and morbid curiosity, but Heather likes you just fine.” She spread her arms wide. “So let’s do this right.” Then she closed the distance and wrapped him in a hug.

Dante basically froze and kept his arms out awkwardly to his sides while Heather tried valiantly to get hers even halfway around his massive torso, and Gabe actually thought he heard bones creaking as she squeezed with her disproportionate strength.

“Oh, well...um...” Dante stammered as he looked down in shock at the top of her head.

“See?” Heather said sweetly. “We can push right through the weirdness and move on to a productive friendship. No need to make it too complicated.” She squeezed harder and got a grunt of discomfort from him.

Gabe immediately wondered if there was another layer in her statement that had been intended for him, but he banked that for later while plastering a smile onto his face. “Wow, big guy. Looks like you’re gonna be my hug surrogate from now on. You’re about the only person in the world she can really squeeze without breaking them in half.”

Heather pulled away, then reached up and thunked the metal plate that now covered the left side of the man’s chest. “I don’t know, he’s not nearly so cuddly anymore.”

Gabe stepped back and looked Dante over for real, suddenly remembering all the wounds he’d had the last time they’d been together. The metal plate was seemingly riveted to his chest, covering one of the massive holes the dragon’s claws had given him, and a faint green glow was creeping out around the edges. The other hole in his stomach was covered by a tight weave of leather cords that looked lashed directly into the surrounding muscles, and the broken right half-horn was now capped with a dark iron replacement held on with intricately wrought metal straps that wrapped and crisscrossed down the length to stop at decorative curls just above his head. He was otherwise well-kempt and the same bull-man Gabe remembered from several weeks ago, but there was a definite hollowness to his features now, and a sallowness to his skin that hadn’t been there before.

“You look...” Gabe began, then paused for way longer than he meant to. “...good.” He spread his hands. “I mean, for a...revenant?”

Dante smiled as if thankful to have something other than the hug to talk about. “Yes. Or so I’ve been told.” He tapped the plate on his chest and the green glow behind it intensified for a moment. “And so far, the bokor’s stave has remained adequate to keep me that way.”

“Neat idea,” Heather said, leaning in to try to peek inside. “Did you attach it somehow or is it just jiggling around in—”

A loud buzzing noise pulled their attention immediately to Ken and he quickly dipped his hand into his pocket. “Sorry. Proximity alarm. Haven’t settled on the notification method yet.” He swiped something off the screen and studied it for a moment. “Hmmm. Visitor. One guy, dark complexion, rough clothes, bad beard, smart enough to not look right at the camera though...” He turned the phone so they could all see. “Anybody know him?”

There was only a bit of the man’s face visible, and they all shook their heads.

Ken turned to walk away. “I’ll go check it out.”

Gabe immediately fell in beside him. “Oh, Ken. That’s noble of you. But one thing you need to learn about this stupid world is that we never split the party. Even if you’re just going out to grab groceries. Take the scary ghost lady, the scary succubus lady, or now the giant philosophical wrecking ball. Just don’t do anything alone unless you enjoy being taken apart in new and interesting ways.”

Ken paled and swallowed visibly. “That’s an awfully grim view of it.”

Gabe nodded his complete agreement. “Our neighbors are harpies, Kenny-boy. And the guy we kicked out of here was a videogame-playing lich king. I don’t think it’s too much of a stretch to say that you and I are pretty well surrounded by things that would love to take a bite out of us at any given time.”

“He’s not wrong,” Heather said as she came up behind them with Dante and Penny in tow.

Ken immediately nodded agreement to her. “I’ll set it up so we all get the alerts. No problem.”

Gabe gave Heather a look and she shrugged and smiled slyly. She knew the power she held over Ken, but generally she was nice enough not to abuse it...too much. She slipped up to the front of the procession just before they came to the entrance, then she turned and guided Ken to the door. “You open it and get behind right away. We’ll do the rest.”

Ken nodded and carefully slid the three bolts open, then wrapped his fingers around the handle while positioning himself to immediately move back. He looked to Heather for confirmation, then took a fortifying breath and pulled.

Gabe realized too late that he was standing front and center, and he frantically tried to pull up the pattern of light and force he’d used against the Phillip thing. Something like it came to his call and he filled it with power until the glow was seeping from between his clenched fingers. Then the door swung open and the stranger’s eyes met his...and he could do nothing but drop the magic.

“Hey, Gabe. I thought I told you to get the hell out of my city?” James said.

ELSEWHERE

“TWO RETRIEVED AND ONE lost,” the First Iteration said. “The third of us has been scattered across the Ether. Dead.”

“Unanticipated,” the Second replied.

The First examined the facet it held, watching dispassionately as the Igla fought to free itself of the restraints. “Three remain for we two to recover...it is unbalanced.”

“Wait for another iteration?” the Second asked, holding up its own Igla.

“No time,” the First said, its eyebrows knitting. “The human grows closer, and we are vulnerable while we hold these. Anchored. He must be stronger now. If he bests us as well and retrieves all...”

“I am aware,” the Second said. Then its head ticked to one side. “We...we are aware.”

The First stepped closer. “Diverged,” it said.

The Second didn’t move. “As are you. You fear.”

The First considered that. “Possibly. The cleansing must come to free us of it.”

“And of singleness,” The Second replied. “And of thought.”

The First closed its fist around the Igla. “Three remain. Two iterations are unbalanced to retrieve them. And yet we must.”

The Second shook its head. “We must allow the human to take the last. A sacrifice. Must not confront him yet. His construct from the Creators will hold them until we can retrieve—”

“No!” The First said, cutting in. “He is already too dangerous. Too close. Too strong. If he is allowed to gather them together, he may—”

“Enough,” the Second said. “Your flesh is speaking for you. Balance first. And prudence. He may hold three until more iterations can be thrust into reality to join us. And then we will face him in force to take them back. He will stand no chance. We will kill him and take them. Make them whole. Seven into one to begin the end. As it has always been.”

The First took another step forward. “And if he gains more than three? If he holds them all?”

The Second’s chin went up a fraction. “Impossible. It has never been.”

The First took another step forward and met the Second’s eyes. “And if we are too weak to stop him? We are stretched as we are. Power split.”

“Impossible,” the Second repeated. “It has never been.”

The First moved closer. “You are correct,” it said. “I do fear. I fear you are wrong, and I fear what may come of underestimating our enemy. We must now retrieve all three to be sure. Soon.”

The Second’s eyes narrowed. “Pitiful. You will not wait, and you will not yield even to gain the advantage. Fear has made you useless. Tell me then, what do you suggest we do? We are too weak to face him alone, so who would you have confront him if not us?”

The First thought for a moment, then came to a decision. “Me.”

It thrust its hand into the Second’s chest and began pulling its entire substance in, devouring it and absorbing everything it was. It tried to scream and pull away, clawing at the air in desperation, but by then its body was already collapsing on itself. Its face went last, bent in a rictus of terror and confusion before it shriveled all at once and then dissolved inward to join the rest.

In the end, it was satisfying to know that it too had felt fear.

The two Iglas settled inside their cages of emptiness, and the First smiled.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

“Heather and I haven’t had sex. It’s possible we can’t. She has a weird thing about not wanting to accidentally eat my soul, and I don’t have a great response for that in my seduction playbook. I know this is uncomfortable to talk about, but at this point I feel like there’s no use holding anything back. And the only reason I mention it is because I always thought sex was the main barrier between ‘just friends’ and a more serious relationship. Obviously now I know that’s a ridiculous oversimplification, but I think we’ve already established that I’ve only recently been resembling a mature adult.

We have officially been a couple for about two weeks as I write this, but the flirting and temptations have been there since the day we met. Yet the closer we get, the more reluctant she seems to be about it. And yet again, the more reluctant she is, the more intimate our relationship feels. At first I thought this was a game she was playing to manipulate me, and at first maybe it was. But now I’ve come to realize that I might be the first person to want to be with her for more than just sex, and she may not have any idea how to deal with that. You don’t generally summon a succubus just to eat nachos together and fall asleep watching old sitcoms, so that makes me a real novelty to her. It helps me understand why she stayed. And why she might be reluctant to see what’s on the other side of that barrier. Frankly, I am too.”

-Excerpt from Chapter Twenty-Three, CONscience

“I MEAN THIS WITH LOVE, man,” Gabe said as James moved in far enough for the door to be closed behind him, “but this might be the first time I’ve ever looked better than you.”

James adjusted his torn jacket to better cover the dirty t-shirt, then pulled himself up as if it were a designer ensemble. Irritatingly, it worked. “This is kind of a disguise, but...yeah. The last few weeks have been a little spotty for me, professionally.” His eyes roamed around, taking in first his companions and then the room itself. “Doesn’t seem like you can say the same, huh?”

“Oh, no. None of this is mine.” Gabe said, looking to Ken. “I mean, it’s kinda for me and we haven’t really talked about compensation, but...” Ken’s expression slowly morphed into confusion, and Gabe turned right back to James. “No. Not mine. That’d be silly.” He stepped back and motioned for James to come in further. “But hey! Let me introduce you around. Everyone, this is...” He had to stop again.

Gabe’s first instinct was to introduce him as James, his old buddy and mostly ally, and one of the few people he’d trusted once upon a time. But the man was also Jacob Jimenez, drug kingpin, old-style crime boss, and one of the three Barons ruling over the Umbras of Lincoln. Gabe had gone in fear of that name for years, trying to work under the organization’s radar, and it had been quite a shock to find out he’d actually been working for them all the while—albeit indirectly. If even half of the rumors about the man were true, he was responsible for dozens of disappearances and deaths in the city, which made him a very bad guy. But then one of those deaths had been the leader of the local Knights of Solomon in order to save Gabe’s life...which made things a bit hazier.

“James,” the man supplied, filling in the awkward pause. “Just that now.”

Gabe was too much of a professional to let it show on his face, but that situation would definitely need some significant follow-up questions. “My old friend, James. And as for this crew, you remember Heather of course...oh, shoot.” He looked to her and started mentally sifting through the details. “Okay, this is kind of a long and complicated story, but—”

“You get a new body?” James cut in.

“Yep,” she replied.

“Cool.”

Gabe glanced between them, waiting for more, then slipped casually back into the pilot’s seat of the conversation. “Or not. Well then, the little one is Penny, the large one is Dante, and the medium one is Ken. He’s the guy who actually owns all this stuff. There’s a ghost grandma somewhere around here too, but she mostly just shows up to make snippy comments and tell us where to go next to get our asses kicked.”

“Pleasure,” James said, holding eye contact with each of them in turn. “Listen, Gabe, this isn’t just a social call. I heard something—”

“The pleasure is mine,” Dante suddenly said. He seemed to have surprised even himself with it. “I mean...ours. Also.” He shook his big head as if not really sure what he was doing, then he took a deep breath and puffed up his chest a little more than usual. “Very well. Since this appears to be in hand, I will return to work.” And then he spun and quick-stepped around the corner.

They all watched him go.

“Ooookay,” James said, being the first to brush it off. “Anyway, uh, I heard something that may or may not be a big deal. But since I was planning on leaving the city tomorrow, I figured I’d better follow up and see if there was any truth to it. And now that I see you really are actually down here, I’m doubting it way less.” Then he looked at Ken and Penny with his eyebrows raised.

“Oh, they’re cool.” Gabe replied.

James nodded slowly. “Gabey boy, making friends. Fine. Word is that there’s some big force coming for you. Several groups allied together based solely on finding your ass. Apparently they think you stole some important thing and they want it the hell back. You have a few days, according to this guy.”

Gabe nodded carefully. It all sounded pretty much like business as usual. “What guy?”

“Don’t know,” James replied. “He didn’t say. Just mentioned that he and I had a mutual acquaintance in you and that he’d prefer you didn’t die anytime soon. Talked weird though. Real dramatic like he thought he was pretty hot shit. You got any guardian angels out there?”

Gabe looked to Heather, and her face and the bond matched perfectly in that moment. He tried not to let it carry over into his own expression. “Not angels, no.”

James looked like he wanted to know more, but he visibly pushed the curiosity aside. “Okay then. That’s it. The guy gave me where and when to find you and that one little tidbit. Hopefully you feel like it was worth me dragging my ass down here for.”

He turned to leave, and Gabe started to argue, but Ken spoke up first. “Are you a pishtaco?” They all turned to look and found the guy peering through a small white rock with a hole worn through. “Sorry,” he said, lowering the thing, “I’m trying to figure out how to use this hagstone, and I can’t seem to get the hang of it no matter how many times Hwei-ru shows me.”

James turned fully back to face the man and squared his shoulders. “This guy, I fucking like. If I had a nickel for every asshole who’s called me a vampire... Well, I’d be wearing a better disguise right now at least, I’ll tell you that.”

Ken grinned, largely uncertain why he’d been complimented but happy about it all the same. “Oh, I’m glad. And hey, if you need anything, just ask. Any friend of Heather’s...and Gabe’s, of course.”

James waved it off. “Naw, I should go. There are a couple contracts out on me, so I try not to stay in one place for too long.”

“We have guns,” Heather said, in the same way someone else might talk about having candy.

James made as if to brush it off again, then his expression softened. “That’s actually interesting.”

Ken’s expression, on the other hand, morphed quickly into concern. “I was more thinking a shower and shave. Maybe some clothes, but...sure. We also have guns.”

James nodded. “You know what, I’ll take one of each. I have been wearing these for a while, so it couldn’t hurt to change things up before I head out of town. I appreciate it.”

Penny slid up then and took his hand. “I’ll show you! Come on!”

James gave them all a confused look as he was pulled quickly down the hall, but Penny immediately started jabbering like a little girl excited to show off her doll collection.

They watched her go, then Ken turned back to them. “She...doesn’t know where anything is.” Gabe smiled and spread his hands, and Ken finally got himself moving after them. “Uh, wait! That’s not even close to the right way!”

Heather laughed softly and checked the locks on the door. “Quite the crack team we’re assembling here.”

Gabe watched Ken catch up farther down the hall and get them moving toward the far side of the complex, and Penny was still holding James’s hand when they went out of sight. “Keeps things interesting at least,” he said. “I kind of like a little chaos in my life.”

“No you don’t,” she replied. “You once complained when I bought a different brand of bread.”

He shrugged. “I don’t like the kind with seeds.”

She rolled her eyes. “You can’t even taste them, and they’re good for you.”

“Says the lady who ordered ten thousand calories of barbecue yesterday.”

A little note of irritation passed through the bond but her expression looked amused. “I’m not the one who has to worry about stuff like heart disease. Chopping up bad guys isn’t the only way I can try to keep you alive longer.”

“That’s ridiculous,” he said, then immediately regretted it. His reflexive argument was going to be that he’d never planned on living long enough to worry about heart attacks, and that her reluctance to talk about long-term commitment didn’t quite jive with her sudden interest in his cholesterol levels. But he instantly knew how counterproductive both of those points would be. So he started constructing a joke to wash the whole thing away—maybe something about bird food in his sandwich—but then her face subtly changed, and he realized some of what he’d been feeling must have accidentally passed over to her.

“Sorry,” she said. “Let’s drop it.” Then she smiled indulgently and gave him a pat on his shoulder that could have meant anything before drifting past into the room Ken had marked out for the armory.

Gabe searched the bond to find some clue for what to say next, but either she was masking it somehow, or she genuinely didn’t know how she felt just then. He remembered suddenly that she must also be starving energy-wise, and that it might be making her touchier than usual. She’d used everything she had against the kraken, and he’d only seen her grab bits of power from passing encounters on their trip back. Just a touch here and there to snag wisps, but nothing nearly substantial enough. And now that he thought about it, that was odd. The pace they’d set hadn’t been conducive to a full recharge for her, but certainly she’d had time to corner someone and grab more than a nibble...so to speak. Unless, of course, she was avoiding it for some reason...

He followed her inside.

The room was just four walls around a pile of crates and cases, but most surfaces were covered in several colors of masking tape detailing where Ken apparently wanted things to go. There were spots for all manner of edged and blunt weapons to be mounted on the walls, and four big squares were marked out on the ground where a series of shelves would eventually be. Heather was already pacing around, reading the labels on boxes, and Gabe went straight to the top of the pile to find a hand-drawn and very elaborate schematic for the room that looked suspiciously like something Ken might have seen on TV. He held it up to show Heather and she gave him a small but honest smile.

She opened a box to check inside, then moved it off the pile. “Talking about cutting up bad guys, I realized I lost my sword in the water. I should probably find something comparable before the next big crisis.”

Gabe tossed the schematic aside and opened the box beneath it, finding some old straight daggers and assorted hunting knives wrapped in plastic. “I’ll help. I lost mine too, so maybe we can rustle up some replacements before Ken notices.”

“I don’t think he’d notice if we were missing our clothes right now, let alone our weapons. Somebody needs to make that man sleep.” She lifted a short sword out of its packing material and gave it an experimental swipe that sounded like it might have sliced an atom or two. Then she shook her head and put it back.

Gabe replaced the lid on his box and moved to another. “I think he’s compensating, don’t you? He keeps hearing about all this doom and danger, and he’s just trying to join the fight the only way he can. We get swallowed by giant monsters and he stays up really late and builds a batcave. Or like with that hagstone business—which, by the way, where was that stupid thing when I needed it six months ago?”

Heather smirked. “By the time we met, you didn’t need a hagstone. You just needed confidence to use what you could already do. That, and to shut up and pay attention a little.”

“Hey, that’s the story of my life,” he said as he opened the next crate.

She smiled more fully, then seemed to catch herself and tempered it a little. “That does beg an interesting question though. Do you even want another sword now that you’re figuring out how to use your magic? One fireball from a hundred yards away is going to beat a dozen swords all day long.”

Gabe pulled out a hand ax that he wasn’t even a little trained to use and gave it a few awkward swipes through the air. “I wouldn’t say I have magic. I figured out how to do two things without the charms—well, three technically, but that was just a combination of the first two. And even then I’m not confident I actually know what I’m doing. I’m just copying the patterns of the spells.”

Heather’s eyes twinkled. “Spells. That’s adorable.”

“What else should I call them?” he asked. “Everybody seems to have a different word, but they all sound like basically the same thing.”

She shrugged and hefted a spiked mace. “That’s all it is, just different terms for the same stuff. Some Umbras like to use specific words to cover their magic, and that helps everyone keep it all separate to a degree. But whether you say geas, charm, spell, hex, curse—it’s all essentially the same. They’re just slightly different flavors, presentations, and packaging. Even your pattern thing is just another crutch, another way for your brain to organize this stuff into something you can understand. If you need it, you need it. That’s fine for now. We’ll try to get some more charms and items for you to practice copying. But eventually you shouldn’t need even that much.”

Gabe watched her go through a quick form with the mace. “Makes sense,” he replied. “I keep forgetting that you know so much about this crap now. Probably better not tell Hwei-ru though. She’ll be disappointed she missed a chance to feed me more cryptic nonsense.”

Heather held out the mace to look down its shaft, then placed it on the floor off to one side in what looked like a “maybe” pile. “Lorelei did love the theories behind magic and the Ether,” she said. “Even if she couldn’t do much with it. That ring she had was a fairly recent addition as far as I can tell...though the memories of where she actually got it aren’t anywhere that I’ve found yet.”

“That’s always a good sign,” he said. “So you’re remembering more? Or, assimilating it...or whatever?”

She opened a new crate. “A little. Several things clicked into place while we were on the ocean. New memories. Some hazy childhood stuff, some education, and her whole introduction to Umbras. Makes me understand more about why you had such a hard time, actually. Different perspective.” She lifted out a longsword but only to set it aside to continue digging beneath. “And I remembered the night you spent together in the tent...”

“Oh,” he said. He watched her face for any hint of whether that was a good or bad thing, but it was perfectly blank. The bond was similarly empty, and he suddenly couldn’t help but feel like he was standing alone in the pitch dark.

They worked in silence then for a while, moving boxes to get to the next and setting aside weapons that looked decent while they searched for anything better. Gabe watched Heather covertly as he pretended to consider different blades, and he waited for her to make the first overture back into conversation. Obviously she’d intended to bring up the memory for some reason, but he didn’t want to say the wrong thing in case he was misreading that intent. And then he didn’t want to say anything at all if she was just asking to be heard and not necessarily questioned. She might also be waiting for him to respond, putting them in a kind of stalemate. It was the curse of the conman and him specifically—overthinking every situation to the point of locking up with too many potential paths and detours, when in reality the other person was likely just trying to draw a straight line between two points. But he also wanted to show that he could be mature and respectful of her boundaries by letting her take the lead. It was exhausting.

And it lasted for eleven minutes.

“So is that a bad thing?” he finally asked, breaking the silence with much less grace than he’d meant to. She looked up with a question forming in her eyes, so he went ahead and answered it. “The tent. Is that why things are suddenly weird now?”

Heather nodded understanding and looked back down into her crate. “No. Not at all.”

Gabe wanted to argue that things had gotten weird though, and that she must have brought it up for some reason. But he held himself back again, and this time was rewarded only a few seconds later when she made a little clicking noise with her tongue on the roof of her mouth.

“I guess I just wondered about it,” she said, visibly working to avoid his eyes. “She really did like you. I think she had a few relationships when she was younger, but once my...her grandmother initiated her into this world, she pretty much distanced herself from other humans. Makes sense, being basically suspended between two worlds. But she lived almost all of her twenties with few friends and no major loves.” She looked down into the crate and pretended to shuffle through something. “Then you came along in a similar position, and all you and...it’s kinda tough to blame her for falling for you.”

For once, Gabe knew for an absolute certainty that he wasn’t supposed to reply.

She let her hair fall over one side of her face the way Lorelei always had. “She just wanted to be loved, you know? To be...the most important thing to someone.”

He heard the hitch in her voice at the same moment he felt it.

Heather reached up under her hair and feigned brushing it back while wiping beneath her eyes. “You really didn’t sleep with her in the tent. Part of me thought that was just a lie to spare my feelings, but you didn’t. You didn’t pick me...her.”

Gabe finally thought he understood, and he slowly started moving around toward her. “Okay,” he said softly, “let me make sure I’m catching up. You’re happy that I wasn’t in love with Lorelei, and you’re sad that I wasn’t in love with Lorelei...simultaneously.”

She laughed once and it came out as half sob. “It’s so stupid, I know! This is why I went away after we met. After I became...Heather. To get used to being her without all this crap getting in the way.”

He came within arm’s reach and held out his hand for her to come closer...or not, as she wanted. “No, I get it. And it’s not stupid. It’s definitely complicated and way beyond my normal maturity level...but not stupid at all.”

She took his hand and then stepped in to let him wrap her up. “We don’t have time for this,” she said into his shoulder. “I need to just be the person I’m going to be so we can focus on what’s important.”

He held her close, letting her lean against him. “Well, I happen to think this is pretty important, if you don’t mind. And you said yourself that we likely won’t live through this. That was part of your recruitment speech for me, remember?” She laughed and he felt a tear drop onto his neck. “So maybe none of this will even matter pretty soon,” he went on. “But if somehow we do figure out a way through, and somehow we do have a tomorrow...” He kissed the top of her head. “...I’d really like it to be with you. Whoever you are.”

She shook with another sob and slipped her arms around his back. “How do you keep doing that?” she asked through her tears. “Every time I think this stupid idea isn’t going to work anymore, you do or say something like that and I get all...dumb.”

She squeezed even harder and he felt his ribs creak with it. “Yeah,” he grunted, “I can see why that would be annoying.”

She held him there for a moment longer, then let go and leaned back to grab the front of his shirt with both hands. Her eyes were wide and wet, but her face had gone very calm. “I’m a succubus, Gabe. I’m not supposed to be with one man for any longer than a few days. I was never built for it. There’s every chance that this is going to end very badly, and I desperately do not want to hurt you.”

He moved one hand up to her cheek and wiped away the tears there with his thumb. “Oh, that? No big deal. High risk, high reward, right?” She frowned skeptically and he brushed the other cheek dry. “I also feel like I should point out that we’re doing a whole bunch of stuff that we’re technically not supposed to do, but so far it’s all been working out okay. You may not have been built for a relationship, but I wasn’t built to have magic either. And look where we are! Two people doing everything the wrong way to get the right result.” He grinned. “That’s kind of our thing.”

She stared at him and let out a long breath as if something in her was unknotting, then she closed her eyes. “You’re so confident about it.”

He brushed her hair back and let his hand linger on her cheek. “Oh no. I have no idea what I’m doing at any given time. Didn’t you just hear me say we’re probably going to die?”

She smiled and leaned into his touch. “I mostly tune that stuff out from you now. I mean about us.” She turned and kissed his palm. “Thank you.”

“Well, yeah,” he said, then cleared his throat. “You know, those weren’t even my best lines—”

She pulled him in then and kissed him hard, slipping one foot between his to get herself closer before pulling away just a fraction. “You’re way ahead,” she said against his lips. “You can stop now.” Then she leaned back in.

He slid his fingers through her hair and lost himself to the moment, falling into the feel of her and wanting nothing more than to be closer. She was all softness and edges at once, too strong and too fragile for the world, and somehow exactly what he wanted. What he needed. She pulled him in closer, pressing herself against him and edging him back until he was pinned to the wall. One of her hands slipped down his chest and stomach to slide around to the small of his back and bunch in his shirt there, and suddenly all of his thoughts were coming in single static bursts of need. The bond echoed back between them, building and building with first affection, then desire, then something like lust but sharper. He growled against her lips and smelled cinnamon and burning cedar. He was melting into her.

Suddenly Heather pulled back like a swimmer coming up for air and she stumbled two full steps away from him. She was panting and pale, and she looked like she wanted to come right back at him...and like she wanted anything but that. He realized he could see her aura and it was flickering as if it wanted to crawl right off of her body. It began to quiet immediately, but before it faded away, he thought he caught a hint of horns in her hair.

She started to catch her breath, then slowly began to straighten. “I...” She swallowed and took one long, cleansing breath. “I need to be alone for a while.”

Gabe pushed off from the wall and took a step toward her, but she backed away just as quickly.

“No!” she said, holding out a hand. “Not yet. I need to recharge and...become myself a little more. It’s not because you’ve done anything wrong, and it’s not because I don’t...care for you. It’s too much of the opposite, if anything.”

He nodded, still partially lost in the moment and trying to drag himself out of it. “Okay,” he mumbled. He knew there had to be a better response than that, but just then he couldn’t think of one. The words that had come so easily just a moment ago, now felt buried deep beneath the fog.

She smiled sadly. “I’ll make it quick. And I won’t go far. I just need to recover, then when I come back we can do this right, okay? Like you...we deserve.”

He nodded again. His thoughts were too muddled to do anything else.

She began backing away, then suddenly shuddered and put her hand over her mouth before turning and running from the room. All he felt from her before the bond winked out again was horror.

Gabe stood there in shock watching the empty doorway, and a moment later it was filled by James, looking back down the hall where Heather had gone.

“That looks complicated,” James said as he entered the armory.

Gabe nodded again. He tried to reply, but words wouldn’t congeal in his brain—and it was only then that he finally realized the stupor was more than just the fog of lust. He started to panic for a moment, but quickly remembered that he’d dealt with this feeling before. The magical haze hung over his thoughts like a perfumed anesthesia, dampening his reactions and emotions to prevent him from fighting back, and he gathered it all up and shoved it down into his void with the help of his own magic. It immediately cleared his thoughts, letting him feel the weight of what had just happened...while also laying bare the disappointment and confusion of what had almost happened.

“Yep,” he finally replied.

James glanced around the room. He was now wearing some of Gabe’s nicer clothes and putting them to much better use on his frame, and he’d trimmed his beard and hair into respectable shape. He still wasn’t anywhere near as polished as he’d been back in the old days, but now at least he would pass for a regular, stupidly handsome person.

James leaned over a crate and made a noise of interest. “Ken sent me back up to get a pistol from Heather while he tried to convince your little sprite friend not to use the shower to turn this whole place into a swimming pool.” He lifted a dagger from the crate and flipped it once in the air to catch it again. “Interesting people you’ve found here.”

“Definitely interesting,” Gabe replied, unable to summon much more than that yet.

James sighed and put the dagger back. “Okay, Gabey. I don’t have much relationship advice that applies to women, but I think I’ve gathered at least two universal truths in all my years in the flesh.” He moved to a closed crate and sat down. “First, it’s always more complicated than it seems. Even when you think you have it figured out, you definitely don’t. People are fucking weird, man. Even the ones you like the best. Even you. So you’re never gonna figure it all out, and you’re never gonna do or say all the right things.” He pointed at Gabe. “I know how you are, and you can’t treat a relationship the same way you do a job. Can’t plan it all out and set up contingencies. You just have to kinda...do it.”

Gabe nodded again. “Sure. And the second thing?”

James dropped his hand. “If you’re happy, be happy. Sometimes shit doesn’t work out and that sucks. But sometimes it does, yet our brains are programmed to keep preparing us for the opposite. Even Umbras aren’t immune if they last long enough to really soak into their skin. Heartbreak hurts, and we’re designed to avoid hurt whenever possible. A lot of people use that as an excuse to keep their distance even when they really don’t want to.”

Gabe found a crate of his own near James and sat too. “I don’t think I’m the one that needs this advice.”

The man nodded. “That’s possible. But I will say that Heather is a succubus—and one of the older ones that started out as basically two-dimensional from the beginning. She was made to do the one thing really well, and that was pretty much it. Umbras change, sure, but that core is always gonna be there.”

Gabe looked up over the walls to the center of the complex where the onyx pillars tapered to points at the ceiling. “I don’t believe that.”

James shrugged and stood. “You don’t have to. And I honestly hope you turn out to be right. If this is what you’re gonna do, more power to you. But there’s no sense being stupid about it either. Sometimes a caterpillar turns into a beautiful butterfly. But sometimes, man, it just doesn’t.” He spread his hands. “And that’s all I got. Told you it wasn’t much.”

Gabe chewed his bottom lip and kept staring at the pillars. “So how long were you listening out there?”

James chuckled and stuffed his hands into his pockets. “Ah, shit. A little too on the nose there, huh? I told you I was in a hurry to get outta here, I just didn’t wanna interrupt your thing. Seemed...urgent. Until it wasn’t.”

Gabe blew out a hard breath and slapped his knees as he rose. “Yeah. That about sums it up.” Then he turned to James. “So why the hell are you here, man? What happened? Last time we talked you had more names and titles than I have pairs of pants. Now you’re...” He finished simply by gesturing at the man.

James flicked his eyes to one side, obviously preparing to dodge the question, but then he stopped and shrugged. “Long story. Basically it boils down to the other two Barons not wanting me around anymore, and selling me out to the Knights of Solomon to get payback for that business after the arena. Apparently they didn’t enjoy it when I shot one of their leaders in the head. Though I’d still do it again.” He drifted over to a gun case and flicked open the latches with a finger. “But, they dismantled all my operations in the process. Took out most of my people, seized my accounts, scared anybody else away from helping me...you know, a real full-service screwing over.”

“Cripes,” Gabe replied. “They gave you the platinum package.”

James lifted a big pistol from its foam and inspected it competently. “For sure. They sent a hit squad of Knights and redcaps after me too, so a real white glove, bespoke experience on the whole.”

They lapsed into a short silence, then Gabe finally let out a breath. “I’m sorry, man. I can’t help but feel like this is partially my fault.”

James waved a hand toward him. “Ah, don’t say that. It’s one hundred percent your fault.” He winked to take the sting out of it. “They even offered me a kind of plea deal if I agreed to help track you down.” He held up the gun. “This’ll do. Where’s the ammo?”

Gabe tensed for a moment, wondering if he’d just fallen into some kind of trap. It would have been the perfect lure for James to come in needing help rather than offering it, and of all the people they could have sent as a Trojan horse, James was the one mostly likely to make it in. But then why would he admit to as much so casually—unarmed and surrounded by enemies? That wasn’t James. He wouldn’t make a stupid or arrogant mistake like that. The only reason a guy like James would give that information out was to build trust and get credit for it. Gabe knew, because it was exactly what he would have done. He relaxed.

“If there’s anything I can do...” Gabe said, trailing off.

James jiggled the gun. “Bullets would be great. But otherwise, naw. To tell the truth, I was almost ready for that life to be over anyway. Didn’t know it then, and I wish so many good people hadn’t died...but I made a few new friends and reconnected with some old ones since. And I’m kinda thinking about heading back to South America, back to my roots.”

Gabe pointed to a steel box he’d set aside earlier, and James nodded before moving over to kneel in front of it. He lifted the lid and began sorting through cases of ammunition until he found a box of the caliber and type he wanted. He slipped out the empty clip and began working bullets in one by one.

“If you’re looking for some kind of purpose, we wouldn’t turn down your help,” Gabe said. “It’s kind of a weird thing we’ve got going on here, but another logical head would definitely be welcome.”

James thumbed another round into the clip. “Yeah, what the hell is going on here? You’ve got a very distinct Avengers vibe happening in this place, and I keep expecting to see Thor or some shit come around a corner.”

Gabe nodded thoughtfully. “Heather did kill a metal dragon with a big hammer the other day, so you’re weirdly not far off.” He glanced down at his right palm and tried to come up with how it was different than an Infinity Gauntlet...then decided to leave that can of worms closed. He felt himself wince without really meaning to.

James chuckled. “Really? You know, the Knights were pretty interested in you a few weeks ago. Might still be for all I know. Apparently they thought you were dangerous for some reason.” He laughed again. “Like, a threat to the world or something!” He looked up to keep going, but then his amusement slowly faded as he started reading Gabe’s face. He stopped loading the clip. “Gabe,” he said, his voice going flat and cold. “...What did you do?”

Gabe held up his hands. “First of all, none of it was my fault!” Then his phone suddenly buzzed in his pocket and he quickly snatched it out to give himself a reason to delay recounting the whole ridiculous story. James’s face went stern in his periphery, but he focused on the message as if it was the most important thing right then.

“PRX ALRM?” Gabe read aloud. Then he swiped it away and an app loaded of its own accord to replace his home screen with an image from a camera pointed into the hallway of the Warrens. It was crammed nearly to the back wall with monsters.

“Proximity alarm,” he said, just as he watched a Sasquatch slam into their door.

CHAPTER TWELVE

“There’s a fine line between being a good guy and being the good guy. And usually that line is bravery. Or the appearance of it, at least. In my experience you can dress up almost any emotion as a close approximation as long as you lift your chin and say something dramatic in the moment. All it really takes to look like a hero is to avoid slouching as you go save the day. But the point is that you do go, isn’t it? The showmanship is just to make sure you get credit for it.”

-Excerpt from Chapter Twenty-Four, CONscience

THE SOUND OF A HUGE body hitting the steel door knocked Gabe into motion, and he turned and snatched up the first sword-shaped object he could find just as a high-pitched alarm started ringing through the place. James was moving too by then, slapping his partially-loaded clip into the gun just as he passed out of the armory. He looked like a man who had been doing this quite a bit lately.

“Shit!” James hissed as Gabe caught up. “I knew I should have left here quicker. The Hunters probably tracked me.”

“Hunters?!” Gabe asked as he hefted the heavy longsword he’d grabbed. The door shuddered with another impact and he glanced over to see the thick steel already deeply dented. “Why?”

Hwei-ru appeared just then and looked between them. “What is happening?”

James jumped and brought his gun around, but Gabe was already moving between them. “We don’t know,” he said. Then he lifted his phone and tilted it toward her, and together they got a better look at what they were dealing with. “Not Hunters though,” he ventured for James’s benefit. “Unless they started wearing snappy uniforms and looking like nightmare glam rockers.”

James looked at him like he was crazy, but then his face slid into comprehension and he snatched the phone right out of Gabe’s hand.

“Twenty Brothers,” Hwei-ru supplied as she began gathering her ghostly green power. “Appears to be mostly elven and fae, with the exception of the big hairy one.”

“What do we do?” Gabe asked, just as another loud crash sounded at the door. He flinched and slid back a few steps toward the armory, just in case. “At least until our big hairy one can get up here?”

James cocked his gun. “Can’t imagine they’re here to talk.”

The door shuddered again.

“Oh, I don’t know,” Hwei-ru said as she pulled her power into a tight green ball. It felt like the ley line beneath them was feeding directly into it. “You may be surprised what people will bring themselves to do with the right motivation. Step back please.”

“No, ma’am. It’s too dangerous for you to—” James began.

The door took another massive hit and the metal of the deadbolts and hinges screeched in protest. It didn’t look like it would take another.

Hwei-ru vanished and reappeared between him and the door. “I am a spirit of the household, pishtaco. Protecting my home is precisely what I do.”

Then she loosed her power toward the door just as another hit finally snapped it from its hinges and sent it flying toward them. The green magic enveloped the steel slab and caught it mid-flight to send it spinning right back the other direction, and it slammed edge-on into the huge sasquatch just as the thing tried to cross the threshold. The momentum carried the creature several steps back before flattening him, and the mess did the bonus duty of taking down a handful of uniformed Umbras who’d foolishly been standing behind it.

There was a long pause as everyone out there tried to decide what the crap had just happened, and Hwei-ru stepped neatly into it. “I would suggest,” she called out calmly, “that you try knocking more politely next time. Etiquette is all that separates us from beasts, after all.”

Several creatures that looked like elves and fairies cautiously leaned in around the door frame, and James slowly raised his gun toward them. Without looking, Hwei-ru reached back and stopped his hand. “Hold,” she whispered.

There was a commotion out in the hall, and the sounds of rustling bodies and mumbled orders passed through the creatures...before a tall, austere elf appeared in the doorway to fill it more with presence than with actual body. It was painfully thin-limbed and gaunt, as if someone had stretched it too far upward, and its face was hollow nearly to the point of being skeletal. It had long, white hair that flowed over its shoulders and down its back like a mane, and even as it stopped and stood there, the hair still waved about its head as if in a breeze. The leaf-green uniform it wore almost looked painted on, and it was festooned with delicate silver lacework and filigree in gold that none of the others behind it seemed to have. The thing looked between each of them in turn with an imperious, half-lidded stare beneath hairless brows, and when its eyes fell on Hwei-ru, it pursed its thin lips and inclined its head very slightly.

Hwei-ru returned the gesture, and in that moment Heather and Dante raced up. The alarm suddenly cut out.

“What’s going on?” Heather asked too loudly as she came to a stop.

Gabe shrugged and whispered back. “Hold...I guess.”

The tall elf watched the new arrivals with vague interest, stopping particularly for Dante with just a flicker of surprise in its cat-like eyes, then it blinked slowly and turned back to Hwei-ru. “My apologies,” it said, its voice drawn out regally but its mouth barely opening. “We should not have intruded on your home in such a fashion.”

“That’s true,” Gabe said. “That was a brand new door too. I hope you have a credit line at Home Depot.”

Hwei-ru gave him a side-long glance that promised several different types of murder, but the elf didn’t so much as flick its eyes toward him. The creature held out one thin hand palm-upward and splayed its long fingers. “Let us attempt this again. I am The Bastian, leader of the order of Fechlial Derthaire. Or Twenty Brothers as we are colloquially known outside the Elfhame. You have no doubt heard of us, so I will not disrespect your time with elaboration.”

Hwei-ru raised her chin. “That is appreciated. You may now inform us why you are here.”

The Bastian’s lips tightened into a thin line that ran nearly to its ears and it began idly beckoning with its splayed fingers, moving them slowly forward and back, one by one, like an underwater plant. There seemed to be too many joints in the digits. Gabe felt a hint of magic in the movement, but it wasn’t close enough to him to figure out what it was meant to do.

The elf blinked again. “Of course. We are here to retrieve a very dangerous and deadly individual, one about whom there is a great deal of collective consternation at the moment. Hence our rather crude arrival. We believe he is here. Now.”

“I see,” Hwei-ru said.

Then James suddenly stepped around her. “Fine. You got me.” He held up his hands, though was still notably holding the gun. “No need for anybody to get hurt.”

The elf peeled its eyes from Hwei-ru and looked James over before pointedly looking away again. “We have no interest in you, filthy pishtaco. Base creatures such as yourself are the very reason our order must exist, to protect the integrity and honor of all free-minded Umbra. No. We are here for Gabriel Delling.” Its eyes drifted over them. “Bring him up here, please.” Behind the thing, the dazed sasquatch was being pulled back to its big feet.

Gabe wasn’t sure whether to be relieved or offended, but neither stopped him from being curious. “This Gabriel fella,” he said, speaking before Hwei-ru could, and probably risking her wrath. “What’s he supposed to look like?” He felt something like a fly brush against his arm and he idly swatted it away.

The Bastian again didn’t deign to glance toward him. “Like any human, I suppose—though quite a ferocious example from what we’ve been told. He’s said to wield mighty magics to rival the gods, and may be holding a key to reality itself. In my opinion, you would be wise to divest yourselves of his company before he misuses what he has stolen...as all humans are inevitably wont to do.” Its lips curled up slightly. “As such, we will be happy to relieve you of him.”

“To rival the gods, huh?” Gabe replied, nodding. Heather poked him in the back.

“I am afraid we are unable to help you,” Hwei-ru said. “We know of no such person.”

The Bastian’s eyes became a touch sharper and its fingers started moving more intently. The unknown magic around it intensified, but it seemed to be slipping right past them toward the center of the room, as if the pillars were draining it away. “A pity. I had rather thought we’d hit the mark given that his last known associate was...” It turned to Heather. “...a succubus.”

Gabe tensed for a fight, but Hwei-ru simply spread her hands and did something far scarier—she smiled. “An unhappy coincidence,” she said. “I certainly do not need to tell you that a succubus is not such a rare sight these days.”

The Bastion placidly glanced to either side, giving unreadable looks to its people, and its fingers moved more and more frantically as if operating separately from its brain. “How unlucky.” It turned back to Hwei-ru. “But then surely you would not deny us a brief inspection of the premises, just to assuage fears and finish this indelicate business on a happy note for all?”

Hwei-ru’s smile didn’t falter. “I am afraid not. Our operations here are still in a delicate phase, and we are not yet prepared to host guests—invited or otherwise. However, if you wish to file a formal petition with the Chamber, in accordance with territorial guidelines, we will gladly abide by such a summons.” She folded her hands together in front of her dress. “I believe they are scheduled to convene again in one month’s time. We look forward to your return.”

The Bastian shook its head slowly. “Are you certain?” Its fingers became a blur and the magic coming off of it was palpable now, so that every word seemed infused as it was pulled deeper into the room. “We would much prefer to end this quickly and gracefully.”

Hwei-ru didn’t so much as blink. “Quite certain. You may also end that obnoxious charm you are attempting. None gathered here are even remotely inclined to be more amenable to your words under such amateur augmentation.”

The elf’s bony fingers suddenly stopped and froze as if clutching an invisible orb, and the thing stared at Hwei-ru for a long moment. “Then I suppose we have no choice but to depart?”

“Just so,” Hwei-ru replied.

Gabe felt another prickle on his arm and he fought with himself to keep from brushing it aside. He didn’t dare move and push the tension one way or another.

The Bastian didn’t seem to breathe in any regular sense, but it did make a sound like a weary sigh then. “I must say, your wards are quite impressive in this...facility. Perhaps a bit hastily constructed, but that can be corrected in time. Though I would give you one gift before we depart, in the name of maintaining your goodwill and for your willingness to attempt a peaceable resolution.”

The barest hint of wariness crept into Hwei-ru’s expression. “We need no gifts from you.”

The Bastian cocked its head to one side. “And yet,” it said, its lips suddenly stretching wide into a ghoulish grin, “I will give it.”

It brought its fingers together hard as if crushing something in its fist, and Gabe immediately felt the magic shatter all around them. The air crackled and wavered like it was boiling, and then it melted in dozens of different spots to reveal figures suddenly standing among them. Gabe saw Hwei-ru and James instantly surrounded, and he heard Heather and Dante cry out in alarm. He shunted magic into his hands and called up the gravity charm pattern, ready to blow the whole place down and sort everything out after—then he froze as two long blades intersected across his neck.

“Stop,” The Bastian said, its voice carrying over everything and working instantly, “or we will slaughter your precious Gabriel.”

They were utterly surrounded. Elves of all variety and wearing the same uniform were now filling the space as if they’d had plenty of time to get into position. They all had blades or wands drawn, and they all looked absolutely focused. Gabe saw that Hwei-ru had already drawn deeply on her magic and was nearly bursting with it, and James had his gun pressed under the jaw of one elf who was returning the gesture with a sword tip. But there were another ten creatures arrayed around them, and from the sounds of shuffling feet and clanking weapons behind him, it didn’t sound like Heather and Dante had been handed much better odds. Apart from the two blades at his neck, Gabe himself counted four more creatures who seemed only to have eyes for him.

“In your defense,” The Bastian said as it stepped into the room, “your wards are quite good. But there exist several individuals, such as myself, who have seen nearly every variation of protective magic ever devised. I will admit to some difficulty hiding so many glamours beneath my ‘amateur charm’, as you called it, but put enough raw magic into the air, and it all becomes a bit fuzzy, doesn’t it? Though I do appreciate all of you paying such close attention to me. That did help.”

“What do you want?” Heather snapped. She sounded furious, but all Gabe could feel through the bond was disappointment in herself...and fear for him.

The Bastian glanced toward her. “I would think that obvious, succubus.”

“No,” she growled, “what do you want to go away and leave us alone?”

The elf hummed in what might have been a laugh. “Droll. We would not risk bartering away the safety of all existence for the sake of your sentiment. Furthermore, you have nothing we desire apart from that which we have already acquired.” It looked straight at Gabe. “Humor in the face of adversity, a propensity to believe intellectual superiority despite ample evidence to the contrary, and a general demeanor of only grasping half of any given concept. Yes, I believe we have exactly who we are looking for.”

“We will not allow you to take him,” Hwei-ru said, with power practically dripping from her fingertips.

The Bastian smiled condescendingly. “We do not wish to end your existence, spirit, but please do not mistake that for unwillingness. While we spoke, my people calculated each of your relevant strengths and deployed the exact amount of force necessary to neutralize you. Their weapons are enchanted with magics sufficient to bypass any mystical protections you may imagine you posses—short of those crafted by a god, of course—and they are trained to utilize them to their utmost potential. But more importantly, if you attempt to fight, we will kill the human. Immediately.”

Gabe heard a low rumble behind him and realized it was Dante. He could practically feel the heat of the anger rolling off the minotaur.

The Bastian noted it too. “It is our understanding that his swift death will serve the safety of the universe nearly as well as his capture. So it is only the curiosity of our queen which prevents us from performing the deed and being done. She wishes to speak with him, to ensure our information on the matter is whole and untainted by outside designs. From there, we will transfer him to the care of the Templars.”

Gabe watched Hwei-ru’s power subtly shift and become something vaguely familiar, like the pattern of the gravity charm he knew, only...cruder. He had already written off his own version as too clumsy and likely to flatten his friends as soon as his enemies, so he wasn’t sure what the woman was thinking. He saw James eyeing each of the creatures in his sight line, counting them, judging them, and likely deciding how many bullets each would need. Dante’s rumble behind him was pushing at its bounds, desperate to tear out as a roar of defiance, and Heather was a warm knot of resolve in the back of his mind, just waiting for the opportunity to take action. They were all primed and ready to fight as soon as someone made the first move, and Gabe knew he could set the thing off with something as simple as a word.

But the odds were bad. They’d all be stabbed at least once no matter what they tried, and while Dante and Hwei-ru might not care much, the rest of them were plenty susceptible to pointy metal. It was just a numbers game. If they fought, they might clear the room and somehow barricade the door. But then what did they do once they were trapped inside? And what happened if one or more of them fell? ...What happened if it was Heather?

He felt the moment ripening and ready to burst.

“I’ll go,” he said.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

“Though I will say there is a certain amount of value in bravery if you can muster the real thing. It’s no small prize to have people respect you...for however long you’re alive to enjoy it.”

-Excerpt from Chapter Twenty-Four, CONscience

THE ROOM WENT UTTERLY silent with the words, and even The Bastian seemed taken aback. Gabe looked to Hwei-ru and James to see if anything had changed, but they seemed frozen with the import of the moment. He felt Heather’s fear climbing with his own.

“I mean, it’s tough to turn down such a cordial invitation,” he continued. “Are meals provided, or should I bring a snack?”

The Bastian nodded and looked to Hwei-ru, and the woman’s power seemed to solidify around her. Then all at once it dropped and dissipated back into the air, and she sagged with its passing. Her face went blank as she met The Bastian’s eyes. “Very well,” she said, unable to mask the defeat from her voice.

“No!” Heather yelled. Then she hissed, and Gabe felt a sharp spike of pain course through the bond.

Hwei-ru didn’t so much as glance back. “You have caught us unprepared. But I will have you know that this man represents the last, best hope of protecting our world from the impending doom of the Endless Dark. And from those who would wish to aid, ignore, or mimic it. His death will mean the death of us all.”

The Bastian waved the words away. “We do not share your beliefs. Furthermore, the Brothers and Elfhame in general are not concerned with the affairs of this world past those which impact us directly. Your words, however, are noted. I will escort him personally to ensure his safety until such time as his future can be determined. Provided you do not attempt to interfere, I can promise that much.”

For lack of knowing what else to do, Gabe started to raise his hands, and an elf at his side immediately reached in to pry the longsword from his grip. His first instinct was to bash the creature in the face, but then he remembered that he was trying the other thing now. “It’s okay, guys,” he said. “They just want to talk. No big deal. This is the one area I can actually hold my own, so let’s just all relax and see what happens.”

He immediately felt Heather’s anger pulse across his thoughts, and he tried to send back something like calm. He wasn’t totally sure it worked that way, but then he didn’t really know how any magic worked and that certainly wasn’t stopping him from throwing it around. Someone planted a fist in his back and pushed him forward into a slow walk, and he came up alongside Hwei-ru with two blades still across his neck.

“Do me one favor,” he said as he passed her. “Don’t forget how awesomely brave and selfless I’m being right now. I’ll want to cash in this credit when I get back. Maybe get some arcade games around here.”

“You’re all just going to let this happen?” Heather snarled.

“Peace,” Dante said. “This was not our battle to win. There will be another.” It sounded less a prediction and more a promise.

“No!” she said, and Gabe felt it. “Even if you make it back out of Elfhame, the Templars will kill you, Gabe. That’s what they do!”

“I’ve been to the Elf Home, Heather,” James cut in. “It is possible to get back out.”

Gabe tried to turn around to look at her, but the hand in his back pressed harder and the blades across his neck didn’t relent. “Well, then I guess I’ll have to be really charming and tricky.” He stepped up to The Bastian and only then realized the elf was almost a foot taller than him.

The creature looked down and met his eyes. “I have seen all this world has to offer, human. If you truly think you can surprise me, it may even be worth letting you try.”

“Gabe, don’t!” Heather called.

Then she cried out and he felt another stab of pain surge through. They were cutting her to keep her quiet, and he wanted more than anything to look back and meet her eyes...to let her see why he was doing this in the first place, to stop her from hurting herself. He heard Dante saying something to her, trying to calm her, then Hwei-ru started speaking in a low monotone as she explained the logic of this surrender. Even James began interjecting points about the wisdom of living to fight another day. But it all quickly became noise, and another stab of pain shot through the bond. She wasn’t going to give up.

“Heather!” Gabe yelled, cutting through the other voices and quieting everyone at once. The Bastian only watched curiously as it played out, and without any other choice, Gabe watched back. “Heather,” he said quietly, staring into those alien eyes. “You have to trust me. Keep them safe. Keep yourself safe. And when I get back, we’ll pick up where we left off.” He gathered up what he was feeling then and pushed every bit of it through the bond, flooding the connection with all of his fear and resolve and affection. “I love you, okay?”

The Bastian stared back at him curiously, then nodded for the elves to walk him out.

Gabe stopped broadcasting his emotions and waited to feel anything echo back from her—any hint that she would be alright and that she wouldn’t charge off after him and get herself killed. But the bond had once again gone quiet.

“I know,” she said.

The elves pushed him out into the hall and around the corner, only stopping him once the room was out of sight. And there he was finally able to see what else had been waiting in the hall. There were at least thirty more of the creatures, all armed and uniformed elves like those back in the room, and Gabe knew for certain that he and his friends hadn’t stood a chance. It would have been a slaughter had they chosen to fight, and then they would have taken him anyway. He’d never been so relieved to have sharp things aimed at him.

Then even as he thought it, the blades withdrew and a massive hand was suddenly wrapping around the back of his neck to rest fingers and thumb against his throat. Gabe looked up and immediately caught his breath as he stared into the wide wrinkled face of the sasquatch. The thing towered at least two feet over him, and its body was covered in brownish fur all the way around. It had affable, almost friendly features, but they were marred considerably by the fanged scowl it wore looking back at it him—likely due to the big knot already forming on its forehead from catching a door there. For a moment it looked like it wanted to pick him up, then it simply nudged him forward and got him walking down the hall.

“I know this seems like a stupid request right now,” Gabe said, keenly aware of how his throat rubbed against the strong fingers. “But is there any chance you’ll let me call you Chewie?” The sasquatch grunted in what was either a laugh or a warning. “Kind of a once-in-a-lifetime situation for me, under the circumstances. I’ll do all the sound effects and everything.”

“Quiet,” an elf said in front of them. Then it turned to a companion. “Call ahead. Tell them we are coming home.”

A few seconds later, the rest of the group joined them from behind. “Please do not give us a reason to destroy you,” The Bastian said as it came alongside the sasquatch. “I would prefer you stay alive until the end of this mission.”

“Sounds great,” Gabe said. “How about we go really crazy and shoot for even longer?”

The Bastian made a humming noise as they all turned down a branching corridor. “That is not for me to decide. But you are clearly not stupid, human. You must be aware that you have just traded your life for those of your friends.”

Gabe swallowed. “Oh yeah? I thought this was just supposed to be a conversation?”

“Initially, yes,” it replied. “We will take you to the Elfhame so our queen may look at you with her own eyes and assess the threat these Iglas may or may not represent. And you must be alive for such a meeting. But I regret to say the Templars hold no such curiosity about you. For all your vaunted imagination, I’ve found that humans greatly favor killing things rather than understanding them.” The Bastian seemed to think about something for a moment, then came back with a small sigh. “And your friends have likely landed themselves in the same fate, I’m afraid.”

Gabe tried to snap his head toward the elf, but only managed to choke himself on the big hand. “What? I thought you said I traded my life for theirs?”

The Bastian nodded. “I did. I did not, however, say it was a good bargain.”

“That’s not fair,” Gabe said, trying to keep it calm as long as he could.

“Fair?” The Bastian said with a laugh as they turned another corner. “Nothing about this is fair for anyone. I do not wish to be here in this filthy realm, serving the whims of short-lived murderers, but here I stand. Though I assure you, it will not be me who breaks the bargain. Your two friends following us behind that glamour seem intent to do so themselves.”

Gabe immediately tried to feel for the bond, casting his thoughts back to Heather and searching for the single-minded anger he knew had to be there. But again he found nothing. It was like she’d somehow shut off and was hiding even from him. “Don’t,” he said simply. Then he repeated it in his mind.

The Bastian spread its long hands. “I will say I’m rather disappointed in your succubus friend. Their glamours are purported to be nearly as potent as ours, and I had hoped for something less obvious from her.” It shook its head. “She and the other creature have until we open the way to Elfhame to retreat. I can give them that much. But if they attempt to follow us through, I will have no choice but to dispatch them.”

They came to a set of ornate double doors in the blank white hallway, and the elf at the front of the group rapped on the wood several times with the end of a long wand. There was a pause as they waited for a response, and The Bastian used the time to begin whispering instructions to those around him. Gabe reached out with his senses to try to find Heather’s glamour, and was shocked when it immediately registered about thirty paces behind them. It barely felt like she was trying. Either she really was that weak and in need of energy, or for some reason she wanted them to know she was there.

The doors split down the middle and opened to reveal a beautiful glen in the full bloom of Spring. A flowery path immediately began where the white tile ended, and it meandered up a grassy hill in the center of the room directly to two blossoming trees with branches intertwined to form an archway. The group entered and the petals of the path seemed to subtly part for their feet, then Gabe gingerly followed and instantly crushed a whole bouquet.

The Bastian pulled them to a stop before the archway and sent a pulse of strange magic into it—and suddenly Gabe saw a shimmer come to life between the trunks. It glittered in the air, swirling as if gathering momentum, then it resolved like a clearing mist to reveal a completely different world beyond. At first the colors were too vivid and the motion was too frenetic, and Gabe wanted only to look away. But soon it settled into a picture that was just below the upper edge of saturation, and he found he couldn’t stop looking. It was somehow both forest and field, and it was every season at once while being none of them. It was thrilling and peaceful and enticing in a way that begged his feet to carry him through to see what more might lay beyond, and it felt like everything good and exciting and ripe about the world he knew, only better, and just a half-turn away.

“Yes,” The Bastian said, “you all get that look the first time. But we’re not quite ready to go yet.” He lifted a finger and instructed the sasquatch to turn around, and Gabe was suddenly looking back at a world that felt two shades too dim. The Bastian signaled to a group of elves who had remained below just inside the door, and they responded by settling into combat positions and then raising glamours powerful enough to make Gabe’s eyes immediately slide off of them.

The magic of Elfhame quickly soured in his mind as he realized what was about to happen, and he again reached out for Heather. He didn’t find her, but he did feel their glamour just as it entered the room. “Watch out!” he screamed, then was immediately choked to silence by the big hand.

The elves dropped their glamours to show they’d formed up into a tight semi-circle with swords pointed inward, and they all thrust forward together in one fluid motion to skewer what had just entered their deathtrap.

Two shields appeared first and the points all skittered off...then Dante was behind them with Penny aloft on his shoulders.

“Hi, everyone!” the sprite called, dropping her flimsy glamour as the minotaur batted aside all eight blades and charged directly into the elves.

Four of the creatures went down to swinging shields, slamming to the earth like ragdolls, and a fifth went flying back off of its feet as Dante body-checked it straight back into the hill. He turned and faced one of the remaining three, dipping his head and snorting as if about to charge, then he flipped one shield up and caught it by the rim before tossing it side-arm like a discus straight into the elf’s gut. The creature crumpled around the blow and dropped its sword before vomiting explosively all across the verdant grass—which took quite a bit of the shine off of its graceful demeanor.

“Whee!” Penny yelled as she clung to the horns and went along for the ride.

The Bastian looked more annoyed than upset, and it flicked a skeletal hand down toward the fight. “Go,” it said to the elves around it, “If they wish to live like fools, they will die like them.”

Almost all of the remaining elves, nearly fifty in total, snapped forward at the order and began descending the hill like gazelles. Their swords came up as one, and their voices lifted in a battle cry more beautiful than any song. And Gabe watched Penny glance back to recognize the threat just as the minotaur batted the last elf there to the ground. She patted the top of his head frantically, and he spun in place and quickly backed into the doorway...but didn’t retreat.

Then the gun went off.

The sasquatch roared and the fingers tightened around Gabe’s throat as he was lifted from his feet, but almost at once there was another grunt and he was quickly being planted back down. Gabe’s feet hit the ground too hard and his knees tried to buckle—and that’s when he noticed James suddenly standing there, pressing a hot gun barrel directly into a furry sasquatch crotch. The monster whined but went utterly still.

Heather appeared an instant later behind The Bastian with a long knife pressed against its throat. “Stop them,” she hissed, then punctuated it by slicing a millimeter into its skin.

The Bastian lifted its hand and snapped once, and the sound carried even more loudly than the gun had. The elves responded impossibly quickly and came to a stop just a few paces from where Dante was holding the door, and while those at the front leveled their blades, the back ranks turned in perfect formation, poised to sprint back up the hill.

“Now,” Heather said, grabbing a fistful of that white, flowing hair, “it’s time for a little renegotiation.”

The Bastian’s smile practically poured onto its face. “Fooled by my own deception? How delicious! But if you think this has won you anything except a swifter death, you have vastly overestimated my importance in this matter. Our queen has given an order, and we will die to the last to see it through.”

Heather tugged hard on the hair, bending the creature backward closer to her level. “Last chance to change your mind and walk away.”

The Bastian grunted in discomfort, but flicked its eyes toward the sasquatch. “Take him through.”

“No!” Heather said, digging the knife deeper and drawing a line of shimmering blood.

But the sasquatch hadn’t moved anyway. Its body was rigid and its eyes were wide as it stared at James in terror.

“Think carefully, big man,” James said, giving the gun a little unnecessary push into the monster’s groin. “You move one inch and I’ll blow off Harry and the Hendersons.”

Gabe chuckled despite himself. “We were actually doing a Chewbacca thing,” he rasped, “but that’s way better than the bowcaster joke I was working on.”

“Boys!” Heather snapped. “Focus.”

The Bastian ignored it all. “You will obey me,” it said to the sasquatch. “You are bound. Take him to the queen or I will see your family suffer!”

Heather kicked the back of the elf’s legs and dropped it to its knees, following it down with the blade. “I’ll kill you!”

“Then do it!” The Bastian replied with laugh. Then it raised its hand again and snapped once, and the elves charged.

Everything became chaos.

Twenty of the elves lunged straight into Dante, swinging swords and pressing in until he and Penny were pushed back out into hall where they vanished from sight. The other thirty sprinted back up the hill, coming fast, and only seconds away. The sasquatch reacted an instant later, swinging a big arm into James and connecting just as the gun went off, and the monster roared and lifted Gabe off his feet to cut off his air again. Heather sliced the knife hard across The Bastian’s throat, then kicked the creature down the hill as the sasquatch slapped its free hand to the new wound in its leg. James hit the grass and rolled to his back with the gun leading and firing, and several more bullets went into the creature’s stomach just as The Bastian thrust its hand into the ground to arrest its fall. The elf looked up and smiled with shining blood sheeting down its neck just as its companions came up behind.

Gabe clawed at the fingers, trying to pry even one free to get a gasp of air, but he immediately realized it was useless. The sasquatch began stumbling toward the portal, jerking with the impacts of another two bullets as it went, and the twin trees loomed ahead of them. Gabe pulled up the gravity charm in his mind and poured magic into it, preparing himself for the broken neck it would probably result in, and the portal rose just in front of him, sparkling with that alien energy and beckoning him to dive through to the vibrant promise within.

Then suddenly something cold passed behind him and he was falling, hitting the grass a few inches from Elfhame. The sasquatch roared again, this time in surprise as much as pain, and Gabe took a hard kick to his side as the monster vaulted over him in a panicked retreat through the portal. Gabe sucked in a breath and grasped at his neck, only to find the huge fingers still wrapped loosely there. He flung the severed hand off, then took another deep breath.

The gun went off several more times, then suddenly the hilltop filled with cries of alarm and the sounds of clashing weapons, and Gabe pushed himself up just in time to see Heather come sprinting toward him with sheer panic on her face.

“Run!” she screamed, inexplicably heading straight for the portal.

He didn’t understand. The elves were somehow no longer chasing her, and James had vanished. And yet someone was still fighting the Twenty Brothers atop the hill. Gabe lifted his hand to loose the magic he’d prepared, hoping to flatten the group and open a way to the exit, then his hand flared in agony and he looked down to find another black void manifesting on the Qi Dragon.

“No!” he shouted. There was too much happening at once, and the pain and shock drove him to his knees. He grabbed his wrist with his left hand even as he heard Heather cry out.

A moment later she was there with him, pulling him back to his feet and dragging him toward Elfhame. “We have to go! No other way—”

She suddenly spun and fell to the ground, landing hard as if she’d been hit by a truck. Gabe reflexively turned that direction to face the attack, only to see a sword come swinging in toward her. He barely had time to think as he raised his burning hand and released the gravity charm, sending a pulse of raw force out from him to blast everything down. He felt the magic catch and heard the grunts around him...

Then he was on the ground, and the back of his head hurt like hell. Something had somehow avoided his charm and come in to hit him. Something fast.

He couldn’t think straight.

“Take all three,” a ragged voice said above him.

Gabe pulled up more magic, intent on pouring all of it in this time, but a boot caught him in the stomach and broke his concentration on the pattern before it could form. So instead he rolled over, preparing to kick and bite and fight in any way he could...but the touch of the sword at his throat stopped him. It was so cold.

The Hunter stared down at him with those dead eyes above its fleshless, rictus grin.

“The takings are bountiful today,” it said, holding the rime blade perfectly still as the ice smoked in the air. “What luck. We are done here.”

“Yes, Huntmaster,” A second Hunter said. Then it stepped aside and viciously sliced the air with its blade, somehow cutting deep into emptiness until Gabe felt the veil itself parting. The slash left behind a glowing line that seemed to split space entirely, before falling open like a wound to release a wan white mist that poured out like blood. And the Hunter went straight in.

Then Gabe was being lifted by impossibly strong hands on his arms and legs and he saw Heather being gathered up the same way. She also had a blade at her throat, and she was watching him carefully. Beyond her, two Hunters carried James’s limp form into the portal, trailing blood across the grass. And beyond that, the idyllic hill was littered with bodies.

Gabe cast back for the patterns of all the hexes he’d tried or magic he’d ever touched, and he hastily started throwing together a ridiculous construct from the bits he could recall. He had no idea what it would actually do when he loosed it, but...

The ragged face of bare bone and muscle rose above him again. “If you struggle,” The Huntmaster rasped, “I will be wearing her skin next we speak.”

Gabe stared into those eyes, empty of everything except a manic, blood-soaked delight, and he believed it. He dropped his magic.

Then they dragged him toward the portal...and through.

ELSEWHERE

AKA MANAH SMILED AS he accepted a shouted compliment with a little lift of his glass, then kept moving past the group to head toward the front of the room. A little clear space opened up in the crowd, and he slowed to let Lauren come up beside him. “You look exquisite tonight,” he said, speaking just loudly enough for her to hear over the music. “One might almost believe you are here by choice.”

She didn’t so much as flinch this time. “You don’t intend to let me go, do you?” she said, staring straight ahead toward the stage. “This game you’re playing with me...it’s about more than just our son.”

The god took a sip of champagne before replying. “Game? If you are still under the impression that this is some elaborate con, you are greatly mistaken. I am quite serious in this endeavor. Deadly, you might say...though, I wish you wouldn’t.” He stopped to shake a man’s hand and pretend to listen to some blather before making an apologetic noise and pressing on. “If I somehow fail in this, Gabriel’s efforts may go for naught. That, in turn, will represent a significant loss of investment for me. So by that measure then, yes, you are an important part of my own designs.”

“I’m a tool, in other words,” she said.

He laughed gamely at a passing woman’s remark, then continued on as he bent his head back to Lauren. “If that helps you. But I wish you’d think of yourself as more a partner. I have now loosened your leash sufficiently that you may leave anytime you wish, but you must know that it will have repercussions that echo beyond your own life. You are here to serve a much greater purpose.”

“Fine,” Lauren said before nodding politely at a young man who complimented her dress. “Explain it to me then. No evasions or cryptic answers this time, Alexander.”

Aka Manah stopped at a table near the wall and let his new assistant open the door to the backstage area. “I know my word doesn’t mean much to you yet,” he said over his shoulder, “but it is all I can offer on that front. For this portion of your life, you will be saving your son’s. If you can no longer spare the time, however, you may leave.” He glanced back and saw the weight settle on her anew. He hadn’t even needed to refresh the geas this time. Her eyes were still clear and yet the web was tighter than ever. “I trust you to do what you think is right. Enjoy the party.” Then he passed through the doorway.

Reznick was waiting for him just on the other side, lit momentarily by the bright lights until the door swung back closed and left the place in the dim glow of a single blue bulb. The sound of the crowd lessened.

“She’d probably whine less if you just told her the truth,” the bokor said as he coiled a bit of rope. “I don’t know why you have to keep her dangling like this.”

“And that is why we are in our respective roles,” the god replied. “You are concerned only about the moment while I place pieces on a board that has yet to be built. Lauren has already been given more information than any human should have, and she suspects more still. But if I were to truly help her understand her role in the full scope of what we face, I doubt she would stay sane long enough to actually perform it.” He moved past a bank of sound equipment to a series of curtain ropes running up the back wall where Paul was crouched and panting. “What have you fetched me today?”

Reznick replied first. “Another holdout, boss.”

The man appeared to be in his seventies. He was wearing a nice sweater and slacks as if he’d been about to go out for dinner, but the fabric at the front of his pants was still damp where he’d spoiled them. He was bald except for a ring of hair around his head, and his glasses were hanging from one ear with the lenses pressed against his chin. He was bound and gagged and tied spread eagle to the wall.

Aka Manah studied the man, recognizing him from the pictures. “And you offered to talk first? Offered the money?”

Reznick snorted. “Just like you said. And that did work on a few others, but this fuckin’ guy had the nerve to threaten to call the cops before we got more than your name out. Had to pull out the big guns.”

Aka Manah reached up and carefully put the man’s glasses back across the bridge of his nose. “I see. And was that integrity, do you think? Or are we simply bidding too low to buy loyalties at this level?” He smiled and the older man flinched.

“In this case, I’d say it’s a little of both,” Reznick said. “He’s got a pretty nice house for the salary he supposedly pulls as a public servant, and a much hotter, much younger wife too. So I’m guessing he’s already been bought several times and doesn’t consider himself on the market anymore.”

Aka Manah slowly ran a fingertip down the man’s cheek, watching how the fear built in his eyes. Then he tugged the gag free. “Isn’t it fascinating how a man might think he’s reached the peak of his terror, only to find new heights of it where he least expects? Even, perhaps, from hope.” He leaned in close. “Cry out.”

The man’s eyes went wide and wild, and he only whimpered and shook his head, a sound easily lost in the noise of the party outside.

Aka Manah moved in closer and breathed on his ear. “Louder. Go on...I won’t stop you. You know you are in danger, but one strong shout here and you may yet be rescued. Save yourself. Now.”

But again, the man barely made a sound. He was trembling hard and clearly fighting to not hyperventilate.

Aka Manah took a deep breath, practically tasting the scents of sweat and fear and urine. Then he leaned back. “And that is humanity,” he said, reaching up to straighten his tie. “They can see the dangers all around, and yet they refuse to take even the smallest steps to mitigate them. They prefer to argue about the best way to save the ship even as it sinks beneath them. And when faced with a true test of courage and character, they whimper into the darkness hoping for mercy until the very moment they see the gleam of the knife.” He finished off his champagne and tossed the glass aside to shatter on the floor. “This is why we are here, gentlemen. To be the blade at their neck. To force them to protect themselves when they would rather cry about it until the true threat throttles them from behind.”

Reznick nodded along as he knelt and produced a sloshing plastic sandwich bag that he upended onto the floor. A cloudy, viscous liquid dribbled out first, forming a pool in front of his knees, then it was followed the wet thumps of three severed eyeballs.

Aka Manah took a step back to keep the liquid from his shoes, and he watched the bokor arrange them in a rough triangle. “You know I’m not squeamish about your methods,” the god said. “But where and why did you get those?”

Reznick pulled a bag of black sand from his cloak and drizzled out a circle around the mess. “You know how bakeries just give the stale stuff away at the end of the day?” he asked. “Same thing, only with undertakers. Just a fun experiment in flesh magic.” He lifted an eyeball between his fingers and peered closely into it with a chuckle. “Windows to the soul, right?”

Aka Manah sighed. “As long as it works. Let’s shoot for a djinn this time. Could be useful.” He turned, then stopped and raised a finger. “After you’re done here, pack me a nice picnic. Something fit for a campfire. And as long as you’re out scavenging, stop by a liposuction clinic. Ten pounds should about do it, I think.”

Reznick simply nodded, already slipping into his incantation.

The old man was staring in horror at the eyeballs, and the sight finally seemed to push him far enough past his fear. “Help!” he called, his voice rasping but loud enough to carry. “Help me! Please!”

Aka Manah raised his eyebrows and feigned listening intently toward the door. There was a round of laughter from a group just beyond...but nothing else. He turned back to the man with a smile. “I may have lied about one or two things, but then I do that.”

“Help!” the man screamed. “God...help me!”

Aka Manah slipped on his warmest smile. “Oh, but I am.”

The bokor began the ritual with a flare of his bloody magic and the man screamed again. Then Aka Manah pushed through the curtain to take the stage to a roar of applause.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

“I’ve realized I’m actually a pretty positive person deep down, and I’m trying to excavate that as I work on this new, sunnier disposition. The only reason I was so bothered by all the crap in my life up to this point, was because I was still holding out hope that there could be something better. It turns out it was just optimism disguised as bitterness and bile—and that’s actually the most optimistic thing I’ve ever heard. Maybe someday I’ll even get to the point where my jokes are only there because I’m happy, and not because I’m trying to distract people from my disaster of a personality. Though, I don’t want to reach too far yet. I think I’ll start with a rainbow sticker on my shirt and see where that takes me.”

-Excerpt from Chapter Twenty-Four, CONscience

HIS WRISTS HURT.

There was obviously more for him to worry about—like the cold dirt cave he was trapped in, the rasping susurrus that never seemed to stop just outside the open hole in the wall, and the fact that he’d heard nothing from Heather or James since being dragged down there. Not to mention the den of Hunters who had likely taken him for revenge. But just then, it was his wrists.

The manacles had proven surprisingly strong considering how rusted and bent they were, and the chain linking them to the large stone in the center of the room was possibly thick enough to hold Dante. It was certainly heavy enough that Gabe had to strain even to lift his hands to his chest. The rough metal at the edges of the cuffs had cut into his skin in several places, and it was like a war between that and his healing ability to see which could work faster. From the amount of fresh blood trickling down his fingers, it seemed like the home team was losing. So he’d settled on doing the thing that hurt the least, which was standing with his hands resting on the rock in the center of the room.

Gabe sifted through the patterns of magic he knew again, coming away with only bits and pieces of the ones could recall. He’d encountered a surprising number of different powers, now that he stopped to think about it, but just then he was wishing he’d actually paid a little better attention to any of them. There was the flash charm, but light would do him little good. He could see perfectly well already, and he wasn’t sure the Hunters even used their eyes in the same way anyone else did. He was also pretty sure he could remember the smoke pattern, but that would likely put him at just as much disadvantage as his captors. And the concussive force of the gravity charm would probably collapse the entire room right on top of him...so that was out too. Everything else was only partially intact in his mind, and very little of it would have been helpful anyway. He didn’t think setting off a stink bomb down there would do much good, even if he could recall how.

And that left him with only one other bit of magic in his arsenal. It was the first he’d ever done, in fact, and he could still see the lines of the pattern where they’d burned across the blank canvas of his mind those months ago. Entropy. Aka Manah had gifted it, and Gabe had used the power to melt two Hunters in a mall parking lot—back when he still hadn’t fully believed any of this was real. It was likely the very magic that had put him in this situation, actually. And now, if he was lucky, it might get him out of it.

He shaved off another slice of power and formed it into the shape of age and decay, letting it ripen until it grew hungry for something to devour. Then he pushed it through his fingertips to where they touched the link that connected to the bigger chain, before backing off again and letting the magic fade naturally into his background aura. He held his breath, waiting for a Hunter to notice this time and come storming around the corner. But once more, it seemed to have gone undetected. A few minutes later he did it again, building it up, trickling it out, and letting it fade. Like breathing.

And that was his life for...hours? Maybe longer. Casting, waiting, and wondering. He didn’t dare use more power for fear of getting Heather killed, and he had no way of knowing how much longer it would take to eat through the metal—or indeed, if it was even working on something that wasn’t organic. For all he knew, the Hunters could be waiting just outside, letting him exhaust himself by drips until he really was out of options.

He kept himself busy by trying to gauge how much power he was using each time and how quickly it was replenishing itself, and he was surprised to find he could actually feel it. He guessed that a full-force blast of entropy would drain him dry, one big shot to take out something really dangerous. But he could probably keep up his current pace indefinitely, so long as he was able to sleep at some point. He tried thinking about his other tricks in the same way, similarly defining them by energy level so he could determine how many of each he had at his disposal, but he soon got lost in thoughts of magic points and mana and spell slots, and none of it wanted to fit the nebulous realities as he knew them. Magic didn’t want rules. It was the very thing that broke them. And beyond that, the thoughts wouldn’t properly stick in his head anyway while the worry was coating everything there.

Gabe reached again for the bond with Heather and found nothing. He’d watched her go through that tear in the veil just ahead of him, and then time and space had smeared together until they’d come out the other side with a sickening lurch and the feeling that they’d just done something truly unnatural. His head had been spinning with it, fighting to connect pictures into coherent thoughts, and by the time he’d collected himself enough to think to look for his friends...they had already been dragged in to that dark hole beneath the ruins.

Gabe sent another wisp of entropy into the metal, weakening a few more molecular bonds and keeping his mind occupied. Heather was fine, he told himself. He’d failed to feel the bond plenty of times before, so that didn’t have to mean anything. He knew that she could mask it when she needed to, so that was probably all this was. She wanted to hide or lie or...spare him. His imagination immediately conjured an image of her bound and bleeding and using everything she had left to keep him from feeling it too. She’d already been hurt from the kraken and then from the elves, and she’d had almost no energy left. No match for a single Hunter. A dozen of them together...

“You are frightened,” a whisper breathed from just behind him.

Gabe flinched and turned, ready to see nearly anything in there with him, but he only found the same rocky, hard-packed soil he’d been staring at for hours.

“That is a start,” it said from the other side.

Gabe turned again, but this time forced himself to do so more casually. “I’ve seen this trick,” he called, his own voice sounding obscenely loud to him. “Maybe it worked on seventeenth century peasants, but after about a thousand low-budget horror movies, I’m a little more—Ahh!” The Hunter appeared directly in front of him, its mangled face grinning inches from his, and Gabe had to carefully swallow back the scream before he could speak again. “...Oh. Yeah. That was, uh...better.”

The Huntmaster stared into his eyes for several beats, looking through them almost, and Gabe found he couldn’t look away. He was trapped in the moment, unable to move or breathe, and he suddenly understood why some prey animals preferred to play dead rather than run. He watched the muscles around the creature’s eye sockets twitch over the yellowed bone, holding those unblinking eyes perfectly still even as the manic energy in them seemed to want to draw them open further. They alone on the monster were untouched by injury, wet and vital and white beyond reason except where they were black at their centers. And in that one instant staring into them, Gabe saw every way he could die. Nothing else. Just calculating, gleeful, unrelenting murder.

He finally managed to pull in a shuddering breath, and he was distantly surprised to find no hint of carrion or blood in it. The Hunter looked like a walking corpse, but it smelled like nothing. His other senses likewise picked up no hint of an aura or power of any kind—not even a blank spot in the air like the shadowmen. Just...nothing. No scent, no soul, no warning. It was no wonder they were so feared among even those who fed on fear itself.

The Huntmaster seemed to recognize that Gabe was clawing his way out of the trance, and the creature broke the stare just enough to finish the job. Gabe sucked in another breath and moved back the instant he had control of himself again, and he pulled with all of his weight to drag the chain to its full extension until his shoulders were scraping the wall and a new line of blood was trickling down his wrists.

The Hunter didn’t follow, but it seemed to be barely restraining itself. Gabe only noticed then that it was wearing the tattered remains of an old business suit, with one wide lapel like something from the seventies still intact next to a kind of charm hanging from a bit of leather around its neck. It looked like some dried bit of meat suspended there against its chest, and above it, the creature sported a ragged slash across its neck.

“We have waited long enough,” it said, its voice like sandpaper over leather, and every word an agony. “It is time for you.”

Gabe tried to summon anything like courage, then finally settled for an illusion of it by lifting his chin a fraction. “Oh yeah? I thought you were supposed to be big, bad hunters? Doesn’t seem very sporting to kill your prey when they’re chained.”

The Huntmaster cocked its head to one side and its face creaked into an unreadable expression. There might have even been a hint of amusement in it. “Why do you believe you are here?” it asked.

Gabe studied the question for traps and tried to find clues on the creature’s face, but nothing in that flayed muscle and sinew was recognizable as human emotion. It only left him with empty guesses and pure honesty, and neither were very smart in his experience.

“Vengeance,” he ventured finally, opting for the latter. “I killed three of yours, so you take the same number from me and mine.”

The Huntmaster’s eyes sparkled as if with memory, but the sense of amusement didn’t change. “Wrong,” it said, simply.

Gabe stared at the horror and waited for elaboration, but ultimately didn’t have the patience or the bladder control to do it for long. “Okay, the Iglas then. You’re bringing me to the Templars.”

The Huntmaster’s smile widened with the sound of grinding bone. “We have declined that contract. For any amount.” It took a slow step toward him.

“Fine,” Gabe said, dumping all of his energy into not whimpering with it. “How about Phillip? Are you working for him again?” The monster shook its head. “Aka Manah?” Gabe tried, feeling the desperation trying to seize control. “The Endless Dark, the Creators, the Knights of Solomon, Fangshai, Hags, or the Chamber of fucking Commerce? What?!” He yelled the end of it, and the echo bounced into the hall beyond to carry until it traveled too far to catch.

The Huntmaster took another step closer, to within arm’s reach. “All rejected. All worthless.”

“Where are my friends?” Gabe asked, trying to turn the conversation into anything useful.

The creature shook its head.

“Where are they?” Gabe repeated, finding some steel to inject into it.

“Inconsequential.”

“Wrong,” Gabe replied, knowing he was giving away a weakness but not caring in that moment. “If you think you’re going to get anything out of me, up to and including cooperation, without knowing that my friends are safe, you’re even crazier than you look. Which, you should know is already a metric fuck-ton.” He knew he was babbling, but he couldn’t help it.

The Huntmaster barely seemed to hear him. “They are valuable. More so than their bounties.”

Gabe tried not to sag in relief, but the weight of the chain was pulling him down whether he liked it or not. “Is that supposed to be reassuring? Because I think you need more practice.”

The Huntmaster took another step closer. “You must have felt it? Deep. Dark.” It brought its face nearer, like it was trying to sniff something on him. “You have.”

Gabe tried to back away further, but the earthen wall refused to budge and the rusty manacles cut into him again. “I...don’t know what you want.”

“Oh, but you must,” The Huntmaster replied, inching closer. “It is there, isn’t it? Calling you. Begging. Feeding. You cannot deny it.”

Gabe turned his head, desperately trying to gain every inch he could away from the thing. “I don’t know what you want!” he said too quickly and too loudly. The fear broke loose and ran through him like icy water. “Just...okay, wait! Let my friends go and we can talk! Good enough?”

The monster’s eyes were roaming all across his face. “You would sacrifice for them?”

Gabe swallowed hard, pushing down his screaming self-preservation instinct at the same time. “Fine. Whatever. Just let them go and deal with me. Not a sacrifice, just...fewer variables.”

The Huntmaster let out a rasping sigh. “Good. They will suffice.”

“For what?” Gabe asked.

“For you,” the Huntmaster replied. “To kill.”

Gabe couldn’t hold back the bark of laughter that came out at that, and it actually pushed down some of the fear for a moment. “Not a chance. I’m a selfish bastard, but I’m not that bad. I guess you’ll have to kill me after all.”

The Huntmaster’s smile grew wider still. “Oh, but that is the one prey we may not take, Gabriel Delling. The one threat I cannot level at you. And the one gift I cannot give.” Then the monster snatched up Gabe’s left hand and yanked it around to press a strong thumb into his palm...right where the rime blade had left a raised patch of frost-darkened skin. “We are forbidden from killing our own.”

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

“Sometimes I don’t know how my luck actually works. On the whole, it seems to be more good than bad, but man does it ever try to keep the balance close.”

-Excerpt from Chapter Twenty-Two, CONscience

GABE’S HEART STOPPED. He felt the ache in his chest radiate into his arms and gut until the organ came back to life with a lurch and began beating faster and faster as if to make up for the lost time. He felt dizzy and sick.

Our own.

“Nice try,” he said, weakly. “I’m not buying it.”

But the Huntmaster effortlessly saw through the denial. “You have summoned the blade. You have fed it agony, fear, and grief. It is in you...and it hungers. The lost thirteenth.”

“You want it back?” he asked quietly. “You can have it. Barely works for me anyway.”

The monster leaned closer. “It cannot be given...only taken. Not a blade but a mantle. Not a weapon but a curse.”

Gabe waited for more, but got only that silent stare. “What do you want from me then?”

The Huntmaster groaned practically against Gabe’s cheek. “Want does not exist. Need only.” It pulled back a few inches and lifted Gabe’s hand until the chain drew taut in the air. “Summon it.”

Gabe started to respond, but then the Hunter suddenly stepped back and dropped his hand, and the weight of the chain pulled him down and forward. He hissed as the metal cut into him, lighting several new fires in his skin and creating new lines of blood to drip to the floor.

“Yes,” The Huntmaster whispered. “Use it. Feed it.”

Gabe shuffled forward until the bulk of the chain was resting on the ground again, then he dropped into a crouch. “No.”

The Huntmaster stared for a moment, and Gabe prepared himself for a fight or an argument or even a quick beheading. But then the creature simply turned and swept out of the room, leaving no trace of itself even in the dirt on the floor. Gabe didn’t know if he’d just won somehow, or if he’d just lost so horribly that the Hunter wanted to take its time devising an appropriate way to punish him.

A moment later, he had his answer when Heather was tossed bodily into the room.

She hit and rolled, her own manacles jangling until she came to rest motionless several paces away. No Hunters followed her in.

“No!” he yelled, then scrambled to her and began working to turn her over despite the new cuts he was giving himself.

Her eyes were closed and her breathing was shallow, and he could see immediately that she had been beaten—probably several times as she’d attempted to get free, knowing her. But it was her aura that worried him the most. He’d seen something like it before, when she’d burned herself out trying to glamour them in the prison several weeks ago, but this time there was still a bare flicker of energy left keeping her afloat. It was like the Hunters had known exactly how far to take her down both physically and spiritually to keep her alive while making sure she didn’t pose a threat. And the longer Gabe looked, the more convinced he was of it. He knew how much punishment Heather could take, and she was right on the edge.

His mind raced with possibilities—trying to heal her, trying to comfort her, trying to fight his way out with her over his shoulder—but ultimately he knew how he could help. He bent down to kiss her...

Then he immediately pulled away. The memory of how she’d lost control with him was still fresh, and he’d watched her drain three big men the last time this had happened. He certainly couldn’t afford to give that much. So instead, he pushed her to the far side of the room, straining to lift his chain enough to get her most of the way there, then pushing her just a few more inches beyond that. His wrists burned with the wounds, blood now running freely from them, and his arms strained with the effort. Then, only when she was barely within reach, did he heave against the chains and lean down to kiss her.

At first, there was nothing. She was warm and breathing, but she was too far gone to participate. But just as it was starting to feel wrong and desperate, and when he was convinced it was a stupid idea, something finally took. Her magic flickered to life in her, reigniting like a trick candle and catching up the trail of energy he was leaving. And the bond came back with it. It started as a slow burn of her essence outlining itself against the murk of unconsciousness, and from it grew several tendrils of a soft, insidious power that he absolutely recognized. The first lashes of it flicked out from her, taking small portions of energy and reeling them back in to the whole. Tasting him. And then the real thing came, blossoming like a time-lapse flower and gathering him up in its folds.

Spring rain on a canopy of leaves...cool cream and sun-warmed berries...vanilla...mint...fingers on his cheek, then in his hair...

Then he felt the full weight of her power roll over him like a velvet onslaught, bearing him under and seizing up his energy in one massive pull. He saw her aura become the demon, the succubus, and he felt no hesitation in her as she reached within to gather all of him like a fruit cored from its rind. He felt her stirring beneath him, life flowing into her as it flowed out of him. Then his legs and arms went slack and he was falling back.

Everything went quiet for a moment as he basked in the numb pleasure she’d left in his mind, and he couldn’t remember why he’d ever wanted to do anything else. He could go back if he pulled hard enough. A little effort for the ultimate reward...

“Gabe!” he heard above him. “Oh, god! No!”

Her panic was sharp and fast, and it sliced directly through the magic like a blade through heavy curtains. The fog parted a little and he opened his eyes, finding Heather leaning over him with utter terror on her face. The relief that went through her then was almost enough to clear the rest of the haze all by itself, and that gave him the space he needed to gather a little magic of his own and wipe his thoughts clean like a cloudy chalkboard.

He summoned a smile. “Relax, it was just a regular heroic deed this time. Not a stupid self-sacrificing one.” He held up his manacles to show her the chain whose weight had dragged him off of her, then immediately regretted it when he saw how much blood was now covering his hands. “Oh...crap.”

She caught his forearms and held them while she looked at the mess of his wounds, then had to let them go as even that much weight became too much for her. She was barely any better, it seemed. Just well enough to be conscious.

“If you need more, I can try—” he began.

But she stopped him with firm shake of her head. “No. I’ve almost eaten you twice today. No way I’m risking another one.”

Gabe grunted as he sat up and slid back until the chain was mostly resting on the floor again. “I’m a big boy. I can handle it.”

She slid over to join him. “Not a chance. Thank you for the jumpstart though.” She pulled in a deep breath that seemed to hurt as much as it helped. “It was a smart move...if completely stupid.”

He tried wiping some of the blood onto his pants, but it only made more of a mess. “Thanks. You wanna come up with an escape plan or should we make-out a little more first? I’m fine with either.”

She smiled sadly. “Hungry as I am, I don’t trust myself to even touch you. And honestly, I’m not sure I trust myself to be able to walk either. Do you know what they want with us?”

He started to shake his head, then realized how foolish that was. If it wasn’t true, there’d be no reason to hide it. And if it was, she might be able to tell him what to do about it. “They, uh...apparently think I’m a Hunter. Sort of a King Arthur thing with the rime blade. Only disgusting and terrifying.”

She nodded. “I wondered. That kind of power generally doesn’t come without some kind of price.”

Gabe nearly choked. “Wait, you think it’s true? That’s...not what I was looking for.”

“No,” she said quickly. “I mean...maybe.” Then she held up her hands to calm him. “But you don’t really follow the same rules the rest of us do, so who knows what’s true and what isn’t with you? There’s a reason nobody can quite pin you down.”

“Fateless,” he replied. “Which, as far as I can tell, means that I’m so clueless I’m screwing up in ways nobody ever predicted.”

“Better than nothing,” she replied. Then her face went carefully blank while a bit of resolve carried over to him. “I won’t make it out of here. Not like this. So you’re going to have to make a run for it.”

Gabe started to say that he had no intention of leaving her behind, and that she should know it by now, but then he spotted the figure in the doorway and clamped his mouth shut.

The Huntmaster slowly stepped into the room, eyeing Heather first then turning fully to Gabe. “Summon it.”

Heather tried to stand to put herself between them, but she only managed to get up to her knees before the effort became too much.

Gabe stood instead. “No. I know how this goes and I’m not playing. I’m not joining your little club, and I’m not believing a word you say. And I’m definitely not doing anything you ask. If my way out of these manacles is killing someone I love, then you can shove that pretty ice sword right up your ass and do the hula. Collect your bounty, turn us in, and get your ugly face out of mine.”

The Huntmaster’s grin never wavered. “Summon it.”

Gabe stared back. “No.”

“You will,” the creature said.

Gabe shrugged. “Hey, I can do this all day. My schedule is totally clear. If I can get a glass of water I’m sure I can even work a good spit if that would help.”

The Huntmaster turned its head to one side like a lizard, and its unblinking eyes went eerily bright. Then it was moving faster than he could follow and Gabe nearly fell backward as he tensed for the impact...that never came. Instead, the Hunter circled around Heather and stopped behind her, yanking her up with one hand and digging into her side with the other. Gabe saw her try to struggle away in the first instant, but then she gasped and went still as the monster pressed hard into her ribs.

“Summon it,” the Huntmaster said again.

Gabe’s mind went blank. He waited for a plan or clever reply to manifest, but all he could see was the tight tension on Heather’s face, and all he could think was the pain carrying through the bond. “Wait,” he said. “There has to be—”

He heard a sickening pop and Heather cried out as she tried to buckle from the Hunter’s grip, but the monster simply pulled her back up and moved its fingers to the next rib while watching him.

“This isn’t how you—No!” he said, feeling another stab of pain carry over and seeing her face go white with it. Every objection he had crumbled.

The Hunter moved up another rib.

“Fucking stop!” Gabe yelled, clenching his hands into fists and fighting back the urge to just throw himself onto the monster, odds be damned. “I’ll talk, okay? But I don’t know how to just—”

Heather screamed this time and her knees gave out, and she was left hanging from the Huntmaster’s grip to pant in shallow breaths. Gabe felt the bond flickering on and off as she lost what little strength she’d had, and the static bursts of pain and the raw will to stay conscious were heartbreaking.

“Now,” the Huntmaster said.

Gabe held up his hands. “I’m trying to tell you—”

Heather screamed again.

“Please!” Gabe begged. “I’ll try!”

Another crunch, another scream...but so much weaker. Almost nothing from the bond. She was slipping away.

“Goddamnit I said yes! Stop!” Gabe yelled. He tried, but nothing came.

The Huntmaster moved up another rib, still staring. Still waiting.

Crunch. Whimper. Pain. Crunch...

“No more!” Gabe screamed, and his hand suddenly filled with cold hatred that froze his fingers closed around an icy hilt. He felt the hoarfrost swarm over the manacle and creep up the chain, and he turned to slam the whole thing against the rock, shattering the link he’d already weakened. His left hand came free and the heavy chain fell to the ground, then he spun back, leading with the rime blade.

Heather was already falling to one side and the Huntmaster’s own sword met his mid-swing. The ice clashed with a shriek and hiss, and a chunk of Gabe’s edge went flying off into the dark. But he didn’t care. He felt only pain and hatred and hunger to kill the thing in front of him, and he brought the blade around in a wide slash to do just that. Again, the Hunter took the blow easily and redirected it into the ground, slicing off another sliver.

“Yes!” the creature howled as it parried again. “Feed it! Take from your memories. Hone the edge.”

Gabe tried a quick thrust inside the monster’s guard and paid for it with a cut on his forearm that burned and spat against his warm blood. The pain was incredible, but he gave it to the sword and the ice crackled as it tightened.

“More!” The Huntmaster hissed, stepping over Heather and pressing the attack.

Gabe batted aside two quick thrusts that tried to slice either side of his stomach, and then he was swinging wildly, hacking and slamming the blade in blind rage as the Hunter matched his every move. He knew he couldn’t keep up the pace for long, that he wasn’t strong or fast enough to ever match a Hunter on equal footing. But even as those thoughts tried to congeal in his brain, he felt a wild abandon creep up from within to pour raw energy into his limbs. Memories of past hurts floated up with it, carried on the same eddy and cutting like shards as they came, and soon he was swimming among a whole sea of them and bleeding into their depths.

His childhood...cold and loveless. No friends. No family. No life until he’d seized one for himself.

The strength filled his arms and shot into his hand to grow the sword by inches. He felt faster. Harder. The blade rang as it cut the air.

His mother leaving. No looking back. No calls. No letters....nothing in him worthwhile enough for her.

He gritted his teeth as the energy coursed through him, and his jaw creaked with the force of it. The blade was nothing in his hands, lighter than air and faster than thought as it met the Huntmaster’s own edge again and again and again. The freedom and savagery was everything.

His father’s accident. The conflict of it. The hatred. The obligation. Aka Manah, and the pain of losing what little he’d had left. A scavenged bit of home stolen and perverted and used as a lever against him until he was back where he’d started and hating the man who’d made him...

The edge thinned to transparency and the memories began drifting together as they sliced past him, taking pieces of him, tearing away his sanity to fill in the gaps in a pattern made of his agonies and fears and obsessions and fabricated hopes laid bare. It all slipped together, fusing into a shape he knew and hated.

The Huntmaster’s expression became pure glee as they traded blows, stronger and stronger, faster and faster until the muscles in its face were stretched past tearing so that it was weeping blood in savage pleasure.

Gabe felt his own face creaking as it bent to do the same. The pattern locked together, finding its shape and flaring to life to imprint itself inside him. Making him whole. Making him hunger.

“Embrace it!” The Huntmaster yelled. “Take your place among us!”

He wanted to. God, but he did. The rage was so...clean...

But then...

Then...

One more memory suddenly floated up and wedged itself in, sticking in the howling gears of that savagery even as they careened toward the edge. And it shifted the pattern in a very small, but very important way. He felt the reckless abandon of the hunger stutter and skip, like a man missing a step on a downward sprint, and then the cascade of raw emotions simply came apart in his mind. All at once he was aware again and in control, his thoughts opening from the narrow pinprick they’d shuttered to, and his movements sliding back down to their normal speed. The blade in his hand slowed again, and the strength of his blows suddenly felt like nothing. On reflex he finished the strike he’d started, arcing the weapon around to drag the edge across the monster’s gut, but the Huntmaster was able to slap it away contemptuously.

“No!” The thing screamed. “Feed it!”

Gabe barely parried a violent swing toward his head, but the blow still shattered his sword near the tip and sent fragments of ice raining across the room. He pulled his blade back around to catch another swing, and the weapon was only half as long.

The Huntmaster’s eyes went wild and raw, and the blood streaking down its face cracked where the expression changed to rage. Gabe took two quick steps back, shocked to find that he had actually been somehow gaining ground in the fight, and he was hugely relieved when the Hunter didn’t follow. The creature simple stood there with its rime blade smoking and spitting in the air, and it looked like it was trying to decide what to do next.

Heather had dragged herself to the far side of the room, and Gabe only then caught her shocked expression. He tried to press a little reassurance through the bond, but it was totally closed off. She didn’t want to feel him. Suddenly her eyes darted past him and her expression darkened further, and Gabe stole a quick glance back to find the hallway just outside filled with the rest of the Hunters. Eleven more just watching them, just waiting for the thirteenth to fall.

“Summon it,” the Huntmaster said, its voice back to a dull rasp.

The feel of that blind rage and lost control settled in Gabe’s gut and soured there, making him want to vomit rather than invite it back again. But in the chaos of the fight, Heather was now closer to the monster, and he didn’t want to repeat that torture either. So he slipped inside himself and studied the pattern that had been left behind. It was an ugly, vile thing made only of edges, and he knew there was no way to take it up without cutting himself anew. It didn’t want magic...it wanted suffering. And the more he fed it, the more it would want. He would bleed out and stop being himself long before it was ever satisfied.

But then he turned it over and found the single memory that had pushed in at the last second and changed things. It was soft where the pain should have been, rounded over and molded to him like a leather grip, and it was placed just where he could reach in with his will and make the thing work for him instead of the other way around. It was still pain, but it was scarred over in relief. A memory of loss smothered by change and victory and hope. He touched it tentatively there and found that it was made for him, then gathered it all up and poured magic into it, force-feeding the pattern until it choked and died and was reborn as something of his own.

The remnants of the rime blade shattered in his fist...and the new one crystallized beneath it.

The Huntmaster watched as the blade formed, ice crawling up the length to the tapered point and leaving tracks of glowing eldritch etchings suspended deep in the fractal translucence. The tip solidified with a hiss and snap, and Gabe leveled it. Then he drew deeply on his magic and filled his right hand with entropy, letting it leak around the edges to make obvious what he was holding. He didn’t bother with any more theatrics than that. Not for Hunters.

“I will kill every last one of you if I have to,” he said. “I’ve done it three times. I’ll do it twelve more.”

The Huntmaster only watched him, its face slowly dropping back into its resting grin. It looked at him like it was seeing something disgusting and impossible, like something still weakly twitching on the bottom of its boot. Then it lifted its free hand to its chest and pulled away the little dried charm that had been hanging there. It held it out carefully, almost reverently.

The Huntmaster locked eyes with him. “Swear it.”

Gabe let just a hint of the confusion leech out onto his face. “What?”

“Swear that you will,” the Huntmaster replied. There was suddenly an odd note in its voice.

Gabe glanced around and saw every other Hunter watching closely, their shoulders straight and their attention rapt. “That I’ll kill you?” he asked. “Sure. I’ll swear to that.”

There was a collective sigh through the group, almost of pleasure, and the Huntmaster grasped the little dried gobbet of flesh tightly in his fist. “Then we accept.”

Gabe tensed and waited for the attack again, this time ready to unleash his magic at the first thing to get close enough...but nothing came. Instead, the Hunters all began drifting away, moving back into the cave as the Huntmaster slowly lowered the charm and his sword. The weapon started falling to pieces at the creature’s feet, and soon he was standing empty-handed, and his grin was a touch more relaxed.

“Okay, what is this?” Gabe asked, turning back and forth and expecting a surprise attack at any moment.

“You are not of us,” the Huntmaster replied. “...And yet, you are worthy. You carry the mantle, but are not bound by it. Wield the edge, but must not obey. Something new. Unfettered, we name you. And you will kill us.”

Gabe tried to piece all of that together into something that made sense, but the picture wouldn’t form for him. “Just like that? All I had to do was freaking ask?”

The Huntmaster moved for the door. “You have accepted a bounty. Hunt us. Free us from torment and shatter our blades so that none may rise to take our places. We will not see you again until then.”

Gabe backed away as the creature passed. “Wait, I...don’t understand. All this and now you’re just letting us go? There’s no way it’s that easy.”

The Huntmaster turned back to him, and for the first time, the monster looked almost hopeful. “One year. Fail, and the price will be collected in your flesh. Good hunting.” Then it simply walked away.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

“I’ve been avoiding thinking about this, but...I’m worried that I’m too far gone to ever go back to the way things were. With the magic and with my humanity, definitely. But mostly with Heather. Up to this point I’ve been great at keeping myself alive, always finding a loophole to slip through or a path to slink away on. But with her, I’m not sure I’ll be able to do the same if it ever becomes necessary.

Though, what am I saying? I know I won’t be able to. I’ve already failed that test a few times, throwing my own life on the table just to keep her safe. Which is...wow. I’ve faced monsters and demons and zombie constructs and a giant freaking dragon...and it turns out the most dangerous thing among them was me. And while I could almost excuse that when the choices are bleak and coming fast, even now as I’m writing this from a comfy chair and with time to apply common sense...I still don’t know that there’s anything I wouldn’t do for her. Yikes. Why does that feel so huge? And why can’t I decide if it’s stupid or wonderful?”

-Excerpt from Chapter Twenty-Four, CONscience

GABE WAITED FOR SEVERAL beats, watching the hall and expecting a surprise at any moment. But it stayed completely quiet. Even the whisper of noise that had been constant outside the room had faded away, and soon he had no choice but to believe his own senses. He backed up slowly, still holding out his blade, and finally came alongside where Heather had collapsed.

“Can you walk?” he whispered, keeping his eyes on the doorway.

“Sure,” she said.

From the pain in the word, he doubted the truth of it. “Liar. Maybe I can rig this chain up as some kind of—”

“Gabe,” she cut in. “You’re not going to drag me out of here and you certainly can’t carry me and defend us. So I’m just going to have to do it, okay?” Then she pushed herself up to her elbows before gasping in sudden pain. “I will...let you help me to my feet...though,” she said, panting.

Gabe dropped the entropy from his right hand and let the magic slide back into his reservoir, then carefully helped lift her up to standing. He felt the agony burning in her ribs at every tiny change of position, and by the time she was up and leaning between him and the wall, she barely seemed to have anything left for actual walking. But then that was the thing about her. Every time he thought he knew how much she could take and how strong she was, she always seemed to somehow go just a little beyond it. And that, in turn, made him go beyond too.

He noticed the strain in her aura too late and she had to push him away before he could think to move. The demon in her slowly settled down from where they’d been touching, and a few more pained breaths had her calm again. She was starving.

She smiled anyway. “We’ll need to find a few guys on the way home.” Then she grunted as she shifted position against the wall. “Maybe a basketball team.”

Gabe nodded, way past thoughts of jealously by that point. “We will. I’ll make sure.”

A single tear trickled down her cheek. “I know.”

He pretended not to notice, and covered it by slapping at his pockets. “My phone’s gone. You?” She shook her head, and he sighed. “Of course it can’t be that easy. Hold still.” Then he lifted the rime blade and neatly sliced the chain between her manacles. Another few careful swipes had the dangling links hitting the floor, and in a moment he could see the relief on her face at the lessened weight. He didn’t dare try cutting close enough to remove the actual shackles, but at least now she could move freely. “Stay close,” he said. Then he turned and led her out into the hallway.

Their pace started out achingly slow, but the uneven dirt floor quickly turned to stone tiles, and soon they found a rhythm to navigating the halls. The place looked like catacombs, and the longer they walked, the more confident he grew that it really had been abandoned. The Hunters had simply left, and the whole sense of the place seemed lighter somehow. He tried not imagine the price he would eventually have to pay for this easy exit. One year. To apparently kill the world’s best killers. As if he didn’t already have enough to do.

Heather was gasping for breath behind him by the time they reached the end of the first hall, and he turned to face her. “Last time I’ll ask, I swear,” he said. “Are you sure I can’t help you?”

She shook her head slowly. “You’ll...only...make it...harder.”

He nodded and turned back to lead the way around the corner, letting her fight the battle on her own. And that’s when they found James.

The man had been chained up too, and looked just as beaten up as Heather. He was sprawled out flat on his back and unconscious, and though he was still breathing, nothing they tried made him come around. Gabe stood and raised the rime blade over his head, then whacked down hard on the chains several times until they were in pieces. He took a grip on the back of the man’s shirt and gave a pull, but then quickly realized how impractical that would be. So with no other choice, he found the pattern in his left hand and flicked it open, releasing the magic bound up there and letting the sword vanish in tinkling shards and steam.

Heather nodded appreciatively and he flexed his hand a few times just to be sure. Dried blood flaked away from his skin, but otherwise it seemed no worse for the wear. And he was pretty sure he could call the weapon back up again if needed. Probably. Hopefully. He bent again and grabbed James under the arms with both hands, grimacing as his manacles once again cut into his wrists, then he heaved to drag the man along.

It was a long, grueling process, but eventually they stumbled out from the hole beneath the ruins into a light rain, and Gabe recognized the spot from when they’d come in. He left James with a gasping Heather to do a quick circuit of the area, then returned a minute later having seen nothing but sparse bushes, worn rocks, and sandy soil in every direction. He was as confident as he could be that they were alone.

“How much farther...do you want...to go?” Heather asked as he came back.

He looked her over. She was damp and exhausted and desperately trying to hide it, and James was still doing little more than breathing. “About fifteen feet that way,” he said, pointing to an area where two columns had fallen together beneath a slab to make a shallow cave. “If we drag James any farther we risk hurting him more than he already is.”

She eyed him carefully. “You’re just...worried about James?”

He shrugged and lifted under the man’s arms again. “Just him. Obviously you’re at a hundred percent, but this poor guy needs some rest.”

“We could have stayed...underground,” she said.

Gabe looked back to the hole and had to suppress a shudder. “I...don’t think so. I’d rather be wet up here than trapped down there.”

She only nodded then and watched him drag the man for several steps before finally following.

The cave was actually deeper than it had looked, and it was divided into three separate sections by fallen rubble. Gabe tested the rocks to ensure they wouldn’t collapse anytime soon, then he spent the next several minutes tentatively clearing out some gruesome-looking brown spiders while also trying his best not to squeal like a dainty child. Heather helped out by chuckling as quietly as possible.

He pulled James into the first section, turning him onto his side in a position that looked reasonably comfortable. But other than getting the man out of the rain, Gabe didn’t know what more to do. Pishtacos fed on fat, and though that seemed fairly straightforward, Gabe had done everything he could to avoid researching the process. Which meant the only way left for him to help was getting them all away from...wherever they were.

Heather had crawled into the middle section while he’d worked, and by the time he was satisfied with James’s position, she was leaned back against several rocks with her eyes closed. Her shoes were still sticking out in the rain, but she didn’t seem to care. The last section of the shelter was barely large enough for a child, so Gabe instead sat outside between his friends, huddling under a short outcropping and watching the final shreds of sunlight drop behind the darkening clouds.

“Getting rained on a bunch these days,” he said as he settled in. Heather made a noise of acknowledgment behind him. “And it’s the second impromptu camping trip in as many weeks. Makes a guy want to start carrying a survival kit.” He carefully touched the remains of the manacles at his wrists and winced. “Maybe a hacksaw.”

She nodded without opening her eyes. “Lots of empty pockets in the bandolier now. You could always turn it into a utility belt.”

He smiled and wiped the wet hair from his face. “Smart. Get some cool gadgets, maybe a fancy car, and a full-body latex muscle suit...the whole shebang.”

She smirked and sighed. “I was being serious.”

“Uh, so was I,” he replied. “I’m thinking all shades of gray with a nice billowy cloak. Obviously bulletproof, waterproof, and dragon-proof. Just the basics.” He watched her long enough to catch her smile, then turned back to stare into the dark. “Where do you think we are?”

She pulled in a long breath as if she’d been about to drop off to sleep, then she sat forward with a groan. “My best guess is that these ruins are Mesopotamian. The flora, the land, the rainfall this time of year, it all lines up. So that would put us somewhere between Iraq, Iran, Turkey, or Syria.”

Gabe tensed a little more. “Okay. Well, if my extensive experience with this region tells me anything, we should be getting airlifted out of here as soon as we beat the level. You think this counts as a save point?”

She wrapped her arms around her legs and rested her chin on her knees. “Some of the most beautiful cultures in the world come from this area. Modern civilization too. Mathematics, agriculture, the wheel even—it was all probably born here. And now too many humans use it as little more than a backdrop for action movies and political boogeymen.”

He shifted uneasily. “I didn’t mean to disparage anything by—”

“Oh, I know,” she cut in, sending an echoing note through the bond. “I wasn’t trying to make you feel bad. Just talking out loud.”

The moment felt ripe for a silence, and Gabe knew he should let Heather rest to recover what energy she could. Tomorrow would likely be hard as they tried to navigate back to relative safety, and he’d need Heather to carry her own weight if James wasn’t up and moving by then. But sitting there lost in the deepening dark, trapped in a strange place with the literal weight of the world resting in his hand, he suddenly didn’t want to be left alone.

“We lost another one,” he said, holding out his right palm where she could see the new black fleck there. “In the chaos with the Hunters and Twenty Brothers. No fanfare or anything. It just...happened.”

She reflexively reached out to take his hand, then stopped herself and made a fist before wrapping her arms around her knees even tighter. “Just the one this time?”

Gabe nodded. “As far as I know. It happened fast, but it looks like the last two slots are still empty.” He wiped another sheet of rain from his face, then realized the wet was loosening the blood on his hands, and he slowly began scrubbing them clean. “Of course, that’s assuming any of this is following the rules we’ve made up for it.”

“I think that’s one of the few things we can count on here,” she replied. “Most of us do follow rules, however obtuse or ridiculous they might be. Umbras, humans, physics, even gods are still constrained by a basic framework—albeit a vast and often unknowable one. And that’s why you’re such a pain in everyone’s collective ass. You only obey the laws you want, including the universal ones, and somehow the world is just cool with you bumbling across entire lanes of traffic to get where you’re going.” She paused then as if giving him space to argue, but he just spread his hands and let her go on. “So if we say the tentative rules are that there are seven Iglas, and that we have to go the physical locations corresponding to the right places in the Ether to retrieve them, and that we have to collect them all to win the mystical prize...then I think the bad guys have to do it the same way.”

He turned so he could see her without craning his neck, ignoring that it put him more fully in the rain. “And what if even one of those assumptions is wrong?”

She shrugged. “Then we lose. The Lorelei part of me wants nothing more than to study this whole process and pick apart the intricacies to codify every last detail until we’re left with a model based on verifiable and actionable facts. But we don’t have that time.”

He smiled. “So the Heather part of you is just picking up the nearest theory and swinging it like a club?”

“You get me,” she said, smiling back. “That’s all we can do. We could lose those last two Iglas in the next day or in the next minute, then the bad guys are coming for the two you have. And right now, there’s nothing we can do to stop any of that. So we either sit around and mope because we don’t know every last detail, or we grab a ruleset and bash in some skulls with it. That’s as delicate as we can afford to be.”

“Action is eloquence, huh?” he asked. Her eyebrows went up and he shook his head. “No, don’t get too excited about me quoting Shakespeare. I think I read that on a yogurt lid.”

Her eyes crinkled at the edges and there was a flash of affection through the bond. Then she seemed to catch it and herself, and she visibly pushed it all back under. There was a moment of struggle in her, and then the bond winked out again like a fire smothered by a blanket.

Gabe waited for her to come back, but she just sat there holding it all in. “Let me give you a little more energy,” he said. “You’re more valuable than me if someone has to carry us all to—”

“No!” she snapped, pulling even tighter in on herself. “Stay back.”

He watched her carefully, then finally sighed. “Why do you keep doing that? Pushing me away from helping you?”

She took in a long, fortifying breath, but wouldn’t meet his eyes. “You know why. We’ve been pretending, Gabe. Both of us have been acting like this could work, and it really was a fun dream. But the reality is that I’m built specifically to avoid relationships longer than an evening. That’s my whole identity. We’re just so good at lying that we keep convincing ourselves it’s not true.”

He let a small frown crease his face, giving her the illusion that he was actually weighing the words, when in fact he’d been waiting to say them for a while. “I don’t think you’re right about that.”

She shook her head firmly. “No. I tried to eat you. That’s not how you love someone.”

He grimaced and rested his hand on the ground near her. “Okay, I have thoughts about that, but first I need you to acknowledge how many hilarious jokes I’m just blowing past to get there. So this is serious.”

She smiled despite herself. “Fine.”

He nodded curtly. “Good. Now listen. You’ve led me through some weird times, lately even voluntarily. And I’ve helped you out of a scrape or two...usually after screwing something up to land you there in the first place. But the one thing that’s been constant through this whole mess between us is that we’ve always done it our way.”

“I know where you’re going with this,” she cut in. “And it doesn’t track. We can’t have a relationship without intimacy, and intimacy is my food. I’ll die without it, but it’s no more special for me than pie is for you.”

He let his eyebrows go up. “You’ve clearly not been paying attention to how much I like pie. But that’s not the point. Just because something is hard or different, doesn’t mean it’s wrong. And just because the rules are stacked against us, doesn’t mean there isn’t still a game to be played. Is it so crazy to say that I’d like to be with you even if we could never actually touch again?”

“That’s stupid,” she said.

“Is it?” He squared his shoulders. “Or is it just that we’re trying to define ourselves by outside expectations? I think we’re making this way more complicated than it needs to be, playing by rules written for people without enough imagination to conceive of anything different. Then we wonder why it keeps stalling when things get weird. Everything was great between us for two weeks when we had the energy to pretend at normalcy, but now it feels like it’s breaking because we’re trying to slam it into a box it doesn’t belong in. We’re not normal, so of course normal things don’t work for us.”

She flicked her eyes toward him and the demon in them was right below the surface. “I can’t just change my mindset, Gabe. That would be like me telling you that breathing underwater is just a matter of perspective.”

“That’s not what I’m saying.”

“That’s what it sounds like!” she went on. “You’re charming, and funny, and clever, but there are only so many times you can talk me out of this before the hard truths catch up to us. Maybe we’ll make it through tonight, and maybe we’ll get back to a place where I can safely kiss you again without needing to siphon out your soul. But it can’t last! Someday something will go wrong and I’ll hurt you or you’ll get jealous of the other men and it’ll all fall apart. And that will be worse than if there hadn’t been anything to lose in the first place!”

“That’s crazy,” he said, working now to keep himself calm. “You can’t live like that! I know because I’ve tried. Shutting yourself off, lowering your expectations until you’re satisfied with rock bottom.” He reached up to brush rain out of his face again. “And how about giving me a little more credit? We haven’t even had sex yet, so based on our experience together so far, isn’t it possible I’m interested in being with you for more than that? When are you finally going to believe that I want you for more than what you think you are?”

She sat back and threw up her hands. “I know, Gabe! I know you’ve tried to do this right. Why do you think I’ve stuck around this long? I spent two months in the cabin trying to prove you were just another walking bag of hormones—if only to preserve my worldview. So imagine my surprise when I realized you were different!” She slowed suddenly, then let out a huge breath and dropped her voice low enough to just be heard over the rain. “And that I might be allowed to be different too.”

Gabe sighed and collected up all the bits of anger and frustration that had been forming, then kicked them into the void before he spoke. “Then I don’t understand what the problem is. For all we know the world won’t last the week, so why wouldn’t we grasp every bit of happiness while it’s here? You’re used to living in bursts. What’s so different about this?”

Her eyes filled with tears and she suddenly looked even more exhausted. For a moment it seemed like she might get angry again, or try to deflect or shut down. Then she sagged and looked at him like he was trapped beyond a barrier she couldn’t break. “Because this time...I’m scared. I’ve never loved anyone before. Not really. I don’t know what will happen if I actually embrace it.”

He watched her face begin to fall, and he wanted nothing more in the world than to hold her. Heather, who was so strong and steady, and who had likely never opened to anyone like this. But he also knew how much it would cost her if he did. Not yet. So instead, he smiled and softened his eyes, then slowly shook his head. “You can face down Hunters, slay a dragon, and fist-fight a freaking kraken...but you’re scared of me? I’m almost flattered.”

She laughed even as the tears fell. “Of hurting you, yes. And of losing you. That’s all new to me. But mostly I’m scared of who I am when I’m with you, and of who you make me want to be.” She wiped her face with the back of her hand. “I’m not some codependent idiot who needs constant validation from a partner to create my own self-worth. But when I’m with you, life is just...deeper. Brighter, somehow. I came back to you the first time to find out if it was real, and then I stayed to see how long it would take to fade. I’ve lived long enough to know that I shouldn’t get attached to these feelings, and that they might be dangerous in me.”

Gabe tipped his head back and let the rain run over his face, then wiped it clear again. The night was getting cooler. “Well, I am a codependent idiot who needs constant validation, so I feel like I can speak from experience here.” She gave him a pained little laugh and he grinned to let her know it was a joke...mostly. “I know I’ve only had the one lifetime, and I know I’ve spent my fair share of breath complaining about what I’ve lost and how hard I’ve had it. But to me, this...” he pointed between them, “...is like an oasis. And so far it’s been at its best when I don’t think too hard about it.” He moved a little closer. “Maybe this is just one of those things that will work because it does and not because it’s supposed to.”

She stared at him but didn’t move. “You can’t just charm me and make this go away, Gabe. I could easily kill you if I lose control.”

“You won’t,” he said.

“You don’t know that.”

He cocked his head to the side. “I know you better than you think. I’ve been paying attention, and I’m pretty sure I trust you more than you trust yourself.”

She smirked. “Now you’re just making stuff up.”

“That’s all I’m ever doing,” he replied. “But eventually you have to stop protecting me. I mean, please keep saving me from scary monsters and stuff, but you don’t need to save me from yourself. I’m not scared of you.”

“I think you should be,” she whispered.

He leaned closer. “No way.”

He watched then as the thin veil of humanity strained over the Umbra aching to escape from her, pushing at her aura and creeping around at the edges of her eyes. But for the first time it didn’t look like something alien or apart from her...just more of her. And he finally knew he was ready to meet it.

Her breath was coming fast and her whole body was trembling with strain. “Gabe, this could go so wrong. What if—”

“What if anything?” he asked. “What if we die tomorrow? What if we lose and the universe collapses? Our lives could have gone wrong a million different ways these last few months and yet somehow we’re still here.”

“This is so stupid.”

“No,” he whispered. “You’re stronger and smarter. It’s the best choice. With enough of my energy, you could carry us all out if you have to.”

“That’s not what I meant,” she said. “If I lose control, you won’t want me to stop. We’ll both be helpless.” She lifted her hand and let it linger just above his. “‘I pray you, do not fall in love with me. For I am falser than vows made in wine.’”

He gently took her fingers in his. “‘I’ll follow thee and make a heaven of hell, to die upon the hand I love so well.’”

Then the last bit of her restraint broke, and the succubus was loose.

Gabe had fallen in love before. Some had been small and some serious, and some had been potent enough to burn indelibly into his heart to serve as the metric by which he measured all others. And that had worked his entire life. But when Heather finally took his hand, everything Gabe thought he knew about love withered beside her.

At first it was tentative, her pulling him in beneath the stone and making room, finding places for arms and legs, then finding each other. But soon they were drawing tight together until there was nothing left but warmth and skin and need, and Gabe felt the telltale siren call of her magic drawing him under with its perfume. She sighed as she kissed him, and he slipped one hand over her waist and the other into her hair until the world around them dissolved in jasmine and cloves, and nothing of existence could manifest beyond the moment.

She slipped her hand around his back and drew him in until the length of her was pressed to him, and he went willingly to be pulled deeper still. She groaned against his lips...and he felt his life leeching away.

The clothes came next. His were wet and stuck, but she had them gone as if by magic and the hard rock around them melted into soft skin. Her arms closed around him and he sank deeper, more life fading into hers. Him giving it.

The noise of the rain faded, all sounds compressing to a single melody of her voice, her breath, her pulse...and he matched himself to it and fell deeper still.

He found the bond and loosed where she’d knotted it, letting it unfurl and carry its frantic reflection of their need to cascade between them. She caught her breath beneath him as she felt it happen. And he fell deeper yet again, the strength running into her arms as it ran out of his.

Then her aura opened to spread vast wings of a dozen lives lived, a woman made of many and none, and he dropped into its embrace. Faces both beautiful and terrible stretched across time as he passed down to a molten core of hunger born of fear and clad in lust, and all the loves and hates and pains and desires wrapped around it like barbed iron bands to hold in a balance of light and dark poised on a pin, waiting to be tipped.

He felt it draining him even as he reached for it, loving and devouring, and he gathered it into his arms just as he felt his body doing the same somewhere far above. He held her to him, dying as he did, and he gave her more.

Gabe felt the years leaking out of him, time and life and joy condensing to a liquor she couldn’t help but consume, and he was so fulfilled that he only wished he had more to give. His one small life wouldn’t come close to satisfying her, and in that moment he could think of nothing worse than leaving her disappointed. He couldn’t be everything she needed...only some. The least he could do was give her all he had.

Then something pinged against his awareness as he felt his body fading above, and it cut through the intoxication of her like a blade. Because it was her...or a piece. Gabe turned the core in his mind until he found the one small fragment he recognized, and an echo returned from the matching place inside him. It caught him up like a current and carried him back, pushing him away from that center, from the aura, then the bond, and then back into himself. He could immediately feel how drained he was, that he could barely keep from collapsing atop her, and that his strength was still fading fast. Her hands were gripping him with that familiar, impossible power, and her eyes had gone all black in a face too beautiful by far to be human. And still he loved her more than his own life, and he tried to let her take it.

But again the sliver of soul pinged in him and pushed him deeper into himself, driving him down into his own magic until he finally realized why.

It was all still there.

He did have more to give.

Gabe gathered up his power, trailing it with him as he ascended back into the moment just as Heather mindlessly devoured the last of him. He filled himself with that bright blue energy, suffusing his body until it blazed with it. The magic tried to retreat, to pull away with the impression that this wasn’t at all what it was for, but he held it there like a sacrifice as she groped for ever more of him.

Then suddenly Heather gasped beneath him and went still, clinging hard to him as the first rush of that power found and filled her. Her geas shattered with the strength of it, tearing away her hunger and blind fervor, and clearing her eyes even as it cleared Gabe’s mind in a sudden rush of cleansing power. He felt his magic sinking into his muscles, replacing what he’d lost and burning out the fog, and through the bond he felt Heather’s shock and fear as the magic worked to heal her as well. They stayed there together, locked in that instant as the last of the power spread between them and made them whole, knitting bone, filling wounds, and giving life. Then it all trickled to a stop and they were left staring at one another. No illusions. No magic. No thought.

Just them.

Heather let out an astonished breath and reached up to touch his face.

He smiled.

She pulled him back in.

ELSEWHERE

BLACK LAN PUSHED THROUGH the ornate double doors and stormed right past a Templar standing guard within. She didn’t move to stop him, and he allowed himself to believe that it was based on his intimidating fury rather than the fact that she’d already known he was coming. He needed every scrap of confidence he could get just then, manufactured or not.

Enoch was in the center of the ballroom, his feet positioned comfortably apart over a tiled mosaic of a sixteenth century depiction of Earth, and his sword was held high as he went through the slow motions of some practice form. The silvery blade seemed to shine brighter than the candles around the edges of the room, and the Templar himself looked completely at home with it in his worn hands.

Lan came just to the edge of the tile, stopping before the toes of his boots crossed the outer scrollwork, and he tightened his jaw as he watched the man finish. There was nothing fancy about the way the Templar moved, nothing clever or complicated. But it was also clear the sword was going exactly where he intended, cutting the air molecule by molecule perhaps. And when most blade fights only lasted a few seconds anyway, accuracy beat flair every single time.

Finally, Lan couldn’t take it anymore. “Alright, we’re here,” he said, doing his best not to bark it.

Enoch didn’t look up as he continued his forms. “Thank you for returning. I hope all your people were comfortable on the flight back to Madrid?” The sword slowly came down at an angle as if slicing across an enemy’s chest.

Lan snorted. “Those of us left, sure.” Then the anger became too hot and acrid in his throat, and he took a single step onto the tile. “Why didn’t you tell us about the fucking danger? I saw it with my own eyes and I still don’t know what the hell it was!” His voice echoed through the room, and he heard the female Templar stir behind him. He wanted to snap around to make sure she wasn’t about to cut him down, but he didn’t, and he was proud of that.

Enoch brought the sword in for a careful thrust, then angled it away as if his imaginary foe had diverted it. The move carried him two slow steps to one side, and he dragged the blade behind to slash an invisible arm. “We did not know for certain,” he said softly. “There are legends and rumors in our private archives, but for every one that turns out to be correct, hundreds more do not.” He turned as if in syrup, planting his feet deliberately and bringing the blade up again into a guard position.

“Pretty goddamned convenient to have some bait to toss around then, ay?” Lan replied, letting a bit of growl come through. “Good way to test the theories without sacrificing anything too important.”

Enoch pulled his blade up in a slow fan, trailing that silver light behind it. Then he dropped it low as if driving his foe’s sword point to the ground. “A regrettable thing, truly,” he said as he stepped in to strike the air with his pommel. “But we are working from instructions laid down by our predecessors...and by theirs before them. They were no more omniscient or infallible than we are.”

Lan ran a hand over his mouth, digging his fingers into his cheeks to rake his unruly beard down. The Templars at the front door had taken his weapons and forced him to come in alone, because of course they had. But he could still feel the urge to run in and grab the smaller man by the throat with bare hands or teeth. He’d definitely die an instant later, sure, but often those primal instincts didn’t think that far ahead. He scratched his chin hard as he fought to keep his teeth relatively human-looking, then dropped both fists to his sides.

Lan relaxed his jaw. “Fascinating. Though it does make a person wonder about the stability of a house when ninety-nine bricks out of a hundred are made entirely of bullshit. How are we to know that anything about your plan is true or right?”

Enoch’s sword circled his right shoulder, then came down in a straight slash toward the ground. “It is my hope that this alliance will lead to further dialogue once the immediate threat has been handled. We could be poised at the precipice of a new age of understanding and cooperation between our peoples. This moment could do more for peace and equality than centuries of blood-letting between us. Your leaders have placed their faith in us for this and other reasons. You would do well to do the same.”

Lan thought about that for a moment. It certainly sounded good, but it was also hard to take from a man whose organization had built such a robust and enduring reputation as “monster” hunters. He’d heard plenty of pitches like it before, and he was sure he would again...provided he lived through this one. “You say ‘leaders’, but I call them cowards. Too scared to tell you no, and too weak to come themselves.”

Enoch brought his sword in close to his side. “You speak with a surprising amount of disdain for those whom you would claim to answer to.”

Lan chuckled. “Well, that’s the nice thing about the Mearrywell Clan, isn’t it? No uniforms, few rules, and we only follow them that deserve it. Now may be now, but every day brings a new dawn, if you ken.”

Enoch raised his right elbow as if about to thrust forward, then paused and finally turned toward him. “So what is it that motivates you, Mr. Black Lan? You speak as if you intend to break this alliance, and yet you are still standing here. As if you too are afraid.”

Lan opened his mouth to snap off an obscene reply...but then paused and actually gave it some thought. Why had he come back? He’d been ordered to by Enoch and then again by his contact at Mearrywell command, but that shouldn’t have been enough to get him scurrying back with his tail between his legs. Not into something so obviously suicidal. He was smarter than that. Braver too...wasn’t he?

He couldn’t help but think back to the night the rogue god had kicked down his door and slaughtered his entire cell with a single gesture. Men and women he’d known and worked with for years, torn apart and reformed into a gruesome...thing. He remembered the touch of the gory throne as he’d been trapped atop it...wet...raw...and still warm with a perverse life. And when the god had finally freed him and told him to run...he had.

That’s who he was, he realized. A dog. And this was just another master kicking to get him moving. Lan tried to beat that thought back, snapping at it in his mind to deny the truth of it. There was no such thing as too late, he told himself, and there was still time to reject everything he’d done with his lives on Earth up till now. He could actually go out into the world and make real change according to his own conscience, instead of blindly following some opaque doctrine or cause passed down from on high. He could.

Then he noticed Enoch staring back at him, his calm, human eyes holding no hint of the power he possessed, but his sword more than making up for it. The thing had slayed dragons, it was whispered. It had killed demon lords. The Templar held it still at his side, letting the enchantments waft from it like smoke from a hidden fire. What was Black Lan to that? Who was he to stop this...or anything else? The world was too big for one person to change.

Lan cleared his throat and spread his hands, conjuring up a false smile from somewhere. “Point taken...though hopefully not literally, if you don’t mind.”

Enoch raised an eyebrow and lowered his sword, letting the tip rest atop a single blue tile that immediately began to scorch. He nodded. “Good to hear.” Then he turned and began his blade forms again. “And I hope you will be equally pleased to learn that we have decided on a different strategy. One that will, I suspect, satisfy your concerns.”

“Fine,” Lan said, forcing the word between his teeth. “But my people need rest. We’ve been fighting or traveling across the continent for two days straight, and some among us have...unusual requirements for sleep and sustenance.”

Enoch’s face went carefully passive as he held his sword out straight to his right. “I’m afraid I cannot grant that. We must leave soon. Though I believe you will find this next method of travel much less...draining.” Then he swept the blade straight across, right where his foe’s neck would have been. “Prepare your people.”

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

“I have this trick where I can slip inside myself and freeze time a bit, giving me a chance to absorb whatever’s happening. And magic has only made it stronger. It’s a valuable skill that’s saved my life more than once, and it’s tempting to use it constantly. Whether it’s a moment of danger I’m trying to avoid or a moment of happiness I want to make last, it always seems like a good idea to stretch the seconds as long as I can. But the problem is that I remember. Everything I see in those frozen instants are like snapshots in my head that never fade. And for every good one I might want to keep close, there are ten terrible ones crowding right behind it. And even then you never know when one of your best memories might suddenly become one of your worst...

So I guess I’m saying life comes at you fast, and the biggest parts come faster still. But don’t undervalue the ability to just live in the moment as it’s happening. Sometimes it’s a gift to stop and think and make a memory that will last. But just as often the gift turns out to be the ability to forget.”

-Excerpt from Chapter Twenty-Three, CONscience

THEY BARELY NOTICED when the rain stopped.

Heather nuzzled into him and made a contented little sound as she kissed him lightly on the neck. “We should probably get some sleep. There’s no telling what we’ll have to do in the morning.”

He ran his fingers down the length of her arm, then back up again. At some point she’d reached down and snapped their manacles off as if they’d been made of twigs, and his hands now felt so much lighter as they skated across her skin. “I’m not tired,” he said. Then he paused and took a deep breath. “Actually, I feel amazing. Completely drained of magic, but otherwise great.”

She shifted beside him, and her hair brushed in a slow tumble down his shoulder. “Me too. I finally know what it’s like to be you and have all my injuries just vanish. I could get used to reality being this easy.”

He chuckled and moved his hand down to her side to find all her ribs right back where they belonged. A flicker of surprise passed through the bond at the touch, but there wasn’t any pain in it. He gently traced them one by one. “You of all people know it’s harder than that. I’m not a cartoon character.”

“That’s debatable,” she sighed, then sent a wave of warmth over to take any sting out of it. The bond seemed stronger than ever. “Do you even know how you did it? If you could heal other people like that it could be insanely useful. World-altering, even.”

He sucked in a breath through his teeth. “I mean...sort of. I remember the basic idea. It was kind of a...magical...push...thing.”

She patted him lightly on the chest. “Oh, my Gabe. It’s okay.”

“Well, maybe not exactly the right steps,” he admitted. “But I could probably figure it out if I had to. Though the sex part might limit some of the mass-market appeal. And obviously I’d have to do extensive clinical trials with the original subject before taking it to market...”

She laughed softly into his shoulder. “How rigorous of you.”

“You know me,” he said, letting his hand trail down to her hip and rest there. “All about that scientific method.”

They stayed there for a moment, letting everything settle and the memory crystallize. For once there was no shred of magic between them except the bond, and that bit of connection seemed to go deeper than magic anyway. He breathed in her contentment and gave back his own, and the echoing roll as it repeated and magnified nearly did lull him to sleep despite his protests. But then she groaned and kissed him again before reluctantly rolling away to find her clothes.

“Not yet,” he said, reaching for her.

She caught his hand and squeezed it, but let it go all the same. “Someone should check on James.” Then she picked her shirt out of the crumpled pile.

Gabe was ashamed to admit that he’d forgotten about James—about the whole rest of the world, really—and the thought of the man possibly lying dead next to them quickly banished the mood. He sat up carefully, trying not to bash his head into the rock, and reached past Heather’s bare leg to find his pants. “Yikes. How long has it been? Two, three hours?”

Heather shook out her shirt, then pulled it on before turning back to him with a smirk. “About forty minutes, tiger. But they were good ones.” Then she slipped on her leggings, somehow doing it gracefully in the cramped quarters. “Wow, I’m hungry.”

“Still?” he asked. “I mean, I might have a little something left if you squeeze me hard enough...”

She reached back and caught his chin, pressing her thumb to his lips like a kiss. “The other kind of hungry, but pretty decent double entendre. Nice work.” Then she winked and crawled out into the dripping night.

Gabe fumbled with his damp clothes, triple-checking for any creepy crawlies that might have snuggled in, then awkwardly got himself dressed. “At least this gives us plenty of time to come up with a plan, huh?” he called. “I was thinking we could go back underground and search more thoroughly for our phones. Maybe see how far Ken can stretch his fortune to get us an airlift out of here.” He pulled on his shoes and tightened the laces, wincing at the squishing feeling in the waterlogged soles.

When she didn’t respond he reached for the bond and crawled out after her. “Unless you have a better idea that doesn’t involve—” He got the flash of alarm too late.

The lash of magic hit him hard and sent him rolling to one side as it wound around his arms and legs, then it finally stopped him cold and stood him up like a marionette. He hit his feet and stuck there, facing the empty landscape of rocks and dark, then was violently whipped around toward the opposite direction. He saw Heather first, standing in a weird half-lunge as if she’d been frozen just entering an attack...and then he saw why.

Aka Manah was holding a hand outstretched and dripping that red-gold magic as if it had just emerged from a pool of it, and he was dressed in the remains of a tuxedo, complete with missing jacket, rolled sleeves, and undone tie hanging to the lapels of his vest. His other hand was lifted with a single finger pressed to his lips, and it was oddly blackened as if he’d dipped it straight into night-dark ink. The smile beyond stopped just short of gleeful. “Didn’t want to spoil the surprise,” he said, quietly.

Gabe reached for his magic, knowing how little was left and how useless it would be even at full strength. Aka Manah was a god, and his power had once filled Gabe to bursting until its eventual absence had left a bottomless void at the center of his mind. He knew better than anyone that there was no fighting that kind of strength...not fairly, anyway.

But then Aka Manah surprised him by taking two long steps back before bringing his hands up in surrender. The god raised his eyebrows and looked at both of them in turn with that one dark and one light eye, then let the magic fall. Gabe stumbled as he took his own weight again, but Heather landed flawlessly into a forward-leaning fighting stance. For a moment, it look liked she might continue with the momentum and bring her hand around in a devastating right cross—likely committing suicide with it—but then she settled in and rocked back. Her knees went loose and her hands relaxed into open palms, and her entire body suddenly looked ready to move any direction in an instant.

Gabe recognized it as her “I don’t know what the hell’s going on” stance, so he changed his attitude to match. If the god wanted them dead, they would be. And it wasn’t like they had anywhere to run.

Aka Manah seemed to read the change as it happened, and he nodded in satisfaction. “You’re getting wiser. Faster on your feet.” Then he slowly turned and bent to retrieve what looked like a picnic basket sitting on the ground behind him. He lifted it with two fingers and held it up for them to inspect before gently raising the lid on one side. “I come bearing three gifts. The first of which is a small repast. Nothing fancy, but then that’s not always what you want, is it?” He looked between them and smirked. “Sometimes rough and dirty is what actually gets the job done.”

Gabe felt Heather’s annoyance cresting to the same level as her alarm, and he moved to stand next to her. “How long have you been here?” he asked.

Aka Manah shrugged and produced a red plastic bag from the basket. It was big and sealed and it bulged oddly at the bottom, and when he turned it, there were black biohazard symbols emblazoned on both sides. “Not long.” Then he produced a ghostly blue knife and slit the thing open near the top. It looked wet inside. “And exactly long enough. Feel free to finish up if you’re not done. Of all people, I won’t begrudge adequate time for a little...worship.”

Then the god tossed the sack to his left, landing it with a sickening slap just inside James’s cave. The contents shifted with the movement, and the bag tipped to let a glistening bit of something peak out above the opening. They watched it sit there for a moment, waiting to see what horror was about to be unleashed, then a shaking hand reached out to snatch it deeper into the darkness before Gabe could turn away. He immediately realized what must be happening then, and he watched the god watch James, the interest blossoming on Aka Manah’s face as they all began to hear a very quiet, very wet feeding.

Gabe quickly decided there needed to be more noise. “Why are you here?” he asked, forcefully closing off his senses to the sound. “And how?”

Aka Manah’s eyes lingered on James a moment longer, his expression betraying hints of disgust and fascination...and possibly arousal. Then he finally turned and deigned to acknowledge the questions. “The how will become self-evident if you live long enough to learn. So as my second gift is information, I will focus on the why.” He reached back into the basket and produced a bundle of sticks wrapped in linen, then tossed it to the ground trailing a thread of magic. As soon as it hit, it burst into flames.

Gabe took a quick step back, but Heather didn’t so much as flinch.

Aka Manah glanced at her with a sly smile before lowering himself into a crouch and starting to unpack. “The time is quickly approaching for you to fulfill your purpose, Gabriel.” He held up a plastic bottle of generic yellow mustard and narrowed his eyes. “A bit sooner than I expected, but then tearing apart the entity Philip may not have been the wisest of my maneuvers, in retrospect. It seems to have rather intensified the level of scrutiny on our little corner of creation.”

“What purpose?” Gabe asked, getting the words out an instant before he felt Heather about to do the same.

Aka Manah held up a package of hot dogs with a sour twist of his lips. “It appears I should have been more specific. Never leave the menu up to a man whose peak culinary aspirations include the word ‘nuggets’. Ah, well.” He set them aside and continued pulling out more food. “The purpose for which you have been allowed to live, of course. Humans are not designed to possess magic—at least, not as you currently are. That part of you has long been closed off, and you’ve learned that lesson well. You people can steal it or mimic it, and you can even brush against it from time to time, sensing that there may be something deeper in the world that you’ve always been missing. But much like tails and wings and webbed digits, you have evolved beyond the need or ability. And yet...” He waved a bottle of water toward him. “...here you are! Perhaps a fortunate regression, perhaps an evolution coming full circle. Or maybe just a sly old god who knows how to milk an opportunity when he sees one.” He cracked open the lid and took a long drink without breaking eye contact.

Gabe moved back up next to Heather and stuffed his hands in his pockets. “Okay. We could go all around this circle again—me pretending like I’m outraged and defiant, and you acting like you’re gifting me precious tidbits of lore from atop your mountain of them. But, you know perfectly well we’re not going to. We’ve already done that, and I don’t repeat quests. I’m not going to join you, and you’re sure as hell not going to tell me anything like the truth. So why don’t you just roll out your carpet so we can see all the stains at once and get straight to the threats or revelations or...whatever.”

The god eyed him over the bottle, then lowered it to the ground. “There is a certain beat to this process, Gabriel,” he said, almost sullenly. “A theatre that one should not dismiss lest we find ourselves mired in apathy. I could certainly lay it all out for you in simple lines, detailing the motivations and stakes in the easiest terms. But I’m afraid it wouldn’t pack the same punch, nor engender the same result. Your meat brain requires ample room and context with which to process even the most rudimentary explanations I could provide, so pretty pictures and emotional investment are how I help it along.” He pulled out a single hot dog and gestured with it. “And you in particular seem to like a good amount of mental runway before accepting a conceptual takeoff. Something I have come to know well.” His voice lowered and slowed with just a hint of menace. “So why don’t we all sit down and have a bite.”

Gabe very nearly turned away and started walking out into the night, forcing the god to make a definitive move, but then Heather shrugged and sat down next to the fire. She reached into the basket and came out with a metal skewer, and the god tossed her the hot dog.

“The way I see it,” she said as she speared the thing for roasting, “is that we have two paths to the same end here. One leaves us angry and trapped, and the other leaves us angry and trapped and hungry. We’re obviously not going to be outsmarting or outfighting a god, so...” She held the skewer over the flames and started cooking. “...let’s just hope he also brought marshmallows.”

Gabe’s mouth started drifting open as his eyebrows knitted together, but Aka Manah spoke first. “I know I’ve counseled you to get rid of her several times,” the god said as he pulled out a jar of relish. “But even I am very occasionally wrong.” He gestured for Gabe to take the seat opposite him.

It certainly was tempting. They’d had nothing to eat or drink since that morning—aside from a little rainwater—and there was no denying that the god could probably have his way with them regardless of how they resisted. Whatever Aka Manah’s lies had been, he did seem to need Gabe for something. And that should be enough to feel relatively safe for the time being. But seeing his father’s face was still too much for him—unexpectedly so, in fact—and all he could do was shake his head as he watched Heather’s meal begin to sizzle.

The god sighed and retrieved a bag of potato chips. “I must admit I expected less sentimentality from a conman. You can see the advantage of my assistance, and yet you consistently choose the more difficult path purely out of love for a man who could scarcely scrape up the energy to talk to you—let alone love you back.” He tossed the bag and it landed neatly next to Heather. “I realize we got off to a rocky start, you and I, but time in this body has given me a great deal of perspective. I am genuinely changed, and now I am offering what you have long desired. My help, my counsel, my approval even, believe it or not. All you need do now is accept. I will even return you directly to your companions to claim what little time we have left. The Endless Dark is coming, and we must all band together if we wish to live through it. Sentiment be damned.”

Gabe felt his hands closing to fists before he could stop them, and the pattern of the rime blade tickled at the back of his mind. He wasn’t sure he could muster enough power to call the whole thing up, but he was pretty certain he could manage a spike long enough to drive into the man’s skull. He let the potential flicker in and out of focus, teasing his will across it until his left palm began crusting with ice...

Then he let it drop.

“No,” he said.

Aka Manah nodded but Heather jumped in this time. “Gabe, I don’t like him any better than you do, but think carefully about this.”

She met his eyes then, and what carried through the bond was a complex melange of worry and suspicion and fear, and he could practically hear her voicing the follow-up questions. How would they get home otherwise? Could they afford to turn down help? Did they have time to stand on principals? And what if the god actually was trying to save the world? It was more than he was mentally prepared to answer, but his gut didn’t hesitate at all.

“I am,” he said. “I have. He’s the god of lies, Heather, and all he’s done is lead me by the nose up to this point. There’s no reason to believe this is any different. And at the end of the day I am a conman, so I should be able to recognize when something is too good to be true. Showing up just when we need him and offering all the answers on a silver platter? For all we know he’s constructed every moment of what led us here. Wouldn’t be the first time. Hell, even the second.”

Heather conceded the point with a small nod, then reached for the buns and condiments.

Aka Manah looked unfazed. “While part of me is thrilled you’re evolving so well, the other part is rather annoyed by it, I must admit.” He pushed himself up and began dusting off his pants. “Then I fear we are doomed. You and your compatriots are wildly unprepared to bring this task to completion, and the one being on the planet who can possibly help cannot secure even a modicum of your trust.” He straightened and sighed. “So...we fail. And the universe with all its wonders slips into darkness to be wiped clean and begun anew. Perhaps, in several billion more years, there will be different versions of us who will succeed where we could not. Perhaps we were merely a trial run after all. Enjoy the meal.”

The god turned then and swept his hand across the horizon, and a smear of the night sky simply melted away beneath a wash of magic. It felt similar to what the Hunters had done, opening a slit in the veil, but this was much more subtle and elegant. It wavered in the center like a heat haze, then faded at the edges back to reality until it shifted in place to look very nearly like a ghostly set of double doors.

Aka Manah moved toward the portal, then stopped. “I will inform your companions when I return, and they may yet retrieve you in time to stumble upon some of the right answers. Three shards of the Dark pushed into our realm to take Phillip’s place, but I believe they have once again consolidated into one, more powerful version. It is the way of reality to persuade fragments to become whole, after all. To coax the unreal into manifesting. Something the nothingness cannot ever quite seem to fathom.” He gestured with both hands and the hazy doors drifted open. “You are also being hunted by the Templars and a cadre of allies they have assembled—essentially everyone who refuses to see the truth of the doom hurtling toward us. Instead, they believe killing you will solve their problems. So...good luck with that as well.”

“Fine,” Gabe replied, feeling the weight of the moment pressing down on him, but unable to pull himself out of it. “Last time you tried making me go through a door it turned out to be a really terrible idea. I don’t see any reason to change my strategy now.”

Aka Manah sighed. “Doors,” he said, condescendingly. “You humans see things in the first simple terms to pop into your brains, then never try looking any deeper. Sometimes I frankly wonder why I’m bothering to help you survive.”

The god turned to enter the portal, but Heather shot to her feet suddenly and abandoned her meal untouched. “Three,” she said, quickly circling around the fire. Aka Manah stopped and looked back over his shoulder with a raised eyebrow, and she gestured back to Gabe. “You said you had three gifts. So if he won’t bite, I will. What’s the last one?”

Something pensive crept onto the god’s face then, and for a moment he looked like he might just go through the portal without answering. Then he let his shoulders slump a bit as he sighed, and he leaned forward to reach his arm through that glistening slice in the air. There was a long pause as he lingered there, his face frozen in concentration, but then he slowly began drawing back. His shoulder came out and then his elbow, and finally his wrist before revealing another hand holding his. Then there was woman standing next to him.

Gabe took in her shoulder-length hair and her gown that seemed wholly inappropriate for their surroundings, and he put her age at about mid-fifties. Her expression looked resigned to whatever she was doing there, but beneath that there was something trying to push up to the surface. Nerves, maybe. But knowing Aka Manah, it was more likely to be fear. He opened his mouth to ask how this stranger was supposed to be a gift...but then the words died in his throat as the whole picture suddenly resolved.

“Hi, Gabe,” his mother said.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

“We don’t blame people for taking cover in a storm, so there’s no shame in doing the same in life. Sometimes the best you can do is hang on until the worst parts are over.”

-Excerpt from Chapter Twenty-Three, CONscience

GABE COULD ONLY STARE.

His mother. The woman who had raised him for the first years of his life, who had given him some small bit of normalcy, and who had always represented the missing piece that might have made his family work. And...who had ultimately abandoned him to fend for himself. He could see the traces in her where his well-worn memories still lined up with her actual face, and he could almost imagine the progression of the thirty years that had brought her to this point. Based on his last images of her, she frankly looked much better than he’d expected—like she’d even done well for herself. He couldn’t decide if he was happy or furious about that, but for her part, she looked like she was full of fear and hope.

Heather drifted back to stand next to him, obviously unsure what was going on but clearly feeling it was something important. She stopped when her right shoulder just brushed his left, and that small touch was enough to fracture the moment and bring him forward into it. Aka Manah’s face was carefully impassive, and Gabe focused on it as inspiration as he gathered up the colossal turmoil inside himself and sent it screaming down into the void. Whatever this surprise had been designed to do, he couldn’t give the god the satisfaction of seeing it land.

Gabe wiped his expression clean and fell behind a shallow persona of himself. “Hi...mom,” he said as casually as he could. Heather didn’t gasp beside him, but the matching emotion definitely passed through the bond.

His mother accepted the greeting almost like a blow to face, and her eyes closed for an instant before she nodded. A kind of resolve passed over her features then, and she looked like she was about to launch into something she’d been thinking about for a long time. Something scripted, probably. She pulled herself up beneath a shadow of dignity, preparing to speak...and then she collapsed beneath it all at once.

“I’m so sorry, Gabe,” she said, the words spilling out as if just ahead of a sob. “I can’t claim I didn’t know what I was doing, and I can’t claim I didn’t want to, but if I had to do it over again—”

He held up a hand and stopped her. “No. Just...no. Don’t insult either of us.” He took a breath to gather himself, but he kept it quick so no one would notice. “There’s a good reason I never changed my name, and there must be a good reason you never bothered to look for it. And I know I didn’t try to find you, so it would be a waste of time for either of us to pretend like we’ve been waiting for this moment. Why don’t you just explain what part you’re suppose to serve in this game and we’ll move on.”

She looked genuinely taken aback, absorbing the words as if they were in a language she barely spoke. Then her mouth slowly drifted closed and she nodded reluctant acceptance.

Aka Manah looked between them in the silence. “That’s it? No explosions? No fury?” He cocked an eyebrow. “I admit I was expecting at least a few tears.”

Gabe shrugged, putting all his effort into the nonchalance. “Sorry you didn’t get the emotional payoff you wanted. Next time you should cast better characters for the roles than a guy raised by a cold-hearted monster and the lady who left him in the lair. Might get healthier responses.” He watched his mother flinch from the corner of his eye as the insult landed, and it didn’t make him feel any better. Heather gently tapped his hand to reel him in.

There was a long pause then where nobody seemed to quite know how to steer the conversation, but soon something rustled back in their cave and they all turned to look.

“You guys are loud as hell out here,” James said as he gingerly crawled out. He still looked badly beaten and in need of several days of rest, but seeing him move at all was a relief. He stopped as soon as he crawled clear, then winced and brought a hand up to his shoulder before finally collapsing back to sit hard against the stones. “Now, I apparently don’t know shit about what’s really happening here, but I assume you’re the asshole who called and landed me in this merry fucking mess?”

Aka Manah paused, then nodded as if accepting a compliment. “Indeed. The Templars and Twenty Brothers were an inconvenience I could not counter myself without disrupting other plans, but the Hunters, on the other hand, tend to be a bit more...predictable.”

James nodded and laughed, then cut off with a grunt and wrapped his arm around his chest. “So I was bait. Wonderful. Also, fuck you.”

Aka Manah nodded again. “And yet you’ve come out the other side. Quite a resilient little worm.”

James closed his eyes and shook his head. “Gotta say, Gabe, I’m starting to really hate your dad now.”

“Good to see the refreshment has returned some of your vigor,” Aka Manah replied flatly.

James shifted position with a grimace. “Yeah, thanks for that. Any chance I get a say in whatever we’re dealing with here?”

The god glanced at his watch, then turned back to Gabe. “You do not.”

Gabe had barely listened to any of it. “Another setup,” he said, bitterly. “Of course it was. What did you think this would achieve? That you’d soften us up? Then bring her in for the deathblow?”He gestured to his mother as if she was just a prop.

“The Templars and their associates are not my pieces to control on this board,” the god replied. “I am merely helping to counter their moves. As for your mother...” He lifted a hand as if trying to take hers, but she shifted just enough to avoid it. “...I promised a while ago I would help you find her. And I am capable of some honesty. If we are never to see one another again, I can now do so having fulfilled my word.”

Gabe shook his head. “Not even a little convincing. You thought this would be a weak point to change my mind, and now you’re scrambling to salvage something from it.”

Aka Manah looked for a moment like he might try to continue lying, then he spread his hands and his face split into a smile. “Oh, now who’s playing games? You know perfectly well this changes things. You’ve certainly got your old man’s gift for hiding it, but I can still hear it bouncing around between those empty words. The denial, the calculations...the resignation. You’ve already seen the end of this conversation just as well as I have. Either you accept my offer of assistance and we all leave together, or I leave with her right now and you never see either of us again.” He spread his hands as if holding one choice in each. “So that gives you a decision to make. You can save the universe and answer the questions at the center of your life, or you can stay here and watch all of it fall to darkness.” Then his expression went serious as if honestly considering the problem. “Would you really let everything die simply because you don’t like me? Abandoning them...like she did you?” A small smile appeared and his voice went quiet, but it sounded much closer than it should. “No. I’ve been inside your head, Gabriel. We know one another better than either of us would like.”

Another trap. Gabe wasn’t sure why he was surprised anymore. Then he watched the horror bloom on his mother’s face, and it became that much worse. She really hadn’t known what her part in this had been—that she was essentially a lure and a hostage—and she suddenly looked hurt and disgusted and so very guilty. He knew in that instant that she was a broken person. He could read it on her, see it in how quickly her anger dissolved to dull acceptance...as if she deserved what she was getting. As if her only choice was to just go along like a puppet. A few days ago she might have been swathed in contentment, living a life constructed of the pieces she’d salvaged and convincing herself it was enough. But one touch from Aka Manah had brought it all down again, and Gabe knew that feeling so well. It was almost enough to make him sympathize.

“You didn’t know, did you?” he asked her. “That you were coming here as a dagger to open an emotional wound wide enough for him to pour his poison into?”

His mother hesitated and glanced at Aka Manah as if for permission, then quickly shook her head. The god’s face was carefully passive.

“No,” Gabe replied. “You were used. Just like me. Just like everyone he touches.” He met Aka Manah’s eyes. “And you knew I’d see all of this and that I wouldn’t be able to let you finish destroying her.”

The god shrugged and looked at his watch again. “I had rather hoped you would accept my help for its own sake. But...yes, this was a solid plan C.”

Gabe bit his lip to prevent himself from screaming, but the impulse was short-lived. He was relentlessly shunting away his real emotions, and some were starting to wither before they even got that far. Like the situation was rotting him from the inside out with every second he failed to deal with it.

“What was Plan B?” Heather asked, voicing the question so Gabe didn’t have to.

Aka Manah smirked. “Oh, how generous of you to set me up.” He was still looking at his watch and he lifted it to his face with a finger upraised on the other hand. “Plan B is actually...” He waited for a long beat, holding his finger poised as if wanting to drop it but increasingly uncertain when to do so. His eyebrows went up, then the smile gradually slid away. He dropped his hands in annoyance. “...Apparently not going to happen when I expect—”

Fire suddenly bloomed in Gabe’s right palm, and he cried out in shock as he grabbed his wrist and dropped to his knees. His eyes went straight to the Qi Dragon, and he could do nothing but watch the two remaining empty spaces as the tension and pain built there. The power threatened to pull him under with it, dragging him along by an ethereal tether to drown in its wake. Then suddenly it all flared in a distant crescendo that forced his mind down to a narrow point trembling beneath the weight...until it ended with a pop and release and a sense of loss. A new black fleck appeared on the Dragon’s surface, and the two shining Iglas there dimmed a little more. He sucked in a deep breath.

“Of course,” Aka Manah said petulantly. “Nothing can ever come on cue, and I’m left on stage looking like an idiot.” Then he brushed a strand of hair from his forehead and appeared to collect himself. “Though perhaps I should blame myself for expecting an entity built of nothingness to have a decent sense of dramatic timing.” He looked down at Gabe and reclaimed a bit of his smile. “Yes, I knew that was coming. Just as I know the last one will happen in four hours. Then the Endless Dark will be coming to claim you...unless you choose to do something about it.”

Gabe accepted Heather’s help getting back to his feet, and then shot her a quick reassurance through the bond that he was fine. But he wasn’t. And her hand firmly staying on his arm let him know she knew it. He sighed and closed his fist around the Qi Dragon, then glanced at his mother.

“Okay,” he said finally. “We’ll do it your way.”

Heather shifted beside him. “Gabe, are you sure?”

He almost laughed. “No, I’m not. But the devil doesn’t need an advocate right now. He seems to have everything firmly under control. And hey, for once maybe it would be easier to just do what I’m told.” He shook his head and flexed his aching hand absently. “I never wanted to be here, handling this crap, so...fine. This could be a quick way out from under a bunch of bullshit I didn’t ask to be put in charge of.”

He felt her uncertainty come across to him, washing up like debris on shore after a storm. Then he marveled as it settled into trust and acceptance just that quickly. He really did love her for that. And for everything. And if nothing else, at least this was a decent way to make sure she wouldn’t have to fight a god for him. At least...not right then. He let all of that trickle back to her, and felt her hand tighten on his arm.

Aka Manah nodded and gestured to the portal with his stained fingers.

“Where does it lead?” Heather asked, taking charge again.

“Just as I said,” the god replied, “back to your friends. The Templars are still after you, and they know the location of the last Igla. They will almost certainly be waiting for you there, and we will need back-up if we are to get you safely through this.”

“Can’t you just smite the bad guys with your god powers?” Heather asked.

Aka Manah’s grin became delighted. “I can honestly say that I would love nothing more! Alas, I am not that kind of god. At least...not originally. I can certainly slay a handful of mortals with the best of them, but even I am not so foolish as to pit myself alone against the massed might of the Templars and whomever else they’ve managed to bully to their cause. We must not risk the larger goal for the sake of personal pride. And though I can tell you exactly when this Igla is, I cannot, unfortunately, say where. The threads of fate are surprisingly fickle about those details in this instance...much to my annoyance. So we will need further help.” He gestured again that they should enter the portal.

“So you knew all along we’d agree,” Gabe said, barely able to muster the right amount of indignation for it. “You already had the portal ready to go straight there.”

This time it was James who answered. “That’s not how it works.” Then the man started dragging himself up to his feet, and Heather quickly moved over to help. “I’ve heard of this. With enough control you can slice just to the surface of the veil instead of through it, opening a kind of slit between reality and the Ether. Some of the really powerful fucks can skim along the surface like a goddamned rainbow road and come back out basically anywhere they want. Unfair as shit, but what are you gonna do? And at least they’re not as bad as the even bigger assholes who stay in there and blow up little bubbles for themselves to hang out in. Like their own fortress of fucking solitude.” He finally got standing with Heather’s help, and then gently pulled his arm away from her as he moved toward the god. “That’s how we got the Feywild and Elfhame and any number of other mythical drug-induced bullshit vacation destinations. He doesn’t have to pick a location in advance. We could even ask him to stop for pizza along the way. So if this is really what we’ve decided...”

James stopped and looked to Gabe, seemingly waiting for any reason to turn back. But Gabe simply shrugged. James shook his head in response, then stepped through the portal.

Gabe wanted to cry out in protest, but then it had happened and James was gone. They were committed. The portal only wavered at the disturbance before settling back to its normal shimmer, and Aka Manah just stood there like a doorman waiting on his guests.

Heather moved up next, and Gabe joined at her shoulder. He glanced at his mother once, but she wouldn’t meet his eyes. So he turned back to the glistening door.

“I know you’re the god of lies,” he said. “But calling this emotional trap ‘a gift’ is especially low. You really should have brought marshmallows instead.”

“Perhaps next time,” Aka Manah replied. “Though you may recall that I never actually claimed the gifts were all for you.”

Gabe felt Heather’s hand slip into his, then she pulled him forward and they were falling through the world.

CHAPTER NINETEEN

“One of the hardest lessons I’ve had to learn is that comfort and fulfillment rarely exist in the same place at the same time. When I’ve had lots of the first, my life has been pretty pointless. And when I’ve had plenty of the second, it’s not pleasant for its own sake. Maybe that’s just because I tend to get handed so many extremes, but I suspect it’s true universally. That’s why we’re so amazed when something manages to tick both boxes. Why we try so hard to find it...and why we hold on so fiercely when we do.”

-Excerpt from Chapter Twenty-Five, CONscience

GABE HAD BEEN THROUGH the veil before, but that turned out to be much different than being on it. He passed fully into the portal and waited for the sensation of coming out the other side into the Ether, but instead reality melted around him, sagging onto itself and slowing to crawl. He felt the ground beneath his feet, and Heather’s hand in his, and then the air entering and exiting his lungs...but to every other sense it felt like he was in a place that wasn’t at all meant to support him. It was a dim mirror world, and oddly enough, it was familiar.

He spotted James, but the man was somehow now over a hundred yards away and twisted weirdly to one side as if the ground mysteriously corkscrewed where he was standing. Then Aka Manah and Lauren appeared above, hanging perpendicular as if about to fall right atop them. Gabe quickly yanked Heather back, but the world bent and flexed nauseatingly as they moved, and suddenly they were all standing on the same plane together, all close and all facing the same direction. Gabe’s stomach took a moment to catch up, and his mother’s face looked just as pained.

Only Aka Manah appeared perfectly at ease. “I assume the pizza suggestion was facetious?” the god asked as he glanced around. “Then we should be on our way.”

“I’ve been here before,” Gabe blurted. He gave Heather’s hand a quick squeeze before gently letting go and pinning Aka Manah with a glare. “Haven’t I? With you.”

The god looked taken aback, as if the answer was obvious. “Of course. You should feel right at home.” The god gestured to the frozen sky and warped mirror image of the world around them. “Our first real conversation took place here, along with the next few to follow. This is where you became what you are, and where you wrested your magic into being.”

Aka Manah began walking then, and the world suddenly moved with him. Gabe glanced down to find his unmoving feet skimming over the ground like an invisible conveyor belt, and he forced himself to begin walking at the god’s pace just to avoid getting sick. Everyone else followed.

“I told you our spirits could not both occupy your mind for long,” Aka Manah went on in the tone of a tour guide. “So we had to push out of reality a bit for some legroom. Still not a sustainable position, but it bought us time and a cozy place to do business with one another. You still have access to it through your mind, in fact. And in the spirit of honesty, this is how I’ve been able to deliver the odd whisper to you as necessary.”

Gabe immediately pictured the void in his mind, the hole he’d assumed was bottomless and led nowhere. It was where he’d been shunting all his unproductive emotions and hostile magics, and if it really did lead to somewhere just like this on the veil, he shuddered at the thought of how filthy the place must be now that it was filled with his psychic garbage.

Aka Manah seemed to misread the expression. “Yes, technically anyone can find you from here if they know what to look for, but Phillip was really the only other entity with that knowledge and ability, and I’ve also taken the liberty of arranging some minor camouflage for you since then.”

The ground suddenly lurched beneath their feet and they all cried out before coming to a quick stop in a blank white expanse.

“Where are we?” Gabe asked on reflex, then had to close his mouth to choke back his stomach again. He’d felt that lurch before too.

“Not really where,” the god replied. “You shouldn’t think of this as a place so much as a condition. It is less a location and much more a state of existence neither conterminous with nor sovereign from reality. It is a between state, and it only exists so long as we are present to observe it.” He lifted a hand to gesture around. “Here, in this realm, you are limited only by your imagination. And those of us with prodigious gifts in that regard, can do very nearly anything.”

Gabe let his mouth work on reflex as he processed what was happening. “Well that sounds like some Saturday morning cartoon bullshit, so I’m going to pretend like you phrased it differently. But...I guess I understand.”

“Do you?” the god asked.

Then Aka Manah waved a hand to brush away a gossamer net of glamour in front of them, and Gabe found himself staring at the other side of his void. The god reached out and rapped on the edge of the bubble like a screen door, and Gabe actually heard the echo stretch back into his own mind. The sensation threatened to break him.

“Don’t,” Gabe said, bringing a hand to his temple.

“Yes,” Aka Manah replied with a chuckle. “Wretched, isn’t it? You would actually do well to fortify yourself against such intrusions at some point. Provided you live past tomorrow, that is. Nearly anyone could reach you through this place if they knew where to look.” He clasped his hands together like a teacher on a field trip. “Shall we continue?”

Gabe dropped his hand and nodded, eager to get away. It was hard enough living in his own head most days. It didn’t help at all getting a backwards view from the outside at the same time.

“Excellent,” the god said. “This time I’d like you to pay attention to how I do this. You may need it.”

The world lurched again, and a moment later they were standing outside the stark white halls of the Warrens. Gabe had only caught part of what had happened—a brief image and a surge of will, then nothing—and a tiny shrug from Heather told him she hadn’t done much better. A new door smeared itself across the image, and the god reached out with a single finger to tap it open. The view beyond was brighter and crisper, like someone was turning up the resolution on existence. The real world. And Gabe had to consciously keep himself from diving straight for it.

James took it upon himself to go first again, walking upright and proud, but still limping like he wanted to collapse as soon as possible. He vanished through the door and reappeared on the image of the world outside, frozen there in that single mote of time. Heather gave Gabe a gentle push to go next, putting herself between him and Aka Manah, and he was so anxious to leave he didn’t even bother with a token protest. He hit the door with the same odd sensation of falling, but this time everything around him melted in reverse, coming back up to full speed until his feet once again hit ground that felt like it really was. He saw James moving to rest against the wall, and Heather immediately came out behind him and put a hand on his back to get him moving out of the way.

“Now’s our chance to run,” she whispered quickly.

He shook his head. “We can’t. He just showed how he can reach me through the veil. That little side trip wasn’t a whim.”

A brief flash of understanding passed through the bond, and she nodded. “Right. So who are we trusting?”

His mother came through looking like she had no business being there and knew it, then Aka Manah followed. Gabe watched the door fade inward from the edges like a closing wound, and the slice of reality it occupied slowly reasserted itself. He tapped Heather’s arm with a finger. “Us.”

Aka Manah took a deep breath and flexed his stained hand like the magic had somehow strained it. The darkness there now looked almost empty...like actual chunks of his flesh were fading away.

“Ah, the Warrens,” the god said. “They did do wonders with these, considering what they had to work with at the time. One of the last great achievements of the old Umbral Council before the proper gods abandoned this world. Every major city has one, and some even connect to form complexes greater than any human habitation on earth. One might like a splash of color or decor, but I suppose this is what you get when you try to please everyone by pleasing no one.” His expression went pensive. “Bit of a metaphor for the state of the world today, really...if we want to get obnoxious about symbolism.” Then he shook himself out of it and pushed past them to start down the hall.

“What’s the plan here?” Gabe asked, following only close enough to avoid yelling. “Are you inviting yourself over for dinner, or are we just here to change our socks and get back to breaking the laws of physics?”

The god continued to stride ahead. “Well, I suppose we could take our sweet time about it. Really think it over and workshop several plans while trading witty banter and resolving personal conflicts with convenient plot developments.” He waved a hand through the air imperiously. “Provided of course you don’t mind losing the final Igla in the next three hours and forty-seven minutes. You’ll become the next logical target for a nigh-invincible force of annihilation and be solely responsible for the beginning of the end of all things...but we could do it that way.”

There was a brief silence only filled by the sound of their footsteps, then Gabe finally sighed. “Careful. You’re starting to slide from terrifying into exhausting, and nobody’s gonna be too intimidated by the god of sarcastic assholes.”

Aka Manah came to a stop directly in front of their base. “As spoken from experience, I believe. But if it will restore your faith in me, I will endeavor to tear out at least one skeleton today.” He gestured to the door.

Their friends had somehow managed to secure the hinges again, though the whole thing still looked badly mangled from the abuse it had taken. And Gabe could already hear the faint note of the proximity alarm coming from around the edges. He realized then that he hadn’t actually prepared anything to say to Hwei-ru, and the most likely reaction he could expect was immediate rage the instant she saw Aka Manah. The man was wearing her best friend’s eye, after all.

Then the door was opening, and it was too late.

Dante filled the entrance, eating up all the gaps around him with sheer bulk and menace. He was holding maces in each huge fist like steel lollipops, and every muscle in his undead body was twitching as he prepared to charge. But when he saw Gabe, Heather, and then finally James with his own eyes, he seemed to sag in relief.

“I wasn’t certain it was really you,” the minotaur said. “Too easy to make cameras lie.” His gaze drifted to Lauren, then Aka Manah, and he pointedly didn’t move to let them in. “Though I must still insist on an explanation.”

Heather stepped forward and held up her hands. “It’s us, big guy. No glamours. And yeah, we’ve brought home the Zoroastrian god of lies and lust...so we should probably call a little family meeting. Where’s Hwei-ru?”

Dante absorbed that for a moment, but didn’t move. “Looking for you in the ley lines. She has been absorbed in the stones for hours. We...feared you dead.”

Aka Manah chuckled. “Not terribly efficient. I’ll grant that it is clever, but the Mesopotamian ruins would have blocked out all but the most potent scrying. Hunters are not stupid, after all.”

“Thank you for your input,” Hwei-ru said from inside. Dante tensed and stepped back out of the door, letting them all see the gui po floating at the end of the hall. She looked more haggard and translucent than ever, and also like she was about to kill everything in a five mile radius. “What evil scheme are you here on, Acishtem Manah?”

The god carelessly edged Lauren aside, and Heather reluctantly moved before he could do the same to her. “Only the salvation of all things,” he called in, squaring up with the door as if readying for a shootout. “But I understand if you’d like to turn down the offer simply because I’m not a nice guy.”

“Do not attempt to downplay your vileness with me, godling!” she snapped back. “Not while you still wear the mark of your crime against Esme. You have perverted her spirit and prevented her return for your own gains, and now you would come here expecting anything but retribution?” Power surged from deeper inside the base and she immediately began to solidify. “Step one foot in, demon, and I will tear that eye from your skull.”

Gabe could feel Aka Manah’s power gathering too, and he knew immediately that this was about to go far beyond his control. He slipped past Heather and then around Aka Manah to wedge himself sideways in the door, leaning against the frame and holding out his hands. “Wait!” he yelled, giving it a second to echo before continuing. Fortunately, nobody blasted him into component pieces in the pause. “We’ve already done this, Hwei-ru. Give us a minute to explain why we probably need his help. Then, if you still don’t agree, you can splatter him however you want.”

“He is holding Esme bound in that eye,” she said, and her voice sounded just on the edge of breaking into a screech. “She cannot reform in the Ether nor on earth so long as he holds the center of her power. It is something that has never been done! Worse than blood magic. Worse than cannibalism!”

“I am using it for the greater good,” the god replied. “And I do not require your approval for my methods. But by all means, attack. Perhaps another god will come along and offer to stand sentinel against the coming end.”

“Stop!” Gabe shouted, putting more force into it. “I get it, okay? But we don’t have the time. We lost another Igla, and he knew exactly when it would happen.” He lifted his right palm to show Hwei-ru. “Only one left now, and he claims it’s going down in about three and a half hours. After that...they’re coming for me.”

“Lies,” Hwei-ru hissed back.

“Maybe!” Gabe said. “But if it is true, we’re screwed without him. And yes, I would rather vomit than say that, so just drop the magic and let’s talk this out for a second.”

“Why would he need us if not for some foul gain?” she asked.

Gabe wanted to turn the rest of his body toward her, but he didn’t dare put his back to Aka Manah. Apart from feeling like a stupid idea, he didn’t know if he actually believed anything he was about to say. “Because he’s not as all-powerful as he’d like us to think. He knows when the Igla will fall, but he doesn’t know how or where or to whom for sure. You can help with the second thing, and Heather and I can hopefully help with the others. And if we act quickly, he can take us through a portal and maybe get us there ahead of the bad guys.”

Hwei-ru seemed far from convinced. “That still does not explain why he would offer to help when—”

“Because he doesn’t want to die,” Heather cut in. “Don’t you see?” It sounded like an admonition, but her voice carried enough sweetness that it didn’t land that way. “It can’t be that hard to imagine that an evil, selfish god would do just about anything to preserve his own existence—up to and including helping the good guys win. He’s not doing this altruistically. This is a means to an end that he wants as much as we do.”

Aka Manah began slowly clapping. “Finally! I have been saying this for months, and at last someone gets me.”

Hwei-ru stared at them for a long beat, letting the energy from the stones wash around her and billow the fabric of her spirit like a strong wind. Her eyes bore into Gabe’s, then slipped past to study Aka Manah. “What would you do then, monster? Assuming we can secure the final Igla, how does that change our lot when the other four are already stolen? What good is the knowledge you bring?”

Aka Manah nodded. “You have hit the heart of it. Yes, the final Igla is irrelevant. This is a pass/fail situation, and the Iglas as we are referring to them are useless individually. Either we have all the pieces or we have nothing.” He spread his hands as if weighing the two sides between them. “But I cannot see where the Endless Dark will go. Nor, I suspect, could Esme. It is a vast void in the weave, and I have found no way to pierce it...except to know the time at which all hope will be lost. So this final Igla represents the last moment that I or any one of us will be able to reliably predict where the darkness will be. That is, until it comes for our dear Gabriel here to complete the collection.” He closed his hands into fists. “But by then I suspect we will be fighting a much less favorable battle against a much more focused enemy. And we will not know when to be prepared to fight it. Tomorrow? Twenty years from now? Who can say? The entities we’ve encountered have voluntarily tainted themselves with reality to interact directly in our world, but their source is utterly inscrutable and unpredictable. Should we fail today, we will be fighting blind in every possible sense.”

Hwei-ru folded her hands together placidly at her waist, but her face had gone even harder at the mention of Esme’s name. “How perfectly reasonable an explanation. And almost believable. But what would you have us do to act on it? The only way to retrieve an Igla is with the death of its carrier, and for that we would need to mount an attack on emptiness itself.”

“Not quite, actually,” Heather said. She sounded intrigued now. “Aka Manah killed Phillip in the Ether, and Gabe did something similar to one of the replacements. They’re real enough to kill, if the circumstances are right, and using the last Igla as bait to draw the thing out...actually sounds like a good idea. We certainly haven’t had any better plans up to this point.”

Hwei-ru shifted her gaze to Heather, and her face softened just a little. “You would be facing the champion of the Endless Dark, presumably now fortified against the same tricks used against it in the past. And you would simultaneously expect to retrieve the final Igla as well? Two days ago you two were complaining about one Igla being an impossible task, but today you are actually suggesting we attempt to sweep all five in one blow?”

Gabe picked up a pulse of uncertainty from Heather and he blew out a long breath. “I mean, I’m not thrilled about it...”

“And while we are being forthright,” Aka Manah added, “we should include the threat of the Templars and their cohorts in this. They seem to know the locations of all the Iglas, and they will undoubtedly be massed at this location in preparation for our arrival.”

“Worse still,” Hwei-ru said. “Just as we might kill their representative and take the Iglas, they stand as much or better a chance. Do not mistake my hesitation for fear or sentimentality, but I would challenge the wisdom of sending our only hope into a nest of vipers and expect him to come out with anything other than a fatal bite. Are we really suggesting a course that amounts to an all-or-none gamble this very day?”

Dante rumbled in thought. “I do not like the god...” He paused and let that sink in longer than was strictly necessary, and Aka Manah simply raised an eyebrow. “...But, there is wisdom in a decisive blow. We can pick at the knot and hope to unravel it, or we can accept our position and slice it open.”

“Says the minotaur who would charge at everything,” Hwei-ru replied, but this time there was a hint of defeat in her voice. She looked to Gabe. “And you would agree to this? You who have not ceased complaining of this onerous task since we met?”

Gabe shook his head. “ Nope. I think it’s a stupid plan with a stupid goal, and I don’t want to be anywhere within a thousand miles of it. If it were just up to me, I’d say lock me in a bunker stocked with books and video games, then bury the whole thing in concrete. See if the bad guys can find me then.” He looked to Heather, and a little smile tugged involuntarily at the corner of his mouth. “But you’re the one who’s been saying how much bigger this situation is than me. And honestly, there is a kind of simplicity to it that’s appealing. I became a conman specifically because I don’t like working too much, so the notion of pulling off one big dangerous job in exchange for being totally done with this whole mess...actually seems like a decent deal.”

Hwei-ru looked like she wanted to toss up her hands, but instead simply bowed her head. “Foolish.” She stared at him, then looked past him to linger on Heather. Her expression seemed to travel through whole worlds of thought and loss and frustration, but then finally it settled on the simple resignation of someone who was getting too used to it. “But so be it.”

Ken came from around the corner then, followed closely by Penny. “Am I missing something?” he asked, then stopped abruptly. “Oh! Visitors.”

Penny’s face lit up and she ran partway toward them before coming to a quick stop herself. Her little face dropped into a serious scowl. “Pssst, Mr. Gabe,” she said, whispering as if everyone else couldn’t hear. “There’s a bad man with you.”

Gabe nodded. “Yeah, we know, Penny.”

She eyed Aka Manah carefully. “He looks like a poophead.”

Heather barked a laugh, and Gabe had to stop himself from grinning. “You’re not wrong,” he replied.

The god’s expression only soured a little. “Charming.” Then he checked his watch. “If we are not careful, we will lose the only advantage we have. Are we going or not?”

Gabe looked to Hwei-ru, but the woman seemed more torn and defeated than he’d seen her in weeks. He was surprised to find that he wanted to comfort her in some way, to tell her that everything would be alright. And that was a weird feeling to have about a woman who he’d largely just been tolerating up to that point. But then he supposed that as one of the few people in his life who had never abandoned, betrayed, or intentionally hurt him, she did probably deserve a little more affection than he was doling out. He caught her eye and gave her a small nod of support.

Hwei-ru took a deep breath that she didn’t need as a ghost, then she straightened. “Very well. I do not like this, but neither will I leave these people to your tender mercies, demon.” Then she turned to Lauren. “But before we proceed, I would ask what the human woman has to do with it.”

Gabe watched his mother flinch and then visibly lift herself up under the scrutiny, and he felt a cold emptiness settle over him as he prepared to answer before Aka Manah could.

Shockingly, she beat them both to it.

“I don’t know,” Lauren said. Her voice was soft and hesitant, but she didn’t stop. “Apparently I was just a tool to convince Gabe to get to this point. I didn’t know Alexander was a...god. I don’t know anything about your world really, and I certainly don’t have a clue what you’re talking about. Until a week ago I was an elementary school librarian with a husband and two beautiful daughters...” She glanced at Gabe, but quickly looked away. “...and one son who I abandoned a long time ago. To my shame.” She mumbled the last and her gaze dropped to the floor. “I have no idea what I am today. I left without a word, and everyone I know is probably looking for me, and I feel like everything is falling apart...” Suddenly she seemed to realize what she was saying, and she quickly looked up to stare at all the faces aimed at her...then to Aka Manah. Her mouth opened to continue, but nothing came out.

Gabe knew he should say something. He could feel the moment ripening for him to come to her rescue with a bit of forgiveness or at least a shred of mercy. He could be the bigger person and prove that he’d grown since this mess had started. But he didn’t.

Instead, he pretended like nothing had been said. “We don’t have time to learn every angle of this,” he replied. “The only reason I’m cool with storming the beaches for this Igla is because we’re showing up early. I’m not going to feel the same way if we have to get in line behind every monster and self-righteous mercenary on the planet. So if we’re going, let’s go.” He looked to Hwei-ru expectantly.

The gui po nodded. “The final location has been difficult to pinpoint, almost as if it is not connected to the ley lines in the same way as the others. But the nearest point is in the Southern Indian Ocean...on the small island of Ile Amsterdam.”

Gabe nodded and finally let his hands drift down. “Great. If it’s on dry land I’m already excited. And an island trip almost sounds pleasant.” He forced a laugh. “Third times a charm, right? So maybe this’ll actually be the easiest one of the bunch.”

There was a long pause, then Heather came up next to him. “Not likely, Gabey.” She took his hand. “It’s...a volcano.”

CHAPTER TWENTY

“I do sometimes wonder if I’ll ever live a ‘regular’ life. I could get a job where the most magical things are the doughnuts in the breakroom, maybe live in a house that isn’t stained with the blood of a thousand virgins, or even do something as simple as getting a cat that doesn’t shapeshift more than what’s required to cram itself into a shoebox. It’s a thought that’s bothered me for a while, actually, since I’ve never really tried normalcy for more than a few days at a time. In that respect, being a conman was reasonably good preparation for being a...whatever I am now. I’ve never played by the same rules or lived in the same world as everyone else, so I don’t miss that stuff nearly as much as I might have. It’s more of an academic question for me than anything, helping to keep me grounded in the rest of humanity for those rare times these days that I run into a person who isn’t secretly something else. But I can’t help thinking it might be fun to try being ‘normal’ for a bit. I’m confident I’d somehow screw it up, but I have to admit it does have some appeal.

I wonder if Heather likes cats?”

-Excerpt from Chapter Twenty-Five, CONscience

GABE FELT HIS EXPRESSION tightening.

Heather waited for him to respond, then elaborated. “You know, a volcano? Like a mountain but angry? If it helps, I don’t think it’s erupted for something like a hundred years.”

Gabe chewed on his bottom lip and nodded slowly. “Oh yeah, very reassuring. Volcanoes pop up all the time in stories just to sit there nicely and not blow up. Totally normal situation.” He turned and stepped inside toward the armory.

“This isn’t a story, Gabe,” she said, following close behind.

He stopped and gestured around in a wide circle at the living myths staring back at him. “Are you sure?” Then he sighed and sagged against a wall panel. “I mean, I’m still going to do it. But after this whole Igla crap is over I want a nice cushy mission to an ice cream store or something.” He crossed his arms. “Maybe a beanbag chair factory.”

“Do they still make those?” Heather asked.

“No pain, no gain, Gabey boy,” James said as he edged around Aka Manah and followed inside. “I need to grab a few more guns if I’m going to be useful to—” He barely made it across the threshold before his legs finally gave way and he began to tumble.

Luckily, Dante was there. “Oh!” The minotaur dropped a mace and easily caught the man with one hand, then quickly dropped the other weapon and supported him from both sides. Both men looked a little surprised and confused for a moment, but then Dante moved to the side and gently lowered James to sit against the wall. “You are in no fit shape for battle, friend.”

James seemed taken aback by what had just happened, but then collected himself. “Just a stumble. No big deal. It takes more to keep me down than getting beaten bloody by a dozen Hunters for two hours. I just need a minute.”

Dante looked like he wanted to say more, but Aka Manah cleared his throat and spoke first. “I can see why it is so difficult for you people to get anything done. We have close to three hours left, and we do not know where precisely on this island we need to be. If we are going, it is time.”

Gabe scoffed. “A thousand bucks says I know exactly where we need to be.” Heather smacked him lightly on the shoulder.

Hwei-ru came toward them down the hall. “We are not yet equipped for an expedition such as this, and there is no time to gather more supplies. The island is populated only by a few researchers and wild birds, and there are no other resources for you there. The nearest conventional transport outside of small outposts is two thousand miles away. So I suggest you at least take the time to pack as if you will be there for an extended trip.”

Ken took a reluctant step forward. “I can probably charter a boat from Australia to start heading there now. It’s not much of a head start, but it’s something.”

Hwei-ru nodded. “Very good. Thank you.”

Aka Manah filled the doorway. “You are speaking as if I intend to abandon them there.”

Hwei-ru met his eyes unflinchingly. “Yes.”

There was a moment of tension again, and Ken slipped away, obviously thankful to have a way to help. Dante turned back toward the door and his thick fingers flexed ever so slightly.

Then the god glanced around the room and broke into his most charming smile. “Smart. I like working with people who don’t expect to be coddled every inch of the way. But if all goes according to plan, such contingencies will not be necessary.”

“And what is the plan?” Heather asked an instant before Gabe could.

The god stepped inside past Dante as if not seeing the man...or not caring. “I guarantee the Templars will already be there in some capacity. They have long been rumored to possess a form of the wide-walking we just did, and they likely got into place quite some time ago in anticipation of this moment. So we will go in as a small strike team, attempting to get past them and straight to the Igla. With luck, we will not need to engage them in combat. Without luck, we will leave part of our group behind as a delaying action while Gabriel and I retrieve the Igla and face whatever comes next.”

Gabe kicked off from the wall. “That’s suicide. There were almost fifty Knights of Solomon at the second Igla, and if it hadn’t been for the kraken, we’d be decorating the bottom of the gulf right now. Even Dante and Heather can’t face that many alone.”

“And me!” Penny said suddenly, bouncing happily on her toes. “I love islands!” Gabe, Dante, and Hwei-ru began talking over one another to express how bad that idea was, but the sprite simply laughed and spun in place. “This will be my payment for getting you to and from the second Igla thingy. I can handle myself, and I love adventures!”

“It is not wise to—” Dante began.

“And you can all go straight to hell if you think you’re leaving me behind,” James said as he muscled himself to his feet. “I’m not fast right now, but my trigger fingers are working just fine. Prop me against a tree or something and I’ll slow the assholes down.” Gabe glanced at him with a hint of confusion, but the man shrugged it away. “I figure my life was forfeit with the Hunters, so I’m basically on borrowed time as it is. I gotta make a few calls to ensure some people are taken care of, but otherwise I’m down to save the world today. And if it means I get to kill some Knights of Solomon, sign me all the fucking way up.”

Gabe watched Dante’s expression approximate something like human exasperation, and the minotaur gave him a questioning look as if asking him to stop all this nonsense. But Gabe could only shrug. “I can’t turn down willing help, big guy. If this is the main event, we need to bring our best acts.”

“Or several,” Heather added. “I like the ones with blades on both sides, but smaller throwing hatchets are good too.”

Gabe smirked and bumped her shoulder with his. “I said acts.”

She just smiled back and winked.

Aka Manah rolled his eyes theatrically before checking his watch. “Wonderful. Go about your business then. I will meet you there.”

Gabe stared back and felt his paranoia begin to edge up. “Where are you going?”

The god waved vaguely over his shoulder and another door smeared across the air behind him. “I have a few more arrangements to make, things designed to help us come out of this alive. And that is rather the point, isn’t it?”

“What?” Heather snapped. A flash of anger and outrage carried through to Gabe, and her posture mirrored it. She smelled treachery already, and he could hardly blame her.

But the god was already turning to usher Lauren through the portal. She looked back at Gabe once with a question in her eyes, then vanished. He guessed it was the last time he’d ever see her, and he was oddly fine with that. The place in his heart reserved for her had long since gone hard, and he didn’t have the energy to cut beneath the callus now.

Aka Manah waved a hand dripping his red-gold magic, and the door seemed to solidify somewhat. “I believe this will hold for roughly fifteen minutes without my intervention. I will endeavor to secure the way at the island for several minutes longer.” He glanced over his shoulder toward Gabe. “I hope you were paying attention. Don’t get lost.” Then he stepped through.

They all watched the doors as they silently undulated across the surface of reality, and Gabe was the first to break the moment. “Anyone else feel like we just bought a timeshare in hell from a shifty salesman?”

Heather met his eyes and all the anger she’d just been nurturing fell away to be replaced with expectation dusted lightly with worry. “Are you okay?” she asked. “About your mom, I mean?”

He waved the concern away. “Yeah. I did as much as I could for her.” Heather looked confused, so he elaborated. “The underlying threat was that if she wasn’t useful as a bargaining chip against me, she wasn’t useful at all. So by letting Aka Manah win, it hopefully guarantees he’ll keep her safe to use against me again. Best I could do. I hope she has a nice life.”

Heather nodded as if the angle should have occurred to her, then she folded her arms. “So what’s the plan?”

He shrugged. “No clue. I thought we’d do it potluck style—we all throw in a piece of a plan until we have something like a—”

Heather bumped his foot with hers and it was enough to make him stop to see everyone looking back at him. They were staring, really, and the rest of the words withered in his mouth. They were all watching him as if he had an answer...even James...even Hwei-ru. And his first reaction was to push it all away with a snide remark so someone else would take the reins. That was always a safer bet. Easier to run away when nobody was watching for your lead.

But then he thought about all the moments he’d won any kind of victory over the last few months—every narrow escape and every marginal triumph he’d scraped together without Heather having to save him. And he realized that each one had only come about because he’d either been extraordinarily lucky, or because he’d been true to his own gut. He loved to complain that the world was tossing him around like a rag doll, and that he was tired of it. But it occurred to him right then that he hadn’t actually done much to stop it. He was essentially letting it all happen and reacting, when what he really should be doing was getting ahead of it with his own brand of creativity. He was the wild card, after all. Fateless. So maybe it was time to start acting like it.

He took a deep breath and gave Heather a nod of thanks, then he turned to his crew. It helped if he thought of it as just another job. “Hwei-ru,” he said, starting with the hardest one, “please give me ten minutes on the clock. We all need to be squared away and ready to jump in on that mark. No exceptions. Dante, help James get changed into something bulletproof and kitted out with guns. If he whines about being able to do it himself, you have my permission to slap him. Gently. He’s always been too handsome anyway.”

“Hey,” James protested, but Dante only grunted in amusement as he moved to help the other man into the armory.

Gabe threw them both a smirk, then continued. “Penny, I’ve only seen you in the water, so I have no idea what you’re bringing to the table on dry land. But I trust you know what you’re doing. Take whatever you need to feel safe.” She nodded very seriously and he narrowed his eyes. “What are you bringing?”

She only giggled and shrugged before turning to skip off.

“That makes me nervous,” he mumbled. Then he glanced around before raising his voice to carry across the whole place. “Ken?”

There was a moment of silence, then the man leaned around a corner. “Yeah?”

Gabe pointed at him. “You’re in charge of survival gear. We have less than ten minutes, and you’re the only one who knows where everything is. Set us up for a week if you can. Bare essentials only, but if you happen to have a spare satellite phone to toss in there I’ll give you a big sloppy kiss.”

The man had started nodding emphatically as Gabe spoke, but trailed off quickly at the end. “Eh, right. Bugout bags. On it.” Then he vanished again.

Gabe clenched his hand into a fist. “Beautiful. And speaking of which,” he turned to Heather. “You’re on weapons. We’re apparently facing a whole army and at least two end-bosses today, so we’re gonna to want swords, guns, explosives, and maybe an attack helicopter if you can cram it into the inventory. And hey, get yourself something pretty.” He tapped her playfully on the forehead.

Her eyes sparkled with a rapid layering of emotions he couldn’t read fast enough. “Pretty deadly, you mean?”

Gabe lost himself there for an instant and couldn’t help but smile back. “Yep, that’s exactly how I would describe you.” Then he forcibly pulled himself out of her eyes and back into the moment. “Hwei-ru?” The woman raised her chin and gave a curt nod. “My magic is still recovering after I, uh...used it all. How fast can you teach me that trick you’ve been doing to charge up from the stones?”

The gui po looked startled and opened her mouth to likely say something snappish, but then she stopped and seemed to go pensive. “I...cannot. But I suppose there is no reason why I cannot do it for you. Follow me.” She spun and floated back down the hall.

Gabe raised his eyebrows and turned to exchange a questioning glance with Heather, but she only shrugged.

“No idea,” she replied. “Must be some fancy ghost trick. Let’s just hope it doesn’t turn out to be the same one you used on me.” Her smile went almost sharp enough to cut.

He started to laugh, but let it fade when she didn’t join him.

“No, that’s not...” He searched her face and suddenly didn’t like what he was finding, then shot a quick glance back to see that Hwei-ru had already gone into the central chamber. “I mean, surely she wouldn’t...” Heather raised an eyebrow, and he felt his face getting hot. “This is a mean joke.”

She took his shoulders and pulled him in for a quick kiss. “Nine minutes, leader man. Now go get your medicine.” Then she turned him right around and smacked him on the butt to get him moving.

He stumbled a few steps for the show of it, then raised a hand in mute acquiescence before moving toward the pillars.

It was officially the second time he’d been in the place since Ken and Dante had done their miraculous overnight renovation, but he hadn’t really stopped to look on the first pass. This time he couldn’t help but feel like he was walking into the atrium of a weird business complex, complete with stacks of boxes that could be filled with accounting files as easily as ancient death masks, and the whole place was defined by more of the eight-foot wall panels that were themselves dwarfed by the massive black central pillars. Hwei-ru was already standing there in the middle of them, holding her hands out to either side and bathing in the soft ambient glow of power.

“Come quickly,” she said. “I do not know how long this will take. And we may need to try a few times before we get it right.”

Gabe bit his tongue to stop himself from making several inappropriate jokes, and he walked to the edge of the circle. He paused a moment there, reluctant to step into that field of energy, but then an imaginary ticking clock sounded in his head and he forced himself to go in.

Fortunately, the feeling turned out to be okay. It was like the sensation of static from a blanket lifting the hairs on his arm on a dry winter day, but this went right through the clothes and under the skin. And it was all over. Gabe shuddered as he took the last few steps to stand directly in front of Hwei-ru, and he held himself almost painfully erect as he came to a slow stop. He didn’t know if the stuff was actually anything like electricity, or if he could accidentally do anything to discharge it in the same way, but he didn’t dare take any risks either. He had about eight minutes left on his deadline, and that didn’t leave any time to recover from some kind of magical lightning bolt.

Hwei-ru closed her eyes and held her hands in front him. “Now, clear your mind and prepare yourself for—”

“Yeah, not sure I can do that,” he cut in. “Might be a little hard to get zen with all the peril and monsters and—OH!” Her hands suddenly sank into his chest.

“Do not interrupt,” she said calmly.

Gabe’s whole body went rigid with the urge to run away and the fear of moving at all, and he only dared take short, shallow breaths while he could see the ghost arms elbow deep in him. He quickly looked up. “Yeah...” he said, barely squeezing the word out. “Got it.”

A tiny hint of amusement touched her expression, but her eyes remained closed in concentration. “Perhaps next time you will listen to me.”

He swallowed and sucked in another breath. “Yes. Absolutely. Though—ah, this is not normal—is this just about the clear mind thing...or are you talking in layers again?”

Her thin eyebrows flicked as if they wanted to go up, but she seemed too preoccupied to muster a proper sagely demeanor. “I consider it a failure on my part if I only manage to say one thing with one statement.”

“Sure,” he said through gritted teeth. “But then you have this extra statement explaining the first one and it kinda becomes... You know what? Never mind.” He tried to force himself to relax, but only managed to bring his arms a few inches closer to his body. “I’m sorry we railroaded you into this plan. I would’ve called ahead with a warning if I could have.”

Hwei-ru’s mouth tightened, but she didn’t let it drop into a full frown. The energy around her began to swirl in the same direction, and it seemed to be thickening. “You had no other choice. And it was not as if we were flush with other plans. I may not agree with the source of this endeavor, but I unfortunately cannot fault the logic of it. This may be our best and only chance...little thanks to me.”

Gabe watched as the raw wisps of power around them began coalescing near the gui po, and it almost looked like steam absorbing into her body. He tried not to speculate what she was about to do with it. “Well, I for one feel no shame in admitting we were outclassed by gods and the universe-spanning personification of death,” he said.

“No surprise coming from a man who feels shame for so little,” she replied. Then her face fell and the energy around her stopped coming. “Ah...apologies. That was unfair.”

“No,” he said, “I can see that. And a year ago I would have agreed with you pretty happily. But life changes you, right?”

She nodded a token acceptance. “For humans, perhaps.” Then her expression hardened and the power began drifting away. “But it has become clear to me that I have been reaching far beyond the scope of my abilities. I was made to protect a home, and to keep a family safe and loved. And I have failed in all of it. I was never meant for great deeds in the way Esme or even Aka Manah was, and my attempting to stand among them has only resulted in more failure...to the detriment of us all.”

Gabe had no idea what was happening with the stones, but he felt like this couldn’t be part of it. Another minute had passed, and Hwei-ru didn’t appear to have her head in the game. He toyed with a few conciliatory statements to reassure her, something kind about her, or something he admired, but the ticking clock wouldn’t stop needling him. And he didn’t think that stuff would work on the woman anyway. She was pragmatic and smart, and she didn’t care one bit about what he thought of her. Which helped, actually.

“Are you done whining?” he asked. He kept his voice calm, but he didn’t soften it, and her eyes opened to meet his with a little spark of anger already lit there. So he continued fanning. “Lorelei died because you dragged her into this. You’re right about that. She fell to Phillip’s influence because she was there, not because she was special. And while we’re at it, let’s talk about how you also didn’t predict the Endless Dark stealing the other Iglas, and how you flat out missed Aka Manah coming in from the side to scoop our plans out from under us. You missed the Templars and Twenty Brothers, the Knights of Solomon, and probably a whole host of other crap we don’t even know about yet.”

He watched her face crumple in fury, and he thought he felt her hands straining to keep from going corporeal inside him. But he couldn’t stop now. “You’re obviously not supposed to be here,” he said. “That’s undeniable. But guess what? Neither fucking am I. Neither are any of us! We weren’t preordained to be some kind of cosmic hero squad, we’re just a bunch of unlucky assholes who were in the wrong place in the wrong era. None of us know what the hell we’re doing, so the fact that you have even half a clue makes you better suited to this than the rest of us. And do you see any other gods or legends scrambling to lead us out of this shitstorm? No. You’re here, and so am I. And that’s what we’ve got.”

He waited for her to respond, but all he got was the slow death of the anger in her eyes and her face slipping back into passivity. She watched for a moment with something like her usual cool calculation, then her eyes snapped closed again and the energy around them began swirling in with new vigor.

Gabe opened his mouth to seal the conversation with a few more quick points, but then a rush of energy suddenly flowed into him like cold saline pouring in his veins. He reached up and grabbed Hwei-ru’s arm on reflex, feeling how it faded from solidity above her elbow to mist below, and then he could do nothing but stand there shivering as the power settled in.

“I am spirit made flesh,” she said quietly as the energy flowed through her, “and can therefore act as kind of translator for you. Like an electrical inverter. You have already done this in the Ether where the potential is pure, and with practice, you will eventually learn to do it on earth without my assistance. Until then...” she gave one final push and Gabe felt a last bit of power surge to gather raw and volatile inside him. Then she cut off the flow. “...This will do.” She withdrew her hands and held them out as they returned to solidity.

Gabe stood there, frozen with a gut full of power that he didn’t know what to do with and that was threatening to burst out of him at any moment. It really was similar to when he’d drawn power from the Ether after the first Igla, but it was also disturbingly like the times Aka Manah had granted him gifts of his dark, vile energy. It felt like it could go either way, and still the clock was ticking.

“Do not force it,” Hwei-ru said. “Let it acclimate. Give it something to nucleate on if you can.”

Gabe wanted to ask what the hell that meant, but he didn’t dare spare the attention for it. Instead, he flailed inside himself, searching for a way to contain the stuff or even shove it back out of him. But then a dim mote of his own magic lifted up from the sea of foreign power and he seized on it out of reflex. A bit of the new stuff followed in its wake and rose to meet it, and to his surprise it seemed to cling like static in truth. He watched the chaotic swirl of colors dance around his tiny blue spark as yet more rose to join it, and the whole thing reminded him of long-lost lessons about atoms fusing to form molecules.

“Four minutes,” Hwei-ru said calmly.

Gabe held up a finger. “Just...shut up for a second.”

More and more energy drifted together, finding other stray bits of his magic and clinging to them like drowning sailors to a life raft. The sea within him slowly calmed to a churn, then a swirl, and after another moment he felt confident it would continue to settle if given enough time. But of course, there was never enough of that.

He reached into the mass of power and then through it, diving deeper to grasp the rest of his magic that had managed to reform since leaving Iraq. It felt pitiful in his mental grasp compared to what he was used to and what was waiting above, but he certainly couldn’t wait for more. So he dragged it back up with him into the center of that power, feeling the raw energy fusing to it as he went, then he left it there to percolate before rising back up the rest of the way.

He looked to Hwei-ru and nodded. “Okay, we’ll see if that works.”

She raised an eyebrow curiously, but didn’t voice the question. “Very well. I suppose that is all we can ever do.”

“Damn right.” Then Gabe took a long breath and finally let the shudder have free reign over his body. “The last time you did that without asking, didn’t you say you’d buy me dinner first? I gotta say, I don’t love it.”

The woman nodded and turned to lead him back to the front door. “Trust me when I tell you that I am no more pleased about it. I did not envision my role in the final battle as a magical battery.”

Gabe caught up to her at the edge of the chamber. “Are you sure you can’t come with us? Even if you are less powerful out there, we’d be better off.”

She was already shaking her head. “I have not exaggerated my weakness when I stray too far from my center of power. I would be little more than a shell of myself at the opposite end of the world, and I may not exist at all, in fact. I would be less than useless.” She seemed poised to fall back into her defeatism, but quickly bounced back. “No, I can better serve you by staying here and monitoring the island through the ley lines. Perhaps I can give you some warning if something changes or is about to go wrong. I still do not trust Aka Manah by a single inch.”

Gabe touched her shoulder and prompted her to turn before they met everyone back at the door. He guessed they had about two minutes left, but something had just occurred to him. “Neither do I. There’s no way he’s playing it straight with us—not if he thinks he can get two or three other things out of this deal while he’s at it. There will definitely be a hook waiting in this bait.” He glanced around the room quickly, then lowered his voice. “How about the Ether? Can you travel through that?”

Hwei-ru looked startled, then shook her head. “Not as such. The ley lines are fractures atop the veil—the level just above the wide-walking you did to get here—and it is also the level I exist partially on when I am incorporeal. So while I cannot travel into the Ether without risking the dissolution of my physical substance, I can perhaps track you from above much like a bird tracking a fish beneath the water.”

“But can you open a portal?” he asked. “Even if you can’t go through it?”

Her expression went a touch pensive. “If I am here at the stones...yes, I believe so.”

“Come with me,” he said, and led her straight for the portal.

Three minutes later, Gabe stepped out of the door and back into reality. Hwei-ru followed close behind.

“Twelve minutes,” Heather said as soon as they appeared. “Where the hell did you two go?” She was carrying a bulletproof vest and tossed it straight into his arms.

Gabe caught it awkwardly, then met Hwei-ru’s eyes. “Are you sure you can find it again?”

The gui po nodded and drifted away from the portal. “Of course. Now that you have shown me. I will be listening.”

“Good,” he said. He slipped the vest on and rolled his shoulders to settle it in place before snapping the buckles closed, then he turned to assess his waiting team. “Sorry I’m late. I know I said no exceptions, but obviously I didn’t mean me.” He clapped his hands together. “Everyone ready to go die?”

Heather met his eyes and he sent a little pulse of reassurance back to her. She took it, nodded once, and that was it.

“Every day since we met,” she replied. Then she handed him a sword and a canvas bag before retrieving two turquoise clips to pin her dark hair back away from her face. She raised her eyebrows a little to ask him if it looked alright, and he nodded with a wink.

James appeared to be exactly twelve minutes better than he had been, but the change of clothes and addition of some ballistic armor and guns lent him a bit more of the gravitas he was accustomed to. Dante seemed to have selected a massive war ax for himself that would have taken Gabe both hands to manage, but the minotaur was carrying it lightly in one fist while keeping the other hand free to hover near James protectively. Penny was the only one of them that wasn’t carrying any visible weapons, but she’d instead opted for several canteens and a small satchel over her shoulder that looked positively stuffed to the seams.

Ken came up eagerly and handed Gabe what looked like a satellite phone. “I can’t guarantee it’ll work perfectly,” the man said. “But it should be alright if you can get a clear line of sight to the sky. It tends to go wonky under trees or clouds or, you know...smoke.”

Gabe nodded as he checked to make sure the thing was on, then he stuffed it into his pocket. “Thanks, man. Nice work.” He clapped him on the shoulder before looking back to the rest of the team. “Alright. Let’s go save the stupid day.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

“I know I’ve said this before, but I think the thing that bothers me most about magic is that there always seems to be something new popping up. And I can’t tell if that’s a consequence of my ignorance (which is admittedly likely) or because that’s just how magic works. I want a good set of rules to know where my boundaries are. Otherwise how am I supposed to know what to break?”

-Excerpt from Chapter Twenty-Five, CONscience

“ARE YOU SURE YOU KNOW what you’re doing?” Heather asked as she followed Gabe last into the portal. “This isn’t something you can improvise as you go.”

He found Dante and James several yards away, and Penny was already skipping back toward them...albeit at a ninety degree angle as if running on the wall. So he focused on his version of reality and infused it with a bit of will and magic just like a pattern. The world around them flexed and twisted for an instant, threatening to bend further out of sync, but then his mental image caught hold and snapped taut, and suddenly the entire team was standing roughly where they should be. Some of them were still twisted a few degrees to one side or the other...but he went ahead and considered it a win anyway.

Gabe let the picture bleed carefully out of his mind, hoping that things wouldn’t snap back as soon as he lost concentration. Then he nodded to Heather as if he’d known all along how well it would work. “I beg to differ. And Hwei-ru might have given me a few pointers. Though it’s only a little basic manipulation of space and time. Not so hard, really.” He held out his hands and settled into a proper mystical stance. “Anybody need to barf before we go? Just me?”

James shook his head and looked to Dante. “I immediately regret this.”

The minotaur snorted in agreement, but laid a heavy hand on Gabe’s shoulder. “We are with you.”

Penny just gave an enthusiastic thumbs up like they were headed to the carnival.

Gabe nodded. “Cool. Here we go then. Hold on tight, don’t look down, and please keep your hands inside the perversion of temporal dynamics at all times. Or...at no times, maybe? I don’t know.” Then he focused on the island in the way Hwei-ru had shown him, and he held his breath. There was a moment of falling as if he was about to go unconscious, and the world bent around him again...then they were moving.

The travel wasn’t instantaneous the way Aka Manah had done it, but it certainly didn’t feel any better for it. Concepts like speed and duration didn’t seem to have the normal meanings in that place, but somehow distance did. The god had seemed to hop them from one location to the next in flashes—even traversing briefly to the conceptual—but Gabe simply couldn’t get his head around moving from one point to another without crossing something between. And without any practice to fix that kink in his understanding, he’d settled on just going really freaking fast.

The world around them flicked by in a smear of frozen scenery too quickly to identify, but they were able to get base impressions from the general outlines. They left Nebraska after what felt like a few seconds, then the continent after a minute. The endless blue of the ocean began running beneath them like a misty field, and the odd combination of stillness outside and speed within made it almost look like a vast impressionist oil painting on a conveyor belt. Some of his mind wanted to slow them to appreciate a view they would likely never see again, but the more logical part revolted and reminded him what would happen if he lost the momentum...or forgot to concentrate...or really screwed up and somehow dropped them out of the veil entirely. It would be a pretty stupid way to die, and he was terrified enough as it was. And feeling nauseous. His stomach didn’t seem to care that they weren’t actually moving. His eyes saw mach ten, so his gut clenched for it. And he still hadn’t taken a breath.

Without a good point of reference, the sense of time they brought in with them quickly went fuzzy, and the rapidly moving sun stuttering across the sky as they flew east certainly didn’t help. But by the time the little island came into view with its red-gold glowing doorway just waiting for them to pass through, it looked like mid-afternoon in the outside world...though he knew no actual time had passed. Half a day had just vanished in an instant as they’d skipped over to an opposite time zone.

Gabe tried to bring them in close to Aka Manah’s waiting portal, but he ended up snapping them to an abrupt stop about twenty yards away at the edge of a craggy beach. Everyone gasped with varying degrees of intensity—and in Penny’s case, glee—then they stumbled forward as one to take the remaining steps and pitch themselves through the waiting door. Heather went through first, silently broadcasting intent to secure the exit back to reality for everyone else, and Gabe ushered Penny through next before following himself and letting James and Dante cover the rear. In reality, they all pretty much came through simultaneously and ended up landing on top of one another.

Gabe rolled aside and laid there for a second, breathing heavily and privately exulting in the feel of solid, unmoving ground beneath him. Then he pushed a minotaur leg off his chest and pulled himself up to pretend like he hadn’t just nearly crapped his pants. “Okay. That was a sickening little miracle. Everyone good?”

Penny was already jumping up and down with her hands clutching at her clanking canteens. “Let’s do it again!”

Dante was snorting with something like irritation and bewilderment as he slowly dragged himself up to his hooves, and he very pointedly shook his big head at the sprite. “No, little one. I would sooner swim back.”

“Yeah, not the smoothest ride, Gabey boy,” James said. “I’m not sure you did that quite right.”

Heather was already facing away from them and scanning the small trees lining the beach for any signs of danger. “Oh, you big babies. It’s not like he had time to practice. And if Penny can get over it, so can you.”

Dante hefted his ax and lumbered into a defensive position of his own. “There is much less of her to move. And to stop.” His voice dropped into a sullen mumble. “It is a matter of momentum.”

Gabe scanned the island with them, and was a little surprised at what he saw. They were on a rocky beach that disappeared quickly into rough grasses and shrubs in either direction, and there wasn’t a single palm tree to be found. It was much cooler than he’d expected too, and several yards away the stony shore was lightly populated by what looked like a few small birds of varying species picking at the ground. The trees were relatively short, scraggly things with trunks barely thicker than his arms, and a hard line of them began about twenty yards in from the shore to blanket the land as it sloped upward toward the far side. But easily the most surprising thing—and also reassuring—was that there was no massive, looming peak wreathed in smoke. The volcano he’d been fearing was more like a wide hill with a crater at the top, and the whole island was basically little more than a temperate pile of stones and scrubland in the middle of nowhere. There wasn’t even an army of monster hunters waiting to kill them on sight. All things considered, it was the most good news he’d had at once in months.

“Glad to see you made it,” Aka Manah said behind them as he emerged from the portal. “And without losing anyone along the way. Bravo.”

Gabe turned and tried to keep the movement casual. Then he watched as his team slowly formed an instinctive semicircle around the god. “We even beat you here,” he replied. “That’s gotta count for bonus points.”

Aka Manah smirked and blithely walked between Dante and Heather as if unconcerned with their stares. “I did say I had a few more arrangements to make.” Then he waved his hand toward the door. “And you know women. They take forever to change.”

Gabe watched in confusion and dawning horror as yet more people emerged from the portal—first a stocky, hairy man on all fours who he thought he recognized, then a man in a black feathered robe who was far too familiar. Gabe felt his features tightening without his input as he watched the Hound and bokor step onto the beach as if they intended to claim it, but the building anger was quickly replaced by a whole slew of new emotions as soon as he saw his mother come through last. She was wearing jeans and boots and a flannel shirt that was far more appropriate for the setting, but as she stepped onto the beach and the door began fading behind her, she still didn’t look at all like she belonged there. Or anywhere, really.

“What the hell are they doing here?” Gabe blurted, waving at all three equally but for different reasons. “I thought you said we were doing this alone?”

Aka Manah frowned slightly and waved to dismiss the portal in a cascade of spent magic, then put his hands on his hips and turned to survey the island. “I say all kinds of things, but I find they often carry different meanings for different people. However, in this case, I believe I said merely that I was making additional arrangements. And here they stand. A Hound of the Hunt and the inestimable Mr. Reznick. They will see to it that we do not come to an unhappy end...if such can be avoided.”

“At least not today,” Reznick said with chuckle. He shot a wink to Heather. “Though we’re not turning down happy endings, sweetcheeks.”

Heather smiled back slyly and crooked a finger toward the man. “Oh, absolutely. Let’s just step into the trees and talk about it.”

Aka Manah waved them both down. “As much as I would love to see that carnage play out, perhaps we can agree to play nicely together while we share a common goal? The island is only a few miles in any direction. The Templars will likely have noticed our arrival, and they will happily kill all of us if it means they can get to Gabriel.”

Gabe could hear the wisdom in it, but he still couldn’t stop himself. “Why did you bring her?” he asked, pointing to his mother. “You got me here. Good job. But that means she’s useless now, and you can send her back so we can focus on saving the freaking world.”

Lauren folded her arms and hunched her shoulders as if trying to make herself smaller, and Gabe had to look away to avoid glaring at her. He hadn’t thought he was capable of feeling anything for the woman after so many years of considering her gone, but just then he couldn’t help but feel a flicker of hatred for her weakness—for then and now. And he wanted to tell her that...to make her feel it. He didn’t know where the emotions were coming from, and that made it even worse.

But before he could open his mouth, Heather sent across a reprimanding pulse that felt like frustration, compassion, and a little shame, and the combination kept him from actually voicing anything.

Aka Manah moved to Lauren’s side almost protectively. “There are few safer places for her than beneath my gaze,” he said. “And now that she has been associated with me, I would fear for her safety until our task is complete. Just because a great many of our enemies are here, does not mean all of them are.”

“Lies,” Gabe said, managing to make it come out calm even though he felt far from it.

Aka Manah shrugged. “Possibly. But you know she cannot travel back alone. And I dare not spare the time or energy to escort her. Would you rather we leave her stranded on this beach? Perhaps hiding under a blanket?”

Gabe felt his anger starting to push through his defenses, and he had to chew back several retorts before they could burst out. He tried and discarded different arguments based on logic and emotion and fear and disinterest, and finally all he had left was the handful of facts in front of him. There were too many battles to fight today, and he couldn’t expect to win them all.

“Fine,” Gabe said, pointedly turning toward the trees. “Let’s get this over with.”

Aka Manah brushed past him, and Paul, the Hound, obediently rushed forward to take the lead.

“We are headed for the collapsed crater of the volcano,” the god said. “It is called a caldera.”

“We know geography,” Gabe snapped.

Heather leaned in close. “Geology.”

He winced and waved the god on.

“It is the highest point on this island,” Aka Manah continued. “The Templars are certain to know we are here, and they will likely know what to expect of us. Glamours will do little good in this case. We will encounter significant resistance at any minute, so prepare yourselves.”

Reznick gave Lauren an oddly gentle pat on the arm and got her moving too, then the man turned and walked backward a few paces as he looked back to Heather. “Don’t go staring at my ass, now. I’m not just some piece of meat.”

Heather sauntered up next to Gabe and casually unsheathed both fighting dirks from her hips. “Happy to change that.”

“Ooooh!” the bokor said, shaking out his hand as if she’d slapped it. On the final shake, a dark wand appeared there and he lifted it toward her while making a little gunshot noise with his mouth. Then he chuckled and turned to follow the god into the trees.

“I can’t guarantee there won’t be any friendly fire today,” she said as they started to follow.

Gabe glanced over to her, noting the small semi-automatics hanging on either side of her pack and the pistol riding low on her right leg. “He does like to ask for it. Just save a few bullets for the bad guys, huh?”

She gently tapped her blades together. “That’s what these are for.”

Gabe heard James and Dante come crunching up behind them just as they entered the trees, and he was surprised they were able to be even that quiet. James because he wasn’t walking so much as dragging himself forward by sheer will, and Dante because he was carrying supplies for James as well as himself—not to mention the dozen extra weapons Heather had managed to strap to him. But they were being positively stealthy compared to Penny when she came clanking and glugging up next to them.

Gabe looked down at her in alarm and saw that she was beaming up at him around a huge pink bubble she had blown. “What are you doing?” he asked, intentionally dropping into a whisper so she’d get the hint.

Her eyes widened and she let the bubble burst around her mouth before dipping a hand into her bulging satchel to pull out a whole wad of gum. “Sorry! Did you want some?”

He stared at the bright pink wrappers. “Wow. Okay. First of all, please don’t tell me that’s all you brought.”

Her smile went fixed and she very carefully didn’t reply.

“Oh boy,” he said. “Second, then...is there any way you can quiet those things a little? This is the sneaky part of the adventure.”

The sprite brought her free hand to her mouth in childlike alarm and it stuck to the gum there. Then her eyes went distant in concentration, and a moment later, all the canteens on her little body went instantly and eerily quiet. She looked back up at him for approval.

“Yeah,” he said, nodding. He’d barely felt the slippery magic. “That’ll work.” Then he grabbed a single piece of gum and popped it in his mouth. The sugar went straight to his head as he chewed, and it made him remember how long it had been since he’d eaten anything. He blew a pitiful little bubble and presented it with a shrug.

A flicker of amusement crossed from the bond and Heather caught his eye. “Sexy,” she whispered.

Penny patted his arm consolingly. “Don’t worry, you’ll get better at it,” she whispered.

There was a distant roll of thunder.

And of course, that’s when the attack came.

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

“One weird thing I’ve learned about combat is that no matter how much time it seems to take, it always turns out to be a different amount when you’re done. And it depends entirely on how well things go. In my head, the fight with the dragon felt like hours of hard work, but it was really only about seven minutes. I suppose it’s just perspective when you’re in the moment. Though it’s mostly an academic observation anyway. Regardless of how much time it takes, what really matters is who comes out on top.

(Note: Dear future Gabe, please do your best to avoid adding a sex joke to this paragraph. Let’s try being classy for a chapter.)

-Excerpt from Chapter Twenty-Six, CONscience

AT FIRST, GABE THOUGHT his gum had popped really loudly. Then two more cracks sounded deeper in the forest and a tree in front of them shook with an impact.

“Gunshots!” Heather hissed, pushing him down into a crouched run.

Gabe reflexively grabbed Penny’s arm and pulled her along too, and the three of them ran together through the trees...until nearly colliding with Aka Manah where he’d stopped.

“Go!” Heather growled as she adjusted her path to avoid running right over the god.

But Aka Manah simply held up a hand and produced a curtain of transparent energy around them. It had no more formed before another shot rang out, and Gabe flinched and pulled Penny down with him. He felt Heather’s flash of panic echo his own as she dropped too, but this time he watched in shock as the bullet impacted on the wall of force and briefly rode the edge before angling away in a spray of power. It happened faster than his eyes could possibly have followed, and yet he’d seen it. The aura of the shield fizzled and frayed where the projectile had hit, and the magic began to tear away along that wound until the whole thing threatened to come apart around them.

“We are miles from the caldera yet,” Aka Manah said, working his hands through the air to impart more magic into the shield and patch the hole. Lauren was on the ground at his feet, quietly huddled and trembling, but the god barely seemed to notice her. “This will be a patrol unit. Certainly nothing we can’t handle.”

Gabe heard Dante and James hit the ground behind them, and he turned to find them still outside the shield. The minotaur had positioned himself to land a bit in front in James from the direction of the shots, and James was coming up into a crouch with his pistols drawn to sight over one furry shoulder. They were already working together like they’d been on a spec ops team for years.

“We can’t just stand here!” Gabe whispered. “Unless you can keep this up all day.”

“I cannot,” the god replied, calmly. “And yet standing here is exactly the plan.”

Gabe glanced at Heather and didn’t need to feel the reinforcing twinge of worry to see it in her eyes. This felt like an obvious trap, and while they’d certainly been waiting for a betrayal from the god, he’d somehow thought there would be a little more fanfare around it. He reached inside for his magic and was pleased to find it mostly regenerated from the weird process Hwei-ru had led him through. So he gathered it up and settled on prepping all of it for one big blast of the entropy. Then he drew his sword. If he was going down, he was going down hard.

Heather too shifted herself, quickly sheathing her blades and retrieving one of the semi-automatics in one smooth motion. She ostensibly kept the barrel pointed outward toward the immediate threat, but her posture made it look like an easy proposition to make a quick turn toward Aka Manah if necessary.

All of that happened in a moment, and Gabe was able to ask the obvious question with barely a pause in the conversation. “Why?” Another shot suddenly came in and ricocheted off the shield to leave a wide gouge directly at his eye level, and he had to consciously unclench all the new muscles he’d just discovered. He cleared his throat to force back the squeak of surprise he’d barely stopped. “Feels kinda stupid!”

James fired twice behind them, obviously just blindly shooting to let the attackers know he could, then he pitched a hoarse whisper. “What the fuck are you doing? Find cover!”

And as if on cue, two figures came charging through the trees. Gabe immediately recognized them in the familiar black combat gear of the Knights of Solomon, and both were leading with large, misshapen rifles that were even then throwing off showers of blue sparks in their direction as they fired with that weird electric bark. The bullets hit the shield and crackled with spent energy as the force was again redirected to either side, and Aka Manah plastered more patches over the holes. Gabe had to admit it did seem to be working. But then two more attackers appeared to their right, and suddenly the thin barricade didn’t feel like nearly enough.

The first creature was gangling and fast, scuttling between the trees to their right with long arms and legs almost like a giant spider. And the second emerged behind it an instant later, barreling straight for them and cracking aside tree trunks as if they meant nothing. The monster was nearly as broad as Dante, though not so tall, and it ran on all four legs like a dog...or a wolf. A ray of sunlight pierced the short canopy for an instant, and Gabe confirmed the shape of the creature as it dodged away from the light.

The god was still facing the Knights, repairing another two holes in his shield as they advanced from tree to tree. And Gabe wasn’t sure if anyone else had noticed the newcomers yet. He angled his sword that direction and brought the entropy into his hand, ready to kill at least one of things. But before he could so much as open his mouth to yell a warning, there was a flash of magic and the gangling thing fell to the ground screeching. Gabe looked to find the source, fearing another set of attackers, and that’s when he spotted Paul falling atop the first Knight.

Gabe would have missed it had he blinked. At first the Knight was moving behind another tree, settling into his cover and preparing a new shot, then the Hound had driven the man to ground and sent his helmet flying across the forest. There was a brief scream of surprise and terror, then a flash of the gun...then it all ended with a wet gurgle as Paul ripped the man’s lower jaw clean off. The other Knight shouted in alarm and turned his weapon to face the new threat, but he was far too slow. Paul lunged eight feet from his crouch and took the man square in the chest, pinning him hard against a tree. Then there was another howl of pain to Gabe’s right and he turned to watch the werewolf go crashing down the same way the first thing had. It hit the sandy soil with a yelp and came to a stop where it seemed only able to writhe in place, and Gabe looked back to the Knight just in time to watch the Hound rip out the man’s throat.

A second later, Reznick stepped out of the trees twirling his wand and whistling as the two creatures on the ground behind him shook in what looked like absolute agony. “Good plan, boss,” he said as he neared the group. “Sorry I couldn’t keep ‘em from screaming. I tested this new pain hex on those Indian elephants you got me, but you never really know how it’ll go, species to species.”

Gabe was still gripping his sword tight and holding most of his magic in his other hand. “What the crap just happened here?” he demanded. He was staring at Aka Manah, but couldn’t help from watching Paul in his periphery as he loped back to the group trailing bits of blood and gore.

The god lowered his shield and gathered the remaining magic back to himself as if winding up a bolt of silk. Then he exchanged a smirk with Reznick. “I’m no tactical expert, but it appears as if we protected you...just as I suggested we would.”

“Like hell,” Gabe snapped back, sheathing his sword but not dropping his magic yet. “That was a show. You just put on a little skit for us to prove how powerful you are in case we needed reminding.”

Aka Manah conjured up a wounded expression and put a hand to his chest, but it was easy to see the little hint of smile beneath it.

Gabe narrowed his eyes. “If anything had gone wrong, one of us would be dead now. But you don’t care, do you? As long as you get whatever you came for.” He lifted the entropy between them and was pleased to see that bit of smile slip away. “If we’re doing this as a team, we’re doing it as a whole team. No games, no lies. Next time you see something coming, we fight together. Got it?”

The god slowly looked down at Gabe’s hand, then back up to his eyes. “Put that away, boy. I’m happy to see you learning new tricks, no matter how sloppy, but you will need every ounce of your power for what we are likely to face.”

“And what do think that is, exactly?” Heather asked as she joined them. “You’ve got a real talent for laying on the vague bullshit.” She flicked a wave over her shoulder without looking. “No offense, big guy.”

Dante snorted in reply. “As an expert, I agree.”

Aka Manah held Gabe’s gaze as the two teams came together and faced one another, and that single blue eye seemed to drill straight through whatever it saw. Then he shrugged. “Much of what I find in the weave is merely frayed possibility and choices unmade. And what little else there may be is shrouded in the coming darkness. Your line in particular is more like a gray suggestion than a definitive cord, and one of my chief delights of late is in landing a rare successful guess for what bit of idiotic nonsense you may be attempting despite any and all wisdom. So when I do perceive a threat directed at you, understand that I may have but a moment to act on it. And even so, I cannot account for every seemingly random leap of your malformed synapses!” The god’s voice had risen at the end, and he suddenly stopped himself and closed his eyes, apparently letting the anger drain away. He shook his head. “I could make an attempt to be more forthcoming, but at this point it hardly matters.”

“And why is that?” Gabe asked despite knowing better.

“Because we are unlikely to be offered another opportunity.” Then Aka Manah turned and began walking through the trees again. Paul loped after, and Reznick carefully helped Lauren stand before following too.

Gabe glanced at his friends, then jogged to catch up. Before he got there, he had to pass the two monsters who were still curled up on themselves and shuddering in silent agony...and they suddenly didn’t look anywhere near as frightening. He slowed and glanced back to Heather, but Dante was already coming behind, raising his ax and waving them forward. Gabe nodded and went on. He reached Aka Manah just as he heard two quick thumps.

“You didn’t answer the question,” he said as he pulled even with the god. “What are we going to face?”

Aka Manah sighed and glanced at his watch. “Most likely? The physical manifestation of the Endless Dark on earth. Think Phillip, only...significantly more. Also, perhaps less in certain ways. And we must not forget about the guardian of the final Igla, in whatever form that may take. Perhaps we will face them separately, maybe together. Who can say?” He glanced at his watch again.

“You,” Gabe said. “I thought that was the whole point of having the ability to see—”

“But in the interest of honesty,” Aka Manah went on, “I will say that we will be doing a great deal of running first. Roughly...” he held up a finger as he counted down seconds, “...now.”

A roar sounded deep in the trees to their left, and voices began shouting orders to their right. Gabe looked to the god to find him smiling.

“Ah! I love it when that works!” Aka Manah said.

They ran.

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

“One of the things I like best about Heather is that she doesn’t hesitate. While I’m standing there stretching my seconds and thinking about what to do next, she’s already moving and halfway into her decision. It doesn’t matter if it’s the best option for the moment, she would rather be wrong quickly than right when it’s too late to matter. And for someone who’s actually thought himself into several cases of option paralysis, that’s a fun change. Maybe if we stay together long enough we’ll wear off on each other and both start acting like reasonable people. Assuming, of course, we can get everyone else to stop trying to kill us.”

-Excerpt from Chapter Twenty-Three, CONscience

GABE HEARD THE FIRST crackling gunshots come from the right, and then his feet were moving. He spent one precious instant to check that Heather and Penny were following, and then the world narrowed to a blur of passing trees as he focused on the back of Aka Manah’s shirt. The god was shockingly nimble as he dodged tree trunks and threw up shields between the gaps, and it was all Gabe could do to keep up. They heard both sides closing in, and the bullets started coming faster.

“Two miles to the caldera!” Aka Manah called back. “Reznick, buy us time!”

The bokor was already digging through his cloak as his short legs churned to keep up, and his breath was coming in sharp gasps. He had fallen back next to Gabe, and it was clear he wouldn’t be able to run for much longer. Then his hand came out with some kind of small dried piece of meat, almost like a fleshy raisin, and he popped it in his mouth to chew frantically. An instant later, he took a very deep breath and began running like an olympic athlete.

Gabe could only watch in surprise as Reznick then pulled ahead of even Paul and suddenly lifted two glass bottles of something dark red from his belt. He held one in each hand as they ran, glancing quickly to either side, then threw them both expertly forward into the woods. There were twin cracks as they struck and split, and Gabe braced himself for an explosion.

But instead, the liquid began gushing out—far too much of it, in fact—and in an instant there were two rapidly expanding pools of blood filling the forest to either side of them. At first it looked like that was all they were doing, creating a disgusting obstacle in the trees...then the blood began boiling and thrashing violently, and suddenly a host of skinless hands started reaching out from within. Gabe watched in horror as scrabbling fingers grasped at the edges of the land, finding purchase on grass or trees or rocks, until suddenly dozens of flayed monsters were dragging themselves up. In a moment, they were all out and screaming and running into the trees, and it was impossible not to notice how shockingly like Reznick himself they looked.

As they passed the grizzly pools, Gabe had rarely wanted so badly to forget seeing something.

“How many of those did you bring?” Aka Manah asked as he tossed up another quick shield. His voice barely carried over the sound of the screams.

Reznick slowed to let the rest of them catch up. “Just the two, boss. Fucking expensive magic, and I distinctly remember you asking me to quit playing with myself.”

The god grunted. “You’d better come up with something else then. I can’t protect us the entire way there.”

Reznick dipped into his cloak again, but just then a creature like a chupacabra came leaping through the trees at him. Paul turned and caught the thing in mid-air, stopping it a foot from hitting the bokor, and at the same moment, James fired from behind and put a bullet in the thing. The group passed the two creatures as they fell to the ground in a snarling heap, and then Reznick was leading the way. The bokor began tossing out vials to either side, and sheets of purple flame sprang up wherever they landed. In moments the forest was bathed in a violet glow, and walls of fire were consuming everything behind them. The little man pulled out another piece of the dried meat and popped it in his mouth.

A bullet impacted a shield right next to Gabe’s head, and the spray of sparks as the hex fired impotently into the air nearly blinded him. His vision swam with the lingering flecks of light, and he felt Heather grab his arm and pull him hard toward her as they ran. An instant later, his other shoulder scraped by the tree trunk he’d clearly been about to plow into.

“Thanks,” he said between ragged breaths.

But she didn’t have time to reply. Three Knights burst out of the woods to their right, all leveling guns festooned with coils and runes and the shimmer of magic, and all three firing at once. Aka Manah threw up a shield as they ran, and the first bullet hit with a screech of warring magics...then the next two passed right through the hole it had created. Gabe felt one of the projectiles crease his right shoulder as it passed, deflecting partially from his vest but still catching him close enough that the hex within bit more solidly. The magic burned into his skin, sinking into his arm and chest like venom until he could barely concentrate enough to keep running, and he felt Heather’s grip firm again on his arm to keep him up.

Then they were passing the Knights and Dante was on them. The minotaur was swinging his ax as he charged, and all Gabe heard as he continued on was a massive thud and two follow-up gunshots before James and Dante were again pounding up behind them. James was breathing like a man about to collapse, but Dante clearly wasn’t about to let that happen.

The gunshots and screams slowly faded behind them as they pushed unerringly toward the caldera, and another roll of thunder sounded from out over the ocean. It seemed closer than before...and the sky was getting dark.

They ran for what felt like another few minutes, and at some point the hex faded from Gabe and he was able to run unassisted again—albeit while increasingly gasping for air. Though that wasn’t necessarily the fault of any hex. He couldn’t imagine what the bullet would have felt like had it actually lodged in him, but he had to admit that he wouldn’t have minded someone carrying him the rest of the way. The only one in worse shape was James, who seemed to be barely staying on his feet, needing Dante’s steadying hand more and more the farther they went. He’d never seen anyone with James’s complexion go quite so pale.

Paul rejoined them at some point in the run, and the Hound easily took his place at the front, showing no signs of his fight. Gabe got the impression that, despite still looking mostly like a man, the Hound could have doubled his speed if he wasn’t waiting on the lowest common denominator in the group. And aside from James, a quick glance around at the easy strides of everyone else made him realize who that probably was.

After several more minutes, the trees began to thin, and Paul had to lead them around a small pond where a huge number of birds had settled. The animals took flight immediately at the sound of their approach, and it was enough to spook Reznick into throwing yet another sheet of purple flame in that direction. The bokor had started flagging again, apparently running out of whatever he’d juiced himself with, and he’d fallen back in line with Lauren to where she was quietly and steadily racing to keep up with them all.

Gabe realized he had actually forgotten about her again. As if his mind didn’t want to hold onto her presence for long. He assumed that was an unconscious defense mechanism, like a preemptive strike against these new memories that he knew he wouldn’t want to keep. But he also knew it might become a problem if he kept forgetting to account for her. Somebody had to care about the woman if Aka Manah wasn’t going to beyond her usefulness, and that meant Gabe annoyingly had to be the bigger person again...if only by process of elimination. Then he saw Reznick pop another shriveled bit of meat into his mouth and chew, before offering one to Lauren with an oddly reassuring expression. She glanced at it, her face going intensely concerned as she tried to split focus between it and moving one foot in front of the other. But then she simply seemed to give up and let the man pop the thing into her mouth. Her expression morphed into revulsion as she chewed, but a moment later both she and the bokor were speeding up as if catching one hell of a second wind.

Gabe started to ask the bokor for one of whatever that was...then he was falling.

Something hit Gabe hard on his left side, carrying him to the ground and into a tree to come to a painful stop. He felt claws scrape against his ribs as he lashed at the creature with fists and feet, trying to block blows he could barely see from a source too fast and too close to discern...

And then the monster was flying away screeching to crash into a trunk with a tremendous crack. The tree flexed violently with the impact, and the creature fell to the ground whimpering.

But Heather wasn’t done. She followed the thing as it flew, drawing her blades again and leading with them as she descended on the monster. This one looked like a Haitian loogaroo, a spindly, toothy bastardization of a werewolf and vampire, and it only had time to rise partway before Heather was on it. The thing reached one long hand up to block her blow, but she sliced right through it and followed with the next blade to stab the creature directly through the temple. The thing convulsed in panic, then pain...then all of its movements became involuntary as it died a moment later.

Gabe rose and checked himself to find that the wound on his side was superficial, blocked mostly by the vest, and he joined Heather as she retrieved her dirks. The creature at her feet finally stilled as the last of its life leaked out...and that’s when they heard the whooping roars of more coming.

Gabe saw James turn first, lifting his guns weakly and firing into the trees as Dante moved forward with his big ax. Paul lowered himself into a crouch, ready to jump, and Reznick pulled out his wand and started backpedaling as if looking for a handy hiding place. Aka Manah filled his hands with red-gold power and began weaving something deadly-looking, and Lauren slid behind the god, going to the only safe place she knew. And that left Penny, all alone and standing in the middle of the group with nothing but her canteens as too many monsters appeared in the trees.

Gabe rushed forward to get to the sprite even as bullets and roars and magic began flying. The first creature took two shots to the face and slid forward to get chopped in half by Dante, and the next four were blasted into scraps by Aka Manah. Another went down with a scream as Reznick fired a pain hex, and yet one more was met mid-stride by a snarling Paul. But still they came. Some were short like goblins, and some were tall and broad, but they were all moving far too fast to identify.

Gabe crashed through the trees to come up behind Penny just as a monster with spikes down its spine came charging toward her. Gabe drew his sword and lunged forward, hoping to catch the thing in the throat with a lucky hit. But instead, he nearly overbalanced when the creature reared back suddenly as if struck in the face. Gabe advanced on the thing anyway, secretly hoping Heather would come up behind him and take over, but the monster only continued backpedaling as it began violently shaking its head. It barely seemed to notice he was there, really.

Gabe realized then that a shimmering layer of liquid was plastered to the thing’s face, and the creature was using its forelegs to try to wipe it away. Its lips opened and closed like a fish tossed onto land, and with every attempted breath, the liquid seemed to rush into its mouth a little more. Gabe stopped following the thing just as it tripped and fell backward, and soon he was watching the monster thrash and open its jaws wide in desperation for a breath that couldn’t get past the suffocating water. He glanced back at Penny, but she only shrugged and smiled as she screwed the lid back on her canteen.

Another three monsters emerged from the trees then, and suddenly Heather was there. She kicked one to the ground as it tried to close with them, then quickly batted aside one flailing set of claws as Gabe knocked away another. All three monsters fell with the redirected momentum, and an instant later, all three were surrounded. One went flying clear over the trees as Dante slammed a huge fist into its gut, and its scream was much shorter than its trajectory. The second went down in a combination of gunshots from James and a pain hex from Reznick, and the third was wrestled to the ground and quickly slaughtered by Paul as it choked on a mouthful of water.

They all paused for a moment and listened then, only hearing the continued thrashing of the lone drowning monster, then Dante came up and crushed the creature’s skull with a hoof. “How much farther?” the minotaur asked. “And how much time do we have?”

Aka Manah’s eyes went distant for a moment, then he snapped back to the present. “A mile to the top. Perhaps less. And I cannot answer the second except to say it is less than what we began with. Our presence here has already changed what might have been, and every future from this point on has slipped into darkness.”

“Convenient,” Gabe panted as he sheathed his sword. “Anything else you can’t tell us? Lucky numbers, maybe? I’m a Gemini if that helps.”

The god only shook his head in response. “Every second we waste is one they gain to close in.” He turned to Reznick. “Hurry up.”

The bokor was hunched over one of the bodies and nodded as he continued mumbling something. Then he reached into his cloak and produced a clear plastic baggy of what looked like severed toes. He held it out over the corpse and said a few more words, and the bag suddenly sparked into acrid green flames. The ashes fell in a surprisingly thick sheet, and the bokor immediately stood to spread them over yet more of the dead monsters.

For a moment they all simply watched and waited, but then the corpses began twitching and pulling themselves back up in a jerking, puppet-like imitation of life. Dante and James both growled in almost perfect unison, but Aka Manah held up a hand to stop them from advancing. A moment later, the undead constructs lurched away in every direction, running toward where any further attackers might be. They made a tremendous racket as they crashed and thrashed through the trees.

“Move,” the god said then. And they did.

Paul immediately took the lead again, with Reznick, Aka Manah, and Lauren close behind. And Gabe could already feel himself weakening with every step. He wasn’t at all used to the punishing pace, and he apparently was the only one without mystical enhancements of some kind. So despite the god’s advice to save his magic, he shunted a little into his legs to keep them moving, then burned a little more to replenish the energy his body had already spent. It was becoming easier and easier to do that sort of thing the more he practiced, and it made him wonder what he might be able to accomplish if he was actually given the time to learn what he was capable of. He tapped into the new reserve of vigor and pushed himself to run harder, letting the whole group speed up with him. He was amazed to see James somehow match the pace too.

They skirted another two small ponds, these closer together and separated by only a thin strip of winding land between. More birds flew away in a flurry of squawks and pounding wings, and then they were past and the trees began thinning further. They heard gunshots and roars several times as Reznick’s decoys found pockets of attackers, but each time they seemed to come from farther away. The scrubland became thicker where the canopy opened up, and soon it was harder to run quickly through the knee-high grasses. And to make things worse, a kind of fog began forming at their feet as well, making the ground more difficult to see. Thunder rolled again.

Without any paths on the uninhabited island except those formed by erosion or rocky deposits, they all had to find their own ways of coping with it. At one point, Penny nearly disappeared beneath the mist and vegetation, and Dante scooped her up to his shoulders with one broad hand. She made a little noise of glee as she emerged from the grass, and her canteens clanked once as she adjusted. Then her hands were holding onto the big horns to either side of her, and she was smiling like a kid on the world’s deadliest pony.

The sky continued to darken as they went, and Gabe could feel the land rising more sharply beneath his feet with every step. It was becoming noticeably rockier as they neared the caldera, and he almost thought he could smell a hint of brimstone on the air. Then suddenly they reached a stony ridge that seemed to cut across their path for dozens of yards in either direction, and beyond it, the trees appeared to stop all at once.

They emerged from the remains of the forest into a thickening mist now joined by the first patters of beginning rain, and a wide valley dotted with more small ponds and rocky ledges stretched out before them. The lip of the caldera rose high out of the fog beyond it, forming the crater of the supposedly dead volcano. And somewhere there, at the top, Gabe could suddenly feel the last Igla...waiting.

But it didn’t matter. There was no way for them to get there.

“What do we do?” he asked as they all came to a stop at the edge of the field between them and their goal.

No one answered as they stared at the waiting army.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

“On the first day of my only year in college, I went to the wrong class. It was some high level computer programming lecture, and within the first three minutes it was painfully obvious I didn’t belong anywhere near it. A normal person might have slipped out then and raced to the right place...except, teacher’s pet that I am, I had gone all the way down to sit at the very front. I had even smiled and chatted with the professor as she’d set up, letting my eager student persona take over and generate some early goodwill. I looked like I belonged. And leaving would have meant admitting to all those people that I’d made a huge mistake. So my instincts took over and kept me glued to the chair for two long hours while I pretended to have any idea what was going on. In the end, I couldn’t get out fast enough.

And that’s basically how I did everything until recently. Just stumbling into problems and faking competence until being dismissed. All I’d ever known to this point were half measures and facades and careful retreats. But now...I don’t know. Maybe I’m tired of pretending my way through life. Or maybe I’m finally starting to hit a point where my competence is more real than feigned. Maybe when I’m healed up and things get serious again, it’s time for me to do the same. Maybe I should finally see who I really am. Hopefully we don’t all hate him, huh?”

-Excerpt from Chapter Twenty-Six, CONscience

HEATHER CAME UP NEXT to Gabe and sighed as she studied the massed army of Templars and Twenty Brother soldiers. There were even a few Fangshai and Knights of Solomon interspersed, but they looked much thinner on the ground.

“Maybe they’re here to to cheer us on,” she said. “Like at the finish line of a marathon.” Then she drew her semi-automatic. “Go find out, Reznick.”

The bokor drew his wand and another vial of his purple flame. “Ladies fucking first.”

“I say we charge,” Dante said, with Penny still happily clinging to his horns. “Break through fast and get Gabriel to the Igla.”

A single man emerged from the army and began walking toward them through the open field.

Aka Manah nodded. “For once I agree with you, beast. With one small adjustment. You will charge. Along with everyone except Gabriel, Lauren, and myself. You will gather attention and make them bleed enough to lose focus, fight the main force and pull them to the east. We, meanwhile, will slip west and make our way up the caldera to retrieve the Igla.”

“No!” Gabe said, shouting louder than he’d meant to. He lowered his voice but didn’t take any of the strength from it. “We don’t split the party. Even I know that.”

Aka Manah shook his head and put on an indulgent expression. “You don’t know, Gabriel, and that has long been the problem. We came here for a specific purpose, and now we are at the cusp of resolving it. Do not falter here for the sake of sentiment.”

Gabe remembered Hwei-ru saying something eerily similar several days before, and he liked it even less coming from the god of lies. He glanced at the man crossing the field toward them, noting his gray clothing beneath a gray cloak, and the hilt of a sword peaking up just over his shoulder. He was still several hundred yards away, but he didn’t look like he was in much of a hurry.

Gabe shook his head. “I’ve only ever won anything because I had help or because I did things my own way. Either direction you slice it, I’m sticking with my team.”

The god curled his hands into fists. “Why do you persist in defying me from every angle when I am trying to save you and your pitiful little planet?”

Gabe thought about putting together a blistering response to that, detailing all the god’s betrayals and lies that had eroded any chance there ever might have been for a modicum of trust between them. Just the fact that the man was speaking out of his father’s mouth was enough, but Gabe knew he could build an even more damning case from everything else. He could finally say all the things he’d been wanting to, putting the god in his place and giving himself a powerfully cathartic moment that might finally free him of some of the guilt he’d been carrying.

“Because you suck,” he said instead. Sometimes catharsis was just too hard. “We’re not splitting up. I’m not sending any friends to die today if I can help it.”

The man in gray got a little closer.

Aka Manah’s face contorted in frustration. “More than this small group will die if we fail today. And you are the key to this. By putting yourself in needless danger, you are putting the rest of us there as well.”

“Oh, everything you’re saying makes total sense,” Gabe replied, “I’m just not going to do it. So I guess we can’t fail, huh?”

“Success and failure are not for you to simply decide,” the god spat.

“We’ll see. How about a portal?” Gabe asked. “Can’t you just zap us up there?”

“I cannot,” the god replied. “The Templars have their own version of wide-walking, and they would be on us the instant they spotted the breach. I would be overwhelmed in moments. And so near to the veil, they could even cast me back into the Ether with relative ease.”

“With ease?” Gabe asked. “I thought you were supposed to be a god?”

Aka Manah’s expression began sliding down a steep slope toward rage. “Yet more that you do not understand. My power may dwarf yours, but it does not mean I am limitless. The gods as you know them are gone—sacrifices to their own hubris and foolishness. I am not all-powerful, nor do I stand astride the earth to play with it as I will. We must act within the confines of our capabilities, and we must not fail!”

Gabe kept his face impassive. “Nothing you say is going to make me change my mind. How about a little smoke screen then? I think I can conjure that up.”

“Enough of this!” Aka Manah said, his voice now a low growl that seemed to come from deeper than his body. “Sacrifices must be made if we are to win!”

Gabe turned from the god, and watched the gray man as he neared. “That may be your version of winning, but it’s not mine. If we can’t trick, then we talk. We do this my way or not at all.”

The god growled. “You have no idea of the forces you are playing with! Do not be foolish!”

Gabe shrugged. “Why stop now?” Then he stepped forward to go meet the gray stranger.

Heather fell in beside him immediately, and James came next to his other side, panting and clearly struggling to keep up. Dante and Penny crunched up behind them a moment later, and Gabe didn’t dare look back to see if Aka Manah and company would also fall in line.

“Do you seriously think this is a good idea?” Heather whispered.

“Oh definitely not,” he replied. “But when in doubt, just do the opposite of whatever the god of lies says.”

She made a little noise of contemplation. “Not totally stupid, actually.”

He nodded slowly. “Wow, thanks. You really are the wind beneath my wings.”

She sent over a little bump of reassurance, and he took it gladly. It was the only confidence he’d likely have for a while. A peal of thunder sounded above, and the rain started coming down a little more steadily.

The man turned out to be quite a bit older and shorter than Gabe had guessed from a distance, and by the time Heather had whispered “Templar” it was already fairly obvious. Gabe picked a spot to stop where he was clearly in the open and ready to talk, but also where the man was forced to choose between skirting a wide pond and scrambling down a rocky ledge to get to them. And it was only a slight disappointment when the Templar chose the ledge instead of walking straight across the water.

Gabe lifted a hand in greeting. “Hail, sir knight,” he said, affecting a cartoonish accent. “What doth bringest thou to yon isle encumbered with such unseemly aggression toward mine person?” Heather sighed quietly next to him.

The Templar stopped a respectful distance away, planting himself just on the other side of a jagged rock that came up to his knees. His steel gray hair still rustled in the wind, but the rain was quickly matting it down on either side of a face that looked like it had seen nearly six decades of weathering. A short silver beard framed what might have been a hint of a smile, and despite being outnumbered, he had pointedly not even twitched toward drawing his sword.

“You are Gabriel Delling,” the Templar said, presenting it like the opening statement in a court case. His voice was just barely loud enough to be heard where they were.

“Yeah, that’s me,” Gabe said. “And you’re in charge of the people trying to kill me, huh?”

The Templar nodded. “Unfortunately. I am Enoch Cavallero, High Templar, and the man charged with ensuring the world remains safe from this particular threat.”

“Threat?” Gabe said, letting a little laugh come through with it. “I mean, I appreciate being the popular kid for once, but do I honestly look threatening to you? We’re here to save the world, not break it. And I think we might actually be on the same team if you tear this situation down to the rafters.”

The Templar raised an eyebrow. “Difficult to believe, considering the company you keep.”

Gabe plastered on his most convincing smile. “These guys?” He glanced around to them: a succubus, a pishtaco, an undead minotaur, and Penny, still smiling a little crazily. He couldn’t quite keep his grin from slipping. “I mean, I’m eighty percent sure the sprite is okay, if that helps.” Then he noticed Aka Manah and the others almost halfway to joining them. The shaggy Paul was noticeably missing, but that only helped their image a little. Gabe sighed and turned back to the Templar. “Okay, you got me there. But we really are here to help. The Endless Dark is—”

“Irrelevant,” Enoch cut in. “So you will need to find another justification to hide behind. It is you who have upset the balance, and you who pose the real danger. My people have been protecting this realm for thousands of years, and never once have we seen a reason to fear the dark. It is nothing but a force of nature.” He seemed to pull himself up then, and a new light of zeal slipped into his eyes. “But some things we do have ample reason to fear. Demons. Devils. Gods and monsters who would prey mercilessly on humans and make this world a playground of blood and despair. And you walk with such. You, who yourself is an aberration not meant to walk this earth. Even without the power of the Igla, you would be dangerous. With it...I am afraid you cannot be allowed to live.”

“You know there’s more than one Igla, right?” Heather said. “Obviously, otherwise you wouldn’t be here. And the darkness wants them all. It’s coming here at any minute to get the last one, then take Gabe’s. And in the meantime, you’re trying to fight the very people trying to stop it.”

“Of course we know,” Enoch said, his tone taking on more of an edge. “We have been guarding the secret of these sites for centuries.”

“Oooh, you kinda dropped that ball there, huh?” Gabe said before he could stop himself. Then he steamrolled on. “But if that’s true, then why are you letting the Endless Dark take them?” He held out his hand to show the four blackened facets on the Qi Dragon. “Why protect them from us when something so much worse is out there collecting them too?”

Enoch’s eyes twitched just a little as he saw the brand on Gabe’s hand and the two shining Iglas stored there. Then he visibly pulled his gaze back up. “We fight against evil, not against the natural laws of the universe.”

Heather threw up her hands. “How can you believe the Endless Dark is natural?”

Enoch ran a hand over his face to wipe away the wet, showing just a hint of weariness for a moment. “How can you believe it is not? What you call the Endless Dark goes by many other, much less sinister names. And indeed, most philosophical systems on earth contain some element of dualism to account for its necessity. Yin to yang for instance. Or damnation to salvation. Your god friend might say druj to asha. All very different, but all essentially the same at the core. We cannot fight the dark. Nor should we.”

Gabe shook his head, frankly unable to believe what he was hearing. “But we’ve seen it! The thing is here now, and it’s trying to destroy the whole freaking universe! You can’t honestly be saying we should just let that happen?”

Enoch’s eyebrows knitted in what looked like pity. “You have been fed a very narrow view of these events. And it is understandable that it would be confusing—”

“No!” Heather said, cutting him off. “We know exactly what’s going on. It’s you who obviously haven’t been paying attention. This isn’t some ideological quagmire that requires unknotting centuries of dogma. There’s a real monster, and it poses a real threat to all of existence. That’s it. No room for ambiguity.”

The Templar slowly shook his head. “I agree. However, not on who that threat is.”

Gabe barked out an incredulous laugh. “I gotta admit, it does get me all tingly every time you call me that. But regardless of what you believe, why would we come talk to you if we weren’t genuinely trying to do the right thing?”

Enoch tugged on the leather bindings of a gray bracer, tightening it with an air of inevitability. “To distract me? Perhaps to beg for your life?” Then he sighed. “No. I am willing to accept that you genuinely believe what you have been told, but I’m afraid it will not change my stance...nor my duty.”

Gabe held up his hands to implore the Templar to listen for a bit longer, trying frantically to think of some way to prove that they were telling the truth. It honestly hadn’t occurred to him that so many people could be so blind about something that seemed so obvious...but then, he’d supposed he’d taken quite a bit of convincing himself.

But Heather jumped in first. “Well, then I guess we can’t help you. Whatever your duty is, ours is to protect Gabe. And we’re certainly not going to let some discount Gandalf murder him for the sake of ignorance.”

Enoch seemed to really see her for the first time. “Noble, but I do not believe you are equipped to stop us today.” Then he reached over his shoulder and grabbed the hilt of his sword.

Gabe felt the crackle of magic around the weapon as the silvery blade began to emerge, and beyond the man, he saw the army shifting in response to the signal. Gabe’s hand went to his own sword, a thing that suddenly felt like a toy in the presence of the masterpiece the Templar was drawing. And he heard Heather produce her daggers in the same instant.

Then suddenly there was a blast of red-gold magic and the Templar was soaring back across the field encased in a sphere of power. The man finished drawing his blade and brought it down in a quick slash that flashed with silver energy, and the sphere split down the middle and flew away in equal pieces like a toy egg. Enoch fell something like twenty feet to the ground and there was another brief flash of silver, then he was rising at the front line of his army with the help of two other gray-clad figures there. There was a pause as everyone absorbed what had just happened, and the blade slowly went up, shimmering like a small dawn in the growing gloom. Then, as if in a dream, it fell.

The army came.

Gabe stared for a moment as the wall of death charged toward them, then he glanced to his friends to find the same flashes of shock and fear duplicated on every face. He stopped at Heather last and felt her emotions all transition into resolve.

Aka Manah slipped up in front of them, still trailing magic. “Behold the fruit of your defiance, Gabriel. Pray that we do not all choke on it!” Then he threw up a shield and deflected the first bullets to come screaming in.

The impact knocked them all out of their shock, and Heather and James both opened up with their guns into the front line. James’s pistols barked in quick succession, his body turning by careful degrees as he rapidly took aim and fired. And Heather, in contrast, simply lowered her rifle in the general direction and pulled the trigger until the gun clicked empty. The bullets dug into the front line as they came, finding marks more often than not, but far too few of the victims dropped. Only three of the figures fell and tripped up a few more behind them, but it was scarcely a drop taken out of the cresting wave.

“Aim for the head!” Aka Manah called back, and he tossed up another two shields just as more shots screeched in.

Then the god stepped forward and held his arms out to either side while swirling masses of power gathered in his hands. It dripped through his fingers like molten metal, and he let it build there as the army approached. Three more bullets slashed the air around them, punching new holes in the shields, and all the while the magic grew to be nearly as bright as a noonday sun. Then suddenly the god brought his arms forward, slamming his palms together in a tremendous thunderclap that rivaled the storm forming above, and the magic surged out from them in a massive glowing spear point straight toward the army. The power ripped across the ground as it flew, tearing up grass and dirt beneath and splitting the rain to leave a wide trail of dust and steam in its wake. The army saw it coming and tried to part, but then the thing hit and they were flying away in a shower of bodies.

Gabe watched the magic split the tide like a bulldozer, throwing men and women to either side in a twenty-foot swath directly down the middle. Enoch alone seemed able to withstand it, holding his sword before him like a man clinging to a fence post in a hurricane. And when the power finally tore through the back of their ranks, the army had been neatly split by a perfect aisle straight up the caldera.

The god then opened twin portals to either side of them, and Paul came racing out followed by a wave of screaming demons charging toward the army.

“Go!” Aka Manah commanded.

For once, Gabe obeyed.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

“I wonder if there are alien worlds out there going through their own versions of the crap we’re dealing with now. Or maybe this particular mess is just an earth thing. The latter seems most likely, really. If there are other habitable worlds, and life did happen to take hold there, and the resulting dominant species somehow developed a rich enough sentience to establish the cultures and philosophies and religions and fears required...I still don’t think there’s any way the resulting legends would be as dangerous as ours. It takes a certain kind of imagination to dream up something as horrifying as a vampire. But it takes a really special combination of egotism and self-loathing to also make that monster sexy. I have a feeling we’re leading the field here.”

-Excerpt from Chapter Twenty-Seven, CONscience

GABE HAD NEVER RUN so fast in his life.

For a few seconds, the army was in chaos, and it left a clear path straight through them while they untangled and tried to figure out what was happening. Then Aka Manah’s dark soldiers hit the front lines to either side, and the world was suddenly awash in the cacophony of battle.

Their little team passed Enoch first, blowing by the man as he seemed to be gathering his senses, and then they were in among the army, passing elves and Templars and Fangshai and Knights who were all trying to figure out what had happened and where the attacks were coming from. James opened up with his pistols to either side, neatly picking off the few stragglers who began stumbling into their path, and Reznick soon joined him, throwing pain hexes as Paul ran up to take the lead. Penny too began slinging more globs of water from her canteens, and soldiers fell in twos and threes as they grasped ineffectually at their filing mouths. Heather and Dante stayed close, only lashing out with their blades to knock back thrusting spears or swords from those who’d regained their wits a bit faster than the others. And Aka Manah kept up a steady flash of shields all around them.

They actually made it halfway through that way, fighting only when pressed and running when they could. And for one beautiful moment it seemed like the plan had been a good one. Then the exit began closing.

Gabe saw the army gathering itself in the back ranks, finally putting together what had happened, and they quickly started closing in. He knew at once that if they got trapped in the center, they’d be cut down in moments. And despite being really tired of running, that didn’t sound like a great reprieve. He glanced at Aka Manah to see if the god would gather yet more power to his hands for another blast to clear the way. But with every wall that went up to block a bullet that would have otherwise killed one of them, Gabe could see the magic dwindling and flickering a bit more in the god’s hands. It was like the power was struggling to come to bear, and Aka Manah was finally showing his limits. So Gabe dived into himself instead, finding the pattern and dumping in magic until it caught and billowed out from his will into reality.

Smoke filled the field as they ran, centering first on Gabe in a clear circle, then rolling out like storm clouds to blanket everything around them. The soldiers who had just been gathering their senses were swallowed in the darkness, and a moment later, their little group passed out of the center and were swallowed too. Gabe felt Heather’s hand latch onto the back of his shirt as they ran, and he reached out reflexively and caught Aka Manah’s. He immediately wanted to let go as if burned by it, but fought the urge and held tight if for no other reason than to avoid letting down everyone behind him. He was counting on Paul to follow the grade of the land and lead them out, and that could only happen if they stayed together.

The visibility was further compromised by the storm brewing above and blocking the sun, and by the rain pelting down on them from it. And to make it worse, the wind immediately caught up the smoke and swirled it with the mists already there, making a wet gray haze that clung to everything inside. Gabe could scarcely see where his hand met Aka Manah’s shirt, and he could only hope he hadn’t made the spell large enough to cover the entire caldera.

“To the right!” Aka Manah hissed.

Then suddenly a group of Twenty Brothers appeared right on top of them, seemingly just as surprised to be there. And their little group instantly split apart to fight whomever they’d run into. Gasps and grunts and metal on metal filled the smoke over the sounds of the confused army just a few feet to either side, and Gabe immediately found himself adrift in the fog with the sounds of battles he couldn’t see in every direction. Then he caught a flash of a sword just to his left and he instinctively ducked away, only to bump into someone to his right. A strong hand grabbed his arm and pulled him in, probably into a grapple, and he lifted his blade to stab first. It hit metal and skidded to one side, then the bond flared with relief just as Heather resolved before him. She waited a beat for his own flash of relief to come through, then she slid her hand down to his and got him moving again.

It was like traveling through hell. Danger and pain and confusion were all around him, and he had no way of knowing how to avoid any of it. For all he knew, his friends were dying out there in the fog he’d created...but then for all he knew, they definitely would have died without it. He tried to tell himself that the ground was still rising beneath his feet as they went, but he really had no idea. He’d lost all sense of direction in the chaos, and Heather seemed no more certain as they urged one another on.

Suddenly the heat haze of a glamour appeared over a soldier trying to blend into the mists, and Gabe barely caught it the instant before the sword came arcing in. He lifted his blade to catch the strike and let it slide away to his left, then took a fast step forward and brought the pommel straight into the glamour near the top. By sheer luck he caught the creature hard on the jaw, forcing the glamour to flicker as the elf lost concentration, then he lowered his shoulder and used it shove the soldier back hard. The elf nearly vanished in the mists again with even a few inches of distance, but then Heather came up quick and drove her dirk right into soldier’s ribs. The glamour fell first, then the sword, and then they were passing the elf as it dropped too.

It was no secret, least of all to himself, that Gabe had always counted on luck to carry him through when talent and plans had failed him. And he’d never seen a good reason to change that habit. So when he and Heather emerged from the fog to find themselves high on the side of the caldera and looking down at a fifty-foot-wide circle of smoke and chaos...he assumed it was just another instance of Lady Luck throwing him a wink. And he actually got to enjoy that fantasy for a full two seconds before noticing a Knight of Solomon pointing up at them.

“Crap!” Gabe had time to say, then a shout rang out and a hex bullet screamed past, missing by inches.

More faces turned their direction at the sound, and suddenly dozens of soldiers were racing up the hill to converge on them from both sides. He tried to pull Heather into a run, but she only let him get as far as ducking behind a stand of rocks before forcing him to a stop.

“They’ll shoot us in the back!” she said, yanking her arm free. “Better to fight from behind some cover.” Then she ripped the second semi-automatic from her pack and leaned out to open fire.

Gabe peaked out around his side and pulled magic from his reservoir, his mind frantically searching for some way to combine the patterns he knew into something useful. He considered the gravity charm, but was pretty sure it would flatten Heather as quickly as everyone else. And the entropy would drain him dry, though it might be a fine price to pay for not dying just then. But there were almost twenty coming up the hill, and most of them glimmered with charms and hexes of their own. He needed something deadly but more focused, something less complicated. And despite hating them on principle, what he really wanted just then was a big-ass gun.

He threw a quick flash charm out just as another shot sounded from below, and the bullet miraculously went wide and emptied its momentum and magics into the rocks a few feet away. Gabe threw another flash, hoping to at least dazzle them a bit to throw off their aim in the growing dark, then he studied the pattern of the gravity charm as the rest of the attackers came on. He frantically tried to find a way to direct the magic straight forward in a cone or scythe of force, but every time he tried to make the change, the magic fell apart. Heather’s gun clicked empty and she slotted in a new clip while Gabe’s panic began to rise.

A third shot sounded from the group, and then a forth, and a fifth, and the rocks in front of them exploded out in a shower of gravel. Gabe ducked back as yet more of those electric blasts sounded from the nearing soldiers, and he dropped his magic in frustration. Then he sent a little reassuring pulse to Heather as he reached over to her leg and pulled her pistol. There was no sense having principles if you were too dead to act all superior about them. He leaned out and began firing.

Predictably, he missed. But the extra return fire did make the soldiers slow considerably and search for cover themselves. Heather’s side had already fallen to defensible positions along the ridge, but they were being bolstered by yet more of the army coming up to join. Of course it had been too much to hope that the sporadic thunder would cover the gunfire. She sent a quick burst spraying across the ground, then let it continue toward Gabe’s side as well, forcing even the bravest soldiers there to finally scramble for cover. Then her gun clicked empty again, and the ridge went quiet as she slotted in another new clip.

“My last one,” she said. “Any ideas what to do next?”

Gabe found a new clip for the pistol on her belt and awkwardly slotted it in as well. “Nope. This might be a last stand situation.” The he paused and looked around.

“What?” she asked.

He waited another beat, then grimaced. “Sometimes when I say something really desperate like that, the world kinda...delivers up a miraculous save. I thought maybe I could conjure it.”

She sighed and cocked her gun. “As much as I love your stupid jokes, I don’t think the universe is just going to hand us—”

Suddenly they heard a bellow from below and a wall of purple flame cut across the field to block the soldiers from Gabe’s side. They both leaned out at the same time to find their team bursting through the enemy lines, with Aka Manah tossing up shields as Paul and Dante smashed aside anyone in their path, and James and Penny dropping soldiers to either side. Purple fires trailed behind them, lighting the smoke below and the falling rain in a soft violet haze, and Reznick was still throwing them out like parade candy. They were only a few yards away and coming fast.

Gabe leaned back behind the rocks, fighting a grin.

Heather was already shaking her head. “Sometimes it’s hard to decide if I should kiss you or slap you.”

“That’s fair,” he replied. Then they were both standing and moving to join their team.

Aka Manah’s shields parted as they arrived, and Gabe fell into place at the center of the group just as two more bullets splashed across the barrier from behind. Penny turned atop Dante’s head and sent two fat blobs of water soaring across the field to splat into the two Knights who’d fired, and both went down hard as if flattened by fastballs. The sprite cast an empty canteen aside and opened another. She was still smiling, but there wasn’t nearly so much glee anymore.

Gabe watched James similarly reload his weapons, pulling out new clips from a vest that looked otherwise empty, and he was breathing very hard and stumbling with nearly every step he took. Reznick too seemed to be flagging, throwing each vial of fire as if it weighed far more than it appeared to, and he was standing near Lauren as she huddled behind Aka Manah. The god himself now seemed to be weakest of all, however, and his magic looked like it was dwindling rapidly with every new bullet it stopped.

And still the team moved as one up the side of the caldera, stopping only to fight pockets of soldiers as they got brave or stupid enough to charge them. But every time Aka Manah’s shields came a littler slower, and their return fire was a little more careful as they neared the end of their ammunition. Gabe himself gave up his pistol to Heather as her gun finally ran dry, and he fell to directing the fight from the center of the group, pointing out Knights with guns leveled or flashes of glamours as they approached. He kept his sword out and ready, but only stepped clear of Aka Manah’s protection once to pick James back up when he fell, and again when Heather got caught between two elves who’d been particularly sneaky. In that instance he threw a flash charm out and followed with his sword, catching one of the creatures just where its shoulder met its neck, and Heather quickly finished off the other one before turning neatly and kicking Gabe’s foe back down the hill. Then they were moving again, huddling together and climbing.

And with every battle, they made a little more progress. Penny dropped another Knight of Solomon as he raised his weapon to fire, and James emptied a pistol into three elves the instant they emerged from behind their glamours. And like that, inch by inch, they made it nearly to the top. They ran and fought and picked one another up without fail, and with every new foot of elevation, the army seemed to thin. There was no telling how many they’d killed, but it was obviously only a fraction of what should have been following. The swarms of attackers soon became trios, then pairs. And after a few more skirmishes, the attacks stopped altogether. They could still hear the sound of battle below as Aka Manah’s demon soldiers worked to keep the bulk of the army busy, but it was almost as if the others had decided the risk of pursuit had stopped being worth it.

Gabe’s team rounded a small outcropping that mostly blocked them from the view below, and James caught Dante’s pack with a grunt of effort that nearly toppled him. “Hold up, big man,” James panted as he pulled another two clips from the bag. “Shit. This is it for ammo. Whatever we’re here to do, we better get it done.”

Dante nodded in weary agreement as he leaned on his ax, and Penny barely seemed able to hold on with the movement as she peered into her final canteen. She tilted her tired little face up to the rain and closed her eyes in relief.

Reznick lifted two more vials of purple fire and dangled them ominously. “Numbers nineteen and twenty here. All I brought. About thirty-thousand dollars worth, if anyone’s counting for reimbursement.” The bokor suddenly looked decades older, and he popped another of the small bits of dried meat into his mouth. James saw it and held out a hand, and Reznick reluctantly tossed one over before handing a final piece to Lauren. All three of them perked up almost instantly.

“Adrenal glands,” the bokor said to Gabe’s questioning stare. “That old black flesh magic you and your girlfriend hate so much.” He still had bits of it in his teeth as he smiled.

Aka Manah suddenly swept his hand across the air to their left and carved another shield there a moment before two more hex bullets slammed into it. The magics burst apart in a wash of red and gold and blue, and the god staggered with it. “Yes,” he said, with a groan. “We are all nearing the ends of our abilities from this...strategy.” He cast a glance to Gabe, and there was no hiding the malice in it. “We cannot afford to waste any more time.”

Gabe looked to his palm and the Qi Dragon, and he immediately felt a matching call from somewhere above. He looked up to the lip of the crater, so near now, and he felt the pull of the Igla there. He closed his hand. “We’re close,” he said.

“With little time to spare,” Aka Manah replied. And then god was moving again, leading them out of cover into a sprint up the side of the hill. And miraculously, they met no resistance this time. Far below they could still hear the sounds of battle as Aka Manah’s forces fell to the greater numbers, but with every foot they rose it faded. There were no more stray bullets, no more shouts of alarm, and for a few amazing moments their biggest worry was the run and the rain slicking the ground beneath their feet.

In one final burst of speed, they made the lip of the caldera, cresting the slope to emerge onto a surprisingly flat piece of land encircling the crater over a matching slope on the other side. It led down to a small, tree-lined lake far below at the center, and compared to the carnage they’d just left, it looked positively idyllic down there. They all knew they were skylined to any snipers who might be watching, but as they finally stopped and caught their breath and found big rocks to lean against or sit on, none of them cared one little bit. They’d made it. And in one piece...mostly.

The others began tending to wounds and weapons, but Gabe took the moment to stop and scan the island. The rain was coming down more heavily, but he was still able to see that the battle below had become pockets of fighting as the last bits of Aka Manah’s resistance fell. The army of Knights and elves had been cut nearly in half it seemed, but there still looked to be more than enough to finish the job. Beyond that, he could now see where the forest began and led all the way back to the beach they’d come in on, and he drew an imaginary line between there and himself to trace the path they’d taken. It looked so short from above, and yet it felt like it had taken hours to cross it. Then he followed the edge of the island around to the right and noticed several ships anchored there. He wondered if that’s how the army had arrived, but his gut told him it seemed like too few to carry so many. Of course, there was always magic to fill those gaps in logic.

He watched the boats as they rocked with the growing waves, and part of him yearned to run down and grab one. He could take Heather—even Dante, Penny, and James—and they could sail away to someplace nobody would ever bother them. A loophole even then.

Gabe sighed and pulled himself back to the moment, then opened his hand again. He had a job to do.

He tried to still the shaking in his hand so he could see the one empty facet left in the Qi Dragon, and immediately he felt the other two Iglas there, buried deep within. He concentrated on them, feeling as they echoed the song of the final piece, and he looked toward the lake in the crater to try to pinpoint exactly where it might be. He scanned the water and trees, then followed the pull as it brought his eyes up...and up...and up further until he was looking at nothing but cloud-shrouded sky. He could only stare in confusion.

“What is it?” Aka Manah asked as he came up beside him.

Gabe shook his head. “It’s not in the volcano,” he said. “It’s freaking above it.”

“What does that mean?” Heather asked from his other side. The rest of the group began gathering around them.

Aka Manah brushed back his rain-soaked hair, and Gabe noticed how much worse the god looked. Whatever magic he’d been using to keep up his appearance, he’d clearly let it go somewhere down-slope. He was now a haggard, spent old man in a filthy tuxedo, and he looked like he barely had enough magic left to light a candle.

The god’s jaw firmed in frustration. “It means we will have to be more creative than simply walking in and snatching it up. How far is it?”

Gabe closed his eyes and reached out for the song again, finally finding it high above. “Two...no. Three thousand feet, maybe? Farther than Dante can throw you, that’s for sure.”

“Willing to try,” the minotaur rumbled.

Aka Manah ignored it. He walked over to the far lip of the caldera, limping a little as he went. “Likely where the original crest of the volcano was before it blew itself to pieces centuries ago. Or perhaps it moves randomly. We cannot know. Remember that Iglas are not required to obey the same rules of reality that we must. By definition. This is but one angle of many from which it may be touched. Though, given that Earth is still relatively primitive compared to the worlds of other similar sentients, it is likely one of the easiest to detect.” The god then looked to the sky and let his hands drift up as he closed his bright blue eye and seemed to slip into himself. “Impossible to see...all dark...” he mumbled, tracing the air with his fingers. “A portal, perhaps... Wait...”

And that’s where he fell.

Gabe watched in horror as a slice in the air appeared next to the god and a silvery blade emerged to slash across his back. Aka Manah had been moving the instant before it came, and he fell forward onto the rocks, barely catching himself before tumbling down the inside slope. Then he spun to his back and manifested a shield just as the Templar brought her sword down in a killing blow. The clash of magics threw out blinding sparks in every direction, and then Paul sprinted in to charge the Templar. He made it halfway before another blade came arcing in to force the Hound to skitter off course, then three more Templars emerged from their portals and suddenly the god and Hound were surrounded. Reznick fired a pain hex that caught one Templar high in the back, but a protective charm in the cloak flashed with it, and the magic seemed to do little more than draw the man’s attention. He turned and lifted his blade to send out a pulse of shimmering energy like a signal, and then portals began filling the air all around them.

The rest of Gabe’s team instinctively circled up, all facing outward with whatever weapons they could bring to bear, but the arriving Templars seemed in no hurry to rush in. Every man and woman there was clad in the same plain gray wool, and they all appeared to be in their forties or fifties as if only the most senior among them had come. And without exception, every one of them held a similar shining sword that seemed designed from the same template. The three standing over Aka Manah locked their blades together in a kind of star, and the god suddenly seemed unable to conjure any magic to counter it. Paul pressed himself back against a rock as he faced two more, and a low, terrible growl came from his throat.

Just like that, they were all trapped.

A final portal appeared, and a familiar figure emerged from it with a hand already upraised. “Hold,” Enoch said, and every Templar there froze. He alone had not yet drawn his silver blade, and he paused for a long time as he studied the scene. He turned to face the battlefield below and shook his head gravely. “Give us Gabriel, and we may yet find a way to spare some of you.”

Gabe opened his mouth to respond, but before he could form the words, Penny reacted. She sent a sphere of water arcing toward Enoch, angling for his face to fill his mouth and take his breath. But this time, the Templar simply turned and lifted an edge of his cloak, and the protective charm blocked the magic to let the water splash harmlessly against him. He looked down at the puddle joining the rest of the rain gathering on the ground, and he shook his head again. Then he gestured sadly toward the sprite, and a Templar behind him lifted a crossbow.

There was a snap and a thump...

And then Gabe was watching Penny’s confused little face as she curled around the bolt in her chest and tumbled from her perch.

“Execute them,” Enoch said.

ELSEWHERE

“I’VE GOT THE SHOT,” the naga sniper whispered. “I can take the human.”

Lan watched Gabriel Delling through his lens from a shorter hill near the caldera, seeing as the man directed his team to fight their way up the side. He lost count of the number of times Gabe stopped to help his friends, to pitch a bit of magic, to knock back an attacker, or to call out a warning...and his friends were all doing the same. Human and Umbras working in concert, watching out for one another, helping where they could, and never leaving another behind. And even more impressively, they were all staying alive against ridiculous odds.

Even the terrifying god seemed to be working with the team. The way he could stop a barrage of bullets as if he’d seen it coming an instant before was incredible, and then he relied on the rest of the group to take out the Knights who had fired on them. It was actually a beautiful thing to watch, a kind of dance of desperation and trust that only the battle-hardened could really appreciate. There was no other way to understand that feeling without having experienced it.

“Wait,” Lan said, lowering his lens.

The naga hissed in annoyance. “I’m going to lose him again if we wait. That fog could come back, and the rain will only get worse with this storm.”

“I said wait,” Lan repeated. He watched the battle with his naked eyes, still seeing the shape of the little group by the flashes of magic and the bodies flying away from them. But now he could also take in the larger picture of the island. At first the Knights and Twenty Brothers had been going up to reinforce the onslaught, and there had been too many of them to count at the foot of the crater. But Gabriel’s team had somehow slipped farther and farther away, always sliding out of what looked like an inescapable trap or deflecting an attack that should have overwhelmed them. And much of the army had fallen back to face the mysterious new force threatening the front lines. The Templars were nowhere to be found down there, and their galvanizing influence seemed to be bleeding away with every inch of ground the human gained.

Lan didn’t know what Gabriel’s plan might be, but even as he watched, the little team crested the edge and made it to the top. From a tactical perspective, it seemed like a foolish way to pin his people away from any hope of escape, but then...it was hard to argue with the fact that the guy did somehow keep winning. One small force, making it work by sheer strength of will.

He shook his head as he looked back toward the army below. Still so much chaos. His people weren’t in there, thankfully, but from the reports of fighting elsewhere on the island, he couldn’t say if they were actually any safer for it. Hell, he wasn’t even completely sure how many he’d brought. The Templars had taken them all through the portals, and then there hadn’t been time to take an accounting before this mess had begun. Far too many dead, he suspected. And for what?

“Ah ha!” the naga said suddenly.

Lan lifted his lens back to his eye just in time to see Templars emerging from their weird portals all around Gabriel’s team. All thirty had converged on the spot in moments, seemingly prepared for just such a tactic. He watched as the god went down, trapped beneath a blade ward and magics older than much of written human history, and the shields all went down too as that red-gold power was finally cut off. He watched the human lock up in indecision, likely trying to conjure another trick to slip away.

And then Enoch was there, and everyone froze.

The naga made a delighted noise in the back of its throat and tightened its grip on the gun. Lan looked down to see the trigger finger sliding into place, and he instantly imagined the chain of events that would follow. The human would die. The Templars would retrieve the Igla. And then...what? Everything would probably go back to being the same. Sure, the disparate teams on the island would fall to whatever planned double-crosses they’d come prepared with, and there would probably be another fight, more threats, and more Maerrywells thrown into the middle as the cannon fodder for their “betters”. But then the world would go back to being the same—albeit this time with the Templars holding an artifact that could fracture the universe. Just another day, just another asshole telling people what to do. Just another master holding his leash. And somehow his superiors in the Clan had thought this sounded like a good idea.

Lan flicked his hand out without thinking and swatted the naga’s gun aside just as it fired, sending the shot wide. The naga flashed a deadly glare at him as it chambered another round, but Lan gripped the barrel hard and pushed down until it was pointed to the ground.

“I said fucking wait!” he growled, letting some of his black shuck come through. The gun shook as the naga began applying pressure to regain control, and while the creature was probably stronger in a fair fight, it was crouching and Lan had the leverage.

The naga’s eyes narrowed to slits and began drifting slightly apart as its glamour faded and the snake within emerged, and its long tongue flicked out threateningly. “We have orders!”

Lan leaned his whole weight into the gun. “I have orders! You, on the other hand, have me. Unless you’ve forgotten who’s in charge here?”

The naga’s long fangs appeared in its mouth, dripping venom as its jaw began to widen. “No, but it seems you have!” It reared back to spit.

Lan beat him to it.

He spat his entire mouthful of chew directly into the thing’s nearest eye, blanketing that side of its face in tarry black. And in the same instant, he lifted all of his resistance from the gun barrel, letting it come up fast and adding his strength to the momentum so it slammed into the side of the naga’s head. The creature snapped back hard, spraying venom across the ground, and its hands fell limp from the rifle as it sprawled back to lay motionless. The splotches of green poison sizzled on the rocks where they’d landed.

Lan shifted his grip to the stock and looked down the barrel to ensure they hadn’t bent it. Then he took careful aim and sighted on the scene above. He was done being kicked.

He fired.

With the distance and rain it was hard to tell if he’d hit, but he didn’t dare watch long enough to find out for sure. He turned back to see how his waiting team was reacting. “Anyone else got a fucking problem with me today?” A few of them stirred like they might, and he shouldered the gun as a subtle reminder. “Because I just wasted the last of my chew on this idiot, and I’d be mighty grateful for something else to gnaw on.”

A few of them began mumbling and inching their hands closer to weapons, apparently seeing an opportunity in this for the kind of promotion Lan himself had recently received. But then a leshie stepped forward, rubbing the blunt edge of its ax over its grassy beard, and everyone went still in momentary deference to the tall, quiet creature. It turned its glowing eyes from side to side, its neck creaking like old wood as it examined its companions, then it lifted a gnarled hand and snapped off a passable salute. “What is your order?” it asked, its stilted voice sounding like mossy rocks rolling over sawdust.

Lan nodded to the thing and turned to the battle above to find the fight well under way. He wished them luck. Or death. He didn’t really care anymore.

“We should never have been here” he announced, facing his squad. “We were sent by our so-called leaders to die, but I don’t aim to oblige them. I’m done sacrificing for someone else’s causes to the detriment of our own, and today I invite you to similarly cast off those fatal shackles. My order, if you choose to follow it, is to gather up any of our folk who still live and meet me at the boats. I intend a bit of piracy to get us gone.”

He looked out at the dozen ships anchored in the water, just waiting to carry all of them back to the real world when the Templars could have easily spared the magic to take them through portals again. Just another injustice he didn’t intend to tolerate anymore. “And if you find any explosives on the way, bring those too. Considering the price we’ve paid in this misguided little disaster, I think a bit of a fuck you is in order before we leave the party.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

“In the last six months, I’ve come close to dying so many times that it’s almost becoming a joke. And given that I’ve somehow survived each one, I now find myself getting nervous if a fight goes too well. That’s really not a comfortable state of mind. You shouldn’t have to ask your girlfriend to carry a body bag in her purse just to ease your nerves.”

-Excerpt from Chapter Twenty-Seven, CONscience

THE MOMENT HIT GABE slowly, inching into his mind as he pieced all the images together one by one. Aka Manah was trapped. Paul was cornered. Reznick and Lauren were huddled together behind the bokor’s wand, and James and Heather were already lifting weapons. Enoch was raising his hand to give the signal to fire, and nearly thirty Templars were aiming crossbows as one.

And poor little Penny...

His mind went blank as he watched Dante slowly turn to find the sprite’s tiny body on the ground. The minotaur studied her for an instant, ignoring everything else around him, then his face crumpled in sorrow.

Then rage...

Green light suddenly gathered in Dante’s eyes, and there was a sound like creaking leather and bone as his giant hands curled into fists. Dante slowly turned as the Templars all took aim...then everything snapped into sudden focus as he roared in berserk fury.

The minotaur charged, blowing past Enoch and sighting on the man who’d shot Penny. A dozen crossbows twanged at once and as many bolts suddenly sprouted from Dante’s torso—each one firing a hex into his skin as it hit. But none seemed to slow him. He brought his great ax around in a swing that might have felled a redwood, and the Templar barely had time to bring his sword up to intercept it. There was a sound like a car hitting a brick wall at speed, then the whole area around them was a disaster of flashing magics and flying shards of a shattered ax. An instant later, Dante emerged gripping the screaming man’s head in one huge hand and swinging the Templar around by it into one of his companions. There was another flash of power as the two Templars hit and their protective magics warred against one another, and then Dante roared again as he slammed them both to the ground hard enough to drive them inches deep in a spray of mud and rocks.

Enoch started to shout an order, then a rifle shot rang out from somewhere and the Templar’s magic flashed as he staggered as if shot from behind.

Then they were all moving.

Gabe tossed out two quick flash charms to either direction as he ran, and an instant later he heard more crossbows firing. He felt a bolt graze the back of his head in a burning line and leave a hex that sent waves of numbness through him, but his own magic found it quickly and wrapped it up before it fully took hold. He stumbled once, reached back to feel wetness and a small cut beneath, then was running again.

He saw Heather sprint from her spot as if she’d been waiting for the moment, and she took three steps before slipping beneath her glamour just as the elves had. She reappeared behind a Templar to slash at his back, and the charms in his cloak flashed to protect him. The man turned with his silvery sword swinging, and Heather again blinked away to come back up behind him to slash at his cloak once more. Again, his charms blocked her, and again she vanished just as his sword came around. She sliced him twice more, both strikes skittering across the magic in that gray wool just as she blinked away, but it didn’t take long for the Templar to catch on to the tactic. He whipped around, feigning another slash at the air while she vanished again, but this time instead he flipped the sword in his grip and stabbed the blade sharply behind him to catch her.

Unfortunately for him, Heather was tricky.

She reappeared directly in front of him even as his sword stabbed back to where she should have been, and her blade was already sliding into his throat where his cloak didn’t cover. The man gasped once in shock as the blood came, then Heather let him drop just as three more Templars converged on her. She parried one strike with a dirk and watched half her blade go spinning into the dark from the blow of that shining sword, then she was running and fighting for her life as they tried to pen her in.

James moved too. He dived for the cover of some nearby rocks as his guns began firing, and four Templars staggered beneath the impacts while their charms saved their lives. Three of them recovered quickly and drew swords to begin advancing, and the last one did something that made a new bolt instantly load into his crossbow. Then a sheet of purple flame suddenly sprouted from the ground directly in front of them, cutting all four Templars off for a moment and giving James the instant he needed to roll up into a crouch. His guns came up just as the three Templars jumped through the fire in a blaze of silver magic, and the first two immediately toppled backwards with new holes in their faces.

The third Templar couldn’t help but watch as her friends fell, and in that moment Reznick rose from a pile of oddly mounded grass to send a pain hex that ignited her charms in a spray of shielding power. The Templar turned to face the bokor as she drew a cowl over her head, and James fired a second later only to see the bullet ricochet from the hood in a spray of sparks. Reznick’s expression flashed to panic as the Templar charged him, and the bokor backpedaled while frantically scattering a bag of small bones across the ground. The Templar first ignored the pieces as she passed, sighting only on Reznick, but then the scattered bones began moving by themselves to quickly snap together. Legs formed, then a spine, and then a skull rolled up to finish it off, and the resulting creature looked like a skeletal cat with an alarmingly large grin. The Templar paused to watch as the little thing took a moment to stretch as if rousing from a long nap, and for a beat it looked like she didn’t know who to focus on. Then the cat seemed to smile at her...before vanishing. An instant later, the Templar screamed as the creature reappeared on her chest with its razor claws already digging.

Just beyond them, Aka Manah was still trapped beneath the three crossed blades, but Paul suddenly broke from his captors, accepting a vicious slice along his side in exchange for ramming one of the Templars holding the god. The crossed swords came loose and the god’s power instantly rushed back in, and then the ghostly blue knife appeared in Aka Manah’s hand. He swiped upward at the remaining two blades, connecting with a sound of screaming metal, and the Templars were pushed back several steps with the force of a weapon they’d clearly never encountered. Paul’s captors came rushing up in that moment, and there was a burst of red-gold power that all the Templars stopped to block with their blades. Then Aka Manah and the Hound were up and fighting, teeth and nails and knife and bursts of unfocused power against five swords.

And that was all Gabe had time to see. All of the scenes had played out in the same moments, and all in his periphery as he watched Enoch gather himself from whatever had struck him. In an instant, fourteen of the thirty Templars were dead or occupied to either side, and Dante was commanding the attention of many more as he broke limbs and sent people flying back down the slope in his fury. But that still left another eight who seemed intent on Enoch—who was himself intent on Gabe. The older man finally drew his sword in a wash of silver light that was brighter by far than any of the others, and he dropped the point toward Gabe in a silent command that none could possibly misunderstand. Gabe drew his own sword of plain steel and prepared to die well.

The Templars charged.

There was a fraction of a second in there, while he saw the swords coming toward him, that Gabe’s brain worked ahead and conjured an image of himself dying. Maybe it was a subconscious defense to prepare his body for the pain, or maybe it was a flicker of the actual future coming the instant before death. But either way, he saw himself raise his sword and fire a gravity charm into the ground, hoping to disrupt the advance and catch one or two of them off-guard. But even in his imagination all of them blocked the charm on their swords as if they’d been expecting it, and none lost more than a half-step as they fell on him. He would hit the ground in pieces, he knew—dozens of wounds ensuring he’d never live through them. And yet somehow he still assumed he’d live long enough to watch his team fall one by one. Heather was last and worst, of course, because his brain knew just where to poke him to make it hurt...but the weirdest thing was in realizing how sad he would be for failing the world. Six months ago, he was running directly away from being a hero. And now he was lamenting his failure at it—at the hands of people who would have been the good guys in any other story, no less. Life was a funny thing.

The image wrapped itself up in a neat little mental package and planted itself in the center of his brain where he couldn’t ignore it, and he watched the mud splash up slowly from the Templars’ boots as they ran toward him. Their swords lit the storm-darkened air as they neared, and the rain seemed to fall heavier on him as if urging him to kneel and accept it. But instead he filled his hand with entropy and prepared to leave one hell of a death curse. Lightning flashed above him.

And suddenly Penny was there.

Gabe had to blink to reconcile the image of the little sprite floating in front of him as if submerged in water, and when his eyes popped back open, all shreds of her glamour were gone. Her skin was blue-green and mottled in shimmering scales, and her hair was impossibly long and thick as it floated serenely around her. She spread her little arms to either side, splaying webbed fingers, then she tilted her face up to the sky and shrieked.

And in a twenty-foot sphere around them...every single raindrop froze in place.

The Templars all skidded to a halt as one, swinging their swords as if trying to gauge where the attack was about to come from, and only Enoch had the presence of mind to focus back on Penny as the real threat. His eyes widened and the calculation was clear in them as the man plotted the remaining five strides and the reach of his sword and the power of the sprite’s magic. Then horror filled his face and he quickly ducked beneath his cloak with a cry of warning...an instant before the death fell.

Penny dropped her hands and the rain dropped with them. Her magic caught up every bit of water in the air and gave it speed and shape, and then sent each one driving hard toward a Templar from every angle. The silver swords flashed as the men and women tried vainly to find a single source to block or destroy, but for every one they stopped, another hundred found their marks. The first Templar went down with hands over his eyes as blood ran beneath them, and then another fell gasping for air with a hole straight through his throat. More and more fell in the same ways, holding wounds that their cloaks hadn’t been able to protect them from...and in the space of two seconds, the onslaught was over and all the Templars save Enoch were down and bleeding.

Gabe watched as Penny tiptoed down the remaining raindrops, using them like stepping stones as she came to stand in front of him. Her glamour flickered and tried to settle back over her like a comfortable jacket, and for a moment she was a little girl staring up at him with a big smile on her face. She gave him a weary thumbs up...then collapsed at his feet.

“No!” Gabe gasped, dropping to his knees to gather her up. He found the bolt still stuck in her ribs and leaking blood, and he felt her little chest barely rising as she struggled to catch a breath. She was so small.

He reached for his magic and tried to cobble together something like healing, but he felt at once that it wasn’t a thing he could easily replicate in anyone else. It had just happened with Heather, and the bond had guided him to where she’d been hurt and to what he could do to help. He was terrified of pouring magic into Penny blindly for fear of making everything so much worse with his ignorance. He didn’t know how to shape health. There was no pattern for it. He didn’t know how he could possibly imprint raw potential with the idea of well-being when he himself wasn’t totally confident what that felt like. He had nothing to give her. And he was too scared to try.

Gabe looked up just as Enoch regained his feet and slowly took in his own dying companions in disbelief. They were opposite sides experiencing identical moments of loss, and it suddenly seemed insane that things had to be this way. Frustration and impotence welled in Gabe as he felt the little sprite slipping away, and then it doubled as he saw Enoch bring his sword to the ready. There was no more time. The world was intent on shoving them all headlong into madness.

So in desperation, Gabe conjured up the feeling of being in Heather’s arms, of knowing she was there with him no matter what stupid choices he made, and of wanting to keep her safe. And he pressed those sensations into something like pattern of comfort for Penny, filling it with a tendril of magic to wind around and through her wound. Then he quickly glanced around to find a nearby puddle, and leaned over to lay her in. It was the best he had.

Gabe rose and lifted his weapon to square with the Templar. All around him his friends were still fighting for their lives, and it was finally his turn.

“Okay,” he said, tossing his sword aside. “I’m officially fucking tired of you.”

He summoned the rime blade.

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

“Occasionally, if I really concentrate, I can do the right thing for its own sake.”

-Excerpt from Chapter Twenty-Eight, CONscience

ENOCH’S EYES ONLY HAD time to widen for an instant before Gabe ran in swinging, and the two blades met with a screeching flash of silver and steam. The Templar was strong for his age, and he took Gabe’s blow without giving an inch, then the silver sword was moving and it was Gabe’s turn to parry. He caught the edge high on the rime blade, losing most of the tip in a spray of ice, but he continued feeding it magic. And by the time he met the Templar’s sword again, it had mostly reformed.

“To think I once felt sorrow over the need to kill you,” Enoch said grimly as their blades met again. He pushed hard and sent Gabe stumbling back several steps. “Now I find you steeped in vile magics, standing with demons and devils, and an enemy to your own world.” He shook his head as he advanced. “This is justice.”

“Keep telling yourself that,” Gabe spat back.

Enoch raised his sword in a high arc as if coming in to chop Gabe straight down the middle, then brought it around in a quick slash designed to open his guts. Gabe barely got his blade in front of it, and a spray of ice flew up between them even as the Templar positioned for another strike.

And so it went, Gabe parrying and losing ground while slowly draining his magic to maintain the shape of the blade, and the Templar calmly dismantling it with vastly superior swordsmanship. Within seconds, Gabe had fallen back a dozen steps and realized this wouldn’t be a fight he could win fairly. So he stopped trying that.

Gabe blocked another high slash and redirected the sword to pass over his head, then read the man’s follow-up strike and dragged the rime blade around to parry that too. He pushed the sword wide for just a moment, forcing the Templar to dip it low before coming back to center, and in that instant he tossed out a flash charm. The light was blinding even to him, but the Templar took three quick steps back shaking his head as if he’d gotten it a worse. The man’s shining sword waved uncertainly before him like a serpent’s tongue testing the air, and Gabe ran into the gap.

The first strike hit the Templar’s sword somehow, as if the man was so good he really could do it blindly, but the second made it past. The rime blade skittered off the edge of the sword and hit the man full across the left side of his chest, throwing off a cloud off sparks and steam as the protective charms warred with the primal ice. Gabe saw the aura of magic actually warp beneath the pressure as it tried to maintain its pattern, but it only frayed slightly before he was forced back by a wild slash from the Templar. Enoch carved a quick sphere of safety in the air as he retreated further, and his eyes blinked rapidly as he tried to clear them.

Gabe took the moment to see Heather sweep one Templar from his feet, then neatly spin away from the slash of another coming up behind her. She then sprinted toward Dante who was facing three Templars of his own, and she slowed only to shove one of his foes in the back hard enough to send the man sprawling straight into the minotaur’s grip. Dante batted aside the Templar’s frantic slash, sending the blade flipping through the air with its silvery light already dying before it landed. Then he threw the Templar right into the one pursuing Heather, and both went flying down the slope in a mess of gray wool, mud, and flashing wards. A Templar’s sword came sweeping toward the minotaur an instant later, but then the skeletal cat appeared mid-jump and landed on the woman’s face.

“I will not let you end this world!” Enoch said as his eyes again found Gabe.

“I don’t want to!” Gabe shouted back. “Why do you assume I’m the bad guy?”

“Are you not?” the Templar demanded as he started circling. “Whatever you believe about the Iglas, whatever you hope to do with them, it does not change the risk they pose to all existence. This Endless Dark you are convinced of is a natural force that you have given life in your own mind. Like a madman! And now you are risking the fate of all reality in a hopeless attempt to stop it.” His sword flared even brighter and it seemed to suck the color right from his face. “There must be death for there to be life. Must be dark for the light. End one, and you end us all!”

The words hit Gabe hard, and he had to slash the air as if to cut them down. “No! I’ve seen it! Damnit, I fought the thing. The Endless Dark wants to swallow us. It wants to wipe everything clean and start new from nothing!”

Enoch’s face looked like it was aging even as he spoke. “And who told you this? Aka Manah? The god of deceit?” He shook his head and rain scattered from it. The man almost looked like he was overwhelmed with pity. “The dark does not want, boy. It does not think. It simply is. You have been manipulated...and I fear you are too far gone into insanity to be retrieved.”

For a mind-blowing moment Gabe wondered if the man was actually right—if maybe he really had gone crazy back when Aka Manah was stuck in his head and there had been a very real danger of it. But then the Templar was charging again, and there was no more time to think.

Gabe brought the rime blade up and parried three fast slashes, backing away with every strike. But the Templar just kept coming. The man’s sword blazed with more and more light with every blow, and soon Gabe found himself struggling to reform his own dwindling blade in time for the next. He blocked a stab at his stomach, then jumped away from a dragging slice that would have opened him along his ribs. And then it was all he could do to stay one beat ahead of the shining death that seemed to be coming from every angle at once.

Enoch swung and stabbed with a workman-like stoicism, only advancing as Gabe retreated, and keeping the pressure constant. Gabe parried and dodged and tried to throw up more flash charms, but every time the Templar seemed to pick up the pace just enough to keep Gabe on the defensive. It was like the man was chopping down a stubborn tree, content to do the work and get the job done whether he liked it or not. The rime blade was already much slimmer and shorter from the constant barrage, and in another few seconds it would scarcely be a sword at all. All of Gabe’s attention and magic was going to maintaining it, which would eventually leave him utterly defenseless. He had seconds left against a man with a lifetime of experience doing exactly this.

So he improvised.

Gabe let the Templar strike his blade twice more, watching the ice fly away in a sparkling spray around them as it fell to half its original length. And he didn’t even have to feign the desperation on his face as he held his magic back from reforging the blade this time. He needed it broken. He needed to seem weaker than he was. A quick slash came in toward him and Gabe lifted the rime blade up once more, but this time it was too little defense as the tip of the Templar’s sword cut straight through and scored him shallowly across the chest. Gabe scrambled back as the heat of the cut spread through him like lightning, and Enoch pressed forward.

The silvery sword slashed twice through the air as Gabe retreated, but on the third attempt, when Enoch came in for a low strike near his hip, Gabe finally let his power flow again. He brought the rime blade up, forcing it to reform even as the Templar’s sword connected, and there was suddenly a screaming hiss as the two met. Enoch’s eyes flicked down in shock at where his sword was now wedged in the new ice, and Gabe stepped in.

His fist slammed into the Templar’s nose with a crack, and Enoch’s head rocked back as he tried to stumble away. Gabe yanked hard on the blade, holding the Templar there for just another moment, and then he reached for the man’s tunic and gathered the fabric between his fingers. The protective charms immediately began firing, trying to repel him with a strength that seemed to match the force he was applying, but he was able to ignore them for the instant he needed. He followed the edge of the charms to the frayed place where his blade had struck, and he pressed his will into it until the magics began to give. He lodged his mind beneath that aura of safety even as sparks began flying into his hand, and then he pulled with all his strength and felt the spells tear away with it.

The two men rebounded from one another as if a bomb had detonated between them, and Gabe found himself lying on his back and staring up into the rain. He could still feel the shreds of the protective spells gripped in the teeth of his will, and he carefully pried out those partial patterns and squirreled them away for later study—always assuming, of course, he’d get the luxury of a later. Then Enoch was standing above him, his face pale and hands shaking as his sword rose for a killing blow. Gabe felt panic consume every corner of his mind as he realized he hadn’t moved fast enough or thought far enough ahead...and then the point of a dirk was sticking out of the man’s chest.

Heather spun around to stand over Gabe and catch the Templar’s wrist, then she slipped her other hand beneath the man’s chin and lifted him right off his feet.

“I did warn you,” she said sweetly, before prying the sword from the Templar’s hand and throwing him ten feet away.

Gabe watched Enoch land and roll to his back, but there was no movement after that. Then Heather’s hand was in his and she was pulling him to his feet. Gabe stood, wobbling for a moment as he took in the battlefield to find all but three of the Templars dead or running...and that his team looked scarcely better. He didn’t know how he’d screwed this up so badly.

Heather left his side in that moment, brandishing her new sword, and the sight seemed to be so shocking to the remaining three Templars that they focused utterly on her. That proved to be a mistake. Paul, James, Reznick, and his cat all stepped in and finished off the last three, and then portals were suddenly opening across the caldera to take the fleeing Templars away from island altogether. One appeared next to Enoch’s body and made as if she wanted to retrieve the sword from Heather, then she simply shook her head and pulled the older Templar in behind her and vanished.

Gabe could only watch it all happen. His arms and legs felt numb, and none of it seemed real anymore. The corpses were everywhere, looking now like movie props dressing a set, and he thought he could make out the trail of them they’d left down the slope. His ballistic vest suddenly felt very heavy with the rain, and he reached up with clumsy fingers to undo the clasps. It fell off with barely any prompting to land in the mud, and it was only then that he noticed how much of a beating it had taken for him. Countless cuts he didn’t remember. A few bullets he must have felt at the time, but...

He looked down to the army below and realized they seemed to be massing again, toy soldiers swarming around one final enemy. They would likely finish it soon, and then appoint new leaders to decide if there were enough of them left to storm the caldera. Or if they even wanted to anymore. There was no telling. He raised his eyes to find that the island itself had taken on a dreamlike quality, and it made him feel very tired all of a sudden. He knew it would all come screaming back soon enough, but for that one moment, everything was quiet.

He saw Aka Manah sitting against a rock with his head in his hands, with Reznick and Paul close by. Heather was pacing around the bodies with her shimmering blade leading, checking to make sure nobody would be getting back up, and James was lying on his back, breathing hard and letting the rain wash him clean. Then Gabe saw Dante kneeling over Penny, crossbow bolts still sticking from the minotaur’s back like spines...her little eyes closed...

Reality came crashing back in.

Gabe moved to Dante. “What can we do?” he asked, hoping the expression on the minotaur’s face wasn’t already an answer.

Dante slowly shook his great head. “She is...breathing.” There was still an edge of barely repressed fury there.

Gabe stopped several paces away. “I tried to heal her, but I have no idea if it helped. I thought the water, maybe—”

“Yes,” Dante cut in. “Wise.”

Gabe glanced around to find that Heather had stopped to help James with a bolt stuck straight through the meat of his thigh, and that Paul was now dragging a Templar’s body to where Reznick was sitting near Aka Manah. He realized then that he hadn’t looked for his mother yet, and he finally spotted her peeking out of the mound of grass the bokor had been standing next to at the start of the fight. As she emerged, a bit of camouflaging magic fell down around her.

“We should get her somewhere safe,” Gabe said finally, taking another step toward Penny.

Dante shook his head again, and it seemed like a massive effort for him. “I fear what may happen if we remove her from even this bit of water. She is...very small.”

Gabe watched the rise and fall of the sprite’s little chest, and he couldn’t help but feel like he was seeing a child...despite knowing better. “What about you?” he asked.

Dante let out a long breath that was obviously an affectation he hadn’t yet broken himself of in undeath. “The damage to my flesh is insignificant.” He gestured weakly to the twenty-three finger-thick bolts sticking out of him. The pack had absorbed quite a few, but far too many were wedged in his body. “But the hexes have damaged my spirit, and much of my strength is gone. There is no telling when or if it will return.”

“Then we should get you all to safety,” Gabe said. “If this is anything like the last two Iglas, we’re about to have a huge—”

“No!” the minotaur growled, giving it a strength he clearly didn’t have to spare. “You came for a reason, and you will not dishonor the sacrifices made to get you here. Not even to save us.” He slumped a little with the effort of the words and had to visibly gather his strength to avoid collapsing. “I will remain here and keep vigil. I will protect her while you continue on.”

Gabe nodded, too tired himself to argue...though he did want to ask why. Dante and Penny had really just met, and yet the man was acting like he owed her some great debt of service similar to what he’d sworn to Lorelei and Hwei-ru... But he knew better than to voice the question. That was the old, pragmatic version of Gabe kicking in again—a defense mechanism built of long years keeping himself alive and fed by only caring about those things. And now he was projecting it on Dante, wondering why the man would care so much about a life that should mean so little.

But it turned out the minotaur didn’t need to hear the question to see it in his eyes.

“In my long years, I have found that life means little without a purpose,” Dante said, softly. “And that the purpose is rarely where we believe it will be. Much of my history is written in blood and sorrow, and I have made peace with that. But I have also come to realize that there may be found a few rare pockets of genuine good among the carnage, and that even such a man as me would be a fool to overlook them.”

Then a hand appeared on the minotaur’s shoulder, tentative at first, but firming...and Dante turned to look up at James. Heather had sliced open his pant leg and removed the bolt before applying one of the special Israeli bandages, and though the man was clearly favoring that leg, he was standing on his own...and wearing an uncertain expression Gabe had never seen on him.

“I’ll get them safe, Gabey,” James said, giving Dante’s shoulder a squeeze. “I’ve got the most medical training here, gods help us, and if the little lady needs more water, well...” He gestured out to the ocean around them. “...we got choices.”

Dante looked as if he might argue on some principal, then the lines in his face softened and the remaining edge of anger seemed to melt away. He laboriously lifted one huge hand and patted James’s in thanks.

Suddenly there was burst of magic nearby and they all turned to find Reznick kneeling over a thrashing Templar. The man obviously hadn’t been completely dead yet, but the dagger now embedded in his heart seemed to be doing the job. They all watched in horror as the life energy leaked from the Templar, filling a circle the bokor had scratched in the mud and swirling straight toward Aka Manah. The god held out his hands to either side as the energy flowed into him, and he seemed to swell with it as the last bit faded into his skin. There was a moment of complete silence as the makeshift ritual came to an end and the Templar finally stilled, and then Aka Manah let out a long, contented sigh.

“Ah! Nothing like the blood of a zealot to perk you back up!” The god then stepped over the edge of the circle, patting an obviously exhausted Reznick on the head as he passed, and he rubbed his hands together. “Everyone ready for the hard part?”

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

“I know I keep coming back to my mother, but I guess I feel like it’s time I finally put her memory to rest. And since I have no interest in ever seeing her again, what better way to get closure for a lifetime of festering hatred and resentment than by laying down a few inconsequential lines in a book no one will ever read?

Okay. The truth is...I don’t actually hate her. I can’t. Maybe someday I’ll go into all the reasons why, but mostly it’s because I didn’t know her well enough. I hate what she did, sure. And I hate where she left me. But all I have of the actual person are a few pictures in my head and a hole I wish wasn’t there. That’s not enough to form any kind of emotions from. So when I say I’m ready to move on and let the remnants of her fade away, I don’t really think it’ll be that hard now that I’ve decided to. She’s gone. And there’s no reason she has to have any impact on me anymore.

There. Done. And it only took me twenty-eight chapters to get around to wrapping up that particular plot thread in my life.”

-Excerpt from Chapter Twenty-Eight, CONscience

THEY ALL STARED BACK at the god. Gabe wanted to be furious at what he’d just seen, that the god would eat a human soul in front of them...but then the Templar might have just as easily died at the hands of one of his friends instead. And even he could see how hypocritical judgment would be at this point. None of them had come into this clean, and they certainly wouldn’t be leaving any better.

Gabe only shook his head. “Not all of us are ready, no,” he finally said to Aka Manah. “James and Dante are staying behind to take care of Penny.” Then he glanced at his mother, who had quietly relegated herself to sitting on a big rock with a shell-shocked look on her face. “And you might as well send her with them too. It’ll undoubtedly be safer than whatever we’re doing next.”

The god nodded. “No sense keeping around dead weight. And if we send them, they will provide an excellent distraction for our enemies to chase. Turn our weakness to strength. Very smart indeed, Gabriel.”

“You know that’s not what I meant by—”

“But I believe I will keep Lauren with me for now,” Aka Manah cut in. “And send Paul and Reznick instead. They have served their purpose well, and deserve a...” He gestured lazily to the island. “...vacation.”

Paul limped over to the god, trailing blood from several wounds but with his tongue lolling happily through his shaggy beard. The Hound’s glamour was thinner than Gabe had ever seen it, and he was shocked to note just how much the human body beneath had changed. Too much hair...too much muscle...everything bending the wrong way... Gabe had to stop looking before his stomach turned. Though it did help explain how the man could run so fast on all fours.

Reznick rose with a groan and tried to brush the worst of the mud from his cloak. Then he gave up with a shrug and trudged out of the circle. “Just as well. I ain’t got shit left but a few utility spells anyway. You need to see in the dark or get your dick hard, come talk to me.” He looked pointedly at Heather.

She just smiled back sweetly. “Aww, are you having trouble since the last time a woman touched you there? I could stomp on it again if that would help?”

The bokor grinned gamely, but his eyes were noticeably clouded as if she’d hit a little closer to home than he’d expected. And instead of returning the volley, he glanced around and found his skeletal cat curled up snugly on the chest of a dead Templar nearby. He snapped twice and gestured sharply to the thing, holding open a bag for it to jump into, and the creature slowly rose and stretched before trotting toward him. Parts of it faded and reappeared with every step.

Dante looked up at that, noting the cat and the bag before looking to the bokor for a long moment. He seemed to come to some kind of decision then and held out his big hand palm-upward while giving a little whistle through his teeth. The cat thing came to a stop just before reaching Reznick, and the bokor’s face twisted in confusion. Dante then lifted his free hand to the plate on his chest, and a flare of green magic began leaking out from around the edges. The cat’s toothy grin curled up in what Gabe could only describe as unsettling delight, and then it turned from Reznick with a little hiss before trotting over to Dante to promptly climb his arm and drape itself over his shoulder. And even without eyelids to close, it was clearly asleep an instant later.

“What the fuck?” Reznick said, shaking the bag ineffectually. “That’s mine!”

Dante planted his hands on his thighs and pushed himself up to standing with a colossal effort, growling through it in a way that seemed to shake the ground beneath them. Then he turned to tower over the bokor. “It now chooses for itself. Pray it is the last thing I remove from you.”

Reznick looked to Aka Manah for support, but the god only shrugged and turned to focus on the army below. The bokor tossed the bag into the mud and threw up his hands. “Perfect! This is going to be a fucking great camping trip. Come on assholes, get that little asshole and let’s get outta here before these assholes blow us all the hell up.” Then he trudged off down the slope, angling sharply away from the army. Paul followed.

Heather handed James her pack and then helped steady him when the weight sent him off-balance. “There’s more medical supplies in there,” she said. “And hopefully enough food to cover you until Ken’s boat gets here. If we make it, we’ll find you.” She didn’t bother saying what would happen if they didn’t make it. Presumably, the whole world would know fairly soon after.

Gabe pulled off his own pack and handed it to the man. “If you can’t carry the whole thing, at least take the sat. phone. Just in case.”

James shouldered both packs with a defiant grin. “You see how much fat that little bokor has on him? Something tells me I’ll be just fine for food.” Then he looked to Dante as the minotaur hefted Penny up like a doll. The two men exchanged a nod. “We’ll be fine,” James said. “Make sure you are too.” He held out a hand for Heather to shake, and then gave Gabe a little salute. “Do good. Don’t die.”

Gabe watched the two men trudge down the slope behind Reznick and Paul, and for some reason he had the overwhelming feeling that it would be the last time he saw any of them.

“You know, I never expected to live long anyway,” he said to Heather. “But why do I suddenly feel like my luck is about to run out?”

She didn’t have time to reply before Aka Manah joined them. “Finally have the house to ourselves.” He made as if to put his hands on their shoulders, but a look from Heather made him pull up short.

“So what’s the plan now?” she asked.

The god clasped his hands together. “Now, we wait.”

“What?” Gabe asked, trying not to let it sound as incredulous as he felt. “I thought the whole point of this maniac pace was to get here fast and defeat Smaug or whatever? Well, we’re here. Let’s do this.”

Aka Manah found a waist-high rock and leaned back against it with his arms crossed. “See there?” he said, nodding to the army below. “They are currently slaying my cyclops. Last and mightiest of my militia. If you listen carefully, you may even hear his dying roar.” He paused and tilted his head that direction, but nothing came. “Ah well. Much like my army, my powers are similarly spent. Thanks to you, I have needlessly divested myself of all the resources we might have used to gain an edge in our cause. I have just enough power to open a single portal to get us home. Unless...” He raised his eyebrows. “...anyone would like to perform a few more ritual sacrifices for me?”

Gabe crossed his arms. “You know, I’ve researched your legend pretty thoroughly since we first met, and Zoroastrianism specifically forbids sacrifice. In fact, half of your whole identity is complete bullshit.”

Aka Manah’s face screwed up in confusion. “Oh...so I’m not conforming to the letter of the legends? My goodness, how obscene of me.” He looked around in mock fear. “I do hope Vohu Manah doesn’t fall from the sky and cast me down to oblivion. Or is it perdition? Or perhaps Niflheim.” His smile returned and he spread his hands. “We are none of us what we once were—not now that we have a choice in the matter. You of all people should understand that.”

“Fine,” Gabe said, rolling a hand through the air. “Then how about you meander your way to the relevant part?”

The god shrugged. “I assume neither of you has learned to fly recently, and Gabriel has wasted something like...” He licked a finger and lifted it to the air as if testing the wind. “...half of his magic? More? So our paths forward are depressingly few. Beyond this point, all else has fallen to darkness in the weave of fate, but sometime in the next hour an opportunity will present itself to provide a narrow window to victory. Until then...” He spread his hands. “...we wait.”

“Okay,” Gabe said, drawing out the word. “What’s this opportunity? What are we watching for?”

Aka Manah frowned. “Oh, you’ve read enough lazy fiction to know that I can’t tell you that. With too much foreknowledge, you may make a decision that alters what needs to occur and doom our one chance to failure. And apart from that, it just spoils the narrative tension.” He smiled as he glanced at his watch, obviously pleased with himself.

“Well, we can’t just stand up here and wait to get struck by lightning. I could try calling the Igla the same way I did with the kraken,” Gabe said, flexing his right hand over the brand.

“That would be profoundly stupid,” Aka Manah replied.

“Why?”

The god only shrugged slyly.

Gabe could feel his repressed hatred for the man bubbling to the surface, and he carefully avoided looking toward his mother as he swallowed it back down. But some of it leaked through the bond regardless, and Heather had far fewer compunctions about voicing it.

“No,” she said, lifting her new sword and doing something to make it brighten. “Start explaining, or we’re going to have a reckoning right now.”

The god raised one eyebrow skeptically, but his smile did wilt a little at the edges. “I see you’ve found a new toy.”

Heather rolled her wrist experimentally, and the weapon left a thin trail of silver in the air. “Sure did. I noticed how wary you were of these, so I thought it might come in handy.”

“Yes,” the god said flatly. He then casually produced his ghostly blue knife and began trimming his fingernails with it. “And now we all have magic blades. Aren’t we a happy little group of adventurers?”

Heather shifted her feet, her strong side trailing to propel her forward. “Mine’s bigger. And I guarantee I use it better.”

“No question,” Aka Manah replied, glancing at his watch again. “But I sincerely doubt you have enough left in you to power that monstrosity for more than a few minutes. Are you prepared to pay the price it asks at a chance to take my life?”

She glanced at Gabe and tried to pretend she hadn’t. “Gladly.”

“Wait,” Gabe said, moving between them with his hands raised. For a moment he experienced a weird dislocation as he realized he was stopping his favorite person from killing his least favorite, but he pushed that aside. “We’re already down five people and most of our combined power, and we haven’t even done the thing we came to do. We can’t afford to lose anything else.” He looked to Heather. “I appreciate the sentiment, but this isn’t the time to kill him. Like it or not, we came here. Now we have to let this play out, and he’s part of it somehow.” He watched her blade lower slightly as he felt a surge of annoyance and then acceptance come from her, and he shook his head. “Though I will say we should probably stop stealing magic swords from people. I can’t imagine the other Templars are going to let you keep that thing.”

Heather looked at him closely, then relaxed and shrugged. “Probably not, but you also said I should get myself something pretty. And I think this one might be particularly special.”

Aka Manah snorted. “It’s unlikely to be the original...though, I suppose few of us are anymore.” He chuckled to himself.

“What’s that mean?” Gabe asked, looking between them.

Heather smirked sheepishly. “There’s a chance...that you’re now dating the once and future queen.”

He started to shake his head...then felt his eyes go wide as he got the reference. “What?!” he asked, taking an involuntary step back.

Heather held up a hand to stop him. “Relax. It’s probably just a good copy like all the others.” Then she couldn’t contain her smile anymore and she held the sword up to catch what little light there was in the rain. “But how cool would that be? Also...” She waved it through the air like a little kid. “...look how sparkly!”

Lauren had crept up close to them as they’d talked, and she was sitting quietly on a pile of rocks while staying as far as she could from the bodies strewn around them. Gabe glanced toward her to check that she was still there, and in that moment she raised a finger to catch his attention. She brought her hands back to her lap as she checked that nobody was looking, then she tapped the back of her wrist and glanced meaningfully to Aka Manah before lowering her eyes again. Gabe was tempted to just go over and ask aloud what she wanted from him...but then he suddenly understood.

He looked to Aka Manah and caught him once more glancing at his watch—the same way he had when he’d been trying to time the loss of the last Igla. He seemed to be looking every few seconds while trying to cover it with mundane gestures and small talk, as if something was coming very soon. Gabe looked back to his mother, but her eyes were still down, giving him no more clues. The god was planning something else—of course he was—and it was about to happen.

Gabe warred with himself, recalling his own words about needing to see this through even as he recalled the number of times the god had betrayed him for some larger plan. It was possible Aka Manah was telling the truth this time, but...no, it really wasn’t. Then he spotted the hint of that dragon smile on the man’s lips as he checked his watch once more...and that finally decided it.

Gabe conjured a feeling of danger layered with caution and sent it through the bond, and Heather turned toward him sharply. Aka Manah’s face came up at the movement, first covered in his default amusement, and then morphing into alarm as he noted the magic Gabe was gathering in his hand.

“What are you doing?” the god asked, standing.

“Changed my mind,” Gabe said as he filled the Qi Dragon with power and held it to the sky.

He stepped into himself and loosed the magic, letting the Dragon rise within him and carry him up. Then he turned it and plunged into his void. He felt at once how the place was similar to the veil, and how he’d already been using it without knowing how or why. And now that Aka Manah had showed it to him from the outside, he could even see the edges of the bubble where it pressed out of his own mind. It was effectively a wound in his spirit, a hole in his psyche where a scab had formed to prevent his soul from leeching out of the cut Aka Manah had made into the Ether. And beyond it, he could see the fuzzy landscape of the veil and where the real world laid nestled parallel and frozen. He even saw a familiar face in that between place, still waiting and listening...and then the orientation flipped suddenly and he was flying up out of himself to see Aka Manah stuck mid-stride and Heather’s soaked hair still dropping from her shoulders as she turned in confusion. Then he saw his own physical body still standing with his hand outstretched, and he had to look away quickly before the disassociation overwhelmed him.

Instead, he focused on his idea. It had worked with the kraken, so it couldn’t be that stupid. He pointed the Dragon up—or what amounted to up in that place—and lifted his hand to the Igla in the sky. He felt it even more keenly there in the veil, as if he was a layer closer to it, and the other two Iglas within him immediately echoed its pulse and sent back one of their own...calling like to like. The power in the sky surged for a moment as if hearing friendly voices and wanting to join them, and then Gabe’s Iglas quieted and dropped back to their normal hum.

There was a pause while everything settled, then the Dragon began drifting down, and Gabe felt himself dropping back through the veil. He fell back into his bubble, and then into his void, and then the orientation flipped again and he was rising back up to the surface of his real body. The Dragon curled back onto itself, and Gabe opened his eyes.

“...are you doing?” Aka Manah asked as he finally finished rising. “I told you there is but one chance for—”

“Enough,” Gabe said, holding up his right hand. “It’s done. And there’s nothing you can do about it now. So whatever game you’re playing, you’d better get ready to adapt.”

The god watched him carefully, his expression beginning as shock and horror...then sliding a little too far into a comic version of them before finally landing on a delighted smile. “Excellent! And sooner than I’d hoped!”

Gabe felt his stomach clench, and he couldn’t keep his face from falling as he looked to his mother and saw real confusion in her expression.

“Oh, crap.” he sighed, realizing what had happened even as the god explained it for Heather’s benefit.

“Tell me, was it the watch?” Aka Manah asked. “I thought perhaps it was too subtle, but I didn’t want to broadcast it either.”

“Why not just let me do that in the first place?” Gabe asked, his voice rising. “Why lie every freaking time?”

Aka Manah looked up to the sky where the clouds were starting to swirl above them. “Would you have done it if I’d told you to? I did say we had the one chance, and the safest bet by far was in forcing you to defy me. If I cannot trust you to trust me, I can certainly trust that you will not. Also, it was fun.”

Gabe clenched his hands into fists and started moving toward the god. “What’s it going to take to get you to stop being such a dick? We’re all here to—”

An impossibly loud roar of thunder threw him from his feet as a massive lightning bolt slammed into the lake at the center of the crater. Gabe hit the mud on his back, sliding to a stop as he watched steam and debris mix with the rain in the air above them. He looked for Heather and found her already rolling into a crouch nearby, and his mother was curling into a ball behind the rocks she’d been sitting on.

Aka Manah had somehow kept his feet and was already running to the lip of the crater. He lifted his hands in glee. “Come, Gabriel!” the god screamed. “Let us finish this!” Then his expression turned to shock as the crater shook beneath them.

Gabe rose and called up the rime blade, already knowing somehow what he was going to see. And he ran for the inside slope just as the fire wyrm exploded out of the volcano.

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

“There’s a certain allure to predictability, especially to someone like me. Which is why I was never perfectly suited to being a conman. There are no guarantees anywhere in the job description, and chaos is a near constant companion. And this new magical crap is even worse. The other day I suddenly remembered all the terrible curses an Umbra could work with even a tiny sample of my flesh, and an instant later I was tearing off my cape to go running out of the salon in a blind panic with two handfuls of my own hair. That’s just a taste of the way I have to live now. It’s...not the best.”

-Excerpt from Chapter Twenty-Nine, CONscience

“ANOTHER freaking dragon?!” Gabe yelled as he scrambled back from the edge.

Lava and fire fell around them even as the rain worked to extinguish it, but he could hardly give any attention to the falling death when the monster beyond was so much scarier.

The creature was just as large as the other guardians they’d faced, but its body seemed to be made of living fire running in rivulets all along its length. It hardly seemed to have any real mass at all, in fact, just flames shaped into a toothy serpent the size of a building, and the fires of its flesh swelled and snapped as it moved. Gabe glanced down to find the lake and trees gone from the center of the crater, replaced by debris and a growing swell of lava—and suddenly the heat of the whole thing hit him like an opened furnace door. A moment later, the monster stretched and spread two massive wings made entirely of smoke, then it flapped them hard with a colossal roar, and was flying.

“Okay, that’s new.” Gabe said a s he squinted up against the blazing wind of the dragon’s ascent. “How are we supposed to deal with this?!”

Heather was already next to him, and her worry carried through as clearly as his own. “Anybody have a fire hose?”

“We did,” he replied, “but she’s unconscious. What’s plan B?”

“My but you have outdone yourself!” Aka Manah said, joining them. “This is truly a marvel. Though I’m curious to see how you intend to defeat it.”

“Me too,” Gabe replied. “Kinda hoping you had a suggestion.”

The god held up his hands, demurring. “We’ve already established that I cannot be the one to retrieve the Igla. And in any case, you have the most experience in that area. From here on out, I am nothing more than a humble observer and your ride home. The rest, I’m afraid, is up to you.”

They all watched as the dragon beat its wings against the air, gaining height until it was hovering above the crater and sending great gusts of steam and smoke in every direction. The latter washed over them for a moment, obscuring the dark day even further until everything was black and hot and acrid. Then it passed and they were all left coughing.

“How?” Gabe gasped as he led them to clearer air. He pointed up to the thing as it gained yet more height. “Even if we could get up there, it’s made of goddamned fire! We’d cook before we could even touch it!”

Aka Manah pulled a handkerchief from his pocket and put it over his mouth. “No idea. But whatever it is, I suggest you do it quickly. Look there.” He pointed to a spot on the dragon’s belly where the flame didn’t seem to want to touch, and then another...and another. There were black smears on the otherwise glowing monster, and they appeared to be slowly spreading.

Gabe didn’t need any further explanation to know what it meant. The Endless Dark was somehow already inside. “Nobody do anything to provoke it until we have a plan,” he said. “How much longer do we have before the Dark gets the last Igla?”

“I’d say ten minutes,” the god ventured. “Though there’s really no way to know at this point. The Dark has consumed everything in the weave beyond this moment, and you are already aware of your own casual relationship with fate. So I truly cannot say what will happen next.” Then he moved over to pick up Lauren by an arm and force her to move with them. Her eyes were wild with fear as she took her first good look at the monster above them, and it was clear she hadn’t at all been prepared for this moment. Whatever the god had shown or told her to get this far, it obviously hadn’t been enough. She looked like she might faint.

The dragon suddenly roared and shot a burst of flame from its mouth, bathing the side of the caldera in fire roughly three hundred yards away. It seemed to be more experimental than threatening, but as Gabe watched wet brush and rocks and mud all melt into a sheet of steaming volcanic glass, he still felt plenty intimidated.

He turned to Heather as he tried to squash the panic. “Okay, what are our options?”

She shook her head. “Gabe, I have no clue. I could always throw you.”

“Into fire?” he asked incredulously. “And why is throwing people always your first suggestion?” She simply shrugged and he moved on. “No, we can’t fight this thing directly. And the only god we have lying around doesn’t feel like helping.”

“Dangerously close to a pun there with ‘lying’ but you’re not wrong,” Aka Manah replied blithely.

Gabe ignored him. “So we need a back door. A way to get into the Ether without going through that thing’s mouth.”

“A back door?” she asked, then pressed her lips together, fighting a smirk.

He held up a warning finger. “Seriously? This is so not the time!”

The dragon suddenly swooped low down the path it had scorched, spreading its charcoal wings wide to catch the heat still rising from it.

Heather held up a hand. “Well then I don’t know what you want from me.” She gestured to the dragon as it picked up speed and angled directly for the army below, and they all turned to watch it descend. “I suppose technically we could traverse the Ether to get there through a kind of back door, but only by spirit. And you already know a human soul can’t survive that process.”

The dragon pulled up just as it came to the mass of Knights and Brothers and Fangshai, and it passed over them as if trying to sense what they were. It was clear none of the people down there had been prepared for it.

Heather continued. “You’re safe in the veil because it’s an empty place outside of time and space, and it probably doesn’t even know what to do with real matter.”

The dragon cut a tight corner, shedding sheets of fire and smoke from its body as it turned. It passed over the crowd again, getting another look, and this time someone foolishly fired a weapon at it.

“The Ether is different,” Heather said. “We need a sphere of reality to protect our physical forms from being torn apart, and the Igla seems to be the only thing that can create that. There’s no telling what would happen if we sneak in through a back window.”

Aka Manah chuckled. “Crossing an infinite sea of concepts whose sole purpose is to hunger for a single mote of reality to manifest itself upon?” The dragon turned again, this time gathering an inferno in its mouth. “We would quickly find out if the human nervous system is capable of registering agony at the atomic level.”

The fire fell like a tsunami.

Gabe watched as the army broke beneath that rolling blaze, running for the trees in every direction. The dragon arced low over them, belching out more fire as they fled, until fully half of the people down there simply vanished within it. Those remaining made it to the cover of the trees and disappeared before the dragon could come around again, but that didn’t stop the monster from carving a path of fire along the tree line for good measure. It made several passes as they watched, and the forest began to burn despite the rain.

Suddenly there was a distant pop that drew Gabe’s attention across the island to the big ships held at anchor there. One was now turning and making for open water, and several others were burning with varying levels of intensity. Maybe fifty members of the army in total had made it into the trees, but he doubted all of them would fit on the single remaining ship. No matter what happened here today, he didn’t think any of these groups would be bothering him anytime soon. Either that...or there would be an awful lot of desperate vengeance coming his way.

Aka Manah snorted. “I must say, I don’t understand why you’re making it so complicated for yourselves.” He turned and watched the dragon circle the battlefield once more. “Why not simply change its shape to something less...immolating?”

It took Gabe a moment to absorb that suggestion. “Because we’re not gods,” he said finally, while silently willing the dragon to stay down there and circle a bit longer. “We can’t just snap our fingers and make crap happen like you.”

The god turned to look at him with a curious expression on his face...before letting it fall into something like disappointment. “Oh, good lord. Every time I believe I’ve found the bottom-most layer of your ignorance, you peel back another.” Then he held out his hand toward the dragon as if the creature was actually small enough to drape over his palm. “You are responsible for the form this construct has taken, Gabriel. And you alone.”

Gabe blinked back at him. “What?”

The god tracked the dragon’s flight as it searched for more victims. “Don’t you see? All of this is centered on your will. You have summoned these guardians, and your belief and expectations and memories have all fed the forges of their creation.”

Gabe pointed to the dragon in disbelief. “I didn’t make that!”

“Oh, but you did!” Aka Manah replied. “It was your expectations that informed that creature’s shape, and since you anticipated this being an impossible nightmare...that is exactly what you received.”

Gabe started to argue again, but Heather cut him off with a sharp buzz of realization through the bond. She lifted a hand to her forehead. “Oh no...Gabe, I think he’s right!” Then she turned to hold his gaze. “In the gulf you were making jokes about sea monsters and that’s what came up! And in the temple you said something about a treasure chest and a dragon to slay like it was some kind of videogame...and there it was. Oh Gabe...you’re conjuring them!”

He backed away. “This is insane! I didn’t dream any of these things up! You think I want to fight the worst possible monsters?”

“Stop and think,” Aka Manah said, his tone edging into anger. “Did you really believe these beasts were simply lying in wait for you in particular to stumble upon? Idiotic. They are seeds, nothing more. And your magic and fear and jaded imagination have proven to be fertile soil.”

Gabe shook his head and continued backing away, feeling himself spiraling...until Heather sent over a bit of calm like a lifeline. He found her eyes and saw the same there to anchor him, and she gave him a small nod of reassurance. It was enough to help him stop retreating. Behind her, the dragon pointed its giant head their direction.

Gabe lifted a hand to continue denying...then dropped it hard against his leg. “See, this is the kind of information that might have been useful in the beginning! What am I supposed to do about it now?”

Aka Manah raised his hands as if the answer should be obvious. “You need not lift a finger to destroy this creature. I thought you would have realized by now. Simply envision a new form for it—will it—and it will be.”

Gabe almost laughed at the ridiculousness of it. “Oh come on! We almost died fighting two of these things, and both times I could have just snapped my fingers?”

“I do not have time to manipulate you into making the right choice, boy,” Aka Manah snapped. “Just do it!”

Gabe looked to Heather, then back to the god. “Even if you’re somehow telling the truth, you can’t put this on me! Haven’t you seen Ghostbusters? This exact situation is how we all end up suffocating in marshmallow!”

The god sighed. “It pains me that I actually understand that reference.” Then his eyes went wide, and he began backing away himself. “Whatever you do, however, I suggest making it soon!”

Gabe turned and found the dragon racing up toward them. “Ah! I...can’t!” he yelled as he watched the monster building fire in its mouth. The panic resumed pounding its familiar beat in him, and he felt his legs trembling as he backed away. He could still run, he realized. He could still let someone else handle this.

Then a hand was on his arm and he couldn’t wrench away from it. “Yes you can, Gabe,” Heather said calmly. She held him there, unrelenting.

He looked over to her and felt his own anger and fear and desperation pulsing through the bond, surging out at her like a weapon to force her to let go and to run away with him. But even as it all rose and filled him to bursting, the waves only broke against what she was sending back. Calm. Trust. Confidence in him and in what he would do. As he was trying to pull away from her grip and run, she was forcing him to be the person she thought he was.

And oddly, that was enough.

The cowardice drained out of Gabe like a poison, and a new feeling took its place. Something like apathy, only...nicer. It suddenly felt like it didn’t matter what else happened—up to and including fiery death—as long as she kept believing in him. It wasn’t the first time he’d felt it, and he hoped to every god he could think of that it wouldn’t be the last.

All of it occurred in a flash—one instant of pure panic as the flaming guardian soared up at them and another world-altering concept was shoved down his throat at the last possible second...and then a balm that drove it all away. Just one moment, fast as thought. Just for them. And it was a good thing, since the dragon was about to murder them.

Gabe watched the guardian rise up to meet them, the flames already spilling from its mouth like molten steel, and he knew he only had an instant left. It wasn’t enough. The concept he was trying to grasp could take months or years to understand, and he was trying to do it instantly. He didn’t even dare slip into his void to give himself time to think for fear of losing a second in the weird time slip...so he just had to do it. One chance.

He stared down the dragon and tried to discern something like a pattern in it that he could manipulate, then he worked to superimpose something far less deadly over it. First he tried a fluffy little bunny, but was immediately rebuffed by what he could only describe as the bitch-slap of conservation of mass. So he shifted to something bigger. There was no time to think any of it through, and he picked up the scattered thoughts as quickly as they could form.

No fire...no wings...same size...Ghostbusters...shit...no marshmallows...New York...what if...wait...wait!

Gabe felt the image take hold and the massive pattern of the guardian shift even as the dragon soared up to drop its fire atop them. The heat was incredible as the flames fell in sheets above their heads, and Heather screamed something as she started pulling him down beneath her...

And then the flames suddenly winked out and there was a blur of black tumbling through the air over them. Something huge hit the ground before sliding down the inside slope of the crater, and yet more debris rose to join the smoke and fog and rain in the air. And then everything went quiet for a moment.

“Wow. Did it work?” Heather gasped, still holding him tight in a half-crouch.

“Well...” Gabe began.

Then the guardian gripped the edge of the crater and pulled itself up in a leap, landing with a thunderous impact a hundred yards away. It roared into the sky revealing massive fangs, then lifted two huge hands to slam its great chest in a drumbeat of fury.

“...it’s not on fire,” Gabe finished.

Heather pulled him into a run as the colossal ape bent and batted a boulder across the ground, sending the thing rolling straight through where they’d been standing. The stone dug a furrow in the earth before flipping over the edge to go rolling down the outside, and the monster roared again.

Heather slammed Gabe against a rock. “Not a huge improvement! You wanna try again?”

“Hey, this is my first time! I think a little leeway—” Another boulder went screaming past, throwing smaller rocks and mud in every direction and nearly flattening them against their cover. Heather caught one large chunk against her forearm and redirected it away, then her eyes went deadly as she quickly wiped a spray of mud from her face. Gabe nodded. “I’ll try again.”

Heather lifted her sword and took a step back. “I’ll buy you time.” Then she charged.

“No!” Gabe stepped out of cover to grab her, but only saw her dwindling shape racing toward the guardian with the silvery sword held out and ready. She vaulted rocks and mud holes as she went, and she was at the ape in seconds.

The monster had another boulder in one hand by then, preparing to throw as she approached, and it instead directed it down at her. Heather dove to one side as the rock slammed into the mud, and she came up running just ahead of a giant fist that pounded the ground behind her. She jumped and spun in that instant, swinging the sword in a flat arc to slice the fist behind her, and the monster roared in pain as she completed the circle and landed like a dancer to continue running. Then she cut hard to her left and flipped the blade to that hand, running in toward the ape’s foot and cutting along the side of it as she raced by. The guardian roared in rage.

Gabe suddenly realized he was wasting the gift Heather was earning him. He couldn’t bear to close his eyes as he watched her dance and dive away from pounding fists and stomping feet, so this time he did slip into his void to give himself time to think. Time slowed in the outside world as he retreated, and now that he knew more about what he was doing, he found he could dial it in to a level that worked for him. He found a place in the middle where he could still feel the pattern of the guardian out there, but where Heather’s movements slowed only to what looked like a walking pace and practice katas, rather than the lightning quick actions he knew they were. She was even then sliding between the ape’s legs, drawing her blade along the creature’s heel to leave a line of ghostly red energy spilling from the wound.

He had to think. He needed something big but harmless, and his first thought was to simply turn the thing to unmoving stone. He took up the pattern of it and laid the new image on top, picturing the creature composed of nothing but rock. He felt it catch and the guardian change, and then he saw Heather’s sword throw sparks as she tried to cut along the top of a huge granite foot. She backed away to see rocky skin crawling up the length of the creature until it was consumed... Then the thing moved, and the massive stone golem roared its defiance.

That wasn’t better. Apparently he couldn’t just do anything. Yet more arbitrary rules nobody bothered telling him until he tried to break them. So he watched Heather slowly run for her life as he dug deeper. A hundred different giant monsters from movies, comics, and anime popped into his brain as he scoured his memories for something that would work, but he discarded all of them just as quickly. They all had risks—some far worse than others—and none of them felt like the answer. It needed to be something huge but benign. Something soft and slow, something...

An image formed over the pattern before he could stop it, and the stone golem was suddenly toppling down right where Heather was running. Gabe felt his heart skip a slow beat as he watched the tower of stone falling toward her...and then the guardian was dissolving into a mass of cascading goo.

The slime fell over Heather in a wave that seemed to take forever to crash, and her expressions of horror and relief and horror again were so much easier to spot in the slowed time. But eventually the sludge settled and pooled around her knees, leaving her dripping in shock at the center of it. She slashed her sword to one side, sending a splat of the stuff flying, then dragged her hand across her face to pull away the bulk of it there. But before she could flick that off too, it congealed in her hand and wriggled out to drop into the mass below...and the rest of it came to life.

A deep red pulse of energy blazed within the blob, and the whole thing constricted around her. Realization hit her features, then she was suddenly lifted into the air atop the thing, soaring twenty feet up as the monster pulled itself into a gelatinous mound. She lashed out to either side, silver magic flashing as she sliced deep gouges into the creature, but they immediately closed back up. And then a huge bubble was forming in the mass, towering above her before splitting horizontally into a huge, gaping mouth. Trails of slime dripped from the upper edge forming long, fluid teeth, and a wet, belching roar echoed out from within.

Gabe quickly tried to conjure something else—anything else—but all the other options just seemed worse. None of the big legends were ever harmless, and apparently he wasn’t creative enough to come up with something out of whole cloth. And to make it harder, she was already in the thing. There was no way to re-imagine the creature without it manifesting around Heather, and that could be just as deadly as the monster killing her outright. It had to be something organic, something that could be cut, and something with enough space inside for her to not be immediately crushed. And it had to be something with enough weight in the zeitgeist to be legendary.

He looked toward the trees to his left, then to the craggy ground around him and the lava still bubbling to his right. Then suddenly a dozen Saturday morning cartoons filled his head as the slime monster’s mouth came crashing down onto Heather. The image formed and settled of its own accord, taking up the best version Gabe could summon, and the guardian changed one last time.

Gabe hurled himself back into reality and found the rime blade still in his hand as he ran. There was no sign of Heather after the transformation, and the creature looming above seemed to be confused as it tried to reconcile its new form. It lifted one big foot to stomp him as he approached, but the mud beneath its other three feet betrayed it and the guardian had no choice but to drop the attack to catch its balance. Gabe watched the thing struggle as its long neck swayed above and the tail lashed behind to steady it, and he knew at once he’d found a winner. Based on what he remembered from sixth grade science, the brachiosaurus wasn’t known for its grace or ferocity. And ultimately, it was what he remembered that mattered.

Now the trick was to get Heather out of the thing. She couldn’t possibly have more than a few moments, and the bond only told him that she was close. He slashed at the creature’s leg as he ducked beneath, and almost felt bad for it until he remembered that it was an unfeeling construct specifically designed to use his own fear to kill him. Then he slashed again. He ran to another leg and let his blade flail in every direction, opening any flesh he could reach to spill more of that deep red energy and hopefully force the guardian to the ground. The dinosaur thrashed above him, turning and lashing its tail hard from side to side, but it simply wasn’t designed to contend with something like him.

Yet the thing still wouldn’t fall. It was clearly losing power and strength with it, but not fast enough. And meanwhile, Heather could be suffocating within. He brought the rime blade back around for another slash, putting in more force this time to dig deeper...then he noticed the noise the creature was making as he worked. Gabe pulled up short and listened, hearing a hoarse, grating cough coming from above. It almost sounded like the thing was trying to bellow in rage but could only produce a strangled rasp. As if it couldn’t make anything go in or out...like something was stuck there.

Gabe sprinted through the front legs to find the distended bulge in its throat high above, and his mind immediately started working through all the ways he could get up there. Being thrown, notably, came to mind first, but then the point became moot as the silver blade emerged from the neck.

Heather’s face was the next thing to appear, first gasping in a big breath before her expression firmed into a snarl. Then the sword was out again, cutting a larger hole to let her shoulders through, followed by her arms as she clung to the edges of the wound. Her hips came next and then her legs, and a moment later she was hanging from the huge neck as the guardian bucked in panic and pain. Then she plunged the sword back into its throat and held on to the weapon with both hands, letting her weight drag the edge down to open the neck like a zipper. Red power flowed out above her as she dropped, and she hit the ground rolling as the guardian swayed and finally fell to one side with a crash.

The spray of water and mud hit Heather just as she was rising, and Gabe started moving toward her. She stood there for a moment, only raising a hand to wipe a glob of slime and mud and gore from her lips before slowly turning his way. He got nothing through the bond as he came, and her expression may as well have been carved from very messy marble for all it told him. He came to a stop in front of her, searching for any wounds, but she held up a finger before he could come closer.

She took a deep breath, then carefully moved a lock of filthy hair from her forehead as if that was the only thing out of place. “I’m not thrilled with you right now,” she said, softly.

Gabe grimaced. “That’s fair.” He looked past her to the dinosaur still thrashing in its death throes. “Though I did nail that last one, huh?”

She nodded slowly, not meeting his eyes yet. “Yep. You did.”

Gabe gingerly reached out to knock a gob of flesh from her shoulder. “Would it help if I say that you’re still weirdly hot?”

She seemed to think about it for a moment as the rain did practically nothing to clean her, and a bit of amusement finally trickled through. “Less than you’d think.”

He nodded again. “Right. How about next time we trade jobs? Keep the relationship equitable. You do the dishes, I’ll kill the giant hell beast.”

“What a gentleman,” she said. Then she reached up and patted his face, deliberately spreading goop all over him in the process.

Gabe had to fight hard not to wince. “See?” he said, straining. “Super hot.”

He suddenly realized Aka Manah and Lauren were missing, and he looked around to make sure they hadn’t been crushed in the fight. But they were just gone. Concern tried to bubble up in his gut, but it was stopped by a very small part of him that understood how much easier his life might be without them. Then he felt guilty for feeling that...then stupid for feeling guilty. He didn’t like how complicated his life was getting.

The guardian finally stilled as the last of the red energy flowed out, and Gabe felt the portal at the heart of the construct finally open. He’d almost forgotten there was more to do. “Crap, we need to go! According to the original timeline, we only have a few minutes.”

Heather rolled her shoulders and sighed, then hefted her sword back up as she ran to take the lead. “Right. Death isn’t going to defy itself.”

“You’re starting to sound like me,” Gabe replied as he followed. He summoned a bit of his remaining magic to reinforce the rime blade, and he couldn‘t help but catch a glimpse of the pattern constructed of the worst of his memories and pains. He quickly pushed it back down once it had done its job, but it left him wondering if he would ever get used to that...or if he wanted to. “You know Aka Manah is going to pop out of a hidey-hole and pull some kind of switcheroo, right?”

“Oh, I know,” she replied.

They skidded to a stop at the creature’s head, where the portal felt strongest, and Gabe stared into that blank tear through the veil. “Well, this time I actually planned a little back-up of my—”

Suddenly he was on his knees and staring at his right hand as his palm flared in pain, and the world closed around him as the agony of it focused his vision down to one pinprick of light.

And then the light went dark.

And darker still...

Then the final slot in the Qi Dragon was an empty void and the two Iglas in his hand dimmed to almost nothing.

“No!” he croaked, unable to believe it even as the evidence stared back at him. They had failed again. After everything...

Heather dropped to his side, grabbing his wrist to help him stay upright. “Oh, Gabe! It’s okay. We’ll still be okay. We’ll think of something!”

Then the corpse of the guardian exploded.

CHAPTER THIRTY

“I love surprises. What I hate, are the ones I don’t see coming.”

-Excerpt from Chapter Twenty-Nine, CONscience

FLESH AND BONE AND mud flew in every direction, scattered as if a bomb had detonated within the corpse, and Heather pushed Gabe down beneath her just as she took a hit from something big on the way past. The world became a cacophony of flying horrors threatening to flatten them or suffocate them beneath...and then, just as suddenly, it was over. And Gabe looked up to find standing in the center of a newly clean circle of space...a man made of darkness.

The thing slowly raised its hands to either side as if ready to receive the world, then it stretched farther, and long black tendrils began extending from its fingertips to swirl lazily through the air. It opened a mouth made of darkness and full of something darker still, and the semblance of a face melted away only to be reformed a moment later.

“I...we are nearly done,” the Endless Dark said. Then, as if to prove the point, it arched its back until five protrusions bulged from its chest, becoming first elbows that uncurled into arms and then fists, each one holding a different glowing facet that seemed to strain in its grip. The new red one was at the center and it appeared barely restrained. “You may relinquish the final two with your life.”

Gabe pushed himself up. “Yeah, sorry. We’re not doing the surrender thing today, so let’s go ahead and fight or whatever.” Heather rose beside him.

The creature seemed to pause for a moment in thought, as if it was translating the language into something it could process. One of the Iglas tried to slip from its grip in that beat, but the darkness quickly snared it back in. “We are inevitable,” it said finally as its mouth drifted down and melted, and a new one formed to take its place. “The end of all things. There is nothing you can do to stand against us.”

Gabe waved the words away. “Oh, I’m sure you’re right. You are a literal force of nature and I’m a...well, I’m slightly less than meets the eye. But I’ve always been one of those guys who has to make his own mistakes, you know?”

The Endless Dark paused again, running the words through and pulling back yet another straying Igla.

This time Gabe didn’t let it finish thinking. “So are we gonna do this or do we need to keep talking about it?” Then he held up a shaking fist as he layered on some cartoonish defiance. “I’ll never surrender! You’ll have to go through me first! Prepare to face my wrath!” He dropped his hand and leaned forward. “Does that help?”

The creature paused again, then suddenly expanded. Its body deformed into something closer to a spider, its fingers splaying across the ground to hold it aloft, and a dozen more dark tendrils exploded out of its back to go whipping through the air straight toward them.

Gabe and Heather reacted at the same time, lifting their blades and sprinting opposite directions to split the creature’s attention. They each sheared off several tendrils as they ran, sending the severed bits arcing through the air to quickly fade to smoke and nothing, and all the others struck the ground where they’d been standing with rapid cracks like shattering glass.

“Pushed a little too far!” Heather called as she sliced off another appendage.

“Yeah, I got that!” he replied, batting away two of his own. Then he watched in horror as several big eyeballs drifted to the surface of the creature’s body, quickly covering it from every angle until there were too many to count staring back at him. “Crap!” he yelled. Then another thirty tendrils burst out.

Gabe slashed as he ran, sending bits of darkness flying to either side as he fought to keep his balance in the mud and gore of the battlefield. In the chaos he quickly lost track of where Heather was, getting only pulses of fear and anger from her somewhere on the other side. He saw bits of darkness flying to pieces at the touch of a silver blur, but he didn’t dare risk trying to join her. He had too many of his own problems. For every tendril he cut, another two seemed to sprout and seek him out, and soon it was all he could do to keep them at bay. The things swarmed around him like lashing vines, and it quickly became more about running than fighting—slashing only to open new holes to scurry through.

But of course, that strategy couldn’t last.

He cut through a whole sheet of darkness as it tried to wrap him up, and the black curtain fell to wisps to make room for him to duck beneath. Then something suddenly hit him from behind and pulled him to a stop with a flash of pain, and he frantically swung his blade back even as four more slammed into him. Mud flew up from his sliding shoes as he tried to fight against the pull, and another two tendrils caught him hard on the shoulder. He turned and cut again and again, spinning in place to free himself as yet more slammed in to bind him. He ducked and slashed and poured more magic into the sword to make it stronger and sharper with every swipe until he had nearly nothing left to give and his world became the blade. Everything centered on cutting down that darkness before it could touch him. And for one glorious moment, he thought it was actually working.

Then Gabe felt a pulse of panic come through the bond, and he reflexively looked to where Heather was being swarmed. He saw her go down...and then something struck him in the stomach. He slashed at the darkness just as the pain began to register, but several more were on him and binding before he could bring the blade back around. And when he tried to cut those, more took him on the other side. He fired a gravity charm once—and then again...but the tendrils simply took the hits as more flowed in behind them. Then he was being slammed over and over from every side by too many to count or cut, and his movements slowed a little more with each one. He knew that his magic was nearly gone, and he could feel the blade diminishing with it. He tried slipping into himself to get a moment to think, but the darkness seemed to reach even there and it pulled him right back out.

Then a tendril caught his left wrist and stopped the blade before it cut again, and it was only another moment before his arms and legs were bound and held fast. He felt the darkness constrict around his muscles, pulling tight until he felt encased in it, and all he could do was scream in impotent fury and pain as he was lifted from the ground.

The darkness pulled his left arm out to the side, trapping the rime blade there, then it yanked his right hand out before him and pried his fingers open to reveal the Qi Dragon on his palm. The two Iglas seemed to cringe from the darkness as if already knowing their fates, then the curtain of tendrils parted, and the creature itself rose before him with two new human heads sprouting on its monstrous body.

“Our purpose is to clear the way for a new beginning,” they said in chorus. “You have hindered that.” Then it stopped to think again as if putting words together like a complex puzzle. “And while we are not meant to be cursed with feeling pleasure at the demise of any specific entity...” Both heads smiled in unison, joined by a larger fanged mouth below on the spider body. “...the iteration standing before you does indeed harbor such a weakness.” A single tendril rose and wrapped itself around Gabe’s throat.

He felt three distinct things then, and they left no room even for panic to squeeze into that moment. The first, was the final drop of crushing pain as his air was cut off and his body tensed against what it knew was coming. And the second was the Qi Dragon rousing and roaring as it thrashed in the confines of the prison within his dying flesh. But it was the third that came through the sharpest—even above the knowledge of failure and certain death and the end of all things...

It was Heather.

He felt her out there, bound and defeated like him, and in just as much pain. But oddly, that wasn’t what carried through the most. It was her sadness that he felt. A soft, desperate thing that cut past all else and filled every angle of her as she watched him die. She was trapped and broken, but this time it was him leaving her first. And in that instant, it was the only thing she cared about.

And it was maybe the best thing Gabe had ever felt.

He knew she wouldn’t live long after him, so it wasn’t like his death was any great sacrifice. And sensing her suffering certainly wasn’t something he enjoyed. But for the first time in his life, somebody actually wanted him in the world. Not for what he could do for them or out of a sense of responsibility, but for who he was. Despite everything they’d been through, the relationship they’d formed, and the fact that she’d stuck around when she really hadn’t needed to...Heather had never actually said she loved him. And he hadn’t dared make a case of it for fear of getting an answer he didn’t want. But in that one moment, at last, he didn’t actually need to hear it.

Gabe felt her watching him...seeing the air crushed from him...the pain on his face that he himself couldn’t feel anymore, and the diminishing of the light of his aura. He felt her sadness deepen to sorrow, then to desperation, and back, and back again until even she couldn’t tell what she feeling except that she wanted it to be over and somehow better. He felt the ache in her swallowing every bit of strength she might have used to save herself, and then he caught the briefest glimpse of a dark confirmation that she should never have let herself feel this way in the first place. She was dying as surely as he was, only hers was starting from within.

Gabe felt the Qi Dragon rising inside him as it tried to find a way out, and at the same time he felt his thoughts begin to slow and crowd his narrowing perceptions. Somewhere deep within his body his lungs were screaming for air, and his muscles were straining against an unrelenting, compassionless strength that wanted nothing so much as to see him dead.

But by then, he had already fallen beyond those pains. Even the Qi Dragon was fading from his thoughts as it rose to the surface in preparation to exit with his soul and free the two Iglas. Those things were minor. All he carried with him as he descended into that creeping darkness was the bond. The touch of her mind. And the knowledge that, if only for a moment, she would live past him this time. There was always a chance for her. It was enough.

Then he was falling.

And he felt...hope?

He hit the ground hard.

Gabe’s eyes snapped open and he sucked in a desperate breath as he saw Aka Manah flash by with his ghostly blade leading. The god slashed at the tendrils as fast as they could come, and his remaining scraps of red-gold magic rose to shatter any that made it through. The darkness around Gabe suddenly dissolved into smoke and left him alone in the mud for one instant, and he looked up to find the creature just above him with all of its eyes focusing on the new threat.

Gabe’s thoughts tried to crowd back in all at once, demanding attention for pains and questions and actions and fears, but he fumbled at them and couldn’t grasp a single one. His whole body felt ten times too heavy, and all he really wanted to do was fall back into the soft earth and close his eyes again.

But there was that hope...

He lifted his hand and saw the two Iglas still there, still glowing faintly against the surrounding darkness. Then he lifted his other and saw the rime blade glistening in the rain.

The mouths on the creature above him moved, but he could hear nothing.

Everything seemed too slow.

Distant.

He was very tired.

But that hope...like a light...

Gabe found himself suddenly on his feet, and he raised the rime blade to ram it into the creature above him. He leaned in with both hands on the hilt until it was completely buried in that spider body, and the monster stiffened at the touch of the ice. Several eyes swiveled back to pin him where he stood, and the tendrils around him stopped and redirected, flowing back to bind him while the others fought the god to a standstill nearby. The darkness of the body seemed to simply part around the blade to accept it, and Gabe felt the pain again as he was bound arms and legs to be held there until the rest could come and fully encase him once more. He dug deep to gather every remaining scrap of magic to pour into the blade in the hope that he could somehow do any kind of damage to something made of nothing. But even as he did, he understood that there would be no killing the darkness. You couldn’t hurt something that didn’t exist. It was always there, waiting to rush back in. You could only ever dispel it for a time.

Though, actually...

Gabe pulled back his power and found the easiest pattern in his limited arsenal, and he crammed all of it in until it held and flowed from his will into reality. Then he loosed it into the only place his bound hands would let him—straight into the rime blade. The charm coursed up the length of the sword, first filling it from within, then spilling out in a million diverging points as it refracted across the crystalline blade. Gabe felt himself screaming as he held it there while the tendrils tried more and more frantically to rip him away... And then every eye across the creature’s body went wide, and a dozen new heads formed atop the thing with identical expressions of terror writ on their faces.

The flash charm exploded.

The first shards of light burst from the creature’s body in ones and twos, lancing out to pierce the dark hide with rays of brilliant bright. Then they came by the dozens and the hundreds, and Gabe’s hearing suddenly returned just in time to catch the screech of unearthly agony that could only come from a creature who had never known pain finally feeling every bit of it. The light blazed out from within, scouring holes from every direction, and Gabe twisted the sword to make the rays turn like razor edges and slice the monster apart. All at once the scream rose to an impossible wail, then the thing blasted into wisps and nothing to scatter in the air around him. The creature vanished, and the only things left were five bright spots of colored light hanging in the air.

Gabe tried to go to them, but the Iglas didn’t wait for him to get there.

The Qi Dragon suddenly rose and opened, and Gabe felt his back arch as the impossibly vast power flowed through him. It burned at the edges of his mind as it poured eagerly into the empty space made for it, and he could do nothing but let it come while the vastness threatened to rip him completely apart. He felt the rime blade shatter in his grip, and his soul nearly did the same. He was nothing to that primal power but a conduit, and it cared not at all for what it left behind in its savage passing. It burned him and tore him down and threatened to lay bare for him the secrets of all existence inside a mind unfit to hold even the smallest fraction of them. It built and built until he was certain that he would burst from it...

And then, just as before, it was over. He felt the Igla settle in the Dragon heavily, joining the others there and adding to their song while his raw mind was slowly returned to him.

Then it happened four more times...

Gabe woke to find Heather above him, tears cutting streaks down her face as she held his head. The dark smoke was hovering in a sphere around them, and he sensed the Qi Dragon curling back up into its hole, now full and content and finally complete as all seven Iglas joined in a low harmony.

Finished.

He couldn’t believe it.

He wanted to close his eyes again and sleep forever, and he wanted to jump up and do a little dance. Though he could already tell he definitely didn’t have enough strength for the latter. Then relief washed through the bond, burning away the fear and pain and worry until all that was left was the feel of her. Heather gasped and pulled him in, holding him up as much as holding him close, and he let her stay there for as long as he could stand it. She was crushing the air out of him, but it was worth it.

Gabe finally gave her a little pat on the back. “You’re very strong,” he croaked.

She laughed through a sob and loosened her grip just enough, then buried her face in his shoulder. “I thought—”

“I know,” he said.

She shook her head firmly. “No. I really thought you were—”

“I know,” he said again, punctuating it with a little pulse of contentment.

She stayed there for a moment, catching her breath and ensuring he was really still with her. “I do, um...” She sniffed, then squeezed him a little too hard again. “I mean, I really do—”

“Hey, I said I know,” he replied.

She laughed and finally held him out far enough to meet his eyes. “You have to stop saying that.”

“I...will.”

Then Gabe caught a glimpse of her arms and he couldn’t help but gasp in shock. He scrambled up to sitting as best he could, then reached up and grabbed her hands. He turned them over even as he noticed the same on himself, and Heather gasped the same way as they examined their skin.

Everywhere the darkness had touched them they were now stained with it. Not pigment, but a deep, undulating emptiness that seemed to eat into their auras straight down to their souls. Gabe felt the ache of it even as he looked, and he saw the same reaction cross Heather’s face. It was just like what Aka Manah had on his hand, but this was everywhere and practically swallowing their bodies beneath their heads.

He tried to say something, to wonder aloud what they should do next...then the dark smoke around them began swirling, and it slowly started coming back together.

“Oh no,” Heather whispered.

“Yes,” Aka Manah said as he limped toward them. “You cannot kill what is not alive. You can only dismiss it for a time.” Then he held up his own right hand, showing them the dark emptiness crawling up his arm to disappear beneath the rolled cuff. “A gift from our old friend Phillip. When I ripped out his heart and sent him spiraling into the Ether storm, he left me a small reminder. The Endless Dark is coming for us all one way or another, though you two rather outdid yourselves with it.” He dropped his hand. “And neither of you have the benefit of being a god to keep it in check, so I can only imagine how uncomfortable it is about to become. That ache is the dissolution of your soul, by the way. Quite a unique and exquisite pain, if you’re a connoisseur like myself.”

Gabe stared down at his arms, at the nothingness eating him from within. “So even when we win, we don’t really.”

“Oh no,” the god replied, watching with mild interest as the smoke began to reform into a loose shape. “One cannot hope to reach into an all-consuming void and not lose something to it. We are using flamethrowers to combat a flood. There’s plenty of light and steam, certainly, but its not a winning strategy.”

Heather stood and helped Gabe do the same, and he was shocked at how much effort it took to get there. He had to take a few breaths before continuing, and that gave him time to think. He only wished he any ideas to show for it.

“What do we do?” he asked, finally.

The god nodded and watched more of the dark smoke congealing around them, already coming back together into a rough outline of something. Then he turned to raise a hand to the air. His face screwed up in concentration, and beads of sweat formed on his brow as he slowly carved a small portal before him. It flickered as if it wanted to vanish immediately again, but then the door was opening.

“We finish this,” Aka Manah said before stepping in.

Gabe turned to Heather as if she could somehow explain what that meant, but she only shrugged and gestured to the door with her sword. “In for a penny,” she said.

He looked down at the nothingness eating them both alive, and he groaned. Then he opened his palm and stared at the seven points of colored light that represented the cornerstones of reality itself. He had them all. He’d actually done it. But he didn’t know what to do next. He guessed this was probably where he should be coming up with some kind of amazing plan to save them and the rest of the world, while also somehow foiling Aka Manah...but he had nothing. He was so far out of his depth now that he wasn’t sure he could even see the shoreline of his understanding anymore. Nobody had thought to theorize about what he should do if he actually happened to win. Almost as if nobody had expected him to. Though to be fair, even he hadn’t considered the question worth asking.

He looked up to find the smoke coalescing into something vaguely man-like, and its hand began lifting toward him. He had no magic left, and the thing was seconds away from coming back together. He had no clue how they could possibly win against something like that.

Heather’s lips were on his then, kissing him hard for just a moment and putting her hand on his chest as if to feel his heartbeat. The bond rang with her trust in him.

She leaned back and smiled. “Don’t screw up.” Then she shoved him into the portal.

CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

“Heather and I are going on a little mission tomorrow to get a new home base, and it feels like things are going to be pretty busy after that. So this chapter might be my last for a while. I’m actually surprised I was able to get so much down in just these few weeks, and if I’m being honest, I don’t have much more to say here. The first ten chapters were about me and my dad, and looking back now I almost can’t remember who I was then. The next ten were mostly about Heather and my own insecurities, and reading those has been a lesson in how much someone can grow if they have the right incentive. But these ten haven’t really had a central theme, have they? They’ve been about Heather again, about my mom, and a little about life in general. And I haven’t had to try as hard to get them written. Like all of it is getting easier. Closer to the surface.

Heather has talked about how she becomes more complex with each manifestation on Earth, and how this time she finally feels like she’s expanding beyond the limits of her archetype. And I can’t help but feel like I’m doing something similar. Change is powerful magic. Belief too. Put them together, and it turns out you might even make a real person out of a walking cardboard cutout of one.”

-Excerpt from Chapter Thirty, CONscience

GABE FELL BACK INTO the portal and landed within, and he immediately looked up to where Heather was still standing outside the veil. She lifted her sword with agonizing slowness, then turned to face the darkness.

“No,” he said, scrambling to his feet and pitching himself toward the portal...only to watch it vanish the instant before he got there. “No!” He reached for his magic, finding nothing there, then began scraping at his own soul to pull free enough energy to open a way out. It didn’t matter that he’d kill himself doing it, and that he didn’t even know how. All he could think in that moment was that Heather had just sacrificed herself, and he’d let it happen. Again.

“At least one of you seems to understand what is at stake,” Aka Manah said, lowering his hand and sagging with exhaustion.

Gabe turned and charged straight at the god, grabbing his shirt in both hands and pulling him in until their faces were nearly touching. “Open it,” he growled.

Aka Manah’s face went carefully blank. “I will not.”

“Open it!” Gabe screamed, shaking the man and nearly overbalancing both of them with it.

‘Enough!” the god said, producing the blue blade from somewhere and holding it to the side of Gabe’s neck. “You have moments only before that construct kills her, Gabriel. Or before it follows us here. Or before the darkness already inside us consumes our spirits and leaves us hollow, useless shells awaiting the suffocating death that is even now coming for this reality!”

Gabe felt his face contorting in rage, and his fists tightened in the god’s shirt. He could think of nothing but Heather. Nothing but getting back to her. How had he not felt her intention through the bond? How had he not felt her deciding to kill herself?

“Do you understand, idiot boy?” Aka Manah pressed. “Moments! The longer we wait, the more likely it is that she dies.”

Gabe wanted to murder the man then, and if he’d had even a scrap of power left, he might have tried. Then hands were suddenly on their shoulders, pushing them away from one another. And weak as they both were, neither man could resist much.

“Stop it!” Lauren said, forcing them to separate before stepping between them. She looked to Aka Manah first. “You dragged me here for some reason, but it wasn’t to watch you kill our son! Put the knife away.” Then she turned to Gabe. “I’ve been a terrible mother to you, I know that. I’m not a strong or brave person, and I don’t have any magical answers to make up for what I did.” She held out her hands and they were shaking. “I was a coward. I was a drunk. And I ran... That’s it.” She awkwardly wiped a tear from her cheek, then seemed to pull a few scraps of dignity back from somewhere. “But whatever is happening here seems bigger than all of us. If you really do somehow have the power to end whatever this is, Gabe...don’t make the world suffer because of us.”

Gabe wanted to lash out at her too, to loose everything that had been building inside him for years, and to scour himself clean of all the hurt and sadness and guilt. For a long time he hadn’t thought he felt anything for the woman anymore apart from apathy, but in that moment he did. He blamed her. And he hated her. For three decades he’d thought about this reunion and what he might say to the mother who’d helped ruin his life, and he had a thousand fictional conversations to draw from as he considered his response. He held all the power now, and he finally had his moment to use it.

But then he turned back to look at Heather, moving slowly on the far side of the veil as she lifted her sword against the first diffuse attack from the creature. And at seeing her...his life didn’t actually feel quite so ruined anymore. Nor, in fact, did it feel entirely his.

“Fine,” he said at last, letting the warring emotions drain out of him. “What do we do?”

Aka Manah looked like he had more to say, but he seemed just as willing to put it away. He did the same with his blade. “We finish the Endless Dark.”

Gabe pointed back to the battle where Heather’s sword was slowly slicing off the first of the tendrils. “We just tried that! And why isn’t time frozen while we’re here? The Endless Dark is going to kill her!”

“We are at the limits of my power.” Aka Manah said quickly. “I cannot take us any deeper. I have just enough left to do what must be done. And that out there is no more the Endless Dark than your discarded fingernail clipping is Gabriel Delling. This...” he began. Then he lifted his hands and painstakingly brought them together as if collapsing a tin can, and the world around them shifted until half of it behind the god was suddenly consumed in utter black. He sagged and let out a long breath. “...is the Endless Dark.”

Gabe had no words. He’d seen it before, and yet repetition had done nothing to dull the sheer horror of the emptiness stretching out before him. The edge of the veil behind Aka Manah was ragged and fraying as it trailed into that unfathomable emptiness, and Gabe couldn’t look at it for long before he too felt like he was being pulled in and consumed with it. The Ether beneath the veil bled out like air from a leaking liferaft, drifting into the abyss only a short way before it simply...ceased. He watched vast concepts and unfocused potential pulled out from the safety of the Ether, only to be immediately rendered down to component parts before vanishing altogether. And in the few seconds he could stand to look, not a single thing managed to break free. He felt the ache in his own skin echoing that abyss, and he knew then that the end was already eating into reality itself.

It had started.

And it was unstoppable.

The Phillip creature had seemed impossible to defeat. But this... It was so far beyond. All the power in the universe couldn’t stop it.

Gabe tore his eyes away from the devouring nothing and looked back to find Heather still there and still fighting. She was buying him time, trusting that he would figure something out and save them all. Of course he hadn’t felt anything from her in the bond...she didn’t actually think she was sacrificing herself. That’s how much she believed he would come through. So now he had to.

“How?” he asked, directing it as much to himself as to the god.

Aka Manah took a deep breath and seemed to steady himself before replying. Then he held out his hands again and forced them once more to shift the world around them. Everything blurred to Gabe’s right and the god collapsed to one knee. Then suddenly there was a massive wall next to them.

No...not a wall, Gabe realized. A monstrosity.

Very few things would make Gabe turn his back to the Endless Dark, but this did it. The construct was massive, both in physical size as it extended in every direction beyond his sight, and in power as it seemed to rise far beyond anything he had ever felt. In a way, it was glorious as it stood shining next to the Dark, holding it back with incredible strength as if designed to keep at bay. But in another, deeper way...it was also one of the single worst things he had ever seen.

It was made of...parts. Writhing. Straining. Arms and legs and torsos and heads of all sizes and shapes were twisted together, pulling against and with one another around clockwork mechanisms made of something like pure magic. The thing bulged and breathed as he watched it, muscles creaking against an unseen push, and a low moan escaped from somewhere to be taken up along the length in a cacophony of torment that faded away down one side. He saw a large hand squeezing a skull from behind, and a massive leg shaking as it supported the infinite mound of flesh above it. A huge eye rolled toward him and saw....watching the Dark...watching him...

In that moment, Gabe couldn’t decide which of the two terrors he was more afraid of.

“The Precept Boundary.” Aka Manah wheezed behind him. “This is what has been holding the Dark without...and what has, for some time now, been holding a bit of dark within as well.”

Gabe searched for where he’d heard the term before, and suddenly remembered the night of the ritual that had planted the god in his head. “This is the wall you were trapped behind? What Gwendal wanted to pull you through to get you to earth?”

Aka Manah limped up next to him, holding his stained arm to his side as if he could barely move it. “Yes. A measure designed by the old gods. They knew of the threat posed by the Endless Dark, and they did not wish this reality to end any more than you or I do. So they conceived of this...device.”

Gabe glanced back to find Heather still battling in the real world, still running and slashing as the monster tried to end her quickly so it could come find them. Then he tore his eyes away and stared back at his own horrors. His stomach clenched hard. “Who did they make this out of?”

Aka Manah let a curious frown slip onto his face. “Themselves, of course.”

Gabe turned to fully examine the god for the first time since getting there, and he could immediately see how exhausted he was. The man looked every day of his father’s age, with another two decades added since coming to the island, and the emptiness staining him had crept up to his neck so quickly that it could almost been seen growing. The god’s real eye was red and weary, and the blue fate eye was nearly bulging out of its socket as if trying to escape. If this was an act, it was the best Gabe had ever seen.

“My god,” Gabe said finally.

“Probably,” Aka Manah replied. “Though it depends on which version of which god you happen to believe in. Some of them are still in the Ether, just too large to physically manifest anymore. And some... Well, some were never invited to the party.”

“You?” Gabe asked before he could stop himself. He knew he should be moving, doing something, but he had to understand first. He had to know why any of this mattered.

The god straightened a little, seemingly costing himself quite a bit for it. “I am evil, Gabriel. Why would I ever have an interest in saving anything?” He chuckled bitterly, then waved at the construct. “Though in retrospect, I should probably thank them. No, it was only the righteous who were called to contribute. They sacrificed themselves to hold the Endless Dark at bay from the earth, likely stranding her alone in the heavens in the process. And as a bonus, they chose to gather up their adversaries and strand them all within as well—ostensibly to maintain the balance of power in their absence. The worst humanity could dream up in the form of devils and demons and lords of malice, all dropped inside a pocket in this impenetrable wall to be the first consumed by the coming end should the defense ever fail. My home for hundreds of your years...until someone was convinced to pull me out.”

“So what?” Gabe said, glancing back to Heather again. She was still fighting. “Why don’t we let this wall thing just stop it then?”

Aka Manah pushed at the air once more, shifting the perspective and this time falling to both knees with the effort. He raised a shaking hand and gestured to a spot on the wall where the flesh had all turned gray and ashen. “Because it has already failed.”

Gabe watched as thin wisps of the Darkness passed through unseen cracks in the surface. It felt familiar, and his skin ached with it. “Okay then. What’s the plan? I have the Iglas, so can I just...” He waved toward the Dark. “...blast it all away or something?”

Aka Manah pushed himself to his feet with a groan. “You should have to do very little, in fact. You are merely the vessel bringing them here. The Iglas should do all the heavy lifting.”

Gabe turned his hand to look at the seven glowing lights embedded there. His arm hurt with even that much movement now, and his legs ached to the bone. He could feel himself diminishing already. “How?”

The god shrugged. “I can’t possibly know. But they are clearly pieces of a greater whole. I suggest bringing them together to see what happens.” He winced and lifted his good hand to the opposite shoulder. “And I suggest doing so soon. None of us have time for further exposition. Give the Endless Dark an end.”

Gabe glanced back to Heather just as she was slowly ducking beneath a dozen tendrils that were trying to wrap her up. He knew she had to be exhausted and hurting at least as much as he was, and she couldn’t possibly keep up the fight much longer. The tendrils would get her, or the emptiness would consume her, or maybe something worse. He looked down to the Qi Dragon.

Everything was happening so fast. He was working on partial explanations and uncertain motivations with cosmic powers he couldn’t even begin to understand, and he was just a regular guy who’d once wandered into the wrong robbery. He wanted Hwei-ru there to tell him if this was right, or Dante to give him some sage advice about courage. Even James would have been nice to tell him to get his ass moving. But he had nothing. No one. Just him facing the apocalypse with the expectation that he would somehow know what to do about it now that he was there. And just a handful of light to make it work. The only thing left to do was try.

He felt the Qi Dragon poised within him, no longer slumbering but now coiled in wait as it held the seven facets that somehow represented the key to all reality. Right there. Inside him. Each Igla had left its mark on him as they had passed through, and he felt them now orbiting one another like atoms trying to find a stable configuration. And beyond that, he could feel the vast Dark waiting to consume it all—only held at bay by the Precept Boundary with all its horrible, magnificent weight. And he could feel where it was leaking...and where it would inevitably fail. As it always had.

Then he could feel Earth beyond that, resting atop reality like an island floating in an impossibly massive sea—which itself was floating atop others. He could suddenly see how it was all connected, how their position in the veil let them be at all places simultaneously, while not actually being anywhere at all. And he could see how the Iglas were pinned to existence through the veil and into the Ether like stitches holding the fabric tight around an inflatable ball—one that contained all the universe and countless worlds teeming with life and legends of their own. It was all there now, all ready for him to understand. Every explanation was sitting there in his mind for him to take up and fully grasp. He finally had the answers.

Then he looked back to find Heather pinned by several tendrils and fighting for her life, and it was immediately clear that she wouldn’t last any longer. She was spent. There was no time for the why or how. Heather needed him. Now.

Gabe found the Iglas where they were swarming and he immediately took up the first, snatching its amber light from the air like a firefly. He could feel the depth of its power out beyond him in the universe, and he tried hard not to think about the paradox he was creating by being inside himself inside the veil, holding a thing that was itself a representation of something that was reality without actually existing. That would have broken him. So instead, he grabbed all the others. He pulled the blue one in next, and then the red, followed by an amethyst, an emerald, a fiery orange, and a deep indigo that seemed to thrum with potential as he touched it. Then he held them all there as if they were merely a handful of trinkets, before curling his fingers around them and...squeezing.

At first the Iglas tried to push away from one another like magnets meeting identical poles, but Gabe held them there with every scrap of his will. He formed a cage around them with his mind, picturing nothing else but the Iglas fused together, and then drawing the borders of that image in tighter and tighter until there was nowhere for the things to go but where he directed. He felt the massive powers out there responding with it, bending and flexing as they moved ever closer, but he ignored it as he pushed harder.

He felt the first of the facets snap together in his mind and in his hand, and he looked with both sets of eyes as the amber and the blue joined along one side. And something out in the universe changed...

Then the others began snapping together, shifting and spinning and bending until each one fused to the next with cracks that reverberated through him and into reality like thunder. He felt powers moving, shifts along ley lines, magic spinning and tumbling and altering until everything within his senses was drifting with the momentum of what his tiny will was setting into motion. He felt it all converging with him, with that moment, building to a vast crescendo of dissonant songs that could each birth a universe as soon as destroy it...

And then all at once it settled into a single sweet melody that even he could follow, and he opened his palm to find a small white star nestled there.

“The seed.” A titan whispered.

The universe waited on him...

He cast it into the Darkness.

CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

“The only thing that’s really true is balance. It’s what everything in the universe is seeking, and it’s the reason most things do what they do. But that doesn’t always mean moving toward the middle. When you’re up against something truly terrible, sometimes the only way to even the scales is to be truly terrible yourself.”

-Excerpt from Chapter One, CONscience

EVERYTHING WAITED.

The seed drifted through space and time as it crossed through the veil and then the Ether and then the Precept Boundary to where the Endless Dark was devouring its way toward them. Gabe watched as that tiny shining light cut through each layer as if it wasn’t there, making its way unerringly toward the nothing like it knew exactly where to go and what to do. He saw it reach that ragged edge and cross beyond where everything else was being dissolved and consumed...and yet the little spark didn’t go out. It drifted into the Dark, lighting what couldn’t be lit and casting shadows on a void made of them. The Endless Dark tried to swallow it, tried to absorb it as it had all else, but each time the seed simply emerged through the consuming wave and continued on toward the heart of the void.

Gabe knew he was seeing far beyond anything he should be able to, and sensing things he had no right or ability to fathom. But he didn’t dare look away as the star forged ahead into the abyss. He could still feel the thing as it made its way out there, like a thin tether was connecting them, and it was still waiting on one more bit of input from him before it would finally release. It flew further and further in, carving a path into the emptiness, until at last, in much too short a time, it was at the heart of what should have been infinite. And it waited.

Gabe felt the pull of the seed, urging him to give it direction in the same way magic and the Ether both hungered for shapes to fill. So without thinking...he gave it one.

An end, Aka Manah had said. That felt fitting.

Gabe pulled the pattern from his mind and sent it through the tether, and it laid atop the vast construct of the seed like a shutter drawn over a light. But it felt right. It was the first magic he’d ever wielded. And if this worked, it would be the last he’d ever need.

Entropy.

The seed accepted the blueprint and began forming around it, changing itself to match while bending all the power of creation to make it true. It grew until it became a star in truth, and then a nova, and then the fine lines of it took root in every layer until finally it was a pulsing, blazing behemoth that even the Endless Dark could not contain.

Then it blossomed.

Light exploded from the seed, filling the Dark with a power so far beyond comprehension that Gabe could only grasp at the outer edges of it—and still he was nearly washed away in its glory. It burned into the Dark, scouring it from every angle into eternity until there was no part of it that hadn’t felt the touch...

Then all at once, it collapsed. The light fell into itself, rolling back in blazing waves until it was a star again, and then a beacon, and then the tiny seed simply hovering at the center of the abyss like a pinprick dot on an empty canvas. It looked for a moment as if there might be more, as if this had merely been a prelude...but then the light slowly began to fade.

He didn’t understand. The Endless Dark seemed to have stopped, lurking at the edge of the veil without actually advancing anymore, but the seed had made no apparent impact. He looked for any signs of the entropy—a decay among that black that might indicate that anything had happened—but there was nothing. No withering, no shattering...nothing. Something had gone wrong.

He followed the tether back to the seed and found only a kind of confusion there. The input it had been expecting was meant to have been far more complex. It had been prepared to create galaxies, and planets, and oceans, and life in the trillions upon trillions, and it had been designed to be used by someone far more prepared for it than him. He caught a fleeting glimpse of a huge titan, a Creator, who might have wielded the seed to make an entire new universe from the void. Not one pattern. Not one human. It had never been meant for this.

A horror began creeping up in Gabe’s gut as he watched the seed slowly fade there in the Darkness, and then as it split back into its seven parts. He watched the Iglas drift away to new pockets in the universe, finding new places to hide until the day an actual Creator retrieved them for their intended purpose. And then they were simply gone and he had nothing left. He’d misused a tool meant for a far greater goal—the greatest, he now realized—and any explanations that might have been waiting for him were now dead with the light.

He found himself on his knees and breathing hard, and when he reached up to his face it came away wet with blood that had leaked from...everywhere. He’d done something wrong. He’d screwed up by diving in without knowing. And now all of reality would suffer for it. He really had lost it all for the sake of one person.

Gabe looked back to find Heather now bound in the tendrils with only her sword arm still free and desperately slashing at anything coming near, and he watched in impotent panic as one dark tentacle crept up behind her to slowly wrap around her throat. She nearly dropped her blade as her air was cut off, and Gabe knew she would be dead in moments. And he would get to watch it play out as slowly as possible. He looked to his hand and found all the lights gone in the brand of the Qi Dragon. It was a total defeat. The end.

He looked back up to where Heather was still thrashing, knowing then that he deserved to watch and suffer. He could do nothing to save her now. “Come on,” he whispered, hoping only for a miracle.

Her sword slashed blindly around her, cutting the air as much as the creature, and he could see her face contorting in pain and panic as she fought.

“Come on!” Gabe begged the unhearing gods behind him.

Heather’s arms flexed against her bonds, pulling with her impossible strength to no avail, and her blade slashed at the flying tendrils only to have them immediately reform around her.

“Heather!” Gabe screamed.

He watched her eyes drifting closed, and her arm losing strength, but still she managed to slice one tendril coming in to strike her face, turning it to smoke. Another vanished in a cloud as it tried to bind that arm, and still another disappeared as she severed it with a wild slash to one side. He saw the life draining out of her as her blade slowed, and she seemed barely able to lift it anymore as one final tendril raced in to finally trap her blade. She sliced as it came...and the piece hit the ground.

Time seemed to slow further then as the creature looked down at its severed limb lying in the mud, dark essence pouring out of it like blood. And then it screamed, a sound that Gabe could hear even through the veil. The bindings around Heather flew away while the creature recoiled in pain, and she suddenly dropped to the ground into an awkward crouch as she sucked in great gasps of air. She watched the monster studying the shortened tentacle and puzzling over why a new one wasn’t sprouting in its place. Then she looked to the quivering mass of darkness at her feet.

The grin that formed on her face was feral.

It was in that moment, he imagined, that the Endless Dark first knew true fear.

Gabe watched Heather in disbelief as she began dismantling the creature piece by piece, first slicing off huge chunks of it, then settling into a rhythm as she butchered the thing in small satisfying bits. There was no smoke. There were no new tendrils to replace the old. The monster tried to run, but Heather and her silvery sword were faster.

“Yes,” Aka Manah said behind him.

Gabe turned to find the god standing, holding his arm out in front of him and brushing away the stains there like ash. Gabe looked to his own arms and found the emptiness cracking off of him like dried mud in the sun, revealing new skin beneath as he frantically brushed it away. He felt a smile grow on his face despite everything. “It worked!”

“Yes!” the god agreed, dragging himself up by sheer will and tearing his shirt open to brush away the last of the stains. “Well done!”

Gabe looked to the Endless Dark then, to where it had been eating its way to reality, and he saw that it was now contracting onto itself like a dying spider. The ragged edge of the veil stopped fraying and began reknitting itself, and the Ether that had been drifting out suddenly stopped and began flowing back beneath the veil. It had worked. Against all odds, he’d actually done it.

Aka Manah moved over to Gabe and pulled him to his feet before clapping him on the back. “This was the purpose for which you were created, Gabriel. I saw the potential in you, and you are finally standing at the apex of it! You have completed the first part of your destiny.”

Gabe almost nodded agreement, relieved as he was in that moment. Then he stopped and pulled away. “First part?” he asked, as the dread reemerged.

Aka Manah’s smile still seemed genuine. “Yes. You have given our foe an end. Now it is for us to deliver it.”

Gabe could only shake his head. His mind felt raw, and every thought that tried to form burned like acid in a wound. “I don’t...um...” he held up his arms to where the stain was still flaking away. “It’s done. We won.”

The god stared back at him, then slowly turned toward the Dark. “Oh, Gabriel. What did you think we were doing here? What did you think the Iglas were for?”

Gabe watched the Dark as it collapsed further, gaining edges far in the distance, becoming finite, thickening...writhing. His whole body started to go numb. “We were supposed to kill the Endless Dark. We did that. It worked.”

The god’s expression softened and looked very nearly sympathetic. “Yes, it did work. But not to kill it.” He pointed to where the Darkness was condensing further still, congealing on itself until it was a mass that was a fraction of its original size but that still might have filled a star system edge to edge. And it was moving. “We came to bring it to life.”

Gabe watched in dawning horror as pieces of the Dark began squirming in that mass, reaching up out of it with tendrils, then hands, then screaming faces. Ten of them. Then a thousand. Then millions and more as a cascade of life and realness spread through the Endless Dark like a virus, rippling through until every bit of it was infected and rising. He saw figures of men crawl out of that primordial abyss to flop screeching and helpless on the shores of the veil, and they were soon followed by half-formed figures made of fins and blades and gnashing teeth. They fell on one another first, tearing themselves apart in an orgy of new flesh and inky blood, and the veil became a sea of carnage as the Dark discovered pain and violence and the pleasures to be found in them.

“What did I do?” Gabe asked no one, and expecting no answer. He already knew.

“You have given us a chance,” Aka Manah replied softly. “We could never have defeated an unkillable force of death. It would have been a massacre.” He pulled in a long breath. “But this...this is now a war.”

Gabe’s mind began shutting down as the implications finally rolled in. He could barely string the words together as they came. “You... You tricked me. Again.”

“I did not,” the god replied. “Not this time. I suspected, yes. And I hoped. I certainly planned to within an inch of my life to get you here. But from the moment you stepped into the veil, your actions were your own. They had to be. There would have been no other way to direct the seed. No other way to save Heather.”

He took Gabe by the shoulders then and turned him like a puppet to where Heather was even then cutting the quivering remains of the monster in half. One side fell to the ground, and the other she kicked to send it tumbling over the inside edge of the crater—presumably into the lava still waiting there. Then she collapsed to sit in the mud, breathing hard and obviously exhausted...but alive.

Aka Manah turned Gabe back to face him. “You have done the impossible by giving us a chance against an enemy that no one has ever bested in the countless iterations of this universe. An enemy that should be indestructible by its very nature. You have used the forces of creation to halt the waning of existence and bring the descending dark into the light for the first time since the dawn of it, Gabriel. And now, because of you, we may fight death on our own terms.”

Gabe saw the hope in the god’s eyes, and even in his numbness he could see that it was real. No deceptions or distractions this time. This was what Aka Manah had wanted from the beginning. And for once, he looked almost human.

“This is my fault,” Gabe said, turning back to watch the Dark killing itself in the tens of thousands. New creatures were rising up now, things with many legs and arms and wings that tore themselves from the pool to fall upon the older versions—until yet newer and deadlier monsters rose to replace them. Distance meant nothing in the veil, he knew, but even so the screams sounded very far away. The Dark was seemingly at the edge of...the universe, maybe? Reality? But it was inching nearer as he looked.

“Isn’t it beautiful?” Aka Manah asked beside him. “A wholly new entity forming, finding life, taking shape, and then evolving before our eyes. Look at how part of it is finding the most efficient killing forms, bigger blades, sharper teeth. And yet many of them still retain the basic human shape they first acquired.” He sounded wistful. “Almost as if they can’t quite abandon it. Made in their creator’s image, perhaps?”

The god laughed as if he thought it was funny, but Gabe nearly vomited.

Then Aka Manah sighed and laid a gentle hand on Gabe’s shoulder. “All good things must end. This moment is sweet, but it will be sweeter still when we’ve won for good and found ourselves alone in a universe without an expiration date. Come, let us make the first strike while they are still confused and weak.”

Gabe moved for several steps under the god’s direction before finally gathering enough of his senses to drag himself to a stop. “Wait,” he said, trying to buy time to dig through the wool burying his thoughts. “I don’t understand.”

Aka Manah faced him toward the wall of the Precept Boundary and pointed to the dead hole where the Dark had been creeping in. “If we wish to fight an army, we must have one of our own. And where better to start than the worst creatures humanity has ever conceived?”

Gabe could barely work up the strength to shake his head. “You want...wait.” He reached up and rubbed his face hard, coming away with dried blood on both palms. “You want me to open the...gates of hell?”

“A little dramatic,” the god replied. “But, yes. Who better to kill a monstrosity than another one? Though I certainly can’t do it myself. The Precept Boundary was made specifically to stop Umbras like me. But you, on the other hand...”

Gabe stumbled backward. “I...no.”

“You must,” the god said, following. “The Dark is weak now, unfocused and vulnerable. If we strike early, we may cut their forces down considerably. Save countless lives across the universe. There are worlds out there that you could not imagine, and they are counting on you as surely as your own. Though none of them know it. Or will thank you for it. Such is the curse we must bear, you and I.”

“I can’t,” Gabe said, holding up his hands and finding nothing in them. No Iglas, no magic, not even a normal sword. “I used everything to get to this point.”

The god stopped and let Gabe continue to back away. “Yes,” he said, before his face suddenly dropped and he took a long, deep breath that seemed to reach deeper than just his lungs. Then he turned and shifted the veil to make Lauren appeared in front of him. Her eyes were wide and full of fear. Aka Manah sighed. “I know.”

It took Gabe much longer than it should have to put the pieces together.

“No...” he said, unable to think of anything better.

The god opened his mouth to speak, but Gabe cut him off with a slash of his hand. “No!” The sound of his own voice sliced through his malaise and excavated a pocket of strength, and he finally stopped to stand his ground.

Aka Manah shook his head. “I did not wish it to come to this. Truly. But I did tell you that sacrifices would have to be made if we—”

“No!” Gabe said again, this time even more firmly. “You got me here, then you got me to unleash those...things on reality. But there is no way in hell that I’m letting you do this. Absolutely not.”

“What’s happening?” his mother asked, the fear making her voice shake.

Aka Manah ignored her as he spoke. “You are not thinking rationally, Gabriel. You must consider the lives that will be lost as a result of your inaction. I appreciate the irony of an evil god thinking of the greater good, but every hand turned against our foe is one we need not muster ourselves. Do not be fooled by the pittance of the force you see sparring out there. They will come in the trillions. Larger and deadlier by far than what you see. And if they are left undisturbed by us until they are ready to attack, we will be scarcely better off than if we had never dragged them screaming into reality in the first place. And you may be assured that they will converge on earth as a start.”

Gabe held his head as he shook it. “You have my answer,” he said, taking several quick steps toward them. “I admit to spending most of my life not knowing where to draw the line, but this is it. I watched my father die for the sake of this cause, for you to be here. I won’t watch you sacrifice my mother to it too.”

Aka Manah stared at him for a long time, letting the words fade away until only the screams of the Endless Dark and Lauren’s panicked breathing filled the air between them. Then he produced his ghostly blue blade from somewhere and tossed it to stick in the ground at Gabe’s feet. “You won’t have to. It can only be done by you.”

Gabe looked down at the little knife and felt his whole body seize up. So much had happened. So much of it his fault. He turned toward the Endless Dark and saw the new horrors it had created, things of gaping maws and blade-tipped legs scuttling over the dead and dying. Each was faster and stronger than the last, and each was killed in turn by something better. And every one of them his fault. He imagined those nightmares rolling over earth like a tide...

“I...no,” he said, even as he felt his conviction draining.

Aka Manah saw, and his own expression turned to sorrow. “You must.”

“Must what?” Lauren asked, her voice now fully panicked. “Let go of me, Alexander!”

Gabe bent and picked up the knife. “I won’t.”

He made as if to throw the blade aside, but his hand wouldn’t let him. He tried again, but this time his arm refused to even make the gesture. He searched for a geas of some kind binding him to keep the blade against his will, but there was nothing in him except doubt, and fear, and hate...and guilt...

“You know it is the right thing,” Aka Manah whispered, holding Lauren tightly. “There is much power in this act. And you may use it to send the darkest parts of humanity against its foulest enemies. None will mourn the loss of Lucifer, nor Baal, nor Fenris. But they will buy the survival of untold worlds, including our own. I will take command of them, and any who survive will serve me for the good of our world. With this one final act, you may save us for eternity.”

Gabe looked down at the knife, feeling its ghostly weight more in purpose than in presence, and it flickered in his hand to mirror the resolve in his heart. It vanished and reappeared, coming and going as he made up his mind and then lost it again. And with each time he tried and failed to drop the thing, he was more certain that he wouldn’t.

He couldn’t.

The choice was obvious, really. He knew what was coming, and more than anyone else now, he knew what they could do. He couldn’t leave the world naked to this battle. Not alone. Not without a chance.

The knife firmed in his hand, and he stepped forward.

“Gabe? What...” his mother began as she squirmed in Aka Manah’s grip.

“I’m sorry you had to go through this,” Gabe said as he took another step. “It shouldn’t have been this way.”

She strained her arms and legs, trying to break free. “No! I...what’s happening? God! ...Please, Gabriel! I know I was horrible to you, but...not this! Please, not this!” She sobbed and threw herself against Aka Manah’s grip, finding some room to move in his weakness, but not enough. Not by far.

Gabe shook his head sadly, barely hearing the words anymore. He wanted to tell her how he’d felt as a little kid, looking out the window the day she’d left and hoping to see her pull back up in that dented green car. And then the next day...and then the next. He wanted to explain how he’d worried with every new town that she wouldn’t be able to find him, and how she wouldn’t be able to come back and rescue him in the night like he’d known she would. He’d known she would. And then how he’d felt months later when he finally realized...she wouldn’t. He wanted to tell her all of it, to make her feel it the way he suddenly did again almost thirty years later. He wanted to make her understand. To make himself understand.

But he couldn’t.

It was just his to keep.

Gabe stopped as he stood before his mother. “I hope...” He swallowed hard. “...I hope you find some peace. That’s really all I can give you now.”

He lifted the blade in front of her face, watching just over its edge as the tears streamed down her cheeks. Then he drifted it down, knowing every inch of what it would take from him to do this. He knew he would forever be altered by this one, terrible moment, and he knew now that he had no other choice. He held the blade to her throat as her sobs became high and pitiful, and for the first time he could see a bit of himself in her her features.

He turned the edge toward her skin...

Then he stabbed Aka Manah in the eye.

The god screamed in pain and rage as the bright blue fate eye poured blood down his face, and Lauren fell from his grasp to the ground.

“Hwei-ru! Now!” Gabe yelled, calling just as loudly inside himself and down through the veil where she had been waiting. A portal opened up beside him, and he pulled his mother up with both hands and shoved her hard into it. He saw the confusion on her face as she passed through into the waiting arms of Ken, and then everything beyond went slow as the door began to fade.

Gabe turned to find Aka Manah bent double and still screaming in fury as he yanked the blade from his mutilated eye. Then the god suddenly stood, blood sheeting down the side of his face.

“What have you done?!” Aka Manah bellowed, his voice filling the space and shaking the foundations of it. “You have doomed us!”

Gabe squared his shoulders. “Maybe. But on my terms! I’m not like you, and I never will be. If there’s going to be a fight, so be it. I’ll be right there on the front fucking lines! I’m obligated now, thanks to you.” Then he clenched his hands into fists. “But I won’t play the game your way. I don’t sacrifice pieces, asshole. I cheat.”

Aka Manah roared and suddenly expanded, his spirit pulling free of his body and surging high into the air to loom over it like a mushroom cloud. Long arms unfurled from that shadow and a jackal head formed atop to open a wide, gaping mouth overflowing with fangs. The god roared again, this time coming from both mouths, and the eyes in the spirit above lit with twin infernos.

“There will be a reckoning, Gabriel Delling!” Aka Manah howled, the voice booming like an infernal decree. “I am now forced to other options, and my fondness for you does not extend to overlooking betrayal!”

Gabe raised his eyes to meet the fires of the demon’s own. “Yeah, I kinda figured. But you’ll have to get in line. I’m a popular target these days.” Then he smiled and raised his fists, ready to fight the devil bare-handed. “But I figured you’d be proud of me for this. It’s not every day the master gets beaten at his own con with his own tricks. My point, motherfucker.”

The god reached out with long, taloned fingers to grab him, to pull him up and devour him like the insolent mortal he was...and then hands were grabbing the back of Gabe’s shirt and he was falling out of the veil.

CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

“Deep down most of us believe we’re frauds. But it’s only when we stop believing that it actually becomes true.

I know I’m making everything up as I go along. And I know I’m not following a neat path through this mess. If this were just a silly story maybe it would have a cleaner plot, or more predictable outcomes, or a nice clear through-line for all of us to follow to the foreshadowed resolution. But this is my life. And the real world doesn’t take the time to weave clever symbolism into the piles of dog crap it rains down on you. It just happens.

Someday maybe people smarter than I am will pore through the history of this chaos and find all the ways I could have done things better or differently. But honestly, that’s fine with me. That means there will still be people around to gripe about it, so we must not have screwed up too terribly. For now...I’m just dodging the piles and trying to be happy in the between places. And you know what? It’s mostly working.”

-Excerpt from Chapter Thirty, CONscience

GABE LANDED ON SOMETHING soft, and he immediately looked up to find black pillars looming above him. Then the soft thing underneath grunted and pushed him away, and Gabe rolled over to find Ken getting to his feet and staring at his own hands as if they’d just been to the moon and back. Gabe glanced around to find wall panels and crates and antiques of every shape and size, and he realized with a start that he was back in the Warrens. Their base. Home, he supposed.

Hwei-ru loomed over him a moment later. “You do not appear to be dead,” she said, her voice holding just a touch of something that might have been relief or disappointment. Then she bent and turned his right hand over to reveal the Qi Dragon now empty and inert. She pulled in a quick breath. “And you were...successful?”

Gabe pulled himself up to sit with a groan, and realized how much he was hurting. There was still ash coating his skin, preventing him from making a true assessment, but from the way he felt, he assumed he would be mostly one big bruise by the morning. Which still officially made this the least hurt he’d ever been after a fight.

He took a long breath, trying to line up everything that had happened into one easy narrative. “Technically...yes,” he said, then held up a hand before she could fall too far into relief. “Though, it’s clear now that none of us had any idea what winning actually meant.”

The smile that had been threatening to form on her face slid away, and her eyes went cold. “Explain.”

He nodded and opened his mouth to do just that, then suddenly remembered Heather. And Penny, and Dante, and James. They were all still stranded on the island...along with Reznick and Paul and probably dozens more who would love to see them dead...

Gabe shot up and didn’t bother keeping the panic from his voice. “They’re still there! How can I get back?”

Hwei-ru’s eyes went wide and she spread her hands. “I can get you back into the veil, but no farther. Though there is no telling what may be waiting for you there. Can you open a portal back out over the island?”

Gabe shook his head. “I’m tapped. No magic. And I don’t think I could even at full strength. I could try, but...” The pattern he’d seen Aka Manah use had been far too complex for him to grasp even a part of it, and there was no telling what would happen if he got trapped in the veil again. Or what might be waiting for him there. His right hand closed into a fist as he searched for a way, but his brain was still too raw to cooperate. He growled and punched his open palm hard. “They’re in danger!”

Ken had his phone out and was already dialing. He put it on speaker and held it out, and a moment later, it connected.

“Yeah?” James said, followed by a burst of garbled static.

“It’s me!” Gabe replied, moving closer. “Are you and Dante okay?”

There was a pause where he could almost imagine the signal flying to a tower before bouncing up to a satellite to find the stranded little island out there. Finally, another burst of static came through. “...all peachy keen. Just livin’ that island life.”

“And Penny?” Gabe asked, trying to fire out the questions as quickly as he could. He had at least one more to ask, but he knew they had to be in a certain order or he’d look like a selfish ass.

There was another pause. “...actually doing okay. We got her in the water and...woke up for a bit. Said to leave her there. Tough little...asked for a piece of gum.”

Gabe wanted to laugh in relief at that, but saved it for after his next question. Hopefully. “Have you found Heather? She’s at the top of—”

There was another burst of static and James suddenly came back on, talking quickly. “Shit! ...gotta go. Some Knights or...fucking thing. We’ll...get...look...promises...okay?” And then the connection went dead.

“Damnit!” Gabe said, fighting not to grab the phone and throw it across the room.

Ken tried to dial again, but there was no response this time. “They may have just gone under the trees,” he said, sounding more hopeful than convinced.

Gabe frantically tried to force his brain to give him a solution that would get him back there, but the only ones that came were insanely dangerous. The elves had a portal nearby, he remembered. Or maybe he could try to call up the Hunters somehow. Someone had to have a way to get him there. Heather was...

Then he stopped and checked himself. What was he doing? Heather was easily the toughest person he knew, and she of everyone on the island was probably fine. He’d seen her win against the Phillip thing—dismantling it, really—and if anyone could survive out there, it was her. Now he needed to trust that she would. And he needed to not get himself killed trying to save a damsel who didn’t need it.

Gabe pulled his spiraling emotions under control and sent them into the void, giving them to his bubble in the veil where they could cool and stay clear of his logic. He took a breath. “How fast can you get me there, Ken? The regular ways.”

The man nodded and glanced back down at his phone. “You’ve only been gone a few hours, but the rescue ship probably already left Australia. Depending on weather, they should be there in three, maybe four days with a medic and hired security.” He looked up and shrugged. “But if you don’t mind the kind of ride I find you, we could try something out of South Africa. Cape Town, maybe. That, plus a chartered flight, and you might make it ahead of the other boat.” He started tapping something into his phone. “You wanna try?”

“Absolutely,” Gabe said.

Ken hit a single key. “Just messaged the driver. I’ll charter a plane and the boat while you’re headed there.” Then he looked Gabe over, obviously trying not to wince at all the mud and filth and ash. “I’ll...also get you a bag of clothes. Maybe some wet naps.”

Gabe nodded his thanks and turned toward the armory...only to find his mother standing there. Her hands were folded awkwardly together in front of her, and her eyes were down. She looked just as muddy and beaten and tired as he was, and she clearly had something to say.

Gabe cleared his throat before she could speak. “I, uh, have to go,” he said lamely.

She nodded. “I know. I heard.”

They stayed there for a moment, neither of them making eye contact while Hwei-ru hovered respectfully nearby. Finally, Gabe spread his hands. “I don’t really know what to say here. There’s not much else I can do for you, unfortunately, but you should definitely go somewhere and hide. Find your...family.” He had to clear his throat several more times then as a lump tried to rise in it. “I don’t think he’ll be able to find you again without his eye, but I don’t know for sure.”

She nodded again, this time more slowly as the weight of what he was saying fell on her. “I’ll try.”

There was another long pause with both of them looking anywhere but at one another, and then she finally laughed a little desperately and put her hands over her face. She wiped her eyes, streaking the mud, then she looked up to the ceiling with a long sigh. “Oh god. I don’t pretend to understand any of what happened to me, and I have no idea how I’m going to explain this to my family.” Then she lowered her eyes and met his, tentatively holding his stare. “But however hard it was for me, it must have been so much worse for you. I’m sorry you’re going through...whatever this is.”

Gabe broke the stare to glance over his shoulder to look for Ken. “Yeah, well...” He honestly couldn’t think of any other response.

But his mother insisted on having the moment, and she met his eyes again when he turned back. She tried to smile, but it wilted before it took hold. “So I guess I just wanted to say thanks. And that...I’m proud of who you’ve become. I’m glad you have so many nice, uh...” She looked to Hwei-ru floating translucently nearby. “...people in your life. That’s all.” Her hands folded back together, nervously.

Gabe just stood there. He knew there were a thousand things he could say to make it better, or worse, or exactly the same. And he honestly didn’t know which he wanted. In most ways he was totally different from the kid who’d stared out that window waiting for her to come back, but in a small few, it was still there in him. In the way he always planned for the worst, and how he couldn’t leave anyone behind. And in the hundred tiny little ways he shielded himself against losing what he loved in case it left him...and how that kept him from having more of it...even when it was staring at him asking for another chance.

“Thanks,” he said, tightly. “I hope, uh, that you manage to find some normalcy after this. I know how hard it can be.”

“Thank you,” she said, her voice cracking. “You too.” Then she held out a hand awkwardly before dropping it back to her side with a shake of her head. “And maybe if...someday—”

Gabe nodded quickly, cutting her off. “Maybe.” He saw that hit and he regretted it. So he scraped together the bits of a smile and put it on for her like a gift. “Yeah. Sure...mom.”

She blinked quickly and let out a shaky breath, but there was a smile of her own beneath it. “Hoooo, okay.” Then she pressed her palms to her sides and looked around. “So, I guess I’ll just call a cab. How do I get out of...” She trailed off as she seemed to take in the odd facility for the first time.

Ken appeared then with a hastily packed bag and wearing the expression of someone who was trying to do four things at once.

“No,” Gabe said, catching Ken’s eyes meaningfully as he took the bag. “I think we might be able to help with that?”

Ken seemed confused for a moment like he was coming out of his own thoughts, then he looked at Lauren and nodded. “Uh, yeah. Right. I’ll make arrangements for you, ma’am. No need to worry. We’ll fly you wherever you need.”

“Perfect,” Gabe said. Then he clapped Ken on the shoulder. “You saved my life, man. I owe you one.”

Ken demurred and started tapping on his phone again. “Oh, well. No big deal.”

“It is to me,” Gabe replied, giving him another slap before shouldering the bag and backing away. “I’m still using this body. I’m damned glad you’re on the team, Kenny boy.” Then he turned toward the door. “I’m going to head up and wait for the driver. I’ll try to change clothes up in the spooky murder house.”

“I will be coming with you,” Hwei-ru said, coming up alongside him.

He shrugged. “Okay, but no peeking.” Her lips tightened and he chuckled for what felt like the first time in days. “Relax. It’s a good idea. I’ll explain as much as I can on the way to the airport.” Then he stopped at the door for a moment before turning back to give his mother a little wave. “See you later.”

She nodded quickly. “I’d like that.”

The trip to the airport was long and full of questions he couldn’t answer, and it was almost a relief to get on the plane so he could have a moment to put his own thoughts together without Hwei-ru dogging him for every detail of every interaction. She’d left unsatisfied and scowling, which felt appropriate under the circumstances, but he really couldn’t have given her more than he did. The fact was that he didn’t know what would happen next, and he didn’t think anyone else on the planet did either. For the first time in any history, the eternal force of destruction designed to wipe the cosmic slate clean for the rebirth of a new reality was now...alive? And it was probably coming to kill them all anyway. Maybe. He honestly had no idea. Most of what he thought he knew came from the god of lies, and even undeniable truths seemed to be uncomfortably malleable these days. But for once, it was at least nice to know that he wasn’t the only clueless moron being thrown into things.

He found a meal waiting for him on the private plane, and a small shower. And a very cushy chair that gave him no comfort.

The boat ride was worse, but also better for being one step closer back to the island. And when Gabe finally arrived forty hours later, the sight gave him chills. There was still smoke rising from the caldera, and a ring of mist was now wreathing the whole place like a shroud. He’d cursed himself several times for having forgotten to get a new phone before boarding the boat, and now he had no idea what was waiting for him when he went ashore. Or, at least, he mostly didn’t know. For that whole day as they’d neared he’d been able to feel the bond. Still out there. Waiting.

When they approached the island, the crew did so cautiously, citing minor complaints like rocks and volcanic activity and the smoldering hulks of several other ships partially submerged at anchor. But Gabe only had eyes for the trees. She was in there somewhere, and he could almost feel her emotions again through the bond.

Calm. Quiet. Hiding.

Then suddenly he felt a ping back.

Excitement.

And she was getting closer. Fast.

“There!” Gabe said, pointing to a spot on the shore where he could feel her approaching. The ship turned toward it, angling in despite the captain’s muttered protests, and Gabe ran to the prow to watch.

He saw nothing. Just trees and rocks and weeds. And he waited.

Nothing. Nothing. Nothing...

Then she spilled out onto the beach at a full run, coming to a stop at the water’s edge and waving for him. Gabe pointed at her and waved back, and the smile on her face was broad enough for him to see even from there.

James appeared behind her a moment later, and Dante stumbled up next with Penny sitting in his arms and waving too.

Joy.

The Australian ship turned out to be a day behind, and they decided to meet up with it on open water based on Heather’s warnings about the enemy presence still infesting the island. The Cape Town boat didn’t have anything like the facilities of the larger ship, and they all needed medical attention that James hadn’t been able to provide. So Gabe chose that moment to bring them all up to speed. There was never a great time to find out that your friend has accidentally saved the universe by birthing a new version of its eventual destruction, but there were certainly worse moments than directly after a morphine injection.

Within hours they were transferred, tended to, and clean, and Gabe was walking down a narrow hall to Heather’s cabin with a tray that was in danger of overbalancing with every wave. He considered asking the captain to slow down and turn this into more of a pleasure cruise, but then he remembered the kraken and decided that maybe less time on the water would be better after all.

The skeletal cat suddenly came shooting around the corner, scratching at the floorboards with its long claws and giving him a wide grin as it passed, and a moment later, Penny came bounding behind. Her smile was equally wide, but much less creepy.

“Hi, Mr. Gabe!”

He smiled back and crouched down to her level, carefully setting the tray aside. “Hey, Penny! How are you feeling?”

She came to a stop and shrugged, then shook her head as if confused why people kept asking her that. “Fine! How are you feeling?”

“Much better now,” he said. “Hey, I just wanted to say that I think you did a great job on the island. We seriously couldn’t have done it without you.” He held up his hand for a high five. “And I hope you don’t mind if I also say you are...a little scary.”

She dutifully smacked his hand and then came in for hug around his neck. “Oh, much, much more than a little!” she said, cheerfully. Then she hummed a happy little tune before hopping around him to continue her game.

He turned to watch her go as he lifted the tray and rose. It was funny how he could be more intimidated by a tiny little sprite than by a giant undead minotaur. He thought about visiting Dante and James then too, but decided to let them be. He’d last seen them helping one another to their rooms, and he imagined they were anxious for some rest. They certainly deserved it.

Gabe knocked on Heather’s door and felt her little spike of happiness even before she opened it, and he couldn’t help the smile on his face when he saw her. She was still wet from the shower and dressed in some baggy clothes the crew had provided, and she looked like she hadn’t slept in days. Because she probably hadn’t. According to James, she’d found them broken and exhausted, and she was the only reason they’d made it out alive. Because, of course she was.

“Hi,” he said.

“Hi,” she said back.

They stayed there for a second, just lingering in a moment unladen with expectations. Then she gestured him in. Gabe fought with the tray a bit as he tried to get it and himself through the narrow door, but eventually he was able to slide through for Heather to click it closed behind him. He found an empty spot on a small table near the bed, and he sat the tray there, adjusting the covering cloth so he could pull it off later for maximum dramatic effect.

He turned toward her with his hands spread. “At your service, madam. I’m here for our first date.”

She smirked and crossed her arms over the baggy sweater. “Oh really? Well, it better be pretty fancy given the number of times I saved your butt recently.”

He nodded. “Fair. Though now that we’re a real couple, you kinda have a vested interest in saving this particular butt.” She raised an eyebrow doubtfully, and he grimaced before she could say anything. “Yeah, that sounded cooler in my head.”

Then she was on him, wrapping her arms around him and pressing her lips to his. He pulled her in close, one hand at her back and the other sinking into her damp hair until time melted and the space between them diminished to drive every bit of the remaining darkness out. Together they fought away all the aches and worries and fears that tried to claw them back, and for a few glorious moments, there was nothing but light in the world.

Then Heather finally pulled back for air, her face flushed and shining, and her eyes met his as she sighed happily. “Much better.” She ran her fingers down his cheek to his chin, then her gaze drifted to the tray. “What did you bring me?”

“Oh, right,” he said, then leaned over and pulled the cloth from it like a magician. “I hope you have a refined palate, because these are the finest bagged chips and canned meats in the whole ship’s galley. Also a rather nice vintage of bottled water.” He lifted it up and pretended to read from the back. “One reviewer raves ‘A flawless libation with a sparkling finish, perfect for the succubus who has recently suffered a dangerous level of dehydration.’” He looked up. “I could do more if this is working for you.”

She nodded slowly and lifted the bottle from his hands to replace it carefully on the tray, then turned back to meet his eyes again. “I think that can wait.”

She pushed him onto the bed.

Two hours later, Heather pulled the thin sheet over herself and curled into him, draping her arm over his chest. “Let’s call halftime and rest a bit. I’m still only feeling about thirty percent.”

Gabe pulled in long, slow breaths as he tried to seem like he wasn’t absolutely exhausted, and he turned his head to covertly wipe away the sweat. “Yeah,” he panted. “Halftime. Sounds good.”

She laughed a little, obviously knowing how he felt, and enjoying the fact that he was still trying to hide it from her. Then she made a contented noise and snuggled close. “You’re different,” she said into his shoulder.

Gabe nodded, his head rustling against the pillow. “Sure. I feel different.” Then he paused and tried to look down at her. “But, just out of curiosity...what kind of different?”

She reached over and found his hand, twining her fingers with his. “Well, you talk less, for one.”

He snorted. “Yeah, it’s kinda hard to get a word in edgewise with all these new people popping up. I feel like I’m running a circus these days.”

She laughed. “Friends and allies, you mean? Given that we’re apparently about to face to an army of literal darkness, let’s hope they feel more welcome than that.” She squeezed his hand. “I just mean that you talk less and listen more. It’s good.”

He nodded sagely. “Like a real grown-up. Pretty soon I’ll be wearing suspenders and whittling things in my garage. I hope you like ducks.”

“And yet there’s still room for improvement,” she said.

He looked up to the ceiling with a chuckle. “Hey, I’ll take it. Anything else?”

She seemed to think for a while, then started idly rubbing her thumb over the brand on his palm. “Mostly little things. You’re complaining less and helping more. Settling into yourself. And you seem to be fighting the world less often, like you’re finally existing where you are instead of where you think you should be.”

He blew out a breath. “That’s not me changing so much as acquiescing.”

“I know,” she replied, “but it’s still there. And look at what you’ve managed to do when you’ve actually tried. I know you think you screwed up inside the veil, but what was the alternative? A slow drop into oblivion with nothing to say about it? Aka Manah might be horrible, but he wasn’t necessarily wrong. We have a chance now, and you did that. Have you ever wondered what might happen if you just...bought in? If you gave a hundred percent to something from the beginning instead of waiting until you’re forced to at the last minute? You might be surprised at what you can accomplish.”

“Sounds terrible,” he said. Then he turned and kissed the top of her head before she could reply. “Okay. How about I try really hard at one thing to start, and we’ll see how that goes. Work my way up to two.”

She smiled up at him. “So I’m your practice run at giving a crap about something?”

He feigned a frown. “Oh, I was thinking foosball, but...sure, we can make it this relationship. That’s almost as good.”

She let go of his hand and smacked his chest playfully.

He pretended to fend her off, then stopped to glance at the Qi Dragon. The lights of the Iglas were gone from his palm, but the brand was just as vivid as when he’d gotten it. “I guess I’m stuck with this thing forever though, huh? I kind of expected it to fade away.”

“Did you use it all up?” she asked. “The power over creation, I mean?”

He didn’t even need to sink within himself to know that. “Definitely. All that’s left are the structures, like a ghost town. There’s the shell of the Dragon, and then there’s all the mental...pipes, I guess, that the thing laid inside me to bring the Iglas in and out. But nothing’s there anymore. Things keep using and discarding me, and here I am left with all this psychic trash to deal with.” He lifted his hand up higher, blocking the light from the window. “Just a regular old human, with regular old magic, and a regular succubus girlfriend.”

“Nice work omitting ‘old’ on that last one.”

He raised his eyebrows. “I’m regular, not stupid.”

Heather made a little noise that somehow conveyed the idea of a shrug. “Eh, it could be worse. And you never know when old psychic groundwork like that might come in handy...” She giggled and reached up to close his fingers around his palm. “No pun intended.”

“Yeah right,” he said.

She pulled his hand in and held it over her heart. “I’m serious. It’s better to have stuff like this than not. Even a broken sword can still cut if you know how to use it. And you have to admit that everything has seemed to work out fairly well for us so far.” He leaned back to meet her eyes, and she knitted her brows. “I mean...relatively.”

Suddenly there was a knock at the door, and they both looked back as one.

Gabe slowly turned toward her with a stern expression. “You cursed it. If this is bad news, I’m blaming you.” Then he crawled over her and found his pants. “Just a second!” he called.

She reached down to the floor and grabbed her shirt, pulling it over her head quickly. Then she gathered the sheets around her as she sat up. “Cursed it...I’ll show you a curse.”

He pulled his shirt on. “You don’t know any curses.”

She folded her hands into her lap. “You don’t know all my tricks yet, Gabriel Delling.”

He smirked. “All right, then get one ready in case this is a monster.”

“Monsters don’t knock,” she said behind him as he turned the handle.

James eyed them both as the door opened, then he nodded once and stepped into the room. “Sorry. I figured you should probably see this before we hit land.” He produced a phone and tossed it onto the bed next to Heather. “It turns out they have internet on this hulk. And...uh, you’re not gonna believe what’s in the American news today.”

Heather picked up the phone and lit up the screen, scanning for a moment before gasping suddenly. She looked up to Gabe, then slowly motioned for him to sit next to her.

“What?” he asked as he joined her.

She just shook her head and continued scrolling down past headlines faster than he could fully read them.

“Record Fundraising...”

“...Out of Nowhere.”

“Dark Horse...”

Then she hit play on a video and the screen went black for a moment as the file loaded. Suddenly there was an image of an empty podium on a stage. Red, white, and blue streamers were covering every inch of it, while a murmur of noise filled the background. Gabe turned and looked to Heather and James to ask why this was something he needed to know about...but then the crowd began to cheer as a man came into the shot.

Gabe froze.

“Thank you! Thank you,” Aka Manah said as he stepped up to the podium to rest his hands on either edge. He still had his blue eye on the video, and his tuxedo was spotless. It was dated the day before. “You have all been so wonderful tonight. I couldn’t ask for better people to share this moment with.” The crowd cheered again.

“This can’t be...” Gabe mumbled before drifting back to silence.

“And so,” the god said, “it is with great pride and humility that I announce my candidacy for the office of President of the United States.”

Heather paused the video and looked up to watch him, and for several moments none of them said a word.

Finally, she lowered the phone. “What do we do?” she asked softly.

Gabe couldn’t answer. It was so far beyond anything he’d seen coming, that it barely seemed to stick in his brain.

James sighed heavily and moved to leave. “My thoughts exactly. You guys keep that phone for tonight. You need it more than me.” He closed the door behind him.

Heather waited for a long while, letting him process. Then she finally lifted a hand to his back. “Gabe?”

“Yeah?” he said, trying to act much cooler than he felt just then.

“Any thoughts?”

He nodded for too long before responding. “I think we’re probably screwed.” Then he sighed and flopped back onto the bed. “But how is that different from any other time?”

She drifted back more gracefully and draped her arm over his stomach. “So I guess we’re going to war now, huh? The only problem is, I don’t know who our allies are supposed to be.”

Gabe reached up and squeezed her hand hard. “Us.” He grimaced as soon as it came out. “Was that too cheesy?”

She pulled him in close. “Definitely. But say it again.”

They laid there for a minute, just staring at the ceiling and thinking of all the ways this could go wrong now. There was an unstoppable force coming across the universe to destroy them, they had countless new enemies and problems on Earth, and now the god of lies was potentially taking control of an entire nation.

“Seems impossible to solve it all,” she said, reading him through the bond. “What do you want to do?”

Gabe thought for a long time before finally lifting her hand to kiss it. “Try anyway.”

THE END

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

FIRST, AS ALWAYS, I owe so much to my wife, Jenny. She’s the reason I get to do this silly job, and she never doubts any of my crazy ideas. And to Jonah and Marie, for being so patient with me when I have to work at it more than usual.

And then there are the other folks who’ve been instrumental in making this book what it is. They’re really important and cool too, I just don’t live with them:

Dave and Geoff, for being my first opinions on titles, jokes, and everything else I’m terrified of embarrassing myself with.

Kaitlyn Johnson, for editing this thing when it was pretty rough, and for finding all the clever ways to make it better.

Steph Warren, for proofreading this like nobody else could, and helping me bring the last draft to a glossy shine.

Tyler Rinne, for the outstanding cover art once again.

My beta readers, Emma, John, Alan, Carissa, Anna, and Liz, for helping me catch all the last mistakes, and for providing your incredible feedback. I honestly couldn’t do this without your help right at the finish line.

All the author and blogger friends I’ve made over the last year, for being amazing sources of support, inspiration, and motivation. There’s too many of you to list, but thank you.

And to all my family and friends, for helping to get me here in the first place, and for continuing to cheer me on along the way.

Thank you all.