Riley’s arms gathered me against him. He turned his face into my hair, and I felt the hot moisture from his eyes. “I have failed you,” he wept. “I meant only to protect you always, and now you will disappear into the ether from whence you were dreamt.”

I was crying too, my fingers twisting into his shirt, my heart breaking with the irony of our fate as I listened to the world falling apart around us. But even as I knew I was mere moments from my inevitable end, I was content to at least be with Riley. I only wished that he would keep holding me tightly—never let me go—until it was over. In his embrace, I would sink into sweet oblivion. In perfect love, I would die.

“I love you,” I whispered. “I love you, I love you, I love you, I love you…”

I felt his trembling fingers in my hair, pressing my head against his shoulder, his fervent lips at my temple, our tears intermingling in our final, precious moments together…

“Oh, for the love of—” A sharp voice rang out behind us with an exasperated sigh. “Get a room.”

Chapter Twenty-Three: Choices

Riley pulled back from our embrace, though continued to clutch me protectively. I twisted around to follow his gaze, and beheld the man emerging from the wings. Neil. His dragon-headed cane tapped syncopatedly against the debris-covered floorboards as he approached us, stepping around a few of the twitching cultists and the toppled beams that buried them. Like with us, the hurricane of destruction didn’t seem to touch him, as if he moved through a protective pocket of air.

He glanced to the chaos swarming above and then tsked at me and Riley. “Of all the times and places,” he muttered, though the gleam in his eye belied his excitement as he tilted his face back as if in reverence to the abysmal vortex. “Sorry if we’re interrupting a Kodak moment here kids, but I think we have more important fish to fry.”

Riley’s hands clenched my arms, pulling my back against his solid chest, and I felt him take a sharp breath.

“You mean…”

“Well, I was thinking…” Neil tossed him a grin. “How about a little of the fight chaos with chaos, eh? Whattaya say?”

My heart leapt with new hope. “You have the power to stop him?” I asked excitedly.

“What?” Neil snorted and shook his head. “No.” He glanced to Riley with a roll of his eyes and then fixed his gaze on me, enunciating very slowly. “None of us do.”

“But…” I whimpered, confused and afraid and a little bit offended. If the world was really about to end, I didn’t want to spend my last minutes being patronized by Riley’s uncle, when we could have been alone together instead.

“That is,” Neil added before I could say anything more, a sharky smile spreading across his face. “Not alone.”