“Deus meus!” Belial screamed, and Cordelia understood: he was calling out for his Maker, the Creator he had rejected thousands of years ago. “Deus meus respice me quare me dereliquisti longe a salute mea verba delictorum meorum—”

There was the sound of a great tearing. The shadow that poured from Belial’s eyes began to coalesce, a shower of darkness that swirled and turned in the air. Jesse’s body crumpled to the ground, going limp as the animating force of Belial’s spirit left it.

Lucie dropped to her knees next to Jesse, her hands on his chest. She made a little broken keening sound. More than anything, Cordelia wanted to go to her, but she stood where she was, gripping Cortana, knowing it was not yet over.

For above Jesse’s body, his feet not touching the ground of Earth, hovered Belial.

Though it was not quite Belial. He was form and shape, but no substance—translucent as colored air. Cordelia could see through him: he wore a robe of white samite, edged with graphic black runes, jagged as lightning bolts. Behind him, she could see the shadow, the suggestion of wings: great, black, ragged wings, their edges as serrated as knives.

Darkness leaked from a slit in the material over his chest: the still-bleeding wound she had given him in the shadow realm. Malevolent eyes gazed from a face of thunder, fixed on Lucie with loathing. “Oh,” he said, and his voice sounded different now that it was no longer emerging from Jesse Blackthorn’s throat—darker, and freighted with the promise of a terrible threat, “how you do not know what you have done.”

“Leave us,” said James. He had come close to where Lucie and Cordelia were on the path. His eyes were blazing; his hand with the gun in it hung at his side. “This is over.”

“This is no end,” said Belial, “but a beginning you cannot even imagine.” His voice rose, raggedly; it was like listening to the crackle of a fire burning out of control. “ ‘For I will set my face against you so that you will be struck down before your enemies; and those who hate you will rule over you, and you will flee when no one is pursuing you. If also after these things you do not obey me, then I will punish you seven times more for your sins. I will break down your pride of power; I will make your sky like iron and your earth like bronze—’ ”

Cordelia’s last thread of control snapped. She charged toward Belial, Cortana in hand; it made a beautiful golden arc through the air, with all her strength behind it—but the blade passed through him without resistance.

She staggered back, despair clutching at her heart. If Cortana could no longer harm him—if there was no substance of him she could strike at—

“Daisy!” Lucie cried. “Be careful!”