When the inevitable descent came, it was faster than a blink and slower than a century—and the impact was worse than he’d prepared for. The instant the dagger sank into Vin’s flesh, he felt as if every nerve in his body transmitted the pain.

Then Eddie sliced him right open.

Vin screamed into the maelstrom as his body cleaved open at his breastbone, his spine straining as he contorted upward. He was vaguely aware of Eddie speaking words, and then the man’s glowing hand reached inside the locus of the agony, making it so much worse.

Probing. Fisting. A great pulling.

Whatever Eddie was grabbing and yanking was holding on tight, and abruptly Vin couldn’t breathe for the great pressure on his ribs and lungs. Gasping, he struggled to draw air down in the midst of it all.

He started to scream again. Which made no sense because he had no breath.

As the battle for extraction raged, Vin fought to hold on not for himself, but for Marie-Terese. He would not die in front of her. He would not die tonight in front of her. He would not—

But Eddie didn’t let up and the thing didn’t loosen and Vin started to fail. His heart went from pounding to tripping to failing to pump, and with the fibrillation came a numbing cold that overtook him. He tried to fight it, tried to will his body back into functioning, but there was no reserve left to call upon. Even as his mind and soul wanted to stay, his flesh was done.

Except then the evil loosened.

At first, there was just the slightest of slips, as if only one of the tendrils that clung to him snapped free. But then another broke, and another, and more in a bunch. And—

With a screeching tear, like metal was being torn apart, a blackness was lifted from him, taken out of him, torn free…and his first thought was that he felt far too light in his body in its absence. His second was that he was still dying—

Vin was saved by the white light.

All at once, as if it knew how little time he had left, he was resuscitated, the illumination’s blanketing warmth easing the pain, and then wiping it clean as if the torture had never existed. He soared free, light and transparent, indistinguishable from what surrounded him.

He wept in ecstatic relief and gratitude.

It was the first time in thirty-three years that he’d been alone in his own skin.

Jim’s eyes had divided loyalties.

Every time a car rolled slowly down the street, he stared out the window. Any noise around the house? Creak of a tree? Breeze rattling the window? It was the same. He was constantly searching corners, waiting for Devina to come roaring in.

And yet the center of the room consumed him.