Before I could even say anything, Molly rose up into the air to face him, levitating effortlessly. Her face was set and cold as she put herself between me and the hellspawn. I wanted to call out to her, but I had no voice. Unnatural energies coalesced around both of them, felt as much as seen, spitting and crackling like beads of water on a hot surface. Something was gathering between them, something awful . . . Just being this close to the two of them felt like razor blades slicing into my soul. Mortals weren’t supposed to see things like this, feel things like this. Forbidden magics and inhuman practices . . .

Roger waved a hand, and a hole opened up in the floor of the Sanctity. The wooden floorboards seemed to just rot away into nothing, and the hole grew steadily, like a cancer in the body of the world. Barbed brass tentacles, already slick with spilled blood, shot up out of the hall and snapped around Molly, pinning her arms to her sides. She cried out, as though fouled by their touch, and struggled fiercely, blood spurting on the air as the metal barbs dug into her flesh. And then the tentacles snapped back into the hole, taking her with them, and the hole disappeared. The floor was solid again, untouched, as though nothing had happened. Roger turned slowly, still hanging unsupported on the air, and smiled his awful smile at me.

“I am of Hell,” he said, “and I carry it with me everywhere. So I’m never far from home. I just sent your girlfriend to Hell, Eddie Drood. Damned her forever, to eternal suffering, to the lake of flames and the torments of the Pit, just because I felt like it. How do you feel about that, Eddie Drood?”

“After I’ve killed you, I will go down into Hell and bring her back,” I said. “Whatever it takes, whatever it costs. But first I will break your body with these golden hands, and make you scream, and after all the terrible things I do to you, falling back into Hell will seem like a relief.”

“Wow,” said Molly. “Hard core, Eddie.”

We all looked around, startled, and there she was, standing untouched and unharmed where the hole had been. I ran over and took her in my arms, and we held each other tightly and nothing else mattered.

“I really thought I’d lost you,” I said.

“You really think I’d go anywhere and leave you behind?” she said.

When we finally broke apart and looked around, Roger was staring at us incredulously. And for all his Infernal presence, he didn’t look half as threatening anymore.

“You can’t be here!” he said. “You can’t! I sent you to Hell!”

“Been there, done that,” said Molly.