Someone reached through my chest and stuck a long needle into my heart. Sienna was almost never wrong.

“Show me.”

The young witch stepped backward into the waterfall. Magic moved around Sienna, like an engine turning over, and a light slowly appeared to the left of the waterfall, opening up like a fast-blooming flower. A battlefield. Bodies collided, some armored, some furry. Weapons clashed, arrows hit home with the shrill whistle of torn air, and magic boiled flesh. A din hung above the chaos, the kind of cacophony only a battlefield in the middle of a melee can produce: screams and wails, grunts, metal screeching against metal, shapeshifters snarling, inhuman shrieks, all blending into an overwhelming cry that was the voice of war. It hit me, visceral and raw, and suddenly I was there, in the heart of the chaos, gripping my sword and looking for a target. The air smelled of blood and smoke. Ashes swirled around the combatants.

Beyond it all a tower rose above a castle, the familiar half-finished structure I had seen this morning, now whole. A huge gray creature, half-man, half-beast, knocked vampire bodies aside as he charged toward it. Blood stained his fur. He didn’t roar. He just ran, pushing his body to the limit.

Curran.

The tower loomed. My father stood atop it in a crimson robe, holding a spear made from his blood. My heart skipped a beat.

Curran leapt, channeling all of his speed into a powerful jump. He shot up, finally snarling, his fangs exposed, claws out.

My father thrust the spear. It was an expert thrust. It punched through Curran’s chest.

Blood poured.

He didn’t grip the spear. He didn’t try to free himself. Why wasn’t he trying to free himself? I’d seen him take wounds that almost cut him in half. Why wasn’t he fighting?

Curran’s body collapsed into human form but instead of its normal color, his skin turned the dull gray of duct tape.

Oh dear God. The Lyc-V saturating his body had died. All of it. At once.

My father gripped the spear and turned it. The perspective of the vision shifted and I was right there, standing next to Roland. Curran’s face was slack, his eyes empty. The ground disappeared from under my feet and I fell down into a cold pit. I fell and fell and couldn’t stop. Dead. He was dead.

My father grunted and hurled Curran’s body back into the battle below. Past the field, the sunset was blood-red. Atlanta was burning, caught in the hot maw of an inferno. Black oily smoke boiled from the ruins of the city, melding into a funeral shroud above.