“Hey!” Bea shouts. “Hey, Moon! It’s him. Dreamboat.”

“I know,” I say.

An image springs into my head: Gabe, looking at me intently.

Ana. We want you to kill Shinigami.

“How long was I gone?” I ask Shinigami, trying to buy time, to conjure a plan. I don’t have one. Get Bea, bring her back. That was the plan. It stopped there.

“How long?” Shinigami says, in a tone suggesting she’s affronted by my question. “A second, a blink. What does it matter? Kronos is all that matters now.”

“And it’s exactly how everyone said it would be,” I tell her, looking at the Seventh Gate, which is surprisingly silvery-blue now, not black. And not as forbidding. It vibrates and shimmers, like any other pathway between worlds.

“I knew it would be,” Shinigami says, her voice febrile. The expression on her face moves through a multitude of emotions: hunger, then greed, then pride and triumph. She unsheathes her obsidian-black sword.

“Fate,” Shinigami says, “drives everything. You cannot change the past, or alter the things that have made you what you are. Destiny is immutable. It was always mine to find the seventh and create perfection, as it was yours to open the path to true power for me. And now, since you are surplus to requirement, your destiny is death.”

Shinigami’s sword sings through the air.

She leaps at me so fast she becomes vaporous, like smoke.

I leap to the side and parry her black blade.

Ra vibrates in my hands and my arms shake, right up to the shoulders.

We circle each other.

In my peripheral vision, I see Bea restrained by a pair of guards and Malik wrestling his own. A stink rises now and I see some of the guards transform into their Reaper form, pink-skinned and vile.

Shinigami strikes. I defend and dance back. She comes after me, forcing me further backward, until we’re moving through the space like prize fighters, her advancing relentlessly, me stumbling back. The swords cut the air.

Shinigami moves with terrifying speed, faster than Vidhan and more skilled than Akuji. Quick and lithe, like a viper. When she attacks, it feels as if ten swords are slicing through the air at me. And, no matter how fast I move, or how quickly I defend and counterattack, she’s always a step ahead, coming at me, eyes alight.

It’s not long before I’m streaming in sweat. My muscles begin to seize and spasm. I find myself standing in front of the Seventh Gate now. Feeling the dark pull of it, my feet almost lifting off the ground.

I know that I’m no match for Shinigami. In terms of raw sword-fighting talent, she has me easily beaten. She’s blazing-quick. It’s almost a thrill being this close to someone of such incomparable skill and coiled energy.

Almost.