Rage consumed him. Mallian looked down at the blazing, bubbling mess the nymph had become. His face was blank, and Vince so wished he could wipe that expression away.

“Bastard!” he shouted.

Mallian glanced up at him, then back down at Lilou’s burning remains. Parts of her skeleton were exposed now that some of her flesh and insides had burned away beneath the intense, unnatural fire. One arm stuck up and her fingers were twisted in towards her palm. A leg shifted and kicked as tendons heated and snapped.

Vince could not believe such a beautiful, ancient mind could have been erased so quickly and so thoroughly. Where were her memories now? The things she had done, the few men and women she had loved and the many, many more who had loved her?

“We need to go,” Angela said. “We need to get away from here now, while we still can.”

“I can’t,” Vince said. “I can’t leave her. Not like that.”

“There’s nothing left of her to leave,” Angela said into his ear. “Please, Vince. We’re together again, and it needs to be for however long we have left.”

“Not long,” he said. He saw Mallian for what he had become—a monster, a harbinger of hate. Lilou had known, and even through her love for the Nephilim she had tried to act against that. If only he could too. “We have to do something.”

“What can we do?”

Vince had no answer.

“Okay,” Angela said. She tucked his broken arm into his shirt, ignoring his groan, his cold sweat. “Okay, we will do something, but not here and now.”

As Vince took the first few steps away from the awful scene, he heard something strange. It sounded like drums, but then he saw Bone struggling to open a metal door.

“What’s he doing?” he asked.

“Oh, fuck,” Angela said. “Does it never end?”

* * *

Father will help me, Bone thought. Father will help all of us.

He could barely compute what he was seeing. He’d encountered Kin before, but fleetingly, never like this. The fairy thing, spewing fire from her hand. The tall beast that had emerged through the rip in the world.

And just what the fuck is that rip, doorway, thing? Where does it go? What more will come through?

As he watched, the steady tap-tap-tap from behind the door worked its way into his brain. Mohserran and the others had stopped banging and were now scratching, and it had the sound of something more deliberate. Maybe they were finding their minds again after waking, using their wiles, hollowing their way through to the outside.

Father can help us all against this.