Mallian came himself, Bone thought. Of course he did. He wants to be on camera as much as I want him to be seen.

Mallian stood tall and proud as Dane turned around to see what stood behind him. The Nephilim glanced down at the sheriff as she struggled to rise, then took three quick steps and snatched Dane off his feet. Even such a big man looked toylike in the Nephilim’s hands.

The shotgun fired into the night, then Mallian plucked it from the officer’s hands and snapped it in half. Still holding Dane beneath the arms in his other hand, he held onto his legs around the thighs, raised him high above his head, and pulled. Muscles stood knotted in his arms, shoulders and chest, and Mallian roared with effort as he twisted and pulled the big cop in two.

If Dane made a sound, Bone didn’t hear it.

Blood and fluids splashed down on Mallian’s upturned face, and he opened his mouth to swallow them down.

The sheriff was on her feet fumbling for her sidearm, eyes wide and disbelieving.

Mallian stood bathed in light, a bloody, living sculpture holding two torn halves of the same man aloft. His head and upper body glimmered as he moved, and it shook everything he knew of the world, even though he had known of Kin since he was a little boy. It made everything darker.

He couldn’t imagine what reaction the sheriff was fighting through.

She’d pulled her gun and was trying to aim, but her hands shook, her right leg quivering as she tried to keep her footing.

Mallian threw the upper portion of Dane’s corpse at her. His head struck her right hip and she went down, and Bone thought, Now he leaps on her and tears her to pieces.

But the Nephilim was relishing this moment. He held the dead cop’s lower torso and legs high and roared, remaining in the light. He knew what he was doing. This was Mallian’s moment, a time he must have dreamt about for years, decades, centuries. This was the beginning of his personal revelation to humanity, and Bone knew that what the cops’ body-cam and dash-cam images recorded would become the founding, early images of Ascent.

The sheriff had gone. Bone hadn’t seen her run, and he felt a momentary fury at her cowardice. She’d left him here, alone, locked away and at the mercy of this beast. Seconds later, he realised he’d have done the same. She couldn’t be thinking straight, and running blindly into the woods would be her first and only reaction.