“How near are you?” Vince asked, nodding at the bundle in her arms.

“I could try,” she said, but her doubt was obvious.

“Not yet,” Angela said. “We have to be sure, Sammi.”

“Maybe we should hide, then?” Vince said.

“Fuck hiding,” Dastion said. “I think we’re long past that.”

Vince tugged the spear from the dead shapeshifter, stuck it into the ground a couple of times to try and clean some of the blood from the wood, and looked around at the people he loved and the dwarf he’d grown to like. He didn’t want anything bad to happen to any of them.

From the direction of the river another dull explosion rang out, and a geyser rose and spread in the moonlight. Three more followed, and they were like strange trees blooming in this alien, desolate landscape.

“Looks like Shashahanna wasn’t the one doing the screaming,” Angela said.

From closer, footsteps approached. Vince expected Mallian to emerge from the darkness, and he crouched down with spear at the ready. Had they made a foolish mistake coming here too soon? Preventing Mallian from leaving the valley had seemed a priority, but breaking his hold over Grace was much more important. If they lost Sammi now—if Mallian came through them and took her—then everything was lost.

The footsteps halted. Nothing appeared.

“Where?” Angela whispered.

“Can’t see,” Vince said.

“Quiet,” Sammi said. “Low... quiet... still. I’ll make us sleek and unseen. Like your friend Bone.”

Bone? Vince thought. His confusion could wait. Sammi was doing something, dipping into her fledgling powers once more, and as he, Dastion and Angela crouched down together, with the bodies of Fer and the infected werewolf close by, he felt the world moving away from them. It was a strange sensation. He was still fully connected to his surroundings—he could feel the ground beneath his feet and knees and the cool kiss of the night air, and he could smell the death and blood, and the bodily aromas from Dastion and his own unwashed, rain-soaked clothes—but he knew from outside he was barely part of the world anymore. Dastion was kneeling ten feet from him but he was less than a shadow, like a memory of once being there. Even Angela, so close that he could touch her, was a ghost.

The darkness came to life and Mallian appeared. In the night he seemed taller and more solid than before, stronger, as if he had never spent two years trapped against the rocky ground to wither and waste away. He was the size of a mountain, and Vince remembered the agony of the Nephilim stepping down to crush his arm. His broken bone and bruised flesh roared in sympathy.

Mallian had others with him. One small shape was familiar, and Vince felt a renewed anger at Thorn, the pixie who he had seen cause so much pain.