The pombero shrugged his big shoulders. He wasn’t even breathing hard. Vince looked at the spear in his hand, ready to roll, kick out, fight if it came down towards him.

“You don’t know what he is,” Vince said. “You don’t know—”

“Shut up, human.” The man threw the spear away, looked down at Vince again, then turned and ran. In seconds he was out of sight, and moments later his footfalls echoed away to nothing.

Silence hung over the clearing, and then birdsong came in again, and the scratching of insects and the buzzing of flies filled the air. It was as if the Fold had seen nothing amiss.

Vince stood and retrieved the spear. His heart beat fast, his nose smarted, eyes watered. He was confused. He’d had the thirteen relics since Mallian had attempted to control Grace, and the fourteenth required for the spell—the one that Vince had stolen and hidden away back in the real world—meant the other thirteen were useless.

He had not been able to identify what it was. A small, dark, knotted lump of petrified flesh, it could have been any body part from any dead Kin. He’d buried it deep in the woods, and even if he could get back to his own world he would never, ever find the relic again. It was lost to the world, and lost to Mallian.

Vince shivered. A cool breeze came from nowhere. He imagined he could hear Mallian’s sarcastic laughter on the wind, smell his rotting breath. He’d believed the Nephilim was dying, trapped against the earth of this place by the fairy’s own powerful glamours. He thought the Kin had given up and was resigned to fade away.

But all this time he had been scheming.

* * *

As he approached the glade where Mallian was imprisoned by invisible bonds, a small part of Vince hoped he would see the Nephilim back on his feet. He’d be weak, unsettled, and needing to feed, but a Mallian that had escaped the fairy’s bonds might be a Mallian who could get him home.

It was a terrifying notion. If the Nephilim took control of the fairy, his long-held desires would come to fruition. A return to the real world, exposure of the Kin, Ascent. Myth against military might, Lilou had once said, and her words had seared themselves onto Vince’s mind. He could hardly imagine such a conflict, and the misery and death it could cause.

Yet a selfish part of him—one he could not control, but which he knew was a foolish dream—only wanted to see and hold Angela again. To hell with the rest of the world.

When he reached the glade, Mallian was where he always was. Arms outstretched, legs splayed, he seemed to be asleep. Yet as Vince approached the Nephilim opened his eyes.

“Hunting rabbit for me after all,” he said.