This is not going to be good, Vince thought. Mallian shifted and he saw past him, up the hillside towards where the sunlight flowed in. Mallian saw him looking, paused, smiled.

“That’s right,” the Nephilim said. “Grace has opened a portal. There’s no reason it might be back to the world we came from, and not some other variation of it. But I think she’s going back for something, or someone, close to you. I saw the way she coveted the girl. Maybe she’s spent all her time here planning how to take her.”

“Angela’s not stupid,” Vince said. “They’ll be hiding away.”

“From a fairy?” Mallian laughed, and Vince felt hopeless. He knew how powerful Grace was. Hiding wouldn’t be enough.

“I need to follow her,” Mallian said. “You’ll help me.”

“I won’t.”

“I’m not asking.” Mallian reached down and closed his huge right hand around Vince’s left shoulder. With a shrug he flipped Vince onto his side. Vince cried out in agony, feeling his arm flop unnaturally under his body, trapped there by his own weight. The pain came in wave after terrible wave, and then Mallian pressed down on his other shoulder, crushing his wounded arm beneath him.

Vince shouted again and again. The agony and inability to escape made him desperate.

“I don’t know where they are!”

“Then remember.” Mallian eased away and allowed Vince to roll onto his back. His fractured arm remained trapped beneath him, and he took a breath and shifted further. He felt sick and distant, and he feared he might faint. He bit his lip and winced at the fresh taste of blood. The pain was beyond anything he’d ever experienced before, even when Ballus the mad satyr had strapped him to a chair and slashed and gouged him with the bones of decayed Kin.

“Even if I did know, you need them to control her. I’d never allow that.”

“Then I’ll follow her back without them,” Mallian said.

“And kill me first.”

“I thought so, for a while. I’ve had a long time to myself. And since you took the relics, I’ve been thinking up some very creative ways to make you pay.”

“I thought you probably would.” Vince was looking for any way to escape, a momentary distraction he could use to flee into the shadows across the hillside. But the shadows were shrunk by the sun he was so desperate to reach.