Hand in hand, with her gift for sorcery and my borrowed magic—boosted by syzygy and vampire blood, and amplified by the Nexus—we powered a walking, talking apparition that fooled even a sorceress as strong as Viviane Duclos.

“We did it.” Hope tilts her face to the stars and closes her eyes, breathing in the night. “And it was … incredible. I’ve never wielded magic like that before. Am I … I mean, am I an asshole for being just a little sad that it was a once-in-a-lifetime thing?”

“I get it.” And I do. But our lifetimes might be over sooner than either of us thinks. As my senses sharpen, I detect something I’ve never felt before—a hairline fracture where I end and the Corrupter begins. He’s starting to separate.

My eyes dart back to the trees, my good mood vaporizing instantly. Colgate Woods was the only location I knew of where a final battle could take place without innocent lives being lost in collateral damage. Meanwhile, the site of the ill-fated rave was the only one that offered both the privacy and proximity Hope needed to pull off a trick this complex. The strongest sorcery needs to be worked close at hand—the greater the distance, the weaker the magic. Which is something that both Viviane and Rasputin will know.

And even now, with multiple vampires crowding my awareness, I can sense the two faction leaders connecting the dots …

“Can you tell what’s happening down there?” Hope interrupts my darkening thoughts, as if reading my mind. Or maybe she is reading my mind. “Are your parents—”

“I think they’re okay.” I spit it out quickly, because now that I’m reaching out with the Corrupter’s radar, I can tell how rapidly things have deteriorated since I vanished.

Now that the flaming arrows have stopped flying, and the prize they were competing for has vanished, the vampires have turned on the humans in their midst—a common foe they can eat. With numbers on their side, the undead are swarming; and even as some of them disappear from my radar, falling prey to the Knights, I can tell by the pattern of their movements that they’re prevailing.

Maybe I should feel guilty. The Perseans are human, and they want the same thing I do: to prevent the apocalypse. The only thing we disagree on is, you know, how dead I should be to get there. If they killed me, the world would be saved … for a while. But Azazel would just keep coming back. I’m the first vessel in generations with any hope of stopping him for good, and who knows when there could be another?