Dominique waits until the streets are deserted, then waits ten minutes more.

Moving out from hiding, she hurries down the avenue to the lake, slipping and sliding in the gray mire.

She steals a quick glance to her left. The smooth, quicksilver surface of the lake sparkles crimson, reflecting the ceiling embers high overhead.

Must hurry … before the demon sentry in Jacob’s holographic program appears.

She jogs faster, adrenaline and fear distracting her brain from the physical pain, the double-edged sword gripped firmly in both hands.

Twenty years of existence, twenty years of nightmares. For six years she has watched her son prepare for war within this same hellish environment. But this is no holographic program, and she is not Jacob.

God, please let him still be alive.

She races past the alabaster tree, hurrying to the cross and its unconscious crucified victim.

‘Jake? Jacob, honey, it’s me!’ She reaches the wooden cross’s base, gazing up at its crucified figure—

—who slowly opens his iridescent eyes, a smile appearing on his angelic face.

Dominique’s jaw drops. ‘Devlin …’

The Seraph spreads its wings, then leaps off the cross, his feet pouncing on Dominique’s chest, his talonlike toenails puncturing her environmental suit.

And then his wings stop flapping, and he leans in closer, staring at her, his dark expression quizzical. ‘You’re not Immanuel?’ He straddles her chest and sniffs her neck, his nostrils inhaling her scent. ‘First-Mother! Where is your other son? Tell me now, or I’ll kill Jacob.’

‘I’ll tell you … but first … I want to see him!’

Devlin’s wings beat the air, lifting him off Dominique’s chest. Regaining his feet, he pulls her up by the hair, then drags her toward the calabash tree.

Jacob is on his back, his throat and limbs pinned beneath the tree’s thickly knotted alabaster roots.

‘Speak now, or he dies.’

‘Manny never made the voyage. I took his place.’

Devlin’s eyes blaze violet. ‘Impossible.’

‘It … it’s true.’

‘Arrgggghh!’ Devlin clubs her in the back of the head, sending her crumpling to the oily ground—unconscious.

The Seraph closes his eyes, allowing his mind to slip inside the nexus. Lilith is waiting for his consciousness within the dense white haze.

Immanuel is not here, Mother. The twins have altered the past!

It doesn’t matter, as long as the portal to Hell is unsealed and Lucifer is resurrected.

But it takes the presence of both Hunahpu twins to unseal it.

You forget, we still have One Hunaphu. His presence, combined with Jacob’s, will provide all the energy needed to open the gate.

Yes, but we cannot tap into his energy field while he remains within his protected domain.

This time he’ll leave. We’ll lure him out using his loved ones.

The pain jerks Dominique awake as Devlin drags her by the hair toward the luminescent white tree.