Twin bolts of energy lanced out and slammed into the tower’s side. Mirrored glass exploded into sparkling fragments . . . but the building remained standing.

The Nephilim leader frowned. He had expected to see stone or metal behind the surface, both of which would have been blasted to pieces, but instead, empty space was revealed beyond the gaping hole. A couple of floors were visible, but no supporting pillars. How was that possible?

‘Fire again!’ he ordered. A short wait for the weapons to recharge, then two more bolts struck their target. Another swathe of glass was ripped away, exposing more floors within – but the building didn’t even shudder.

‘My lord!’ The oddly accented shout drew his attention away from the tower. The human, Zan, stood at the top of the mausoleum stairs. ‘There is something Sidona says you must see.’

Another frown – even if it was at his wife’s request, Gadreel did not like being summoned by a human, and he considered the beast both obsequious and cowardly – but he crossed the throne room. ‘Keep firing!’ he ordered, then descended into the chamber below, where the rest of his people still waited in their sarcophagi. He went straight to Sidona. The tracker was beside her, cables connected to the glowing crystal wall. ‘What have you found?’ he asked.

Her eyes shone with excitement – an almost predatory awe. ‘I . . . I can see the whole world,’ she said. ‘When I touch it, I can see everything!’

‘What do you mean?’

‘I cannot explain it. But this thing, this machine – it shows me the flows of energy, everywhere. And I can guide them!’

Gadreel indicated Zan. ‘He said it was a weapon. Can you make it work?’

‘I think so. This picture,’ she indicated the laptop’s screen, ‘is a map. The human showed me how it works, and chose a target – and I could feel where it was. If I focus, I can direct the energy to that place, make it stronger and stronger . . . until it explodes.’

‘That is what he told me,’ Gadreel confirmed. A moment of thought, then: ‘We will test it. I have a target – the tower in front of us. The beasts have forgotten the Nephilim. It is time to remind them of our power!’

Eddie watched the lift’s floor counter tick down. The tower was eighty-three storeys high, which would have put it in the upper ranks of New York’s skyscrapers. Sixty floors to go, and then he still had to find Nina before the Nephilim—

The elevator jolted. Macy gripped her father’s hand. ‘Daddy! What was that?’

‘They’re shooting at the bloody building!’ Eddie cried as the car shook again. Its guide wheels squealed against the vertical tracks. ‘We need to get out of this thing.’

‘We’re over fifty floors up!’ Cheng protested as the Yorkshireman shouldered his way to the control panel. ‘It’ll take ages to get down the stairs!’