“The sun has set. People hide in their homes, listening to the news, and they wonder if we are myths or magicians. We will reveal the truth to them. That we are monsters. Get yourself cleaned up, or they will think we are the pathetic sort of monster.”

He gave Jacob the slightest of pushes, sideways not out, and put the boy off balance, arms windmilling until Kurt stepped out to catch a finger in one closed fist.

That indignity, more than the bloody nose, made Jacob fume. To be made afraid, just for a moment.

“Tonight,” King said, and he was talking to Screamer. “Twenty die. One will experience hell on Earth, with a fate so horrific and remarkable that the entire world will speak of it. If they wish to be spared, they must lop off a finger and place it at their doorsteps. One for every person in the home.”

“We’re announcing ourselves?” Kurt asked.

“We’ll give them clues. Glimpses. Already there are more appearing,” King said. “If we aren’t careful, we’ll be overshadowed.”

Kurt reached beneath the folds of his coat, and pulled out his mask. Snarling, bestial, with glowing red pinpoints for eyes. Jacob, meanwhile, was standing a bit straighter, his fingers combing his hair straight, one hand still holding the handkerchief to his lower face.

Jacob, little more than an animal when he was at his worst, driven by instincts that seemed to be as sharp as the knives he carried, was tidying himself up, like King liked him. Kurt, with his snarling mask, animal or demon, to hide the analytical, cold expression beneath.

“Hell on earth. Are you prepared, Nicholas?”

“Yes, sir,” Nicholas said. The boy was standing in the doorway. Monochrome, tidy, wearing a school uniform.

Nicholas had told King that he had been given his powers. Not by demons, not by angels, not by Scion. By humans. He’d told King that they knew King collected boys—he saw himself in children like Kurt and Jacob. They’d wanted Nicholas to infiltrate. It hadn’t worked—his mind was too affected by his own power, and he answered every question he was given, revealing where he’d come from.

There were others, standing by and waiting. Bradley, with his trilobite-like bugs that he kept, and Rafael, who could turn people into monsters, an illusion as fragile as glass… though that glass could cut.

He set the mask onto his face, and he could relax a bit, not worrying about his expression or gaze betraying something vital. He rolled his shoulders, releasing tension, and preparing for the exercise to come.

Jacob laid a hand on his shoulder as the two of them slipped through the window, into the house.

Jacob has his vision of the future. Bloody and ruined. Us as Kings.

I don’t know how to tell him I find his idea dull.