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A chair had been knocked on its side.

Someone had dropped a mug of coffee on the floor and left it there.

Tension rippled among their group. Hands eased toward guns.

Had these people left so hastily that they’d knocked all this shit over? Or had something else happened? It seemed unlikely, given how they hadn’t heard any noise, but?—

Travis drew a pistol and kept walking.

Malakai was first to reach the corner.

A wet, fetid odor slapped Travis in the face. Ugh, thatsmell?—

As they rounded the corner, Malakai froze.

Everyonefroze.

“What the hell?” Malakai breathed.

There was blood all over the walls. Blood and claw marks.

People lay dead in every room and hallway. Throats were slashed. Bellies were ripped open, innards smeared across the floor.

The lights flickered.

The power shut off, darkness falling like a quilt.

Deep in the hospital, something roared.

38

East Yveswich Industrial Park

YVESWICH, STATE OF KER

All hell had broken loose outside.

Roman kept Paxton close as he stalked out of the warehouse and straight into a bloody war zone.

Clumps of snow and ashes fell from a charcoal sky. Buildings were burning, flames casting the ravaged street in flickering relief.

But the fire’s glow was still no match for the Void. The otherworldly darkness just kept growing, blotting out their world bit by bit, structure by structure. A parasite feeding off light. Off life itself.

The others were engaged in combat, dead monsters lying in gory lumps all around them. Bullets flashed in the ever-darkening street, and several blocks over, soaring above and between buildings, he spotted Fleet soldiers and attack helicopters. Members of various armed forces were going up against droves of winged demons with bullets, crossbows, and magically enhanced blades. Bellowed commands and the spitting of rapid-fire gunshots rang through the night. Those monsters—some of them belonging to breeds Roman had never seen before—had one thing in common.

The stones embedded in their foreheads. Pulsing with dark magic that rendered them practically indestructible. The bullets, the blades, the bolts fired out of crossbows—those soldiers might as well be brandishing sticks and stones for what good they were doing.

This was not a war they could win. This city, his home?—

It was already lost.

A demon barrelled toward them from the black sky.

Roman felled it with a net gun of magic, shadow snapping its leathery wings shut.

It crashed to the pavement and tumbled straight into the path of Max’s obsidian blade.

He punched the sword through its skull, then planted his boot on the back of its jagged spine and wrenched the blade free.