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She was here, though. In that partially constructed apartment building straight ahead. He could sense her. He’dconcentrated on the tug of the Sight the whole time he drove, determined not to make a mistake. There was no room—no time—for error.

He parked and got out.

The others followed, and together they walked to the entrance.

Apart from one foggy streetlight, the darkness was stifling. The dirt parking lot was covered in a thin layer of snow and ice that crunched under their boots. The weather right now was as crazy as everything else going on—while it rained in one district, it snowed in another. If only Spirit Terra would glitch and decide to send some of that Angelthene late-summer heat.

They walked up the concrete steps and tried the door knob.

Locked.

“Stand back,” he told the others.

He kicked the door open with abang?—

Blackness greeted them.

Dominic flicked on a flashlight, the beam bouncing through the building.

The coppery tang of blood slammed into them.

“Holy gods.” Dominic’s husky whisper echoed.

Max staggered through the door frame, his chest tightening as he took in the space bit by bit, the smashed glass and body parts and blood—so much blood—lit up by the darting glow of the flashlight. Red covered the floor and walls—thick puddles and sprays of it.

“Maya?” Max’s shout broke out of him. The empty building echoed it back three times.

No answer.

His sharp breaths chewed up his lungs.“MAYAAAAAA?”

The body parts on the floor…whoever it was, they had been torn apart so thoroughly, they didn’t even lookreal.

As a Darkslayer, Max had seen his fair share of fucked up shit, had killed many of his own victims in brutal ways, but this… This was repulsive. A murder of the most gruesome kind.

It wasn’t Maya. Itcouldn’tbe Maya. He’d tracked her here. Felt her aura the whole way. Shehadto be alive?—

He lurched forward, boots splashing in blood he hoped didn’t belong to his sister. The others followed, blind apart from the beam of the flashlight.

Dominic crouched before a pool of red, eyes black, and dipped his fingers in. “Still warm,” he murmured.

Oh gods. There was a woman’s head in the corner?—

Click.

Max whirled?—

And nearly fell to his knees in relief as he beheld Maya standing in a doorframe, her features veiled in shadow.

The relief quickly faded as his attention dipped to the gun in her trembling hands. The gun she was pointing right at his head.

She stepped into a beam of greyish light slanting in through a window and rasped, “Put your hands in the air.”

Max swallowed the ache in his throat. “Maya, it’s?—”

“Put your fucking hands in the air!”She pointed the gun between everyone in their group. Her eyes began to glow orange.“All of you—right now! Hands where I can see them!”

Max did what she wanted, the others copying.