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“It’s not about that.”

“I swore to myself that I would make you safe again. I was unable to get into the spirit realm to help you, and I wanted to kill myself for it. I’m not letting you get away from me again.”

“Darien—”

“Don’t argue with me, Loren Elizabeth Calla.” He tried to keep his tone teasing as he glanced down at her, a strand of his inky hair shifting out of place, but Loren could see the worry simmering in his eyes. “I love you, sweetheart, but you will not win this fight.” Loren heard the double meaning behind his words.

Deep in her heart, she knew he spoke the truth. But she worried he and the others might not win the fight either.

The elusive magic inside her was quiet and still. It did not stir. It did not glow. It did not even warm her, her body colder than ice with its absence. There was no power left in her, no way for her to help her friends, so she let Darien carry her up to the street, Mortifer still hanging from her ankle, Singer trotting at Darien’s side.

Down the road, at the end of the block, Darien’s car waited like a dark bat, paint shining beneath a streetlight.

A thick wall of fog was rolling through the city, swallowing cars and buildings, plunging the urban sprawl of Angelthene into the eerie and lightless embrace of night. Deep in the Meatpacking District, monsters stirred, hungry baying bouncing through alleys.

As soon as she was in the back with her father, Singer now sitting on the middle seat between them, Darien tried to straighten, but she reached up, grabbing onto him with hands that trembled.

“I need you to promise,” she said, wrapping her hands around the back of his neck and pulling him down to her level. The tears flooding her eyes made it difficult to see, so she blinked them away, desperate to look upon on his stunning face once more, just in case. The LED streetlight gilded his strong jaw, turning his hair into liquid night and his eyes into deep-hued sapphires. “You need to promise me that you’re going to be okay.”

His throat bobbed with a swallow. “I’ll be fine, sweetheart. I always am.” He took her face into his large hands, thumbs rubbing that same comforting pattern that she could never get enough of, the feeling making her shiver with short-lived delight, instead of that deep-boned fear that hadn’t left her alone for days. “I’ll love you through anything and across any distance.” He kissed her, long and deep, the heat from his mouth burning into hers in a way that never escaped her notice, not even now. Not even with their world ending. Ending again, so soon after the last time they had just barely saved it. When he broke the kiss, he stayed close, their noses touching, his breath fanning her mouth. “That is my promise to you, and I will keep it.”

His attention went to Mortifer, who had clambered up Loren’s leg and was now sitting on her knee. “Will you guard this car for me, Morty?” Darien asked. The Hob blinked up at him. “It’s a very important job. Think you can handle it?”

The Hob nodded, looking as concerned for Darien as Loren felt.

“Thank you. Love you, buddy.” Darien’s eyes went to Loren again, and for a moment that didn’t last long enough, he studied her features, as if trying to memorize everything about her in this short time they had left. “I love you, Loren.” It was a statement. The kind that made the universe go quiet as the words reverberated out into the distance. The kind that made her blood heat up with passion, only to ice over just as quickly, fear turning it to frost. “I’ll love you forever.”

It wasn’t until he’d let go of her and shut the door, disappearing back toward the tunnels, that Loren realized his promise was lacking.

Through anything and across any distance, he’d said. She knew Darien well enough to read between his lines, and she knew that through anything meant death. The truth hidden behind his carefully chosen words was like a fist cracking through her ribcage and ripping out her heart. Her bloody, still-beating heart.

Darien’s promise meant he wasn’t sure if he would come back.

—

There were too many of them.

It was by choice that Darien was using his magic more than the others were using theirs.

He stood at the front of the group of Angels and Devils, positioning himself right at the gaping mouth into Spirit Terra, taking down the swarms of demons that pushed through the rippling divide, ignoring the protests of his family and friends, who tried to step up to his side, only to be held back by his wall of magic. He knew they only wanted to help, but he was the fastest and the strongest with his magic, so this was how tonight would have to go. And fuck, he would gladly die before he let a single person in this room fall.

The shadows of his magic choked the breath out of the demons’ lungs before they had a chance to touch ground in the tunnels, their limp bodies falling slack with death in midair. Darien himself barely moved, only twitching his fingers or tilting his head every now and then, his expression hardly changing as he snapped necks, stopped hearts, and cracked skulls wide open, pulpy blood misting the air.

But these creatures that were getting through…they were smaller and easier to kill, just like those batlike ones he’d downed in the Financial District, seconds before totalling Travis’s car. And Darien knew from the sounds he could hear vibrating like seismic waves from deeper in the spirit realm that he wouldn’t be so lucky soon. Stronger ones would push through, and when they did he wasn’t sure if they would make it.

He didn’t allow this horrible truth to stop him. His magic was spread out around him, a wall of surging black, lit up throughout with pinholes of color and light that looked almost identical to the entrance into Spirit Terra, almost identical to Mortifer every time the Hob vanished out of sight back at Hell’s Gate, only to reappear somewhere else in the house, usually in one of the fireplaces, scaring the shit out of Darien or one of the other Devils.

Darien stared straight ahead with black eyes, not blinking, as he downed the demons, sometimes four or more at a time. The entrance was crowded with piles of dead bodies. Some of the creatures resembled bats, while others resembled wolves or dogs, or a cross between fauns and jackals. His once invisible magic was an unstoppable force of nature as he pushed himself to his limits, fuelled by nothing but sheer determination and the Venom he’d dripped into his eyes.

But, like everything in life, he knew he would soon hit a wall. A dead end that would render his magic useless.

And the night was far from over.

That was when he spotted three demons running straight for the gate, the Blood Moon drawing them here to slaughter, the white scales on their massive bodies catching the light. Three creatures exactly like the one he had barely managed to kill at the carnival.

All the blood in Darien’s head drained down to his feet.

Travis stepped up beside him as Darien’s magic briefly waned from his surprise, allowing Trav a chance to get closer than any of them had been able to all night. “Darien.”