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For how dare they, these inconsequential creatures?How dare they approach me, touch me, do anything but fall on their faces and worship me?How dare they?

I knew how the golden god had felt, more outraged than anything, when they hit him with their stupid bazooka.He’d been shocked, like a human seeing a bunch of ants working together to pull a trigger.And they were about to do so again, I realized.

Jonas, damn him, wasn’t dead yet, and was getting ready to fire once more.But I wasn’t a god driven half mad with hunger; I was a demigod energized with it and used to fighting against the odds.My chest was on fire, but I healed it with a thought; easy, as the blow hadn’t gone all the way through, maybe because I hadn’t been bisected like—

Bisected.

The word stuttered across my brain, rewound, and did it again, like a record scratching over and over in the hands of an expert DJ.I stared at the dead god, looking small and dark now, just a shriveled pile of nothing recognizable in the middle of the other bodies.And then my gaze went to the portal, churning around and around on the wall.

I wondered if the rest of his power was still on the other side, lying there where it had been cut off, separated from his mind, and helpless.Could the gods resurrect that way?I had no idea.

But even if he could, he’d be at half-strength and vulnerable, with little way to fight back, and if he couldn’t...

If hecouldn’t, then all that power was just lying there, sizzling in the mud and waiting...for me.

Suddenly, this stupid fight seemed like a minor inconvenience.I dodged the second blow Jonas sent at me as easily as thought and sent one back at him, not bothering to wait to see if it landed.I didn’t care about him and his little weapon, or his war, or his men who I knocked out of the way with flicks of my hand or set ablaze with a glance from my eyes.

I only cared about one thing; only no, that wasn’t entirely true.Because if I found that other half, if the damned creatures who craved power as much as I did hadn’t already cannibalized it, then...there were others, weren’t there?I’d seen at least two more, and while one was probably hiking around the Arctic right now, that still left one in Stratford.

Only not for long.And once I had him, well, the rest were mindless, weren’t they?They barely knew who they were or where they were, and many probably didn’t understand that much.They were vulnerable, little more than animals anymore, and I...I was not.I could lay traps, could hunt them down, could—

Feast.

The word rang in my head and hastened my steps as I ran through the portal, only to stop on the other side, confused and discombobulated.But not because of the stinging spells still snapping over my skin that the Circle had thrown or the pathway’s mighty suction, which I’d hardly noticed.But because this…

Where was this?

I stared around in disappointment and fury.I wanted my prize, the one that was supposed to be lying here waiting for me.Half a god with no mind and no defenses, just glorious, golden energy for the taking!

Where was he?

I didn’t know, and all I saw was an empty, ugly, warehouse-looking structure, nothing like the burnt-out remains of the pretty medieval town where my feast waited.It was still whole except for a few holes in the roof, allowing birds to make nests in the rafters.And filled with dust motes that turned in shafts of moonlight spearing through said holes.

Otherwise, there were only dunes of reddish sand that littered the floor, piling up in drifts in the corners.It reminded me of the coven’s enclave, with the Earth slowly reclaiming its own.Even the sand was the same color—

Vegas, I thought, suddenly understanding.The others had gotten another portal working, or had reset the first one to the place they wanted to be.But not me!

I roared again before turning to stride back through that gateway, to force it to bend to my will and to take me where I wanted to go, whether it liked it or not.And I could have; I knew it instinctively.I could rip it straight off its foundations and—

There was a man standing in front of it.

I started to knock him aside like I had all the others, but stopped halfway through the gesture.He had dark hair, glowing golden eyes, and a huge scar bisecting his otherwise perfect face.A face that was strangely familiar.

“Hello,Dulcea?a,” he said with a small smile.“I have been waiting for you.”

And then the world fell away.

Chapter Twenty

Darkness swamped me, blocking out the view of the warehouse.Laughter rang out around me, perhaps my own; I didn’t know, but it sounded mad.And maybe I was.

I felt mad.

“Let me go, Mircea,” I said, naming him, although I couldn’t have said how.

“No.”

It was stark, and I was suddenly furious that anyone would dare say that to me or try to keep me from my prize, which could be stolen at any moment.