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The FBI agent lay on the floor of the storeroom. Blood leaked from his temple and formed a small, spreading puddle under his head.

I took the weapon from his holster, walked over, and laid it carefully on the table.

Only half a second had stood between that man on the floor and my right-hand man winding up in handcuffs. If he’d moved just a little slower, hesitated for just an instant, Yates would’ve drawn that gun, and Napp would’ve surrendered or even died right there.

I’d known who Hagen Yates was immediately at the university. Him and Stella Knox. They’d stopped Maureen King, the woman who, according to reports in the press, had been my most dedicated of students.

The blood spreading across the floor was the very same the Nashville newspapers said Trevor McAuley had tried to spill in return for his reward. He’d almost succeeded too.

Making Hagen Yates my sacrifice would be a beautiful act. He didn’t deserve redemption, not after all he’d done. But his sacrifice would redeem me. Just like the others .

All those people who’d had the intelligence to believe what was written on that tablet, who’d already redeemed themselves and the people they loved…some had done what was necessary. Others would do it now, after me, after my act of valor, as this world ended.

My hope had always been that my leadership alone would be enough to give me a place in the era to come.

The tablet was silent on the form that world would take, though.

There was no way to know whether the coming age would be like this one, just cleansed of those too stupid to understand and too blind to see.

Or whether, after the Day of Changing, the new era would be something altogether better.

But I wanted my place in it. I deserved it. At the very top. This would secure it.

Queen of the new world. Head priestess and highest empress. The old world could burn, and I would rule over its ashes and build my empire on its ruins.

No one had contributed more to the old gods than I had. No one had caused more blood spill in their honor.

When those two FBI agents had walked into Whelan’s office, I’d had such a burning desire to sacrifice them. At least one of them. I swore to myself that I’d do it if I got the chance.

And when Hagen Yates stepped into the museum—on the day—I knew the gods had smiled on me. They wanted me to sit alongside them. Of course they did.

The blow had made a sickening crunch as it struck the side of his head. The thumps he made as his chest bounced off the back of the chair and then again when his head hit the ground…just as awful. How incredible to be this close to the action.

I watched the stream of blood snake down Yates’s cheek, adding to the pool on the concrete. Such a beautiful color. A deep, glorious red. So much ancient poetry had been written about that liquid of life, so many old stories.

I checked my phone. Just forty-nine minutes before the end.

The moment was almost here, and I now had the perfect example to set for others.

Two perfect examples, actually. Two handsome federal agents bleeding to death in the basement of the Museum of Ancient Art would be the trumpet announcing the apocalypse.

The sound would echo across the country.

It would tell the world that they should’ve paid attention. But now they were too late.

This would start the sacrifices my followers would make across the country as the old age ended at the stroke of noon, according to the prophecy. The agents’ bloody corpses were a stronger message than anything I could’ve conjured up using old-fashioned words, basic English.

I needed to move fast now.

“Alfie.”

Napp stared at me.

“Put down the mace and help me. Now.”

He returned the mace to the shelf, then crouched next to the agent. “I’m not used to physical violence.”

“You could’ve fooled me.”

I placed my fingers on the side of the agent’s neck. He was still alive. At least for now. “He’s got a pulse, so you haven’t jumped the gun on your sacrifice. It’s all going as planned.”

Napp smiled, gripping Agent Yates’s under his armpits and lifting him.

We dragged his unconscious form up and into the old, heavy seat.

The man was lean, but muscle was heavy, and I hadn’t done any heavy lifting in…

well, had I ever? Not really, but Napp was in fan-fucking-tastic shape for any man at any age.

He was a big help. I’d chosen right with him as my sidekick .

As we got Yates situated so he’d stay in place, his head lolled back in the seat, causing blood to streak in multiple trails across his cheekbone, curving around his sculpted jawline.

Some splashed on me, too, but I didn’t mind.

Much more blood would flow. Soon enough, my hands would no longer be clean, and they were only going to get dirtier.

I pointed at a coil of rope on the bottom shelf, left from the crates used to ship artifacts, and Napp retrieved it.

I ran the line around Yates’s limp body until he was trussed up like a spider’s prey.

Napp tied the knots. Even if the agent regained consciousness before the end, he wasn’t going anywhere.

Fifteen minutes later, his partner was at his side again. Everything was even more perfect than I’d planned.

With nearly half an hour to spare, I turned on the ring light and took the tripod from the corner of the room, its metal legs clicking open with a satisfying snap.

“As the sun begins its descent, so too will the old world.”

I glanced at my watch. It was nearly time for everything to change.