“Have you given any thought to what my guilded is saying, Nicolas?” Darius asked calmly. “Demon magic killed your men and killed the stranger in their midst, and you have no questions about that?”

“My only question is how you snuck your demon mage into my guild.” Nicolas raised his fist in a wordless command, and every Keys member who didn’t already have a weapon in hand drew one. Crimson power flashed over and over—two dozen demons taking form among the mythics.

Two dozen demons. They had more demons than we had fighters. I clenched my hands into fists to hide their trembling.

“I told you there are no demon mages in my guild,” Darius said, his quiet voice rolling through the streets. “And you’re about to take innocent lives at your enemy’s bidding.”

“I do no one’s bidding, Darius.”

Nicolas swung his arm down to signal the charge—and the earth trembled.

Behind the Keys’ line, the pavement split open. A pillar of dirt and concrete shot upward, rising two stories and halting when it reached the top of a nearby building.

A man stood on the roof, glaring down at the gathered mythics. He stepped onto the pillar and it sank back into the earth, carrying him downward like an elevator. He thumped his wooden staff into the pillar’s top and it went still, three feet above the road.

“Blake?” the Keys GM growled. “What—”

“Are you out of your mind, Nicolas?” The terramage yelled. “You’re about to slaughter an innocent guild!”

Nicolas snorted. “You’re the one out of his mind.”

His gaze sweeping across the assembled Keys men, the terramage struck the earthy pedestal with his staff. “We faced Enright together. We fought a battle more horrific than anything we had ever seen, and we lost friends and comrades. It was worth it because we were stamping out an evil force before it could grow any larger—but that’s not what happened. We didn’t stamp out the cult.”

“Shut up, Blake!” someone shouted. “You’ve lost it!”

“I was in there when Russel, Anand, Piotr, and Chay died,” Blake roared. “They were part of the Enright cult! Russel had become a demon mage!”

A man laughed, the sound cruel and mocking.

“Get off that rock, Blake,” Nicolas yelled. “You need medical attention.”

“I needed medical attention after Russel blew a hole in my chest, not now.” Blake pointed his staff at the GM. “Four weeks ago, a Crow and Hammer team showed up at Enright. They were investigating the possibility that the cult had survived, and we found an active sect in Portland. I called for backup. I got an assassin instead. The cult has infiltrated our guild, turned members, and is trying to discredit and kill me—and they’re tricking you into destroying the only guild that knows the truth!”

The wet drum of rain on the pavement filled the quiet that answered him.

Nicolas chuffed. “A wild story without any evidence, Blake.”

“You know what else you have no proof of?” Blake shouted. “That anyone in that guild is a demon mage!”

“The MPD has—” Nicolas began.

“You know the MPD plays its own games!” The terramage’s deep voice rolled right over the GM’s. “Everyone who was with me at Enright—you’ve all talked about the horrors of watching those families die. Women and children, damn it! And now you’re going to commit the atrocity yourselves?”

Movement in the mass of combat mythics—scattered men shifting their weight or looking around as if to see what their comrades thought.

“Hell, Nicolas.” The mythic beside the GM, a lean man pushing sixty with a wide, weathered face. “He’s got a point. I thought this was a hardened combat guild about to go full rogue, not a bunch of misfits and kids.”

Kids? We weren’t that young—though, considering almost half our fighting force was under thirty, we probably looked pretty young to the grizzled veteran.

“The demon mages in Enright were kids too,” Nicolas replied flatly.

“This isn’t Enright.” The man—probably an officer—shook his head and stepped out of the line. “If we’re going to dismiss Blake’s claims because he doesn’t have hard evidence, then I’m not butchering a guild without hard evidence either.”

“I’ve seen the evidence, Tyrone. I got it straight from the source. Now get in position.”

“I want the evidence too.”

“You calling me a liar?” Nicolas snarled.

Tyrone took another step back. “Why are you acting like this?”

I snapped to attention. Was Nicolas’s behavior unusual?

Tyrone sheathed his short sword and pulled out a cell phone. “I’ll decide for myself how much blood I want on my hands.”

As he began to dial a number, I scanned the rooftops.

Nicolas snatched for Tyrone’s phone but the officer twisted away, stepping farther into the no-man’s-land between the two guilds. It rang on speaker.

I peered into the darkness behind the lines of Keys mythics, searching for a telltale shadow or glimpse of movement.

The line clicked.

“MPD Hotline,” a bored female voice answered. “How may I assist you?”

“This is First Officer Tyrone Bartell of the Keys of Solomon. Get me Agent Söze and make it fast. This is an emergency.”

“One moment please.”

The line clicked again and a tinny elevator tune filled the street as cold rain peppered our heads. Twenty-two Crow and Hammer mythics, sixty Keys of Solomon bounty hunters, two dozen contracted demons, and one lone terramage stood in silence, waiting.

I surveyed the dense enemy line, three mythics deep, seeking the smallest, slimmest form among them. Kai and Ezra noticed what I was doing and began searching too.

A pop from the phone speaker as a line connected.

“First Officer Tyrone,” a cold, commanding woman greeted.

Tyrone started. “Where’s Agent Söze? I thought he—”

“Agent Söze is indisposed. You are speaking to Captain Blythe.”

“Indisposed? We received orders from him less than—”

“He is unavailable,” Blythe interrupted. “Has your guild engaged the Crow and Hammer yet?”

“No,” Tyrone muttered. “We—”

“Damnatio Memoriae has been rescinded. Withdraw immediately.”

Nicolas twitched strangely. “What?”

“I am ordering you to withdraw,” Blythe repeated. “If you attack, you’ll be charged with murder.”

Nicolas went completely still, his face blank of emotion. “Fine. We will withdraw.”

“Do so immediately and report to me.”

“Yes.”

Tyrone pressed his screen, ending the call. A restless shudder ran through the Keys mythics, and I could sense the relief in it. They might be remorseless killers when it came to rogue contractors and demon mages, but many of them were human enough to care if they were killing innocent people.

A similar wave of relief swept across our much smaller line of mythics, but my shoulders didn’t sag like theirs. Instead, I rose on my tiptoes, neck craning as I scanned every face across from us.

“Well,” Tyrone said, “it seems we—Nicolas?”

The GM’s huge two-hand sword fell from his grasp. As it crashed to the pavement, he pulled a dagger from the sheath on his thigh.

“Watch out!” I screamed.

I expected the GM to lunge for his officer, but his feet didn’t move. The blade in hand snapped up—and he plunged it into his own throat.

Blood spurted across the black pavement, and the tall man swayed. His mouth gaped, emotion contorting his face—confusion, then horror, then terror. The dagger dropped and he clutched his throat, trying to stop the bleeding.

Knees giving out, he collapsed on the street—and behind him, hidden by his broad form, was a tall, thin woman.

Xanthe smiled.

Right there. Right in the GM’s shadow, controlling him. Blending in like always, dressed for combat with her raven hair tied into a high ponytail, her dark eyes glinting as they met mine.

With shocked cries, Tyrone and half a dozen Keys men rushed toward their fallen GM.

A shriek of terror.

My head snapped around. One of the Keys’ demons, head and shoulders taller than the humans around it, lifted a man into the air by his neck. The demon’s fist clenched, bone crunched, and the struggling man went limp.

Another roar of pain. A scream. A burst of white-hot flame among the Keys’ men.

And chaos exploded among them.

Weapons clashed. Bodies surged. Magic flared. Screaming. Shouting.

I reeled backward and Ezra caught my arm. His face was pale, stare locked on the battle erupting in front of us. Keys attacking each other. Keys killing each other.

My horrified gaze caught on Xanthe and her smile widened before she disappeared among the struggling bodies.

Several Crow and Hammer members took uncertain steps forward, and Darius lifted a hand, silently commanding them to hold their positions. I craned my neck, trying to follow what was happening. This wasn’t Xanthe’s doing. It couldn’t be. No way she could control this many people.

Men broke away from the tangle, stumbling backward toward us. Tyrone was shouting, rallying his men. Weapons flashed—then the earth heaved. With a crack louder than a cannon blast, a three-foot-wide fissure split the intersection.

In a frantic scramble, men leaped across the chasm, choosing one side or the other—joining their allies so they wouldn’t be caught alone among enemies.

As the two forces separated, the violence quieted.

Twenty-five Keys mythics retreated toward our ranks, their backs to us. Tyrone headed the group, and beside him was Blake, who’d somehow crossed the chaos and created the narrow rift, drawing a literal line through the battlefield. He clutched his staff, breathing hard from the strain of the magic he’d unleashed.

He and his allies faced fifteen other Keys, who’d withdrawn to the far end of the intersection. Twelve were demon contractors, their powerful beasts lined up in front of them. The remaining twenty Keys mythics littered the pavement, victims of the sudden outbreak of violence.