A sphere of red power exploded nearby, hurling me off my feet. I crashed to the ground, rolled, and sprang up again. With a final stumbling leap, I broke through on the other side.

Xanthe stood just ahead, her manic grin wide and gaze darting across the combatants. She could see again, and she was deciding who to take over with her mentalist powers.

Her attention landed on me, and I sprinted toward her, counting the seconds in my head. I had to reach her before she could get her psychic hooks in my brain. The distance between us shrank. Only a few more steps—

I slowed to a stop, four feet between us. I pulled my paintball gun from its holster, then reached for my belt buckle with my other hand. My fingers fumbled over the leather, and the belt dropped to the ground.

Turning the gun, I extended the handle toward her.

She took the weapon and, with a merciless smile, lifted the barrel to point at my face.

Crimson magic detonated nearby. A wave of pebbles and grit blasted over us, and Xanthe gasped, ducking her head and shielding her face. The instant her eyes left me, awareness exploded in my head. My lungs heaved, muscles spasming with adrenaline.

Jerking upright, Xanthe swung the gun loaded with a final shot of hellfire potion toward me. I swept my leg up in a roundhouse kick, and my boot hit the metal gun with a jarring thwack. It flew out of her hand, bounced off the pavement, and skittered away. Fire surged over it as the paintball broke from the impact.

As my foot came down, my fist veered toward her face. My knuckles hit her cheekbone and her head snapped back.

But Xanthe was a Keys of Solomon member, not an amateur combat apprentice.

She whacked my wrist aside, and her other fist drove into my sternum. As I stumbled, agony burning through my chest, her hand dipped down to her thigh where a long dagger was sheathed. She pulled the weapon.

I grabbed the violet crystal around my neck. “Ori vis siderea!”

A crackling, multi-hued sphere appeared in my hand and I hurled it at her as she lunged for me. It burst against her wrist, knocking her arm back. The weapon dropped from her numb, magic-stained hand.

“Ori vis siderea!”

A second orb manifested in my palm, and I chucked it at her face. It hit her in the forehead.

I yanked a fall spell from around my neck. “Ori decidas!”

As I leaped for her, crystal extended in my reaching arm, she threw herself back and kicked out. Her boot caught my hip, and my dive turned into an awkward fall. I crashed down on her legs.

She seized my wrist and slammed it on the pavement. The activated artifact flew out of my hand.

Desperate to keep her too busy to mind-control me, I threw myself into her.

We rolled across the ground. The hard parts of her body—fists, elbows, knees—were finding all the soft spots in mine, but I kept grabbing her, trying to pin her down. Her fist connected with my jaw and my vision went white. The world spun, and my chin hit the pavement, her knee driving into my back. She grabbed my right arm and wrenched it behind me.

I screamed as agony tore through my shoulder. Twisting away from her, I pushed up with one hand, shaking uncontrollably.

Her arm looped around my neck from behind and clamped tight.

As she pulled me into her, she caught my good wrist and bent my arm behind my back, locking me in place on my knees. My other arm hung limply, a nuclear inferno of agony burning through my shoulder.

“Look,” she hissed in my ear.

Magic flashed and danced, the air rippling with the heat rising from Alistair’s snaking lines of lava. The silver war hammer, splattered with blood, lay abandoned on the ground. Girard scrabbled at his belt for an artifact as he limped sideways, almost stepping in a molten fissure. Tabitha darted back and forth in front of a demon, flicking ice shards in its face.

Aaron had one arm around Kai’s chest, the electramage sagging in his hold. He held a fistful of Drew’s shirt in the other hand and was dragging the unconscious telekinetic away. Ezra, one of his swords missing the last few inches of the blade, faced a demon alone.

“They’re all going to die,” Xanthe crooned. “Just like everyone in Enright died. Xever was waiting in the underground temple. When the time was right, he had Nazhivēr slaughter them all like the brainless cattle they were.”

I fought for air, my mouth gaping.

“These are First House demons. The most powerful of them all—except for a female demon, of course.”

My lungs screamed for air. My head spun, sparks flashing behind my eyes.

“Stop fooling around,” she called, “and finish them off!”

The three demons glanced at her, then faced their outmatched human foes once more.

Xanthe’s constricting arm loosened enough for me to gasp in a tiny breath. “Don’t die yet,” she purred in my ear. “Watch your beloved die first.”

I sucked in another wisp of air—then threw my head back, smashing my skull into her nose.

She gasped and jerked away. Wrenching my wrist free, I grabbed the purple crystal resting against my chest—and with my injured arm, I reached for her neck. Agony burst through my shoulder, blurring my vision, but I didn’t stop.

“Ori vis siderea!” I gasped.

As my weak fingers scraped across her neck and caught on her infernus chains, I smashed the arcana orb into her sternum.

It exploded, throwing her backward—and I tore the demonic pendants over her head.

Her furious scream rang out as I whirled around. Her weight crashed into me from behind, and I slammed down. As she lunged for my wrist, I whipped my arm back—

And hurled the infernus pendants.

They arced through the air, crimson light creating a violent backdrop to their graceful flight, then plunged into a wide crack in the pavement where glowing lava bubbled.

The silver discs plopped into the lava, floating on top of the dense fluid. The metal edges charred, then the medallions melted into silver puddles.

Chapter Twenty-Seven

As one, the three demons went completely, unnaturally still. Their magma stares were blank, their bodies as motionless as flesh statues.

“N-no,” Xanthe stammered. “No!”

Aaron leaped over a cooling lava fissure. Sharpie’s blade glowed red with heat, flames licking the steel. He swung the weapon at the nearest demon’s neck. The super-heated blade passed clean through flesh and bone.

The demon’s headless body collapsed to the ground with a dull, heavy thud.

Xanthe’s weight vanished from my back. Her shoes scuffed across the ground, then broke into a pounding run. I lurched up—and gagged as agony burned through my shoulder. Half blind with pain, I broke into a run, my blurred vision locked on her.

The gap between us widened. She was escaping.

She skidded to a halt. Her arms flew up, and she cringed backward. “No!”

Terror laced her high-pitched cry. My steps slowed, my gaze jolting over the dark, empty street for whatever was scaring her.

Then I saw them—the mob of combat-geared mythics streaming toward us.

For a terrifying instant, I thought they were cult reinforcements. Then I saw the woman at the head of the line, her long ponytail swinging with each step and a silver badge displayed on her chest.

Agent Lienna Shen. And the mythics with her—

“Pandora Knights!” she called. “Take the west side. Odin’s Eye, take the east. SeaDevils, set up a triage immediately.”

I stood in the center of the street, numb with disbelief as thirty mythics sprinted past me on either side, rushing toward the flashes of magic, booming bursts of power, and cries of pain that still echoed from the battlefield behind me.

They sped past, and then it was just me … and Xanthe. The cult leader cringed where she stood, hands gripping her head and fingers digging into her skull.

A footstep crunched, the sound almost lost in the weak patter of rain, and I realized there was one more mythic here.

Kit walked down the center of the street, his hands in his pockets and his badge hanging around his neck, the small shield gleaming. His stare was locked on Xanthe.

Choking on a terrified sob, she sank to her knees.

“Isn’t it fun?” His voice was quiet, devoid of humor or snark. “Messing with people’s minds.”

“Stop it,” she gasped, still clutching her head. “Make it stop. Please.”

He halted six paces away from her. “Not so fun when it’s happening to you, is it?”

“Please,” she whimpered.

I pushed forward. As I lifted my last ruby artifact over my head, I murmured, “Ori decidas.”

I pressed the artifact against the back of her neck, and she crumpled bonelessly. As she thudded to the pavement, Kit pulled a pair of handcuffs from his belt. He snapped them around her wrists.

His blue eyes rose to mine. “You okay?”

I belatedly noticed I was trembling. “Um. More or less. Where did you come from?”

“The precinct?”

“Did you …” I squinted. “What happened with Agent Söze and the damnation order thing?”

He quirked an eyebrow. “Ignorance is bliss, my friend. You should go find a healer. I’ll handle her.”

“Oh … yeah, okay.”

In too much pain to press him for answers, I left him with Xanthe and walked back toward the intersection. Sound filtered into my ears, gradually registering in my brain.

Gone were the blasts and screams. Instead, I heard raised voices calling to each other and the occasional clank of steel. No more magic flashed, and dark shapes moved about the intersection with purpose. The other guilds had subdued the last of the cultists.

Was it over? Really, truly over?

Xanthe’s three winged demons lay on the ground, headless and macabre. The silver war hammer was still abandoned on the pavement, its crushing end splattered with rain-streaked blood.

My foot landed on something soft instead of the wet, crunchy grit that coated everything. Purple fabric.

Bending down, I picked up the Carapace. It hung from my fingers in a very mundane way, the fabric shimmery and soft like a blend between cotton and silk, but it didn’t glow or sparkle or float eerily. Regret punctured my numb bubble and I spread the fabric out, my shoulder burning.