“Hey,” I chuckled, “Urban fantasy fans would lose their minds.”

  We sat like that for a few minutes, listening to the crackling flame and the faint sound of the howling wind somewhere up above.

  “You understand why I sent Lily?” he eventually asked. I could hear in his voice that my forgiveness was being sought.

  There was a crack that made the ground reverberate, and I knew instantly that lightning had just struck somewhere close to the church.

  A drop of cold water dripped onto a hand resting on an armrest, and I languidly moved my eyes to latch onto the tiny bubble of water.

  I could see in the corner of my eye that Father Thomes had moved his head to watch it too, and we both moved our gazes toward the ceiling right as another drop landed on my lips. Without thinking about it, I licked the water away as I stared at the leak in the ceiling.

  With a voice that sounded tired, I mused, “Maybe Collin’s guys didn’t do as good a job as I thought.”

  11

  LILY

  Returning to her body, Lily glanced at the woman who was taking full control over her soul for the first time in who knew how long.

  She debated whether to give the woman a few words of encouragement, but stilled her tongue when she saw her skin was still vaguely reptilian.

  “Sleep,” Lily commanded, waving a hand in front of the admin’s face.

  The corrupted soul dropped her head on the keyboard with a thud.

  Turning down the hall, Lily began to stride toward the exit, which was drawing nearer.

  “What was that about?” Greg asked as he jogged to catch up to the swift walking Lily.

  “She was human, once. But her soul is already infested by the demon she welcomed unto herself.”

  “Wel-welcomed?” Greg asked, missing a step and falling behind as he turned his head to look back down the hall. The front edge of the desk was visible, but he couldn’t see the once human that sat behind it any longer.

  “Keep up.”

  Greg jogged again as Lily opened the next door in the Fibonacci sequence.

  The pair had silent monologues inside their minds as they walked past yet another admin desk. The masculine-shaped demon didn’t even acknowledge the pair still camouflaged by Greg’s glamour.

  As they approached more and more the last door in the sequence that would hopefully lead them outside the building, Greg asked, “What do you mean she welcomed the demon?”

  Lily stopped, throwing her hands up in agitation as she turned to face her companion.

  “I-I don’t know,” she admitted, frustration fueling her words. “They somehow convinced her that it was the better of two choices.”

  “Kill or be killed?”

  “Something approximating that, yes.”

  Silence stretched for a handful of seconds before Greg threw out, “Hell is growing its army past the original angels who fell.”

  “That’s what I’m afraid of,” Lily admitted, crossing her arms as she stared down the hallway.

  “They are gearing up for war.”

  Lily simply nodded in agreement.

  Another succession of seconds ticked by as the pair thought about the implications.

  “Come on,” Lily directed, taking in a deep breath and lifting her chin slightly. “We have a mission to complete. We can worry about all of this later,” she finished, waving a hand in the direction they had come.

  Greg nodded but clenched his jaw as more and more stress piled on top of his chest.

  With renewed vigor, or perhaps a new sense of urgency, the pair made their way closer to the final door which led to the only city in Hell: Tartarus.

  12

  MAGNI

  Something clicked in Magni’s mind, and he bellowed in fury as he willed a glowing wand to appear in his hand. A torrent of frozen air rushed forward with enough force to topple a fully loaded commercial train.

  The fiery face of the boiler seemed to contort in pain as it was instantly extinguished with a hiss.

  Shooting his wand upward with a quick, wordless bark, Magni focused on the steam in the room and demanded it obey his order to condense itself at the tip of his wand.

  The mist did as commanded and hurried to collect into the size of a marble before snuffing out of existence by Magni’s will.

  As sweat dripped down his face and off his chin, Magni looked around to see he was now standing in the dormitory hallway on the second floor. Through the windows, he could see that the sun was nowhere to be seen, leaving behind an eerily calm night.

  He could hear cicadas chirping in an unsynced chorus, sounding like Satan’s ringtone.

  Without knowing what else to do, Magni walked down the hall toward his old room. He knew this was probably a trap for him, but couldn’t help himself as curiosity drove him onward.

  As his brain wriggled out of the unconscious motion controlled by his curious subconscious, common sense flooded his mind, causing Magni to freeze just outside of his old door.

  From down the hall, a floorboard creaked.

  Magni’s breath caught in his throat and his body tensed as he forced his head to slowly turn toward the sound.

  At the top of the stairs was a tall teacher, complete with blank mannequin face. Its head gradually tilted as the eyeless creature regarded Magni.

  The cicadas outside went still as the teacher’s head returned to its full height.

  Magni’s nostrils flared, desperately fighting the urge to run into his old room.

  The faceless thing lunged forward with impossibly long hands and boney fingers outstretched as a shriek emanated from a mouth that wasn’t there. It moved with hideous grace, almost floating instead of running.

  Ludvig flashed in Magni’s mind, and he squared his body against the tall teacher, whispering, “No.”

  He raised his hand, and the glowing wand erupted with a blast of raw energy in the shape of an invisible cannonball. The sphere crashed into the tall teacher, removing one of its arms and most of a shoulder, but that didn’t stop it.

  Without acknowledging the attack, the long creature continued rushing closer to Magni, who readied a different spell.

  Waving his wand over his head in a circle as if he were about to crack a whip, Magni sent a rotating sphere of frost down the hallway. Shards of ice whirled around the attack, freezing everything they impaled.

  The orb crashed into the figure, who began to visibly slow as frost grew over its body. The entire hallway looked like an old freezer that had built up several layers of rogue ice over the years.

  Once the creature was completely still, Magni scowled and lifted his wand to eye level. A ball of fire no larger than a marble grew at the tip, pulsating with power as if in anticipation of the attack.

  Stepping forward, Magni swept his arm in front of him, sending the inferno sphere soaring down the hall to smash into the frozen creature.

  The explosion was brilliant, shattering the tall teacher into chunks of ice that immediately evaporated into steam as the fireball expanded.

  Baring his teeth in a predatory smile, Magni straightened his stance while keeping the wand firmly at the ready.

  Then Magni partook in a grave sin, considering the situation, and unconsciously blinked his eyes, just as he had done over a thousand times that day.

  One moment, the hallway was full of melting ice, with a large section coated in fire. The other, the area was completely untouched.

  No ice. No fire. Only a darkened hallway with a very confused Magni standing there. The predatory smile mutated into an open-mouthed frown, as if his face were comprised of steadily melting wax.

  Cicadas began their awful chirping in unison right as a long hand wrapped around the wrist that held the still glowing wand.

  With a gasp that could have been construed as a scream, Magni shot a horrified look to his side where a tall teacher was holding onto his arm. Smooth eye sockets stared into Magni’s as the mannequin tilted its head to the side, as if curious about what the young man would do now.

  An explosion of glass at the end of the hall caught the attention of both predator and prey, and Magni mirrored the tall teacher as they turned to see Ludvig land in a crouch. Several deep gashes dripped blood to the tile floor.

  In a smooth motion, Ludvig stepped forward with one foot while pivoting his hips, and he threw Mjolnir down the hall like a professional baseball pitcher.

  The hammer whooshed down the hall before crashing into the tall teacher’s head. It shattered into countless pieces, revealing a hollow neck underneath, just like a mannequin.

  “Magni!” Ludvig cried out. “To me!”

  Hope yanked the young man into action like he was connected to a speeding train by a bungee cord.

  Twisting his wrist, Magni broke the tall teacher’s frozen, lifeless grip—like cracking kindling before the fire—and ran toward the battle-worn Ludvig.

  Mjolnir flew through the air over Magni’s head, and Ludvig caught his hammer at the same time he extended his free hand out toward his son.

  Magni sprinted for all he was worth, almost screaming with each exhale, as he reached out with one hand, his other still grasping the wand.

  With each step forward, Ludvig grew two steps further away as the hallway lengthened and narrowed in a vertigo shot. Every horror movie Magni had ever watched flooded his mind, making him cry out the only word his mind could formulate, “No!”

  Ludvig grasped the situation in an instant and began his own sprint toward his son, gaining momentum with his sheer determination and speed.

  Magni could feel the blanket of safety that his mind was trying to wrap around his emotions when he saw the huge man making progress down the lengthening hallway. Then the blanket was set on fire and incinerated in an instant like it was made of gas-soaked wool.

  A distorted, diminished tornado siren whirred all around, making the hairs all over the back of Magni’s neck and arms stand at attention.

  Every surface began wilting and flaking off like old, dried paint. But it didn’t drift toward the ground. Instead, the skin of everything in sight floated upward, leaving behind horrible versions of themselves.

  The surface of clean, well-maintained lockers peeled away to reveal rusted metal with most the doors broken or missing entirely.

  As if a giant tree full of brown leaves had been struck with a speeding garbage truck, the clean tile floor exploded into a cloud of wilted flakes, leaving behind an ugly, shattered floor the color of dirt.

  Black shadows shifted to a matte red as if someone had colored the entire scene with A Nightmare on Elm Street filter.

  Magni continued to push through the flecks of floating debris, barely able to see Ludvig in the distance.

  Tiny hands reached through the brown, broken tile like the floor was made of nothing more than shallow water, and began tripping up both Magni and Ludvig.

  The eerie tornado siren was ramping up for another raise in pitch, creating a sound curve that made Magni want to burst into tears.

  Childlike fingers wrapped around Magni’s feet, ankles, and even his calves, making him stumble. Terrified of falling into the growing forest of arms, Magni stopped and brought his wand up, ready to unleash hell on the grasping appendages he knew belonged to the faceless children.

  Ludvig wasn’t to be stopped, however, and continued tromping through the forest of saplings, crunching their limbs beneath his large feet.

  Once again, the poison that was hope dared to provide Magni with a modicum of peace as his dad grew closer and closer. Nothing could stop the huge Ludvig.

  In answer to the notion of safety that Magni had allowed to be born inside his mind, a wave of children burst from the decaying ground in between the two men. It was like a torrent of water from a firehose, but instead of life-saving water, the hose spewed a blur of tightly packed, faceless children. The white of the mannequin heads reflected the dull red of the scene.

  Ludvig’s cry of surprise was cut short as he was instantly overwhelmed, disappearing into a flood of little monsters that flung him down the decrepit hall that belonged in an abandoned building rather than the orphanage Magni had been adopted from.

  Little hands pulled and pushed on the back of Magni’s knees, making him crumple toward the sea of limbs. Dropping his wand, he postured up on both hands, trying to keep himself from being pulled under the surface.

  Through the sound of panicked breaths and the clapping of the wriggling mass of arms against one another, Magni heard the unmistakable sound of steady, deliberate footsteps on the tile behind him.

  Pivoting at his waist, Magni somehow managed to painfully crane his neck while turning his upper body enough to see behind him.

  Three tall teachers were approaching, the sea of arms parting for them in a malevolent contrast to Moses. All around, the tornado siren was ramping up again, building in volume and pitch the closer the tall teachers drew.

  Hands continued to violently pull Magni downward, feeling like a million fire ants digging into his flesh.

  A wave that sounded like the applause of an intimately sized audience snatched Magni’s attention, and he turned his gaze toward the other end of the hall.

  Once the wave was done with Ludvig, it surged in the opposite direction toward the struggling Magni.

  For some reason, his mind made him feel like he was standing just off the beach in waist-high water with an approaching wave that loomed several feet overhead.

  Tall teachers behind and a cresting wave of faceless children in front, Magni did the only thing that made sense to him.

  Sucking in a deep breath, he dove under the surging tide, and into the darkness.

  13

  JOHN

  Leaving Father Thomes’s church, I stepped out into a steady drizzle of cold, heavy rain. Fat drops plopped against my trench coat hard enough that I could feel them kneading my skin below the Fae silk that mimicked leather.

  I could feel my beard becoming heavier with each passing moment that the water decided to call the long hair home.

  Feeling uneasy about my entire conversation with Father Philseep, I didn’t even bother to flip off the stone statues that were surely watching from above. All of a sudden, it seemed completely and utterly childish to even mess with the guardians, and that realization produced a somber weight in my heart, like a teenager discovering they were no longer an innocent child and had become an adult with all the responsibilities that entailed.

  Gabriel, via the proxy that was Father Thomes Philseep, had been up-front with me, which was what I had thought I wanted all along.

  But with the courtesy came the responsibility.

  It was a fact that felt alien to me, but it also fit in place like one of the final pieces to the puzzle that was John. I hadn’t fully been aware what the missing pieces were, since I didn’t have a box lid that showed the completed puzzle. All that had been there was a large hole that I knew several pieces were meant to go in, and one more portion had been solved tonight.

  The complete picture that was John was becoming more and more evident, and I fucking hated it.

  As I grew as a person, I was losing my blissful ignorance and childlike happiness. Glee and the overall feeling of being carefree had cocooned itself, only to transform into a butterfly made almost exclusively of stress and anxiety.

  Though it felt right, like it was the natural order of things, it still sucked. My shoulders weren’t meant to carry the weight of the world, buff as they were. Yet here I was, enduring.

  I held out my hands, palms up, and let the heavy rain smack into my flesh. It was then I noticed my beanie, coat, and even my Fae shirt and pants were waterproof. It made me think of Taylor, frozen in his ice coffin.

  Except it wasn’t a coffin. It was only a prison because he had me to get him out.

  Rolling both of my shoulders, I repositioned the weight of the world, ready to continue what must be done…what only I could do…

  A feeling swelled up from my stomach and bubbled over into my chest, and I clenched my fists as I struck a superhero pose.

  “I am John. And I am funny as fuck,” I proclaimed to the world, refusing to lose my sense of humor for any reason. To emphasize my point, I forced a loud belch that actually exploded a few raindrops from the sheer power that was John.

  Though it felt good, I didn’t laugh, and that was okay. Hell, was that another piece of the puzzle falling into place? If so, I wanted a damn refund.

  “The John Puzzle,” I said as I grabbed the air around me and focused on the hospital where I had last seen Hayley. “For ages five hundred and up. Heh.”

  As I shifted planes, my mind replayed what had happened after the battle in Germany, causing me to maybe…maybe…lose focus on my target.

  At the last second, I slammed a picture of the hospital hallway in my mind with intense urgency, and was met by a wall mere inches from my face.

  “Whew!” I exhaled as I began lifting my arm to dramatically wipe my brow. “That was clo—”

  My words were cut off as the sound of a crash cymbal grew and then reached the breaking point. It had started out faint, barely a noise at all, before quickly growing in both volume and power in the blink of an eye. The wall in front of me exploded, and my right hand went numb as I stumbled backward, shielding my face from the flying debris that pinged off the stone walls of the hallway.

  Glass broke and metal sang as it was struck by tiny pebbles from where the wall had randomly exploded in front of me.

  An alarm began blaring as the white lights of the hallway were replaced with a pulsing red.

  As I turned to look down both sides of the hall, Nurse Isaac appeared beside me with a glowing wand pointed directly at my nose. My eyes crossed as I beheld the tip and the compressed ball of pure energy pulsating just inches away from my flesh.

  “Um…sorry?” I began, hands held up in placation, my right hand still numb to the wrist.

  Isaac shifted his gaze from my face to the wall and then my hand, where he crinkled his brow.

 

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