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  “One of you should have gone with her. She should not have crossed without protection,” Kelly hissed.

  “Kiddo, if she needs protection over there, none of us are going to be any use at all,” Jason muttered.

  “I am as old as the cosmos,” Kelly said. “You should respect me.”

  “I don’t respect anyone or anything I can con as easy as you,” Jason said.

  “Cut it out, guys,” Sam said.

  The place should have been crawling with demons.

  The problem with places that should have been crawling with demons was that the usually were - you just hadn’t found them yet. He checked on Samantha. She continued to get further away, but she was optimistic. She had turned the corner and was headed back away from Hellcity.

  The heat on that side was oppressive. He could feel it on his skin, through her, like waking up sunburnt and unable to find shade. He was distracted enough by the rawness of it that he nearly missed the demon who attacked him. He got the hatchet up between his body and hers as she tried to grab him. The demons in New York tended to be more civilized. They fought with blades and guns, rather than teeth and claws. She was newly-crossed, bloodthirsty, and angry.

  The hatchet was buried into her shoulder and Sam was losing the battle of strength as she tried to bite him. He had a good lever through his elbow, but she had gotten her hand around the back of his neck, and she was much, much stronger than he was. Wrath burned in his other hand and he stabbed her in the stomach. Twice. If you can hit them once, you can hit them twice. She screamed and vanished. Sam rubbed the back of his neck and looked at Wrath, watching as the demon blood ashed. Jason had Anadidd’na raised to strike, and Kelly had fallen backwards. Sam turned out, getting Jason behind him, and he felt his brother’s shoulder touch his own.

  “You okay?” Jason asked.

  “Fine.”

  “That wound gonna be fatal?”

  “I’m fine.”

  “Hers, idiot.”

  “Oh. Probably not. If she was strong enough not to ash the first time, she can probably regenerate.”

  “You need a better blade.”

  “She was powerful,” Sam said. “Normally she’d be ash.”

  “Not too smart, though,” Jason observed as they moved cautiously forward. There was a scuffling noise as Kelly regained his feet and followed them, drawing a curved sword with a barbed point from over his shoulder.

  “That’s a neat trick,” Sam commented. It hadn’t been visible until Kelly reached for it. “Sam says that new demons don’t glitch instinctively. If she’d known to glitch, she’d have laid me open.”

  “New?” Kelly asked.

  “Ones that haven’t been on this side before,” Jason supplied. “I think it’s time to call Argo, don’t you?”

  Sam nodded and took his phone out, dropping into a crouch so that he didn’t get in Jason’s way if another demon materialized. He glanced up at Kelly as the phone rang, watching to see if the angel’s first reaction was one-time surprise or fear that he hadn’t been properly prepared for. The boy looked solid on his feet and his eyes searched the room with an intensity that suggested he was upset he hadn’t made good in his first encounter with a demon. Sam pulled the corners of his mouth down and dropped his head as Argo answered.

  “We’re here,” he said.

  “Where is here?” the man answered. Sam gave him the address and Argo hung up. Sam knew there had been a substantial conflict between Argo and Samantha when she had told him that his contact would be Sam, rather than herself, and it made him nervous. He and Jason had only met a few members of the clique they called ‘us’, and they had been diverse in how they had expressed disdain, even hatred, for each other. Carter was playful, Lange had been competitive, Bane was negligent, and in the few words they had exchanged, it had sounded to Sam as if Argo was angry. Combine that with being forced to work with outsiders to close a hellsgate that had remained open in his territory for months, and Sam wasn’t sure how much they could count on the man if they needed him. And Samantha said they needed him.

  Sam put the phone back away and stood, switching his grip on Wrath from underhand to overhand. He was stronger that way, and a little faster. Jason led on.

  A demon glitched into sight down the corridor of the mall and the three of them paused, waiting for the attack. Jason stepped away from Sam, keeping Anadidd’na out, and Sam wondered if this had been a good idea. They had to come here, he knew, but he didn’t like being here without Samantha. Jason had broken out, but only narrowly, and Sam wasn’t sure he and his brother remembered how to fight together. With Samantha, hunting demons in New York, Sam had been fearless. And it wasn’t that he was afraid, now, so much as that he was aware of how his role in the pair didn’t hold up as well on his own as hers did. He took a breath and looked over his shoulder, trying to keep everything in sight that Jason wasn’t watching as he and the demon stared each other down. Kelly was quivering with tension, and as Sam watched, he vanished. Sam turned his head to where the demon was standing and watched as Kelly brought his sword across his body toward the demon. The demon glitched out, and Kelly hit nothing but air.

  “We weren’t counting on the element of surprise, were we?” Jason asked. Sam grunted. Kelly glitched back.

  “You glitch into a demon like that, you leave your stomach exposed,” Jason said. “I could have cut you in half.”

  Kelly twisted, searching the empty building.

  “We don’t get to practice with it,” he said as he spun.

  “Yeah, I can tell,” Jason told him. “Stay close, and don’t do anything you don’t know how to do. They aren’t going to keep their distance forever.”

  Samantha was cautious. They were close. He tugged at her again and she nudged him away. Busy.

  “We need to get there,” he said.

  “Feel free to point out the most direct route,” Jason muttered. A demon glitched into the middle of the space in between them and spun. Sam blocked and Jason rolled away, getting below the pair of blades and coming up in a charge. Kelly caught a bellyful of demon blade. Sam bent time, picking up a half-second advantage over the demon. He blocked the second blade as the demon continued to spin and went for the underhanded jab to his ribs with Wrath. The demon glitched three feet to the side and Jason was on top of him. Sam dipped a hand into his bag and pulled out a bag of powder, glancing at Kelly for a fraction of a second before making up his mind and flicking the powder into the air. It didn’t take much to make glitching much harder. It took serious magic to stop a determined, powerful demon from glitching out, but one that was inexperienced and preoccupied with keeping himself in a single piece would probably be stuck.

  Jason was saying something, and Sam bent time harder, sweeping his senses and then dropping into a vision of himself to look around the room for other demons. There were two, watching to see how he and Jason handled the first one. He couldn’t drop his grip on time and give them an opportunity to glitch in to listen to what Jason was saying, so he found the spot where Jason was least likely to touch him with Anadidd’na and went for it, waiting out the long span of time it took Jason to finish speaking. Sam hadn’t mastered speaking while he had time bent, yet. He hadn’t realized, back when Jason was learning it, how hard that part would be. When Jason fell silent, Sam dropped back into a vision to listen to what he had said at speed.

  “Check him!”

  There was a quick flick of Jason’s hand at Kelly and Sam nodded, snapping back into his own head and rolling below the plane Anadidd’na carved around Jason as he drove the demon back.

  Sam checked the two spectators again and found them gone. He dropped his grip on time.

  “Are you okay?” he asked. Kelly was wearing a white tee shirt Samantha had stolen from Jason, and it was slit from side to side and stained in an otherworldly red. Kelly looked stunned.

  Sam glanced back over at Jason, not wanting to abandon his brother, but Jason was magnificent. The demon didn’t stand a c
hance before the dragon blade, and it was only because of Jason’s conservatism and unwillingness to expose himself that he hadn’t dispatched the demon already.

  “He was fast,” Kelly said. Sam nodded.

  “They usually are.”

  “I’m wounded.”

  “Yeah.”

  Sam picked the shirt out of the wound, not knowing what he expected to find, but it looked like a stomach that had been slit open.

  “What can I do?”

  “I don’t understand,” Kelly said.

  “Kelly, he hurt you bad. What do I do?”

  “What would you do?” Kelly asked.

  Sam checked on Jason again. The demon was on the ropes, ashing around gaping wounds and just barely holding himself together. Sam heard metal clang to the ground as he turned to look at Kelly again.

  “I don’t know. I don’t know how to heal an angel. Do I need to take your ashes with us or something?”

  “You believe I’m dying,” Kelly said.

  “This is bad, Kelly,” Sam said. His first aid triage said he was supposed to put pressure on the wound, but if he did that, squishy things were going to squirt out. The bright red spread across the white shirt. Kelly looked dumbfounded.

  “It takes more than this to kill an angel, Sam,” Kelly said. “Pain on this plane is… different… unexpected, but…” He put his hand out and grabbed Sam’s shoulder, trying to pull himself upright.

  “Is that as bad as it looks?” Jason asked. His voice indicated he was facing away from them.

  “Every bit,” Sam said. “I don’t know what to do.”

  “I’ll be okay,” Kelly said, falling back. “Angels are robust to injuries that are fatal to man.”

  “Carry him,” Jason said. “You kept that demon from glitching?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Cover my back and keep them from hopping all over the place, and I’ll get us the rest of the way,” Jason said. “We have to keep going forward.”

  Sam grunted, not happy with the arrangement, but glad for the decisiveness. He just hoped the angel didn’t fall to ash in his arms.

  He tucked the hatchet into its loop on his belt and turned Wrath in against his wrist, against the leather guards Samantha had advocated after he kept nicking the insides of his wrist with the knife. Wrath was a bloodthirsty little thing, and it didn’t seem to mind whose blood it took. He picked up his bag and snugged it against his back, keeping out the bag of powder, then picked up Kelly.

  “That isn’t necessary,” Kelly said.

  “Then walk or glitch,” Sam said. Kelly writhed in his arms for a moment then fell still.

  “I’ve been trained among the hosts of heaven to fight demons.”

  “Fatality rate for first fights is the highest,” Jason said, starting forward again. “Don’t take it too personally.”

  “You sure you’re okay?” Sam asked again.

  “Apparently less than I thought,” Kelly said. Sam wondered if angels went into shock.

  They moved faster now, just trying to make their way to the center of the gate, where Samantha would cross. Jason moved like he was beginning to recognize things. Sam caught sight of another handful of demons, but no one came after them.

  Jason stopped.

  They’d come around a corner to be in view of a vast cavern of unfinished space. Maybe it was intended to be a food court, maybe it was a huge atrium, maybe it was something else unfathomably Texan, but in the middle of the dusty concrete and abandoned construction equipment there was a small building.

  “That’s it,” Jason said.

  “That’s what?” Kelly asked. For a few minutes, Sam had thought the angel had passed out.

  “That’s where I spent the last eighty-odd years of my life,” Jason said. “They would have had to put the entire thing on one side of the center of the gate, because otherwise I could have gotten out hellside, but it’s right on the eye of the gate. That’s where she’ll come through.”

  “They held you at the focal point of a gate?” Kelly asked. “Is that possible?”

  “Apparently,” Jason answered. “They did it.”

  Sam scanned the room again from a vision. Demons glitched in and out everywhere, watching, but not getting close.

  “I’m going to knock it down,” Jason said.

  “Can’t we wait until she gets here?” Sam asked. Jason shook his head.

  “No. I ran, last time. This time I’m knocking it down.”

  Sam checked in on Samantha. She was close, weary but feeling a sense of destination.

  “You okay?” he asked Kelly again. The blood on the kid’s shirt was dry, and still vibrant red.

  “They told me I would learn many unexpected things,” Kelly said. “That this place has… unusual rules.”

  “That doesn’t sound okay,” Sam said, looking over his shoulder. He felt exposed, in the huge expanse, and he dropped back into a vision so he could see behind himself.

  Somewhere there was a thump and a cracking noise, and moments later Sam saw Jason hotwire a forklift and drive it for the building. Samantha had a spike of anger and there was another crash. The forklift meandered toward the building, and demons popped in and out of the cavern, like television static. There was a sense of anxiety to it. Sam stood, not leaving the vision, and drew the hatchet. If one of the demons decided to finish Kelly, he’d have a hard time defending.

  The long stretch of the bond to Samantha snapped short, startling him out of his vision. He started to yell to warn Jason, but there wasn’t time. He gave Samantha the warning he could, pushing her along the side of the building so that she wouldn’t be where the forklift went through the wall. She moved back, and there was an even louder crash as Jason drove through the side of the building. Sam crouched, waiting for something to react, but all he heard was Jason curse.

  “Wow,” Samantha said, picking her way through the rubble and out of the building. “That was genius, Jason.”

  There was a young woman with her. Sixteen or seventeen, maybe, with long black hair. Pretty. Nervous. There was a strange sound from Kelly behind him, but Sam only checked to make sure the kid hadn’t died.

  “Did you let him do that?” Samantha called. The relief rebounding back and forth along the bond made both of them a little giddy.

  “He said he was going to knock it down.”

  “Machines don’t work hellside. He just stranded a massive hunk of metal over there.”

  “I thought the middle of the gate couldn’t be in there, because he would have crossed when he went through it.”

  “Oh, it’s in there. They built a mirror building on the other side. I had to hack my way in.”

  “You mean I wandered back and forth?” Jason asked, sticking his head out of the building.

  “Not exactly. The focus isn’t that tight. The hole between the planes is basically the whole room,” Samantha said. “Help me find something to pull that thing back across.”

  “Why?” Jason asked. “Just leave it.”

  “I’m not leaving a battery over there,” Samantha said. Jason disappeared and came back a minute later with the forklift’s battery.

  “Done.”

  Samantha snorted, then waved him back through the hole in the building.

  “Fine.”

  “This place is full of demons,” Sam said. “Powerful ones. I think they came through the gate.”

  “I know,” Samantha said. She looked at the girl with her.

  “We don’t have a lot of time. You need to name yourself. Pick the first name that comes to mind.”

  “Maryann,” she said. Samantha put her hand over her eyes, then nodded.

  “Well chosen.”

  “Why?” Sam asked.

  “Something about demons. They like picking Gidget-style names.”

  “Demon,” Kelly hissed. “She brought a demon.”

  “I had an obligation,” Samantha told him dismissively. “What happened to you?”

  “He got himsel
f gutted by a demon,” Sam said. She clucked at him.

  “You big baby,” she said. She looked at Maryann. “I don’t know how to teach you how to glitch. There are a lot of other things you’re going to need to find demons to teach you, as well. Right now, you need to figure it out, and you need to leave. Go far away. Any interaction we need to have to finish this needs to happen later. Do you understand?”

  Maryann took Samantha’s hand with both of hers and kissed it.

  “Thank you,” she said. “I won’t forget.”

  “Lover, I can’t give you mercy. You have to go now.”

  Maryann looked around, seeing the shopping center for the first time, and took a step back.

  “I understand,” she said. She closed her eyes and stretched her hands out, fingers wide.

  “I can feel everything,” she said. “There’s so much space….” Her eyes flew open and she looked at Sam. “You have a heartbeat.”

  “Yup.”

  She looked at Samantha.

  “I understand. I will keep my word.”

  She dropped her head and took several deep breaths.

  “I can feel…”

  And then she was gone. Samantha shook her head.

  “That one’s going to be a handful.” She knelt next to Kelly. “Your first trip out, and you’ve got Sam carrying you around? Really.”

  She pulled his shirt away from the red mass of blood-covered tissue and internal gooey bits and clucked again.

  “Do they not teach you how to regenerate, anymore? Who’s doing the training up there, these days?”

  “It’s different,” Kelly said, eyes wide. She sighed.

  “I know, sweetie. I’ll get you up and moving. You need to figure out the rest.”

  “Of course.”

  She drew Lahn and spoke the words engraved on the blade as she drew the flat side across the wound. She stopped short of healing him all the way across, and Kelly put his hand to his stomach, grimacing at the pain. Samantha patted him on the shoulder and stood. There were more cracks from the center of the room as Jason continued to tear down the building without the fork lift.