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“Also, I knew it would piss Modred off,” Cyrus added.

Braxton scowled at her. “Is that how you think of us? Accessories to the fact?”

“Oh, honey. Of course not.” Sabine smiled. Oh, man, did I ever know that smile. “Not at all. You’re so much less to me than that. You’re like an afterbirth. At one time, you may have had some value.

But now you’re all used up and—well—just gross.”

“You fucking—”

Two things happened very quickly. Braxton raised his right hand, which was sheathed in another Vorpal gauntlet. But Sabine moved in a blur. She grabbed his arm and snapped his wrist. The sound of it made me shudder. Braxton cried out, falling to his knees. Sabine sighed.

“Cyrus. Drain him, please.”

“Wait.” I reached into my coat, withdrawing the evidence bag with the carved wooden box inside.

“Let’s do this first. Braxton may be an asshole, but he doesn’t necessarily have to die. I’d much rather see him rotting in a paranormal institution.”

The truth was that Braxton was desperate, angry, and in considerable pain. That made him a wild card, and I needed to keep him in play as long as possible.

Sabine extended her hand. “Open the box and take out the vial.”

“I hope I don’t drop it. I can be superclumsy sometimes.”

“Drop it, and the girl dies. It’s that simple, Tess. You know how fast I can move, and I know that you’re not completely retarded. Just do what I say, and everyone gets to keep breathing tonight.”

“I’ve heard that promise before.”

She smiled again. It was like the visual equivalent of nails on a chalkboard. “Maybe I didn’t mean it before. But now I do. Give me the vial, and I walk out of your life for good.”

“Is that a promise?”

She rolled her eyes. “Do you think I want to keep shadowing you? I have better things to do. It’ll be a pleasure to leave you and your pathetic drama behind. Now, take out the vial and walk it over to me.”

I turned to Selena.

Her eyes widened. “Now you’re acknowledging my authority?”

“I thought it might be an interesting change.”

“Just give her the vial. It’s not worth two lives.”

“Listen to your boss,” Sabine said. “Mia’s fine for the moment, and Patrick’s just sleeping. We had to knock him out so that he wouldn’t call for backup with that annoying vampire sonar of his. But we can do something far more permanent to both of them. It’s so much easier to cooperate.”

I drew the vial out of the box. Its contents sparkled, like cranberry ginger ale. It definitely wasn’t blood. I crossed the room slowly, and as I approached Sabine, I saw two things. The first was Or-deño’s armor, which was sitting on the chair next to her.

The second was Sabine herself. This close, I could see how tired she looked. She was positively haggard. Her eyes were red-rimmed, and there were odd scratches on her arms. What sort of creature could leave scratches on an elder vampire?

“It really does look like you’ve been through hell,” I told her. “I guess I should apologize. But I’m really not sorry.”

“I’d only be disappointed in you if you were.”

“What’s in it, by the way?”

“A tincture. Like a fine paint made out of what you call ‘materia.’ Luiz spent his life perfecting its creation. That’s how he earned the title el alquimista.”

“Most people think that’s just a myth.”

Sabine grinned. “And us? Don’t most people think that we’re just a myth?”

She held out her hand.

I gave her the vial.

Then the lights went out.

The Nerve began to hum. Someone was loading a simulation, but Becka was still tied up in the corner. Nobody else had gotten to the controls, and Braxton didn’t even know how to operate them.

Derrick. He must have found Esther.

“This is a pretty lame trick,” Sabine said, her voice carrying through the darkness. “You’re only endangering your loved ones.”

“I didn’t do this. Honestly. I don’t know what’s happening.”

“And I’m supposed to believe that?”

“Believe whatever you want. You’ve got your magic potion now.”

A pale blue light appeared, coming from the ground panels. A patch of air near the doorway began to shimmer.

Marcus Tremblay appeared.

Sabine actually laughed. “Seriously? Is this supposed to frighten me?”

The room flickered. Then we were standing in a familiar alley. A blond-haired boy lay propped up against a Dumpster. He was dressed like a mild-mannered accountant. There wasn’t a mark on his body, but we all knew that he was dead. Marcus stood next to him, staring at Sabine.

I saw her eyes harden in the dim light. “This is idiotic. You think I’m still grieving over Sebastian?

He was a thrall. He meant nothing to me.”

“I don’t believe that,” I said. “I remember how your eyes changed when you talked about him. You cared for him, Sabine. Just like he cared for you.”

“Shut your mouth,” she hissed, “before I rip your tongue out.”

Ah. The Sabine we all remembered was back.

Sebastian’s form shifted. His eyes opened. I remembered how blue they’d been in the photograph taken of them together. He looked sadly at her.

“Fuck you,” she whispered. “This is meaningless. It’s all meaningless.”

“Actually—” The lights flicked back on. Derrick was standing in the doorway, his gun leveled at Sabine. “I think it’s pretty gripping. A tearjerker.”

“Ah. Your maggot’s here.” Sabine smiled. “How’s it feel to be the diversion once again, little man?”

“I’m not sure. How does this feel?”

He fired at her. Sabine moved too quickly, but she’d forgotten about Miles, who was still waiting in the background. He fired from the opposite direction, and the bullet slammed into her shoulder, blossoming on impact. She screamed, staggering a bit, grabbing onto the wall for support.

Selena drew her athame. It shivered beneath her hand, then turned liquid, elongating into a saber that burned like green glass.

“Take them out!” she cried.

Cyrus leapt at me, but I was already moving. I touched the point of my athame to the ground and drew a spike of earth materia. He slammed against an invisible wall, like a bug hitting a windshield.

He glanced off the plate of materia, snarling. I leveled my gun at him, but I was one second too slow. His form blurred, and the silvertipped bullet struck the wall of the Nerve, shattering one of the ceramic plates.

“Careful!” Selena swung her athame at Sabine. “We’re not insured for this!”

Sabine dodged the blow. She was bleeding from her shoulder, but that barely slowed her down. She struck Selena across the face. Selena managed to deflect some of the blow’s force, but it still threw her across the room like a rag doll. She landed on the floor with a grunt, dropping her athame.

Sabine rushed her. I tried to throw something offensive at the vampire, but she was moving too fast.

Then Selena surprised me. Still on one knee, she leapt into the air. Her athame flew after her, glid-ing into her hand. She hung in the air for a moment, then spun around, pointing the blade at Sabine.

A column of force burst from the athame, striking Sabine and sending her stumbling backward.

Selena landed on the ground in a crouch. She raised her athame, and it began to glow, first blue, then incandescent white.

Then it sang.

The sound was deafening. I felt it stabbing my head from all sides, ringing in my ears and making my teeth chatter. And Sabine’s hearing was much better than mine. She screamed, covering her ears.

Something hit me like a truck from behind. Cyrus. I slammed against the wall, losing my grip on the Glock. I tried to rise, but the vampire pinned me to the ground. I could smell the garlic and onions on his breath. He smiled at me.

“You know, you’re kind of a bitch. I’m not even going to drain you before killing you. I think I’ll just—”

A bullet tore through his eye socket, spraying me with hot blood and clear vitreous fluid. I gagged.

Cyrus screamed something incomprehensible, and a second bullet tore most of his scalp off. This time I managed to get my arm up in time, so the blood just doused the sleeve of my jacket.

Miles kept firing until he cut the vampire’s spinal cord. Cyrus gave a great, shuddering lurch, and black purge fluid poured from his mouth. Then he stopped twitching, and was still.

Thank you, I signed.

My pleasure, he signed back.

That was when I heard the growling.

Sabine was back on the mezzanine floor. She’d opened up the vial, and was pouring its contents on-to the suit of armor. Gold smoke rose from the plate mail, and with it came a sound halfway between leonine growling and metal foundations twisting beneath an enormous weight.

“That’s never good,” Derrick murmured, coming to stand beside me. Miles helped me up, and we both stared at Sabine. Smoke was rising all around her, and somewhere within its depths, I could see a form emerging.

Sabine laughed. “You’re all fucked now. La manticora is on her way.”

“Tess!” Selena was bleeding from a cut on her forehead, but she’d managed to stand halfway up.

She pointed to my Glock. “Aim for the armor!”

I started to crawl across the ground, but then something hot sizzled past me, like a small meteor.

The gun went spinning away. I looked up, and saw Braxton with his hand outstretched. He was smiling.

“You’re not going to harm it. Not until la manticora has fully arrived.”

I stared at him. “How dense are you? That thing’s going to kill us all.”

“No.” I saw that he’d placed the Vorpal gauntlet on his uninjured hand. “It’s just going to kill her.”

The armor had become a pool of hot liquid gold, swirling faster and faster as it threw off smoke and sparks like a naked singularity. I could see the manticore beginning to emerge. It had the body of a lion, with bloodred fur and dense musculature beneath its hide. Its tail resembled a scorpion’s, but it was divided into three segments, each one with a giant barb, like a fishhook made of bone. The tail moved left and right, hypnotic, its bone shears trembling.

It also had wings like a bat’s, only much larger. The wings had three sets of eyes, gold and reptilian, staring at me without blinking. But the manticore’s face was what scared me the most. It was human

—the face of a withered old man with wiry black hair—and its wrinkled mouth was full of needle-sharp teeth. Its pink tongue tasted the air. Then it howled.

“La manticora!” Sabine raised the empty vial. “You’re free! Now serve me as you served the necromancer!”

“No!” Braxton stepped between her and the rapidly expanding manticore. “She knows nothing about you. She only wants to control you. If you serve me, I promise to feed you more souls than you can count. You’ll drink the blood of worlds. We’ll conquer every living realm together!”

“Get out of my way!” Sabine grabbed Braxton by his bad arm. But he was ready for her this time.

The gemstones on the Vorpal gauntlet began to glow. He laid his gloved palm against her chest.

“You deserve this,” he hissed.

Red light tore across her body. Sabine howled, and the sound of her voice was somehow more shattering than the manticore’s birth-cry. She withered before my eyes. The necroid materia devoured her from the inside, irradiating her, making her bones glow ruby and hot. I saw every vein in her body. Her eyes grew impossibly large, and blood sprayed from them, blood that was also burning light.

Her scream became a kind of groan. Then her body collapsed in on itself, crumbling into embers and calcined flesh. She shrank until she was nothing, just a dark, ash-choked stain on the floor.

“That’s real power,” Braxton said. He turned to the manticore. “You must recognize it. And you respect it. So serve me. Be my paramour. Do what I say, and I’ll let you have whatever you desire.”

He pointed at me.

“Starting with her.”

Oh, fuck.

The manticore stared at me. It was growing more solid. I couldn’t tell what it was considering. But then it opened its mouth, and spoke. Its voice sounded like a plague wind tearing through the room.

“She belongs to another.”

Braxton’s eyes widened. “I don’t care! Kill her! Tear her apart! She’s nothing to a creature like you.”

Its ancient, impossible eyes held me absolutely still. I could hear it breathing. Then it turned back to Braxton.

“No. She is something. But you—you are nothing.”

Its mouth opened wide. Braxton screamed. The manticore snapped its head forward. Its pink tongue wrapped around Braxton’s head.

He kept screaming. Even when his head came off. I looked away.

“Tess!”

I turned, trying to ignore the nausea. Lucian was standing in the doorway.

“It’s about time!” I snapped.

“You have to destroy the armor. The two are symbiotically linked.”

“Tell me something I don’t know.” I stared at the rapidly liquefying disk of molten metal, still spinning beneath the manticore. “I can’t get close to it. That thing will take me apart in a second. And a bullet’s not—”

Then I remembered something that Lucian had told me about the Nightmares. I can’t say why I thought of it at that moment. But I remembered his gentle look, and the way that he touched my shoulder, reassuring me when I thought I might be sick.

It’s fine. They’re mostly made of water, remember?

Water.

“Becka!” I screamed. “The fire alarm!”

Becka, managing to free herself, had crawled across the mezzanine floor to the control panel. She reached up and pressed the emergency button.

The sprinklers came to life.

The Nerve was a priceless device, and so a great deal of technology was invested in protecting it.

The entire ceiling was loaded with sprinklers, and they all released their water in unison as the fire alarm began to clang.

A curtain of water fell onto the molten disc. It hissed and steamed. The gold started to clump in places, like amber slime.

“Selena! We need ice!”

We both pointed our athames at the bubbling, seething mass that had once been a beautiful piece of armor. There was a lot of materia lining the walls and circuitry of the Nerve, and we drew on all of it at once. Two cones of liquid nitrogen shot from the blades, coating the gold metal in ice and frost.