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“I know,” Darien gritted out. He rallied his magic, the force of it causing bits of rock to rise up off the ground. The flame inside him was threatening to gutter out.
“I can help,” Travis said.
“I can handle it.”
“Darien, for fuck’s sake, we’re cousins.” Travis’s husky voice bounced through the tunnels. Darien was vaguely aware of the others listening, their panting breaths and heartrates blending together. “I’m not going to stand here and let you get killed!”
Cousins.
Cousins…
Darien whirled around to face him. “Your magic. Let me see it.”
Travis blinked. “What?”
“Show me! Form a wall or something, just show me your fucking magic, Trav! Hurry.”
Travis shut his eyes, squeezing them tight with focus. When he reopened them they were black, just like Darien’s, though Trav’s was devoid of the webbing that came with taking Venom.
Nostrils flared, brow creased, Travis pushed his magic out of his body, building a wall of it with an outward thrust of his right hand.
A wall almost exactly like Darien’s. It was visible, though slightly more transparent than Darien’s, a three-feet deep barrier of black that curled like mist. Hope kindled within Darien’s chest at the sight of it.
Maybe…maybe they could win this thing.
Shadow magic, death magic, the magic of the Void—Darien didn’t know what it was, but he didn’t care, because Travis had it too.
Darien grabbed the bottle of eyedrops out of the thigh pocket of his bodysuit and tossed them to Trav. “Two drops, one in each eye.” He looked back at the gate. The demons were getting closer, tearing up the ground with clawed feet, red light glowing within hollowed-out eye sockets. Was he imagining it, or were they bigger than the one at the carnival? “We’re going to have to kill these fuckers.”
Ivy tried to ask him something, tried to step up to his side, but he didn’t have a chance to hear her, because the monsters were diving through.
The tunnels lit up with bullets and magic as the creatures attacked with a speed that was staggering, but their line of defense wasn’t enough to down them.
By the time Darien and Travis had incapacitated one of the three, another had thrown Darien into a wall, its barbed tail lashing through his magic and right into his chest.
He hit the wall with a shout of pain and landed on a table, crates and boxes and other shit toppling down around him, the front of his bodysuit absolutely shredded by those lethal barbs. The table turned on its side with a groan, and he slid onto the ground with it, winded and blindsided, but thankfully not bleeding. The barbs hadn’t reached his skin, but there wasn’t much left of the armor that covered his chest, leaving it vulnerable. Another hit, and he would be done for.
Righting himself in a crouch, he looked up to see the others in the cramped space, fighting for their lives against the two demons, the third already stirring awake, not nearly injured enough by his magic, not even with Travis’s combined.
That was when the darkness hit. The silence that was somehow deafening. All power went out in the city. The tunnels plunged into a total absence of light, leaving them blind except for their Sight and the faint glow filtering through the entrance into Spirit Terra, barely enough to allow them to see.
The ground below that entrance began to cave in. The walls around it cracked, and debris fell from the high roof, smashing as it hit the floor.
The Veil was falling. If they couldn’t find a way to close this gate, if the others didn’t get here with the Moonstone in time, they would lose.
Darien twisted the face of his watch and held it up to his mouth, shouting bloody murder for the person he was trying to contact to pick up on the other end, to be listening, gods-damnit. The cell service would be down too, no doubt about that, so this was the only way. The only bloody chance he had to fix this—
“Darien, what the fuck?” came a deep voice. “What are we, kids using walkie-talkies again?”
“Malakai, I need help.”
Malakai immediately became serious. “What’s going on?”
“There’s a rip into Spirit Terra under Angelthene Boulevard.” He stood, lashing out with his magic, keeping one of the demons from cutting his sister’s head right off.
Ivy whirled on a heel to face him, a mixture of fear and shock in her eyes as she stumbled away from the creature, tripping on bodies. The creature’s claw strained with the effort to break free of Darien’s hold.
Jack caught his wife before she could fall. He pulled her behind him, putting himself between Ivy and the demon.
