My magic sparks at my fingertips, blue-gold crackling, and I clench my fist and kill the light before Eric can see what his words do to me.
Henry turns his head toward Eric. “We don’t have time for a father-son spat.”
Eric points at me, his eyes never leaving my face. “My son’s a siphoner. Same as Josiah.” His lip curls. “Stronger, probably. Worse.”
Layla hisses, fangs out, blood still rimming them. “Don’t speak to my man that way.”
Josiah turns and runs the backs of his fingers along her cheek. “Oh, beautiful Layla. I love when you stand up for me.” He kisses her, quick and soft, then looks back to me. “Do we spare him, or do we kill him? Your father?”
I don’t answer, and black magic pools in Eric’s palm, oil-dark, the light bending around it instead of catching. He throws both hands out, one aimed at Josiah, one at me, and it erupts off him in a twisting violet-black wave. I turn my back on it and get a shield over Mara just in time.
“Aaron, get out of the way!” she screams.
It catches me across the back. Pain nearly shatters me as the floor rushes up and my knees slam into it. The spell meant to tear through her breaks against my shield instead, scattering across the bookshelves in dying sparks. She’s untouched. I drag a breath through the burn. Across the room, Josiah throws himself in front of Layla, taking it across the shoulders.
“I love you, beautiful Layla,” he grinds out, and she hisses, furious, beating at his back while he folds his body over hers.
Then it’s a war. Eric comes at us with both hands working, dark magic pouring off him in ribbons, and the level of it staggers me. Dark magic has him fast and brutal, the spells coming quicker than I can counter them. I throw up a barrier and his first hit shatters it. I throw up another and it bows, the strain driving a spike straight through my temples. He’s whipping us and I feel every bit of it, every block rattling down through me.
Josiah’s laughing. He takes a spell that splits his cheek to the bone and comes up off the floor still grinning, blood sheetingdown his throat. “Keep ‘em coming,” he says, and throws himself at Eric, and Eric blasts him into the bookshelves, the wood splintering under his weight.
“I’m going to torture you so bad if you survive this,” Layla calls to him, sweet and threatening.
Josiah drags himself up out of the broken shelving, his fangs red. “Promise, Layla?” There’s real want in it. “You promise?”
“Aaron, please!” Mara is on the far side of my shield, clawing at the curve of blue-gold light with both hands, her tail lashing the air. “Aaron!”
Eric drives me back into the wall with a sheet of black fire, and I catch it on a barrier that nearly folds, the heat pushing through, my arms shaking under it. He prowls toward me where I’ve gone down to one knee, my power flickering, and stops close enough that his stolen young face hangs over mine.
“You are so fucking weak,” he says. “Always have been.”
I’m breathing through blood, my magic guttering low, and he crouches down to my level. “I bet you were still hoping. Still longing. Still thinking I’d come around and love you.” He turns his head and finds his own reflection in the glass front of a bookcase, the smooth skin, the dark hair, and laughs at it, soft, in love with what he stole. “I’ll never give up my beauty to love you,” he says. “You’re worthless.”
Something rises in me, and my hand shoots out and locks around his arm. I touch his skin and my power latches on, and the dark magic comes pouring out of him into me, turning gold the instant it crosses over. Eric jerks back. I hold on. I plant one foot, then the other, and push up off the floor, dragging him up with me, his arm clamped in my fist while my magic drinks him down.
“Worthless, huh?” My voice comes out level. “Let me show you how worthless I am.”
Eric’s head whips toward Henry. “Help me!”
Henry stays where he is, his hands clasped at the small of his back. “I told you. A father-son quarrel is not worth my time.”
“Time to send you back where you belong.” I pull harder, his power flooding into me faster than I can hold it.
Josiah’s head turns toward Henry, slow, his grin sharpening into something with edges. “I’ve been waiting to meet you face to face.” But his head snaps down instead, toward boots on the stairs, fast and heavy, the rack of weapons coming up with them. The police are almost on the landing.
Henry lifts a hand and says nothing. The bodies on the floor, the blood across the marble, the spray up the walls, all of it shudders at once and caves inward, every corpse and every stain collapsing into gray ash that hangs a breath in the air and then scatters to nothing. The room is clean, as if the massacre had never happened. Even the doors repair against the hinges, slamming shut.
“Another time,” Henry says. He opens a portal at his side, and I can’t see into it, the edges dark and oily and the middle just black, a hole punched in the air that shows nothing.
Behind me, Mara drops to her knees, her tail going limp against the floor, and when I look back she’s down, her amber eyes wide and wet on me.
Henry’s gaze passes over her and dismisses her. “I shouldn’t bother with you. You’re as worthless as your son...” His palm comes up and fires, and I catch it in my free hand without letting go of Eric. The spell stops dead against my palm, and I feel my magic close on it and start tearing it apart, swallowing it the same way I’m swallowing my father. Henry’s brow draws down. He watches my hand drink his power, and something crosses that still face that looks like surprise.
Josiah charges him. Henry’s hand snaps out. A wall of force tears across the room and slams into both of us.
It rips me off Eric and hurls me into the bookcases. Wood cracks against my back. Beside me, Josiah hits the wall hard enough to bring a shelf crashing down on top of him.
I shove the boards off and stagger to my feet. Henry has Eric. Magic coils around my father’s drained body and lifts him into the air, dragging him toward the black portal. Eric’s eyes are rolled back. His face hangs slack. Henry feeds him through.
