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"I’m on it," she promised as her hands began crackling from her magic. "I can glamour the block so no human wanders into a horror movie, or I can fight. Pick fast, because I can't do both."

"Keep the humans away from the sight. And Sarah, you need to stay here." The decision was an easy one for him.

"Like hell I do," Sarah growled at him, telling him she meant business. "You heard her. Three feet of steel through its chest, and it didn't blink. You've got one weapon in this city that we know has made a Titan flinch, and you're benching her?"

Abraxos tamped down the anxiety bubbling in him. "You bled twice catching a thread in a garden." He stepped into her space, so she'd have to look up at him. "You want to test yourself on a living enemy?"

"I don’t want to be the reason a block dies because the big, strong males were too busy protecting me to let me work." She didn't retreat an inch. "Move out of my way."

"I hate to interrupt," Izzy drawled, jerking a thumb toward the rooftops, "but we’re on a clock. Finish the foreplay before it creates corpses."

Izzy’s comment had him wrapping his arms around Sarah. They were airborne before she began cursing him. She didn't fight it, which told him more than anything about how focused she was.

He felt the Titan before the cemetery came into view. It made his skin crawl and his anger rise. There was no time to decipher what that was about because they had arrived. He’d have to figure out what was happening to him another time.

Lafayette's tombs threw back a dull orange flicker from a creature built like a bull. It had massive shoulders and a hide of black stone covered in fissures. Those seams glowed like cooling slag.

“Where are its eyes?” Sarah called out.

“That band of white heat is its face,” Abraxos explained. When it swung its head toward him and opened its mouth, inside was a furnace.

It took a step, and the tremors it created made one of the old tombs buckle. Sarah went rigid against his chest. "Set me down," she breathed. "Now, Abraxos!"

Doing as she asked was the hardest thing he'd ever done in his entire life. Thankfully, the Vampire Princess and Donovan arrived the second their feet hit the grass. Izzy hit the Titan from the left. Her steel sliced another glowing seam into its hide. A fan of sparks had Sarah’s arm flying up to protect her eyes. The thing let out a low groan.

Abraxos conjured his flaming sword and swung at the same time Donovan went for the softened crack Izzy had opened. Abraxos pulled up short, so he didn’t relieve Donovan of his head. The young Dark Warrior’s daggers sank to the hilt. The creature caught him with the flat of one stone limb and sent him into a crypt hard. The impact was enough to split the marble. Izzy screamed his name in a register Abraxos had never heard from her.

Seeing his opening, Abraxos came down on the thing's spine with the flaming blade leading. He buried the hot steel that had taken ten thousand demon heads between two plates of basalt. The blade rang like he'd struck a mountain. The creature reached back almost lazily and closed a stone hand around his wing.

Pain whited out the world and made his breath catch. He'd had wings broken before. He'd never had one crushed like that. The Titan flung him into a row of tombs. Black dots crowded the edges of his vision, making his stomach revolt. He managed to come up spitting blood and brick dust. One wing was screaming, but he took a step to go after the creature.

The Titan had already forgotten him. It had turned toward Sarah. It sensed her power. The magic in her blood. It knew she was the hand that could lock it back inside its cage.

"Sarah, run!" Something in his side gave way as he got up and headed for her. "RUN!"

The stubborn female didn’t move. She planted bare feet in the dirt, shoved her sleeves to the elbows, and called on her magic. He felt it from across the graves. Lines of pale green fire worked themselves up her forearms, changing her magic to violet shot through with green. The Codex and brand were changing her.

Unable to allow her to face off with it, Abraxos threw himself between them. His arms were spread wide, and one wing was dragging. He couldn't stop himself from trying to protect her because every cell in him screamed mine when he looked at her. And it would not be quiet.

"Move, you beautiful idiot!" Sarah's voice cracked. "I can't aim through you! Get out of my way!"

He couldn’t make himself step aside. His body was the one thing between her and the monster. It was also the one thing keeping her from killing it. He should move and let her try. He didn’t have to go far. He could stay close enough to keep it from reaching her.

“Mated males are freaking stubborn mules,” Izzy muttered as she headed for him.

Before Izzy could reach him, his feet were already stepping to the left. He caught the vampire princess around the waist and hauled her up. The exertion hurt like a bitch, and he dropped Izzy right away.

They both turned right as Sarah shot her magic out. Her power hit the Titan squarely in the chest. It spread out and poured into every crack like water finding low ground. The orange went dark instantly, and the stone locked up, slab by slab.

“You did it,” Izzy whooped.

Abraxos closed the distance between them and caught Sarah around the waist when she wavered. “Easy peasy,” Sarah quipped.

Blood ran from her nose and ears. A thin line slid from one eye as well. When the creature stirred, she resumed pouring magic into it. She screamed and kept pushing until the Titan reflected a portion of the magic, sending it right at her. The force ripped her out of his arms. She landed flat on her back. The creature went back down into its hole, dragging half a tomb after it.

Abraxos had his arm under Sarah's shoulders before the ground closed over the creature like water over stone. She was gray, and the script on her arms was smoking. Her eyes found his, and she smiled at him. There was blood on her teeth, but her expression was so triumphant that it melted some of the ice that had taken over his heart when she was ripped from him.

"Told you," she rasped. "It was worth it."