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I reach out and squeeze Grubbs’s arm. “Come with me. They’ll welcome you. You can help us keep the ark safe from demons, ensure it never falls to Lord Loss and his stinking kind. It’s the best we can do. Staying here is pointless. The fight has moved on. We have to move with it.”
“Abandon our world?” Grubbs sneers. “Leave Bec in the clutches of Lord Loss? Run while the demons are weak? Never! They’ve lost their master. The army will split. They’ll fight with each other and return to their own
realms. We can harry them, hit hard, drive the fear of the Kah-Gash into them. This isn’t the end—it’s the beginning. We have the advantage. Now’s the time to press it home and make sure that even if Death does return, it has no army to support it.”
“That won’t work,” I say impatiently. “Death’s stronger than us, and it’s eternal. No matter what we do, it will rise again, recruit new followers, and lead them to victory. It’s over.”
I stand and roll my neck. I want to sleep so badly. But I’ll wait until I find Raz, then sleep as we travel to the ark. Forcing off the waves of pain and weariness, I focus on the lights in the air around me and think about Raz in the chamber on Atlantis. As patches blink, I start the long, laborious job of piecing them together.
“That’s it?” Grubbs grunts. “You’re just going to leave us?”
“It will take several hours to open the window. I’ll be here when you get back. You can decide then if you want to come with me or—”
“What about Kirilli?”
I wince. “Damn. I forgot.” The stage magician is resting, eyes closed, breathing heavily. I let thoughts of Raz slip from my head and think about a hospital instead. It only takes a few minutes to open this window. When it’s ready, I ask Grubbs if he’ll help me carry Kirilli through.
“Leave it to me,” he says, then picks up the wounded Disciple, slings him over his shoulder like a slab of meat, and steps through before the groggy Kirilli has a chance to say goodbye.
While Grubbs is gone, I think about what I’m going to say when he returns. I have to warn him about Bec, tell him what the Old Creatures cautioned. I recall the way Lord Loss eased up on her and I realize why I felt so troubled. It looked like they were going to stop fighting, as if she’d said something to make peace with him. Could she have betrayed us like Nadia did? I need to alert Grubbs to the threat before he races after her. Maybe she doesn’t want to be rescued. Maybe she’s on their side now.
As I’m trying to decide where Bec’s loyalties lie, Grubbs steps back through the window. I prepare myself to argue with him again, but he smiles and waves my protests away before I can voice them.
“You’re right,” he chuckles. “You have to go. I wasn’t thinking straight.”
I sigh with relief. “Will you come with me?” I’m hoping he says yes. Accepting my role on the ark will be hard. It would be a lot easier if I didn’t have to face it alone.
“My place is here,” he says. “Dervish, Bec, Shark… those are the people I care about. I don’t care about other worlds. I’ll fight and I’ll die, and if that’s not enough, at least I’ll have done all that I could. That’s what matters most, isn’t it, doing all you can, regardless of the consequences?”
“Yes.” I smile and extend a hand. “No hard feelings?”
“None,” Grubbs says, taking my hand in one of his huge, hairy paws. His smile fades. “But you might have some.”
I frown curiously. Grubbs is gripping my hand tightly. “What do you—”
Before I can complete the question, Grubbs slashes at my face with his other hand. The sharp, bloody, jagged nails that he was gutting demons with just minutes earlier carve my left eye open. As it pops and I howl with shock and agony, he sweeps his hand back in the opposite direction and rips my right eye out. Then he lets me go.
I fall to the floor screaming, and blindly try to scoop the contents of my ruined eyes back into their sockets.
“I didn’t enjoy that,” Grubbs says, his words only barely penetrating my veil of screams. “But you agreed—regardless of the consequences. I need you, Kernel. I can’t fight on without you. So you’re staying. End of story.”
“My eyes!” I bellow, lashing out furiously, hoping to strike him dead. “Give me back my eyes, you son of a—”
“Can’t,” Grubbs says calmly. “But what I will do, once I’m done with Dervish and we’ve had time to patch up our wounds, get our breath back, and link up with support troops, is open a window back to the universe of the Demonata. You’ll be able to build another pair of eyes there. And then you’ll use them to find Bec and help me rescue her.”
“You’re insane!” I holler, swinging for him again. “Come here so I can kill you!”
“There’ll be plenty of time for killing,” Grubbs says, backing away. “Forget your crazy ark. I’m your keeper now. All other bets are off.”
“Come back!” I yell, stumbling after him and falling. “You don’t know what you’re doing. You’re handing victory to them. We can’t trust Bec. She’ll betray us. Lord Loss will be waiting. Death will…”
I stop. I’ve been shouting to myself. I can hear Grubbs scrabbling up the rope ladder with Dervish, ignorant of my cries. Apart from the werewolves, which are still snacking on the insect demon’s remains, I’m alone.
Abandoned and blind, I strike the floor pitifully, then moan softly and lower my face into the blood and dust, wishing the roof would cave in and finish me off. If I still had eyes, I’d weep, not for myself, but for the multitudes of creatures who’ll have nowhere to hide when their worlds burn.
“What the hell have we done?” I sob.
All that you could, I imagine the voice of Beranabus whispering. And then, after a short, bitter pause, he adds with a sarcastic chuckle, But it wasn’t enough. This universe is finished. Goodnight, Vienna!
