Shadowman closed his eyes. A small breath, and already she sprang into his mind. Kathleen at her easel, gazing wide-eyed into Twilight. Kathleen under his hands, giving herself up, even as she seduced a dark lord. Her skin, her hair, her rising breasts as his mouth skimmed their peaks.
The gate was not made of metal. Black, or otherwise.
The gate was made of her memory.
He’d set this trap, and so killed her himself, no matter who gripped the hammer. kat-a-kat-a-kat-a-kat: You created me to save her. Let me save her. I can save her.
Death before him, death behind him. Every single thing he touched brought death. Even to the one he loved. He was cursed. If Moira were here, she’d be laughing. Stormcrow, Thanatos, Reaper. You are your nature; you are fae.
I want to change. I need to change, he thought.
kat-a-kat-a-kat-a-kat: Perhaps you think you can end this madness? If you can, pick up the hammer yourself and strike her down.
As if Shadowman could ever strike Layla. Crack her body. Make her bleed. The thought sent a blast of despair through the cave, the deep places in the earth bellowing, No! Nor would he let another. Not even if Layla asked him.
His power, his ageless cruelty, stopped there. He was at the end of himself.
Then massacre the angels?
Shadowman eyed them from the folds of his dark cloak. Heaven’s soldiers, set on a beast they had no hope to bring down.
Custo shook his head abruptly as if to clear his vision, or to get rid of a bothersome thought. What subtle things was Hell suggesting to him? Mortal minds, even mortal angels, were so weak. Eventually the gate would hit upon just the thing, and even Custo’s great soul would falter.
The host advanced. A third broke away to circle and come at him from the left. Another third to his right. Conviction and purpose made them glow.
“I stand with you,” Custo said, “but I don’t have it in me to kill them.”
Of course not. He wouldn’t be an angel if he could. In fact, Custo would probably try to save as many as he could, while also protecting the gate. His purpose, like his nature, was at odds.
But Death was no angel.
“I’ll do what I have to do,” Shadowman answered.
The walls of Segue stretched high as Layla ran through the center atrium to Zoe’s side of the building. The roof was gone, and in its place was a ceiling of nighttime stars, the barren tips of branches fingering their way overhead.
“What do you want?” Zoe’s voice echoed, laced with fear. “Stay back!”
A coded door almost stopped Layla, but as she gritted her teeth to find a working combination of numbers, the door itself became transparent, the frame an archway to the corridor beyond.
Fae voices whispered, Coming, coming, coming, coming, with each of her panting breaths.
When she rounded the hallway to Zoe’s room, brown vines crawled the walls, and standing in the way was Therese, the little girl ghost. Her hands were fisted, and a pout was on her face. Around her was an aura of another time, her patch of space a throwback to the hotel a century before. There, too, Shadow crawled, the climbing vines like stitches hemming the two realities together.
“Dead man, dead man,” she began to chant.
“Yeah, yeah,” Layla said, and rushed past the ghost. “Old news.”
Therese made a grab for her, clawing Layla’s flesh and wrenching at the vessel she hoped to possess. Layla felt a jarring disengagement but moved forward anyway, the parasite on her back. Was it even possible for a ghost to animate someone else’s body? Layla wasn’t sticking around to find out.
The right angles of the floor and walls came apart, the structure of the building consumed by Shadow. Therese’s hold turned into a clinging cringe as she found herself at the edge of one world and the beginning of another.
A shrill, startled scream from Zoe, and Layla advanced down the vestiges of the hallway. Either Therese would let go, or she’d be forced to cross, as she should have all those years ago. Zoe had to get out now, or be lost to Twilight. This was exactly the reason Shadowman needed to return to his post.
“Leave me the body!” the child wailed at her ear. “I need the body!”
“No can do,” Layla answered. There was power in mortality; Shadowman had taught her that. Maybe it would buy her enough time for him to find her. Too long in Twilight and there wouldn’t be much left to find.
An electric wave rolled toward her, and the remains of Segue were demolished, particles lifting into the air like snapping sparks from a fire. Layla could feel the advent in a hum that buzzed her senses and tightened her womb. Heart seizing in terrible ecstasy, she leaned into the crossing.
Therese released her hold, sobbing, “The body!” Her voice weakened with each syllable as she fled the tide, and then she was gone.
Layla ran through the trees in the direction of Zoe’s room, the hotel now a thick forest of dark trunks and craggy branches. Roots elbowed out of the earth to stop her progress, but somehow her feet only glanced on the surface as she darted forward.