Colby yelled over the noise of my demons bursting into the arena from below. They knocked him over just as the dragon slayer jerked his head up, gave Drake an evil smile, and snapped his arms open.

The black threads fell away, and the dragon slayer stood free.

Drake, without missing a beat, started the spell again, sending tendrils to wrap the man. The dragon slayer threw them off with ease, jumped over the balcony to the dirt floor, and prostrated himself in front of Colby, who’d climbed to his feet.

“I brought them, master. I serve you.”

“Good,” the entity said with Colby’s voice. “Keep the dragons away from me.”

I hated hearing Colby talk like this. I wanted to reach inside him and strangle the asshole monster who’d taken him over.

What scared me was that I suddenly knew I could do it. But I’d kill Colby in the process.

“This wasn’t his plan,” I snapped at the entity, waving my hand at the dragon slayer. “It was my plan. He’s been stuck in a basement. I want the credit for bringing us all back here, understand?”

Colby raised his fists to strike me, but I shoved him away with a burst of magic. I had to get the entity out of him without damaging him—maybe by knocking Colby out? Worth a shot.

“Take him down!” I shouted at the demons, pointing at Colby. “But gently.”

They moved in, way too fast, teeth and claws striking. Colby spun away from them. He gave me a look of understanding, cloaked himself in darkness once more, and became a dragon.

The demons—flying ones, crawling ones, man-shaped ones—attacked him, trying to force him to the ground. Demons are hard to control, as the witch who’d summoned the one in the C had discovered, but I had so much more power than she did. The demon that witch had conjured was here, in fact, racing to attack Colby.

“No!” I waved at him frantically. “You! Get the dragon slayer.”

The slayer was trying to escape through one of the arena entrances, but Mick stepped in front of him, grinning dangerously.

The mirror continued to scream, the keen of it grating on my nerves. I kicked the shard out of the way, and it ended up against the wall. A bright light shot from Colby to it, and its scream wound to a thin, piercing wail.

“I’m soreeeeee,” it sobbed, and then the Earth came.

It was like the attack on the rooftop, except this time, we were already underground.

Clods of dirt, sheets of mud, and the snakelike roots dove out from the arches at all of us—demons, dragons, Earth goddess, Beneath goddess.

Janet drew down the lightning from the storm outside and struck back. She was beautiful with her power—both kinds entwined in her, balanced and whole. She’d struggled with that for a while, and now here she was, honed and terrifying.

I’d been struggling for similar balance, but I couldn’t worry about that right now. I was Gabrielle, goddess of Beneath, and I wanted to kill.

So did the demons. They surrounded Colby, braving his fire, striking with acid, claws, teeth, venom.

Titus went for him too, the fury in his black eyes telling me he’d give Colby no quarter.

Mick and Drake and the red-eyed, horned demon stalked the dragon slayer, while Janet fought the suffocating Earth with her storm. Rain washed away the dirt, wind blew back the roots, and lightning pulverized the rocks.

And Grandmother and Chandra? They watched. Their heads turned as they observed the demons flying around, the dragons fighting, the Earth itself attacking us.

Nash was in the arena, trying to get close to Colby, probably with the idea of sucking out the entity as he had from Cornelius. Even Maya tried to help, though she mostly hid behind a pillar, looking to see where she could point her gun.

I had to get to Colby. The demons would hold him down, and Titus would rip him apart if the Earth entity didn’t eat him from the inside out first.

I blasted a path to him. The demons melted away, afraid of their goddess, and I walked through them.

“You want to mess with Beneath?” I yelled at the entity in Colby’s dragon eyes. “Then you got it!”

I spread my arms, willed the sands of the arena to surround me, twisted the storm into the vortex, and called forth the world of Beneath.

I became it. The liquid light from below swallowed me, my goddess magic twining with it to let the light rise and have substance. If the Earth entity could attack with all the power of the Earth, then I could fight it with all the power from the world of Beneath.

I’d never entirely control what flooded me—I knew that. But as the magic filled me, I had a sudden insight as to why my mother had wanted nothing to do with me.

Not disappointment in me, as I’d thought. And not because Janet had Earth shaman magic, inherited from her father’s family, the power to control the storms, when I did not.

It was because I had too much Beneath magic. My mother would never have been able to bend me to her will, and she’d known it.

Maybe I had a reason to be so crazy and unpredictable. Self-defense.

The Earth entity in Colby didn’t like what I’d done. Colby spread his wings, driving aside the demons, and came for me.

This was our first dance, and our last.

I flew toward him on a wave of Beneath magic, my body catching the brunt of Colby’s sudden stream of flame. The flame and white light wove around each other and haloed us.

The Beneath magic that I’d become opened like a gigantic maw. The Earth entity screamed, and then I devoured it, dragon and all.

“Colby,” I whispered as the world went away and there was nothing but magic and death. “Give me your true name.”

“Give me yours,” came his response, tinged with laughter.

I didn’t even have to think about it. I closed my eyes and slid the syllables of it to him on his fire.

In return I heard music, pure, crystal notes mixed with Colby’s rumbling bass, swelling in my heart.

The Beneath magic swallowed Colby, and crushed the Earth entity inside him.

---

I came to myself kneeling on sand, the room caving in around us. Colby’s body, broken, his tatts smeared with blood, lay in my arms. His eyes were open, filmed over, sightless.

The moan that tore from my throat was inhuman. I’d never heard a sound like that before. It broke through the chaos of demons, dragons, and the sudden laughter of the dragon slayer.

The sound was my grief, an emotion I’d never experienced, not truly. I’d been sad when my stepmother had died, but her life had been hell. The afterlife was surely better for her.

Colby was dead. In my embrace, gone. He’d died so he could save me.

This was why he’d intercepted the mirror’s beam when I’d wanted the entity to take over Titus. I’d figured I could fight Titus, kill him if I had to, and be sorry but resigned.

Not with Colby. We hadn’t had a relationship, not really. Not yet. It had only been budding.

But I grieved. For Colby’s laughter, his friendship, the way he could infuse the direst situation with humor, breaking tension and making me feel less afraid. He took all kinds of shit cheerfully, had even put up with punishment by the Dragon Council because Bancroft, the head dragon, couldn’t keep his dick in his pants.

I grieved for what could have been. If I’d been a person instead of a confused, half-insane, half hell goddess, I could have given myself to him without hesitation, without worry.

Colby didn’t deserve this. He’d sacrificed himself. For me, for all of us.

I’d wanted to sacrifice me, and he’d stopped me.

I wailed, my grief too strong to hold inside. I’d never controlled my emotions in my life—never had to, never understood how to.

Hands settled on my shoulders. I recognized the touch, the scent of lightning mixed with dust. My sister Janet sank beside me, tears spilling down her cheeks.

I continued to wail, the hurting tearing at me like a live thing. I couldn’t make it stop.

“Shh.” Janet put her arms around me, the only person in the world who dared to. “You did it, Gabrielle. You saved us.”

I couldn’t breathe, could barely see, but I became aware of the quiet. The demons were gone. The way to Beneath had vanished, the vortex closed.

The roots and boulders had disappeared, and the floor beneath me was still. Lightning had torn the roof open to the desert sky, and a gentle rain pattered to the sand.

I didn’t care. Colby was dead, his body already growing cold. He was gone, and I could never have him back.

“It’s not quite finished,” came a voice.

Janet jolted up and around, but I could only dash tears from my eyes and rock Colby, my fingers on his beautiful face.

The voice was the dragon slayer’s. Janet went rigid as he marched our way.

I had no interest in him and didn’t look up when his dusty boots stopped a few feet away. Janet’s smaller but no less dusty motorcycle boots faced his.

“I will use this host to hold me while I recover,” the dragon slayer said with the Earth entity’s voice. “And then you will pay. All of Beneath will be wiped away.”

“You killed our friend,” Janet said, her voice shaking. “Not gonna let you get away with that.”

“I did not kill him. She did. Of her own accord and her own desires.”

“Wrong answer,” Janet said, and she reached for the rain.

“That won’t work,” the dragon slayer said softly. “The storm has played out. Your witch sister doesn’t have enough strength to sustain it or to call the Beneath entity again. Why don’t you—”

Maya shot him.

I’d seen her come out of the shadows behind the dragon slayer and aim her dark pistol at him. An explosion of sound—then blood and gore took the place of the top of his head.

He toppled. Janet leapt the hell out of the way even as Mick grabbed her and pulled her to safety. The dragon slayer fell over, blood spraying in a semicircle to land hotly on my arm.

Half demon, half human, Mick had said. The dragon slayer had managed to extend his lifespan for hundreds of years, but he was still mortal.

Nash sprinted forward. He put his hands on the dragon slayer’s shoulders, and I heard a scream of protest as the entity streamed into Nash.

Nash let go of the inert slayer and balled his fists over his gut.

Could Nash’s null-ness cancel out the entity? Or would it kill him before he could? Or would it try to leap into another body—Maya was standing behind Nash, wide-eyed, the pistol pointed downward, her finger well away from the trigger.

The entity liked the weakest person in the room, as I’d said in the basement of the Crossroads, which was why it had so readily jumped into Colby, a less powerful dragon than Titus.

“Now,” Grandmother Begay said.

She hobbled quickly to Nash. I no longer saw the Crow, but only a small, slightly bent Diné woman leaning on her walking stick. Behind her came Chandra, taller, younger, more robust.

Grandmother held out her hands. “Give him to me, Sheriff Jones.”

Nash looked at her in puzzlement from his half crouch. “You ladies need to back away,” he said.

Grandmother Begay didn’t listen, of course. She touched his chest with her hand and the head of her cane. She pulled, scowled, pulled harder, then set her feet and yanked.

Nash blew out his breath as darkness shot from him and spun once around the walking stick. I heard a howl as the entity touched the turquoise in the cane’s handle, and then tried to flee from it.

Grandmother Begay shoved the stick under her arm and caught the darkness between her hands. She began to press it together, as she did when she gathered up dough to make her fry bread, compressing it into a small ball.

Chandra watched, hands on hips, the loose sleeves of her top fluttering over her wrists. Grandmother gave her a nod, and Chandra smiled.

She reached out her hands, palm downward, and let white light flow from them to the ground.

I heard an inhale and an exhale, exactly as I had in the hallway of the C the night the entity attacked.

Not the entity I realized. The Earth itself.

A hole opened in the arena floor. Not the frenzied vortex I’d wrought, but a neat hole with straight sides that let directly into the ground. From it came a breath of heat, and red light mixed with white.

“The Beneath world is necessary,” Grandmother said to the ball of struggling darkness in her hands. “From it came all life. The Earth understands that. The two places are not entirely separate, but you have been too obsessed in yourself to understand. So now we will teach you.”

While Chandra held the hole open with her steady stream of magic, Grandmother lifted the dark ball above her head.

“Janet,” she said calmly. “Help me.”

Janet moved to her, bewildered. “How?”

“Just touch it.”

Mick didn’t like that. He was next to Grandmother in a heartbeat, but he didn’t interfere when Janet put her hand on top of the ball. She gasped as though something was dragged out of her, and then Grandmother Begay hurled the ball downward.

A scream, a white light and a red one, and then Chandra clapped her hands together.

The hole sealed, the white light faded, and the sands ran over where the hole had been. I heard another deep exhale, and then all was silence.