“Your presence is enough.” V confronted Butch. “And you are a traitor.”

Butch shook his head and put his phone away. “No, I’m making sure you stick to the plan we agreed to.”

“Fuck you both—”

Just as V went to dematerialize, Lassiter closed his eyes and nodded like I Dream of Jeannie. All at once, a containment barrier formed around V’s entire body, the translucent prison the kind of thing that cut off his yelling and levitated him a good six inches off the floor.

For a moment, all Butch could do was stare at the spectacle of Vishous, son of the Bloodletter, blooded borne son of the Scribe Virgin… pounding mutely on the inside walls of his floating mini-prison.

“He looks like a bumblebee caught under a glass,” Lassiter remarked.

Butch glanced over at the angel. “I know you’re immortal and shit, but you better run like a motherfucker when you let him out.”

“You know, I’m inclined to agree with you.” Suddenly, the angel’s odd-colored eyes got really fucking serious. “You let me know if you need him, though. And be careful. Things are so close to the end, and that’s always when the parachute fails.”

With a nod, Butch said, “I will be. But can you tell me anything? About where we’re at? What’s going to happen next?”

Lassiter seemed distraught as he shook his head. “I’m sorry. I can’t. It’s not my place—and even I have rules I need to follow if I want to stay in the game.”

Butch studied those handsome features, usually so lighthearted and laughing. “So it’s going to get really bad, huh.”

The angel ignored that happy little comment and focused on V. “Come on, Sparky. I’m taking you home.” With his open hand, he summoned the V-bubble, and it came forward like it was on a leash. “Should I try and dribble him?”

Butch shook his head as he got a load of the furious flush on his roommate’s goateed mug. Plus, hello, there was all that hopping around that was still happening.

“I realllllly wouldn’t go there,” Butch murmured.

“Yeah, you’re probably right. Drive safe.”

Justlikethat, both the fallen angel, who was #1 on pretty much everybody’s beat-down list, and the Wilson edition of Vishous, up and disappeared.

Butch spoke into his shoulder communicator as to his ETA and then he jogged off down the corridor. He’d gone about ten feet when he realized… he had no clue how the fuck to get out of the goddamn building. Lock-and-key expert Vishous was gone.

And with that pissed-off genius, went the exit Butch needed.

* * *

As Jo stood behind Syn and gripped the heavy gun he’d given her, she grunted through the pain between her temples. Something was rising within her consciousness, a memory that was inexorable even against the barrier that was blocking it. Parting her lips, she breathed in a shallow way, her pounding heart and tingling limbs, the present danger in front of her, everything including even Syn, giving way to a desperate need to know just one thing.

One fucking thing—

Like spring rain bubbling up through the crack in the foundation of a basement, all at once a sliver of memory broke free and made itself present.

She saw herself at the security chain in front of the mall’s barren promenade. And she recalled being convinced that things were going to change forever if she continued forward.

Then she remembered lifting her running shoe up and over the links. And moving forward with a heart that beat as fast as hers was now.

“I was right,” she mumbled as she had to let the recollection go because of the pain.

Giving up her hold on the image, the thought, the piece of her past, the semi-answer that explained nothing sank below the impassable void that seemed to be consuming events and emotions, the black hole disappearing so much of what was so vitally important.

“Get behind me,” Syn said. “And be prepared to shoot if they come through that door.”

“I’m ready.” Liar. She was shitting her pants.

As they stood together, him in front, both of them poised to use their weapons, she remembered running from the police helicopter with him. That had been the warm-up for this showdown—and none of this should have made sense, but it did. Somehow, this was where she had been heading these last months.

As much as her brain didn’t understand anything, her instincts got it all—

The gunfire was not like it was in the movies. It was not some grand explosion.

And it was not inside the corrugated building.

It was outside. Pop-pop-pop-pop—

“Are they shooting at each other?” she whispered into the darkness. Even though she didn’t know who the “they” was.

“Gimme the gun back now—”

“Wait, what?”

Syn snatched it out of her hand. “I can’t run the risk of you killing my reinforcements.”

The door to the facility swung open and light pierced through the pitch black. Just before the illumination hit them both, Syn yanked her out of its path—and meanwhile, figures stumbled into the interior, nothing but black outlines that scrambled, slipped, and fell to the concrete floor.

The stench of them made her cough and gag. Just as it had on the train.

As the door slammed shut, there was a shuffle.

“Bolt it from the inside!” a male voice said. “Fucking bolt it—”

“I will! Christ—”

“Who has a weapon?”

Outside, whatever battle was going on continued, and given the echoing sounds of metal-sliding-on-metal, the men had found a way to buttress that metal panel shut.

“Stay here,” Syn whispered.

“No!” Jo grabbed the sleeve of his arm. “Don’t go—”

“I need to know where you are.”

“What are you going to do?” Even though she knew. He was going to kill them by hand. “Don’t leave me!”

There was a split second of a pause. And then his lips somehow found hers in the darkness. The contact was too swift—

The explosion registered first as blinding light. Second as a shock wave. Third as a sound so loud that her ears felt like nails had been driven into them.

Jo was thrown back against the wall, her head hitting the metal with a clang, her vision conking out. As she struggled to recover her senses, the smell of the gunpowder or whatever had been combusted was like lead shavings in her nose, and she reached out blindly, trying to find Syn.

He was gone.

Rubbing her eyes, she—

The growling sound about five feet in front of her was not human. It was that of an animal, a wild animal… something massive and powerful, the kind of predator that thought of every other living thing as prey.

And then a red tint flared inside the building.

Shock and terror tightened Jo’s chest and made her heart skip beats, and both got worse as her eyes came back online. Across the empty space, in the far corner, smoke wafted inside on erratic wind currents, its frothy path illuminated by the light inexplicably flooding in from the outside. No, not inexplicably. Part of the building had been blown apart, the force of whatever had been set so great that the metal was peeled back, the hole big enough to drive a semi into.

It was courtesy of the illumination that she watched the horror movie unfold.