Finishing up now, Naomi texted to her friend Sera as she and the others entered a waterside park close to the costume ball. You?

Almost done here too, replied Sera. I hope.

Hungry?

Sera’s reply was almost instantaneous. Do you even need to ask?

No, she really didn’t. Alex and her twin sister Sera were always hungry. They could each eat their weight in pizza.

Naomi was also hungry right now. Besides Alex’s sip of pig blood and a mouthful of some dubious appetizer, none of them had caught a bite to eat at the ball, and fighting a demon had burned through Naomi’s reserve energy.

Naomi looked at the others. “Hungry?”

“Do you even need to ask?” Alex said, just like her sister.

Midnight snack? Naomi wrote back to Sera.

Absolutely. Meet you later at the Pancake Palace, replied Sera.

The Pancake Palace was a twenty-four-hour breakfast diner located roughly halfway between the Dark Prince’s costume ball and the gala Sera and Kai had attended tonight.

“We’re meeting Sera and Kai at the Pancake Palace,” Naomi told the others, slipping her phone back into the holster around her thigh.

“I can’t wait. Hunting demons makes me hungry,” Alex said. “Pancakes, waffles, French toast…”

A low hiss punctuated her words, like air quickly escaping from a punctured tire.

“Scrambled eggs, poached eggs, fried eggs…”

A deep growl joined the hiss.

Alex paused. “Wait a minute…”

Naomi could feel it too. Thick, hellish magic stirred all around them like a pot of hot water—popping, bubbling, boiling over. The air had changed. It was heavy with the harsh bite of demon magic, an unpleasant, acidic burn on Naomi’s tongue. Even the wind had grown hotter and drier. It seemed to whisper dark spells.

The vicious magic snapped, bit, and tore at her magic like a rusty, jagged knife. Acid gurgled in her tummy. Her lungs burned, her face was feverish. Each breath of air scalded her lungs.

“Hell beasts,” Naomi whispered.

“Yes,” agreed Makani. “The magic here reeks of hell. The beasts must have followed their demon master to earth.”

Demons on earth could summon their hell beasts to them from beyond the veil.

Naomi could not see the beasts, but she could hear them. And she could feel their demonic magic. Their hissed growls seemed to come from every direction.

Logan scanned the shadows, each flicker of his eyes as sharp as a laser. Like his gaze was hitting the bullseye of a target. He stared into the darkness like he could see beyond it—no, like he could see through solid concrete and even further, across the whole of San Francisco. But of course that was impossible. No one could do that.

Naomi’s gaze could not even pierce the cloak of darkness. And she certainly could not see through buildings like they weren’t even there.

“This way,” Logan said.

He didn’t wait for them. He was already moving deeper into the park, running down the paved path that cut through it. His steps were fast and silent. If Naomi hadn’t seen his legs moving, she’d have thought him to be floating above the ground.

Logan stopped in front of an assortment of enormous flower beds, each one filled with roses of a particular color. There was a section of red roses, then a section of orange ones, followed by a section of yellow blooms. The colorful bands repeated from there. A lamp post inside each flower bed was the only source of light in this dark part of the park.

Just beyond the colorful, sweetly-scented rose beds lay a playground. It was empty at this hour, its only visitor the wind that rattled the creaking metal swings. A scattering of loose flower petals coated the chipped red paint of the well-loved slide. A dizzying carousel turned slowly in the wind. Naomi remembered going on one just like it when she was a kid. Her dad had pushed her on it as she’d shouted for him to go faster.

Dad. Two months after the demons had hitched a ride inside his body, he was still unconscious. Naomi was beginning to wonder if he would ever wake up.

She pushed those thoughts aside. She would not allow herself to abandon hope. He’d survived years trapped in hell. He would survive this. He would wake up, and then her family would be reunited once more. Her family would be complete—just like it was meant to be.

A thumping noise spilled out of a concrete tunnel at the back of the playground. It was the sort of place where kids would play hide-and-seek, but there were no children in there now.

Dum-dum thumped the drumbeat of hell. It was joined by the eerie, high-pitched dry whistle that characterized the winds of hell. The trumpet of hell, earsplitting shrieks, blared over it all. The hellish orchestra echoed off the exposed concrete walls of the tunnel, growing louder, cascading.

Firelight flickered in the tunnel, then four red-and-orange birds shot out of its mouth, trailing streams of flames. They were large birds, each one roughly the size of a peacock, but instead of fluffy feathers, their bodies were covered in flames. The firebirds’ talons were pure gold, and their eyes sparkled like black opals and bright red rubies, pulsing in time to the flickering flames.

“There’s someone in the tunnel with the beasts,” Logan said.

Alex stared into the tunnel, squinting her eyes. “Who is crazy enough to run into a closed space with a bunch of burning birds?”

“You are,” Naomi pointed out.

“True. But obviously I’m out here, not in there,” said Alex. “Let me rephrase: who besides me is crazy enough to run into a closed space with a bunch of burning birds?”

A hooded figure dashed out of the tunnel, right through the ring of fire. The firebirds’ flames bounced off his clothes. His red bodysuit was well-fitted and as light as cotton, but Naomi didn’t think for a moment that that was what he was wearing. He had to be wearing magic-proof armor, Drachenburg Industries’ ultra-lightweight mesh armor designed to not look like armor.

Over his bodysuit, the Red Knight wore a hooded cloak that masked his face in shadow. In his right hand, he carried a baton spelled with ice magic. Tiny blue-white crystals sparkled across the weapon’s surface. As the frost-kissed baton streaked through the air, streams of twinkling snowflakes trailed it.

The Red Knight swung his baton around and slammed it hard into one of the firebirds. The ice magic on the baton latched onto the bird’s fiery feathers, freezing them solid. The frozen flames burst into a million tiny ice pieces to the sound of shattering glass. The naked bird froze, suspended in the air for a moment. But before it could drop to the ground, a knife point emerged from the tip of the baton, and the Red Knight pushed it all the way through the beast’s belly. The bird evaporated into a puff of steam.

Smooth and balletic, the Red Knight turned toward the next firebird. The inferno of flames around the hell beast raged hotter, louder. It was so hot that even at a safe distance from the battle, sweat beaded up on Naomi’s forehead.

The Red Knight’s two hands slid together on the baton. The baton pulsed, and when he drew his hands apart once more, the weapon had split into two even pieces. Each one grew as long as the original baton—and each one now sported a knife point. One shimmering silver blade slashed through the bird in front of him, the other pierced the one behind him. Both birds disintegrated, leaving only one final beast.

The Red Knight slammed the two batons together. Magic flashed like lightning, then the two batons were one again. A flare followed the flash. The baton was a rope now, hissing with purple-gold lightning magic. The Red Knight cracked it like a whip, snapping the sizzling tip against the final firebird. The beast exploded into a light storm of sparkles and falling ash.

The entire battle had taken mere moments. Before Naomi could take more than two steps toward the Red Knight, it was already over.

“Wow, he’s good,” Naomi said. “Very good.”

“He really is,” Alex agreed.

The Red Knight strode toward them, his steps confident and strong. He moved like he owned the path, the park, and everything in it. He flipped back his hood, revealing the face of Cloud Silverstride: fairy-mage hybrid, former owner of the Cloud Nine magic shop, drug dealer extraordinaire, and the very last person Naomi would have expected to find under the Red Knight’s mask.