Cedric dropped to his knees beside Ace, his hands hovering, afraid to touch him and make something worse. "Ace! Talk to me. Where are you hit?"
Ace blinked up at him. The world was a tilt-a-whirl of pain and shadow. Cedric's face swam in and out of focus, a pale smudge in the dark. A high-pitched, metallic buzz sawed through Ace's skull, drowning out the ringing in his ears. He tried to draw a full breath, and a white-hot brand seared across his right side. He coughed—a wet, tearing sound from deep in his chest—and a fine spray of blood misted the dusty air between them. The coppery tang filled his mouth.
"Ribs," Ace managed to grate out, the word scraping his throat raw. He tried to push himself up on one elbow, and the pain flared, bright and nauseating, forcing him back down. His vision swam again.
Cedric's face hardened with determination. "Okay. Okay, don't move. Just breathe shallow. Axl's on his way, they're close, just—"
Ace saw it first.
Over Cedric's shoulder, in the jagged hole that led back to the hallway, the darkness moved. Not a shape, but a thickening, a freezing of the air itself. Then it poured into the room, silent and swift as spilled ink. It re-formed behind Cedric, towering, the dark-blue syrupy essence dripping from its distorted face and sizzling on the floorboards.
Cedric saw the change in Ace's eyes—the widening, the raw warning—and started to turn.
He was too slow.
The poltergeist didn't have arms, but the air around it solidified. An invisible, icy force hooked under Cedric's armpit and yanked him off his knees as if he were a doll. He didn't even have time to cry out before he was hurled sideways through the air.
He crashed into the old, heavy wooden closet against the far wall. The sound was a sickening crunch of wood and a simultaneous gasp of air punched from Cedric's lungs. The closet doors splintered inward, the frame cracked, and the whole structure sagged with him half-buried in it. He slumped, dazed, a low groan escaping his lips.
The poltergeist flowed toward the wreckage, its intent a cold wave that preceded it. To finish the one who had burned it. To end the gun.
Ace was moving before the thought finished.
The pain in his ribs was a distant thunder. A different fire took over—clean, sharp, and full of rage. Adrenaline flooded his veins, sharpening the world. The buzz in his head vanished. The blurred edges of his vision snapped into painful, hyper-clear focus. He saw the dust motes hanging in the air. He saw the individual splinters in the broken wall. He saw the vile, dripping form of the thing gliding toward his friend.
His right hand slapped to his belt. His fingers found the familiar, worn groove of the mother-of-pearl inlay. The Italian stiletto. His father's lone gift. The metal was cold, then warm as his grip tightened.
His thumb found the release.
Snick.
The sound was small and final in the ravaged room. The blade sprang free, locking into place. In the gloom, it didn't just catch the light—it made its own. A faint, persistent purple glow emanated from the honed edge, casting a sickly, beautiful light on Ace's bloodied knuckles and determined snarl.
He didn't get up. He launched.
Pushing off with his good leg, ignoring the scream from his side, he came off the floor in a stumbling, low charge. Not a war cry, but a gritted-teeth growl of pure fury, the violet arc of the enchanted blade leading the way, aimed at the dark heart of the thing moving to kill his brother.
Ace's charge was a broken, stumbling thing. He led with the purple glow of the stiletto, a desperate, shining arc aimed at the center of the dripping shadow.
The poltergeist didn't move. The air in front of Ace congealed. He hit a wall of invisible force that threw him backward like a swatted fly. He landed hard, the wind gone, his ribs a cage of white-hot fire.
From the closet wreckage, Cedric fired. The shot was wide, blasting plaster from the wall. The poltergeist flowed to the left, its form blurring.
Ace pushed himself up on one knee, gasping. He saw Cedric, pale and bleeding, trying to aim again. The poltergeist was coiling toward him, a dark promise in the air.
"Hey!" Ace croaked. He grabbed a chunk of shattered wood from the floor and flung it. It passed through the entity's misty edge. The thing halted, its hollow gaze sliding back to Ace.
It shot a tendril of solidified cold at his face.
Ace jerked his head aside. The tendril grazed his cheek. It didn't cut. It burned with a cold so intense it felt like fire, searing his skin. He hissed, slashing out with the stiletto. The purple blade sheared through the tendril. The severed end dissolved into black smoke. The poltergeist recoiled, the stump sizzling with violet sparks.
Cedric fired again. This time, his aim was true. The blue tracer lanced through the space where the thing's shoulder would be. It didn't pass through. It tore a chunk of darkness away in a burst of actinic light. The entity shuddered, emitting a soundless vibration of rage.
It whirled. A dresser by the wall lifted into the air as if plucked by a giant's hand and hurtled toward Cedric.
"DOWN!" Ace screamed.
Cedric dropped. The dresser sailed over his head and exploded against the wall in a cascade of splintered wood and shredded clothing.
The poltergeist was on Ace in the same second. It was fast, a smear of freezing shadow. A fist of telekinetic force slammed into Ace's gut. He doubled over, vomiting air. A second blow, an uppercut of pure pressure, caught him under the chin. His head snapped back. Lights danced behind his eyes. He tasted blood.
He swung the stiletto blindly. It cut empty air.
A bookshelf ripped from the adjacent wall and toppled toward him. Ace threw himself sideways. The shelf crashed down, missing him by inches, a cascade of books and broken wood.
"ACE, MOVE RIGHT!" Cedric's voice, raw and desperate.
Ace rolled right. A lamp on the nightstand where he'd just been imploded, glass shards peppering the wall.
Cedric was up, bracing against the doorframe. He fired twice. Bam. Bam. Two blue streaks. The poltergeist, solidifying to throw another piece of the room, took one round in its midsection. It flinched, the darkness around the impact flashing with painful light. It lost its grip on a hovering chair. The chair clattered to the floor.
Ace saw his opening. He lunged from the floor, a low, clumsy tackle, leading with the blade. He aimed not for the body, but for a trailing, anchor-like strand of shadow that seemed to connect it to the floor.
The stiletto sank in.
It was like stabbing tar. Thick, resistant, icy. The purple glow flared, eating into the darkness. The poltergeist shrieked its soundless shriek. It backhanded Ace with a limb of pure force.
Ace felt a crack in his left forearm. Pain, bright and sharp. He lost his grip on the knife. It stayed buried in the shadow-strand, pulsing violet.
The entity reached down to pull it out.
Cedric emptied the rest of his magazine. Bam-bam-bam-bam! A storm of blue fire. The poltergeist was driven back, writhing, as rounds tore into it, each impact a small, searing sun in its dark form.
Ace scrambled on his knees, his left arm hanging useless. He reached the stiletto, wrapped his right hand around the hilt, and yanked.
It came free with a sickening, tearing sensation. A long rope of viscous, black ectoplasm came with it, dissolving in the air.
The poltergeist was diminished. It flickered, less substantial. But it was furious. It gathered the last of the cold, drawing the heat from the room. Frost crystallized on Ace's skin. It shot forward, a final, desperate spear of darkness aimed at his heart.
Ace couldn't move fast enough. He was on his knees, broken, one arm dead, the other holding a knife.
Cedric's gun clicked. Empty.
"No!" Cedric threw the gun. It clanged off the entity's form, doing nothing.
The shadow-spear was a foot from Ace's chest.
He did the only thing he could. He stopped trying to dodge. He braced. He reversed his grip on the stiletto, held it point-out in front of him with both hands—his good right hand over his broken left wrist—and welcomed the charge.
The poltergeist impaled itself.
The shadow-spear ran itself onto the full length of the glowing purple blade.
There was no sound. There was only light.
The violet glow erupted from within the entity, blazing out through its eyes, its mouth, the holes Cedric's bullets had made. It froze mid-air, a pincushion of brilliant amethyst light.
Cedric didn't hesitate. He had seen Ace's move, the sacrifice play. While the thing was pinned, transfixed, he had clawed his final magazine from his pocket. He slammed it into his pistol, racked the slide, and in one smooth, final motion, he stepped forward, placed the muzzle against the flickering, lit-up core of the poltergeist, and pulled the trigger.
The shot was muffled, a point-blank execution.
The blue flash consumed the violet from within.
The poltergeist didn't unravel. It shattered.
It burst into a million crystalline shards of frozen darkness that hung in the air for a single, silent second before evaporating into a fine, bitter mist that was carried away on a sudden, warm draft that sighed through the broken house.
Silence.
The kind of silence that comes after the last thunderclap.
Ace fell forward, catching himself on his good hand, the stiletto clattering to the floor beside him. He was shaking, dripping sweat and blood onto the wood.
Cedric stood, swaying. The pistol slipped from his numb fingers. The color drained from his face all at once. The adrenaline that had been holding his body together, that had powered every shot, every shout, evaporated. His eyes lost focus. His knees buckled.
He started to crumple.
Ace saw him fall. He pushed through his own wrecked body, surging up. He stumbled forward, his broken arm held tight to his chest, and caught Cedric around the shoulders with his good arm just before he hit the ground.
He couldn't hold his weight. They both went down, Ace absorbing the impact, sinking to the floor with Cedric's dead weight against him. He held his friend up, Cedric's head lolling against his shoulder, both of them breathing in ragged, syncopated gasps in the dust and the ruin.
The silence didn't last.
Boots pounded up the porch steps. The shattered back door was kicked aside. Axl filled the broken frame, Garath a half-step behind him, his shotgun sweeping the dark kitchen.
They froze, taking in the war zone.
The hallway was a scar of splintered wood and torn wallpaper. The bedroom was an open wound—plaster dust hanging in the air, furniture reduced to kindling, glass glittering everywhere like malignant snow. In the center of it all, Ace knelt, holding a barely-conscious Cedric upright. Ace's face was a mask of blood, dust, and cold-burn. One of his arms cradled the other at a sickening angle.
Garath's gaze, cold and analytical, tracked the bullet holes—the blue burns on the walls, the charred, sizzling patches on the floorboards where the entity had bled its essence. He gave a single, slow nod. "Clear."
Axl didn't move with a hunter's caution. He moved like a man who'd heard the world end. He rushed forward, skidding to his knees in the debris beside them. His hands, usually so steady, hovered over Ace's crooked arm, over the deep, frost-burned welt on Cedric's temple, not knowing where to start.
"What… what in the seven hells…" His voice was stripped bare, all authority gone, replaced by a raw, paternal terror he never showed.
Ace looked up. His eyes, in his battered face, were shockingly clear. Tired. In pain. But clear. He met Axl's gaze and gave the smallest, most exhausted shake of his head.
Later.
The word wasn't spoken, but it passed between them, heavy and absolute.
Axl's jaw clenched. The priest in him saw the fading, greasy stain of bad energy in the air, the victorious, ugly truth of it. The man who owed Neal everything saw the boys Neal had left in his care, broken in a stranger's house.
He swallowed hard, the fear hardening back into duty. "Garath," he said, his voice rough but steadying. "Get Cedric. Carefully."
Garath was already moving, slinging his rifle. He knelt, his movements efficient and surprisingly gentle as he pried Cedric's dead weight from Ace's grasp, lifting him in a fireman's carry.
Ace tried to push himself up with his good arm. His legs buckled. Axl caught him before he fell, looping Ace's good arm over his own shoulders, taking his weight.
"I've got you," Axl murmured, the words gruff. "Don't be a hero. Just walk."
Supported, Ace took a shuffling step. Then another. They moved through the carnage, a ragged procession—Garath with the unconscious Cedric, Axl half-carrying a stumbling Ace.
They left the house behind. The first, tentative sounds of the normal world were creeping back in: a distant siren, the rustle of leaves in a newly-felt breeze. The oppressive silence was broken.
But in the RV, under the buzzing fluorescent light of the convenience store, a different quiet would settle. The quiet of wounds assessed, of shock setting in, of a hunt that was no longer a theory. It was the quiet after a storm, where all that's left is the damage and the dawning realization of what it took to survive.