Chapter 37: Eruption

  Air ripped itself apart as heat, metal, and noise exploded outward in such force that Cole thought reality itself was imploding for a moment.

  The car became a sun for a heartbeat. White-hot and furious. Shrapnel screamed across the yard. A shockwave punched through ash and smoke and turned it into a rolling storm.

  “Ashen Aegis.”

  The invisible line in the sand flared in Cole’s awareness. The blast hit it and stopped. The force drove into his chest. Cole slid back a step, boots scraping. His coat snapped hard against his legs.

  Pieces of the car clanged off the shield and fell, dented and steaming. A door spun end over end and slammed into a pile of debris. Glass rained down. For a second the whole compound was nothing but firelight, smoke, and that deep ringing silence your ears filled with when sound had been too loud to make sense.

  Devin had sprinted backward the instant the fire touched the car, already in motion, already prepared. He kept the pressure up, throwing more fireballs through the smoke, green arcs that burned their way forward.

  Only Cole wasn’t out of tricks.

  “Edict: Null Hymn.”

  The melody of erasure joined the dying roar of the explosion. A gentle denial that didn’t argue with reality. It simply told it no, and the spellfire evaporated in midair as if it had never been.

  Green flames winked out. The heat eased.

  Devin blinked once, his expression twisting in disbelief.

  Then the rage surged again.

  “How do you have so many spells?” Devin snarled, voice rough with smoke and anger. “No matter. I’m still gonna fucking end you.”

  Green fire curled away from his hand, thinning and stretching, turning into a whip.

  He snapped it toward Cole, the lash cracking through the air with a hiss that made Cole’s skin prickle.

  Cole raised his staff slightly.

  “Edict: Null Hymn.”

  The whip unraveled mid-strike, scattering. Devin’s eyes widened a fraction, then narrowed again, jaw tightening hard enough Cole saw a muscle jump.

  Cole didn’t give him time to reset.

  “Black Halo Lance.”

  His one attack spell went to work. Dark seraphic light sharpened out of shadows, stabbing for Devin’s legs, his ribs, the space beneath his arms.

  Devin was forced to block.

  He threw up a sheet of green flame that met the lance and deflected it in a flaring burst. It wasn’t smooth. It wasn’t effortless. The shield hissed. Devin’s shoulders tensed. His stance shifted.

  Cole’s eyes tracked all of it.

  “Choir of Verdict.”

  Authority descended over the yard again, heavy and quiet. A verdict settling onto Devin’s shoulders.

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  It slowed him but didn’t stop him completely.

  Devin’s face contorted. His teeth bared. For a moment Cole thought he was about to drop, that the Choir might finally force him to his knees the way it forced lesser men.

  Then he shoved back against it.

  He moved anyway.

  They fought for some time.

  Cole held the loop.

  Shield, erase, verdict, lance.

  Simple and reliable.

  Devin fought like a storm.

  He could manipulate that green fire endlessly, shaping it into knives and spears, into a long barbed chain that whipped and snapped, into a broad shield that flared when black light struck it. He threw flame low to force Cole to raise his Aegis, then followed with another strike from the side, trying to catch him in an angle.

  Cole erased what he could.

  Blocked what he couldn’t erase in time.

  And kept his calm.

  Fire warped the air as it passed, splashing over Cole’s shield, his line in the sand that delivered a simple no to Devin’s attacks. The Aegis didn’t break, but Cole could feel the strain in it now. The feeling of pushing back against something with real force.

  Devin was a man with something else inside him that made the green flame move like it had a mind.

  For a moment, Cole thought he could do it as freely as Cole cast spells.

  He soon realized that wasn’t true.

  Devin was tiring.

  Cole could see it in the way Devin’s chest began to heave, in the way sweat appeared at his hairline and made his combed hair start to cling in strands. He could see it in the subtle delay between Devin’s thought and Devin’s flame, a fraction slower each time, a touch less clean.

  His face scrunched in concentration. His shoulders tightened. His movements grew sharper, more desperate.

  Whatever he was doing, it wasn’t free.

  It was incredibly powerful, and it obviously used something other than mana, but it cost him something.

  Rage burned behind Devin’s eyes, and his mouth was bared in a silent snarl. His suit was no longer perfect. One sleeve had ash smeared across it. The shoulder was singed. The tie was slightly crooked.

  Cole was all but certain that fueled Devin’s rage further.

  Because men like Devin didn’t just want to win.

  They wanted control.

  They wanted to look clean while doing it.

  Devin snapped another whip of flame, and Cole erased it.

  Devin flung a spear of fire, and Cole’s Aegis caught it and hissed.

  Devin tried to shape a shield again, and Cole lanced through the shadow at his feet, forcing him to dodge, the movement stiff now, slower than before.

  Cole walked toward him.

  He erased.

  He shielded.

  He kept up his attacks on the monster.

  Devin slowed more.

  “Fuck you!” Devin snarled.

  Green fire flickered over his fingers, then flickered out.

  For a heartbeat, the yard was quiet except for the crackle of dying flame and the soft sigh of ash drifting.

  Cole felt the shift immediately. The pressure changed. The air stopped warping. The heat eased.

  He stepped closer, Crozier grounded, expression calm.

  “This is the end,” Cole said.

  Devin’s eyes were wide now with disbelief and outrage.

  “You haven’t beaten me,” Devin spat. “I won’t fucking let you, you shit!”

  He began to curse. Intelligible at first, then devolving into a stream of rage that didn’t even bother with meaning. Spittle flew. Veins stood out on his neck. His hands shook.

  Cole raised his staff a fraction, ready to end it with a single word.

  Then Devin stopped.

  His whole body locked.

  Veins stood out against his skin.

  His eyes widened further, and something shifted in them, something that wasn’t just anger anymore.

  Pain, maybe.

  Or pleasure.

  Cole’s authority stat tightened.

  Devin’s mouth twisted.

  “Do it,” Devin hissed, voice suddenly strained. “Kill me now!”

  Cole frowned.

  The demand wasn’t a challenge. It was…urgent. Desperate.

  Cole answered.

  “Black Halo Lance.”

  Dark seraphic light lanced into Devin.

  It should’ve ended him.

  Instead, it met a burst of dark green.

  The fire wasn’t a whip this time. It wasn’t a spear. It wasn’t even shaped.

  It erupted from Devin’s skin.

  Runes appeared over Devin’s body.

  They surfaced, glowing beneath the skin, crawling along his arms, across his throat, up his face. They pulsed in time with his heartbeat.

  Cole stared, mouth tightening.

  Then Devin began to laugh.

  A dark, inhuman laugh.

  It started small. Then it grew deeper, harsher.

  Cole’s grip tightened on the Crozier.

  Devin’s head split open.

  Skin parted along the sides of his skull, peeling back in wet, horrifying folds.

  Horns elongated out of it, tearing through flesh and pushing bone aside. They grew fast, curving upward, ridged and blackened with that same green glow seeping along their edges.

  Devin’s laughter became a guttural roar.

  The air shook.

  Ash lifted from the ground in a small swirling spiral.

  Then the roar split the yard, and Cole felt, for the first time in this fight, something close to true danger.

  From whatever Devin had just become.