Outside the hotel, it was so dark now that it was as if the sky was mourning the tragedy occurring beneath it. If there were demons nearby, Rodrigo couldn’t see them. He turned his phone on, the glow from the screen cutting through the blackness, and was about to search for the others when he heard whispering from the rosebushes to his side.

“Guys?” Rodrigo asked. Raquel, Carlito, and Leila came out, all looking relieved initially, and then terrified.

Leila slapped a hand over her mouth. “Oh my god, are you okay?”

Rodrigo glanced down at himself and realized he was coated in blood. “Most of it’s not mine. I know you’re probably freaking out about me and what I can do. I swear I’ll explain, but first we need to get somewhere safe.”

“Don’t worry too much about that,” Raquel said. “We’ve been filling her in.”

“Err...never mind, then. Do you believe it?” Rodrigo asked, looking toward Leila.

“With what I saw you do in there, I don’t know how I couldn’t,” Leila said with a smile that didn’t reach her eyes.

Rodrigo’s phone vibrated. He took it out and looked at the caller I.D. It was private. “Hello?”

“I assume you understand what’s happening by now,” Adena said.

“Yeah, your source gave you some crappy info.”

“I see you just left the hotel.” Too much else was going on for him to make an issue out of how she knew that. “I’d pick you up and bring you to my place, but it’s best to stay in motion. Listen carefully. Make your way north, about halfway through Central Park, exit to your right, then cut left a few blocks until you reach the Metropolitan Museum of Art. I’ll meet you outside. I have a backup plan that I’m sure is better than whatever you’ve cobbled together.”

Rodrigo thought back to his stroll through Prospect Park with Jett yesterday. They hadn’t even gone from end to end, yet the curving pathways had made it time-consuming. Central Park was nearly twice the size and while normally, the scenic walk would be pleasant, in this darkness, with monstrosities lurking around every corner, they might as well be running blindfolded across a minefield. “That park is huge. Can’t we go around it?”

“You could try, but I wouldn’t advise it. Resent’s presence should offer you some protection, making the demons think you’re one of them, but you’re going to want to keep away from crowds and off the streets. Otherwise, you’ll get lumped in with everyone else. Don’t get yourselves killed,” Adena said before hanging up.

“Who was that?” Leila asked.

“Adena. She’s a friend of mine and said we can go to her house. Downside is, to get there we have to head through the park and to the Metropolitan Museum.”

“Uh-uh. We need to go to auntie’s and get back to Mom,” Raquel said.

Rodrigo had a thousand things on his mind with all that was happening. Sad to say, his mother hadn’t been one of them.

“Walking home from here tonight isn’t really an option. Let’s just call her and make sure everyone’s okay,” Carlito said, snatching Rodrigo’s phone out of his hand.

“Okay, as soon as he’s done, we need to move.”

The whites in Leila’s doe eyes expanded with barely suppressed panic. “Move somewhere, yeah, but I’ve been to the Met for a school trip. It’s got to be at least a mile away.”

She had a point. If Rodrigo didn’t have Adena guiding him, he’d be going for immediate shelter, not traversing wide open death traps like Manhattan’s largest park. Then again, without her, he would already have been dead several times over. “No kidding. But Adena’s...kind of a specialist on this stuff, so unless anyone has a better idea, I think this is our best shot.”

Carlito’s shoulders sagged as he lowered the phone. “No answer.”

Rodrigo was thinking of something comforting to say when he noticed a group of imps flying toward them. “Go, go, go!”

They ran full pelt, the fear of death pumping adrenaline through their legs, temporarily granting them the speed of Olympic Sprinters as they continued up 7th Avenue. Rodrigo stayed in the rear, staring over his shoulder. The imps were gaining on them. Rapidly.

“Keep moving, don’t stop!” Rodrigo yelled, skidding to a halt and turning to face the demons. To his misfortune, there were even more imps than he had first seen. As usual, they were screeching at him and making a variety of offensive gestures.

Just as Rodrigo was about to bring out the nebulae, a ray of light tore through the skull of an imp. It fell to the sidewalk, convulsing for a couple of seconds before lying still. The imps and Rodrigo looked around for the source of the attack, but saw nothing. Then another ray came and then another, each one ripping through an imp and leaving a fresh corpse on the concrete.

When their numbers had halved, the imps finally flew off. Rodrigo waited for his savior to come out of hiding, but they didn’t.

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“Thanks!” Rodrigo shouted, hoping he was heard, then ran off to catch up with the group.

“Do humans actually have weapons capable of such power?” Resent asked.

“Never seen anything like that outside of sci-fi, but for all I know it could be new military tech.” At the corner of the block, he found Raquel, Carlito, and Leila crouching behind a car.

Across the street, the trio of flags hanging over Carnegie Hall’s entrance were on fire. People scurried in all directions as they burst from the illuminated building’s glass doors, shoving and trampling each other to escape the demons. Their screams, blending together to make an indistinguishable racket, sent chills racing up Rodrigo’s spine. A few, maybe the venue’s security, had guns and were shooting, but if their bullets were doing anything more than annoying the demons, the creatures didn’t show it. Vehicles had been abandoned throughout the street, making it even more difficult to wade through the madness. A swarm of news and police helicopters were circling overhead as the blaring of sirens resonated through the city. Watching as order collapsed, he wondered if things were the same everywhere in the world.

As Raquel noticed Rodrigo behind them, she glared up at him. “People are dying here. Aren’t you going to do something?”

“It’ll be hard enough saving ourselves. Let’s try another street. Going through here would be a nightmare.” Rodrigo averted his eyes from the ill-fated victims, knowing that if he watched for too long, he’d be compelled to interfere again. What else could he do? Wrap his scarf around his face and charge in like some kind of wannabe superhero?

Luckily, the street they ran to was less crowded. There were several small clusters of people running past them and only a couple of imps.

“Good thing there’s not too many demons around here,” Raquel said.

“Yeah, but why?” Leila asked. “There were tons of them right on the next block over. Now there’s only a few here and there.”

“I don’t know what they’re after, but if their goal is killing as many of us as possible, it makes sense they’d be drawn to crowds,” Carlito said glumly.

After a few more blocks of running at full speed while avoiding demons, Carlito needed a minute to catch his breath. Rodrigo stayed on his feet as the others rested their legs, sitting under a green awning, on the porch of an apartment building across the street from the park. He pulled out his phone and called Jett. It rang once then went to voicemail. There were about a half-dozen missed text messages from him from hours earlier, each one increasing in anxiety as he tried to untangle where they’d all gone and why.

“Checking up on someone?” Leila asked.

“Yeah, my cousin Jett. You might remember him from school. He should be better off than us, but I want to make sure.” Rodrigo didn’t want to frighten anyone even more, but if the demons had already reached Brooklyn, that killed any faint hope of this being an isolated incident.

“What about you? Don’t you have to call Hannah? Or your parents?” Raquel asked.

“They don’t live around here anymore,” Leila said.

“So what? You should still call them to make sure they’re okay.”

Rodrigo noticed Leila’s growing discomfort and shot his sister a sharp look.

He was about to call again when the glass and steel door behind them swung open. A heavyset man, in a long-sleeved dark blue shirt and black tactical vest, staggered out with a 12-gauge shotgun aimed at Rodrigo’s head. “The hell do you little shits think you’re doing loitering at a time like this? Get off the premises!”

Rodrigo threw his hands up and walked backward slowly. Following his example, Raquel, Carlito, and Leila jolted to their feet as well.

“Are you serious? We were just taking a breather,” Leila said.

As the security guard’s eyes lingered on her face, then dipped to take in the rest of her, he licked his lips. “Mmm. Awfully cold to be sitting out here, darling. Matter of fact, why don’t you come on in and warm yourself up?”

Leila pulled her coat closed, tucking her hands under her armpits. “Yeah, no thanks. I rather freeze to death.”

Rodrigo wasn’t sure whether Leila was brave or disregarded the gun because she had faith in him to deal with it. He hoped it was a healthy mix of both.

“Now see, that was rhetorical. I was you, I’d play nice, cuz the boy will be the one to pay for you getting mouthy too soon.” Still leering at her, the man barely looked at Rodrigo as he addressed him. “You, take these kids and get the hell outta here. Leave me that spiffy sword you got, though.”

“Look, sir,” Rodrigo said, doing his best to mask his disgust. “I’ll give you the sword if it means we can all go without a problem, but leaving her with you? Not happening.”

The man’s invasive gaze flicked from Leila to Rodrigo, his eyes widening, as if noticing the blood on him for the first time. “Ooh. Well, damn, son. Either you got one hell of a high pain tolerance, or you’re a bad little hombre with that there blade.” He snorted, adjusted his mesh hat with one hand, and wagged his firearm around like it was a toy with the other. “Good thing I got the gun, ain’t it, boy?”

After everything Rodrigo had faced, a man with a shotgun shouldn’t have seemed earth-shattering. But as he stared down the barrel, Resent’s regeneration didn’t seem so reliable. Worse, the stench of alcohol radiating off the man meant his aim might be off and the shot would hit someone else instead. Even with everything that could go wrong, there was no way he was going to run off and leave Leila alone with this sicko.

“Hey, are you not seeing what’s out here?” Carlito asked, gesturing toward the street. “Shouldn’t you be more worried about the monsters killing everyone?”

The man swung the gun to point it at him and before Rodrigo could react, Resent took over. He was on the man faster than he could squeeze the trigger, shoving the gun barrel upward so the deafening shot punched through the top of the awning and into the sky. A vicious throat jab dropped the man to his knees and left him gagging. Then Resent kicked him in the side of the head with such force that there was a dull crack as his face rebounded off the concrete.

There was no need to check for the man’s pulse.