“What happened here?” Rodrigo asked, examining what, under normal circumstances, would be mistaken for a crime scene. A short distance from the Spiral, a lanky body blackened with burns was laying in the snow. Despite its head having been pulverized, he recognized its build and clawed hands as the creature’s, or at least something of the same breed. A trail of blood, belonging to a human by its brighter color, stained the snow, leading away from the creature and to the curbside.

“Whoa, Jett actually pulled it off,” Raquel said.

Rodrigo whirled to her. “Jett did this?”

“Had to be. This is where we left him.”

“Preposterous,” Resent said. “Not only was this monster far beyond him, the wounds suggest a ferocity the twig lacks.”

So then it wasn’t Rodrigo’s imagination. It was the creature from Swan Street that had nearly killed him and Resent both. “Somebody sounds a little jealous.”

Before Resent could fly off into one of his tirades, Adena came back over from the phone call she was on. “Looks like the hospital managed to avoid an all-out assault and just had to endure some skirmishes outside. Let’s find some shelter. It’ll be a bit until my associate can pick us up, and you need to lose that armor before an overeager soldier passes by and shoots you.”

“Just a sec,” Rodrigo said, holding a hand up. If his cousin had died so that he could live, he wasn’t sure he’d ever be able to face his Uncle Antonio and Geo again. “There’s a lot of blood here. Is Jett all right?”

“He won’t be running anywhere for a while. But he’s alive,” Adena said, and Rodrigo breathed a sigh of relief. “Now, let’s go.”

They had no choice but to wander Lunar Peak, looking for a building to duck into. Because of its proximity to the portal, more than anywhere else Rodrigo had seen, the demons had torn through the neighborhood, bringing death and devastation with them in spades. Crushed cars, debris, collapsed buildings. Happy’s, the hole-in-the-wall Chinese Restaurant, demolished. The Pizzeria reduced to a burned out shell of its former self. The trees still standing were scorched and leafless, while the less fortunate had been hacked down to their stumps in a petty act of cruelty. And then there were the bodies. Dozens just in his immediate sight. He saw a few vaguely familiar faces, but many of the victims were half-buried in snow or beyond recognition.

Raquel was trembling, her eyes welled with tears she was fighting to hold back. Her strength in that moment made Rodrigo swell with pride. He took her hand in his and gave it a reassuring squeeze, knowing that hugging her would be like giving her license to fall apart.

He actually walked past where his house once stood, only noticing because Adena kept glancing his way as they covered that block. Back when they first met, she had said, “Houses will be the least of anyone’s concerns by January 1st.” At the time, he saw that as a cop-out to hide the truth about Misery knowing where to find him. Now, he was almost glad it happened as early as it had. It gave him something which the dead strewn throughout the streets never got. The chance to process and accept the loss in a semi-rational world. For everyone else, losing the safety of their homes had just been one more bombshell in a succession of them.

“Anyone home?” Rodrigo asked as he pounded on the door of a house that was already cracked open, halfway off its hinges. In case anyone was still there, he didn’t want to startle them and end up getting shot. When there was no response for about a minute, he said, “Coming in. We’re not here to hurt anybody.”

Despite the situation, entering someone’s lived-in house without them present still felt like a violation, and lacked the thrill of exploring an abandoned one. After closing the door behind Raquel and Adena, Rodrigo sank into the worn couch in the living room. There were four colorful plastic trays on the glass coffee table with a half-eaten dinner, long gone cold, in front of a flat screen TV. The news was playing with the sound muted and the subtitles turned on. Raquel found the remote and increased the television’s volume, as breaking news flashed on the screen.

“This just in: for the past hour we have seen drastically reduced presence of the creatures being referred to as demons, and while the terrifying widespread devastation they caused remains, it might be safe to say that the worst has passed,” Caity Wright said from inside a newsroom. Apparently, she was CNN’s lead anchor on all this after risking her life by sticking around to report about it. “What’s more, military personnel will soon begin taking back the streets, with the goal of saving as many lives as possible, as US Air Force fighter jets patrol overhead. Following the tragic death of President Irvine, Vice President Blackthorn will presumably be taking the oath of office before addressing the nation later this evening. As it stands, after nearly forty-eight hours under siege, it appears the invasion has ended.”

“Hmm,” Adena said, rubbing her chin.

“What?” Rodrigo asked.

“In a surprise attack this well coordinated, what do you think the odds are of the Vice President surviving if the demons didn’t want him to?”

“You think he’s possessed?” Rodrigo asked, staring wide-eyed at her. The far-reaching consequences of such a thing were too much for his tired mind to handle.

Adena shrugged. “It’s one theory. He just as likely could have been spared because the high lords felt he’d make an incompetent leader, or even scraped by on sheer dumb luck.”

“Time will tell,” Resent said, sounding amused by the thought. “In any event, they haven’t all left, you know? After seeing what luxuries the past offers and how vulnerable you all are, many won’t.”

“Then we’ll have to make them. I don’t care if they leave in peace or in pieces.” Rodrigo wished he hadn’t said that. He could see a huge argument stemming from this, and he was in no mood.

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“Yes, I have no interest in those with an inability to follow my orders. Besides, it shall make good practice for the angels.”

Caity continued her broadcast, her green eyes taking on a fanatical gleam. “Worldwide, multiple confirmed sightings of what seem to be humans with supernatural abilities have been reported. We’re currently unsure of what connection the sudden emergence of these people or their abilities have to the demons, if any. Now, what we do have is a recording captured on a cell phone from inside the luxury hotel, the Bloodstone. I would say viewer discretion is advised, but I wholeheartedly believe this is something everyone needs to see.”

The red ogre appeared fully on the screen, the footage taken from afar, blurry, shaking, and without sound. From the position of the camera, the cameraman must have been at the top of the staircase, not far from where Rodrigo was. Just as he remembered, the ogre merely stood there, blocking the exit, as the other demons did as they pleased. A second after the boy crawling along the ground was smacked away, Rodrigo flew into the camera’s view, the nebulae blinding the ogre and dropping him.

“Now, that’s karma!” There was a pause, then Caity’s lightly freckled face flushed as she cleared her throat, seeming mortified about her excited outburst in the midst of the chaos. “A-anyhow, while descriptions of this young man controlling some form of magic vary, blue streaks in his hair and a purple and black scarf remain constants. Dozens of witnesses credit the savior’s brave actions as the reason for their survival, and we’ll go live to them in a moment. I would just like to say, whoever or wherever you may be, young man...thank you.”

As Rodrigo saw person after frantic person come forward to sing his praises, making him out to be so much more than an angry kid who had reached his breaking point, he felt hollow. Deep down, he knew he would trade every life he had saved for Carlito’s, even if his kindhearted brother would hate him for it. Not wanting to hear anymore, Rodrigo took off for the nearest bedroom, hoping to find clothes close enough to his size.

Having seen the state of the front door, he had braced himself for the bodies. But what he found was nothing he could have imagined. Spread out on the hardwood floor in front of him, were three corpses holding hands, each with a single gunshot wound to the head. The girl and boy on either side of the mother were younger than even Carlito. A pool of congealing blood conjoined underneath them. The father’s body was slumped in the corner of the room, still gripping the revolver in his right hand, his blood splattered on the floral-patterned window curtains behind him.

Rodrigo backed away until he hit the wall, then numbly slid down it until he was sitting. How many homes across the world had scenes that mirrored this one? People with no means of fighting back having lost all hope and killing themselves before the demons could do worse? The religious feeling abandoned by God and praying that a better afterlife awaited them?

“Why are you still surprised by the cowardice of humanity?” Resent asked.

“Cowardice?” Rodrigo was no advocate for suicide, the unknown hereafter always scaring him more than anything in life ever could, but while rotting in that pit after having failed everyone he cared about, amid the bones of the long departed, he had certainly felt its allure. Yet where Rodrigo might have welcomed death out of a selfish need to escape his guilt and self-loathing, this man had made the hardest choice imaginable, sparing his family far more pain. Could Rodrigo have done the same if he knew the agonizing end awaiting Carlito? “Someone like you could never understand.”

“Someone like me?” Resent demanded, and Rodrigo clammed up to prevent himself from saying something that might weaken their fragile partnership further. But Resent wouldn’t let it be. “Go on. Elaborate.”

“Someone whose first instinct is to put his own well-being above everyone else’s, and has never known powerlessness since the day he was born.”

Resent snorted. “Yes, yes. I’ve had to hear derivative tripe like this for centuries. From Semiazas’ delusional whore of a daughter to that oaf of a conqueror, whining about life’s unfairness, before I killed him.”

“Don’t get me wrong. I’m not singling you out, I’m talking about your entire damned species. Even if you were among the weakest of demons, you’d still have an edge over the world’s strongest man. Clearly, that kind of unchecked power has warped your thinking. Because if that looks like a coward to you,” Rodrigo growled, pointing at the dead man. “You’re more vacuous than your old man feared.”

Rodrigo knew he had overstepped by uttering Strife’s choice insult, when Resent’s black and purple nebulae somehow sprouted from his right shoulder, grabbed him by the throat and started to squeeze. Briefly, the nebulous arm flickered, Resent seeming as shocked with his new ability as Rodrigo was. Resent being able to generate nebulae without needing to be in control had all sorts of chilling applications. Even if he couldn’t afford to do any lasting damage to Rodrigo, he could now lash out at everyone around him with impunity.

Resent chuckled, probably coming to a similar conclusion, and the nebulae solidified, reapplying the pressure on Rodrigo’s throat as they pinned him against the wall. “I hope you didn’t presume that my learning of some misspent seed would awaken any sort of paternal concern in me. You’re a useful spare until I get my body back, but disrespect me so brazenly again at the peril of your loved ones.”

So they were back to square one? Rodrigo left with no choice but to tiptoe around the prince, careful not to poke the bear, lest he tear off the face of the nearest person he cared about. To hell with that! Rodrigo constructed his sword from his pitch-black nebulae in his left hand, and he could feel as Resent’s nebulae stiffened, bracing for the slash. It was a battle Rodrigo had no chance of winning. Instead, he leveled the blade at his own forehead so that he was staring at the razor-sharp point, an inch away. “Threaten my friends and family at yours, prince. Because if you hurt them, that’s all you’ll ever be.”

“You...you’re bluffing,” Resent said, unable to mask the doubt in his voice. “You would never leave your sister alone.”

“Seeing the injuries I gave her and Adena when I had no control over myself made me want to vomit. If you think the risk of you hurting them or the others even worse isn’t enough incentive for me to kill us both, you haven’t been paying attention.”

There was a tense silence, then Resent’s nebulae dissipated, leaving Rodrigo gasping for air. “I suppose it only fitting any spawn of mine has something resembling a backbone.”

Rodrigo wanted to believe that it was the insistent honking of a car horn outside that kept him from addressing the elephant between them. But really, he was still unpacking all the ways Resent being his father explained the mysteries of his life. From the rage that had plagued him since childhood, to Edward’s detachment and eventual abandonment of his own family. Yet as much as he wanted to blame Resent for all the frustrations and misfortunes in his life, the prince had been equally clueless about their relationship.

And what if Resent had known? Would Rodrigo have grown up in Hell, groomed into a miniature version of his father, a demon who embodied nearly everything he stood against? More likely, the instant Miriam started to show, Resent would have killed her with Rodrigo growing in her belly. With those odds, it seemed like having been raised ignorant of his demon heritage was the best outcome for all involved.