"I would prefer some necessary reconnaissance of the terrain, which will allow you the time to hide yourself should you so choose." Japhrimel turned away from Eve, who stood smiling at me, the tips of her white, white teeth showing. My Fallen's boots were soundless as he took three long strides away from my daughter.

I tensed. Premonition tickled my nape, swam through dark water, flowered in the space behind my eyes — and sank away, showing me nothing. Nothing except the dread of something unpleasant about to happen.

"I ain't gonna hide," Lucas said. "I want him to know I'm standin' with you. That was the deal.

What the hell? "What deal?"

Lucas coughed, rolled his shoulders back, and settled his bandoliers. "The one I made with your boyfriend, chica. The one that kept me in this game. What, you thought I was workin' for you?"

"That was my understanding, yes." But Eve hired you before I did, and Japh paid you. So I suppose you were working for me until a better offer came along.

"If I was still workin' for you I'd've killed you. After you tried to unzip my guts, that is. ' Lucas brushed past me. McKinley and Vann, wearing identical expressions of worry, stood like statues. Eve still didn't move, watching me with that unsettling smile.

You lying sack of shit. "Isaid I was sorry," I repeated, despite Japhrimel halting less than two feet from me, his head slightly bowed. The scar, softly burning against my shoulder, pulsed once. Another warm, soft coat of Power eased down my skin. Caress or last-minute bolstering, it cleared my head a bit.

The thin red ribbon of rage smoking in the bottom of my mind shivered, uneasy. Eve finally eased forward, stepping cautiously over the now-defunct borders of the circle. My nape prickled, the skin of the world suddenly too thin and full of whispers just beyond my auditory range.

I braced myself. Eve's smile widened, and her hands came up, elegant fingers spread. The therma-grenade bounced as she flung it, one deadly accurate throw, straight into the middle of the ammo crates Lucas had been digging in, stacked alongside the wall.

"Oh, shi-" McKinley never got time to finish the word.

The world turned over. Japhrimel spun aside and I dove for cover, oxygen hissing as fire bloomed, a hungry flower. I hit hard, rolling to the side, searching for something, anything, in the vast naked space of the cargo bay to hide myself behind.

Eve landed next to me, catlike, one hand tented against the floor for balance as the other curled around my upper arm and hauled. The scar gave a flare of spiked heat, Japhrimel's aura compressing over mine, and the desert invaded the hover as an explosion so huge it was soundless tore plasteel like paper.

What the he — This time it was me who didn't get to finish a word as my body left the grating, the shockwave and Eve's application of force conspiring to drag me through air turned hot and viscous. I went limp as a rag doll, the slim iron bar of Eve's arm now around my waist as she compressed herself, then let loose, flinging through space, my head jolting as we cleared the huge starfish hole torn in the side of the hover.

Bleeding. Nose and ears. Sand grinding underfoot as Eve landed hard, physics taking revenge as we both skidded. A cloud of grit rose, Power screaming, and I realized debris was raking the ground around us.

Eve leapt again, my sword almost jolting free before my fingers clamped shut, and I searched for a way, any way, to help her instead of just bouncing along for the ride.

Nothing came to mind. There was a brief starry moment of unconsciousness, desert heat mouthing my skin, and Eve dragged us both down a rocky incline scarred with detritus. We reached the cover of the edge of the blast zone, but even then she didn't stop, fleeing not just for escape but also for her life.

There was no water. We sheltered in the twisted ruins of what might have once been a tallish building, one side of it black and flash-fried from the blast centuries ago. Eve propped her back against the wall, gasping, and peered out onto the wasteland of Vegas. "Are… you… hurt?"

I shook my head, struggling to bring my own lungs under control. When I could talk, I still kept breathing, savoring the feel of air in my lungs. It was hellishly hot even in the shade, and something about this heat wasn't as nice as, say, the sun I'd basked in outside the boarding house in Hegemony Afrike. I'd always hated sweating before Japhrimel changed me; afterward I'd had much more tolerance of temperature variance. But this heat was something else — an oppression, helped along by the thought that thousands had died and crumbled to dust in these very buildings.

"You're bleeding," Eve finally said. Fine thin stripes of black demon blood on her own strange face glistened before they soaked back into golden skin. "My apologies."

"So were you." I braced my back against the wall and cast around, calculating fire angles. "Didn't know you had a grenade."

"Necessity being the mother of invention." She shook her head, the icy ropes of her hair providing no relief from the heat. "I could not warn you, either."

"Understood." And it was.

"I couldn't afford to let the Eldest chain me, or take the chance he might —"

I wouldn't trust him either, if I was you. "Understood, Eve." I sounded weary even to myself. The scar on my shoulder throbbed angrily, another bolt of pure Power flushing down to my bones and spreading outward. "Really. So what's the plan?"

"The best I can come up with is not very good." She slid down to sit cross-legged, scooching herself between a shattered chunk of concrete and something that might have once been a couch covered in faded tattered plaid. Shards of silica glass littered the building, sand-laden wind whistling on the other side of the wall. In this wilderness of cracked and dead buildings, cover was cheap and sight-lines a dime a dozen. If I'd had six or seven bounty hunters and was up against a human adversary, it might have been a good locale. "He is due to arrive at dusk." Her face twisted, blue eyes rivaling the heaving light outside. Every time she mentioned Lucifer, her expression held such pure loathing it almost covered up the fear. "We can either run and search for another opportunity to kill him, or take our chance now. Without allies — unless your Fallen decides, as I hope he will, that covering your attempt is the best way to keep you alive.

I tipped my chin down toward the scar. "I'm not exactly inconspicuous. He's going to come looking for me.

She nodded. "Dusk approaches. It won't be long, and we are not the only danger here. Listen.

I did, tilting my head in a parody of her graceful motion. My entire body ached.

Wind, moaning. The ever-present hiss of sand, and the sound of roaring distance without hovers or crowds.

And little, skittering noises. Too light or too heavy, too fast or too slow to be mortal. Noises that hit the ear wrong and raised my hackles.

I breathed in softly, tasting the air. Dust, dry rotting things, decay and the faint odor of long-ago violence. Threading under that, a faint well-traveled hint of burning cinnamon and musk.

"This is not a human place," Eve whispered. "Even when it was a city, it wasn't a human place. Since the catastrophe here, a door to Hell has remained open. He will use it, if he has not already, either to issue forth from Hell or to return once he has won. At least, that is what he thinks." Her eyes glittered, her mouth twisting. She seemed not to notice her sweater was torn to rags, the firm golden slopes of her breasts peeping out.

Nausea rose hot and acid. I swallowed it, my rig creaking as I shifted. I had all my weapons and a serious case of sand-in-the-crevices; it's why I never go to the beach. "Okay." You and me against the Devil? We're dead.