Page 25 of The Darkest Night

Lightning flashed in the Heavens. Mae’s eyes widened.

A dark void had appeared where none should be, some two hundred feet above the rooftop. A sickening, crimson light oozed out of it as it grew.

“What is that?!” Mae shouted above the rising gale.

“Hell!” Violet yelled back.

Mae looked at her blankly. “Huh?!”

Violet indicated the black hole. “That’s a portal to Hell. Let’s just hope nothing else comes out of this one.” She narrowed her eyes. “Maybe we should have done the greeting ritual after all.”

A crimson light throbbed on Mae’s chest. The pentagram pendant Nikolai had stolen from the Sorcerer King and bestowed upon her levitated out the top of her hospital gown, metal aglow with a scarlet light. Mae flinched.

Miles blanched. “That thing was on her all along?!”

Violet’s pulse quickened as she observed the medallion. She could feel its deadly magic.

It flashed, blinding them for a moment.

Something on the ground caught Violet’s eye once her vision cleared.

“Oh.”

Mae and Miles followed her dull gaze.

A circle overlaid by a pentagram and interlinked with radiating runes had formed around the Witch Queen, the lines blazing with the same red glow emanating from the pendant. It looked different from the spell Violet had intended to create but she could tell its purpose from the strong magic emanating from it.

“There’s our greeting ritual.”

The medallion hummed, the sound it made pleased.

“That’s creepy,” Miles mumbled.

Mae hesitated before raising a trembling hand to the pendant. The humming intensified, the weapon pulsing vermilion as it kissed its mistress’s skin. She shuddered and blinked slowly, as if recalling something.

“There was a man with a crow. He was here that night, on the rooftop.” She met Violet’s eyes, her own wild. “He gave me this thing, didn’t he?!”

Violet maintained a neutral expression. They hadn’t seen nor heard of Nikolai since that night. It was as if he’d vanished into thin air.

Then again, I would be keeping a low profile too if I had the Sorcerer King and the Dark Council after me.

Still, Violet was certain he wouldn’t be far. There was too much at stake for him to leave New York.

“We have incoming!” Miles warned, his eyes on the sky.

Violet and Mae looked up.

Something was falling out of the crimson portal.

“Wait.” Miles squinted. “Is that a—?”

Violet drew a sharp breath as the shape spun and grew in size.

“Maybe you should step out of that circle,” she told Mae.

Large, orange eyes appeared in a rich, red and black triangular face, the vertical irises wide with panic.

Violet shot an alarmed glance at Mae. “Like, seriously, move!”

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