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in amazement as its face began to melt like wax.
    “He’s like one of those little dinosaurs from Jurassic Park ,” Derrick said.
    The equine demon recovered quickly. Although obviously in pain, it didn’t seem overly concerned by the fact that its skin was bubbling. It reached for the boy, but the smaller demon moved too quickly, flitting out of the way.
    Then the larger demon cracked its whip again. The black tendon snaked forward, catching the boy around the ankles. He cried out and fell to the ground. Fire began to move once more along the leathery surface of the whip, flowing from the handle downward. I could feel its heat, and so could the boy. He struggled to break free, but the whip held him tight. For the first time, I saw panic in his startling green eyes.
    I looked around the autopsy room. Everything was completely sterile—the worst environment possible for conducting materia. Still, we were underground, and I could feel the currents of geothermic energy beneath my feet. They shied away from the fake tile and manufactured steel countertop, but they were still there, and I could hear them, subterranean lions growling absently in their sleep.
    The amber light continued to flare along the length of the whip. I didn’t want to know what it would do when it touched the boy’s flesh, but I could imagine the result.
    I reached beneath the tile, beneath the building’s foundations, and into the cold matter of the rocks and earth below. They were outraged. Who did I think I was? They tried to ignore me. But I kept reaching, deeper and deeper, until I felt the plane of my consciousness sink into a dark pool.
    I let the materia rise within me, until it enflamed every nerve ending. My athame was throwing off a corona of heat. I tightened my grip on the handle of the blade, focusing the power down to an incandescent line. Then I channeled it toward the end of the whip, still wrapped around the boy’s legs.
    Burst, I thought, with all of my might. Burst.
    The tiles cracked.
    A shaft of rock and molten material exploded upward from the ground, severing the coiled end of the whip. The flame stopped. The amputated piece of leather shriveled, then turned to dust.
    The boy was free. Before the larger demon could crack the whip again, he leapt forward. I felt him gathering a surge of power, and then he hit the equine demon full in the chest, like a cannonball. A shock wave tore through the room. The demon stumbled, its four legs clawing at the ground. It fell onto its haunches.
    Lucian pointed his hand at the fallen demon. A halo of red light coalesced around his fingertips. He shaped the light into a fizzing dart and then hurled it at the demon, like a Roman candle.
    The equine demon raised its arm. I felt a vibration move through the floor, and then its power lashed out. The air in front of it went liquid, tracked with silver and filaments of icy blue.
    For some reason, it made me think of being a small girl, sitting in the front seat with my mother while we went through the car wash. I’d always been captivated by the way that the soap moved down the windshield, coating everything in a soft, luminous pink, and making the glass seem to ripple like water.
    Lucian’s missile struck the liquid and dissipated, scattering into embers that seared and blackened the tile wherever they fell. He swore.
    I heard a commotion in the hallway. Finally, Selena had arrived with reinforcements. I started to yell something, but the equine demon suddenly swiveled its head, golden eyes narrowing. Obviously, it had better hearing than I did.
    The demon snarled something beneath its breath and gestured toward the door of the autopsy suite.
    As I watched, the metal frame of the door began to blister and crack. Smoking and bubbling, it turned first red and then electric orange, shifting to an igneous curtain that spread across the walls and floor.
    Great. They weren’t getting through that anytime soon. Even if I could channel enough power to