nodded because he was doing what I’d asked him to do. He was stating his purpose, and he sounded somewhat confident. I had to hope I was right and the demon was either too far gone to fight or honestly wanted a way to communicate with us.
Dean moved closer and his eyes closed, his shoulders straightening and his body seeming to grow a bit taller.
He would be magnificent someday. It whispered along my consciousness. Sometimes I get hints of the worlds I saw when I aided Gray in his transition to dark prophet. All of the roads my life could take had been lain open to me, every choice I could make and the consequences of them. The vast majority had been lost to me, my mind unable to remember what was seemingly infinite, but every now and then I would feel a shadow over my mind.
I’d felt it with Fenrir.
I felt it now with Dean. Dean was important. Perhaps more important to my world than Summer herself. Dean would one day tip the balance in a war I hadn’t even contemplated, a war that would define my plane forever.
This was one of his first steps, and if he had the right mentorship, he could become everything the Earth plane needed him to be.
Everything she needed him to be.
A shiver went through me. After I helped Gray transition into a dark prophet, I’d asked Jacob if I would retain any of the visions I’d seen, if I would have any of the power I’d had in those hours. He’d told me I would only be able to see bits of the future in dreams. But he was wrong. I get hints of prophecy every now and then even when I’m awake. I kind of hate it because I never know what to do with it.
When I’d looked at Dean in that moment, the briefest vision of a blonde woman at his side had hit me. I shook it off because I needed to focus.
I shook it off because I didn’t want to lose myself in wondering if I’d just seen Mia Day as an adult.
“Kelsey, I’m in.” Dean’s voice was deeper than normal, his tone calm and relaxed. “You’re right. He wants to talk. He’s worried. He’s very weak, but not close to death. He thought he was immortal but now he understands how fragile he truly is. He’s scared.”
I didn’t like the thought of a demon being scared. “He said something about energy.”
The muscles in Dean’s face tensed as though he was struggling with something. “Please slow down. Sorry. He’s shoving a lot at me. Bees. They’re like bees. They take energy and leave some behind. They are necessary but the energy that should flow…it should be a wave but it’s a trickle. He didn’t notice it at first, but the situation is reaching a point of no return. The magic must flow. That’s what he’s telling me. The Planeswalkers will cease to function and then…”
Dean’s eyes came open, a bit of panic there.
“What is it?”
“If the Planeswalkers fail, everything falls apart,” Dean said in a whisper, looking down at the demon.
“What do you mean by everything?”
He turned my way, a stark look in his eyes. “The walls fall. The convergence…it’s only the start. The magic that keeps the planes separate is failing. If the walls come down, it will be chaos. The planes will fracture and collapse on themselves until they swallow up the original plane, the plane from which all others were built.”
“Earth.” I wasn’t going to pretend we weren’t all fucked. This was always the time in one of my adventures when I got the message the world was ending. Except this time it wasn’t merely the world. It was all worlds. “What do we do?”
I would have waited for the answer to my question, but I heard a scream.
“He’s killing her!” a feminine voice yelled. “He’s going to kill us all!”
I took off running because somehow my day had definitely gotten worse.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Summer
I opened my eyes to find myself in a cell, Marcus laid out beside me.
“Hello,” a feminine voice said. “Don’t worry about the Earth vamp. He’ll wake up soon. My witch gave him a little extra whammy so we could talk for a minute. Also, I sent the hubby on an errand and the rest of the crew is working, so we’re a testosterone-free zone. Just you and me and the pups.”
The woman standing outside the high-tech cell was tall, with long red