Derek. She gazed wildly into that opening, seeking him.

“Ruby, down.”

She dropped as the net of green flame passed over her. It snagged her flailing arm, snapping the net back like a rubber band. It wound around her biceps, growing outward to cover and pin her to that ledge, drag her over it.

“Serrate,” she snarled, swallowing the pain as the spell’s detonation, so close to her, flashed over her skin. Hell, she hadn’t even put on her SPF 40 moisturizer this morning. For some crazy reason, the macabre image of a makeup party she’d attended with Ramona years before flashed in her head. The perfectly made-up hostess explaining, Every night you don’t take off your makeup before bed ages your skin three days.

Wonder what she recommends for a thousand degrees centigrade at a ten-foot distance?

The green net parted as if sliced down the middle. Scrambling free, she leaped to another ledge of rock, an incisor over that gaping hole. She spun in time to see Derek engage Asmodeus again. He was wielding what appeared to be a thick staff, about a yard long. She recognized the rainstick she’d used when she integrated a gentle rain noise into the rotating array of illusions in Rose’s world. Just like selecting the music options on an MP3 player, Rose’s mind could choose whatever gave her pleasure from moment to moment. Ruby hoped this moment wasn’t penetrating, unless it was like a soothing, distant roll of thunder behind that gentle rainstorm.

Derek could use anything to focus his energy, but it was incongruous to see him lifting the relatively fragile object as a weapon. Until it transformed, and he held a white ash staff instead, nearly as long as he was. But oddly, as he used it to absorb the shards of fire from Asmodeus’s random attacks, she could still hear the rainstick. Both males grunted with exertion to dodge, deflect and absorb the whistling projectiles they were hurling, and those noises of battle were mixed with that rain noise, like the tiny chuckle of fairies.

As Derek pivoted, Ruby could see the aura of the tether he’d used for the sphere, like tying a balloon to one’s wrist to keep it from floating away. With a direct line of sight, of feeling, she could tell nothing was disturbed in the sphere. Rose was still dreaming, unaware a demon had come to suck away that charged amniotic fluid, leaving her soul a defenseless husk, adrift forever if he was successful.

She couldn’t get a clear shot to help. Derek and Asmodeus were moving too fast, astoundingly, awesomely fast, ducking, lunging, attacking. Sharp rock was flying, such that she’d had to put her shields up again. Some were finding their target on both demon and sorcerer as they danced around the ledge. They didn’t stay on the ledge, though. Asmodeus used his wings, and when Derek moved into open space, it held him, as if he’d conjured a platform for himself out of air, and he likely had. The magic of all elements was available to him, after all, and he was not afraid to draw from them. He had the ability, the understanding.

You can’t use your power. It will only lead to tragedy.

She was standing here, impotent. She couldn’t do anything like what they were doing. How could she be anything but a hindrance? It was the first rule of gun use. If you weren’t sure what you were doing, you were better off retreating, running or getting out of the way. Else pulling your gun would likely get other people or yourself killed.

Asmodeus howled and threw his body forward. Derek backpedaled, for a demon’s touch was as venomous and deadly. In that brief second, Ruby saw the shadows gather above and leap.

Fuck, soul-eaters. Goddamn demon was cheating, calling in reinforcements. They landed on Derek as he backed right into them. Because of the protections on Rose, they stayed clear of the sphere, but they covered him, blinded him. His heels hit the ledge behind his air platform and he stumbled. Normally, he’d blast them right off. But he couldn’t, not while shielding Rose.

Asmodeus snarled, moving in, those long talons now glowing red like iron, reaching for Derek. He clamped down on Derek’s wrist through that dark blanket of shadows, and Ruby felt the reverberation of agony from the sorcerer as the soul-eaters, eager to drain him, sank their fangs into him.

Fuck you, Mother.

The power unfurled inside of her, Dark, Light and all shades in between. While this battle might be happening underground, lightning didn’t exist only in the sky. Unlike Derek, she wasn’t hampered by what she could draw from below. Reaching down, she called for a storm of energy from the bowels of the Underworld itself. Belatedly, she realized she’d stepped right out into that open space, but she’d conjured herself a platform of air, just as Derek had. Years of study had dovetailed into automatic instinct.

Asmodeus’s crimson eyes flickered toward her, surprise and alarm there. The cold wind spiraled up, straight from the mouth of the Underworld Asmodeus had opened himself, helpful bastard that he was.

Unfortunately, his shock was short-lived. His lips pulled back from his fangs, his hissing voice filling the chamber like a thousand snakes. “You will unleash Hell on Earth, little girl, and you will not know how to put it back.”

“Pandora didn’t have him.” Jerking her head at Derek, Ruby let the power go like hitting the lever of a catapult. As she released it, she shouted the command at the top of her lungs. “Derek, shield yourself. Now.”

Lightning cracked through the chamber, shooting up from that opening. The soul-eaters screamed, their bodies flashing transparent, like a macabre cartoon where the skeleton could be seen. They let go of Derek. Asmodeus snarled as the charge reverberated through his soles, grabbing him. His bat-like wings snapped open, holding him up, even as he jittered in the grip of the voltage.

Ruby got a quick glimpse of Derek’s pale face behind a shimmer of power, a major relief, since she wasn’t sure if he’d managed to protect himself. He looked pissed off in a major way, even beneath the blood, which meant he couldn’t be mortally wounded— right? Of course, he was the type of guy who would react to being mortally wounded just that way. Trying not to think about that, she stepped farther out over the abyss, advancing on Asmodeus. Her hair was flying around her face, lightning shards crackling over her palms in a disturbing tingle as she lifted both hands. Her skirt whipped around her.

The Darkness reared its head, summoned by her anger, her desire for revenge. You took my baby. You made me afraid. You attacked my guy, you son of a bitch. As the barbed magic lashed out from her, she recalled the scene from Lord of the Rings she’d always associated with Derek. Khazad-dum…. You shall not pass. Only instead of Gandalf, now she saw the Balrog, striking with that fiery whip at the last moment, taking him down. She was the Balrog, coated in darkness, and she’d take it all down with her. All of it. She could make Asmodeus suffer, writhe in pain, scream with the agony of it.

But Darkness was all about pain and agony. The more Mikhael had given her, the more she’d wanted, the hunger only abated for short periods, not gone. Her gaze snapped to the sphere, where Rose lived in a world with no darkness, no pain. Even though her mother had dealt with Darkness to protect her, there’d been no Darkness in that spell, nothing in that chamber to touch Rose with fear or pain. There’d been a reason for that.

Twelve hours of love, of trust and healing…. Her heart might be fragile as glass, but it had made a key difference, given her back vital parts of herself. She saw Derek register what she was doing, his alarm and calculation, but she didn’t give him time to go beyond that, to decide what heroic and unacceptably dangerous measure he needed to take to protect her. She let go of the barbed magic, vanquished it with a sweep of her hands, a thrust of energy to send it spiraling off into the air, inert. It wasn’t the weapon she needed for this.

“Derek, let her go.” She shouted it over the din of the funneling elements. “Let her go.”

He locked gazes with her, verifying she’d said what she said. It was barely a blink, but if she survived this, she knew she’d recall it later as something much longer. Because in that split second she saw he understood what it meant to her to make that decision. And she wanted to tell him it was because of that comprehension, his love, that she had the strength to say it, mean it.

He let Rose go. Asmodeus, recovering way too fast from that strike, zeroed in on it like a torpedo’s tracking system. Before he could leap, Derek tossed a handful of sand in the air. In an instant, the grains became a hundred orbs the same size as Rose’s, spinning and moving through the chamber, confusing the eye and thwarting any attempt by the demon to interfere with the real sphere’s path.

When the illusion cleared, she’d called the sphere straight to her, anchored it in her hands. The power of it pulsed between her palms, the complex world she’d created. She’d become a Goddess, shaping this small world the way the bigger one should be, not the way it was. And she’d told Linda that wasn’t the way the world was supposed to work, no matter the heartbreak that such a truth brought.

The meaning of that Goddess’s power, the choices, the good and bad of such energy, coursed through her as Ruby stared over her daughter at Asmodeus.

She was cognizant of Derek watching her, ready, alert, locked on the way she stood over the abyss, her magic holding her up, its strength continuing to blow her hair back in wild disarray. What held her up was solid. A foundation that could never be shattered. Her faith in herself.

I decide who and what I am, Mother. Not you. You doubted your own worth so much that you had to steal mine. But I forgive you for your weakness.

“Is this what you want, Asmodeus?” She rotated it in her hands, and the mist that wisped around it began to lengthen, twine around her wrists. All of it was here, the magic traded with the pieces of her soul. Given out of love, as Derek had said. “Then open wide, because here it comes.”

With a sharp word, she cracked it like an egg between her palms.

The contents zinged forth like a chaotic explosion of fireworks. She’d woven the magic with clever, painstaking care, but, like all power concentrations, if the wrong string was pulled, it could detonate like a bomb.

The meadows and ponies, butterflies and rainbows, candy and long naps on green grass…. all that, plus the incredible array of elemental and Underworld magics. The brilliant tapestry illuminated the room, filled it to bursting. She was plastered against the wall, the weight of it compressing her shields such that if they gave way, she’d be crushed.