On Earth, in the woods near the Jericho camp, an altar was being assembled.
Gomez and Pugsley were tied at the center of it, unconscious. A thin man moved around the perimeter setting up the ritual components with the practiced efficiency of someone who had done this before — many times, in many places, across a very long history.
His right hand was missing. If Ethan had been standing there he would have recognized him immediately.
Issac Night. The zombie boy.
He finished the last of the setup and stopped, looking at Pugsley and Gomez with the expression of someone who had been significantly delayed by factors outside their control.
"This body's brain is genuinely irritating," he said. "If it wasn't for his grudges this ritual would have been done days ago."
He looked out into the dark between the trees, watching the faint disturbance where the demons had been moving.
"And these demons." His voice dropped slightly. "Low level creatures. When did they become this active?"
It bothered him. When the Dark Ones had ruled, demons didn't set foot on Earth. They knew better.
They understood the hierarchy and they respected it — not out of goodwill, but out of self-preservation. Now they seemed to have forgotten that entirely, crawling out of Hell and possessing humans like the old order meant nothing.
Because to them, it didn't anymore.
The last time he had tried to open a dimensional gate to the Dark Dimension — to free what remained of his kind, to fill the Earth again with the old powers — a vampire had appeared and dismantled the entire plan before it could finish.
Recently the Book of the Dead had resurrected him, the backup contingency he'd left in place decades ago in case of exactly that kind of failure.
The body it had chosen was functional.
The brain that came with it was a different problem.
This boy had grudges the way other people had furniture — accumulated over time, resistant to removal, impossible to ignore. So he had spent more time managing the residual impulses of this borrowed mind than he had spent on the actual work.
He looked at the altar and got back to it.
There wasn't time to complain.
He reached into his coat and pulled out the Book of the Dead.
The twin-tailed girl had taken it from him last time. That was the part that still sat wrong.
Everything had been moving correctly, the ritual positioned perfectly, years of preparation behind it, and then a girl on the verge of death had reached for a book she had no business touching and opened the door the vampire had locked.
That single moment had sent the entire plan to ruin.
He had underestimated her.
He wouldn't make that mistake again. If he saw her he would kill her immediately — no hesitation, no margin given to someone who had already proven exactly what she'd do with it.
He opened the Book of the Dead, found the page, and began reading.
His voice stayed low and flat, the altar responding before he'd finished the first verse, the air around Gomez and Pugsley beginning to shift and thicken.
The ritual had started.
Before it could finish, two dark shapes dropped from the sky and landed behind the Dark One. The Dark One closed the book and turned around.
He recognized them immediately.
"Heh." He looked between Baphomet and the figure beside him — the one that had once been an angel, before it chose something else entirely. "You two have gotten brave since we disappeared."
"Dark Ones." Baphomet's voice had something unfamiliar in it. Confusion. "You were locked in the Dark Dimension five thousand years ago. How did you—"
"Surprised?" The Dark One smiled, showing all his teeth. "Did you genuinely believe that pathetic ritual you helped humans construct would hold us permanently?" He tilted his head slightly.
"Nothing holds us in the Dark Dimension. Nothing that has ever existed was built strong enough for that."
He stepped forward, the altar behind him beginning to shine in the dark, something thick and wrong starting to pour out from its surface.
"Earth always belonged to us," he said. "Humans are our creation. Our property. That was true before you demons existed and it remains true now — nothing either of you have done changes that." His smile didn't move.
"So prepare yourselves. The age of your freedom is ending. Slavery suits you both considerably better."
"Ahahaha — be ready to kneel again—"
Red lightning split the sky in the distance.
All three of them looked up at the same moment.
The silence that followed was a different kind of silence — the kind that came from recognizing something.
None of them spoke. Baphomet's confidence from a moment ago had gone somewhere else entirely. Even the Dark One's smile had shifted into something less certain.
Red meant one thing on this Earth.
And none of them were happy to be reminded it existed.
"It seems that annoying vampire is coming back," the Dark One said, turning back toward the altar to finish the ritual.
Valak and Baphomet stepped in front of him.
The Dark One stopped.
"Heh." Valak looked him over slowly. "Arrogant for someone who just crawled out of a five thousand year lockup." His eyes moved across the Dark One's form with something clinical in them.
"You're not at full power. Anyone with eyes can see that. Which means we're not taking orders — we're taking you."
Baphomet smiled beside him.
"And did you really think," he said, "that we would let you open the lock on Earth again? Hand everything back to you after you spent five millennia sealed away while we built what you lost?" He tilted his head. "This world isn't yours anymore."
The Dark One looked at the two of them standing between him and the altar.
Then at the red lightning still flickering on the horizon behind them.
Two problems. One in front, one incoming.
He smiled anyway.
***
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