Robin gasped, choking. He didn't know what was happening, but he knew it was something he wanted no part of. His memories were a disjointed jumble, sharing his body with Ammadrine and changing positions so quickly that he wasn't sure which parts he'd been in control for, when he'd been a passenger in his own body – or in hers – and how much time he'd missed entirely. He didn't know what was happening, except for a searing pain in his chest that suggested they'd been injured, and the stink of blood and burning trash.

He couldn't even catch his breath, his heart was racing and his whole body ached. It was like he'd run a marathon without any kind of preparation, and now he was paying the price. He threw up noisily on the ground beside him, and at least the choking stopped, but he still couldn't gather the strength to lift his body. There were voices on the edge of hearing, he had no idea where the demon had brought him. But he couldn't even worry about that now; he coughed once more and then his head slammed into hard flagstones, and the world faded away.

* * *

"Did we get it?" Amber called, shaking and terrified as she ran closer. There was no sign of the monster now, and she couldn't feel its aura now, but that didn't tell her if it had been their powers, or if the beast was still hiding somewhere, ready to attack again as soon as they weren't looking. Her mom ran behind her, perhaps even more scared.

There were a dozen different buildings that had been touched by the fight, many of them now reduced from ruins to rubble. There was no sign that any of them had people in, which had to be a good thing. Amber ran over, looking into the shattered shells of warehouses and factories, until she found the one where Arnie was shaking, crying, her tears soaking into Mel's shirt.

"Mel!" she called out, "You're okay? Arnie? Please tell me you're not hurt!"

"It's okay," Arnie managed to answer, "It's okay. You saved us, I think? That was awful, I really thought we were going to..." and then she broke down crying again.

"Are you okay?" Mel called back to Amber, "She didn't get to you, did she? We need to be sure everybody's okay. And I think we have a prisoner?"

At that, Arnie managed to at least pull herself together a bit. Like Mom had been able to get over her fear when Amber was in danger, maybe. Amber's mom was striding closer anyway, and with a half-nod she put her arms around Mel and Arnie, and did her best to comfort the crying teen. Mel muttered some kind of thanks, before pulling away to reach out for the ancestral spirits he could feel. The area was still blanketed by the monster's power, a cloud of blue-black fog. Even Amber could feel that. But as she watched Mel walking towards one of the other broken buildings, she could sense something else up ahead. A glow of red; the bright light of Ammadrine's soul. Amber chased after him without thinking, and they got there at about the same time.

The man she'd seen in the janitor's uniform, Ammadrine's host, was lying battered in the middle of the concrete floor. Whatever knocked him down, it had struck hard enough to make a man-shaped hole in the concrete, maybe an inch deep. Cracks radiated out across the whole floor of the building, like this man had taken a punch hard enough to make a crater underneath him. It was something out of a cartoon, and certainly something that no human body could ever stand. The man had been sick, and the ground around him was smeared with blood and brick dust.

Amber didn't know what she should do. She didn't know if she should hope he was dead or not. He'd hurt Ammadrine, tried to keep her locked away. He said he'd been trying to keep them safe, but Amber still couldn't believe that Amma would ever harm her. Not the woman who'd been so kind, who'd done everything she could to avoid hurting the others. But that monster, that had been more powerful than all the ones they'd seen before, even put together. There was no doubt that it had been intended to kill all of the Knights. Did that mean Jack had been right all the time?