Don Carano's guards proved that they were worth their money. Two of them were already leading the Don towards the exit accompanied by Teodore, another one tried to do the same with Jenna. The rest lined up, facing the balcony. They conjured an invisible, magical wall, as far as Robert could tell using the Rune of Movement. The ghouls couldn't get over it. This simple spell, if it was cast in the right way and had enough power behind it could have stopped a speeding train. The five guards pushed the monsters back, step by step, but it seemed like every step was harder than the one before. That was because of the increasing number of ghouls: they were still climbing the skyscraper, arriving onto the balcony and then into the ballroom.

'I need a wand,' said Jenna, after she shook the bodyguard off.

'You need to get out of here,' answered Robert. 'Now.'

'Sure, and you can stay back, being the hero you are, sacrificing your life so everyone else can escape.'

Robert didn't answer, but he knew that he didn't have to.

'Yeah, that's not gonna happen,' said Jenna fiery. 'I'm staying until you do,'

The ghouls pushed the wall back by a step. People around were running and shouting and screaming, mostly just trying to reach the elevators, pushing each other. It was complete chaos and raging panic.

Vittorio appeared beside them out of nowhere.

'Your father is on his way downstairs, Teodore is with him,' the bodyguard said. 'Don Sebastiano ordered me to take you out of here, with force if I have to.'

Jenna gave him a dark look.

'If I were you, my friend, I wouldn't try that,' said Robert. 'Let's help with the wall.'

By now one of the guards was down: she used too much energy and simply passed out. Another one tried to get her to the elevators, so only three bodyguards kept the wall up. Three guards and Duke Richard, who stood in a heroic pose, pointing a ridiculously over-decorated silver wand towards the balcony. His face was sweating and his knees buckled but he held on.

Robert and Jenna said the Name of the Movement-Rune in perfect unison and the wall started to move again, keeping now hundreds of ghouls in the bay.

'We cannot hold them up forever,' said Jenna loudly so Robert can hear her over the panicking crowd. The ghouls, of course, didn't give any noise, apart from some teeth-clattering. 'We need to destroy them somehow.'

'We can't,' said Robert, already feeling tired. 'There are too many of them. I could burn them but if I remember correctly they don't feel pain,' he looked behind to check how the evacuation was going. He saw Marcus and Rose trying to get people in line.

'We could make another wall behind them and just smash them,' offered Jenna.

'We can barely keep up this one as it is,' pointed out Robert. He had to take a step back again. Another guard fell on the floor, eyes open, blood oozing from his nostrils and ears. He was dead. The ghouls gained several metres now, the front moved back almost to the middle of the ballroom. A few guests tried to help, but they couldn't use magic: none of them had any Runes on them, and the few who had them tattooed were marked with the Signum, rendering their Runes temporarily useless. The Don only allowed his highest-profile guests to keep their weapons, like Duke Richard, the ones he wouldn't dare to insult with a search. Ironically, those were mostly the people who left first, using their magic to clean the way from the other, less fortunate guests.

Robert didn't have a Signum, but he was sure only because Don Sebastiano believed that he cannot do magic anymore, so he could show off the level of trust he gave without risking anything.

Jenna picked up the meter-long stick the dead guard dropped and took a step backwards. She took a deep breath and closed her eyes. Runes sparked up on the stick and the ceiling above cracked, then fell with a terribly loud rumble, killing ghouls by the dozen. The floor shook under Robert's feet, but beside that it was a very precise spell: their side of the magical wall remained completely safe.

Robert saw that Jenna staggered back a little: it was a big spell and she was drunk and tired from holding the wall. The worst thing was, it wasn't enough: the backup arrived immediately, climbing the ruins and corpses of their fellow ghouls. The wall got pushed back again.

'You need to leave,' Vittorio said to Robert. 'Take Jenna and get out while you can.'

'That is not necessary,' said Duke Richard. Even though he was trembling from the exhaustion by now, his voice remained the same: overly self-confidence and annoyingly smug. He took a glimpse back to make sure Jenna was watching. 'I'll take care of the situation right now.'

The air became ice-cold all of the sudden, so much so that when Robert said "No!", he could see his own breath emerging from his lips. He knew what's gonna happen, he saw the Runes, recognised the spell and was sure that the Duke won't be able to cast it, not like this, not this tired.

He was right. The silver wand snapped and all the power the Duke collected from around exploded into a magical fire. Colours and shapes changed and Robert felt that he was flying backwards but did not move at the same time, the reality around them bent and changed every second. Jenna saved his life: he was, in fact, flying, was thrown away by the explosion, somehow right towards the ghouls. He hit the ruins of the ceiling hard and everything went dark for a moment. The wall that kept the ghouls away did not exist anymore and Robert was ready for the teeth and claws tearing up his flesh, but that didn't happen. The monsters couldn't get to him, because Jenna killed them one by one, with terrifying efficiency. Her gigantic shadow-hound fought on her side, bigger and angrier than Robert has ever seen it before. Most of the ghouls nearby died in the explosion, and Jenna now killed the rest.

'You okay?' the girl asked, offering her hand to help him up. She was bleeding from a few small scratches and her dress was torn at her belly.

'I think so,' Robert answered. He looked over himself. The magic that washed over him changed the colour of his suit from navy blue to a beautiful, deep black and his tie disappeared altogether, but he wasn't really injured. 'You?'

Jenna didn't answer. She was staring at something behind Robert's back. He spun around, thinking that the second wave of ghouls arrived, but that wasn't the case. Jenna was staring at Vittorio's body: the bodyguard laid on one of his colleagues, probably tried to save her, but they both were dead. Vittorio's empty eyes looked at them, but he couldn't see them anymore.

A few metres away Duke Richard was sitting on the floor, weeping and sobbing silently. Every bone in his right hand and forearm was shattered, some of them tore up the skin.

'We need to help him,' said Robert, beckoning towards the duke.

'He deserves it,' Jenna answered harshly. She couldn't take her eyes off of Vittorio.

'Jenna… C'mon.' Robert touched her hand gently, seized it for a second.

The girl shook her head and nodded, but before they could do anything, the second wave Robert was afraid of actually arrived. So did Marcus, with Remy on his side. Marcus stopped for a second, staring at Vittorio, but didn't have time to say anything, because a monster jumped on him. Remy went down on his knees beside the bodies, looking for pulse or any sign of life, clearly pointlessly. He didn't care about the ghouls, Jenna had to protect him.

'We are surrounded,' Marcus said, blowing up the attacking ghoul. 'They found the stairwell, we have to evacuate through the elevators, but it's like, 100 people and two elevators, maximum 10 a pop.'

Robert smashed in a ghoul-head with a piece of the fallen ceiling. This wave wasn't as big as the first one, and he now understood why: half of the ghouls went around to attack from the back.

'It's still our best chance, let's go! Can somebody take care of that moron?' he beckoned towards Richard.

Remy nodded and went to help the duke up, while Robert and Marcus covered him.

'Where are the others?' asked Jenna.

'Last time I saw Teodore, he was trying to get your father out. Claire and Marcus are fighting with those that come up on the stairs. Don't know where Rose is.'

'She took a few guards and went down to the lobby to protect it, so people won't be eaten when they step out of the elevator downstairs,' said Remy. 'Do someone have a spare wand or something?'

Marcus gave him his own, and rolled his sleeves up. For a moment, Robert saw nothing, but then Runes lit up on his skin.

'Tattooed by the exact colour of my skin, so they will be invisible when I'm not using them,' he explained. 'They will even change if I get a tan.'

'Clever,' nodded Robert, sending half a dozen forks from a buffet table into a ghoul's brain.

They retreated slowly, holding up and killing the monsters, so they couldn't get to the remaining guests. The mission was clear: they had to fight off the ghouls long enough so every guest could escape. That wasn't as easy as it sounded: ghouls were hard to kill and there were a lot of them. Robert heard the noises from the stairwell, and they got closer and closer: sounded like Claire and Martin weren't on the top of the situation.

This got proved when the door leading into the stairwell swung open, and Martin's back appeared in the doorway. He was followed by Claire. They both backed up slowly, throwing curses at every step. Remy left Duke Richard to a less panicky woman's care, and went to help them. Robert saw that two ghouls breached the line and slipped into the crowd, but before he could even move, Claire made them both frozen in between moves and decapitated them with the spell.

'You gotta love this girl,' said Jenna with a pale smile. 'So fucking terrifying.'

'Some would disagree that being terrifying is a desirable quality, but as a man who is already deeply in love with a terrifying woman, I have to agree,' said Robert, burning through three ghouls with the same tiny, blinding fireball.

'Aw, you really think I'm terrifying?' Jenna asked, while behind her the shadow hound tore a ghoul apart. 'That is so sweet.'

'You know I love romance, guys,' pitched in Marcus, leaning back so he can avoid the dirty claws aimed for his throat. 'But now is maybe not the time.'

'Fair enough,' nodded Robert.

Munin, the spirit-raven came, flew through the head of the ghoul that was attacking Marcus, killing the beast, then taking a sharp turn and aiming for another one.

'Just to make sure we are on the same page,' said the bird. 'Is this a regular thing for you? Isn't exactly what I signed up for.'

'Pretty much, yes,' said Robert. 'Things have been quite eventful lately.'

'That's one way to put it,' murmured Jenna. 'How many left, Munin, did you see?'

'They are still climbing the building, a big hoard is coming in a minute or so. Brace yourselves.'

Robert ducked and turned towards the staircase. The doors were closed now, and ghouls tried to break through, while Remy and Martin were trying to seal them somehow. Claire was fighting with an unusually big one that threatened to jump on the guests. Things did not look well. Robert used the Name of the Rune of Change and the double door became solid metal. Remy and Martin stepped back and looked around surprised, but only for a moment, then they got busy with attacking monsters.

Munin wasn't exaggerating. What remained of the glass wall that separated the balcony from the room, now basically exploded as a small army worth ghouls went through them. Beasts fell from the sky, too, quite literally: the ones from the stairwell must have found the way to the level above and jumped down using the hole Jenna had tore in the ceiling. Some of them stopped to feed on the bodies that Robert and Jenna had to leave behind, but most of them charged directly at them.

There was nowhere to hide and there were simply just too many of them. For a moment Robert wanted to curse everyone, every innocent guest out of the way, so he could send Jenna away, down with the elevator, but he knew that the girl wouldn't leave. None of them planned to leave. Robert saw Remy and Claire standing side by side, the boy seized the girl's hand for a moment before the uncheatable death would arrive. Martin raised the metal stick he got from a dead guard and Runes lit up on it. Marcus conjured a few swords for himself and the weapons were levitating, top towards the ghouls. Robert looked at Jenna, he was sure for the last time, and the woman looked back at her, with that ironic little half-smile on her face and shrugged, as if she would say "What can you do?". She was bleeding and Robert saw that she could barely stand anymore. There was no more miracle left she could pull off, not this time.

The army of ghouls arrived silently. Rotten teeth and sharp claws tore up skin and flesh. Robert got a long, bleeding claw mark on his chest. Remy was already on the floor, two ghouls feasting on him. Marcus killed a bunch of monsters, then got knocked down himself. Robert saw a ghoul on Jenna's back, bone-cracking jaw tearing on her shoulder. The shadow hound leapt but disappeared mid-air as its mistress collapsed. Some of the remaining guests escaped to the now empty stairwell by the hole Martin had blown in the metal wall Robert had made just minutes earlier.

Robert closed his eyes and reached out with one hand. As Jenna's dropped stick flew to him, Munin struck, killing the ghoul that attacked her. Robert grabbed the stick with his bloodied hand and the Runes all shone as the magic flooded them. He stomped down the stick, and the raven became two identical birds. He stomped again, and both ravens produced another one. Again, and again and again, eight, sixteen, thirty-two, sixty-four ravens, all the same, all Munin and all somehow Robert, too, because at that moment the two of them were the same being. Robert was humming something, a song long forgotten, or maybe one that never existed, and all the bird's tiny black eyes sparked up with cold, blue lights. His eyes lit up, too. Soon there was nothing, just a tornado of black feathers and sharp beaks sinking in half-dead ghoul-bodies. Robert heard someone singing in a language he didn't recognise. It might have been him, or it might have been only in his imagination or Munin's endless memory, he couldn't tell it later on. The song escaped him, too, he was never able to remember it.

Then all the birds disappeared, all at once, except for one, and silence fell on the room, completely, deafening silence. The last raven was standing next to Jenna's body, in a pool of fresh blood. The ghouls were dead, every one of them. Nobody said anything, the survivors, guests and friends alike, stared at Robert as he walked up to Jenna and fell on his knees next to her. The right side of her body was soaked in blood and it looked like a big chunk of her shoulder was missing altogether. She was breathing, very slowly and weakly.

Robert pushed the top of his finger into the girl's blood and started to draw Runes next to her, on a clean part of the floor. Nothing happened.

'I can't…' Robert said, voice trembling. 'I don't know… Munin, help her, please.'

The bird opened his wings, then closed them again.

'It's too late,' he said. 'Too much blood. No man or spirit can help her now. She is almost gone.'

'Maybe a vampire…' said Martin hesitantly, but Robert didn't even hear him.

'No man or spirit…' he echoed, then he got up and picked up Jenna. 'Right.'

Robert never quite figured out how to fly. He spent hours and hours experimenting, trying, in the last few months. He was close, very close, but he just couldn't feel it, just couldn't get it right. Raw power wasn't the key, it was something else, something hard to describe or understand. Yet, now he just took off, so naturally as if he was born to fly, not because he understood how to do it, but because he had to do it, and went out of the window, with Jenna in his arms.