Simon rushed around the corner and halted. Now what?

If he was to face the peril – did he have any choice? – it was obvious where he had to go. There was the light show coming down two blocks over, swirling clouds and lightning still coming down despite Azrael’s partial resumption of reality. And there was something else, too, a yearning in his veins – he knew where Simone, the blood of his blood, must be.

Simon started running again. Did he have a plan? No, he didn’t have a frakkin’ gorram plan. He started going through his usual bag of tricks. Some things from the decoded Fons Vitæ might help – he’d used Kabbalahist ritual during the summoning. The descending node from the Dee Necronomicon was probably useless. The heretical Vritric Sutra had one or two bits he might fold into a re-weave; he had a novel idea for merging it with some things from The Book of Abramelin, though he would have preferred a chance to test it first.

Simon rounded the next corner, and nearly ran into a man playing a PSP .