Then he was gone. A gust of hot wind, the smell of ozone and myrrh, and silence. Father Mihailov stood trembling, his crucifix blackened and twisted.

The white fire flickered. The man’s hand dropped an inch.

The first time Anders felt the Fury, he was seven years old, kneeling in the musty back pew of St. Adalbert’s, bored out of his skull. The priest was droning about fire and brimstone. Anders was drawing a stick-figure dragon in the margin of the hymnal.