The oldest weapon in my repertoire was a net, pure magic woven from the core of me. It was an extension of myself, bright and silver-blue, and in and of itself, it did no harm. But it landed on the demon like Greek sticky fire, like napalm, not burning but not coming off, either. He shrieked, a sure sign I’d gotten his attention. Once I had it, I did what any sensible human being would do.

I ran like hell.

I had no idea where I was going. Away from people. Away from people in the sense that I cleared a path in front of me with shields, and they bounced around without quite realizing what was going on. I careened onto a street where new construction was happening, picked a likely-looking empty building, and yanked the door off with another net. The healing power inside me, the source of my magic, gave a weird little burp at that. It was not generally meant to cause property damage. On the other hand, its job—my job—was making people healthy. A demon velociraptor was not going to help along those lines, so the power did not, thank God, seize up as it was wont to do when it disapproved of my behavior. That would have been a real problem, because the truth was, I could only think of one place to go where I could be sure my buddy the rainbow dinosaur wouldn’t rip people apart while I figured out how to deal with him.

The Lower World.

Honestly, opening portals to other planes wasn’t my strong suit. I did better with astral travel, but I knew how to create a door to the red-sunned, yellow-earthed level of the universe that was the Lower World. Usually I’d use a power circle and spirit animals and some polite words to the cardinal directions. Usually, however, I didn’t have a punk demon on my ass, so I simply threw forth a panicked warning, the psychic equivalent of How’s the water, I’m comin’ in!, and ripped a hole between the Middle World—Earth—and the Lower.