No-one speaks.

It's like time has stopped.

After the noise and carnage from moments before, everything is silent. Still. The air heavy and unmoving.

Cupid stands behind me, holding my arms – his hands firm around the sleeves of my jacket. I'm enveloped in the heat from his body, but it does nothing to comfort me. We stare out through the shattered glass at the LA street outside the offices.

My heart beats fast.

Valentine is gone.

And so are Morta's shears.

Looks like you just lost the only weapon that could have killed me.

Valentine's gruff, taunting voice echoes around my mind, competing with the dull thump of my heart that I can hear pounding in my ears.

That's what he came here for. The shears. Not me.

And it was my idea that led to him taking them.

Though it's Cupid's hands I feel on my arms now, Valentine's touch seems to linger on my skin. I can still see the shocking blue of his eyes on the back of my eyelids every time I blink.

I shiver.

I'll be seeing you, Lila.

"Are you OK, lovebug?"

Finally, Cupid disturbs the quiet.

I turn to look up at him. There's a smear of blood across his face from where he has wiped his bleeding nose with his sleeve. The skin around his left eye looks bruised and swollen. And, below his leather jacket, his grey top clings to his torso with sweat. His masculine scent floods my nostrils.

"It's my fault," I say, quietly.

He shakes his head violently. His eyes burn into mine.

"No. No it's not. Don't ever think that."

I glance past him at Cal, Cassie, and Morta, who are all stood in the center of the now disheveled looking reception area. The smashed monitors behind the desk still loop through news channels behind them.

Morta is the image of outrage.

The muscles in her bare arms are tensed beneath her black band T-Shirt, her jaw gritted. She stands stock still, curling and uncurling her hands repeatedly, her combat boots covered with blood, gore, and ash. Momentarily her cool blue eyes flit from their fixed position on the floor, to meet mine and I wince at the ferocity in her stare.

But then she shakes her head.

"I should have known better. What's done is done. Now we know."

"Know what?" says Cal – his face drained of color.

He's still wearing his khaki bomber jacket and striped scarf, and looks a little out of place among the surrounding battle scene remnants – even with his bow and arrows slung over his back.

"We know that to kill Valentine, we need to find his life thread," says Cassie, stepping forward and leaning casually on her staff. She bites her lip, "Oh...and Morta's shears, of course..."

Cupid turns, slipping his arm around my shoulder protectively, and gives her a look.

"Aren't you supposed to be able to see these kinds of things coming?" he says. "I mean...thanks for the prophecy about the bird flying into the window earlier and all, very useful, but couldn't you have told us about...I don't know...say our super evil, serial killing, zombie raising, villainous brother stealing the immortal shears of death?!?"

She rolls her eyes.

"Yeah, sure...blame the prophecy girl why don't you?! I don't choose what visions I see, do I? Why do you think I work here instead of living in my big mansion that I've bought with my multi-million-dollar lottery winnings? Huh?"

"Enough," snaps Morta. "What's done is done. We move on. We get my shears back. We retrieve his thread. We cut it. We end this."

The reception falls back into silence.

"Can someone tell me what's going on with this thread thing?" I say – my voice coming out a little shakier than I'd like. "I thought people's threads were in the computer system."

Morta gives me an impatient look, then shakes her head.

"Not everyone's. It wasn't always this way. We used to cut the literal threads of life when a person's time was though. But we moved to a new system and there was a transition period. It would have taken too long to convert existing threads into the computer so there was a time where some of the threads existed as actual, physical threads, while we coded any new lives into the computers. When all the humans from the old system died – we were able to move fully modernize. But still – some of the old threads remained..."

"Immortals," says Cal quietly.

Morta nods.

"Immortals, gods, goddesses..."

"Original cupids," says Cassie pointedly.

"...their threads exist out of our modernized system. We left them. And when the time came that the gods left this world, their threads went with them. We believed them to have merged with their actual bodies, threading around their actual life force. But Valentine..."

"...Valentine is not a god," says Cupid darkly.

Morta shakes her head.

"No. Not in the sense of the others. He has always been here. His thread must still exist – as a literal thread. I should have known better. It was an oversight."

"Don't be so hard on yourself, boss," says Cassie. "You control the fates of the entire of humanity. It's not like that's a small task. Give yourself a break, ya know?"

Morta sighs. She looks suddenly very tired.

"I need to tell my sisters what has happened." She looks at Cupid. "My shears, and Valentine's thread, are now the priority. He's probably keeping the shears close to him and his army. Find out where that is. I'll have Cassie forward you on the location of our old loom – where the physical life threads were kept. Someone should check it out, but I'd imagine he has managed to retrieve it for himself."

"Can't you just enter him into your system?" I say "And somehow delete him, or whatever it is you do?" I say – the thought occurring to me.

Morta shakes her head.

"Not without the physical thread. Get the thread, get the shears, and get them before Valentine's Day. That's his most powerful day. Whatever he is planning I believe it will all come together then. We must end him before it comes to that." She turns and heads back to the elevators. "Cassie will be on hand to assist if you should need anything."

The elevator pings and she steps inside. Morta looks around the chaotic mess that is now the reception – covered in ash, bone, and zombie gore.

"Cassie – clean up this mess, please."

The doors close. Cassie groans and catches my eye.

"And here I was worrying you were going to spill your coffee..." she takes a step back from Cal. "See you guys around. Let me know if you need anything..."

Then she turns, absently twirling her staff, and heads to a door at the back of reception – presumably to find a mop or something. Cal sighs heavily then makes his way toward us. He plucks his phone out of his jeans pocket.

"I'm going to call Crystal. We need to discuss what we're going to do."

"Get her to meet us at the Love Shack," says Cupid, his arm still around my shoulder. "I want a coke. I need the sugar."

Cal nods, then tosses Cupid's car keys back to him.

Cupid leads me out through the hole where the window once was. We step out, our feet crunching against broken glass, and make our way to the car. Cal's urgent tones follow us as he fills Crystal in on what has just happened.

Back in the car we all sit in silence for a moment.

"I can't believe he's really back," says Cal suddenly from the passenger seat – his eyes fixed straight ahead. "I mean, I knew he was – but actually seeing him after all this time."

He shakes his head – his shoulders stiff below his jacket. Cupid slaps him on the shoulder.

"Chin up, brother," he says. "It's not all bad."

Cal looks at him sharply.

"In what way is it not all bad?!"

A grin spreads on Cupid's face as he starts the engine.

"Well... now we know how to kill him, don't we?"