Taamir dug in Svika’s pockets. He pulled out three objects that looked like electronically activated car keys.
“Feckin’ hell,” Jamie said, whistling, as Taamir showed them to everyone. “Are these what I think they are?”
“These disarm the mines?” Taamir asked.
Svika nodded.
“Two are decoys?” Jamie probed.
“All . . . work,” Svika whispered.
“How do you know about those?” Jenn asked Jamie.
“IRA. But I’ve never actually seen one, only heard about them.”
“They’re all the same,” Svika replied.
“Brilliant.” He looked at Jenn. “If I take one, that leaves the others for you lot.”
He snatched one from Taamir’s hand. He grabbed an Uzi and headed back toward the minefield.
“Jamie, wait!” Jenn shouted. “We don’t know if they’re in there!”
“You’re just afraid for him. This is our mission,” Jamie accused.
“Even if that thing gets you through the minefield, they’ll have sentries. You won’t get within a quarter of a mile of that place without getting cut down,” Taamir insisted.
“We’re going to lose the advantage. One of those monsters will tell Dantalion about us. Maybe that freak Antonio was giving last rites to didn’t go to hell. Maybe he went back to Dantalion. Maybe Antonio sent him with his blessings,” Jamie finished, angry at himself for standing there arguing with them.
“But what if Dantalion doesn’t know about us?” Holgar argued. “And he sees a stranger on his grounds?”
“Then let’s all go now. Our job is to take him down!” Jamie shouted. He clenched his jaw. “Give us the order.”
“Not. Yet,” Jenn gritted. “Noah, ask Svika for the layout of the—”
“Now,” Jamie insisted. He whirled in her direction, gripping the Uzi. He could see the fear flare in her eyes. Jenn was wondering if he would force her to do the right thing and send the team in.
Holgar growled; tears slid down Skye’s face. Noah kept hold of Svika as Taamir cautiously observed the power play. For that was what it was, plain and simple.
“Skye, are they inside the palace?” Jenn said. “Give it everything you have. Please.”
At the sound of her name the young witch shuddered.
“I don’t know, I don’t know,” Skye cried. “Oh, God, I’m so scared, Jenn. I’m sorry. This is why we’re not supposed to do this. Witches.”
“Well, you’re here, and you are doing it,” Jenn shot back. “Come on, Skye. We need you.”
Jenn looked at Noah. “Okay, then. Make Svika tell you exactly how to get in there. Do whatever you have to do.”
“No, wait, please,” Skye said, finally pulling herself together. “I can try to take the mesmerism away.”
“Bloody hell,” Jamie said, spitting on the ground. “Best you just stay out of it. Jenn. This is all arseways. Let me go in. I’m good at this. This is how I grew up.”
He waited one beat and was just about to take off when she gave him a nod.
“You can go,” Jenn said. “On your own, Jamie.”
That was all he needed, permission. And then it struck him. Why did he need her bloody permission to do anything? Rebellion and rage burned inside him, but it was best spent on finding Eriko and killing as many Cursers as he could.
Jenn recognized the inner struggle that raged through Jamie—it was the same one raging through her. She knew that if they both lived through this mission, a showdown between them was inevitable. That was fine; she’d gladly embrace it, if only because it would mean that they had both survived.
“No, don’t let him go,” Skye cried. “Please, Jamie, don’t do it. Wait a few more minutes.”
Jamie said nothing. He took off running into the darkness. Jenn wondered if she’d just given him permission to go on a suicide mission.
Skye balled her fists against her chest. Then she straightened her fingers and held them out, murmuring in Latin. Probably a spell of protection. Then she lowered her arms and frowned at Jenn.
“You shouldn’t have let him go.”
“Dantalion,” Svika murmured in English. “I hear you. I hear you.”
“He’s falling back under the spell,” Taamir ventured. “Or whatever you call it.”
“Noah, do what you need to do to get through to him,” Jenn said. Noah licked his lips, nodded, and leaned harder on Svika’s shoulder with his boot. Svika groaned.
“No! Let me try!” Skye pleaded.
Then Svika screamed, a high-pitched sound that didn’t seem like it could come from something that had ever been human. Noah cupped Svika’s mouth; behind his hand the sound ended on a keening note that jittered along Jenn’s nerve endings and set her teeth on edge. His entire body shook.
Svika took a deep breath and looked up at them with eyes that were clouded by pain but more alive than they had been. Tentatively, Noah lifted his hand.
Svika whispered something.
“What?” Jenn asked, moving closer. Noah joined her, and together they leaned over his friend. Suddenly Noah grabbed her hand and squeezed hard. Startled, she saw tears in the hardened soldier’s eyes. She realized that this was torture for him. Svika was his comrade and teammate.
“Go to the right. Not the tunnel. The palace. There is a blind spot, broken camera,” Svika said.
“Are you sure?” Holgar asked.
Svika nodded. “No trick.”
“Skye?” Jenn asked.
But the girl had grabbed one of the two disarming devices and was sprinting after Jamie. Holgar whined deep in his throat and stared after her, then turned back to Jenn.
“What else?” Noah asked.
“Don’t look in his eyes.” Svika shuddered. “His eyes.”
Jenn looked at Noah. “We’re moving out,” she said quietly giving his hand a squeeze. “If you want to stay here . . .”
Taamir reached down and took Svika’s hand.
“My friend,” Taamir said in English. “What else can you tell us?”
“Nerve gas. Torture,” Svika said. “Better that they all die.” He gritted his teeth. “Let me go.”
“No. No, Svika,” Taamir insisted, glancing up at Noah. “We can carry him.”
As Noah looked down at Svika, he let go of Jenn’s hand. A long, low shudder worked its way through the Israeli soldier. He picked up the wicked, sharp knife Taamir had been carrying and held it by his side.
“Go on ahead,” Noah said to Jenn and Taamir. His gaze was fixed on Svika, who was staring up at him. “Go on ahead.”
“Noah,” Jenn said, her voice strained.
“I’ve done this before.” His voice was gruff. He pulled out a pack of cigarettes and placed one in Svika’s mouth. “Go now.”
With the last remaining device clutched in her hand, Jenn led the race to catch up with Jamie and Skye. With every step she was terrified that the device would fail or that it was a decoy, and that a bomb was about to blow her to bits. She also kept running toward the palace, expecting a fresh wave of monsters to pour across the snow.
At one point she thought she heard the roar of half-dead creatures in the distance, but a moment later it was gone. A figure loomed suddenly in the dark, and Jenn slowed in time to avoid running into Skye.
The witch was standing with her back to Jenn, hands moving as though pressing against an invisible box. She flipped her head frantically from side to side, white-blond Rasta braids flying around her.
“Skye!” Jenn shouted.
Skye just pounded on the wall that she alone could see.
Skye stood in the middle of a house of mirrors. Terror gripped her. She had made it this far only to be trapped, her reflection reflected into infinity. Everywhere she turned she couldn’t get away from herself or from him.
She couldn’t find a way out, and she had to if she wanted to save her friends. She saw Estefan’s face projected in front of her, and she pounded at it in frustration. Everywhere she t
urned, she only saw more mirrors, no exit, no salvation. And everywhere Estefan’s laughing face. If only she could break the mirror, then she could fight her way through the impossible labyrinth.
Skye had been lost in a mirror maze when she was a child at a local fair. She’d begged her parents to let her go with a family who had no idea the Yorks were witches. Then she had been stuck for two hours until a kind stranger took pity on her and led her out. But there was no kindness here, only evil.
She had told that story to Estefan.
She turned and ran to her left, suddenly convinced there was an exit there. She had to follow Jamie, stop him, save him. She made another left, and another. Then she slammed into another mirrored wall. The disarming device she held in her hands went skidding away, and Estefan’s face loomed larger and larger.
“You can’t escape me, borachín. I’m everywhere.”
“No!” she screamed in fear and rage.
“Sí. And my friends are far more powerful than yours, so there is no protection for you.”
Her reflection blurred, disappeared, reappeared. She pulled back.
And there, in a mirror in the far corner, an image shivered briefly, and Skye realized she was seeing Estefan’s thoughts, thoughts he didn’t want her to see. She focused on the image, struggling to ignore his leering face, which appeared in every other one.
It was fuzzy, but she pushed, and slowly it became clearer, until finally she could see the vampire Aurora, bending over a man who seemed unconscious. Skye shifted slightly, and then his face too came into focus. Skye trembled. Antonio. Aurora really did have him. It was Antonio and not Eriko who had been captured.
And not by Dantalion.
And they weren’t in the palace.
Jamie was about to sacrifice himself for nothing.
Suddenly the image vanished. Estefan’s laughing rippled in surprise and quickly turned to rage.
“I’ll teach you to reach inside my mind!” he roared, his voice rattling the mirrors.
“Skye!”
A different voice called to her from far away. Who is it? She had to get out of the maze. Why didn’t Estefan just kill her instead of toying with her?
Because he can’t, she realized at last.
Because he isn’t really here. He’s only inside my head.
Skye took another look around and realized that the mirror maze was the exact one she had been trapped in as a child. It wasn’t real. It was just a memory.
“Skye!”
The voice was louder this time, and Skye recognized it as Holgar’s. She twisted around, trying to see Holgar, and the minefield, and the dark, instead of Estefan, the mirrors, and the garish light. For just a moment the mirrors shimmered as if they would fall away, which provoked a laugh from Estefan before they solidified again.
“So, you finally figured out this place isn’t real?” he asked. “A little slow, borachín.”
Skye screamed in frustration, and ran, focusing on a mirror in the distance, willing it to disappear. It began to pulsate, as though fading in and out of reality. She called up all that was within her and threw herself forward faster, until her left boot landed on a bit of metal that made a loud click.
A mine!
Petrified, she tried to stop herself, her right foot sliding out from underneath her, and she began to fall.
I’m dead.
Then something hit her with tremendous force and speed. She heard an explosion and felt wind rush by her, driving bits of dirt into her eyes and mouth. When she hit the ground hard, something heavy fell half on top of her, knocking the wind from her lungs and cracking one of her ribs.
Skye’s lids fluttered against the stinging of the dirt in her eyes, and they teared up. When her vision finally cleared, Holgar was lying on her, whining quietly.
“Holgar! Are you okay?” she asked, fear washing over her.
“Unfortunately, I’ll live,” he groaned, sliding off her but staying on his stomach.
She sat up and saw that his back was a bloody mess, embedded with bits of shrapnel.
“What did you do?” she asked, her distress so great that when she brought her hands over his back she couldn’t think of a single healing incantation.
“He knocked you off the bomb you were standing on,” Jenn said quietly from a few feet away. “You dropped this while you were out of it.” Jenn lifted one of the two disarming devices she was holding.
“No human could have done that with enough speed and strength to save you both,” Noah said softly. “Lucky for us that you’re not.”
“I’ve always thought so,” Holgar wheezed. He pushed himself up and tried to stand, then collapsed back onto the ground with a high-pitched cry that sounded like an injured animal.
“You broke that ankle,” Taamir said. “You won’t be any good to travel.”
“Never underestimate a werewolf,” Holgar said through gritted teeth.
Skye moved her hands over his ankle. Goddess, help him, she silently prayed.
“Or a witch,” Holgar added. “She’ll fix me up.“
“We don’t have a prayer of catching up to Jamie,” Jenn said. “But we have to go in after him.”
“Three minutes,” Skye asked, working as fast as she could.
This was Estefan’s fault. He had done this to her and put Holgar in harm’s way. It was bad enough that he wanted to hurt her, but now he had hurt Holgar, and she could feel the rage building within her. It wasn’t good; it distracted her from helping Holgar heal.
She breathed in, trying to feel the earth beneath the layer of snow that was quickly turning crimson around him. Every second that she lost to her anger was a second more that Holgar was bleeding and in pain, a second more that Jamie was alone and in trouble.
Jamie, we’re coming. Don’t do anything stupid before we get there.
Jamie knew it was stupid, but he went in through the front door. Alarms were going off, and the place appeared to be on red alert. Stupid blighters didn’t even bother to lock the door when they were under attack. Maybe that was their exit strategy.
He made his way toward the stairwell and stopped a moment to study an evacuation plan mounted on the wall. It was in Russian, and he couldn’t read any of it, but a giant red arrow pointed out the door he had just come through. Since no one seemed to be coming his way, he figured they were either holed up somewhere else or using an entirely different exit.
Svika had mentioned underground tunnels leading in and out of the building. And the basement was where he’d go if he were expecting an attack.
Smart money said that they’d have Eriko down there and not aboveground where she might throw someone out a window. And then jump to freedom. That was his girl.
He kicked open the door to the stairwell and ran down, taking them two at a time. The door on the next landing was made of reinforced steel and locked. Jamie gave it a tentative kick before continuing downward, encountering one sealed door after another, much to his frustration.
At the bottom of the stairs there was an unlocked door. Jamie ran through it, crouching low, gun in one hand, stake in another. Red flashing lights illuminated the hallway, and he saw a few people, or maybe Cursers, in lab coats, scurrying around at the far end.
Why do I keep ending up in the labs of mad scientists? he wondered, heading down the hall away from the people. The first two rooms he passed were offices with papers scattered about. The third held rows and rows of freezers and benches with high-powered microscopes and beakers and test tubes. Along the wall, text scrolled across the screens on a bank of computers, and a nearby printer spat paper at an impossible rate.
No sign of Eriko.
Jamie moved on to the next room. The door was closed. Jamie braced himself, then flung it open and stepped inside.
The room resembled a hospital ward with rows and rows of cots. Bodies lay on the cots, sheets tucked up to their chins. Sleeping, dead, or comatose, Jamie couldn’t tell. He walked slowly down the ranks, scanning each face for Eri
ko. Or even Antonio.
The first few appeared human, but as he walked, the creatures in the beds began to resemble those they had fought in the woods, all fangs and twisted features. They appeared to be in comas, tubes running in and out of them.
Janie heard a strange hissing and picked up speed, desperate to find Eriko so they could torch the place and get out of there.
He turned to the next cot and froze as a pair of eyes met his gaze.
It was a girl, no more than eight. Her pupils dilated in fear as she stared at him. There were straps over the blanket that covered her, pinning her down to the bed. IVs were hooked up to both of her arms, and there were fang marks up and down her throat. Tears slid out of her eyes and down her cheeks. She opened her mouth, and he could see that her tongue had been cut out.
He swore and moved to her side, quickly unbuckling the straps that held her down. As he grabbed the last one, he heard a noise behind him, and spun to see a man in a doctor’s coat, his hands raised above his head as if to show that he was unarmed.
The man spoke in Russian over the clanging of the alarms, and Jamie shook his head.
“English, lad,” Jamie said.
“I wouldn’t do that if I were you,” the man said in English.
Jamie covered the man with his gun, trying to decide whether or not to shoot him. “And why is that?” he asked as he flipped the last buckle open.
In an instant the girl jumped on Jamie, clawing at his face.
“Hey!” Jamie shouted, trying to pry her off.
She grew fangs before his eyes. Her mouth clacking, she strained to bite him. Jamie screamed and jumped backward. Then he managed to throw her clear.
She landed on the ground on all fours and made a horribly breathy sound—a hiss without a tongue. Her knees bent the other way, like an animal’s, and her hands and feet were tipped with six-inch talons.
The girl turned, saw the doctor, and threw herself at him, sinking her fangs into his throat. Jamie opened fire on them both, killing the doctor before she could. Then, while she was recovering from the gunfire, Jamie staked her. As she slowly turned to dust before his eyes, she gave him a ghostly smile.
Sick to the bottom of his soul, Jamie turned and ran the rest of the length of the room, scanning the beds for Eriko and Antonio until he reached a set of bassinets. He could hear strange cries coming from the infants, but he squeezed his eyes shut, unwilling to see what was inside. He turned and staggered out of the room.
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