"Nathan?" I gasped through the pain. "No way. Kill me now."

He lifted me by the throat and flung me across the room, literally. I bounced off the wall and landed in a broken heap on the floor. In my head, breaking down the wall I'd created to block him out, Nathan's anger—with me, with his sire—and his pain assailed me, skewering my mind in a thousand agonizing places. "Nathan, no!" But I'd meant to call out to him with my mind.

The Soul Eater laughed, and the sound twisted into the tortured screams of the souls trapped inside him. His eyes glowed red and his face contorted. "Let him come. Let my wayward child come home to me, as he's longed to do so many times."

"No!" I scrambled to my feet and broke for the door, but the Soul Eater was on me in a second, holding me back.

"Struggle! He'll feel your fear and it will quicken his pace." Jacob's hands turned to claws around my arms, and the stench of decay overwhelmed me, "You will be rewarded for your compliance."

Bile rose in my throat. I choked it back. "He'll kill you! And I'll help, I swear it!"

"And you'll die like all the others who've tried." His words died into an anguished cry, the chorus of voices in him raising to protest their eternal torment.

The door of the study ricocheted off the wall as it burst open. "The hell she will!"

"Nathan, no! Get out of here!" I tried to escape from the Soul Eater's grasp, and to my surprise, he let me go easily. I hadn't anticipated it, and wound up on my face on the hard marble.

When I looked up, I saw what had taken Jacob Seymour so off guard.

His son Cyrus, presumed dead, standing in the doorway.

Cyrus showed no hint of bravado as he entered the room where he'd once died. He met the Soul Eater's astonished gaze head-on. "Hello, Father. There are a few things we need to discuss."

In all the time he'd worked for the Movement, Max had never seen the Oracle conscious. She actually seemed less frightening, and that was dangerous.

She sat on a carved wooden throne with a back that pointed up like a church steeple. Her head, normally bald, was covered in an Egyptian-style wig, her thin body robed in a loose red dress. She held her head regally, but appeared fragile, like a mental patient in the starring role of the asylum's Cleopatra. Her frailty actually caused a stab of pity in him.

He knew better, but Bella… she might have been through assassin training, but she was still a woman, and women had sympathy. Sympathy that would get her killed.

"Come." The Oracle pointed at Bella and crooked her finger. The wheelchair shot forward with such speed that when it stopped, Bella fell out, spilling to the floor.