He fell screaming to the floor. I stood swaying over him. He was blind, broken. But as deeply as I looked inside myself I could not find a single splinter of mercy. Inside, a black voice howled from the cold furnace of my soul. The sounds of gunfire and screams echoed down the hall.

I bent close to Grigor and whispered in his ear. “A bunch of women are chopping your master race to pieces. Bet that really fucking stings.”

I straightened.

“This is for the Mothers of the Fallen.”

And I stomped him to death.

*   *   *

Somewhere along the way I went crazy. Broken things inside me shifted and there were bursts of color and walls of darkness. I could hear myself laughing every time a bone shattered under my heel. While I was in that bad, bad place, the damage in my chest and the damage in my head caught up to me. I coughed and spat blood on the wall.

I reeled away from Grigor and went toward the sound of the battle, but I kept hitting the walls.

I heard a woman’s voice. Familiar.

“Grace!” I yelled.

That’s what I thought I said, what I tried to say. But my words came out slurred as I wandered sideways on feet that no longer understood their purpose. I made it as far as the metal stairs, but when I tried to step down I forgot how my feet worked. I fell. Rolling, tumbling, hitting the metal, spilling and sprawling as the cavern swirled around me.

I don’t remember landing.

I thought I heard voices. More knights? No … was it the cold voice of Mr. Church speaking in the meaningless language of the knights?

My dead mother smiled at me from behind the stacked crates, her eyes weeping blood.

Rudy whispered in my ear, “I was so sorry to hear that you died, Joe.”

I said, “No!”

But the darkness said, “Yes.”

I fell forward into its embrace.

Chapter One Hundred Twenty-four

Chapter One Hundred Twenty-Four

Aghajari Oil Refinery

Iran

June 16, 6:43 a.m.

I heard someone calling from the other side of a wall. The wall was a million miles high and made of darkness.

I thought I heard a woman speaking. She was close, kneeling beside me, whispering in my ear, but her words made no sense.

Then silence.

A moment later …

“Cap’n? Jesus, Cap’n … are you dead?”

I knew that voice. Male, gruff. Filled with emotion. But I had no label to hang on it.

Dead?

“No,” I thought, or perhaps I said it aloud.

Then there were hands on me. Another vampire? I screamed and tried to fight them off.

“Watch!” barked another voice. “Hold his arm. Hold him.”

My wrists were caught. One, two. Held, though I fought against it.

“Hold him!”

“I am holding him, Farmboy!”

“Christ, he’s a mess.”