“What?” he asked, befuddled.

“She’s an upyr. I know she was brought here. Tell me where she is!”

The doctor’s eyes widened. “Ah...ah... It can’t be...”

Suddenly, he made a dash for a door at the other end of the room. Vanya took off after him and tackled him to the floor. When the man tried to rise, Vanya linked his arms around the man’s throat.

The man strained under Vanya’s body, frantically thumping his palms against the ground. He grasped hold of the sheet covering the table and pulled on it, trying to haul himself up. The cloth puddled around him as his thin face reddened then began turning purple, and his eyes bulged from his skull. He tried to scream, but he could only manage a thin, guttering moan. After fifteen seconds, his wheeling limbs stilled, and he lay motionlessly beneath Vanya.

Vanya unfolded his arms from around the doctor’s neck and pressed a finger under his jaw. Hesitated.

“He’s just unconscious,” Vanya said, but I barely heard him. All my attention was directed at the table now. With the sheet pooled on the floor, the table’s surface was exposed to the harsh glow of the electrical light overhead. A pile of rags had been heaped in the center.

A groan escaped my throat as I registered what I was seeing. The pistol fell from my hand and clattered to the floor.

Galina lay motionless on the wicker-paneled table, drowning in her dress’s fraying lace and linen. Surrounding her were the tools of crude butchery: bone saws, scalpels, picks, and needles.

Her head hung askew on her neck, partially attached with coarse sutures.

I froze, petrified by shock and horror. It couldn’t be. Not this. Not after everything that had happened. All that we had endured and faced on our journey here—this wasn’t how it was supposed to end.

“Galina,” I whispered, and walked forward on feet that suddenly felt as insubstantial as smoke. “No. Oh, please, no.”

She didn’t respond. She was just a corpse now. The corpse of a child left for so long, she had started to mummify.

Whatever power had held her here was gone. Gone. She was gone.

“Toma,” Vanya said softly, and when he tried to take my wrist, I jerked away, his touch excruciating. If he hugged me, I’d burn to ashes.

“I need to bring her back,” I said frantically, searching the countertop for needles. It took me a moment to realize we had interrupted the scientist’s suturing, and that a needle still hung from the thread trailing down her neck.

“Toma, I don’t think—”

“Shut up!” I snapped. If he told me she wasn’t coming back, his words would curse her. I needed absolute silence to make this work. “Shut up, and just let me save her!”

Vanya backed away as I snatched up the needle. Cloth rustled behind me, and the doctor groaned, but I didn’t look back to see what Vanya was doing. Didn’t care. I had to focus.