I wanted to ask Vai if he saw the white stone walls rising beside us, if he saw a plaza stretching to all sides like a sheep-mown pasture, but the effort of forming words was too great. All I could do was look ahead, hoping we would soon reach the jade door and its warded ground.

A cloud of crows swept past, flying as before a blow. Wind sheared across my back. I faltered, looking over my shoulder. A wrath of clouds boiled toward us. Lightning flashed, although no thunder sounded. Rain lashed the ground in sheets.

I had seen that storm before. I knew what it portended.

I grabbed Vai’s hand. “It’s my sire coming. We’ve got to run.”

Light flashed on the horizon ahead of us. It splintered into a smoky tide like the crests of multiple waves tumbling toward us: a dragon’s dream.

Vai’s hand tightened on mine as he sucked in a harsh breath.

We were caught between Hunt and dream, between death and obliteration.

A plain black coach rolled up, pulled by four white horses whose hooves did not quite touch the ground. A coachman sat on the front of the box. He had the white skin and short, spiky, lime-whitened hair of a man of Celtic birth. He wore a plain black coat, thin leather gloves, and a hat that he tipped up with the handle of his whip, greeting us. The footman hanging on at the back of the coach was no man but an eru; she appeared as a woman with black skin, short black hair, a third eye in the center of her forehead, and her wings neatly furled. She did not let go of the coach. Instead the door swung open. My sire beckoned from the interior.

“Best hurry,” he said with a calm smile. “This coach is a refuge, a sort of warded ground all on its own. The tide is coming in fast. You’ll be safe inside here.”

His sober dash jacket and neat black trousers made him look like a humble clerk on the way to his day’s work at his master’s offices. You would never have guessed he had recently hunted down and killed some poor soul in the mortal world, and then been forced to bow before the spirit courts and have all that power ripped from him to feed them instead. Not until you looked into his eyes. His gaze had as much mercy as a knife in the dark.

“Do you imagine we believe you?” asked Vai in the tone of a man at his supper who has just been told that the crust of bread set before him is the haunch of beef he requested.

“I imagine you have no choice but to join me. I have something of yours, Cat.” He indicated the Taino basket in which I kept the cacica’s head.

“How could you get that?” I demanded.