The one good thing about nightmares, he’d always thought, was that when they got bad enough and presented horrors too enormous to face, he’d wake up. The unthinkable—being unthinkable—would drive him out of the subconscious and back to reality. He’d find himself gasping, tangled in sweat-stained sheets, eyes casting about the dark corners of his room, and relief would wash over him like a narcotic. God how he wished that would happen now.

It didn’t, and the faces of the trapped ones still haunted Marcus when Olena ran through the casino lobby. She raced for the door, and was nearly through it before Marcus called to her and slid out of the shadows. She spun, her face white-pale even in the murky light. She looked terrified. She stepped back from him, stumbling over debris on the floor. “No!” she yelled. “No!”

“Olena,” he pleaded, “it’s just me. It’s Marcus.” He nearly said that he wasn’t a monster, but considering the things he had thought, and the moments he’d forgotten her, and the fear behind it that he was only a stray thought or two from doing vile, vile things … He just said, hoping it was true, “It’s me. It’s me that loves you.”

To his relief, her face flashed with recognition. She ran toward him, smashed into his chest, and squeezed him. Nothing had ever felt better. But it was over in a heartbeat. She fell back, her face going hard. She grabbed his hand and pulled him toward the door. “We have to go.”

“Do they have the stuff your dad wanted?”

“Doesn’t matter.”

“But…” Marcus peered back into the casino, looking for signs of the others. “What about your dad?”

Olena breathed a moment, clearly controlling her frustration with him. “There was something in there. A thing that … that … that just shouldn’t be. A mouth.”

“A mouth? Olena tell me!”

She looked annoyed, gritted her teeth, but she spoke in a fast whisper. “We got to Baba Yaga’s offices quickly. It was dark and our flashlights didn’t work and there was no electricity. But we used lighters and found the room. Andrii made a fire in a trash bucket and we went to work. I thought we were really going to get away with it. And then something blew out the fire. Just like that it was gone. Something began moving around us, making a sound like…” She opened her mouth and, hissing out a long breath, trilled her tongue in a staccato rhythm. “It was language, but not of this world. It was the tongue of Lucifer. That’s what it was. We could see nothing. We couldn’t see it at all, but the way it talked and laughed … We knew it could see us fine. It kept moving. And then, just before it struck, its body lit up. A great, awful mouth. Rows of teeth. Just a mouth and two legs. The light lasted just long enough for its jaws to close on Andrii’s head. Then it went dark. Darker than before. That’s when I ran. The others … I don’t know. There. You know. Let’s go now.”