“We came to save you.” Christopher smiled. “Even me. I didn’t want to come back to this place, but I had to. I couldn’t leave you in a cage.”

He gave me more broth. I drank. Curran hugged me to him.

We were in some sort of large room. A fire burned in the center, eating the remains of office furniture. A pile of cubicle partitions rested against one wall. There were windows in the ceiling. The room looked like it was on its side. That made no sense.

“Where are we?” I whispered.

“You don’t know?” Christopher’s blue eyes widened. “We’re in Mishmar.”

Roland’s tower prison. I only knew what Voron told me of it. When the business district of Omaha fell, my father had bought the rubble from the impoverished city. He had taken colossal chunks of fallen skyscrapers, two, three, four stories tall, pulled them into a remote field somewhere in Iowa, and piled them onto each other into a huge tower, held together by magic and encircled by a wall. It was a vicious place, an ever-changing labyrinth, where exits sealed themselves and walls took on new shapes. Feral vampires roamed here. Things for which nobody had any name because they had no right to exist hunted here. There was no escape from Mishmar. Nobody ever got out.

“You came into Mishmar for me?”

Curran hugged me to him, cradling me like I was a child. “Of course I did.”

I loved him so much. “You’re a fucking idiot.” My voice was hoarse. “What the hell did you do that for?”

“Because I love you. Give her more broth. She’s coming around.”

“We have to get out of here,” I said. “Hugh checks up on me in my dreams.”

Curran’s eyes went gold. “Let him come.”

“A vampire!” Andrea shouted.

The window above and to the left of us broke. Shards of glass and wood cascaded to the floor. A vampire fell into the room, its mind a hot spark in front of me. It landed on all fours, old, gaunt, and inhuman. A sharp bone crest protruded from its back. Another ancient one.

The vamp shot forward and then stopped abruptly.

“I’m still . . . a Master of the Dead,” Ghastek said from a blanket on the floor. “Kill it before I lose consciousness.”

14

I OPENED MY eyes. I lay on a blanket, wrapped in several layers of clothing.

I couldn’t see Curran. He’d been holding me for what felt like hours. Every time I woke up, he was there, but not now. Anxiety spiked.

Okay, I had to snap out of it. He wasn’t going to evaporate. He wasn’t a hallucination. He was here . . . somewhere.