I grasped Chev’s wrist and squeezed till he let out a grunt. “Touch her again, and I’ll send the rest of you where your pupils have gone.” Rage made me young again. But Chev pulled away from me and spat into the reeking water.

Belle held Bracken out of the water and stroked his damp curls. “Enough, the both of you. You wear my nerves worse than the sirens.”

The crooning alarms hadn’t quit since the dust had settled. The city above had rushed to the aid of its fallen streets. Crumbled houses wedged like barricades along our ancient pathways. Dane’s tunnel was gone. He and his three children were somewhere beneath the ruin of a home that had had green curtains and white walls.

Chev flinched with every strike as Beth’s trowel chimed against the cement that encased the bars blocking the opening of the Last Drain. Her brow furrowed in concentration. “I don’t understand . . . ”

“Don’t understand what, love?” I watched as her breathing turned slow and shallow again.

“If this is where you take the Kindred when they die, why isn’t there space already? How do they get through?”

Belle looked to me and shook her head.

Chev nodded to the grate. “You’ll find out soon enough, child. Sooner, the faster you dig.”

With the bar pulled free, we squeezed through the gap, the water at our feet flowing in a current that pulled us toward the space beyond.

“There,” Chev said. “We have passed through the Drain. All the Kindred are dead, now.”

***

Beth’s fingers scuttled up the side of my coat, gripping their way to my elbow. “Aemon?” She swept her foot across the unseen floor of the drain tunnel. “What are we standing on?”

The floor rolled beneath us, shifting like a landslide.

“Your ancestors,” Chev said. “Or my ancestors.” He reached into the dark and pulled a skull from the slick water. “I’m not certain they’d accept you as their own. Not after what you’ve done.” He held the stone face up to Beth’s. “Look into their black eyes and apologize, girl, so they may let us pass safely over their graves.”

“Enough, Chev!” Belle took the skull from him. She kissed its brow and lowered it back into the water. “What do they care anymore?”

We stumbled over the rolling bones of our ancestors till the drain’s pull grew heavy and its current pressed us against another grate. Beth hammered at the concrete while Bracken pulled, leveraging his tiny weight against the bars. When their arms grew tired, Belle and I took over. And when we wearied, Chev took the trowel from us and drove it into the crumbling rock.

“It seems there are drains beyond the Last Drain,” Beth said, rubbing the ache in her elbow.

Chev paused, running his fingers through the water.