He turned his head and looked up. Only Rhoshamandes remained in the doorway. And the creature had never looked more calculating and menacing—a mighty angel of Hell with his serene face and soft curling hair. He stepped forward with a quick furtive glance behind him, and then snatched up the arm and once again hurled it into the fire.

Then he was gone and the door was slammed shut and the bolt thrown, and Derek sat frozen in terror.

The sobs poured out of him like blood.

He had to get to the fireplace, take his arm from it, he had to, but he could not bear the thought of touching it himself. And he could hear a crackling, a noise as if of logs shifting. Move, Derek. Go, that’s your arm burning on the fire!

The demons were gone. All sound of them gone.

Move, Derek, before your own flesh and blood burns! But what does it matter? Despair paralyzed him. What good would it do?

He opened his eyes and attempted to crawl on all fours until the horror of his missing arm struck him full force, and then he sat back on his heels staring forward.

But his arm had rolled out of the fire. It had rolled out of the fire and onto the stone floor again. It lay on the floor, the torn shirtsleeve blackened and smoking as before.

No left hand with which to cover his eyes, only his right hand. No left arm to wrap around his middle, only his right arm.

Demons, some night I will have my revenge. Kapetria is alive. Garekyn is alive. And they will find me. Try keeping your secrets from your wary tribe, your talented tribe of blood drinkers who can read your minds, just try! And they will come to find me here just as Garekyn found you in New York.

He stretched out on the floor full length, and resting his face on his right hand he cried as if he really were a child. And it seemed he’d never been anything else. Why had the Parents given this innocence to him, this capacity for suffering to him, why had the Parents fashioned him as such a tenderhearted being? And he wondered now, as he had any number of times since that long-ago time, had he and Kapetria and Garekyn and Welf been wrong to disobey the Parents—to put the purpose aside?

…to destroy all sentient life, to destroy all life-forms…until the primal chemical innocence is restored and this world may begin its ascent all over again as it would have originally, had not circumstances favored the ascendancy of the mammalian species…

No voice or sound from anywhere in the castle.