But even as dead as the rest of him appeared, his eyes were something altogether different. The look in his eyes sent an icy chill through her.

It wasn’t just that they glowed with a kind of inner light. It was that the glow was fired by the gift, yet unlike any light of the gift she had ever seen before. It was at once dead and empty, but alive with menace.

Magda was so shocked by what she saw that it stopped her cold for an instant.

Then, that frozen instant shattered with a crack that made her ears ring. The room suddenly spun in her vision. Her back smacked the wall, driving the air from her lungs. Her head hit the stone so hard that it knocked her senseless. Through the pall of pain she only dimly heard the terrible roar of the thing, only dimly saw blurry movement in the swirling room.

Magda could taste dry stone dust and blood. She realized then that the man had struck her with a blow so powerful it had lifted her from her feet and thrown her back across the room.

She was distantly surprised to realize that she still had her knife gripped tightly in her fist. Isidore’s warm blood ran down Magda’s arm and over her hand, making for a slippery hold on her knife.

Magda blinked, trying to clear her vision as she struggled to get her breath back. Looking up from the floor, she saw the man in a wild fury ripping into Isidore. He tore off the side of Isidore’s face and top of her skull with one powerful blow, the rest of her head with the next.

The dark figure roared as he flailed and ripped at Isidore’s body. Blood and gore from the poor woman splattered across the floor and up against the walls as he swung both arms in mad fury.

In a strange pall of quiet shock, Magda told herself that it was too late to do anything but escape. If she didn’t get away, she would be next.

As the man bellowed in a wild frenzy of savagery, she told herself that there was nothing she could do for Isidore. This was her only chance to get away. She knew that she had only a few fleeting seconds if she was to live.

She told herself to move.

Magda scrambled to her feet and staggered toward the black entrance to the hallway out. She snatched up her lantern on the way past.

Once into the hall, she looked back over her shoulder as she ran. She was still stunned from the blow, and her wobbly legs wouldn’t move fast enough. She could see the man back through the entrance, finished ripping Isidore apart, turn toward her.