Was this Wewelsburg Castle, then? It felt so different from war rooms and officers’ banquet halls. As if the chamber had been prepared for this purpose. For ritual. For sacrifice.

The tower in her vision. It was leading her here—

She lifted her hands from the book, but they were already sticky with some thick substance.

“Isn’t it beautiful?”

Rebeka nearly jumped out of her skin. She stepped back from the manuscript, and now she could clearly see: it was seeping shadows and blood, not unlike an infected wound. Opposite her in the darkness, a man stepped forward—the angry man who’d confronted her in the shadow realm last time. The one who’d commanded the demons, who wanted the shadow world for his own.

Dark eyes, loose dark curls—he looked a little like Daniel if she squinted, but there was something whittled and starved about him, like if he bared his teeth, there’d be nothing left of him but fangs. He wore round-lensed glasses perched halfway down his nose that made him look both old and young at the same time.

“Don’t worry,” he said. “You’ll be right on time.”

Movement from the manuscript caught Rebeka’s eye. The blood had cleared from the open page, revealing an illustration. A black rectangle of ink, only now it was shifting—stretching wide. An arm took form, reaching up out of the page—grasping for her—

Rebeka stumbled backward. The arm connected to a complete figure—a man. But he was far from a normal-looking man. His skin was shrinking, pulling tight around his skull. Shadows wisped out of his nostrils and mouth as he laughed.

Please. This time it was the voice of the faceless ones. The civilization who’d lived in the shadowlands long ago, before Sicarelli desecrated their world. Please. Our energy will corrupt your world as surely as yours corrupted ours. You cannot let this pass.

Lightning crashed beyond the chamber, the hot white flash revealing the man was only a black void in the shape of a person. His smile was licked with flames.

“Don’t be late,” he said. “We need all the blood we can get.”

But the vision was collapsing around her.

Rocks shook loose from the chamber walls. A bust of a senior Reich official tipped forward and smashed to the ground. The rubble fell straight through the man as if he were a ghost. In the distance, a pitch rose and fell, rose and fell on a frequency as it adjusted, dialed itself in.

“Wait—” Rebeka cried.

But it was too late. Phillip had done what she’d asked.

She awoke on the blood-strewn floor of the cabin.

“Rebeka!” Phillip rushed toward her. “Are you all right?”

She flung a hand out in front of her face, patting around until she could grip his shoulder. “Did you . . . What did . . .”