Liam opened his eyes with a gasp. His nails had torn into his palm, and blood welled there. Hands he’d touched Daniel with last night, had cradled his jaw and traced along his throat and his hips and more besides. What if you closed the rifts for good? Daniel had asked him—forever sealed off the pathway between the shadow world and theirs. The very thought curdled in his stomach, crushed his chest with a panicky weight.

He needed the power—needed it. His whole life had been pushing him toward this victory. He’d no longer be the helpless, powerless, too-young boy struggling to grow up, struggling to care for his mother, struggling to prove his worth. For himself, and for countless others suffering. The chance that Pitr and his Nazi friends could claim the shadow world for their own was just the risk he had to take.

He forced his palm flat to his side as he crept across the great room of the chalet and peered into the kitchen. No one. Nothing.

Nothing except a note on the counter.

I know you’ll try to stop me, or demand to come with me, which is why I must go now. I can’t let anyone else get hurt—and that means not letting the darkness eat you, too. Know, though, that you gave me one last reminder of what it is to feel joy—that for a moment, I could pretend there might have been another fate for me. For us.

I’m sorry. I wish I could have spent another lifetime learning you.

The cry wrenched out of him, dropping him to his knees. He was imploding—his sadness and fury collapsing into a single dense point. Daniel. You idiot. Darkness pounded in his head, crowded his vision. It didn’t have to be this way.

He crumpled the note in his fist, leaving smears of blood on the paper. Unthinking, he drew on the darkness. The first trickle of shadow was like ice, but the more he pulled, the more it thawed.

A quick glance out the window showed the Mercedes was gone. But if he moved through the shadow world, he could go faster. He could catch up to Daniel. Maybe even beat Daniel there.

The shadow pounded in him, an executioner’s drum. It demanded to be let in. It was a great carrion bird, hungry and eager to stretch its black wings in his heart. Tear through his skin. Consume him. Make him its vessel of rage.

The chalet shimmered around him as oily nighttime flooded it and the shadow world stretched before him, beasts circling, trees hungering, wind laughing with his name—

Shit.

Liam shoved it all away with a snarl and slid into a heap on the floor. “God damn it!” The rift wavered and closed back up. Blackness slithered out of him and scattered to the far corners of the cabin, evaporated, burrowed, fled. “God damn it.”