Liam saw them popping behind his eyes like mortar shells bursting: the monsters, his monsters, feeding. The Nazis’ agony and pain sustained them. The fierce, relentless gnash of teeth and claws and a hunger that had no bottom, just like his power, his boundless power.

Someone wheezed with laughter behind him. Frowning, Liam turned, letting his focus slide away from his monsters and their glorious feast. Kreutzer was dislodging himself from beneath the rubble. Bright red blood glistened over the fine coating of stone that powdered his face and hair; it smeared across his chin the color of a ripe pomegranate. He swayed as he pulled himself up to one foot, then the other, and dusted his hands across his knees.

“You have some skill, Mr. Doyle, I will grant you that.” He cracked his neck from side to side; his tongue darted out to flick against the blood beneath his lip. He stooped down and grabbed the battered Porta ad Tenebras manuscript. “But you lack that crucial ingredient that will see our Aryan warriors to glory. You lack conviction.”

Liam took a step back as the doctor moved toward him. With a roll of his hand, he wrapped a strand of shadow energy around his wrist. It shivered in his touch, desperate to be used. Desperate to use Liam. “I wouldn’t say that.”

“You think I underestimate you, little runt? No.” Darkness slithered across Kreutzer’s eyes, purple and silver galaxies spinning in its wake. “I’ve seen it. I’ve seen through you. Through all of this . . .”

Kreutzer took a deep gulp of the fetid air around him. The castle smelled like the shadow world now, that spoiled-meat stink full of rot and dampness. Liam had always fought against its influence; for all he felt it corrupting him, he hadn’t realized, before, quite how much he’d managed to stave off. It had eaten Pitr from the inside out. Latched on to that cruelness in him and let it metastasize. Pitr had already been a creature of the shadow world, its ruthless laws and rabid pursuit of selfishness and cruelty; he just hadn’t yet found his home. And now that he had, it was no wonder the world had bent toward him far more confidently than it had ever yielded to Liam.

But the darkness was pulsing through him, and he couldn’t keep control of it forever.

Pitr and Kreutzer struck as one.

It was a wave of force, black and sparking with electricity. Slamming Liam to the ground. Crackling across his skin. He only panicked for a moment, but it was enough to loosen his grip. One by one, the leashes of the monsters he was controlling slipped free.

Shit.

Above him, Daniel dangled, blood dripping down his forearms. He stared at Liam with an unfocused gaze. Too unfocused—he was losing too much blood.

The monsters’ howls were at the chamber doors now.

“Enough, Dr. Kreutzer,” a woman’s voice said.