The buzzing grew louder. Closer. It sounded like their uncle’s farm when the drought hit, the fields full of swarms and rot. He staggered in the direction of the hiking trail, but the ground shifted beneath him like cinders. Stone columns jutted from the earth at odd angles, forcing him to dart around them. He pitched forward and caught himself on a low branch—it felt like a skeletal hand grabbing him back.

The buzzing was following him. But he’d outrun a squadron of Einsatzgruppen SS—surely he could escape this. Daniel suppressed a hiccup in his chest. He couldn’t surrender to fear and panic now. He wasn’t ready to give up just yet.

He crested the first hill and found himself in the shattered remnants of a fortress, one curved wall hinting at where a tower once stood. Daniel pressed a hand to the cool stone and risked a glance over his shoulder. If even one Nazi had survived that evil, that darkness the American wrought, then he didn’t dare head straight for safety—they’d follow him right to Rebeka. And the last thing he needed was the American tailing him. But where the village should have been were only more ruins and figures threading through the eerie flames. Not quite human, limbs too long, fingers too sharp—

Daniel launched himself down the trail and ran. Nazis or not, he had to get back to the barn.

The dead guard’s too-tight boots strangled his toes as he flew through the forest. Dry leaves cracked like bones; bird calls sounded like screams. Something was writhing, slithering through the underbrush, and through the leafless tree branches, he could see no stars. Nothing to guide his way but that faint wash of indigo all around. Just a few more kilometers to the barn. He could make it—

A muffled shout somewhere close. He flattened against a tree trunk, heartbeat shrieking in his ears. Would they be coming through with their dogs? Worse, had they already found her? Light shimmered between the trees, and for a fleeting second, he saw the outline of a man—but then it evaporated, leaving only black.

He was losing his damned mind. That had to be it. He’d been so hell-bent on his mission that he’d lost all sense of reality, just as Rebeka had warned.

Daniel forced himself to take a steadying breath. He’d killed Sturmbannführer Junker! He couldn’t fall apart now. If he could hold it together for another week, maybe two—then he could surrender. Let the exhaustion and hunger eat him up, let the bone-deep grief swallow him whole. Until then, there were more SS officers to kill.

The tree trunk he was pressed against moved.

Daniel swallowed. I really have gone mad. It rose and fell beneath his back. Like a breath. Daniel pulled away from the thick sap that coated the trunk—

No. No, that was definitely not sap—