“Oh,” she said, sucking in her breath as she took in the corpse. It was almost completely black, as if burnt, but rather than being charred and ashy, it was . . . slimy. The closer she looked, the more certain she became that the thing in the crate had never been a person at all. Not just because of its eerie, burgundy-black skin, but also its overabundance of joints. Too many knees and elbows. Too many talons jutting from the backs of heels and palms.

If Ilse hadn’t known Dr. Kreutzer, if she had not been working with him for over a year now, she might have grown ill at the sight. She might have screamed or fainted. But she was the sane one, the secret mole within Caligari’s asylum. She was the only one who could expose Kreutzer, and in time, make things right.

“Fascinating,” Kreutzer murmured, his smile scalpel-sharp. “Yes. Though I admit I am envious I was not the one to manage it first.”

“Manage what, Herr Doktor?”

“To open a rift stable enough to permit these creatures to slip through.” He snapped his gloves into place. “Decades of research, but the best I have managed is a trickle of energy. So many wasted trials . . .”

She’d seen only glimpses of the doctor’s trials—people ushered into operating theaters, then reemerging with a hollow look in their eyes and ink in their veins. If they emerged alive at all.

Ilse had tried to read the doctor’s papers about this shadow world, the Schattenland, but they put her to sleep every time. Prattling on and on about energy, blood offerings, some Italian idiot who spoke with angels or devils or whatever nonsense. It wasn’t becoming for a man of science like Dr. Kreutzer. But he had been so methodical in his experiments thus far. Perhaps it was all leading somewhere after all—and she would be the one to witness it, to report it to the Resistance. A magnificent prize.

“We will need to work quickly. Once I have mastered the process, we must use the book very soon, to ensure we are in control. Not whoever is responsible for . . . for this.”

“D-do we have everything that is required?” Ilse asked. With shaking fingers, she fumbled her gloves on, and hoped he did not see.

“Near enough to it.” Kreutzer held out his hand for a scalpel, which Ilse hurried to provide. “Summon Herr Černik, then. It is time.”

“But what is it?” Ilse asked before she could stop herself. She flinched as he made the first incision—the wet, squelching noise thick all around her.

Kreutzer’s eyes crinkled through the lenses of his mask.

“It is as he promised.” He peeled back flesh to expose deeply corded sinew. “The key to the Third Reich’s conquest.”

CHAPTER ELEVEN

LIAM