As they say, hindsight is always twenty-twenty.

The truck began to bounce as we turned off a main road onto one that felt earthen instead of gravelly. I shifted Bones’s body more fully onto my lap so that the rough jostling didn’t knock anything off him. He’d been nearly invincible in life, but in death, his remains were fragile, aged as they were now to his full two-and-a-half centuries. If not for the triple set of manacles restraining me, I’d have taken off my coat and wrapped him in it, but my upper arms were plastered to my sides, pinning my jacket onto me.

After fifteen minutes or so, the vehicle stopped, and the back hatch opened, letting in a wall of light. I blinked until the brightness transformed into a background of trees shrouded with moss. Then I inhaled, noting that the fresh air was thick with moisture, mold, and the tang of old chemicals. Seeing that the bleakly beautiful landscape had a small, grass-covered dome in the distance was almost redundant.

Madigan had taken me to the McClintic Wildlife Management area in Point Pleasant, West Virginia. Exactly where I wanted to go, except under far different circumstances.

I considered fighting when the soldiers hauled on the net to drag me out, but then decided against it. For one, that would decimate Bones’s remains. For another, if Tate, Juan, Dave, and Cooper were here, then my last act would be to free them. They were my friends. Besides, Bones would want me to free his people. How could I disappoint him?

Once out of the truck, I was hustled onto what looked like a large luggage cart. When thin red lines criss-crossed from pole to pole to encompass the perimeter around me, however, I understood. Laser beams. This must be how he’d gotten Tate and the others into the facility without mass casualties. Anything that breached those beams would get sliced off, and while vampire limbs grew back, our heads didn’t.

As I was wheeled toward one of the former munitions igloos, a male voice screamed my name. My head jerked up. Through the netting and red laser beams, I saw Fabian flying in frantic circles above the cart.

“What should I do? Who do I tell?” the ghost wailed.

None of my guards looked up. They couldn’t hear him, so when I said, “Don’t do anything. Go home,” several helmeted heads turned in my direction before looking around warily.

Fabian flew closer, until I could see the determination in his faded blue gaze.

“I won’t abandon you,” he said in a steely tone.

I looked away, fresh tears spilling down my cheeks. “You don’t have a choice, my friend. Now please, go.”

“Cat—!”

His voice was snatched away as I was pushed into the concrete igloo and a hidden door flashed across the entrance. My laser-rigged trolley cart shook as something metallic clamped onto its wheels. Then four short, T-shaped poles rose from the stained concrete floor. The guards grasped them just as the ground began to vibrate, making the old litter stuck to it tremble, before it abruptly dropped beneath us.