CHAPTER NINETEEN

PHILLIP

The cabin’s door creaked open on dry hinges. The whole room was a vacuum, Phillip’s and Rebeka’s and Simone’s breaths collectively held, their muscles taut as stretched springs as they waited for whoever was on the other side. From the corner of his eyes Phillip spotted Simone, her arms perfectly still as she kept her rifle ready.

A man reached into the room and flicked on the light switch.

“Don’t move,” Simone growled in German. “Or I feed bits of your fascist brain to the wolves.”

The complete bewilderment on the man’s face morphed as he took in the scene before him. The Algerian woman training a rifle on him. The Black boy clutching a tool kit. The Jewish girl huddled under wool blankets. His lip curled up, and his eyes bulged into something like parody.

“What in the hell are you mongrels doing in my home?” he bellowed in German.

Simone pulled back the cocking mechanism with a resounding click—

A woman with her wheat-colored hair in perfect plaits beneath a knit cap. “Sigi, what’s the matter?” she purred as she ushered two tiny, flawlessly adorned children into the cabin’s doorway. The youngest of them, the boy, stumbled forward, heedless of his father’s outstretched arm until he caught sight of Phillip and stared.

“Mama,” the little girl said. “Monsters.”

Simone’s grip on the rifle slipped. Dammit, Simone. Now wasn’t the time for her to discover some shred of sympathy for fellow humans. The kids weren’t a threat, not yet, but if the woman ran to summon the Gestapo, or—or—

“Yes, they are monsters, Fritzi.” The mother snatched her little boy by the straps of his lederhosen. Yes, Phillip realized with a groan, he was wearing honest-to-Kraut lederhosen over a ribbed sweater. “Go back to the car. Fetch Mama her—”

“No one’s going anywhere,” Simone said, and turned the rifle toward the little boy.

“Go, Fritz,” the man Sigi—Sigmund, maybe—urged. “Don’t listen to these people.”

“Papa—”

“Don’t you do it,” Simone said.

“Go!”

Fritzi took off running. Simone lined up her shot. Her finger pressed down on the trigger—

Then with a snarl of frustration, she stopped herself. “Khara,” she swore under her breath.

Sigmund laughed, the sound harsh as gravel. “You’re all the same. Vicious like animals, but weak-willed.” He took a step into the room, even as his wife shot out her arm to stop him.

“I don’t kill children. Unlike you,” Simone replied.

“But you’ve lost your bluff now. Do you even have bullets? Let’s see.”

He reached for the barrel of the rifle to snatch it away, but Simone yanked it back. Swung it around to crack the side of his head. As he reeled from the blow, she brought it up to aim again, the woman screaming, until—

“Stop,” little Fritz shouted. He’d reappeared in the doorway wielding a pistol, the weapon comically large in his shaking hands. With a smirk, his father took it from him and clapped him on the shoulder.

Phillip’s left hand was still under the woolen blanket. He had half an idea forming. Carefully, he stretched his fingertips for the sole of his boot and started to slide open the panel.

“Well done,” Sigmund cooed to his son. “Now. Help me tie them up.”

The family moved into the room. Again the man snatched Simone’s rifle by the barrel and this time managed to yank it out of her grip.

“Stand up,” the woman barked.

Reluctantly, Simone and Rebeka got to their feet. Rebeka’s shoulders were squared, but her hands trembled as she moved them behind her back. Shit. Phillip was almost done. He’d eased the components out of their hiding place—he just needed to fit them into the receiver—

“You too, Blackie. Stand up!”

Phillip palmed the components into his jacket sleeve and stood, clutching his pack. It was just inside the main pouch, it would take him five seconds—

“Mama,” the little girl said again, stepping into the cabin to tug at her mother’s wool trousers. “Monsters.”

“Yes, darling, I know. But we’ll take care of them, the Gestapo will take them away—”

Though it was the last thing he wanted to do, Phillip turned his attention back to the open door with a heavy sickness in his gut.

Monsters. The little girl had no idea.

Red eyes blinked from the darkness beyond the cabin steps. Prowling, circling. He might not have noticed them if he didn’t know what he was looking for. Phillip risked a hasty glance at Rebeka, whose hands were shaking.

Well. He swallowed. Maybe the monsters would offer a quicker death than the Gestapo.

The woman spun Rebeka around to fasten her hands behind her back, and Rebeka faced Phillip. She mouthed three syllables at him, twice, to be sure he caught it. Jaw tight, he dipped his chin slightly to confirm.

Frequency.

At Sigmund’s feet, tendrils of shadow slithered into the cabin. Phillip forced himself not to look at them. The woman finished binding Rebeka’s hands and turned toward Phillip.

“They’ll have fun with you,” she sneered, pulling out a fresh braid of rope.

“Not as much as we will,” Phillip replied.

Her arrogant expression wrinkled for the briefest moment.

Then the screaming started.

Whump. Sigmund hit the floor face-first as the tendril of darkness yanked him backward. His daughter shrieked, banshee-like, but didn’t take his hand as he grabbed at her. The woman turned away, eyes widening, and Phillip plunged his hand into his satchel.

Where was his goddamned jammer? As soon as the monsters were done with the Germans, he had to try—he’d have to hunt for the right counterfrequency to lock them out. But even as he thought through the plan in his mind, he saw all the points of failure, the unlikeliness of success—

Rebeka closed her eyes and rocked back and forth on her heels. If she was communing with the shadows again, he hoped it was working.

Crunch. Sigmund’s shouts went abruptly silent with the gnash of bones and teeth, replaced by the screams of his family. Phillip forced himself to look: the first monster stood in the cabin’s doorway now, grinning at them with a blood-slick smile. It sucked down Sigmund’s headless body with a fierce slurp.

“Anytime now, Rebeka,” Simone shouted, stepping backward from the monster. It turned flaring nostrils toward her, sniffed deeply . . .

Then swiveled its focus toward the German woman.

Something bumped up against Phillip’s leg, and he looked down to find Sigmund’s bitten-off head staring back up at him. Bile roiled in the back of his throat. But it was the reminder he needed to get to work—

“You devils have done this! With your—your wicked magic and your—”

The German woman had no time to finish before the monster raked her into one massive, multijointed claw and held her aloft. One talon punctured straight through her lungs, dissolving her words into a damp gurgle.

Finally Phillip found the jammer and tore it free of his pack. He snapped the crystal into place and rattled the box until the dimmest frequency came in. Come on, you know how to do this. He clicked through the frequencies, but his invention was designed for portability, not fine-tuning. Before him, the monster took its time feasting on the woman while its companions munched on the Reichsjugend.

There—he found one frequency that made a curious shimmer in the air. It was almost as if, for one second, the monsters were a chalk drawing on a blackboard that someone had smudged. But then they righted themselves and turned, snarling.

Oh, you felt that, didn’t you? Phillip spun back to the frequency, and the same effect happened. But it wasn’t enough. Liam had told him that the frequency opened the rifts, so countering that frequency should push it closed again. Right? If he was going to force them back into their realm, he’d need more power.

“You found it,” Rebeka said, locking eyes with him.

Phillip winced. “I don’t have enough juice. I need a bigger generator. I need—”

“A car?” Simone asked, peering out the cabin window.

Phillip’s face fell. Yes, a V-6 engine ought to do the trick. But there were at least two monsters between him and that horsepower. “They’re blocking it—”

“I can buy you time,” Rebeka said.

“Please—don’t—”

But she was already facing down the first monster, now finished with its feast. It crouched back on powerful legs, watching her with a cruel smile on its gore-smeared face. Rebeka extended one hand to it, and it took all of Phillip’s willpower not to scream at her.

“Trust me,” Rebeka said softly. She averted her gaze from the monster just long enough to meet his eyes. “Like I trust you.”

And then Rebeka collapsed to the floor, her heap of a body shimmering—as if caught between both worlds.

Phillip froze. “Rebeka!” he shouted, despite the monsters—half a dozen of them now—despite everything. “Rebeka, please—”

The cabin rumbled like the beating of a thousand wings. The air around them turned dense and scraped at his arms.

Go, the monster roared, its voice multitonal, a frightful chorus. The word was coming from the other monsters’ mouths now, too. Go, Phillip. Hurry!

Phillip gathered up his tools and raced for the cabin door.