CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

LIAM

Liam awoke to birdsong. Sunlight tickled his nose as he stretched along their makeshift pallet on the floor, savoring the raw, swollen feel of his mouth. “Daniel,” he murmured, fingers stretching, grasping. “C’mere.”

But his hand landed only on bunched-up blankets, already cold.

“Daniel?”

Dust motes swirled in the sunbeams as he stood. The air in the chalet was too stale—ash and sex and musty bedding. Too silent. Sudden panic jerked Liam upright like a puppet string.

“Daniel?” He whispered this time, pushing to his feet. “Daniel, where are you?”

The only answer was a dark crackle in the back of his mind.

Liam forced himself to take a slow, steadying breath. He hadn’t so much as touched the shadow world since their escape from Nazis and then Pitr the previous evening. He didn’t need the shadows to guide him, to bolster him. But they certainly made things easier. Thoughts of the darkness circled him like a hunter outside the cabin. If Daniel was in danger, or if Pitr had found them—maybe he could just snatch a fistful of energy, only enough to protect them—

Liam opened his eyes with a gasp. His nails had torn into his palm, and blood welled there. Hands he’d touched Daniel with last night, had cradled his jaw and traced along his throat and his hips and more besides. What if you closed the rifts for good? Daniel had asked him—forever sealed off the pathway between the shadow world and theirs. The very thought curdled in his stomach, crushed his chest with a panicky weight.

He needed the power—needed it. His whole life had been pushing him toward this victory. He’d no longer be the helpless, powerless, too-young boy struggling to grow up, struggling to care for his mother, struggling to prove his worth. For himself, and for countless others suffering. The chance that Pitr and his Nazi friends could claim the shadow world for their own was just the risk he had to take.

He forced his palm flat to his side as he crept across the great room of the chalet and peered into the kitchen. No one. Nothing.

Nothing except a note on the counter.

I know you’ll try to stop me, or demand to come with me, which is why I must go now. I can’t let anyone else get hurt—and that means not letting the darkness eat you, too. Know, though, that you gave me one last reminder of what it is to feel joy—that for a moment, I could pretend there might have been another fate for me. For us.

I’m sorry. I wish I could have spent another lifetime learning you.

The cry wrenched out of him, dropping him to his knees. He was imploding—his sadness and fury collapsing into a single dense point. Daniel. You idiot. Darkness pounded in his head, crowded his vision. It didn’t have to be this way.

He crumpled the note in his fist, leaving smears of blood on the paper. Unthinking, he drew on the darkness. The first trickle of shadow was like ice, but the more he pulled, the more it thawed.

A quick glance out the window showed the Mercedes was gone. But if he moved through the shadow world, he could go faster. He could catch up to Daniel. Maybe even beat Daniel there.

The shadow pounded in him, an executioner’s drum. It demanded to be let in. It was a great carrion bird, hungry and eager to stretch its black wings in his heart. Tear through his skin. Consume him. Make him its vessel of rage.

The chalet shimmered around him as oily nighttime flooded it and the shadow world stretched before him, beasts circling, trees hungering, wind laughing with his name—

Shit.

Liam shoved it all away with a snarl and slid into a heap on the floor. “God damn it!” The rift wavered and closed back up. Blackness slithered out of him and scattered to the far corners of the cabin, evaporated, burrowed, fled. “God damn it.”

Could he make himself close the rift for good? Daniel had asked him to. Daniel had seen what the shadow world was doing to him. Liam raked his hands down the sides of his face. If he closed the rift now, then it would all have been for nothing. He’d be an empty shell, the hollow, precocious boy who’d pushed too hard and come up short, when all he wanted was to drink up the shadows until there was nothing of himself left—

No. The shadow was never going to grant him everything he needed. He blinked back tears. But the shadow could help him save Daniel still—take down the Nazis at Wewelsburg. If it didn’t destroy him first.

A loud banging tore him from his thoughts. Someone was pounding on the door.

Liam was crumpled in the corner of the kitchen. Not exactly hidden from sight. He should stand up, find a hiding place. But his body didn’t seem too interested in following through. It was futile—it would take so much effort; it would cost him so much more than he had to give right now, with his heart wrenched open and the shadows just out of his reach, a danger in themselves. The bloody paper wadded in his fist was taunting him as fiercely as the darkness had. Another thing he couldn’t change.

“Werner? Are you here?” a voice called in German.

Liam said nothing. Did nothing. He’d been scooped out.

The polished boots stopped in front of him.

“You are not Werner.” The man reached down and forced Liam’s chin up. “So why did you have his car?”

The soldier’s compatriots flooded through the chalet, circling him. It would be so easy to touch the shadow and shred these men. But Liam was drained now; he reached out for the frequency but everything unraveled at his touch. Even if he could access it, Pitr was waiting, just waiting, to snare him again. Liam did nothing as the soldiers bound his hands and steered him toward the waiting truck.

“Let me guess,” Liam muttered as they shoved him onto the low bench. “You’re taking me to Wewelsburg Castle.”

The soldiers surrounded him on the bench as the truck lurched to life. “Oh, no. We have other plans for you.”