CHAPTER THIRTY

DANIEL

For one desperate, beautiful moment, Daniel almost thought he’d be able to pull it off.

After returning the Mercedes-Benz to the motor pool, he slipped unnoticed through the garage bay, the morning shift’s soldiers still bleary-eyed and half asleep. He followed two men to the dining hall, and from there, found the directory for offices. Kreutzer’s was in the basement, attached to the laboratory space, which should have been ideal: fewer witnesses, thicker walls. The yawning secretaries paid him no mind as he stalked past them in a freshly stolen uniform. The office door was unlocked.

And inside, the doctor was nowhere to be found.

Daniel cursed, then shut the door behind himself. It was the safest place for him to hide, for now. He hadn’t done anything too rash just yet. He hadn’t fired his gun, given away his purpose. Maybe the book was here, under the stacks of lab charts, bundled-up papers. He could take it back to Liam, forget his assassination plot, leave his vengeance for another day. Maybe he could even destroy the book. Keep it from everyone’s hands. Run away with Liam and forget everything.

But he’d burned those ships.

Daniel stepped out of the office, his heart a heavy timpani line. Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring. He was here for his own ritual, one last act to balance the scales of the Eisenbergs’ deaths. The corridor was empty, but somewhere in this stone prison, Kreutzer waited. Maybe even Himmler himself. Any one of them would do.

The drumbeat heightened as he drew closer to the end of the wing—the laboratories the Unterführer had mentioned. Where Kreutzer wove his vile magic, where his victims gasped for air but breathed in only shadows as Kreutzer and Pitr infused them with energy from another world. A bass line underpinned his heartbeat now as he moved closer, rising and falling, over and over. One hand closed around the doorknob, the other around his knife. He wrenched it open, not knowing what horrors would await him on the other side—

Kreutzer looked up from the body spread before him. His white lab coat was thin and too starchy; it had been washed too many times, with too many blood stains leaving behind a faint yellow residue. And the body—it hurt Daniel’s eyes when he tried to focus on it. Shadow and smoke and fast-twitch muscles, a pained shudder of breath—

“Ah. Herr Doyle’s accomplice, aren’t you?” Kreutzer asked. “A pity he didn’t come himself.”

Daniel lunged forward, knife raised. He aimed for the doctor’s throat, mottled with puckered burn-scar scabs—

The body lurched up from the operating table: shadow and smoke and emptied-out stare. It socked Daniel square in the gut, dropping him to his knees, then shot out a foot to kick his knife away. Kreutzer snapped his fingers, and the soldier wrenched Daniel’s arms behind his back with impossible speed.

Kreutzer stood before him, fresh burns glistening with puffy skin along one side of his face. It was almost enough to make Daniel smile, the memory of the Kino fire Liam had set. He crouched down low, the machine behind him humming with the alternating frequency to open the rift, and regarded Daniel with a smile scalpel-sharp.

“Don’t worry. I think I have a use for you yet.” He turned to the soldier. “Take him to the dungeons while Herr Černik and I prepare.”

The soldier dragged him away, his failure weighing him down, heavy as shackles. His cell was tiny, closet-size; the door slammed shut with a finality that stung. He curled into the corner to wait. He could almost hear Rebeka scolding him for trying to be such a hero, such a fool. His traitor brain conjured up memories of the pale field of Liam’s throat, his muscles tensing and relaxing as Daniel’s fingertips charted them. Had he felt that passion still, when he found Daniel’s note? Had he awoken with regret and felt only relief to know Daniel would trouble him no more? For Liam’s sake, Daniel hoped so.

And yet deep down, he supposed he’d been hoping Liam would find a way to stop him.

No, hope was foolish and wasteful. Why should Daniel cling to hope in such a worthless world as this? Why should he fight to make it better? There was nothing to fix. At least the shadow world was more honest about what it was: darkness and blood and endless agony and rage. Humans were the real monsters who wore the skin of innocent creatures while underneath, they festered with hate.

After very little time, the door to his cell clanged open. Daniel glanced up, squinting into the harsh burst of light as Dr. Kreutzer stepped inside. But it was the boy who followed him into the cell who gave Daniel pause. He was shorter and a few years older than Daniel. Perhaps. The sallow, haunted expression in his eyes spoke of someone far older. His dark hair was swept to one side over bottle-lens glasses. And when he moved, he—

Daniel squinted. He didn’t know how to describe it, except as an echo, shadow trailing behind the boy’s limbs. An uneasy tide rose in Daniel’s gut, his subconscious working out something his mind hadn’t yet put into words.

Kreutzer wrinkled his nose at the stench of hard water and molding stone and human waste that permeated the cell. “You’re certain this will work?”

The boy’s smile was brutal, carved out of his face with a rusty knife. “He smells of Doyle’s spells.” He stepped forward, one hand raised, and instinctively, Daniel jerked his head away. Yet this only made him laugh with a wretched, metallic scrape.

Revulsion flushed over Daniel. “Pitr.”

Pitr’s eyes narrowed to hot points of fire as he gripped Daniel by the chin and forced Daniel’s face upward to study him. His touch was clammy; his movements jerked awkwardly, like a marionette. And still he smiled and smiled.

“I am so much more than Pitr now.”

Daniel tried to shrink back, but Pitr held firm.

“Did he love you?” Speaking low turned Pitr’s voice scratchy, and it felt like claws raking over Daniel’s skin. “Oh, I hope he did.”

The doctor regarded Daniel like a beautifully marbled cut of meat, making Daniel’s skin crawl. “You will pay for what you did to me.” He turned his face into the grimy light, the burn scars from the fire at the movie house in Hallenberg shiny like sausage casing. “I look forward to it.”

Pitr trailed a fingertip down Daniel’s jaw until it rested against his collarbone where it jutted from his torn-open shirt. His touch felt like venom, burning Daniel alive from the inside.

The air around Pitr shimmered then—his touch faded away as if he was backing off. But he hadn’t moved at all—he’d only thinned. Pitr sighed like he was scolding a child. “I will need to ready him first.”

Kreutzer narrowed his eyes, then nodded. “I’ll have my tools brought to the chamber.”

“Yes,” Pitr said. “That would be ideal.”

Then Pitr became solid again. His grip was now a fist clutching Daniel by the throat. His mouth stretched into a rictus, rotted teeth sharp and grinding beneath glowing eyes.

“I want him to feel it. Each excruciating moment of your pain. I want you to cry for him. I will break him, and his power will be mine. Do you understand me?”

Daniel said nothing, despite the cold dread filling him. Bait. They wanted to use him as bait for Liam.

“I want him to come try to save you. Hear you begging for mercy. And I want him to watch as you die.”

Daniel closed his eyes. “I died a long time ago.” How many times had he dreamed of this moment, of telling these men exactly what he thought of them? And yet he had no words, no knife or pistol in his hand either. It had all been a waste. “You bastards killed me when you sent my family to Chełmno.”

Pitr’s grip loosened, and he slithered back.

“Come.” Kreutzer seized Daniel by his bound hands. “Maybe we can make your death mean something more.”

“Welcome to the Realm of the Dead.”

The chamber they dragged him to was a cavernous, ritualistic space, gaudily appointed like some sort of medieval sanctuary, with curving stone walls and too many candles to count. A shaft of light illuminated a sole lectern in the center of the room. Daniel’s head felt woozy; whatever they’d given him had imbued the whole space with a misty, hazy atmosphere that threw garish shadows onto the rough sandstone walls. Daniel knelt, hands bound behind him, while Pitr held a dagger under his chin. Thin rivulets of blood ran down his neck and arms, trickling with warmth.

And then there was the machine—the two machines—

Liam’s oscillators. The curved metal posts emitted a noise that rolled over and over at a painfully low frequency, thousands of times stronger than any radio wave. It threatened to tear open Daniel’s thoughts.

A girl appeared in the opening to the chamber, taking in the sight with wide rabbit eyes. “Herr Doktor . . . ?”

“Ilse, my dear, there you are. Better late than never.”

The girl—Ilse—blinked, trying to regain her composure. Her gaze skittered toward Daniel’s, but just as soon darted away. “J-ja, mein Herr. What is it you need?”

“This one”—Kreutzer jerked his head toward Daniel—“he’s showing remarkable resilience, isn’t he? Come. Help me make use of him yet. Prepare the oscillators.”

Pitr chuckled. The sound was almost inhuman, rumbling deep in Daniel’s marrow.

“Perhaps it is . . . too cruel to use a prisoner for this, Herr Doktor.” Ilse clutched her clipboard to her chest. “We have so many volunteers—”

“Nonsense.” Kreutzer waved her off. “Now, help us prepare for the ritual.”

Ilse clipped past him on high heels that echoed through the chamber. As she came alongside Daniel, she knelt down, studying him with a quizzical look. Daniel looked back at her with drooping eyelids.

But then she mouthed a single word: Rebeka.

Daniel sucked in his breath. “Here? No—”

Ilse’s eyes flared wide as she pressed a finger to her lips, then stood once more and joined Kreutzer at the lectern in the chamber’s center. He ran his fingers along the page open before him. The illustration showed a darkened doorway, thick shadows pouring out of it in spiraling waves. As Daniel tried to focus on the waterfall of darkness pouring off the lectern, he felt even more disoriented, nauseated.

Rebeka. Had she come after him? What about Liam and the others? He prayed that if any of them had sense left, they’d find one another, stay together, leave him to die and not risk their own lives as well—

“You shall be a sacrifice. To fuel the transformation of our troops and the unlocking of boundless energy for the Reich,” Kreutzer crowed. All around them, the air had taken on a shimmering quality. “You remember the creature we examined from Siegen, Ilse?”

Ilse’s smile was strained. “How could I forget?”

“We will command an army of them. Infuse our soldiers with their powers. An army of monsters to devour our foes.”

“And a new world to conquer,” Pitr added. His blade skipped across Daniel’s arm, making a shallow nick.

Kreutzer waved his hand with annoyance. “But only if you hurry up.”

“He’s fighting it,” Pitr growled, studying him. “He doesn’t feel enough pain.”

The machines gurgled with a new sound—the frequency had changed. Daniel felt a tremor in the air like the trill of the strings section, the low rumble of timpani. He knew the sensation. It was the same feeling of teetering on the brink that he’d felt all around Liam. When they were about to kiss. When he was about to tear the world in two—

A tremendous explosion ripped through the chamber. Not an artillery strike—something more, something primal. Something deep and vast and hungry.

Yes, hungry—that was the word Daniel thought as he was tossed into the air, the ground beneath him bucking wildly. Hungry like a deep, deep well that could never be filled. As Kreutzer and Pitr and Ilse went flying skyward with him, he imagined they felt the hunger’s pull, too, and none of them were afraid.

Then they landed on the shattered Black Sun mosaic at the chamber’s center. Daniel groaned, fingers stretching out along the tiles as he tried to wrench his arms around. The book skidded across the broken stone floor, pages rifling in the wind. Sulfur and smoke danced heavy on the air.

A figure stepped out of the smoke, soot smearing his face. Dark tendrils wisped from his blond hair, his outstretched fingertips, his glowing eyes. He strode across the tile, something dark and wondrous trailing behind him like a veil.

“Liam,” Daniel breathed.

With a ripple of whispers, Liam stomped on Pitr’s wrist and wrenched the dagger from his hand. “Hello, Pitr.”