I kicked and screamed, I fought and bit, but the thing’s strength was unbelievable. What was it? What was I fighting? How easily I’d believed what it had wanted me to believe! How it must have been laughing when I’d tallied the sins of my guilty conscience for it. Where was my spear?

For the second time in as many minutes, I couldn’t breathe. It was choking me.

I stared up at the leathery underbelly of a Hunter as I died.

SIXTEEN

A s I’m sure you’ve figured out, I didn’t really die, twin to my sister’s fate, alone in an alley, run down by monsters, in the dark heart of Dublin.

My parents would not have to claim another body from airport officials. At least not yet.

I’d thought I was dying, though. When the blood is being cut off to your brain in a choke hold, you don’t know if your assailant plans to keep the pressure on your carotids for ten seconds—long enough to knock you unconscious—or longer still, until your heart stops and your brain dies. I’d assumed the specter wanted me dead.

It wouldn’t be long before I would wish it had.

I came to with a sour, chemical taste in my mouth that made me suspect I’d been drugged, a burning pain in my wrist accompanied by a peculiar immobility and heaviness, and the dank odor of wet, mossy stone in my nostrils. I kept my eyes closed and my breathing even, trying to assess as much of myself and my surroundings as possible before betraying to anyone who might be watching me that I was conscious.

I was barefoot and cold, dressed only in my jeans and T-shirt. My boots, sweater, and jacket were gone. I had a dim memory of losing my purse in the alley. So much for the cell phone Barrons had given me. Speaking of Barrons—he would find me! He would trace my cuff and—

My heart sank. I couldn’t feel the cuff on my arm. In fact the only thing I felt was something stiff and heavy around my wrist. I wondered when and where my cuff had been removed, where I was now, and how much time had passed. I wondered who or what the specter was. Although the Lord Master had worn a similar hooded robe of crimson the one time I’d seen him, I didn’t believe these villains were one and the same. They shared some aspect of their nature in common, but there was something very different about the specter.

I lay perfectly still and listened. If someone lurked nearby, they were taking pains not to betray their presence.

I opened my eyes and stared up at stone.

No one said anything ominous like Aha, you’re awake, let the torturing begin, so I risked a glance at my wrist. I was wearing a cast.

“I almost ripped your hand off,” a voice said conversationally, and I nearly jumped out of my skin. “You were bleeding to death. It made repairs necessary.”

I sat up slowly, carefully. My head was muzzy, my tongue thick. My wrist was a mass of screaming nerves, burning all the way up to my shoulder.

I looked around. I was in a cell of stone—an ancient grotto—behind iron bars, on a thin pallet on the floor. Beyond those bars my specter stood.

“Where am I?”

Its hood rustled as it spoke. “The Burren. Beneath it, to be precise. Do you know what the Burren is?” Its voice held a smile. Where had I heard that voice before? Sibilant, silky, it was familiar…but different…tone fluid, words loosely formed.

Yes, I knew what the Burren was. I’d seen it on my maps and read about it during the recent learning binge I’d gone on in an attempt to dispel my provinciality. From the Irish Boireann, which meant great rock or rocky place, it was a karst landscape in County Clare, Ireland, a limestone area of roughly three hundred square kilometers, with the famous Cliffs of Moher at the southwest edge. On cracked limestone pavements chiseled by grykes, or fissures in the stone, one could find Neolithic tombs, portal dolmens, high crosses, and as many as five hundred ring forts. Beneath the Burren were active stream caves and miles of labyrinthine passages and caverns, some open to tourists, the majority unexplored, undeveloped, and far too dangerous for the casual potholer.

I was beneath the Burren.

It was a hundred times worse than being in the bomb shelter. I might as well have been entombed alive. I hate confined places as much as I hate the dark. The knowledge that there were tons and tons of rock above my head, dense and impenetrable, separating me from the air, from wide-open spaces and the ability to move freely about made me feel wildly claustrophobic. My face must have betrayed my horror.

“I see you do.”

“Where are my things?” I couldn’t think about where I was or I’d have a meltdown. I had to focus on getting out. Specifically, where was my cuff? Had it been removed here? Or back in the alley? I could hardly ask. I desperately needed to know.

“Why?”

“I’m cold.”

“Cold is the least of your problems.”

Undoubtedly true. Even if I managed to get free, how would I find my way out of this place? Down dark tunnels, through flooded caverns, with no compass, no sense of direction. As desperately as I wanted more information about my clothes, cuff, and spear, I was afraid to press; afraid too much interest might make my captor suspicious, and the last thing I wanted to do was cause the specter to dispose of something it might otherwise have left lying around—a thing that could save my life. How did the cuff work? Would Barrons be able to track it beneath the ground? “Who are you? What do you want?” I demanded.

“My life back,” it said. “In lieu of that, I’ll take yours. The same way you’ve taken mine. One piece at a time.”

“Who are you?” I repeated. What was this thing talking about?

It raised a hand and pushed back its cowl.

I flinched violently. For a moment I was too horrified to do anything but stare. I searched the face for something, anything that I recognized. It took me several long moments to find it in the eyes.

They were dead, citron, inhuman.

Mallucé!

I’d been grossly premature in swiping him off my playing board. I’d been wrong, so wrong! The vampire wasn’t dead.

He was worse than dead.

All those times I’d glimpsed the specter, seen it out a window late at night, or in the alley, or in the graveyard with Barrons, it had been Mallucé, watching me. All those times I’d discounted my Grim Reaper as a figment of my imagination, the vampire had actually been there, somehow. I shuddered. I’d been so close to him so many times, with no awareness of the danger I was in. He’d been in my back alley the night the Shades had gotten in, the night I’d broken into Barrons’ garage. He’d been watching me since shortly after I’d stabbed him. I wondered why he’d waited so long to take action.