When he pulled away, his voice had gone low, hoarse. “Once this is over—” Satira pressed her fingertips to his lips. “Levi would have told you not to waste time making plans before over gets here.”

“Yeah, I guess he would have.” He slipped the bag over her head and helped her secure it against her hip. Then he took her hand and hefted his gun. “This way.”

For a large man, Wilder moved quietly. Satira watched his boots and tried to step where he did as he led her behind several roughly constructed buildings that looked to be in poor repair. More than one showed the evidence of violence—bullets lodged in wood and snapped timber. Black scorch marks climbed the back of one wall, as if a fire had been narrowly averted. The vampire who’d taken over the town clearly cared little for any home but his own.

And the hotel was immaculate. Fresh paint all but shined in the early-morning light. Tools lay in a neat row on the north side, where a new addition to the building was underway.

It was there that Satira saw the first stirrings of life. A ghoul, from the vacant expression, one who wandered in a jerky, uneven arc back and forth in front of the main roadway, his hands hanging limply at his sides. Avoiding him was laughably easy. Wilder hustled them both around the south side of the building, past a stable where horses whinnied restlessly.

Satira made note of the location of the stable door. Nathaniel would need a mount, if he was well enough to ride on his own. Please let him be well enough to ride on his own.

Wilder stopped near the edge of the building, next to a door that blended in so well with the wall that Satira might not have noticed it. Pulling it open revealed steep stairs carved into stone that twisted down into darkness.

“Stick close,” Wilder whispered as he began to descend the stairs. His boots fell on the stone with soft thuds, and he winced and stepped more lightly. “Echoes down here. Be careful.” The stairs went down and down, until the darkness was all but absolute. Wilder had no trouble seeing—or perhaps whatever heightened senses bloodhounds enjoyed helped him pick out a path. Satira put one hand against the wall and braced the other on his shoulder, feeling her way slowly behind him as her heart hammered in her ears.

It seemed like forever before she saw a flicker of light ahead of them. Wilder stepped away instead of down, and her foot hit solid dirt. She stumbled a little, then caught her balance with a curse she only gave voice in her head. “We must be a hundred feet underground.” The tunnel was still dark, and another, brighter flare of light followed the scrape of a match. Wilder looked around and shook his head. “It’s an honest-to-God dungeon.” Satira reached into the bag at her hip and fumbled until she came up with a slender tube made from a clear resin. One of the first projects she’d worked on with Nathaniel, inspired by their modified rounds.

Twisting a knob on the side combined the chemicals within, and she gave it a good shake to mix them together before clipping it to the strap of her bag.

The glow grew in intensity with each passing second, until Satira could clearly make out the long row of metal bars. Cages, carved into stone, large enough to accommodate one prisoner with no more room than they might need to stretch out.

Wilder stepped closer to the nearest one, and the flame of his match illuminated a desiccated corpse within. “Jesus.” He snuffed the match and cursed again.

Her handlight wasn’t bright enough to pierce the darkness at the backs of the cells. “That wasn’t—” She couldn’t force herself to form his name.

“No, not Nate.” Wilder reached for her hand again and continued around the curving tunnel, toward a heavy door at the end.

Movement in the last cell on the right stopped her. “Wilder, I think—” A body shot toward the cage bars so hard they rattled, and Satira stumbled back out of instinct.

Wilder stepped in front of her, his nostrils flaring. “I don’t fucking believe it.”

“What don’t you—”

The low growl that rumbled through the hallway sent fear skittering up her spine. Satira unhooked the handlight and lifted it high enough to illuminate the figure gripping the cage bars.

A man—mostly. Dark hair hung in shaggy locks over blue eyes that held not a glint of humanity. His chest was bare, revealing scratches and scars and a spattering of ugly yellow bruises. He sucked in a breath and fixed his gaze on Satira, and she recognized something in the feral madness staring out at her.

Bloodhound.

“Go away,” the man rasped. “Go.”

“He’s not part of the Guild.” Wilder clenched his jaw, his hands tightening into fists. “Did they turn you here?”

The man—the hound—didn’t answer, but he hardly needed to. The process by which the Guild made their warriors was a well-protected secret. Surely that couldn’t have been Nathaniel’s secret project…

Experimentation had been outlawed for decades, ever since the Guild’s inception.

Satira reached for Wilder’s shoulder. “Should we free him?”

“No.” A hand swiped between the bars, a menacing gesture undercut by the wild fear in the man’s eyes. “Leave. Go. Not safe here.”

His terror made Satira’s chest ache. Made her wonder what horrors Nathaniel might have suffered. “I could undo the lock if he let me.”

Wilder faced the other bloodhound, and they stared at each other for long minutes. “We’ll come back once we find Nathaniel. It’ll be safer then.”

“Nate.”

A scratchy sound, seemingly torn from the man’s throat. Satira ducked under Wilder’s arm before he could stop her. “Do you know him?”

“They put him in his lab. Always do, at dawn, now.”

Wilder breathed a sigh. “Do you know where it is?”

She barely heard the instructions— in his lab. In his lab.

Nathaniel was alive.

“We’ll be back,” Wilder promised the man—the hound—inside the cell.

Another person to rescue, but they could do it. Together, she and Wilder could do anything.


Ten feet from the door, Wilder knew something was off.

The scent of death hung heavy in the dank air, heavier than he would have expected if Nate was alive, like the feral hound had said. But who knew what lay behind the solid pine door? Nate could be alive but surrounded by corpses, stark reminders of what could happen to him—or those he loved—if he refused to work.

Wilder rattled the sturdy padlock and turned to Satira. “Don’t think Nate would object, do you?” She studied the padlock for a moment, then ran her fingers up to the heavy loop and along the metal plate bolted to the wall. Her hand dipped into her bag again and came out holding a flat sheet of paper.

Unfolded, it revealed several long strips of a pale, tacky looking substance. She peeled one from the paper and smoothed it over the metal plate. Then she dipped into her bag again and retrieved what looked like a perfume vial.

“You might wish to cover your nose,” she murmured as she replaced the folded paper. “This will smell unpleasant enough for me.”

Wilder pressed a gloved hand under his nose as Satira misted the liquid onto the substance she’d spread over the plate. It began to bubble, and then to eat through the metal plate that secured the lock to the door.

She stepped back and tucked the bottle back into her bag. “There. A firm tug should break the metal.” He tried it, and the door snapped open with a cracking noise. “Nate?” The room beyond was all but dark, even with the light cast by Satira’s lightstick. The scent of death was worse now, but mixed with an oddly familiar note—something that could have been another bloodhound if it hadn’t been just a little off.

Next to him, Satira shivered. “Nathaniel?”

Something stirred in the room. A boot against the floor, a quiet clink. Then— “Satira?” Satira made a choked noise and launched herself forward, but Wilder drew her up short with a steely grip around her arm. “Not yet. Not—something’s not right.”

She all but shook with nervous energy, but she didn’t try to pull away from him. “Nathaniel, we’re here to take you home.”

A click. Light flared so fast Satira reeled back, lifting an arm to cover her eyes. The illumination came from dozens of intricate glass bulbs lining the walls of a vast room, all hung above long shelves overflowing with tools and equipment.

Several worktables were arranged in a neat row across the center of the room, on which projects of various complexity rested. Nathaniel stood next to the closest bench, sallow and wild-looking, his usual neat vest askew and his spectacles gone completely. He squinted at them, gaze flickering over Wilder before fixing on Satira.

Regret filled his eyes before he closed them. “Take her away. Keep her safe.” He smelled like death, and even with his sickly pale expression, his face looked…different. Younger.

“What the hell did they do to you?”

“Nathaniel?” Satira sounded uncertain. “Is that you?”

“Perhaps not anymore.” He took a step forward, moving as if he barely had the energy to get his boots off the ground. “Satira, wait in the hallway.”

“But—”

“Now.”

The man might not look so much like Nate anymore, but he had Nate’s voice, and Satira seemed to obey it out of instinct. She tried to tug her arm free of his grip, and Wilder let her go.

The man looked like death, but he smelled like a bloodhound. “Nate, what happened?” Nate lowered his voice until the whisper was too low for Satira to hear in the hallway. “The vampire.

Lowe. He’s building his own army. Needed a weapon, and I wouldn’t build it. So he found a way to make me.”