13. Callie

We crossed the open field toward the blood bank, my movements a lot closer to silent than they would have been without Magnar’s lessons. He may have had a point about that, not that I’d be thanking him for the advice. He needed to work on his delivery in my opinion.

The grass shone silver in the moonlight, the tips of the brown stalks sparkling with a new frost as the temperature plummeted, winter clawing at me, a shiver building in my flesh. My breath rose before me in a cloud of vapour, reminding me of the warm blood that pumped through my veins. I was mortal. I was a slayer. And I was alive. No vampire could claim such things. And it was time they remembered that they were dead.

Fury pulsed with anticipation in my palm. The blade was working itself up into a frenzy as we drew closer to the danger. I was starting to feel its revelry too, leaning into the anticipation and using it to stave off any fear that might try to creep in. Now wasn’t the time to let fear guide me. We were about to find my family, and I was going to get them back. No doubts, no exceptions.

The thought alone made my chest swell with hope and banished the fear from my body.

Magnar led the way straight up to the wall of the blood bank before turning right, using its shadow to conceal us from prying eyes as he hugged the stone and moved more silently than the wind.

The building’s windows had all been bricked over, presumably to keep all traces of sunlight out. The newer mortar and brickwork stood out like ugly scars against the rest of the old factory, but I guessed the vampires hadn’t cared about the way it appeared. This place wasn’t supposed to look pretty, it was a death sentence, pure and simple.

We moved quickly, and I was almost at a jog, hurrying to keep up with Magnar’s long stride, my pulse picking up as I worked to contain my own jitteriness. The chilling silence kept us company. Even the wild animals knew this place was evil. Nothing dared approach it.

A piercing scream sounded from within the building, and we both froze as the echoes of it reverberated into the valley beyond. I knew my old Realm lay somewhere in that direction, though no lights shone to show me where. I wondered if anyone had heard the screams carried on the wind tonight.

My gut clenched with terror, but I hardened myself against it. I was no longer a helpless human hiding in my apartment after dark while the pain-filled howling on the wind sent nightmares to my slumber. I was going to see this place destroyed. Tonight would be the last time the Realm was terrorised by these screams. The constant threat of the blood bank was about to be removed from the humans’ lives for good.

Magnar started moving again and I followed in his shadow, his presence enough to help me keep faith in our plan.

He made it to the corner of the building and stopped abruptly, holding out a hand to halt me too.

Fury growled a warning across my flesh and a shiver rolled down my spine in reply. There was a vampire somewhere close in the dark, though no sound gave it away, only the heat of the blade in my fist.

I bit my lip as Magnar slowly released Tempest from the sheath on his back before sinking into a crouch. His hand swept through the bristly stalks by his feet for a moment until he located a stone which filled his palm.

As he stood again, he tossed the stone ahead of him and it thumped into the grass a few feet away, making it rustle unnaturally.

Magnar’s grip tightened on his blade, and my breath halted in my lungs as a vampire stepped into view.

She looked at the rock, then whirled around, some supernatural instinct or maybe just guesswork putting her on alert, but it didn’t matter. Magner struck like a cobra from the long grass, his blade slicing through the air with unavoidable brutality, carving through her chest and obliterating her heart with a single strike before she could so much as scream.

The vampire fell to ash and was carried away on the gusting wind in less than five seconds. Here then gone, her eternal life ended as simply as that. Magnar tossed the small pile of her clothes into the shadows behind me, and I kicked them into the cover offered by a patch of brambles, the only evidence of our presence concealed.

“The lesser vampires won’t cause us much issue,” Magnar explained in a whisper. “But I can feel the presence of more than one Elite inside, and they could prove more difficult to dispatch. If at any point I tell you to run, then run.”

“I won’t just turn and flee at the first sign of trouble,” I hissed.

“You will do as I say,” he replied in a low growl, his eyes burning with dominance. “Or I’ll tie you to a tree and make you wait outside. If you’re going to follow me into this mess, then you’ll do so at my command or not at all.”

“You forget that I haven’t taken any vow Magnar,” I replied icily. “So I don’t follow your commands unless I want to.”

“What if I said that I won’t go any further until you swear to do as I say? What would you do then, drakaina hjarta?”

“Then I’ll go in alone,” I replied simply, and I meant it too. “Because my dad and Montana need me, and I won’t abandon them any more than I would abandon you if you needed me. I owe you a life debt, Magnar, don’t go thinking I’ll forget that until we’re even.”

Magnar blew out a breath which was part amusement, part frustration. “You really would, wouldn’t you?”

“Try me,” I growled.

He glared at me for several long seconds before shaking his head and turning away, moving around the corner. I jogged after him, at least a little smug that he hadn’t forced a promise from my lips which I wouldn’t have been able to keep. No matter what he told me to do, I knew I could never save myself at the cost of his life, and if I told him otherwise, it would be a lie. He’d come for me when I’d been captured and, bait or not, we were bonded because of that.

A heavy wooden door stood ajar ahead of us, and Magnar made a beeline for it. I stayed close, relying on Fury’s senses to reassure myself no vampires were about to strike.

Magnar stepped through the doorway, and I slipped in behind him. He hesitated as he looked up at the long fluorescent lights which illuminated the wide corridor.

“What magic is this?” he breathed in astonishment, seemingly unable to tear his gaze from the flickering bulb above his head.

“It’s just electricity,” I reminded him, laying a hand on his arm in case he decided to attack a lightbulb and fuck this whole thing up before it had even started. “Like the flashlight but bigger.”

I felt the tension ease out of his muscles at my words, but his gaze remained fixed on the lights for several more seconds before he forced himself to look down.

He frowned at the floor as he processed what he’d seen and convinced himself to accept it before moving on. My gut twisted uncomfortably at the pain which flashed in his gaze. Every time he was reminded of the changes which had happened to the world in the thousand years he’d spent sleeping, it seemed to bring up what he’d left behind, the weight of that loss pressing down on him more firmly. There was nothing I could do to ease that pain, and I ignored the knot of sorrow which tangled inside me as we continued on our hunt for my family.

A set of double doors lay directly in front of us. They were made of heavy metal and the handle on the right-hand side was drooping in a way that suggested it was broken.

Magnar squared his shoulders and began walking quickly, closing the distance to the doors in several long strides. I glanced nervously down the corridors to my left and right before scurrying after him.

His eye caught mine as he placed a hand on the broken handle and eased the door open.

A wave of warm air washed over us, and a cloud of pungent smoke caught in my throat. I slapped a hand over my mouth as my lungs filled with pressure and I fought back the urge to cough.

Magnar headed inside and I followed him into a wide room lit by an orange glow which came from a furnace to the back of the space.

The hot air was dry and made my tongue thicken with distaste. The smoke filled my nostrils and a sickly stench accompanied it. I had to fight the desire to cover my face entirely. I really didn’t want to know what they were burning in here, but I got the feeling I was about to find out.

I began to cross the open space and head towards the furnace, but Magnar caught my arm, yanking me to a halt. I stumbled, glancing up at him in confusion, and he pointed to the floor before my feet. I squinted in the dim light and could just make out a hatch.

Magnar released me and dropped down to pull the hatch wide. Soot spiralled out of the area below as the air was disturbed, and I blinked down at the dark space in confusion.

I fumbled in my pocket and pulled the flashlight out, glancing at Magnar for confirmation before flicking it on, the small beam of light illuminating a shaft beneath us.

I leaned closer, peering down at a drop of around twenty feet to the basement below. All I could see was piles of ash and soot. I swept the beam from my flashlight to and fro and gasped as the light fell on a skull.

I almost dropped the flashlight as I stumbled back, and Magnar let out a low curse before swinging the wooden door closed over the hatch.

“They’re burning people,” I whispered in horror, my gaze shooting to the furnace which continued to blaze beneath the giant chimney. “Do you think they’re alive when-”

“It is very unlikely. They would want to remove all the blood first,” Magnar growled.

A fluttering of relief passed through my chest. Death was bad enough, but the idea of being burned alive filled me with a special kind of horror.

“We should move on,” Magnar said in a low voice. “There isn’t anyone alive in here.”

I nodded my agreement, more than happy to turn my back on that room and its disgusting stench. I flicked the flashlight off and jammed it into my pocket before following him back out, the cold air in the corridor beyond a sweet balm to my senses.

Magnar hesitated for a moment, running his thumb across the runes on Tempest’s hilt before choosing to follow the corridor to the right. My connection to Fury made me feel sure that this was where most of the vampires were assembled, and I let out a long breath as we made our way towards them.

“You didn’t want to pick the safer direction then?” I hissed, but Magnar’s only reply was the feral grin he threw back over his shoulder at me.

Magnar stopped at the first door we came to and eased it open. I peered over his shoulder as icy air washed out of the room and kissed the exposed skin on my face. A shiver ran down my spine and I realised it was a giant refrigerator. Magnar shifted aside, revealing metal trolleys holding row upon row filled with bottles of gleaming red liquid.

“They take human blood as if they were milking cattle,” Magnar growled angrily as he stepped inside.

“We were required to donate two pints of blood every few months in the Realm,” I explained as I eyed the bottles with disgust. “They claimed it was for our own protection – no chance of accidental death from a vampire who was a little too thirsty. The whole thing was supposed to be civilised.”

A sound like the growl of a feral beast escaped Magnar’s lips, and I barely managed to jump aside before he pushed one of the huge racks over. The sound of the metal trolley hitting the floor alongside a hundred bottles smashing was more than enough to tell every vampire in the building that we were here, and I cursed in alarm, my grip on Fury tightening.

I leapt out of the way, pressing my back against the cold wall as he lunged towards the next trolley.

My shock turned to glee as I watched the way the blood splattered against the walls and mixed with every speck of dirt and grime on the floor. What he was doing was utterly insane, and yet the satisfaction it built in me was endless, because fuck them. Fuck their thirst and their realms and their fucking barbaric idea of civilisation.

It was already too late to try and hide. The vampires had to have heard the crashing and shattering of glass, so instead of wasting my time on terror or calling Magnar out on his utter lack of subtly, I took several running steps towards the closest trolley and hurled it against the wall with as much strength as I could muster.

A bark of laughter fell from my lips, a hint of mania lacing the sound because I knew this was it; the vampires were racing towards us right now, their anger at what they would find immeasurable. Yet something about destroying this stock of stolen blood was so utterly freeing.

I grabbed a bottle which hadn’t smashed as it rolled against the side of my boot and hurled the thing at the far wall, red splattering the ceiling, glass cascading down into the ever-growing puddle on the floor.

Magnar picked up another trolley and hurled it overhead, aiming it towards the door, and I watched in terrified glee as the contents shattered everywhere.

Between us, the other three racks quickly followed suit and the ground was littered with smashed glass and ruined donations. A tide of spilled blood washed over the toes of my boots before flowing out of the refrigerator into the corridor beyond, staining the filthy floor with the evidence of the crimes those bloodsuckers had been committing against humankind for too fucking long.

“The vampires,” I breathed, barely able to believe what we’d just done. “They’ll know exactly where we are-”

“Let them come,” Magnar growled, pulling Venom from his back to join Tempest in his other hand and moving to the centre of the refrigerator. “Stay behind me.”

That order was simple enough to follow, and I backed away from him, pressing my spine to the rear wall as the sound of the vampires approaching reached my ears. The fact that they weren’t silent was enough to tell me just how many of them were coming our way, and my pulse skittered in reply.

Fury burned red-hot in my palm but rather than hurting me, the heat seemed to find its way into my veins, pricking at my senses and dialling them up. My vision seemed sharper and more focused, every sound was clearer in my ears. Even the metallic scent of the blood pooling by our feet smelled stronger in my nostrils, the taste of it racing along my tongue.

Instead of cowering against the wall, I stood ready to defend myself, Fury in hand. If it came to a fight, I would face it.

Magnar rolled his shoulders, casually rotating the two huge blades as he awaited the vampires’ arrival. I could tell he held no fear, only rage at what they’d done to us while he slept. Rage at what the last thousand years had brought upon the mortals. And he was about to collect payment for that debt.

The first of the vampires made it to the door, and he cut through them before I could even count how many he killed. Dust swirled behind his blades as he swung at them again, using the door as a bottleneck, carving into any who tried to find their way through.

The clash of metal on metal rang out as the next row of vampires realised they were under attack and drew their own weapons. Adrenaline spiked through my veins like wildfire, but I wasn’t cowering like a rabbit caught in a bright light, I was waiting like a snake in the grass, letting Magnar do what he did best and preparing for the moment when they forced their way past him so I could have his back.

He held them at the doorway, using the narrow space to stop them from overwhelming him, spinning and kicking, striking with furious, feral blows which were met with screams and explosions of ash. He swung his swords and mercilessly hacked his way through all who came at him, a wildness to his movements which spoke of the warrior who had been destined to defeat these monsters hundreds of years ago.

The vampires rallied themselves, barks of command and urgent calls forcing them into line before they surged forward as one and Magnar was forced to step back, allowing them to spill into the room. He roared a challenge as they tried to make it past the fury of his mighty blades, spreading out and coming at him from both sides, trying to overwhelm him, but none could get close.

I watched in utter awe, my heart pounding a frantic rhythm as time and again, he parried blows and delivered death, his movements unearthly, his instincts seeming to guide his blade to the perfect position time and again.

Magnar swung to the left and a vampire leapt around him, aiming straight for me, forcing my attention back to survival instead of staring at the slayer from legends.

The vampire’s eyes glittered with malice, and my pulse hammered in my ears as he swung his sword straight for my head.

Somehow, I managed to get Fury between us to take the blow, the blade pushing memories into me which weren’t my own, offering me just enough to wield the weapon effectively. I cringed back as the strength of the vampire’s attack resonated right down to my bones and he swung at me again.

My feet moved quickly, and I danced aside, half feeling like I knew what I was doing as Fury poured information into me like I was an empty vessel just waiting to be filled. Whatever the blade was doing, it was working, so I didn’t question it as I ducked beneath a third swipe of the vampire’s blade, my hair flicking around me as I spun aside.

Strike now!

I did as Fury commanded and the golden blade sliced across the backs of the vampire’s legs, cutting through muscle and tendons, spilling blood that was too bright a red to be human.

The vampire hissed as he fell backwards, his legs unable to hold him upright anymore. I scrambled away from his blade as he thrust it at me from his position on the floor, ducking to my right and coming close to the raging tornado which was Magnar.

I tightened my grip on Fury, lunging toward the vampire I’d brought to the ground, meaning to finish him, but Magnar’s sword made it before I could, carving him in two, finding his heart and leaving a heap of clothes and ash where he’d been.

“That was my kill,” I growled, whirling on Magnar, but in the moment he’d given to help me, a female vampire had leapt onto his back, wrapping her arms around his neck.

Magnar bellowed a challenge as he tried to throw her off, his fingers ripping a great chunk of hair from her scalp, but she held on tight, snarling as she attempted to find his flesh with her teeth.

He swung around again, forcing me to leap aside but leaving his back to me in the movement. I lunged at the grappling pair, driving Fury straight at the vampire’s back where it found a space between her ribs and made it to her heart with a sigh of pleasure.

Magnar didn’t spare me a glance as he was released from the vampire’s grip in her death, simply charging to take on our final two enemies, a battle cry spilling from his lips.

He cut down the first with a single strike and the last one turned and fled.

I pushed away from the wall, breaking into a run, expecting us to take chase, but Magnar slapped a hand against my chest to stop me, pushing me back firmly.

“Let her tell her masters what she found here. We’ll be elsewhere by the time they get back.”

“You’re enjoying this,” I accused, my chest rising and falling heavily, blood and ash staining my skin, adrenaline making my limbs tremble.

“So are you,” he shot back.

“Of course I’m not,” I snarled. “What kind of psychopath would enjoy fighting for their life in a bloodbath?”

Magnar took a step closer to me, sheathing Venom over his shoulder before taking hold of my jaw in his bloody fingers and tilting my face up to his.

“You can lie to yourself all you want, drakaina hjarta, but not to me. I see the way your eyes blaze with the hunger for their deaths. I feel the way your pulse is thundering with the thrill of the fight, and if I kissed that pretty mouth of yours, I’d taste the bloodlust on your tongue. You are born of my blood, and our kind wasn’t meant to bow down to the rule of the fucking vampires. This rebellion has been locked away inside your heart for a long, long time. I’m simply the key you needed to unlock it.”

He leaned closer, the sin of his mouth drawing me in, the sweetness of his breath brushing over my lips and the feral freedom in his golden eyes promising me so much more of that rebellion if only I decided to claim it.

Then he was gone. His grip left me and he turned away, leaving my heart to jolt back into rhythm, the tension in my limbs falling to nothing.

I glared at him as he stalked towards the door. Fuck him, because deep down beneath the utter terror and complete disbelief over what we’d just done, he was right. This was something I’d never even dared dream of being possible, to have hit back at the vampires so ferociously, to have killed so many of their kind after enduring a lifetime in servitude to them as little more than livestock…

Magnar headed out of the room, taking the other corridor and heading away from the fleeing vampire.

I didn’t question him as I followed, the truth that was being revealed within me too potent to put words to.

We trailed bloody footprints along the corridor as we went, not making any attempt at subtlety or stealth now. It wouldn’t be difficult for the Elite to locate us, and I just hoped Magnar would be ready for them when they arrived. It was one thing for him to fight a group of lesser vampires, but I’d seen how much more of a challenge the last Elite had been. I wasn’t sure what would happen if he had to go up against more than one of them at once.

We moved quickly, and Fury didn’t seem to think any more vampires were close to us yet, so I allowed myself a moment to catch my breath.

The corridor we were in held no doors and we continued along it at speed, searching for a way on, hunting for the humans they kept here, my need to reunite with my family stoking my moves with urgency.

Finally, we made it to another door and Magnar pushed it wide. I stepped through behind him, squinting as we were plunged into darkness. The light from the corridor illuminated a switch on the wall, and I flicked it on just as Magnar slammed the door behind us.

Light flooded the huge space as bulb after bulb illuminated above us and Magnar flinched in surprise. A smirk pulled at my lips as I glanced at him. The warrior who didn’t bat an eyelash at enraging a group of vampires flinched at the flick of a light switch.

Magnar noticed the look and rolled his eyes at me. “Fuck you.”

“Fuck you,” I replied in kind.

“Be careful what you wish for, drakaina hjarta,” he warned, sending a lick of fire right through my core.

I turned away from him dismissively, refusing to allow him to see the effect he had on me when his voice got all rough like that. The door we’d passed through was made of heavy metal and held large bolts, which I quickly slid across to secure it.

“Will that keep the Elite out?” I asked.

I knew they were strong, but I was doubtful that they could punch through solid iron.

“It looks like it might,” Magnar agreed, placing Venom back into its sheath.

I returned my attention to the cavernous room we’d found ourselves in. It was filled with two long rows of coffin-sized boxes, a narrow walkway passing down the centre of them. The space was cool, the vaulted ceiling strung with pipes and wires which ran down to the coffins.

“I didn’t think vampires really slept in coffins,” I said as I took a step towards the closest row.

“They don’t,” Magnar replied darkly. “This is something else.”

I bit my lip as I approached the first box. There was a glass lid over the top of it and two tubes ran into it from the ceiling. One was filled with clear liquid. The other was filled with blood.

I peered over the edge of the box and sucked in a sharp breath as I came face to face with someone I knew.

Thomas lay completely naked and perfectly still beneath the glass. His chest rose and fell steadily, though he showed no other signs of life. The last time I’d seen him, he’d punched me in the face for following him out of the Realm.

I guessed this meant the vampires had figured out that he’d been leaving too. Perhaps I should have felt guilty about that, but as I remembered the way he’d loomed over me, death flashing in his merciless gaze, I found it hard to be particularly remorseful. My family had needed the supplies which were available beyond the fences, and I wasn’t going to feel bad about exploiting the secret he’d found in an attempt to help them.

The clear tube delivered a drip directly into a vein in his left arm while the red tube took blood from a vein on his right.

“It’s like intensive farming for people,” I said in disgust. “They’re keeping them alive so they can drain them.” This was what we’d always known went on here, and in a way, it was a relief to see him lying there the way he was. He didn’t know what was happening. It wasn’t like he’d been strung up or was even conscious, he was simply asleep, unaware. It was practically humane. If you ignored the fact that he was there against his will and having his bodily fluids stolen to be used as food for monsters.

I looked around for some way to release him from the coffin, but there was nothing. The whole thing was sealed shut, no catch or lock that I could find, no buttons or levers either. I shoved at the glass lid, then pounded on it with Fury’s hilt, but nothing happened. It was shut tight and impenetrable.

Magnar moved to stand beside me, throwing his shoulder against the lid, his muscles straining as he tried to force it open to no avail. The thing was rock solid.

“How are we supposed to get them out?” I asked desperately, my heart thumping to a painful rhythm as I looked around, wondering which of these boxes might hold Dad and Montana.

“We should locate your family. We can figure out how to release these people once we know where they are. I’ll check one row while you check the other. I saw your father when he was taken but didn’t get a clear look at your sister. Her hair was dark, wasn’t it?” he asked.

“Yeah, her hair’s as dark as mine is light, but we’re twins so we still look a lot alike. Probably enough for you to recognise her. Mom used to call us her sun and moon. Dad too.” Magnar’s brows pulled together as I said that, but I didn’t have time to question why. My family was close, I just knew it. They had to be.

“Just call me over if you see anyone you’re unsure of,” I told him, then hurried across the room and started moving along the other row of coffins.

There were many faces I didn’t recognise but some that I did. Most were people who had been taken from the Realm for breaking rules. And a few were elderly people who had just disappeared in the night.

“Callie?” Magnar called.

I ran back to look into the coffin he’d found with my heart in my throat. A girl around my age lay in there, her hair was as dark as Montana’s, but the similarities ended there. I shook my head as disappointment ran through me and I returned to my search.

Box after box, face after face, and none of them were them.

As we approached the far end of the room, my heart plummeted. There was no sign of them. If my family weren’t here, then I didn’t know what we would do. I had no idea where else they might have been taken. No idea what the vampires might have done to them. The terror of not knowing, the fear of them being lost was rising up in me until I felt like I might choke on it.

Tears pricked my eyes, but I forced them away, blinking hard and refusing the urge to fall to panic. We would rip this place apart before I’d give up on them. If they weren’t in this room, then I just had to presume they were in another.

I reached the end of the row, and my soul fractured a little when I didn’t find them. I turned to Magnar, and he shook his head sadly, confirming he hadn’t located them either.

I moved past him and began to check his row for myself. He didn’t know them. He couldn’t be sure like I could be. I had to check again.

As I closed in on Thomas’s coffin, a huge crash sounded from the door we’d bolted, and my heart hammered in terror, my feet stalling before moving faster as I continued my search, needing to be certain, determined to check thoroughly.

“We hear a human has dressed themselves up like a slayer of old!” a voice called from the other side of the iron door just as I made it back to Thomas’s coffin, my heart sinking with the certainty that my family weren’t in here.

I began to back away, and my slayer’s mark tingled in warning, Fury burning hot as I drew it once more.

“Why not come and see if you can face a real opponent or two,” the voice jeered.

The door rattled again, and Magnar caught my arm, pulling me behind him. I could tell he wanted to take the vampire up on the offer of a fight, but we kept retreating until we made it to the far end of the room again, and I turned around to find a way out.

A small door was tucked into one corner, and I ran for it, trusting Fury’s assessment before pulling it wide.

I found myself in a control room filled with CCTV screens. I recognised it from the Realm. They’d had one just like it in the Emporium and I’d seen the little cameras that recorded us in all of the communal spaces. Even the bathhouse. My skin crawled as I thought about the invasion to our privacy. They wouldn’t even allow us that much dignity.

Magnar froze as he looked at the screens, his eyes flicking from one to the next as he tried to process what he was seeing.

“Think of it as looking at lots of different places at once,” I said quickly. “It just shows us what’s happening elsewhere.”

He stared at them in fascination and slowly raised a hand to point at one of the screens. “Isn’t that your father?” he asked.

I spun to stare at the man he’d pointed out, and the bottom fell out of my stomach.

“Dad,” I breathed, a tear spilling down my cheek.

He was in a small room, his arms were suspended by chains at his wrists, his body marked with signs of torture. They’d removed his shirt and he shivered in just a pair of torn jeans. Blood trickled across his skin from bite wounds on his neck and wrists. Bile rose in my throat as I took in the fact that he’d been here, enduring this the entire time we’d been searching for him.

I flinched as someone else moved into the view of the camera, and I realised he wasn’t alone.

General Wolfe stalked towards him, his finger raised as he pointed it directly into my dad’s face. It looked like he was asking him a question, but there was no audio to go with the footage, so I had no idea what it could be.

Dad shook his head firmly, though I could see something horribly like fear in his gaze as he did so.

The General shouted angrily, striking a blow to my father’s face which sent him staggering back. He only remained upright because of the chains holding him so. Before he could recover, the General lunged, biting his neck.

My own scream met the one I could see falling from my father’s lips, and I rushed towards the screen, wishing I could get to him.

“We have to find him! We have to help him!” I demanded as Magnar caught me in his arms, dragging me back against him.

“We will. He must be here. We’ll find that room.” He pulled me against his chest for a brief moment, then released me, holding me at arm’s length. “Is your sister on one of these boxes?” He pointed at the screens, and I got the distinct impression he didn’t like them.

I forced myself to look at the CCTV again, searching frantically for any sign of Montana, but she wasn’t there. I shook my head, unable to say it out loud. Where else could she be? It didn’t make sense. I could see the room where Thomas was contained on two of the screens but there wasn’t another one like it, nowhere else that she might be unless it was somewhere without a camera.

My thoughts snagged on that skull I’d seen in the basement beneath the furnace. Maybe she hadn’t been unconscious when they took her away. What if the General had struck her too hard? What if she’d never woken up?

“What if she’s...I mean what if they...” I couldn’t say it out loud.

If she was dead, I’d die too. I just knew it. There couldn’t be a world where one of us existed without the other.

“What does your heart tell you?” Magnar demanded, forcing me to stand still and placing his palm above my racing heart.

I took a steadying breath, banishing the panic as I looked into his eyes and stole a measure of strength from him.

“She’s alive,” I said firmly, refusing any other answer to pass my lips.

Magnar nodded, his golden eyes hard and full of determination. “Then we will find her.”