The darkness answered with teeth.
Something hit the chapel doors from outside. Hard. The old oak groaned on its hinges, and dust rained down from the rafters onto Nyra’s hair.
Then again.
And again.
Claws. Dozens of them. Raking the wood like it owed them money.
Nyra dropped to a crouch. Her knees landed in something soft and gritty.
Ash.
What was left of the man she had touched.
Her fingers brushed cold metal. The pocket watch. She didn’t think about it. She grabbed it and shoved it into her jacket, because her hands needed something to hold that wasn’t shaking.
“Mara.” Her voice cracked. “Mara, light another match. Right now.”
Nothing.
“Mom.”
A hand closed around her arm.
Nyra almost screamed again. Then she smelled it. Lavender soap and pharmacy cough drops. The smell of every scraped knee and every fever and every bad dream she’d ever had.
“Don’t say that word,” Mara breathed against her ear. “Not here. Not in front of them.”
“In front of who? What is happening? What did you call me?”
“Crypt stair. Behind the altar. Third stone from the left lifts.”
“I’m not going anywhere until you tell me what a Hollowborn is.”
Mara’s grip tightened until it hurt.
“Not now.”
“Then when?”
“Not ever, if I can help it.”
The doors boomed. A hinge screamed and let go.
Across the chapel, a phone lit up.
The blue glow carved the vampire out of the dark. He was still on one knee, the screen pressed to his cheek, his red eyes fixed on Nyra like she was the only thing in the room.
He tapped the speaker.
A man’s voice filled the chapel. Smooth. Cool. Unhurried, as if wolves weren’t tearing the doors off around them.
“Silas. Tell me what you see.”
The kneeling vampire swallowed. “Elder Vane is dead, my prince. Ash. And the mark is on her hand.”
Silence on the line.
One second. Two.
“Then listen carefully,” the voice said. “Alive. Unharmed. Bring her to me. If a single wolf so much as breathes on her, I will hold you responsible.”
“And if she will not come?”
“Persuade her.”
The call ended.
Silas rose. Two more shapes peeled away from the far aisle, a pale man with a shaved head and a woman with a silver braid down her back. Both in black. Both moving the way smoke moves.
“Ansel. Brigid.” Silas didn’t raise his voice. “The doors.”
They went.
Nyra stood up slowly. Mara’s fingers were still locked around her arm.
“Who was that?” Nyra whispered. “On the phone.”
“Someone who should never have known your name.”
“I didn’t give anyone my name!”
“No,” Mara said. “You gave them a body.”
The doors exploded inward.
Rain and wind howled into the chapel, and with them came the wolves.
Nyra had seen wolves before. On nature shows. In the zoo in the Bronx on a fourth-grade field trip.
These were not those.
They were the size of ponies. Black and gray and rust-red, soaked from the storm, with shoulders like boulders and eyes that burned amber in the dark. The first one hit Ansel in the chest and the two of them crashed through a pew.
Splinters everywhere.
Brigid moved so fast Nyra lost her. A wolf yelped. Another snarled. Somebody’s blood hit the floor in a long dark slash.
“Mara, come on!”
Nyra turned.
Her hand closed on empty air.
“Mara?”
The space beside her was empty. No footsteps. No shadow. No lavender.
Just a matchbook on the flagstones, gray cardboard with blue letters.
VOSS FAMILY PHARMACY. SAINT VEIL. OPEN LATE.
Nyra stared at it.
Twenty-three years. Twenty-three years of packed lunches and curfews and “I love you, now go to sleep.” And her mother had vanished in the dark like she’d been practicing.
Maybe she had.
A wolf swung its head toward Nyra and growled.
Nyra ran.
She vaulted the altar rail, hit the floor behind it, and clawed at the stones. First. Second. Third from the left. Her nails split. The stone shifted with a grinding sigh and a breath of cold, wet air rose up from below.
Stairs. Narrow and black.
Of course.
She dropped through and dragged the stone back over her head just as something heavy landed on the altar above.
Darkness. Her heartbeat. The muffled roar of the fight.
Then the roar stopped.
All at once, every snarl in the chapel cut off, as if someone had flipped a switch.
Nyra pressed herself against the slimy wall and held her breath.
Footsteps crossed the chapel. Bare feet on stone. Slow. Unbothered.
“Crane.” A man’s voice. Low and rough, like gravel under a tire. The voice from the chapel steps. “I asked you to send her out.”
“Thorne.” Silas sounded tired. “And I declined. You’re a long way from your lake.”
“Where is she?”
“Gone.”
“Don’t lie to me. I can smell her. Fear and lantern oil and something I’ve never smelled in my life.” A pause.“Something that shut my wolf up on those steps. Nothing shuts him up.”
Nyra’s heart slammed against her ribs.
She remembered the way he had flinched at her palm. Like she’d hit him from across the room.
“Kneel to her all you like, Crane. The vote stands. She ends before sunrise.”
“Lucien will burn your lake for this.”
“Lucien can try.”
“Kael.” Silas lowered his voice. “You have no idea what you’re hunting.”
“I know she turned one of your Seven into an ashtray with her bare hand. That’s enough of an idea for me.” His voice went flat. “Seven hundred years ago, my family helped put her kind in the ground. I’m not going to be the Thorne who let one climb back out.”
A long silence.
Then the voice moved directly above her. The man was standing on her stone. She could hear him breathing.
Sniffing.
Nyra didn’t move. Didn’t blink. Didn’t exist.
“Sunrise,” the man said quietly, almost to the floor. “That’s how long you’ve got, sweetheart. I’d make it count.”
The footsteps moved away.
Nyra waited until her lungs burned before she let the air out. Her hands were shaking so badly she nearly dropped her phone when she pulled it from her pocket.
Thirty-one percent battery. No signal.
Sunrise was maybe four hours away.
Four hours to find her mother. Four hours to find out what a Hollowborn was, and why five clans of wolves had voted on her life without ever learning her name.
She wasn’t going to spend them hiding in a hole.
She turned on the flashlight.
The stairwell opened into a low stone crypt, older than the chapel above it. Older than anything in Saint Veil. Water dripped somewhere in the dark.
She swept the light across the walls.
And froze.
Every wall was carved.
Not names. Not prayers.
Circles.
Hundreds of them, floor to ceiling, overlapping, gouged deep into the rock by hands that had been desperate or furious or both.
Each one split by thirteen jagged lines.
Her palm began to burn.