Ravenous

He slid his hand down the wood, feeling its roughness. A long existence had inured him to fear, yet the Castle, as Lore had put it, was like old, bad dreams. It was a hell built for the vampires and the wolves, the dragons, the demons, and the fey, made for their eternal imprisonment. Made to keep his kind trapped forever. The guardsmen were mad and merciless. Holly had made a door, but who was to say that it would work from the inside?

Holly had disappeared. Logic said she was in the Castle, perhaps lost or hurt or worse. He touched the cold iron strapping, the metal dented as if from a blacksmith's hammer. Anxiety pounded like a full-body migraine. Alessandro drew the bolt. It slid without resistance.

Omara broke her silence. 'I forbid it!' she snapped. 'You need to rest. You'll bleed into insensibility and lie there like a great idiot until a guardsman trips over you.'

The door swung out on massive hinges that gave a sighing groan.

'Alessandro!' Omara cried, her voice sliding from command to entreaty.

'I'm sure you'd be happy enough to see me if you were the one trapped inside.'

He walked into hell.

When Holly awoke she was sprawled on a cold floor of stone. The chill went bone-deep, the air around her clinging with damp. The light was faint, but enough for her to see that the wall in front of her eyes was stone, too. Where ami?

She jumped to her feet, then fell against the wall, dizzy. She'd moved too fast. She felt sick, spent. Almost hungover. But she was unhurt and alone. For the first time in days no one was trying to bite her. Sluggishly, memory flowed back.

Sweet Hecate, I'm inside the Castle. Holly looked around. She'd tried to make the portal into a doorway, but there was no doorway in sight. I could have been thrown. Someone could have brought me here. It might not have worked at all, and I'm trapped.

Holly looked beyond the presence or absence of a door. What she saw wasn't reassuring. The picture in Grandma's book was pretty accurate. The Castle was a wilderness of gray stone. Torches set into the walls threw smears of smoky light, but the glow died within feet of the flames.

Every few hundred feet, passageways intersected the hall where she stood, regular and endless. Holly walked to the nearest corner, cautiously peering around its edge. The new passageway looked much like the last, its ceiling hidden in a fog of shifting shadow.

Movement. A few hundred feet away two guardsmen herded a cluster of changelings, swords and whips at the ready. They crossed the hallway, following yet another passage deep into the Castle's maze. Holly pulled back, afraid she would be seen. Prisoners from the battle?

She turned the other way and nearly walked straight into the guardsman with the braid—the same one she had seen in the Flanders house. He had a thing on a chain that was probably a wolf, but looked as big as a bear.

The wolf looked as crazed and brutal as the man.

'Hi,' she said stupidly. She reached for magic, but there was nothing there.

Holly spun and took off down the nearest side corridor, lungs burning as she gulped the musty, damp air. She heard the rattle of a chain, and the guardsman released the wolf, shouting something in a tongue she didn't know. The wolf lolloped after, his juggernaut form crashing into corners whenever his bulk refused to turn quickly. The Castle, solid stone, didn't even quiver.

The only thing in Holly's favor was a head start. Using one hand as a brace, she swung around a corner, then raced off in a new direction. She was utterly lost. The wolf's panting echoed behind her, gusting as if there were fifty beasts hurtling along the corridors. Claws scraped as he moved, the sound like the drag of chalk on slate.

Cold stone smacked against Holly's sneakers, hard even through the cushioned soles. If she could find a room, some doorway too small for the wolf to pass through, she would be safe.

Before her she could see the foot of a stairway. The light barely touched it, showing only a few horizontal edges highlighted against the prevailing murk. She hurtled up the stairs, using hands as well as feet.

Her fingers slipped on slime—some mold that grew in the dark, or else the trail of something she did not care to meet. Shuddering, she pulled her hands away and tried to ignore the slick sensation beneath her running feet.

The stairway was steep, going up and up an irregular slope. At the top of the stairs she froze, counting on the darkness to hide her. Slowly, careful of the long drop at her feet, she turned and looked down, her stomach cold.

The wolf was nosing the bottom step as if it wasn't sure it wanted to make the effort to climb. From Holly's vantage point he was a shapeless mass of dark brown fur, his head a matted wedge. He put one massive paw on the bottom step, and she could hear the clack of the scythe-sharp claws over his wet, slurping snuffle.

Surely a wolf could smell my trail? Maybe it was a wolf with a sinus disorder. Maybe it was senile. Silence might save her, make it forget she was there.

She barely dared to breathe. Behind her, in the unseen tunnel, she could hear the distant moaning of wind. Grit and dust sifted over her toes, blown by an errant gust of air.

Holly's gaze stayed locked on the wolf. He lifted his head, looking from side to side and making a doggy whine of boredom. She dared let a tendril of hope unfurl in her breast.

Then some thing crawled over Holly's foot. Instinctively she flicked it away. The infinitesimal scritch of the creature's carapace hitting the stone floor was enough. Ears pricked. The wolf's eyes, crimson as sin, looked up into hers. Hecate!

Spinning, Holly resumed her flight, shadows and puddles of torchlight mottling the long hall. The passageway angled, breaking her line of sight. There were rooms branching off the passage, and she was running out of strength.

Holly ducked into a large room on her left, curling into the darkest corner. Here the movement of air gave the impression of a high ceiling. It almost smelled fresh.

Then it smelled like wolf. Two eyes like red coals peered through the door.

'Viktor!' bellowed healthy male lungs. The echo bounced through the stone halls.

The wolf whined, backing away.

'Viktor!'

The wolf barked, a deep, hair-raising woof. With a scrabble of nails on stone, the thing lolloped away to answer its master's voice.

Holly slid up the wall, trembling. Something brushed her cheek and she jumped, barely stifling a squeak. She slapped at it, finally realizing it was only cloth. Her foot sank into something soft, and she bent to touch it. Carpet.

This was no prisoner's cell.

Alessandro prowled the stone corridors, sword drawn. He was growing weaker, blackness edging his vision. Omara was right: He was pushing his endurance to a foolish degree, but he could feel Holly's presence now. The blood bond between them had been erased by the sheer volume of power she had channeled, but a connection remained. He knew where she was as surely as the ocean felt the pull of the moon.

However, knowing where she was and getting there were two different things. The Castle was a maze filled with unpleasant surprises, some of them large and furry.

Others told dire stories. He found The Book of Lies, the cover bloodied and torn, lying abandoned in one passageway. If Pierce drove away from the campus, how did the book get here? Who had taken it? There was no way to know. Alessandro picked it up. It could well be their ticket out of the Castle.

And then, an hour into his search, he discovered a woman's body, facedown. From the camouflage pattern on the outfit and the long fair hair, he knew it was Geneva.

He crept up on her slowly, unwilling to make any assumptions. There was no heartbeat, no respiration, but then demons were smoke and energy. They didn't need to breathe.

He drew close enough to nudge her gently with the tip of his sword.

Nothing. He placed his sword down close at hand and knelt by her, feeling a strange familiarity with the