“And now?” Ashley said, the tone of her voice bordering on desperate.

I didn’t answer, although I knew the question was directed at me. All eyes were on me now, waiting for my answer. I moved away from all of them and walked further up the rocks. I sat down on the edge, glad that nobody followed me. I didn’t even want Kiev next to me right now. I just needed to be alone.

I took a deep breath, inhaling the crisp sea air and closing my tired eyes.

Magnus.

Where are you?

The fact that Rhys had left us so quickly when he should have at least caused some injury to us after the beating we had given his people in The Shade was deeply disturbing. I knew Rhys. If he was after Magnus, he would not stop until he found him. I didn’t know whether the vampire was crucial to their ritual, but clearly he was important, otherwise Rhys would not be wasting Lilith’s precious time searching for him.

We just seemed to be looking in all the wrong places. At least in The Blood Keep, The Tavern and The Cove we had managed to get some clue as to where to search next, but here… it seemed like we had met a dead end. Nobody had even heard of Magnus.

“What are we going to do?” Ashley repeated her question, and this time I answered. There was no point in denying it to myself any longer:

“I don’t know.”

Chapter 15: Rhys

Mona and her companions’ appearance was certainly unexpected. And the thought that they were on to Magnus too was disturbing. But as much as it had been tempting to stay and finish them off, I had more pressing matters to attend to.

I did believe the chieftain when he told me that he did not know where Magnus was. Now I had to be sure that other chieftains hadn’t seen Magnus either. Even if Magnus had befriended the werewolves, there was no way that they would risk their lives for a vampire. It just wasn’t done by werewolves—at least not the wolves of The Woodlands. I traveled quickly from pack to pack, following much the same procedure as in the first chieftain’s mountain. I eliminated all who were in my way by putting them to sleep. After meeting with the sixth chieftain, I stopped. None of them so far had seen a vampire named Magnus.

I have to rethink what I’m doing.

A feeling in my gut told me that even if I took the time—time I did not have—to meet with every single chieftain in this realm, I still would not find Magnus.

But where could that vampire have gotten to?

How could he have made it out of the realm without attracting the attention of even one werewolf?

Besides, he would have been weak on waking. He wouldn’t have had any blood in years.

I had to think carefully about what my next step should be.

One option was just return to Lilith now, perform the ritual without Magnus, and hope for the best. But I hated the idea of yet another defeat. And we were much more likely to succeed if we had Magnus present. There was no doubt about it.

I have to find that damn vampire.

Having just left another pack, I entered the woods and paced up and down among the trees, breathing deeply and trying to clear my mind.

It was only after a few minutes that I realized that I had come full circle back to the mountain where I had put Magnus into slumber. I wasn’t sure why, but something made me vanish myself back up to it. I entered through the open wall. I looked around the dark quiet chamber. I moved toward the open container where the vampire’s body had lain.

I asked myself for what felt like the hundredth time: how had he escaped?

At the time, I had thought that I had secured him so expertly. Could I have been so delusional in my capabilities that even a mere vampire could escape my spells? I just could not believe it possible. As I looked around the room, I remembered how much effort I had put in to making sure there were no loopholes. Not even a skilled witch of the Sanctuary could have broken through the spells I’d put on this place. I was sure of it.

Now that I was taking more time to think—and I had recovered from the shock of seeing the container empty—I realized that I had acted too rashly before. Searching among the werewolves had been a waste of time. I felt like a fool. Of course they had not seen him.

Because Magnus had never escaped this chamber.

I should have realized what had really happened here right from the beginning…

Chapter 16: Mona

“You can’t just say that,” Ashley said. “We are relying on you.”

I stood up, looking over them all with a heavy heart. “I can’t lie to you. I have no idea where we go from here. We have hit a dead end.”

Magnus could be anywhere within this whole supernatural realm—heck, he could even be back in the human realm. It was worse than trying to find a needle in a haystack.

And now we didn’t even have any more leads. Not even a single straw to cling to that might lead us to his whereabouts.

“So what? We just… give up?” Rose asked.

“We can’t give up,” Derek said. “We have to end Lilith, or all that has happened until now will only be the beginning of our troubles.”

“I don’t know what you want me to say,” I snapped. The pressure was getting to me.

Because I had spent so much time with the black witches and I knew most about them, it felt like the responsibility fell on my shoulders for leading everyone in the right direction. I wished that someone else could take on this burden for a change.

“Where is the nearest realm to this one?” Kiev asked. “Perhaps Magnus made it there, and perhaps they might have some clue as to where he is.”