“Wait, where’s Marty?” I called out, not seeing him through the sea of guards that had surrounded me.

“Go on, I’ll catch up!” I heard Marty yell before more communications from the guards’ wires and multiple footsteps on the stone staircase drowned out his voice.

“To the dungeon!” Samir said, shooting me an apologetic look as he added, “it’s the deepest underground part of the castle, so the surrounding rock will protect you.”

Did he really think I’d pick now to be snooty about my accommodations? “Will it be big enough to fit everyone?”

Samir wasn’t the only one who looked at me like I was crazy. “We stay above to fight,” the blond named Christian said.

I put on the brakes at that, but it had as much effect as a leaf trying to stop the raging river it was floating in. “I’m not huddling below while the rest of you risk your lives!”

They kept propelling me down the narrow passageway as if I hadn’t spoken, moving so fast that I barely saw us being waved through the first two security doors that led to the dungeon. When we reached the third, I tore my gloves off. Light suffused my right hand, casting a bright glow in the unlit tunnel.

“Stop!” I demanded.

They ran even faster, ushering me through the foot-thick metal door that was the entrance to the dungeon. Frustration made my hand spark. Vlad. He must’ve threatened them with something awful if they didn’t get me to a safe place in the event of an emergency. Either I hurt them for their obedience—which I couldn’t do—or I switched tactics. They wouldn’t let me fight, but maybe I could protect some of them another way.

I pulled my right hand tight to my body and put all the command I could muster into my voice. “Send all the humans in the house down here with me. They can’t help in the fight and they could, um, get in the way if they stay up there.”

“Get them,” Samir said, and one of the guards ran back through the dungeon’s entrance. I sighed in relief, then nearly choked at the odor that seemed to shoot up my nose. I’d forgotten how this place reeked, as if the dungeon’s oppressive atmosphere, manacles, and other gruesome devices weren’t unpleasant enough.

Samir barked more orders at the guards, who half dragged, half carried me past the stone monolith that marked the first section of the dungeon. Then I was whisked past the various “information extraction” devices in the second, larger section before we came to the third, where the roof abruptly sloped and the walls shrank until the passageway was as tight as the narrow staircase leading down here.

It was also so dark I had to squint despite my supernaturally enhanced vision. Cells lined the cold stone walls, their height maxing out at four feet, restricting their unlucky occupants to a permanent stoop. The last time I’d been here, Maximus had been the dungeon’s only prisoner, and he’d been in one of the regular-sized cells at the end of this row. This time, the squat cells around me weren’t empty.

Since we were now at the end of the dungeon, the guards finally stopped shoving/carrying me. As my eyes adjusted, I saw Shrapnel, Vlad’s former third-in-command, in the cell to my left. He’d been down here ever since he got busted for betraying Vlad to an associate of Szilagyi’s, not to mention the part where he drove me off a cliff trying to kill me. Thick silver chains hung from Shrapnel’s wrists and ankles, their length secured into the stone floor with a large clamp. I met his dark eyes and felt a flash of pity as he looked from me to the cell across the hall from his. It was the only other occupied one in this section of the dungeon, and in it was the woman Shrapnel had betrayed Vlad for. I doubted it was an accident that Shrapnel’s cell was positioned so that he had an unrestricted view of her.

Something soot-smeared flung itself against that cell’s bars as I neared it, then grunting sounds emerged from a mouth filled with a spiked ball-gag of silver. If I didn’t already know who it had to be, I wouldn’t have recognized Vlad’s former girlfriend, Cynthiana. She looked even more terrible than the last time I’d seen her, and Vlad had been torching information out of her back then.

Cynthiana’s long, lustrous brown hair was gone, replaced by a bald skull that was as soot covered as the rest of her. She couldn’t speak past the hideous gag that kept her from uttering spells like the one that had killed me, but her glare conveyed her hatred. She was tiny compared to her tall, heavily muscled lover, yet Cynthiana had more shackles than Shrapnel. Every part of her was bound with silver chain, leaving only her fingers free. Even in her pitiful condition, she wasn’t cowed. Two middle fingers shot up at me as we stared at each other.

Alexandru began to rebuke Cynthiana, as if that would do any good. Out of all the crimes that had landed Vlad’s former girlfriend in the worst part of his dungeon, cowardice hadn’t been among them. She glared at him, twisting her fingers in such a way that the clear translation was Fuck you in the ass!

If the situation hadn’t been so ominous, I might’ve made a mental note of how she did that. Instead, being in the dungeon’s deepest, darkest—and thus safest—region only highlighted the fact that something terrible was about to happen.

“Alexandru, Petre, Dorian, stay here,” Samir said, leaving the corridor of cells at a run. “Protejati-o cu vietile voastre!”

I knew what that last sentence meant because I’d heard Vlad say it many times. Protect her with your lives. My gut twisted. I might be safe with the guards and the half mile of rock between me and the impending attack, but what about Marty and everyone else? The only person who could contain the fiery fallout from an air strike wasn’t home at the moment!