I fist my hands, furious at this turn of events.

I was a kiss away—okay, maybe a few nights of sleeping with the enemy and despising myself more than I ever thought possible—from getting what I wanted. But it was going to happen. I was gaining his trust. I’d seen it in his eyes. He was going to confide in me. He was going to tell me all his secrets and I was going to kill him and fix the world.

And now his head is no longer on his body, and I don’t know what I needed to know, and I can’t live in this hellish reality for the months it could take me to get the four, the five, and the prophecy.

My entire mission was distilled to one goal—and now that goal is tottering, decapitated, in front of me!

It’s a total bust.

I let him touch me for nothing.

I stare at the bloody stump of his neck as his body staggers in a small circle without a head. I’m astounded he’s still moving. It must be the Unseelie in his veins.

He stumbles and collapses to the ground. Somewhere nearby, I hear garbled sounds. Oh, God, his head is still talking.

Good! Can he form sentences? I’m in a strong bargaining position. Tell me what I want, and I’ll put your head back on.

I frown. Where are the princes? Why didn’t they protect him? Wait a minute! Who did this to him?

Am I next?

I glance wildly around.

“Whuh,” I manage. I can’t process it.

Sidhe-seer, the Hunter purrs in my mind.

I stare blankly. The Hunter that Darroc summoned for us to ride is crouched a dozen paces away, dangling Darroc’s head by the hair, swinging it from a taloned claw.

If Hunters smile, this one is. Leathery lips crack on saber teeth, and it oozes amusement.

Its … hand, for lack of a better word, is the size of a small car. How did it so tidily rip off Darroc’s head?

Did it pinch it off with its talons? It happened absurdly fast.

Why would it kill him?

Darroc was allied with the Hunters. It was the Hunters that taught him to eat Unseelie. Did they—as I once warned him they would—tire of him and turn on him?

I reach for my spear. It’s back. Great, the princes are definitely gone. But before I can pull it out, the Hunter laughs, dry and dusty, in my mind, and I am assaulted by a sense of age that defies time, of sanity that was forged down a long path of madness. It was muting itself before. This one is very different from the other Hunters.

I wouldn’t be surprised to discover it was the granddaddy of them all.

It calls itself K’Vruck. Humans have no word for it. It means a state beyond death. Death is small compared to K’Vruck.

“Huh?” I stammer. The voice was in my mind.

K’Vruck is so much more complete than death. It is the reduction of matter to a state of utter inertness, from which nothing can ever rise again. It is less than nothing. Nothing is something. K’Vruck is absolute. Your species would postulate the loss of soul to try to wrap their puny brains around it.

I stiffen. I know this voice. This mockery. My spear will be no use against it. If I kill the Hunter, it would probably just hop a ride on me.

I will tell you a secret, it says silkily. You do go on. Humans. Unless you are—it laughs softly—K’Vrucked.

I suck in a ragged breath.

MacKayla, I permit none to control me. Darroc will never use his shortcut, and you will never learn it.

The Hunter pops Darroc’s head like a grape. Hair and bone slap to the pavement. And now that I’m no longer transfixed by the gory sight, I see what the Hunter holds in its other hand. Had been holding all along.

I back away faster.

There was never any chance that Darroc and I would soar up into the night, and hunt the Sinsar Dubh.

It beat us to the punch.

It hitched a ride on our Hunter and came to us.

And here I am, helpless. I have no stones, my spear is useless—

The amulet! When the Hunter ripped Darroc’s head off, it stayed on his body! I feint a wild glance around, trying hard to look at nothing in particular and everything, to keep from telegraphing my intentions.

Where the hell are the princes? They could sift me out of here! What did they do—vanish the moment Darroc was killed? Cowards!

It’s there! When Darroc’s body collapsed to the ground, the amulet slid off the stump of his neck. Silver and gold, it’s lying in a pool of blood, a dozen feet from me! I have power in my glassy lake. With the amulet to reinforce me, is it enough to hold my own?

I turn inward to step onto my black-pebbled beach, but that damned wall springs up before I can get there. The Sinsar Dubh laughs. I fractured this wall last night. I’ll do it tonight or die trying.

Power is earned, and you have not.

I don’t need to look to know it’s rising, separating from the Hunter, soaring up, becoming the towering Beast form of the Book, getting ready to crush me with pain.

Or, who knows this time? Maybe worse. Maybe it’s going to K’Vruck me.

I lunge forward and grab. My fingers brush the chain. I’ve got it! I’m pulling it toward me!

Then suddenly something slams into my side, and the amulet is knocked from my grasp and gone. My arm is caught at a bad angle, extended mid-reach, and I hear it snap as I’m pushed into a long, helpless slide on my side, scraping pavement. My head hits the ground and my forehead drags. I feel skin ripping away.

Then I’m being picked up and tossed into the air. I glance wildly around but don’t see the amulet anywhere. As I come down, someone flings me over their shoulder. My hair is in my face, my arm dangles limply, and my forehead is bleeding into my eyes. I nearly scalped myself on the pavement.

Everything is moving so fast it’s a blur.

Superstrength. Superspeed. I feel motion sickness coming on.

“Dani?” I gasp. Did she come to save me, even though I was such a bitch and drove her away?

“Dani, no! I need the amulet!”

I hang upside down, watching pavement whiz by.

“Dani, stop!”

But she doesn’t. I hear snarling receding rapidly behind us.

The Hunter roars.

Bloodcurdling howls shatter the night.

I jerk. I know those sounds. I’ve heard them before.

“Take me back, take me back!” I scream, but for an entirely different reason now. Who are they—these beasts that sound like Barrons? I need to know!

“Dani, you have to take me back!”

But she doesn’t. She keeps running. Doesn’t listen to a word I say. She runs me straight to the one place I never want to see again.

Barrons Books and Baubles.

My first suspicion that it wasn’t Dani carrying me reared its head when we blasted through the front door of the bookstore.

Or, rather, that suspicion turned its head and licked blood from the back of my thigh.

Unless Dani had some serious issues I didn’t know about, this wasn’t her shoulder I was over.

It licked me again, dragging its tongue across my leg, just beneath the curve of my ass. My dress was hitched up, trapped between my stomach and its shoulder. It bit me. Hard.

“Ow!”

With fangs. Not deep enough to draw blood but enough to sting. I wiped my sleeve across my face, scrubbing blood from my eyes with the fur cuff.

I was dazed by Darroc’s abrupt murder and my shock over K’Vruck being the Book. If I’d been thinking clearly, I’d have known from the first that I was much too high from the ground for it to have been Dani. Several feet too high.

The shoulder I was over was massive, as was the rest of it, but it was too dark to see clearly. Rooftop spotlights no longer illuminated the exterior of the bookstore, nor did the customary amber glow bathe the interior. There was only the light of a three-quarter moon, spilling in through tall windows.