“Shut up,” Jamie whispered, and Larissa turned to look at him. She cocked her head, but he looked away; he couldn’t bear to see her, was struggling to tolerate being anywhere near her. She reached over and touched his arm, and when he looked into her pale, beautiful face, she smiled at him, an expression of placation, of apology. He didn’t return it; he just stared into her wide eyes and waited for her to drop her gaze. After a few seconds, she did so, and he returned his eyes to the floor of the helicopter.

“Ninety seconds,” said the pilot, his voice crackling over the intercom.

Frankenstein reached above his seat and pulled his helmet down into his lap. He drew the weapons from his belt and checked them quickly, before replacing them in their loops and holsters. Morris did the same, removing the magazine from his MP5, checking it, and clicking it back into place.

“You won’t need those,” said Larissa. “There won’t be anyone here.”

“This may be a surprise to you,” replied Frankenstein. “But I don’t believe a single word that comes out of your mouth.”

Larissa laughed. “You think I care whether you believe me?” she asked.

“No,” replied Frankenstein. “I’m sure you don’t. But I am sure you care what he thinks.” He gestured toward Jamie, who looked up at him. “Am I wrong?”

Larissa looked away.

“That’s what I thought,” said the monster, as the helicopter touched down.

The four passengers leapt down into a dark farmyard. A large metal shed rose in front of them, tractors and other farm machinery looming in the darkness, a round grain store standing silently to their left. To their right sat the farmhouse, a squat building of pale stone behind a neatly kept lawn and two long flowerbeds. There were no lights on in the house and no smoke rose from the chimney.

Morris pressed a button at the rear of the helicopter, and a huge door lowered to the ground with a deafening hiss. He walked up into the hold and out of sight. Frankenstein, Jamie, and Larissa waited in the yard, until they heard an engine fire into life, and a black SUV slowly reversed down onto the tarmac.

“What’s going on?” asked Larissa.

“The helicopter needs to be back at the Loop,” said Frankenstein. “It was checked out for a training flight. It can’t be gone any longer without someone asking questions. We’ll drive home.”

Morris brought the car to a halt and got out. Frankenstein led them forward, his T-Bone outstretched in front of him. He tried the handle on the front door of the farmhouse, and it turned in his hand. He eased it open, reached inside, and flicked a light switch on the wall by the door. The bulb burst into life, bathing a homely, rustic kitchen in warm yellow light. He held the door open, but Jamie paused.

“Give me the detonator, Tom,” he said.

Morris gave him a questioning look, but passed him the cylinder. Jamie wrapped his fingers around it and rested his thumb near the button on the top. “All right,” he said, and walked into the farmhouse, ignoring the look on Larissa’s face as he passed her.

The rest of the team filed silently inside, Morris closing the door behind them.

“Where’s the family?” asked Frankenstein.

Larissa stared at him. “Where do you think?” she asked. “They’re gone.”

“God damn you,” muttered the monster. “You and all the rest of your kind.”

Jamie walked through the kitchen, around a battered wooden dining table, and led them into the rest of the house.

It was empty, as Larissa had promised it would be.

They stood silently in the kitchen. Jamie’s head was lowered, his mind racing with one terrible image of his mother after another. Morris was looking nervously at the door, desire to leave this place and return to the Loop written all over his face. Larissa was watching Jamie, an expression of shame on her face, and Frankenstein was staring at the vampire girl so intently he didn’t appear to be blinking.

“Everything about you is a lie, isn’t it?” he said eventually, his voice low.

Larissa returned his gaze, and sneered. “You don’t know anything about me,” she spit. “Nothing.”

Frankenstein’s gaze didn’t so much as flicker. “I think I do,” he said, softly. “I think I know a lot about you. Do you want to hear what I think?”

“I really don’t care,” Larissa snapped. “If you’ve got something to say, get on with it.”

Frankenstein nodded. “I don’t think you’ve ever killed a single thing in your life. I think you’re a scared little girl who was pretty enough for Alexandru not to kill her. I think you were terrified of him, and I think you probably spent every second of every day looking for a way to escape from him. But I think you were too scared to try it. Am I warm?”

Larissa looked away, and the monster continued. “I think you probably lied about the men and women you killed until Alexandru believed you, probably until you even started to believe it a little bit yourself. I think you probably survived on the leftovers of others’ kills and on animals when you could find them. I think you lied, and lied and lied so much that you made Alexandru believe you were almost as bad as him, although if you’d asked the rest of his followers, I bet none of them would remember ever seeing you take a life. I think that’s why you were entrusted with killing Jamie.”

The monster’s voice was rising now, thick fury spilling into it. “I don’t think you spared Jamie; I don’t think you could do it, when it came down to it. I don’t think you could kill him. And while I’m grateful for your weakness, your lies and your bravado and your criminal selfishness have wasted time that could have been spent looking for Marie Carpenter, time we did not have to spare. And if we’re too late to help her because of the time and attention we wasted on you, wasted on a pathetic little vampire girl we would have been better off letting you die in the garden where Alexandru dropped you, then so help me God I will make you pay for it for the rest of your days!”

Frankenstein was visibly shaking, his great shoulders trembling with anger.

“Look at me!” he roared, and Larissa, whose head was turned toward the wall, jumped. “If you can’t, then look at him at least! Do him that courtesy, after you’ve wasted our time and left his mother in the hands of a madman! Look at him!”

Larissa’s shoulders hunched, then she slowly turned back to face them. Jamie felt a gasp rise in his throat as he saw her face.

The vampire was crying.

Tears ran down her pale cheeks, leaving narrow lines that glistened under the electric light above the table. Her expression was one of utter misery, and she looked at Jamie with pain etched across her face.

“The night your mother was taken. After you left me in the park,” she said, her voice barely audible, “I ran. I got a couple of miles before Anderson caught me and brought me back to him.” She spit this last word, her face momentarily curling with disgust. “Alexandru pulled me into the air, smiling, telling me he had to teach me a lesson, talking to me like everything was normal. Then he beat me until I lost consciousness and dropped me out of the sky.”

She looked at Frankenstein and hate twitched across her face. “You’re right,” she continued. “I’ve never killed anyone. Never hurt anyone, until the soldier and the boy in the garden, and I didn’t mean to hurt them. I was in so much pain, I can’t even—”

Larissa looked away, composed herself, then looked directly at Jamie.

“I’m sorry,” she whispered. “I truly am. I thought you’d kill me if you thought I didn’t know anything, and I don’t want to die. I haven’t had a chance to live, not yet. I don’t want to die.”

“Why take us to Valhalla?” asked Jamie, quietly. “Why lead us on a wild-goose chase?”

“It was all I could think to do. I know you think I led you there to get even with Grey, but that wasn’t it. I just knew I couldn’t stall you anymore, and I couldn’t think of anywhere else, and I thought that if it was the last time I was going to see the outside world then at least I could see the person who did this to me and—” she broke off, fresh tears pouring down her face.