Page 110 of Roguefinder

The opera house was on fire.

On the ground, Carlo’s body collapsed into ash. Just gone, like he’d been freeze-dried and someone tapped him with a hammer, leaving a pile of vaguely Carlo-shaped dust.

Why not? Add it to the list of weird shit.

More shrieks echoed from the hall. I twisted the tubing until my knuckles went white and tied it off. My hands came away slick and red.

“Finished.”

“Good boy,” Jesse said. “Let’s go.”

We raced out of the operating room. Fire licked over the walls. Stone crumbled and smashed on the floor. Alonzo staggered from a corridor, screaming, flames wreathing his bald head. He crashed to his knees and hit the stone face-first. The smell of cooked meat hit my lungs.

I gagged. Jesse grabbed my arm, and we kept running.

We tore down the corridor, found a stairwell, and climbed. Smoke poured down the stairs in gray waterfalls. My lungs burned, and sweat stung my eyes. Jesse kept us moving, his good hand planted in the small of my back.

We ascended one level. Two. Three.

“How deep is this fucking basement?” I wheezed.

Jesse didn’t answer. Just kept us climbing.

At last, we burst into the corridor on the main level and hurried toward the foyer. The gilded mirrors were cracking in the heat, splitting our reflections into hundreds of pieces. Above us, the chandeliers swayed, crystals chattering like teeth.

Alessia stumbled from a hallway looking like the “after” in one of those scared-straight mugshot progressions. The woman who’d vaulted a six-foot fence was gone. Her dark hair was wild around her soot-streaked face. She was gaunt and waxen, her lips cracked and bleeding. Her skin was papery and loose, and she’d aged about a thousand years.

I moved in front of Jesse, but he stepped around me.

Alessia clutched at him. “It’s done!”

I grabbed her arm. “Get off him!”

“Let her speak,” Jesse said, gripping her with his good hand. “What’s done?”

She shook her head, gasping. “Not what. Who. A man. He called himself Dun. He walked through walls. The master never feared anything. But when this man came, the master wouldn’t meet his eyes. He did whatever Dun asked.”

Jesse’s expression sharpened. “What did he want?”

“He brought blood. It was—” She coughed, clawing at her throat. Same as Carlo. It was like something didn’t want her to speak.

More screams echoed somewhere deeper in the building. Down the hall, the ceiling collapsed in a roar of sparks and dust.

Alessia cried out and cringed away from Jesse like his grip burned. She babbled something in Italian, her whole body shuddering.

“What’s wrong with her?” I asked.

“Withdrawal,” Jesse said grimly. He gave her a light shake. “What kind of blood?” When she didn’t answer, he shook her again and raised his voice. “What kind of blood did Dun give Carlo?”

Her eyes went wild, the whites showing all the way around. “I d-don’t know what it was! Only that it was old. The master was careful with it. Afraid of it. He used it on the wolves he kept.” She gasped, cracked lips bleeding. “The master thought the experiment failed. But Dun said no. He said the wolf who escaped—” She gagged. Tears tracked through the soot on her face.

“Ulfrik?” Jesse demanded.

She nodded, coughing and cringing. “Dun said he was proof the experiment worked.”

Jesse and I looked at each other.

He turned back to Alessia. “Ulfrik escaped because whatever was in that blood kept him lucid enough to function? He wasn’t fully rogue?”