The rift was closing. Drago was still inside the underworld.
“No,” Alexander rasped.
With the last shred of strength he had, he shoved at Drago, trying to force him toward the slowly narrowing opening.
But Drago shoved back, harder. Before Alexander could react, the ground beneath him lurched. The veil swallowed and spat him out the other side.
He slammed into the ground, air rushing from his lungs as the impact rattled through his bones. For a moment the sky spun above him, his ears ringing.
Then he was on his feet.
“Drago!” he shouted, lunging toward the veil.
But arms wrapped around him from behind, locking tight around his chest and dragging him back.
“Let me go!” he snarled, thrashing violently.
Alexander lashed out blindly, the madness surging back into his veins like poison. He felt it swallow his thoughts again, burning away reason as the image of his brother trapped in hell flashed through his mind.
He’d left him there. Left him to die.
The realization broke something deep inside his mind. The last fragile thread of control dissolved into rage.
After that… he didn’t know what happened.
***
The coffin sat in the center of the cellar, its iron surface gleaming dully beneath the flickering torchlight. Shadows slithered over the metal like living things. Father Claremore trembled where he stood, clutching a wooden crucifix so tightly between his fingers that his knuckles had turned white.
Boaz hauled the last of the chains into place, looping them around the metal coffin with grim determination. The scrape and clatter of iron grinding against iron echoed through the cavernous chamber, each sound a reminder of the nightmare they had barely survived.
Father Claremore’s gaze darted nervously to the small trapdoor built into the lid of the coffin, the narrow opening through which they could still see the vampire inside.
A cold shudder crept up his spine.
If only they had found a coffin that would plunge the creature into complete, merciless darkness. It deserved nothing less. But the blacksmith had only this one. A grotesque iron display coffin once used to show the strange preserved bodies the church shipped in from distant lands—lands they had no business disturbing in the first place.
Raising curses from the dead to the living. That was what they had done.
No wonder the world had almost ended.
Father Claremore crossed himself quickly, his lips moving in a silent prayer.
“That should do it,” Boaz muttered at last, stepping back. His massive shoulders rose and fell with exhaustion.
The fight had drained them all. But it wasn’t the battle with the demons that had nearly broken them.
No. It was the fight with the vampire… the moment he had suddenly gone mad, turning on everyone around him like a wild beast, forcing them to battle the very being they had just fought beside.
Father Claremore couldn’t remember how many souls he had ushered into the afterlife before the vampire finally fell.
Too many.
The demons pouring from the veil had been terrifying… but nothing like the vampire. The vampire’s red eyes were burned into his memory. And the blood. God help him, the blood dripping from its white fangs. A sight he knew would follow him for the rest of his life.
“Do you think that’s going to hold him?” Manlius asked quietly.
He stepped closer to the coffin, his long white robes whispering against the stone floor as they rippled around his tall frame.