He looked vaguely familiar, though I couldn’t think where I’d seen him before.
Maybe I’d run into him in the Quarter. Maybe he’d been one of my marks — one who’d escaped a staking.
“Who I am doesn’t matter,” said the vampire. “I am the Watchman’s prisoner. But you . . .” His eyes flashed with something like desperation. “He doesn’t know you’re here.”
“Lyra!” Adriel snapped from the corridor. I could hear the urgency in his tone, and the much louder sloshing of water from below told me why.
“Go!” the vampire urged.
But my feet remained rooted to the spot, the back of myneck prickling with a strange sense of knowing. “How long have you been here?”
“Five thousand eight hundred and sixty-one days.”
My heart shot into my throat.
“Go,” he repeated. “You are the only one who can end Semphrys. Hemustbe stopped.”
At the mention of the demon king, I turned and stumbled after Adriel, wondering why a vampire trapped in the in-between would care what became of Semphrys.
We rounded a corner to find another flight of stairs that wound along the inside of the tower, but as soon as we resumed our ascent, my stomach bottomed out.
The stairwell emerged in an open cavern, and I could see water rushing in through openings in the tower below.
Quickening my pace, I trailed after Adriel and Sorsha, yelping when the edge of the narrow step crumbled beneath my boot. I lurched sideways as I fell, gripping the rough rock for purchase.
Dragging in a ragged breath, I pulled myself up. Adriel and Sorsha had halted their ascent, but they weren’t looking at me. Their gazes were fixed on a spot high above their heads.
Then I realized why they’d stopped.
The rocky steps had crumbled away, leaving a gap of at least twelve feet between where they stood and the entrance to the topmost chamber — the chamber with the portal.
Stumbling up to join them, I evaluated our options. The tower narrowed at the top, with only ten feet of space at the center. There wasn’t enough room for Adriel to fly us in without shredding his wings on the rough stone.
“We’ll have to climb,” he said grimly.
My mouth went dry. The inside of the tower was hewnfrom the same rough rock as everything else, but there was little in the way of handholds.
Glancing down at the water filling the tower, I realized it had risen at a much faster rate than I’d anticipated. A powerful whirlpool had formed in the center, as though the Watchman had somehow sensed intruders in his fortress and was commanding the sea to devour us.
Sorsha and I exchanged a glance.
“Fine,” I said, sheathing my blades and scouring the tower wall to identify the best way up. “I’ll go first.”
It was my fault we’d all ended up here. I would make the climb.
Adriel’s throat bobbed, but he didn’t protest. He knew it was the logical choice.
I was the smallest. If the protrusions in the crumbling rock couldn’t hold my weight, there was no sense in them risking the drop to the violently churning water below.
Sorsha gave me a quick squeeze, and I found my first handhold. Pulling myself up, I used the slight indent in the stone wall as a crude ledge for my foot.
A few inches above my hand, I spotted another bump in the rock and placed my other hand there.
I climbed up the wall at a cautious pace, trying to ignore the frantic throb of blood in my ears and the rush of water below.
I didn’t dare look down. I knew I’d see nothing but a perilous drop into that churning black water.
As I neared the opening that led to the topmost chamber, I realized I had a problem. There was only one good handhold left, and it was just barely out of reach.
