His head had come off by the time we reached the first landing.

For a few moments, I was so exhausted that I sat with it in my lap. Then, I threw it aside, hearing it bounce its way down the rest of the steep staircase. The lions had collapsed as soon as the ghoul’s head came off. Now, they were a collection of scattered stones on the steps instead of the solid, lethal creatures they’d been moments before.

I stepped over those stones as I climbed back up the steps. I was almost at the tunnel’s entrance when I saw a man crouched about twenty meters away. He had a long, tubelike object balanced on his shoulder that was pointed right at me—

Oh, shit!

I retreated into the tunnel, then was hurtled backward from the tremendous explosion.

Everything. Hurt.

I opened my eyes, then shut them when they immediately filled with gravel. I tried to wipe that away, but my arms were pinned. So were my legs. I couldn’t even wiggle.

Panic rose. I fought it back while trying to remember what had happened. That’s right, the man outside the tunnel had pointed some kind of rocket launcher or other military-grade weapon at me. I’d flown back into the tunnel to avoid getting shot, but from the taste of blood and gravel in my mouth, the tunnel had collapsed on top of me.

If I had any room to move, I could use my formidable strength to begin digging out of this. But my arms and legs were pinned beneath multiple heavy rocks. How long would it be until people started clearing away the stones? Mycenae wasn’t the most popular tourist destination in Greece. Worse, the cistern was hardly the most famous aspect of the ruins.

What if no one bothered to clear away the rocks for weeks? Or longer?

And what if the man who’d blown up the tunnel decided to make sure I didn’t survive? Enough flame accelerant poured on top of the rocks would eventually reach me. Then all it would take was a match to turn my prison into a stone-lined inferno . . .

Don’t panic! I thought, feeling it rise again. You can’t move, but that does not mean you’re helpless.

I concentrated on the magic inside me, bringing it forth while trying to ignore the continuous pain from the heavy stones. When I had enough, I sent that magic out to coat the stones around me. After that, I whispered a spell to form a perimeter around those stones. I was light-headed by the time I finished, but the magic was now as ready as a cocked gun.

I pulled the trigger. The stones around me exploded so thoroughly, they disintegrated into sand. The ones of top of those didn’t collapse into the empty cavern that now formed around me, either. The perimeter I’d made held them up.

I got up slowly, wincing at the many shards my body expelled as I healed. My ears still rang from the explosion, but soon they healed, too. It would take everything I had, but I could repeat this process all the way to the surface. Thankfully, it wasn’t too far . . . What was that?

I listened harder, catching faint fragments from an argument several meters above me.

“. . . felt that explosion? I told you, she’s not fucking dead,” a male voice snarled.

“. . . still can’t stay. Sun’s coming up!” Different male voice.

It was? I’d been unconscious for over an hour, then. My head must have been badly crushed by the initial cave-in.

“. . . we go back without her . . . dead anyway,” the first man said.

“Then you stay and burn!”

Only one species burned in sunlight. Demons. I gave my stony prison a grimly appreciative look. All those rocks crushing me had also saved me. Without any empty space around me, the demons had had nothing to teleport into.

Now they did. I searched through the centimeters of crushed gravel on the ground for my weapon’s satchel. At some point, it had been ripped from my neck. But I didn’t find it, and magic didn’t work on demons.

I put the rock wall to my back and readied myself to attack. I’d fought demons weaponless before. All I had to do was use their own bones to stab their eyes out—

A tall man teleported in, his back to me. I hurled myself at him, only to pull back my fists when I recognized his frame and the shoulder-length auburn hair that swung as he whirled to face me. My momentum still made me crash into him, though, and he laughed as he caught me.

“Running into my arms? You really don’t like it down here.”

Another rock must have crushed my head and caused me to hallucinate. That was the only logical explanation for Ian being the person whose arms were around me now.

“How are you down here?” I said in disbelief.

In reply, his arms tightened. A nauseating blur later, we were at the entrance of the tunnel instead of trapped inside it. Cat hadn’t been exaggerating about Ian’s teleporting skills. No wonder she and Bones hadn’t been able to keep or catch him.

“No great mystery as to where you were,” he replied. “Those sods,” a nod at the nearby bodies of two men with smoldering eye sockets, “were arguing about which of them would risk the rising sun to teleport down there and kill you. I stabbed their eyes out before they realized a vampire had teleported into their midst instead of one of their own kind. Almost too easy—”

“But how did you know I was in Mycenae?” I interrupted.

His turquoise gaze gleamed with emerald. “Think I didn’t know you’d flee the first chance you got? Didn’t expect the villa spell, but by then my tracker was already in place.”

I still felt like this couldn’t be real, but I began searching my jacket pockets for the tracker anyway.

He only winked. “If we were playing hot and cold, you’d be icy right now.”

“Then where is it?” I asked, still reeling.

“Don’t you have better things to fret about? Like, for instance, how two demons managed to ambush you so impressively?”

I already had a theory about that. “Dagon’s after the people I’m tracking. He must have seen the same video I did, that led me to this place. So, he sent two of his demons here to stake it out in case I showed up.”

Dagon must not want to face me himself yet. He must still be too weak, but that wouldn’t last. Someone as determined as Dagon would find ways to scrounge every bit of power he could. He obviously still held a grudge. Those demons hadn’t accidentally been carrying a weapon powerful enough to take down a tank when they came across me.

Ian grunted. “Right wanker this Dagon is.”

“You have no idea,” I muttered, a stab of memory causing me to push away from him.

“Careful,” Ian said when my preoccupation made me ignore the loose ground at my feet. I almost tripped, but I caught myself, then looked at the pile of rocks where the ancient wall used to form the cistern’s entrance.

These ruins had survived for several thousand years, but they weren’t the only priceless loss today. Four murdered people were still buried beneath this pile of rubble. Four innocent lives I might have saved if I’d been faster, smarter, stealthier . . . just more!

Now, all I could give them was the dignity of being found. I’d place an anonymous call to the Greek authorities later about them. It felt so inadequate, but aside from killing their murderer, I could do no more to help them.

To cover my lingering frustration and guilt over that, I kicked one of the demon corpses nearby. “That’s what you get for shooting at me with an anti-tank weapon,” I muttered. “Gods, I hate demons!”