EDIR KUCHIN was a very smart man, smarter than all of them had thought. Not only had he outwitted Professor Mallory, but he’d outmaneuvered Reggie and her team on the ground in Provence. The penalty for this failure was steep. Reggie stared over at the bodies of Whit and Dominic. Whit’s head was gone; Dominic no longer had a face.

Reggie had been forced to kneel in the center of the freezing room while Kuchin and his men encircled her. There really was no escape this time. She looked up into the long, cruel face as he stroked her chin with one of his hands. She would have attacked him, but her hands and legs were bound. She focused on the bodies of her dead colleagues so she wouldn’t feel the touch of the monster against her skin.

Kuchin laughed, a smug, deep laugh that seemed to go on for minutes. Did you think it would be that easy? he said to her. Did you really? After all those years of guarding myself against this very thing, you really thought someone like you could get to me? You’re an amateur sent in to do a professional’s job.

The stroking changed to a hard slap and Reggie fell backwards, hitting her head on the concrete floor. He immediately pulled her back up by the hair. His face nearly touching hers, he said, Tell me your name. Your real name.

Why? she mumbled.

Because I like to know these things.

No, I won’t.

He hit her in the mouth with his gun, loosening two teeth and breaking a third. She tasted blood and pieces of her gum and swallowed part of one shattered molar.

No.

He hit her again in the stomach and she doubled over. He stomped on her right hand, snapping two fingers. He crushed her left knee with another blow.

Now!

Reggie, she muttered as the blood trickled down her face.

Reggie, what?

Reggie Campion.

Well, Reggie Campion, now you’ll know.

Know what?

What it feels like to die in beautiful Provence.

He motioned to one of his men, who came forward with the canister. A moment later Reggie could taste the petrol as it poured over her, clogging her nostrils, stinging her eyes.

She wanted to be brave. But she heard herself scream, No, please. Don’t. Like a child. Pathetic. Weak.

Kuchin smiled, took the match from his pocket, struck it against the heel of his shoe, and held it up for her to see.

No, no, she cried out.

I actually thought you’d be a worthier foe, Reggie, said Kuchin.

No, please, don’t kill me.

This time the monster wins, Reggie Campion, he said.

He dropped the match on her head and she burst into flames.

With a scream muffled only by the covers over her face, Reggie threw herself out of the bed and landed on the floor, her body twisting and turning, grinding itself into the floor as she fought the imaginary flames. Then, coming to her senses, she stopped and lay still for several minutes. She managed to crawl to the bathroom before emptying her stomach in the toilet, and then collapsed on her back on the cool tile floor.

She lay there breathing hard, waiting for the waves of sickness to fade. Finally she struggled up, stumbled to the window, and looked out onto the grounds of Harrowsfield. As the time to leave on the mission grew closer she usually liked to spend less time at the estate and more at her flat. However, the sexually energetic couple in the room above her had still not satisfied themselves. So she’d come here.

Yet as she had driven away from London she’d also felt a pang of envy. When’s the last time I had sex? Pretty pathetic when I can’t even remember.

The rain had passed but the air had not lost its chill. Reggie lifted the window and leaned out, taking deep breaths as the nightmare’s sickening effects faded.

I’m having night terrors about the bloke and I haven’t even faced him yet. Not good, Reggie. Not good.

The worst part had been the vision of Whit and Dominic lying dead. Her fears could not be a reason for them to die. She had to get her head straight.

She dressed in jeans, sneakers, and a frayed hooded sweatshirt with “Oxford” stenciled on the front and slipped out the rear kitchen door. She wasn’t sure if Whit had gone back home or stayed over. She didn’t want him, or anyone, to see her like this. It only took her a few minutes to reach the old cemetery and, even in the dark, mere seconds after that to locate the old tombstone of Laura R. Campion. She stood in front of it, hands in her pockets.

In a completely irrational way, since she had no family left alive, Reggie had come to think of this dead woman as representing a touchstone for her, to visit in times of stress and uncertainty. It was madness, though, she knew, to try to escape the terror she was feeling by coming to a cemetery in the middle of the night and staring at the grave of a woman dead for over two hundred years who as far as she knew had no connection to her at all.

“Yet I must be a bit mad,” she said softly, “to do what I do.”

And yet it was perfectly sane, she told herself, to be afraid of a man like Fedir Kuchin, who burned children alive without a second thought. A man who’d slaughtered thousands of people at a time in horrific ways. It would be madness not to be afraid.

On the other side of the graveyard was a small private chapel that had fallen into ruin. Its stone-block walls were blackened with age, the roof was partially fallen in, and the thick arched wooden doors had grown frail from termites and rot.

Reggie passed inside and walked up near the altar. She would come here on occasion to get away from the demands of her “career” and to listen to the birds that had taken up roost in the old joists of the structure. There were no stained glass windows, simply lead ones that had been broken or merely disintegrated. Through these openings the sounds of the surrounding woods poured inside.

Apparently unlike Fedir Kuchin she had long since given up notions of a higher power guiding them all. She had done so for a simple reason. An all-knowing, all-powerful, benevolent god would never allow the monsters to roam the earth, killing whomever they desired. So for her, their mere presence in the world ruled out any possibility of a benign supreme being. Others would argue that point, and many had with her. She listened patiently to their reasoned statements and then simply disagreed with their conclusions.

They would have two more days to finalize everything, and then she was leaving for Provence. Before that happened she and the professor would make the exact decision on how to do it. Whether Fedir Kuchin lived or died would depend on their making the right decision.

Finally, realizing all that was riding on this, and despite her own personal misgivings, Reggie knelt down at the altar, put her hands together, and started to pray, that good would defeat evil one more time.

She figured it couldn’t hurt.