DROPPED DOWN onto the terrace like a bird of prey. As soon as my sneakers thunked onto solid ground, I raced along the terrace until I saw an open door. I rushed through it and immediately down some steps. Somehow, I had seen these steps in the message Angel had sent me — I knew just where to go.

“Fang! Angel?” I yelled, not even trying for stealth. I was storming the castle, not stealing the jewels.

Then through a vast maze of lab tables, metal and glass shelving, gurneys, and all kinds of medical equipment, I saw Fang in a hospital bed, looking beat up, bruised. Way too still and way too pale. Then Angel, rising slowly from beside him like a zombie from the grave and drifting slowly toward me.

“Max, I …”

“Angel! What the —” I sprinted across the lab to Fang’s side.

I grabbed his hand. It was cold. unbelievably cold. One eye was open slightly, unseeing.

Fang will be the first to —

I couldn’t let myself think it. I couldn’t. But he really looked … He felt …

Just then Dr. Gunther-Hagen appeared from a side room holding some medical supplies. “I see you now regret your decision, Max.”

I snarled at the doctor, “What in the name of God happened, you butcher? He looks like he went through a wood chipper!”

“He had a bad reaction to a sedative,” said the doctor stiffly. “He was injured.”

The solid drone of an alarm sank into my brain, and my gaze snapped to the machinery next to the bed. There was no heartbeat registering.

“He’s flatlining!” I shrieked, and grabbed Dr. Hans by the front of his jacket. “Fix him!”

“Why are you so surprised, Max? Your insistence upon being with Fang above all else — well, I warned you quite clearly that no good would come of it. You had the chance to protect all of the ones you love.”

Had he killed Fang? Could he have possibly …?

“There’s nothing anyone can do. It’s too late. I’m sorry.”

He had killed Fang. That sentence made absolutely zero sense to me. It simply did not compute. I shoved the doctor away and turned to Fang.

I wanted to shake Fang’s shoulders, splash cold water on his face, tug on his hair. I stared at him. The parts of his face that weren’t purple and bruised were not … life colored.

It just didn’t make sense.

A remote part of my consciousness registered that the rest of the flock had arrived, were slamming through the lab door. I couldn’t even look up. Fang’s hand was limp and cold in mine. My brain hadn’t kicked into gear yet, had frozen at the entry of the unthinkable thought.

Fang — after everything we’d been through — was …

Gone?