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T om threw himself from the car almost before Isabel had time to slam on the brakes, but the vamp was quicker still. She was at the door and up the stairs before Tom could blink.

“I can honestly say I’ve never seen Isabel quite so… harried,” Adam observed, straightening his jacket as he unfolded from the back seat and looked up at the house.

“Good. I need them both on their game if she’s…” Tom trailed off, following her inside and taking the stairs two at a time. He didn’t want to think about the end of that sentence.

Everything was cold and dark inside. It only took seconds to take in the obvious – no signs of forced entry, no scuff marks on the walls. Erin’s bedroom door stood ajar, her bedside lamp casting warm yellow light across the landing.

Murray sat on the corner of her bed, shoulders hunched, Erin’s red sheets twisted and thrown back beneath him. One hand was knotted in his hair, the other hung loosely, clutching a crumpled piece of notepaper. Isabel moved toward him, and Tom noticed the sense of urgency in the room seemed to have… di sappeared, like smoke.

“What does it say?” Isabel’s voice held a sharp edge as she extended her hand. He passed it to her silently.

Tom turned away, scanning the room instead. Everything looked normal enough – except the bed frame. The headboard had a new, jagged split running along its wooden edge, as though something – or someone – had been slammed against it with tremendous force. Behind it, a section of plaster on the wall had cracked and chipped, leaving a pale wound in the otherwise pristine paint. His jaw clenched. If it was Murray’s doing, he might have to fucking kill him himself. But if it wasn’t… well, that was even worse.

The sash window was wide open – impossible, given Erin had painted it closed two years ago. A breeze blew the curtains lazily, and the outside air did nothing to dissipate the odd smell of petrol. Her laptop lay on the floor by the bed, its standby light flashing. Erin wouldn’t have left it like this, much less running. Not if she’d left willingly.

“‘ Checkmate .’” Adam read, looking at the note over Isabel’s shoulder. He glanced at Tom, who was tugging down the ladder to the attic with difficulty.

“Erin?” he called up the steps. Silence.

“She’s no there, Tom.”

“But look at this place,” Tom insisted, climbing up anyway. “She gets crazy about me not putting things away when I’m here—”

He squinted up through the trapdoor. The attic was as dark and empty as the rest of the house – and undisturbed. The largest, east-facing window was beginning to show the earliest dawn light, the sky a deep, undisturbed blue. Tom dropped back down to the bedroom below.

Isabel hadn’t moved a muscle since taking the note, only the crease between her brows betraying thought. Adam was by the window, examining the frame with interest. Only Murray, in Tom’s opinion, was reacting appropriately. His dark eyes met Tom’s across the room, vacant and unseeing.

“We have to leave, Nick. The sun rises,” Isabel broke the silence, her words clipped.

“You can’t just… fuck off and sleep through the day and do nothing!” Tom’s voice cracked.

“Do you have another suggestion, lad?” Nicholas asked dully.

“This.” Isabel smoothed the note on Erin’s dressing table. “You are the better tracker. What do you make of it?”

Adam glanced across the room at Tom, who raised his eyebrows and shrugged.

“Dirt, damp and rusted iron. No exactly unique.” Nicholas dismissed the idea without getting up.

Not good enough. “What about the handwriting?” Tom asked. “Do you recognise it?” It was a long shot, but it was the only shot he could think of.

Murray didn’t look up. “No. Tis a classic European cursive, taught in most schools til the nineteen-seventies.”

“There are smudges here that appear to be blood.” Adam ran a finger along the wood of the window frame. “And can anyone else smell petroleum? ”

“It’s no Erin’s blood,” Murray stated, as though that was the end of it. “I’d ken if it were.”

“Alright,” Adam stepped forward, every inch the gentleman despite his obvious concern. “That’s quite enough, Nick. I refuse to accept you admitting defeat so easily. It won’t help Erin—”

“If they want to hurt me, she’s dead already.” His eyes flashed. “They wilnae have kept her alive a second time.”

“Don’t interrupt,” Adam retorted, blanching. “We don’t know that, and I intend to proceed as though it isn’t the case. Tom and I will do what we can while you’re incapacitated, but you need to come up with a better answer if you want to find her. You are the best tracker either of us has ever met,” he indicated Isabel irritably. “And that was the most pathetic answer I’ve heard from you this century. Get a hold of yourself.”

“And what of me? Would you presume to give orders to us both, Adam?” The look Isabel gave him would have felled a lesser man.

Tom couldn’t help but grin at the idea of Adam trying to control Isabel, despite everything. “‘ And wild for to hold, though I seem tame …’” he quoted under his breath.

Isabel’s rosebud mouth formed a small ‘o’ of surprise, recognition flickering in her eyes.

“Your role is to ensure Nick does nothing rash, Izzie.” Adam shook his head forlornly, ignoring their exchange. “At least not until we know who we’re dealing with. For now, get underground. I’m holding you responsible for him.”

Murray nodded, visibly agitated. “Aye.” He stood, bracing himself. “You’re right, Adam. I’m sorry,” he hesitated before continuing, his face betraying a flash of raw anguish that forced Tom to look away. It was too intimate – the depth of his fear for Erin laid bare. “Try going back to the entries between ‘89 and ’46 – I might have a notion as to how this could be linked.”

“1889? What makes you say that?” Tom asked, watching him.

“Checkmate. A feelin’.” His eyes returned to the wrinkled bedsheets. “Tis familiar, though it makes nae sense…”

“Do you know something you’re not telling us? Because I swear to fucking—” Tom began.

“Tis a hunch. It cannae—” Murray sighed. “Just check.”

???

T wo hours later, the white winter sun streaming through the library’s tall windows, Tom was ready to call bullshit on Murray’s hunch. The journals were full of horror stories, but nothing that could be useful in finding Erin.

Adam’s library was impressive enough, and he’d kill to get his hands on some of the rare books hidden away in the stacks – but Murray’s journals were something else entirely. After hours of finding nothing in them except material for a year’s worth of nightmares, his initial hope was gone.

“We can’t be looking in the right place,” Tom said, leaning back in his chair and rubbing his eyes. The adrenaline he’d been running on had worn off, and he felt like he could climb into bed for a month and still not be satisfied.

Adam dragged a hand across his stubbled jaw as he closed the book he’d been poring over. “I’m inclined to agree with you, if I’m honest. We were in France for quite some time; the instances in which Nicholas might have provoked another vampire are… numerable. He could be quite disagreeable when there was a war on.”

“You don’t say.” Tom stared around the enormous room without really seeing it. This felt like a waste of time, but his tired brain couldn’t come up with anything better to be doing. On the bright side, the wankers that had Erin probably couldn’t do much when the sun was blazing outside. Probably.

Adam said nothing to that, and Tom squirmed. Blunt as he may be, Tom was starting to like Adam, despite his unsavoury choice of friends. Being rude to him wasn’t helping anyone.

“Let me see the note again.” Tom reached across their scattered research for the heavy cream paper.

“I doubt very much it has changed in the last twenty minutes, but you’re welcome to check.”

Tom held back a rude retort, reading and re-reading the note instead. “I just don’t get it. They obviously want Murray to find them, so why not give us more to go on?”

Adam sat back in his chair with a slight frown. “Once more, I agree.”

“Dirt and iron. It’s absolute rubbish. He may as well have said air and sun,” Tom muttered.

“There was dirt on the windowsill too,” Adam added. “With the blood.”

“Soil. Earth. It’s everywhere. I cut off that creep’s hand, stands to reason she’d still be bleeding.” Tom shifted the books in front of him into a pile, absently. “None of that helps us figure out which of Murray’s friends has turned kidnapper.”

Adam dragged one of the thicker diaries closer, scattering loose papers. “Wait…”

“What?” Tom sat up straighter.

“Well, you said friends ,” he murmured. “We assumed whoever did this was someone Nick befriended and later crossed – it made sense, given how carefully they’re mimicking his old murders. But perhaps…” Adam turned to the back of the diary, searching the dates.

“I don’t follow.”

“In 1889, Nick and I had quite the argument – we parted ways for several months and didn’t reconcile until 1890, when Isabel forced him to speak to me again.”

“Go on…”

“We’d always resided together before that – at least when Nick wasn’t off fighting in one of his wars. After our row, I didn’t see him some time; it’s the one part of his life I wouldn’t be able to account for,” he explained. “Until recently, anyway.”

“We kept an apartment in Paris. When I finally returned, the concierge mentioned something rather singular – a passing comment, really, about a stranger coming and going at all hours with Nicholas. I had assumed…” Adam’s usual composure faltered slightly. “Well, I confess it stung at the time, the thought of him hunting with someone else. Quite childish of me, looking back.”

“So Murray had a, uh – a partner?” Tom asked.

“Not that sort of partner, no. Nicholas might not be a monk, but he hasn’t truly dreamt of anyone but our Miss Conrad since long before I knew him. I rather thought he’d invented her, until recently.”

“Get on with it, Locke,” Tom grumbled.

“If someone was hunting with Nicholas…” Adam paused, considering. “A lodger, perhaps? Someone of no particular consequence at the time.”

“Whoever it was must have known what Murray was – or have been a vampire themselves. He couldn’t hide that, living together,” Tom finished.

“Yet why wouldn’t Nicholas mention him?” Adam stared at the diary entries as if willing them to reveal more. “There’s not a single reference to anyone else in these entries. Look—” He passed the book across the table.

Tom examined the stitching on the spine of the diary. It must have been damaged at some point; the cotton thread was newer in places. He could think of a thousand reasons a vamp would keep secrets, but he had to admit Murray honestly seemed to care about Erin.

“Maybe he thought they were dead?” Tom shrugged.

“Vampires are not so easy to kill, Tom,” Adam reminded him. “The world isn’t as full of hunters as you might like to believe.”

“Wait…” Tom leaned forward. “What years did Murray tell us to check again?”

“Between 1889 and 1946,” Adam replied. “Rather a broad span.”

“1946… that’s right after the war.” Tom’s voice got quieter. “When Murray was in that camp place?”

“Sachsenhausen?” Adam asked, surprised .

“Yeah – I’m not gonna try to pronounce that. But he told Erin about it – that he didn’t try to escape because he wasn’t sure if their weapons could kill him.” Each word came faster as the connection clicked. “And you said you refused to go with him. So if he went with someone else – another vamp – and they got caught, and the experiments… he might have no idea if they survived.”

“All those imaginative new ways to destroy their enemies – for someone like Nick, in a place like that… he had good reason to be concerned.” Something dark passed across Adam’s usually composed features. “It was partly why I could never bring myself to enlist in that war, more than any other – not after the first. I heal at a normal human rate, you see. I didn’t know what might happen to me, subjected to…” he trailed off.

Tom grimaced. Sometimes humans could be monsters, too.

“You didn’t go. Wyatt wasn’t there. But he wouldn’t have gone on his own—”

“It isn’t too much of a leap to say he’d have taken someone along with him. That much is true. Whether it was the same person is an entirely separate matter,” Adam said gravely.

“It would explain a lot,” Tom pointed out.

“The connection is rather tenuous. Someone he knew in Paris that I did not, and who was still around in the Forties…” He shrugged. “Only he would know. We need to speak to him about this when he awakens,” Adam added. “But if we are to believe we’re dealing with a person he left for dead in a place such as that… ”

“What?” Tom asked.

“I dare say one can understand their… disposition toward Nick, considering what those prisoners endured—”

“Can’t exactly blame them for wanting payback.”