Vlad stood in front of a raven-haired woman who was on her knees, fire circling her in ever-growing waves. If she moved at all, she’d get burned, and from the charred state of her hair and clothes, it wouldn’t be the first time.

Then I saw something else that made me keep walking, until the farthest corner of the cave was revealed. One look at Mircea and I understood why he hadn’t been able to contact me. He was now entirely encased in glass, preventing him from even twitching, let alone forging a connection through our flesh by cutting himself. The tight cluster of black quartz that had previously surrounded him now surrounded the glass, and while I wasn’t about to touch that since it negated Mircea’s abilities, I did punch the glass around his head hard enough to cause it to shatter and fall.

“You found me,” were his first words.

“A friend helped,” I said, thinking about what it had cost Ian to get the power he’d used to yank Mircea’s location out of the other necromancer’s mind.

Mircea shot a half-defiant, half-wary look over my shoulder, where I felt Vlad come up behind me. “Well, well, stepfather dearest. It’s been a long time, hasn’t it?”

“Both too long and not long enough,” Vlad said, his eyes turning green as he stared at Mircea.

A scrambling sound followed by a scream had both of us spinning back around, then Vlad let out a dangerously charming laugh as he saw the female necromancer dousing the new flames on her arms and legs.

“Did you really think you could escape those if I merely turned my back?”

She hissed something rapidly at him in a different language. It might have been a spell, because her face crumpled a second later when we didn’t drop dead or turn into frogs or something equally awful.

“Your magic doesn’t work here, Neryre,” Mencheres said, coming into this section of the cavern.

Her dark gaze snapped up to him. “Menkaure,” she said in a venomous tone, calling him by his Egyptian birth name.

“Is she the sorceress you knew way back when?” I asked.

“Yes,” Mencheres said, shaking his head almost sadly. “Why did you align yourself with this group, Neryre? They are not true Imhotep acolytes. They twist everything he stood for.”

“They fight for what he gave up on,” she snapped. “What you gave up on. Your powers could have been great, Menkaure.”

“They are,” he replied without sounding arrogant. “But not in magic. They are great in what I have honed myself. Now tell me, Neryre, why did your coven try to force Vlad to murder me?”

Vlad’s head swung around, although the fire prison around the necromancer didn’t waver. “You knew?”

Mencheres glanced at me and a smile ghosted across his lips. “My wife just texted to reassure me that she would tell no one that the video going viral in the vampire world was fake.”

Vlad looked at me in disbelief next. “You told her?”

“Kinda. I didn’t have her cell number, so I told Ian to tell her.” Guess he’d checked his text messages after all.

“You didn’t merely hide this from me, Vlad. You lied to me. Why?” The words, softly spoken, still fell with the weight of a thousand bricks.

Vlad met Mencheres’s gaze, and though his shields cracked and a poignant sadness flitted through our connection, his stare was unflinching.

“You know why.”

Mencheres stared back and his incredible aura began to flare. Alarm flashed through me, covering even my overwhelming grief over Marty. Vlad’s meaning couldn’t have been clearer. Was Mencheres about to retaliate for Vlad admitting that he would have killed him if his glamour ruse hadn’t worked? Good Lord, could we even fight him off if he did retaliate?

“You would have widowed Kira.” Mencheres’s words were a harsh rasp. “You would have brought war between our two lines, forcing Bones into a fight against your people that would have resulted in many deaths. Our allies would have been forced to choose sides, too, bringing more death, until you could have shattered the peace we’ve had since Appollyon failed to incite a war between vampires and ghouls—”

He stopped speaking, and I saw understanding dawn on his and Vlad’s face at the same time that I figured it out, too.

“Sonofabitch,” I whispered, turning to the necromancer.

Neryre’s expression was as stony as our surroundings, but her eyes flicked a little too quickly between Vlad and Mencheres. Her scent changed, too. Now I knew what “busted” smelled like.

“You sought to destabilize the vampire world by pitting two of the most powerful undead lines against each other,” Veritas stated, coming into this section as well. “Why?”

“My people would have restored order.” Neryre’s gaze manifested pure hatred as she stared at Veritas. “We would have been the only ones powerful enough to bring peace between all these warring sides, then the rule outlawing magic would have had enough support to finally be overturned.”

I was stunned by how callously she admitted to plotting so many deaths. Yet deep down, the part of me that was growing harder by the day also admired the simplicity of their plan. All they had needed to get that disastrous ball rolling was the death of one powerful vampire due to the betrayal of another.

Then Neryre stabbed a finger in Mircea’s direction. “He had committed himself to freeing our people, yet he left our order to pursue petty vengeance. That is why we hunted him down, and why we were going to kill him until we discovered his tie to her and the Impaler. Without intending to, Mircea handed us the easiest means to enact our chaos.”