The blood at her feet stirred, started moving like a sluggish river. Whatever was coming was big—big enough to sweep everything before it.

There was no place to hide. The lake of blood stretched out to infinity. Now she could see broken bits of bodies rising to the surface. A hand, outstretched, as if asking for help for a body that was no longer there. A foot, still clad in a shoe. Another head, popping up like a balloon, then subsiding.

She was walking through a bloody river of death.

The blood was flowing faster now. Darkness fell suddenly, as if something behind her was covering the feeble light on the horizon. Whatever was coming for her was huge.

She tried to hurry, but kept tripping over parts of people, like offal in a slaughterhouse. The faster she tried to move, it seemed, the denser the parts became, until there was an interlocked puzzle of human pieces blocking her path.

She chanced a look backward, breathing fast. There was something there, huge and dark on the horizon, dressed in a long coat. Moving forward in giant strides, unperturbed by the bodies.

She could hear a faint crackling that grew louder. The cracking of human bones as the monster carelessly stepped on them. She turned her head forward, blindly seeking a hiding place, and tripped. Her hand fell out to break her fall and she pushed a head down under the surface. Snatching her hand away, the head bobbed back up. A child’s head, small features looking puzzled.

Oh God, oh God, coming closer…

A frigid wind rose at her back. What was coming for her was cold, with no human warmth at all. Something grazed her back. His huge hand. He’d almost caught her.

Faster! Faster! Sobbing, she bent to push the cadavers away so she could run faster. A cold wind came and went, the monster breathing.

She was tiring and he was tireless. He would never waver, never renounce. It wasn’t in his nature.

She tripped, then tripped again. Oh God, he was almost upon her!

A head rose to the surface just before her. It took her exhausted, terrified mind a second to realize that the head was rising vertically, up up up. Broad, naked shoulders emerged, dripping red. A man, a hugely strong man. He lifted his hands, muscles rippling with tension and strength. Huge hands held a sword, glinting in the uneven light. He lifted the sword to his shoulder, ready for the cutting blow.

He had fully emerged now, an immensely powerful man standing on the blood, sword at the ready. He lifted one hand from the sword and beckoned to her, fingers curled in a universal message.

Come to me.

He was aware of her but wasn’t looking at her. He was looking behind her, at the danger close on her heels.

Safety. He was safety and protection. Every line of his strong body was a wall she could hide behind if only she could reach him. But it was so hard to move, as she tripped and slipped in the blood, stumbling over the bones of men and women and children, terrified of the icy cold at her back.

She cried out as something cut across her back in a fiery line of pain. The creature had claws, fully out, and slashed her again across her back. She was bleeding, her blood mingling with that of the uncounted dead.

The pain was unbearable, the creature had slashed across muscle, down to bone. She slipped, fell to one knee. The creature’s claws snapped over her head.

The man with the sword was striding forward, eyes still fixed on the monster behind her, face hard, determined. He’d been caught by the monster, too, some time ago. A broad white scar ran down the side of his face, gleaming in the gathering darkness.

Leathery ropes wrapped around her torso, squeezing so tightly she could barely breathe. She was lifted from the earth, her body dripping blood.

They weren’t leathery ropes, they were fingers, their grip tightening so hard she felt a rib crack. She looked up, into blood red eyes, a cruel mouth with sharp teeth. The mouth was smiling.

He had her. It was over. This was how her life would end—in pieces at the bottom of a lake of blood, dying cold and alone.

She turned for a last look at the last human she’d see. The man with the sword was running, slashing at the monster’s legs.

The monster laughed. She struggled desperately in his cruel grip, trying to free herself.

“Grace!” The man screamed. “Grace!”

She tried to call to him but there was no breath in her, the world was fading…

“Grace!”

She couldn’t breathe…

“Grace, wake up!”

She came awake on a shuddering gasp, trembling and shaking, flailing madly, as if she’d been underwater and crested the surface an instant before drowning.

Two strong arms were around her, pinning her. Oh God! He was going to kill her! She struggled, twisting wildly, but there was nothing she could do against this kind of strength. She was going to die…

“Grace, Grace, love, look at me.”

That deep voice. Not cruel, not insane. A voice she knew…

Her eyes opened and she stilled, panting, staring into steady brown eyes. A soft brush of lips across her forehead. “It’s all right. You’re safe. You had a nightmare.”

Only one word penetrated. Safe. She was safe. No drowning in blood, no horrible monster with claws gripping her. No dead bodies.

She blinked, tears springing to her eyes.

Except, of course, there was a dead body. Harold’s. It all came back, rushing in like a river whose dam had broken. The four men gunning for Drake, using her as bait. Harold’s head exploding off his shoulders, what was left of his body falling loosely to the ground like an empty sack, all the goodness and humor in him, vanished like a light being snuffed.

The monster in her dreams wasn’t real, but the monsters loose in the world were, something her unconscious had recognized. One of those monsters had killed her friend, a man known, even in the art world—a cutthroat business if ever there was one—for his gentleness and generosity. A man who had truly loved art, who had never harmed anyone, had been wiped off the face of the earth by one of the monsters who inhabited it.

She’d been strong and had tucked her grief away, shoving it into a dark corner, but now it all came rushing back. The nightmare had robbed her of her usual resilience, sapping her strength. Grief welled up, fierce and unstoppable.

She turned her head into Drake’s shoulder, inhaling his scent, sensing his strength around her like a coat of armor, clinging to it desperately. She shuddered with her sadness and pain at the loss of Harold. Her horror of the violence at the gallery. The loss of her own life, cut off abruptly; the loss of her home. It all came tumbling out in an upwelling of sorrow that she tried to breathe down, heart pounding, trembling.

“Let it out, duschka,” a deep voice said in her ear. “Cry. I’m here to catch you.”

It was all she needed. With a wild moan, she buried her head against him and let go. She wept out her grief and her rage, her sorrow and her desperation. She wept for Harold, for the violence that was still stalking her, for the loss of her freedom. While she was at it, she wept for her mother’s immense sadness at being abandoned by her father, and for her own inability to find a place in the world that felt right. She wept for sorrows past, present and future.

She wept until there were no more tears, until she ran out of breath, until her throat ached with sadness. And then she wept some more. Grace had no idea so many tears were in her, and it was only when no more came that she subsided against Drake’s wet, bare shoulder, eyes closed, dazed with the force of the tempest that had passed through her.