Minhi lost her balance the moment she felt her ankle yanked out from under her and she fell back, catching the porch with her shoulders. She tried to use her moves, twisting and kicking at the woman who was dragging her off. She saw Paul’s head bounce on the grass and then on ice as he was dragged beside her.

They were being towed onto the lake itself, moving fast. The woman who had Minhi slacked her grip a bit as she began to “skate” with her feet across the ice. Minhi took the advantage to twist, hard, and suddenly she was free.

Minhi sprawled out, spinning on what she now saw was actually an ice road that stretched across the lapping waves of Lake Geneva. She found her footing, glancing back at the shore. She slipped as she started to run, then gingerly looked for cracks and crevices in the ice, picking up the pace.

Suddenly the attacker came at her again. The villain laughed, tuft s of dark hair sticking out from the red wrap around her head. Her teeth showed, long and glistening. Vampires? Shocked, Minhi missed her opportunity to dodge the woman.

This time the creature wrapped one arm around Minhi’s torso, grabbing her tight. Minhi was no match for her.

“What are you—where are we going?” Minhi begged.

“We’re going home,” hissed the vampire.

After a few minutes of seeming to fly over the frozen road, a voice filled the air, cold as ice. “Though I be ashes, a far hour shall wreak the deep prophetic fullness of this verse.”

Minhi could see a man, floating on the air, surrounded by icy wind, the moon behind him. They were nearing another shore. She saw a great house there, a ghostly manor surrounded by trees, and at the shoreline, the sculpture of an angel, its arms held wide.

They were headed for the sculpture. Now just at the edge of the shore the ice disappeared, and there were waves churning.

The man was enjoying himself. “And pile on human heads the mountain of my curse!”

They rapidly approached the sculpture and then plunged down through the churning water. Minhi’s vision was swimming as the water disappeared and they entered a dry tunnel. Down into the tunnel, down over dank and shimmering stone, down past support beams of skull and bone, down past torches the vampires ran, their feet light, running like wolves.

And then they arrived, far below, coming to a stop in what Minhi could only call a courtyard, vast and groomed with spiny grass as white as bone.

The vampire holding Minhi threw her to the ground and she rolled to a stop, coming to her knees. She was shaking in terror.

Paul was nearby. In his eyes Minhi could see the same fear that she felt. She stood, dizzy, and looked up to see an enormous castle, all under the lake—under the very lake! Up to the dark sky of rock the walls reached, rock and mud reinforced with latticeworks of more bone.

The captors stood around them, waiting. Minhi became aware of more figures, standing on the battlements of the castle and lining the edges of the court-yard. Many of them, like Minhi’s attackers, wore red, but the vast majority wore white tunics and hoods. Beneath those hoods, white, white skin glowed in the darkness. And their eyes reflected the light of the torches, so that as Minhi looked out, she saw hundreds upon hundreds of pairs of glowing eyes.

“What is this?” Minhi whispered.

“This,” the voice boomed from behind her. She turned slowly, petrified to look. A great vampire with long hair and wearing red armor was drifting to the ground on an icy wind. “This…is the Scholomance!”