They drove for what must have been a couple of hours, though there was no clock in the car in order to tell. It was dark by the time they reached their destination. Emery hadn't spoken once during the entire ride, and neither had Charlie. He hadn't offered to stop, either, but at least he'd had the heat on, which allowed her hair to dry and her body to warm up in the ridiculous dress she wore. She'd looked out the window for the first half hour or so and hadn't recognized where they were, though based on the weather and the landscape and the road signs they'd come into contact with, she'd guessed they were somewhere north-ish in North America. Only after falling asleep and waking up a while later did she see that they were heading somewhere populated. The two lanes had become four, and then they expanded to six, and then eight, the traffic increasing to match. The buildings had transitioned from farmsteads to industrial complexes, and in the distance, Emery was sure she saw skyscrapers. She still couldn't catch any signs indicative of location, though, and that was strange, but it didn't entirely frustrate her. More people and busier streets meant the possibility of escaping Charlie was greater, and she could always figure out her location after she got away.

But Charlie didn't take her into the busy streets of the city in the distance. Instead, he took an exit ramp that led into a dark, run-down area full of what appeared to be abandoned warehouses. It was dark, and the streetlamps were few and far between, but Emery could make out block after block of brick buildings, many with broken windows or crumbling walls, which didn't bode well for any sort of escape. This neighborhood was void of life; she saw no people and very few cars, and she'd be just as scared walking these streets as she'd be to stay with Charlie. Biting her lip, the girl peered out at the sad scenery, wondering whether Adam had been right in telling her to do this--whether that had even been Adam on the clock radio at all--whether she'd imagined it.

After several moments of winding through a maze of empty, derelict constructions, Charlie pulled the car up in front of a tall black building maybe ten stories tall. It wasn't brick; it looked as if it were made of sheet metal, and the windows--even though there were very few of them and they were all high up--weren't broken. The door was unassuming, just an industrial-looking rectangle. No one stood outside it.

Charlie got out and walked around to Emery's side. She was annoyed at his false chivalry and attempted to open the door before he got there only to realize she couldn't. It would open only from the outside. Of course he'd taken precautions.

"Get out," he ordered, swinging her door open.

Emery didn't argue; there was no point. She wasn't going to try running from him here. She'd stand out like a glow stick in her white dress, and there was nowhere for her to go. She might as well do as she'd promised, at that point, and just hope it went all right.

Charlie took hold of her upper arm the minute she was out and pulled her into the street to slam her passenger door. Then he dragged her toward the building.

"This is totally unnecessary!" Emery barked at him. "I'm going with you, aren't I?"

"Shut up."

She huffed in frustration, but he definitely didn't care. Fortunately, the door was close enough that he didn't have to yank her too far, and when they reached it, Charlie pressed a small silver button on an intercom.

There was a momentary crackling buzz, then a voice: "Who?"

"Fear Doirich."

Emery half-expected to see one of those eye slots that were in guarded doors in old television shows and movies, but there was nothing like that. The door just groaned for a moment and pushed inward.

The moment Charlie pulled her in, the door swung shut behind them. It was so dark inside, but Emery immediately understood that this building was not what it'd seemed to be. A hallway stretched before them, coated in some old, very dark or black Victorian wallpaper. Sconces were embedded at irregular intervals, red lights flickering within them. Straight forward, at the end of the hallway, was a huge floor-to-ceiling mirror, and as Charlie tugged her along as if she were an unruly child, Emery was mesmerized by her own image in it, striking white against the dark, but even more shocking was Charlie's image--it didn't show him disguised, as he was when she glanced at the person to her left; instead, it revealed his true self, the terrifying, cloaked figure she'd seen that night outside of Luglochta Loga, his hood hanging low over his features. Her apprehension skyrocketed, but she couldn't have escaped his grip if she'd wanted to.

If there were any other rooms or doors branching off that hall, she and Charlie did not pass them. He took her straight toward the mirror, and they stood before it in the dim light, the red flames from the wall sconces casting a fiery glitter across their features. Emery waited, unsure what Charlie would do. Side-by-side they looked at themselves in the glass, he with his horrifying glowing eyes and black claws wrapped around her pale arm and she practically a ghost next to him. Charlie said something so quietly that Emery turned to him to check if he was speaking to her, but before she could ask, she caught a glimpse of herself moving in the mirror and snapped back to it.

Her reflected face--her own face--was grinning puckishly at her. But how could it be? She raised a shaking hand to feel her lips, her cheeks, and though her reflection copied her movement, her features were certainly not the same. A spectral blue flare lit the eyes of her mirror-self, sparkled along her shoulders around her silhouette, and Emery gasped.

"What?" Charlie asked, his voice in strange contrast with his mirror image.

Emery could only point at her reflection.

Charlie smirked, laughed a little mockingly. "I always knew it was in you. I like you like that."

"But--what is it? It's not me--"

"It is you. This mirror allows no dissemblance, shows only your true self. Can't have disguised Gods or Goddesses or the like wandering in, can we?"

"Are you saying . . . you're saying that's my true self?" Emery stared aghast at the uncompromising smile, the cunning expression, the blue glow. "That can't . . . No. I'm not like that."

"The mirror doesn't lie; only we do."

Emery wanted to say more, but their images suddenly began to shudder, and the glass rippled as if it were liquid. She was relieved to see her image tremble away.

"Come on. In we go." Charlie shoved Emery into the mirror, and she slipped right through it, he following close behind.

What lay beyond was anticlimactic, merely more short hallway, more strange red light, that led to an elevator. The two of them stepped into it, and Emery made note of its glass sides which, at the moment, revealed only wall beyond their panes. There were two buttons in the elevator: one labeled "up" and the other labeled "down." Charlie pressed "up," the doors rattled shut, and they began to move. It seemed the slowest elevator Emery had ever been on, but perhaps that was because there was no indicator of which floors were passed when. But the glass walls revealed with each passing layer terrible sights. Emery never quite caught a clear glimpse of what lay on the floors beyond their elevator, but there were strobing lights and dark forms and terrible sounds; twisted and strange faces coming and going as if in and out of smoke; and figures of things certainly inhuman, bestial and clawed and fanged and furred. All of it was a mass of writhing and pulsing and confusion, and once the sounds and sights had passed through her senses, she couldn't have explained any of what she'd seen or heard had someone begged her to try.

By the time they reached the top floor, Emery thought she was having a panic attack. Her heart beat wildly, and her breaths were shallow and rapid. She couldn't fight back as Charlie pulled her from the elevator into another dark hall much like the first, but once the doors closed behind them and the elevator sank back down into its shaft, the noise and chaos of everything she'd just been through faded rapidly, the only sound now her panting, which seemed ridiculously loud.

"What was all of that?" she asked Charlie, who'd let go of her at last.

He stood next to her in the dark hall, apparitional and impassive and looking as comfortable as she was uncomfortable. "It's whatever you want it to be."

Emery merely shook her head, unable to say anything else without wasting precious breath. She had to calm herself down.

"Here we are, then," Charlie said quietly. "Through there." He waved toward the end of the hall where a set of large, black double doors loomed.

With a shiver, Emery looked at the doors and then back to him. "You aren't coming with me?" For as horrible as she knew Charlie was, his presence would offer a sense of security.

His grin widened vertically, revealing his tongue between his teeth. The freckles on his tipped nose looked like emberous ashes in the weird reddish light. "Appetizing as that prospect is, no. I am not."

"Charlie . . . please? I--I can't go in there alone. Wh-what if they--"

"What they do is their prerogative. I've told you they can't do anything unless you let them. Do you not believe me?"

Emery was so far from herself that she didn't know what to do. The image in the mirror, and that elevator ride, and the dark disorientation of the hall . . . even the bizarre dress she wore--it had built a deep dread within her. All of it felt so, so wrong. How could she have given in to Charlie? Days and days of holding out, and here she was, allowing them to control her like this . . . she just, she couldn't . . .

"Emery, Em." Abruptly, Charlie stepped toward her, wrapped his arms around her, and pressed her to his chest. "Everything will be all right." With one hand, he stroked her head.

She hated him, but in that moment, his reassurance was a comfort when there was literally nothing else to give her confidence.

Holding her at arms' length, Charlie narrowed his eyes at her. "Maybe if we're lucky, they'll give you back to me." He licked his teeth. "I'd like to play with you, in this dress. You're absolutely mouthwatering."

Cold spread through Emery at his words, but she was grateful for them. They were all she needed to remember how vile he was. Calmly, she swallowed her enmity and twisted out of his grasp. He let her go. He had to. It was time for her to meet them, whoever they were. With nothing but an icy last glance at Charlie, Emery turned away from him and started down the hall, her heart pounding. She tried to stay steady as she moved toward the door, and it took a supreme amount of effort. What made her most composed was the fact that Charlie was behind her, probably watching, and she didn't want to show him any more weakness. He didn't deserve that.

Reaching the doors, Emery peered at the knobs. It was so dim at this end of the hall that they were difficult to make out, but when her eyes adjusted enough, she thought she saw that they were each shaped like the head of some sort of monster, and when she grasped one, her fingers felt the engravings. With a deep breath, Emery closed her eyes for just a moment, told herself that--if nothing else--whatever happened would be better than sitting in the bunker for an eternity, turned the knob, and stepped through.

Beyond was a vast, open space, concrete floor and windows instead of solid walls. It was dark except for the moonlight and starlight that shone through the glass, and the only thing in the entire space was a row of chairs--very large chairs--on which sat seven figures, three each on either side of the largest, which sat in the middle. Emery had a hard time really seeing them at first, poorly lit as everything was, but she could tell that they'd been waiting for her and were all looking her way.

"Approach," ordered one of them (she couldn't tell which), and so she did, though with caution.

Had they made her wear white so they could see her better? She did certainly stick out in the shadow, a drop of bright in a sea of dark, and she had a sickening sense that that sea wanted to swallow her, but she was there, and she couldn't turn back.

As she drew nearer to the seated figures, they became easier to make out. The one in the middle was absolutely huge, bigger even than Fergus or Cethern, Cullen's largest warriors. He was just enormous, and he sat in his enormous black chair half-naked, dark breeches but the rest of him--chest, arms, even feet--bare. His skin looked whitish, far paler than any regular human skin, and it was mottled with scars and strange darker patches. The long fingers of his hands curled over the arms of his chair, and he was entirely hairless and beardless, but what was most unsettling about him was the fact that, around his eyes was wrapped a thick, dark cloth, effectively blinding him. Below that strip of fabric was a nose that looked as if it were decaying, and under that was a half-open pair of lips, moving slightly like thin gray worms, small pointed teeth beyond them.

This person was most disturbing to Emery, though the others were frightening as well. To the left of the giant was a woman--the only apparent woman present--who was dressed in sable swirls of velvety fabric. Her eyes, like Charlie's sometimes did, glowed with some sort of otherworldly white light, and she gazed at Emery as if carved of marble, unmoving and smooth-skinned. On her head of short hair was a cap with huge ram horns curling out of it, and in her right hand was a staff similar to the one Emery had seen Cathbad use a few times, though the tip of the woman's contained a huge onyx stone wrapped in branches.

The two others to the left of the woman were likely men, but Emery really could not tell. Each wore dark clothing cut of leather and fur and metal, and each also bore the head of an animal. In fact, she'd almost thought they were giant animals, but she caught sight of their human hands and assumed that the goat heads were masks of some sort.

To the right of the blindfolded giant was a wizened old man, so ancient he hardly looked alive. His white beard fell in coils to the ground, and he was hunched over so low that his chin nearly touched his knees. Like claws on his lap, his hands rested atop a malformed skull, and Emery saw what appeared to be more claws extending from the bottom of his layered robes. She might have thought him dead, truly, except that his eyes bulged like those of a fish, and though the rest of him was still, one of his pupils seemed in constant motion, casting about for her, likely.

The last two, next to the old man, looked alike, and they were the most human in appearance. They resembled, in fact, the sorts of warriors Emery had been used to seeing in Dun-Dealgan, looked as if they could be members of the Red Branch. They were dressed in armor and tunics and boots and leather belts with weapons attached, and their faces, though one was much younger than the other, were otherwise almost identical. They were proud faces, both, with beautiful masculine features but haughty, unnatural expressions. The elder's hair was graying and pulled back, but the younger's was long and white-golden and flowing around his shoulders. Even so, their beauty was corrupt; she knew as well as saw it.

Emery was sure every one of those seated figures could hear her wild heart, her trembling breaths, but she drew as near as she dared, and then the huge one in the middle--who must have been able to see in spite of his covered eyes--remarked in a harsh, reverberating voice, "You have come to us at last, our deliverance."