I’d just been through a particularly savage beating and hadn’t had time to heal. I was lying on the floor, drifting in and out of awareness. The sound of muffled gunshots reached me behind my four walls, then a loud crashing outside my cell door. My dreams had begun blurring with reality, and I had a hard time distinguishing between what was real and what was fantasy. So I didn’t immediately believe my own senses. My cell door broke open and there stood a terrifying warrior, appearing like he’d just crawled his way back up from the Underworld. I dared not move, not even breathe. I couldn’t tell if he was some new form of torture I was meant to endure or Lucifer himself coming to drag me to another layer of Hell. “Oh God . . . Kris?” I inhaled sharply, recognizing the voice. Only one person on Earth ever whispered my name with such deliberate reverence—ConRad. He was ConRad, but not quite him. He appeared different, more wild . . . more volatile. The same piercing blue eyes stared at me, but from a more chiseled face.
