The force sends her backward into the puddle of Jennifer’s blood.The blades fall out of her hands, both palms come up to clasp her nose, and a scream sounds from somewhere in the middle of the cherry juice stain that is her face.She slips wildly across the puddle, the blood slick against the bottom of her shoes, and then she loses her footing completely, falling back into the guardrail and—I was right about that railing being too low.
She’s gone before I can gasp, and the sound of her hitting the floor below is just as foreign as anything I’ve heard tonight.Heavy and unnatural and followed by a silence that sounds so conclusive, I don’t know if I want to check to see where she landed.Howshe landed.I’ll have to, though.As soon as I can drag my eyes away from the rod in my hand.It’s stained ruby red in contrast to the white of my knuckles, and embedded in the end of the wood is a—yeah, a tooth.I must have caught her mouth on the upward swing.
“Jamie?”
The strain in Wes’s voice pulls my gaze from the stake in my hand, and when I turn he’s still on the ground.Slumped over.His knife is hanging from his wrist, flashlight on the floor, one hand on his ribs and the other pressed into his chest.
I can’t swallow away the tightness in my throat, I can’t stop my hands from shaking, but when he doesn’t move to get up I make myself rush toward him.I fall to his side, dropping the stake and ignoring the way my knees make the blood seep out of the carpet.My bare foot accidentally touches Jennifer’s elbow and I jerk it away.
“Wes—” When I get him to straighten, I see red.
She got him on the other side of his chest from where Dani cut him earlier in the night, slicing right through the material of his shirt and across his pec in a horizontal line that stops above his heart.His shirt is already soaked.It’s deeper than the cut he had before, but once the noise in my brain dies down, I can see it’s similar to the one on my arm.He could do with some stitches, but a bandage would hold him over until we can get out of here.
He’ll live.He’ll live, and that’s all that matters.
“She was going to stab me,” he breathes.I think he’s in shock.“She was aiming for my chest and… If you hadn’t—If you didn’t—”
“Hold on.”I push away from him, circle around Jennifer and the blood that’s settled back into an even untouched pool after Billie’s fall, and make myself look down to where she fell.It only takes half a glance for me to know I don’t have to follow rule ten—down doesn’t mean dead: double tap.
It’s a classic Disney villain death if I ever saw one.She landed on top of the bar at the edge of the dance floor, and the way her… the way she… She’s dead.Deaddead.
What I can’t figure out is howthisis the end.
Wes is still bleeding out behind me, so I move over to where Jennifer dropped the first aid kit and rip it open, extracting the first roll of gauze my fingers land on.There’s no time for touchy-feely disinfectant.
“Open your shirt.”
Wes complies with difficulty, and when I tear my eyes away fromthe gash across his chest, I can tell why.My eyes start to burn.There’s mottled bruising along his ribs, other bruises as well, and the bandage on his pec has bled through at some point.He’s endured so much damage trying to keep us alive.My fingers start to tremble as I work at winding the bandage around his chest.I try to solve the enigma of Billie being Heart Eyes in an effort not to focus on all his injuries.This whole time I assumed it was a man.I may have momentarily played with the idea that Billie could be the killer earlier in the night, but that was before the brutality I’ve witnessed.The strength required to pull the ax out of Stu, pin Campbell to the wall, gut the guy at the end of the hall…Howhas she managed that all by herself?
“It doesn’t make sense,” I murmur before tying off the dressing in a crude knot.
“What doesn’t make sense?”Wes pants, buttoning up his shirt before I can figure out whether the black pointed lines of the tattoo creeping over his shoulder are connected to the similar-looking ones high on his ribs that peek out under the bottom of the bandage.It’s an observation rather than any kind of appreciation at this point; there’s no time for being “afraid and horny.”Not when there’s a growing feeling, a telltale pull warning me this isn’t over yet.
“This.Her.It just doesn’t make sense.”
She made it very clear she hated me, so there goes my “anything for love” theory, but still: the roses, the messages, the pure theatricality of every kill.All that effort requires a motivator.A driving force.I’ve never done anything that would lead to the accidental death of one of Billie’s loved ones.I’ve never so much as stolen a parking spot from someone let alone done anything that would warrant revenge.Everything has been too meticulously planned for her to have been driven by mindless bloodlust.So what reason is left?
“Jamie, we still need to find a way out of he—” Wes tries to stand and immediately looks like he might throw up.“Okay…” Hiseyebrows shoot high up on his forehead as he huffs, “Fuck… Jamie, could you help m—”
“Sorry.Yeah.”I shift back on my heels, push them firmly into the damp carpet as we both work to pull him to his feet.It’s a struggle.Wes swears some more until he’s upright; then, after some recuperative breathing, he resituates the knife back into his hand.
We could very well be the last ones standing, and I need him armed if my gut feeling is right and this is a false ending.I always feel safe when he’s around, and when he’s not, that’s when—
The thought stops me.
I always feel safe when he’s around.
But what about the times when he wasn’t?Those times he left the group.When he was doing that hero shit I found so frustrating.That’s when Heart Eyes first appeared.Suddenly it clicks.Why Billie being the sole person responsible for tonight doesn’t add up.
Because the first time I saw Heart Eyes, when he showed me just what he was capable of by butchering a man at the end of a hallway somewhere deep in the labyrinth behind us, Billie was down in the basement with Wes.She couldn’t have done that kill if she was with him the whole time.
She couldn’t have done that unless…
It’s not over, not until we see if you can make it to the end.
“We.”
Because there’s always—
