So does Shea. Gobs of it, dark with Rot. It drags in a jagged line down the narrow hall. They creep along the trail, rounding the corner into a narrow kitchenette. A pair of heavy work boots poke out from behind a wooden island. Blood oozes, ink dark, onto the penny-round tile.
Heart in her throat, Shea reaches for the knife block on a nearby countertop. A carving knife slips loose with a slightping.
There’s a wet cough. Then a man’s voice: “Keeling? Is that you?”
Poppy scrabbles for the knife block next, drawing out a serrated bread knife. Shea tosses her a look, which she returns, her shoulders lifting in a shrug.
“Goddamn it, Keeling,” calls the man. “I know you’re in here.”
Shea swallows a breath and steps into view. The man on the floor is older, but only just. He looks to be in his early twenties, his sour-milk skin sheened in sweat and his hair a short crop of blond, the light going out of his lake-blue eyes. He lies slumped against the cabinets, his hands clutched to his middle. The damage is immense. His abdomen has been gorged open as if by the claws of some horrible hell-beast. A wolf, in the body of a boy.
“You,” he grits out.
Shea grips her knife tight by the hilt. “You know me?”
The question makes him laugh, and the laughter devolves into a fit of coughing. Blood dribbles, dark as pitch, down his chin.
“Do I know you?”It comes out mocking. Derisive, even dying. “Everyone knows you. You’re Keeling’s singular obsession.”
Keeling.Her heart races hard enough to hurt. “Is he here? In the house?”
There’s a dull thud, somewhere beyond the kitchen. The scrape of something dragging along the wall. A palpable slackening in her chest. The man’s face falls, and suddenly he isn’t looking at her at all. He’s staring clean through her, out into the dark of the hall.
Reverently, he whispers, “If it’s the devil you want, he’s just behind you.”
Shea stills, the hair on her arms standing on end. Another thud sounds, closer than the last. Shea takes her first deep breath in minutes as Poppy draws in close, her grip tightening around the bread knife.
“This feels worse,” she says.
Shea turns to follow her gaze. Lys is there, just as she knew he would be—just as she felt him—his frame swallowing up the exit. He looks the way he did that night on the bridge—veined beyond recognition. His teeth are fanged sharp, his claws bloody. In his right hand, he grips a wooden baseball bat, the grain dark with blood.
On the floor, the man begins to chant. Quietly, like he’s reciting a prayer. “From the fount of the forest comes the age of the beast. From the fount of the forest comes the age of the—”
“Lys,” Shea whispers. “Look at me.”
His head quirks oddly, following the sound of her voice. Locking onto her, as though sighting prey. His eyes are flat and cold, no recognition in their depths. He takes a single step, his bat clicking over the grout. The kitchen is small. There’s nowhere to run. The island’s edge bites into the small of her back.
Behind her, the man is still chanting. “From the fount of the forest comes the age of the beast. From the fount—”
“Babe Ruth,” blurts Shea. “The Titan of Terror.”
Lys halts, going vulturine still.
“The—Shoot, what was it? The colossalsomething—the colossal—theColossus of Clout!”
“Shea,” whispers Poppy. “What are you doing?”
“He played, uh, twenty-two seasons of baseball,” she goes on, raising her voice in an effort to drown out the man and his chanting. “He had seven hundred, uh, seven hundred fourteen home runs. Not the record holder but close. Who holds the record? You never said.”
Lys’s eyes open and close in a reptilian blink.
“Finish it,” goads the man. “Kill me.”
“Shutup,” snaps Shea.
“You know you want to,” says the man, ignoring her. “You want to know what my plan was? You want to know how I would have done it? I’d have crept upstairs, whisper-quiet. I’d have gutted her while she slept. Broken her right in front of you—drained her of blood and made you watch.”
With a snarl, Lys lunges. He doesn’t make it far. There’s the twang of a string loosing, the sickthwackof a wooden projectile lodging itself into drywall. Lys is pinned by the shirt, blood pouring from a graze in his lower abdomen. Asher stands in the door, already reloading.
