There’s one thing every single person has, though.
Wounds where the eyes should have been, like they were ripped out, and a hole in their chest, showing their missing hearts.
Mei keeps walking, but she moves slowly, it takes me a moment to gather my thoughts and follow her. My hands tremble a little, but I shove it all aside and focus on the mission.
I don’t know how he did it so perfectly. How did he get them all to come out here? How did he ensure there were no survivors?
My brain starts working, and I can see it in my mind. It all makes a terrible, sick sense. He would have chosen a house on the edge and taken them one by one in the night. When the alarm sounded and people tried to hide, he would have left them until he’d killed all the fighters, then gone for those hiding. The children would have been the last.
I close my eyes, children are special, they are sacred. How can he do this? There’s only one creature I’ve ever met who was this evil. I take Mei’s hand, pulling her to a stop.
“Was this-”
“Deux,” she says. “This is a message to me. This is a promise. He’s not going to stop, not until he’s got me, and as long as I continue trying to fight him or run from him, he will just keep killing.”
“Mei.”
She shakes her head violently, tossing that golden hair of hers. “I know him.”
I look up at the bodies, at all the people who were alive a few days ago.
“This is excessive. This is the joy of killing just for the sake of killing. He will always be a monster, it’s not your fault. It’s his.” I lick my lips, shivering in the cold. “Where did he do it, though?”
“He would have found somewhere he could hide.” Mei tries for nonchalance, but her voice breaks.
“Mei?”
“I think he killed her like this. Because she fought him and got me away from him. He was following us for so long.”
I pull her into my arms, holding her close. “I’m not going to let him get you, but I don’t understand, Mei. Who did he kill?”
“I think he killed my mom. I couldn’t find her, but I could feel her. It’s a thing, I can feel their pain, their agony. I can hear their screams. It lingers in the world like an echo.”
“No, Mei. It’s done, it's not them. You are safe.”
I hold her for a long time, listening to her broken confessions, each time that monster hunted her and almost got her. Each time, he stole a piece of her. I make a tally in my head.
He hurt her. He scared her.
I’m going to chop him into pieces and feed him to the crabs at the bottom of my ocean. My rage grows, and my shiver stand in silent witness, hearing the words, letting the soul of this Nightmare into us. She’s not just our enemy. She’s not a mindless killing machine.
She’s scared and hunted. She’s braver, smarter, and wiser than anyone I know.
I look at Ronit and see him dip his chin in acknowledgment. We’ll talk, but later. Right now, she needs us.
We keep walking and stumble upon the site by sheer luck. It’s a bloody circle with brown, black dried blood mushed in withthe trampled snow. Most of it is covered up, but the thick tree canopy stopped the snow from falling on it and burying it.
He’s cunning.
We have to be smarter.
He’s vicious.
We’ll have to be meaner.
Deux is an apex predator who hasn’t met his match yet.
But we are weakening. We aren’t what we should be. Just thinking that eleven months ago, we would have ripped this ridiculous creature apart, but the curse has dampened our powers, and the closer we get to the end of it, the less strength we have.
