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His body jolts once, a sudden, involuntary spasm. Knees jerk, fingers curl. The sound he makes is low, animalistic, buried in his throat. Then he softens beneath me. The fight leaves him all at once, like air from a slashed tire.

Blood blossoms from the wound in a slow, pulsing rhythm, thick and dark. It spills across his chest, soaking through the sheet, the mattress, pooling in the folds like ink bleeding through paper. It spreads with a strange kind of grace, organic, deliberate. The smell hits next: sharp iron, undercut by something deeper, fleshy, hot, alive.

I watch him go.

Not out of mercy. Not because I need it to be peaceful.

I watch because I have to.

Monsters bleed, too.

For a moment, I feel nothing. No satisfaction. No triumph. Just the echo of his last breath, rattling in the back of my mind like a loose screw in a locked door.

And then I exhale.

CHAPTER

FORTY-FOUR

The house is still. The kind of stillness that hums beneath the floorboards like something caged, breathing shallow.

I sit at my childhood desk, the edges worn smooth by a girl who used to draw angels in the margins of her homework before she knew exactly what the devil was. The chair is small beneath me, the cushion long since flattened, but it fits.

Outside, the wind whispers through the trees, bending branches against the windows like fingers trying to claw their way in.

The laptop’s glow throws strange shadows on the desk, and next to it lies the journal, my father’s scripture-wrapped confessional, his looping scrawl tangled with names and dates and rot. At the top of every page, the same two words, underlined: The Covenant.

I trace one name over and over with my thumb: Trent Miller.

Tennessee. Pastor. A man Levi named in a broken voice just before he bled out.

I reach for the photograph I found in Levi’s bible. I searched every inch of his apartment, and this was the only thing that I could find. The picture is of Trent, in his early days. Thin, clean-cut, beaming in front of a red-brick chapel. I compare it to the image on the Green Pastures Revival site. He’s older now, heavier in the face, the corners of his smile softened with time. But it’s him.

“He watches. Always has.”

Levi’s warning echoes louder in this room than it had in his.

The desk lamp buzzes faintly, casting long shadows that crawl along the floral wallpaper. I try not to look at the mirror across from me, it always makes this room feel smaller, like the past is trying to crawl back through the glass.

I reach for the journal again. Flip pages. One is dated in red ink. Trent’s name scrawled beside it:

Trent’s ready. We’ll begin soon.

Begin what?

I open my mouth to ask the question aloud, but the house answers before I do.

A low hum.

I freeze.

The sound grows faint, mechanical, vibrating through the walls like a distant heartbeat.

A car engine.

I stand slowly, pushing away from the desk, the chair scraping softly against the floor. My fingers move to the knife on my hip, sliding the sheath open just enough to feel the cool press of steel. I take the stairs, one at a time on the tip of my toes, trying to make myself as light as possible. Maybe it’s Frank paying us another visit. I haven’t seen or heard from him since that first night.

Once on the first floor, I cross to the front window, gently parting the curtain with two fingers.