The monster in front of her is not human at all, but there are traces in its hands. It doesn’t have claws so much as thick, grooved nails that have never been trimmed, broken and growing and broken again into jagged edges. It shuffles toward her on legs that bend backward at the knee, like a cow’s. At the end of those legs, covered in dense, matted fur tinged green with moss, heavy hooves fall on the ground not with cheerful clopping, but with careful padding.
Its shoulders are broad, too broad, rippling with power on either side of a massive chest, but its waist narrows to an almost delicate taper before turning into hips not designed for upright walking. It has no genitalia at all, just more of that matted, green-tinged fur. It hunches, head parallel to the ground. Atop a short, broad neck, its face is a flat expanse with two nostrils, flaring as the monster breathes in deeply, searching. The terrible scarring where they put out its eyes balances between incongruously delicate ears, velvet soft, sloping on either side of the head beneath the long, sensuously curving crown of horns.
They look heavy. She wonders if they make its neck ache after a day of hunting.
Unlike her father, there is nothing pathetically human about this monster, but it strikes her as pathetic nonetheless as it shuffles closer, bringing with it the scent of death and decay and rot to assault her senses, warning her that this is the end.
And even though this thing, this abomination, destroyed so many people and would consume her, too, she can’t hate it. Whatever those families did to summon it, to make their deal, she can’t imagine it agreed. It doesn’t seem to have the capacity for consent.
It exists to consume. Who can blame it for following its terrible course, for being in a place it does not belong, for being forced into wretched existence and sustained and fed merely to keep existing?
Mack takes the sharp edge of Rosiee’s silver heart pendant, rescued from the carousel, and drags it along her wrist. Blood beads along the line, the scrape enough to break the skin but not make her gush freely.
The monster stops mid-step, head snapping in Mack’s direction, nostrils flaring wide.
Her task is to make sure the monster is where they want it to be, when they want it to be there. But instead of turning and running, Mack watches. She can’t look away. She missed death the first time it came for her, and she was ready—maybe even eager—for it here. For that last, final, ultimate hiding place, the darkness in which no one could ever find her. Not her father, not her guilt or her shame, not hunger or fear or want.
The monster unseals the thin line of its lips and a spittle of drool drops down. But there are no teeth there. In its mouth, oblivion. A velvet black so deep and complete she has never seen its like, never will. And beyond the black, a hint of something burning. Not warm, hungry, orange fire, but the cold white pulse of a distant star.
Mack takes a step toward the gravity-drag of that promise.
Several shots fire somewhere in the distance, and Mack remembers herself. She remembers her own self, super-compacted, pushed down so deep all she had was the pull of her own misery, the terrible weight of her lonely shame.
But her shell cracked, and it didn’t end her. She didn’t burn up, or burst. She’s not alone anymore, and she won’t leave her friends, just as she knows—has seen, has felt, and would believe even without that evidence—that her friends, her Ava, won’t leave her.
Mack turns and runs, and death follows quickly, drawn by the scent of her blood and the need for more.
* * *
—
Ava’s going too slowly. She knows she is. But even her tremendous will can’t make her body move faster. The generator, named PREDATOR with absolutely no irony on the part of the company, weighs nearly two hundred pounds. She’s glad it weighs that much, because that means it still has gas in the tank. But it also means she can barely manage a shuffle, much less the brisk pace she had planned on.
They need her to be at the right place at the right time, or they have no chance. Mack will die, LeGrand will die, and then what point does Ava have? She finally found the borders of herself again, finally believes she can fill in the vast hollow that took claim of so much of her. Finally found a purpose and a family, two things that had been taken away from her right alongside a functioning leg.
She would give almost anything for that old leg now. Her knee trembles and almost gives out, her boot-encased metal ankle sliding dangerously far ahead of her. She stumbles to catch up.
Head down. Do the work. She’s done harder things than this, hasn’t she?
Has she?
Probably not. Fine then, this is the hardest thing she’s ever done, and she’ll be damned if she doesn’t do it.
“You are the strongest woman alive,” Maria whispers in her memory, both of them squeezed onto her cot, pressed so close Ava knew exactly where she ended and Maria began because she felt every inch of it.
“But what if I wasn’t?” Ava had whispered, suddenly afraid that if she couldn’t be strong, she couldn’t have Maria.
“Impossible.” Maria had squeezed Ava’s bicep, laughing when Ava flexed as a matter of pride. “Even without these,” she said, pinching, “even without any of this, you’d still be the strongest woman alive.”
Ava is so tired of being strong. It hadn’t saved Maria, and it hadn’t saved her own soul, and why should she have to be so strong? The world demanded constant strength from women like her, displays of infinite grace and patience, proof of why they deserved to—
Ava stumbles again, and this time she doesn’t catch it. She only manages to twist at the last second so the generator doesn’t fall on top of her and pin her to the ground.
“Fuck!” she screams, face pressed against countless seasons of fallen leaves. An earthy scent, dirt and decay and life all in one, floods her nose and invades her mouth, trying to claim her.
Ava lies there for one second. Ten. Thirty. A minute.
Just because she shouldn’t have to be so damn strong doesn’t mean she isn’t. Ava stands up. She grabs one of the cage bars of the generator, and she starts dragging it.
She moves without thinking, without checking her progress, mind on nothing but her goal. Not where she’s going right now or what she’ll have to do when she gets there, but the goal beyond that. Mack, and LeGrand, and freedom.
Her pocket with Ian’s book bounces against her leg, while other pockets jingle, flush with cash and Linda’s family jewelry—taken as vengeance for how many times her fucking saint of a mother was accused of stealing jewelry from the houses she cleaned for women like Linda—and her muscles tremble, and her spine aches, and her knee won’t move right, and her ankle isn’t functioning, and Ava keeps going.
She has no idea how close to the gate she is, and, with her back turned, she doesn’t see the owner of that terribly gaudy jewelry standing beyond it, rifle pointed at Ava’s back.
* * *
—