Soultaker

CHAPTER FORTY-TWO

It was after 2:00.

It was already happening.

The fucking Harvest.

Jake cranked the Camry’s steering wheel as he blew through the four-way stop where Marlowe intersected with Spillane Boulevard. A blue Hyundai slammed on its brakes in the middle of the intersection as the Camry missed sideswiping its left fender by inches. The Hyundai’s driver shook a fist at him and honked his horn. Jake was too busy getting the Camry turned in the right direction to give a shit about the other guy’s righteous indignation. The Camry’s passengers let out startled cries and swayed from one side of the vehicle to the other. Jake felt their pain, but they’d wasted too much time already. Traffic laws and the potential for collateral damage en route to Rockville High were the least of their concerns.

Damn the torpedoes and full speed ahead.

He looked at the clock again.

2:04.

Fuck.

He whipped the steering wheel back the other way and now they were roaring along at seventy-five miles an hour down Spillane, where the posted speed limit was forty.

Rockville High loomed up ahead, now only a quarter mile away.

They should already have been there. Should already have made their big play. It could all have been over by now. All things considered, they would have been better off turning back to retrieve the book from Kelsey’s Oldsmobile. Jordan wound up spending too much time inside the Barnes & Noble. The store didn’t have a copy of the same book. Other books on ancient mythology alluded to the banishment ritual, but did not contain the necessary chants. They took a detour to the west side of Rockville to check out a used bookstore Will knew about. By then all bets were off. They all scrambled out of the Camry and rushed into Rhino Used Books, no longer caring whether anyone recognized the boys. And again they spent too much time in the store. The shelves in the nonfiction sections were all double stacked. Some were triple stacked, with old musty paperbacks tucked into every available nook and crevice. Still others were packed tight inside boxes on the floor. They’d had to pull out the stacks and sort through the titles individually. They did this with a callous disregard that upset the clerk on duty, who yelled at them about tossing books on the floor. He threatened to call the cops at one point. Kristen ushered him into a back room at gunpoint, secured him somehow, and returned to flip the Open sign on the front door over to Closed.

Then, at last, Jordan turned up the right book. It was even the same edition. A price of one dollar had been scrawled in faded pencil on the first inside page. At Jake’s direction, Jordan dropped the fifty-dollar bill he’d given her earlier on the desk as payment and they got out of there.

Jake prayed the delay wouldn’t prove too costly.

Prayed that not too many kids had died already.

He tapped the Camry’s brakes as they neared the school, twisted the wheel hard again, then gunned across the main parking lot toward the far side of the school. He pulled to a screeching stop between two rows of cars. An instant later the Camry’s doors popped open and its occupants again scrambled out. They didn’t bother to shut the doors, knowing they might have to beat a hasty retreat.

They all saw the same thing in the same moment.

Will said, “Holy shit.”

Jake felt a sickness swell inside his belly. Bile touched the back of his throat. If he’d harbored any lingering traces of denial or doubt, the sight of the dead guard vanquished them forever. He fought back the tide of nausea and placed himself in front of the others.

He looked at Kelsey. “We’re going in. No time to fuck around, get the lay of the land, any of that shit. You got that book ready?”

Kelsey raised a hand, his fingers bookmarking the proper page. It was a strange juxtaposition. Mythology book in one hand. Glock in the other. He looked like a deranged scholar. “Got it.”

Jake nodded. He looked at each of them in turn, sparing none of them more than a second. Not even Kristen. She seemed to have cast her reservations aside and was as swept up in the moment as any of them. She looked him in the eye and nodded.

Jake heaved a breath. “Right. Let’s go.”

He turned away from them and led a grim march toward the school.

Kelsey moved closer to Will as they neared the school’s rear entrance. There was something fucked up happening in there. The screams alone told him that. But there was more to it. The atmosphere surrounding the school was alive with some kind of unnatural energy. It made his flesh tingle and his nads shrivel. It was similar to the way he’d felt during Jordan’s levitation trick, only intensified a thousandfold. A sudden and very intense desire not to venture inside the school gripped him.

Who the hell did he think he was anyway?

John fucking Wayne riding to the rescue?

Who was he kidding?

He searched Will’s pale face and saw at once his friend was thinking similar thoughts. He could also tell Will knew the same unfortunate truth. Their fear didn’t matter. Their friends were in there. Trey was in there. And his only hope of salvation was this banishment spell, which, by God, better not turn out to be a bunch of made-up ancient hokum.

It was their only shot.

We’re doomed, he thought. Oh fuck. We’re doomed.

He nudged Will with an elbow. “You ready for this, man?”

Will swallowed and nodded. “I…think so.”

“Well, that makes one of us.”

And then there was no time left for idle conversation. They’d arrived at the entrance and the screams ripped at their ears. Kelsey worked hard to control the sudden tremors rippling through his body as they passed through the entrance and stood in the hallway, but it was impossible. His mind flashed on the movie Saving Private Ryan. Those soldiers in the landing boats, most of them hardly more than kids themselves. Crossing themselves and saying final prayers in those last moments before storming the beach at Normandy. For the first time, he thought he truly understood how it must have felt to have been in one of those boats.

A door on the left stood open maybe ten yards ahead.

The screams grew louder still as they approached it.

They were a few strides away when a door to their right flew open and Alexis Mackeson came at them in a rush, a scream tearing out of her mouth as she veered toward her son. Will froze in his tracks and gaped at her. There was a large bruise on her forehead. And matted blood in her hair. She was wild-eyed. A savage. She was nothing at all like the very proper society lady Kelsey had known.

There was a knife in her hand.

A big one.

Kelsey’s mind reeled.

What the hell?

The last they’d seen of her she’d been tied up and stuffed inside a closet. How had she gotten here? Who had released her?

She had lain in wait for him.

Had somehow known he would come here.

In the time it took for these thoughts to flit through his head, she brought the knife around in a savage arc and ripped a gash in Will’s throat. Blood leaped from the wound as Will staggered backward and banged into a row of lockers.

“NOOOOOO!”

Then the booming report of a gun overrode his cry of grief. Kristen stood ramrod straight in a classic shooter’s stance and pumped several rounds into Alexis. The woman’s body jerked as each slug tore through it, then toppled to the floor.

Will was on the ground now.

On his back.

His eyes staring up at the ceiling tiles.

Kelsey dropped to his knees, the book slipping from his fingers.

He scooted across the floor.

Stared down at his friend’s eyes.

His dead, sightless eyes.

In the next moment a scream of his own joined the chorus of agony issuing from the auditorium.

He could feel it all slipping away, his control of the situation pouring like sand through his fingers.

No.

Not like that.

Like blood from a mortal wound. A deep gash in the neck, say. And no matter how desperately you wished to stop the hemorrhaging, you just couldn’t do it. Jake stared at the dead boy on the floor and for a moment was stunned insensible. He just stood there. He didn’t know what to do next. Didn’t have the first inkling. He’d known he was heading into a life-or-death situation. Knowing that on an intellectual level was all well and good. But it did nothing to prepare you for that first moment of sudden, shocking violence. He doubted anything could prepare a person for this. He looked at Kelsey’s tear-streaked face and wished he could ease the boy’s pain somehow.

But there was one thing he could try to do.

The only thing left.

He reached for the fallen book.

As he knelt he became aware of a new sound rising above the screams from the auditorium. It was an ominous sound he associated with the impending storm. He was down on one knee when he heard Kristen shout his name. The alarm in her voice diverted him from the task of retrieving the book. He looked up and saw several pieces of notebook paper come swirling down the length of the corridor, buffeted by a powerful, rushing…

WIND.

Now hold on a second.

This didn’t make sense.

A wind originating from inside the school?

How-

And then it hit him. It was like being struck by hurricane winds. The force of it knocked him off his feet and sent him sliding several feet down the hallway. He rolled onto his stomach and saw the mythology book go flying past him, the slim volume’s pages flapping in the gale, looking for a moment like a wounded bird struggling to stay aloft. For a nanosecond, he saw it framed in the light visible through the open back doors. Then it was gone.

Someone screamed.

He didn’t know who.

Could even have been himself.

A burst of adrenaline slammed into him and he surged to his feet to stagger after the book. The wind continued to buffet him, slamming him against the lockers more than once, but he managed to stay upright through a monumental effort of physical will. Then he was through the doors and back in the parking lot. The strange wind followed him out of the building, blew past him, and lifted the book off the asphalt. He dove for the book and a fingertip brushed its spine for a moment before it flew high into the sky and disappeared forever.

He screamed and pounded the pavement with his fist. He was so lost in feelings of impotent rage that he hardly noticed the wind had ceased blowing.

Then Kristen was kneeling next to him, a trembling hand on his back. “Jake? Baby, get up. We’ve got to get out of here.”

Jake found a fresh reserve of strength and pushed himself to his knees. He stared at the open rear entrance, saw only the dead security guard. He looked at Kristen. “Jordan. Kelsey. Where are they?”

She hesitated a moment; then her shoulders sagged. “Still in the school.”

Jake got to his feet and started walking back toward the school.

Kristen hurried after him, grabbed him by an elbow, stopped him. She spun him toward her. “Did you hear me? We have to go. Now.”

Jake shook his head. “I’m not leaving them in there.”

Kristen made a sound of frustration. “You don’t even know them! Don’t you get it yet? This is bigger than us! There’s nothing we can do to stop it. The fucking army couldn’t stop this. We have to leave before we’re dead, too.”

Jake looked at her and felt a bone-deep weariness. The day had started off with a monster hangover and he was still feeling some of its effects. He was in nowhere near peak physical condition to begin with. Factor in an ass-kicking at the hands of his jock brother, an afternoon spent speeding around town like some kind of berserk meth-head, and what you wound up with was an exhaustion so enervating all he wanted was to find a comfortable bed and sleep twenty-four hours straight. And yet he knew he couldn’t just run away. Not this time. Maybe he couldn’t save the Rockville High class of 2009, but he could at least try to save two people. And it didn’t matter that they were strangers. They were human beings. The girl was maybe even related to him somehow. He wouldn’t be able to live with himself if he didn’t make the effort.

“I have to try.”

Kristen made a face. “Fuck.”

Jake started toward the school again. “You can leave with out me. I understand.”

She followed him. “Right. You know I can’t do that.”

“Just so you know. I wish you would go. But there’s no time to waste trying to convince you.”

They stepped through the rear entrance again. Pages of notebook paper-the contents of someone’s discarded folder-littered the floor. Kelsey was where they’d left him, still knelt over the corpse of his best friend.

Jake approached him, put a hand on his shoulder. “Kelsey…where’s Jordan?”

Kelsey sniffled and looked at him through eyes shiny with tears. “I don’t know,” he said in a numb monotone. “She was gone when the wind stopped.”

Jake grimaced. “Fuck.”

Of course.

It fit right in with everything else that had happened today. Nothing could go down the clean and easy way. If he’d found them, he would’ve heeded Kristen’s advice. She was right. They couldn’t win. They’d been stupid to ever believe they could. But with Jordan missing, he felt obligated to look for her.

“You didn’t see where she went at all?”

“I just told you, I looked up and she was gone.”

Jake sighed and looked at the open door to the auditorium. His stomach churned and he felt faint. It was the only place she could have gone. He would have to go in there.

He took a step toward the door.

Kristen grabbed him by the arm again, more forcefully this time. “No. I mean it. You’re not going in there. If I have to, I’ll shoot you in the fucking foot and drag your stupid ass out to the car.”

Jake looked at the door again.

Then he looked at Kristen, saw the fierce determination on her face. She would really do it, he knew. Shoot him to save him from himself. He could feel his resolve diminishing. It was so tempting to just admit defeat and slink away.

Then something happened that frightened him more than anything else that had happened.

The screams stopped.

There was a long moment of frozen silence. None of them moved. None of them said a word. Jake felt a deep coldness pierce the center of his being.

They all knew what that silence meant.

They were all dead.

All the kids.

Jesus fucking Christ.

Jake’s breath caught in his throat and tears stung his eyes. He would have collapsed to the floor had Kristen not been holding on to his arm. The enormity of the loss hit him like a blow to the gut from a heavyweight champ. His knees sagged and Kristen drew him close, wrapped her arms around him.

A sound broke the silence.

Jake’s heart started hammering again.

Footsteps.

Coming from somewhere on the other side of that open doorway.

Someone on high heels.

Then the person came through the doorway and he thought his heart might stop altogether. His mouth opened. He forced the word out. “Moira.”

The demon smiled. “Hello, Jake. I’ve missed you.”

Kelsey got shakily to his feet and moved backward a step. “Something’s not right. That’s not her. Not Myra. But…”

Kristen’s grip on his arm tightened. “Jake? Who is this? Do you know this person?”

Jake didn’t reply. He was temporarily incapable of speech. A mind-bending sense of surreality gripped him. This thing was their enemy. Lamia. And at the same time it was Moira Flanagan. The hair. The clothes. The eyes. The mouth. That same knowing smirk, so playful and full of sexual promise. And yet…there were little differences, slight subtleties in the shape of her face. A moment after he sensed this, he saw through the disguise. Moira Flanagan was still dead. This was her baby sister, the girl he’d met at the Grill his first day back in town. Bridget. He couldn’t fathom why she would have gone to such lengths to look like her dead sister.

Lamia moved a step closer. “It’s true. This is Bridget’s body. But I am Moira, Jake. And I am Lamia. I am the woman who was the center of your world for a few precious years. The one you made love to in the back of your car down by the dock. The one you read your first stories to. You’ve never loved anyone like you loved me.”

Jake shook his head. “No. Moira’s dead. She went for a ride with my brother Michael. There was an accident. They both died.”

Lamia smiled again. “Moira’s body died, yes. But the essence you loved lived on, just as it has lived on through the ages.” She held out her hands, looked at them, then looked at Jake again. “This is just a shell. I can inhabit any female body. You like this one, yes? I can take another if it’s not suitable.”

The sense of surreality intensified. Too many horrific revelations in too short a time span. The dead love of his life had never really died. Had never been truly human. He thought of all those drunken, wasted years he’d spent mourning a monster and would have laughed if not for the tragic circumstances.

He found his voice at last and said, “You killed them all, didn’t you?” He nodded at the open door behind her. “All those kids. They’re all dead.”

Her smile remained placid. “I fed, yes. It’s irrational to hate me for it, Jake. It’s simply my nature.”

“And now you’re going to kill me?” He glanced first at Kristen, then at Kelsey. “And them.”

She moved another step closer, raised her hands, splayed her fingers. “Them, yes. Not you.”

Jake moved backward a step, dragging Kristen with him. He felt her tremble and drew her close, wrapped an arm around her. “Why not me?”

She laughed. “Because I enjoy you. I want you around. The others are nothing to me. I’ll feed on them as I fed on the children. Then I’ll feed you some of their essence. I can do that. I wasn’t strong enough ten years ago, but now I am. You’ll become stronger, too. And you’ll live a long, long time. Hundreds of years, if I wish.”

Jake’s throat constricted but he managed to push out the words: “I’d rather die.”

Lamia shrugged. “I don’t believe that. But it hardly matters. The choice is mine, not yours. You are mine. You will do as I say.”

He shook his head. “Fuck that and fuck you.”

The time to run had come. No more talking. There was nothing more they could do here other than die. He spun around and Kristen turned with him. Then Jake’s heart sank as he realized they wouldn’t get to make a break for it. The way out was blocked out by at least a dozen big dogs and an array of other animals. The dogs bared their teeth and growled at them. Huge droplets of saliva drooled from the mouths of each. Jake sensed these weren’t normal animals. The strangely glowing eyes told him that. And there was the way they’d sneaked up on them without making a sound to consider. An immense frustration tore at Jake. There was nothing to do now. No way to run. No way to fight. They could tangle with these creatures or Lamia, and either way they’d be equally fucked.

Then he looked at the.38 Kristen still held and thought maybe there was one last option, after all. He didn’t like it, but it beat the hell out of a surrender to the monster. He looked her in the eye and saw the same grudging acceptance. He pressed his lips to hers and felt equal measures of regret and longing in the way they yielded to his.

“Stop that.”

Lamia’s voice was harsher now. Angry.

Jake heard the click of her heels on the floor tiles as she strode rapidly toward him. Jake wrapped one arm around Kristen in an awkward embrace as his other hand went for the.38. He had to do this fast without thinking about it. Had to get off two quick shots. One straight between Kristen’s eyes, then swallow a bullet himself.

BOOM!

Jake jumped at the sound, recognizing it immediately for what it was. He let go of Kristen and turned back toward Lamia, gaping at the sight of the massive and bloody exit wound just below her sternum. Then he looked beyond the demon and saw Jordan Harper. The girl pumped another round into the shotgun’s chamber and took aim again.

Instinct pushed Jordan through the open door as Kristen took aim and fired at the knife-wielding bitch who’d murdered Will Mackeson. Though she’d found temporary solace in the company of others, she knew she was the only one who stood a chance against Lamia. She had to act while the others were otherwise occupied, before they could get themselves killed by trying to face the monster.

Much of her bravado vanished as she entered the backstage area and saw all the elegantly attired bodies on the floor, all of them leaking blood from still-fresh gunshot wounds. The rest of it disappeared as she moved beyond them and got a look at her mother, who was still working her dark magic at the edge of the stage. The body belonged to Bridget, but strong, undeniable intuition told her the girl she’d known no longer inhabited that body. It was her mother. Lamia. She stood at the edge of the stage with her hands raised high over her head. Bolts of electricity arced out of her fingertips to weave a tapestry of light over the ceiling. The students screamed and screamed. The ones that were still alive, that is. Bodies were piled up at the chained doors and in the aisles between seats. The bodies looked ravaged, as if they’d been hollowed out from the inside. The eyes of the dead appeared to have burst, the sockets filled with bloody pulp. Every few seconds a finger of electric light would descend from the ceiling tapestry to strike at yet another of the screaming students huddled between the rows of seats. The light would enter through the mouth, suffusing the flesh of the victim with an incandescent glow. The body would convulse and quickly wither. Jordan watched this and felt her resolve wither just as quickly. The energy emanating from the edge of the stage was as powerful as anything a faulty nuclear reactor might generate. Stronger. She’d only just started learning how to tap and harness her own abilities. They would be no match for what her mother could do. So she watched in numb shock as the massacre went forward unimpeded, feeling paralyzed, unable even to retreat. She knew she ought to get back to the others, warn them it was hopeless, but she remained riveted to the spot until it was nearly over.

When she saw that only a few students remained alive, the shock gave way to a simple, reflexive act of self-preservation. She moved backward and tripped over the body of a man in a long black trench coat. She landed awkwardly, twisting her ankle as she hit the floor. The last of the screams from the auditorium cut off as she lay there. Then she heard footsteps coming toward her across the stage. She had only a few seconds to act and rolled under a table laden with a punch bowl, plastic cups, and various refreshments. Another dead body was nearby. She pulled it close, hiding behind it as she held her breath and waited for Lamia to pass. The sound of her mother’s heels entered the backstage area and continued through to the hallway beyond.

Jordan let out a breath and shoved the dead body away. She crawled out of her hiding spot and spied the shotgun’s barrel sticking out beneath another table. She retrieved the weapon and hurried after her mother, a wild idea sparking inside her as she examined the gun. She knew how the thing worked. Her only high school boyfriend had been into guns and had shared much of his knowledge with her. In truth, he’d been more into those guns than he’d been into her. Which was fine, because she wasn’t into him either, but a girl was supposed to have a boyfriend. When he’d kiss her, she’d close her eyes and pretend he was Laura Miller, her number-one crush at the time. But his stubble made the illusion a fragile one. Well, at least now maybe some good would come of that sham of a relationship.

Her plan was simple. She would sneak up on Lamia and blast her host body full of holes. And she would hope this would weaken the demon sufficiently to successfully engage her another way. It probably wouldn’t work, but there was nothing else she could do.

She stepped into the hallway and aimed the gun at Lamia’s back, acting quickly before the others could see her and give her away. She squeezed the trigger and the shotgun’s stock slammed against her shoulder, but she’d been taught how to absorb the weapon’s recoil and was able to keep it steady as she took aim again. Lamia started to turn toward her as the next shell took out the back of her skull and sent bone shards and bits of brain matter flying. The demon’s mouth opened and a sound like a thunderclap split the air.

Jordan chambered another round and fired again. The third shell took the demon full in the neck and nearly decapitated her. The head lolled sharply to one side, but the demon remained upright as she turned fully toward Jordan and began to stagger toward her. Jordan retreated down the hallway as she chambered yet another round. The next blast hit Lamia between the breasts. It staggered her for a moment, but she kept coming nonetheless. Any one of the blasts would have knocked a human woman off her feet, but Lamia was able to keep Bridget’s mortally wounded body erect and mobile. It was frustrating. And now there was another complication. The minions streamed past Jake and Kristen, past Kelsey, and Lamia herself.

Jordan tensed, expecting an attack. They were Lamia’s minions, after all. Instead they surrounded her and formed a barrier between herself and Lamia.

A few of the dogs even growled at Lamia.

Jordan heard Jake say, “Well, damn. Look at that.”

Jordan kept a wary eye on Lamia while directing a response at Jake. “I’ve got this. You guys get out of here.”

“Are you sure? Because-”

Jordan screamed and raised the gun again.

Jake frowned.

Now what?

In less than a heartbeat Jordan had gone from relatively calm to terrified, and he had no clue what had happened to cause the change. She raised the shotgun to fire again. The blast hit Lamia’s midsection again, but failed to even rock her. Then the demon’s host body began to convulse. She ripped at her bloody clothes, shredding them and pulling them free. Her flesh rippled and shifted as something moved beneath. Then her skin began to split in several places as something inside started to push its way out.

Kristen cringed and clung tighter to him. “What the hell’s going on?”

Kelsey aimed his Glock at Lamia’s blister-covered back and fired until the gun clicked empty. None of the wounds seemed to have any effect, except perhaps to accelerate the change occurring.

Kelsey looked at Jake. “Why won’t she fucking fall down?”

The shotgun boomed again. The shell hit Lamia’s neck again and now the head hung by a single thick strand of tissue. But now something else surged through the neck stump. Another head. This one green and triangular, with hard, pebbled flesh and rows of sharp, glistening teeth. The rest of Bridget’s dead flesh fell away and a reptilian creature the likes of which Jake had never seen stood hissing in the hallway. It had short, stubby arms, somewhat longer legs, and a long, thick tail. And it began to grow as they stared at it in awed, paralyzed terror. The body expanded to perhaps three times its original size in seconds, its head bowing to avoid scraping the ceiling. Its arms grew and long black talons appeared at the tips of its fingers. The minions whimpered and retreated as it reached for Jordan. A flick of its thrashing tail knocked Jake and the others off their feet. The back of Jake’s head smashed against the combination lock of a locker and a bright, flashing pain obliterated everything else for a moment. Then he rolled onto his back and lifted his head to get a look at what was going on.

And he felt a small flicker of hope.

Because now Jordan was changing, too, her body morphing, becoming something very similar to the reptilian demon without having to shed her skin. The creatures lunged at each other and clashed in the hallway, slamming each other from wall to wall. The auditorium door was knocked off its hinges. Lockers collapsed like crepe paper beneath the force of the body slams.

Jake realized what was about to happen an instant before it did.

There was no time to get out of the way.

He closed his eyes and hoped it wouldn’t hurt too much.

Then the thing that had been Jordan crashed into him and the world went black.

The first thing he felt when he woke up was pain. Pain all over. He wondered for a moment whether he was paralyzed, but then realized he wouldn’t feel this all-over pain if he’d been paralyzed. He carefully tested his arms and legs, rolled his neck from one side to the other. It hurt like hell, but nothing seemed to be broken. A miracle. Now he’d just have to hope he hadn’t been hit quite hard enough to trigger some kind of internal bleeding.

He drew in a deep breath, braced his palms against the slick floor, and pushed himself up to a sitting position. He held his breath as he surveyed the carnage around him. Kristen sat slumped against a bank of lockers, unconscious but breathing. She looked okay otherwise, with the exception of a bruised face and a bloody nose. Then he saw Kelsey and felt a pang at the center of his chest. The boy was facedown on the floor. His neck had been snapped during the monster melee. He wasn’t breathing. Jake considered a CPR attempt, but knew it would be useless. The floor was littered with pieces of Bridget Flanagan’s exploded body.

He frowned.

They were gone.

There was no sign of Jordan. No sign of the thing she’d become. No sign of Lamia in Godzilla mode. All the animals were gone, too.

What the fuck happened?

Kristen groaned and her eyes fluttered open. She blinked slowly and in a few moments was able to focus on Jake. “Jake…what…happened?”

He sighed. “Your guess is as good as mine.”

He got to his feet and went to her. He took her outstretched hand and pulled her gingerly to her feet. They walked out of the school and she held tightly to him as they made their way to the Camry. He got her settled into the front passenger seat and said, “I have to go back inside for a minute.”

Some of the bleariness drained from her eyes then. “No. Jake…please…”

“I have to. I won’t be long, I promise. You stay here. I just have to check on something.”

He turned away from her and left without another word. Back inside the school, he moved quickly past the bodies in the hallway and stepped through the open door leading to the auditorium. In the backstage area, he stopped and stared for a moment at the bullet-riddled bodies of the adults. These were the people Lamia had recruited to assist her in arranging the Harvest. All dead. Good. Fuck them. He moved past them, found his way to the stage, and felt the strength drain from his body as he saw what had happened in the auditorium.

They were all dead. Just as he’d feared. Every last one of them. If Trey’s body was out there somewhere, he would never be able to identify it. The withered corpses barely looked human.

He dropped to his knees and just stared at the horror for a long, long time.

Then he heard footsteps behind him.

A moment later, a soft hand on his shoulder.

“Jake…let’s go.”

He looked up at her through eyes wet with tears. “Okay.”

He took Kristen’s hand and she helped him to his feet.

Then they left that slaughterhouse and never returned.