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And then an Amazon comes out of nowhere. Carmel has jumped down the stairs, halfway down the wall. She’s screaming. The Obeahman turns just in time to catch an aluminum bat in the face, and it does more than it did to A
I don’t miss my chance. I stab my athame into his leg and he howls, but he manages to snake his arm out and get hold of Carmel’s leg. There’s a wet popping sound, and I finally see how he’s able to take such large bites of people: he’s got most of his jaw unhinged. He sinks his teeth into Carmel’s thigh.
“Carmel!” It’s Thomas, yelling as he limps his way down the stairs. He won’t get to her in time—not soon enough to keep her leg in one piece—so I throw myself at the Obeahman, and my knife goes into his cheek. I’ll saw his entire jaw off, I swear it.
Carmel is screeching and clinging to Thomas, who is trying to pull her from the crocodile. I twist my knife in his mouth, hoping to god that I’m not cutting her in the process, and he releases his bite with a wet smack. The entire house shakes with his fury.
Only it’s not his fury. This isn’t his house. And he’s weakening. I’ve sliced him open enough now that we’re wrestling in a sloppy mess. He’s managed to pin me down as Thomas drags Carmel out of the way, so he doesn’t see what I see, which is a hovering, dripping dress of blood.
I wish he did have eyes, so I could see the surprise in them when she grabs him from behind and tosses him with a crash into the banister. My A
On the staircase, the Obeahman comes slowly to his feet. He dusts himself off and bares his teeth. I don’t understand. The cuts in his side and his face, the wound in his leg, they aren’t bleeding anymore.
“You think you can kill me with my own knife?” he asks.
I look at Thomas, who has taken off his jacket to tie around Carmel’s leg. If I can’t kill him with the athame, I don’t know what to do. There are other ways to take down a ghost, but nobody here knows them. I can barely move. My chest feels like a bundle of loose twigs.
“It’s not your knife,” A
“A
And then I notice the soft, red glow, like embers.
There’s surprise on A
The Obeahman hisses as she moves forward. Even when she’s weak, she’s got no equal. They trade blows. She twists his head around only to have him snap it right back again.
I have to help her. Never mind the clawing of my own bones inside my lungs. I haul myself over onto my stomach. Using my knife like a mountain climber’s pick, I heave and scrape across the floor.
As the house shifts, a thousand boards and rusted nails groan out of tune. And then there are the sounds that they make, crashing together, the noise dense enough to make me wince. I’m amazed that they don’t both shatter into bleeding pieces.
“A
“Cas!” she shouts through gritted teeth. “You have to get out of here! You have to get everyone out!”
“I’m not leaving you,” I shout back. Or at least I think I do. My adrenaline is ru
She screams. While her attention was on me, the bastard unhinged his jaw, and now he’s attached himself to her arm, dug in like a snake. The sight of her blood on his lips makes me yell. I pull my legs up under myself and vault.
I grab him by the hair and try to push him away from her. The slice I made in his face flaps grotesquely with each movement. I cut him again and use the knife to pry his teeth up, and together we use everything we have to throw him. He hits the broken staircase and falls down, sprawled and stu
“Cassio, you have to go now,” she says to me. “Please.”
Dust is falling around us. She’s done something to the house, opened up that burning hole in the floor. I know it, and I know she can’t take it back.
“You’re coming with me.” I take her arm, but pulling her is like trying to pull a Greek column. Thomas and Carmel are calling to me near the door, but it seems like a thousand miles away. They’ll make it out. Their footsteps hammer down the front steps.
In the midst of it all, A
Then it hardens. She shoves me away, tosses me back across the room, the way I came. I roll, and feel the sick crumple of my ribs. When my head lifts, A
When he looks with his stitched-over eyes and sees, he’s afraid. He rains down blows on A
“A
I throw myself over and start to crawl again. I taste like blood and panic. Thomas’s hands are on me. He’s trying to pull me out, just like he did weeks ago, the first time I was in this house. But that feels like years ago now, and this time I fight him off. He gives up on me and runs for the stairs, where my mom is yelling for help as the house rattles. The dust is making it harder to see, harder to breathe.
A
“Let go of me,” I growl, or at least I think I growl. I can’t tell. I can’t talk well.
“Oh,” somebody says.
I push myself up to look at the house. It’s filled with red light. The whole thing throbs like a heart, casting a glow into the night sky. Then it implodes with a sick crash, the walls sucking in on themselves and collapsing, sending up mushrooms of dust and flying splinters and nails.
Someone covers me, protecting me from the blast. But I wanted to see it. I wanted to see her, one last time.
EPILOGUE
You wouldn’t think that people would believe that we all got so incredibly beat up—in so many interesting ways—from a bear attack. Especially not when Carmel is sporting a bite mark that is a spot-on match for wounds found at one of the most horrifying crime scenes in recent history. But I never fail to be surprised by what people will believe.