Chapter Thirty-Three #2
I turned the cold steel over in my palm, tracing the killer edge like a fever dream. I thought I’d lost it in the woods when I tripped and fell. Was I hallucinating then, or was I hallucinating now? How long had I been gone? It felt like forever, yet not much had changed.
Robert, another man, and Nick were fighting nearby.
Mitch was shouting something at June, who was trapped against a tree by a figure in black, his mask gone, too.
She held the shotgun uselessly, having spent all the shells.
She was too far away for me to reach. The men who had chased me for the grimoire were gone.
I didn’t know if they’d run, gotten lost, or something worse had happened.
"You?" Robert’s eyes widened as he stumbled backward, clearly not expecting to see me. Then he looked up at the moon. It looked ordinary now—no flare of death, no omen in the sky. "You’ve ruined everything, you stupid bitch. If he doesn’t get what he wants, we’re all going to..."
He didn’t clarify who "he" was: one of his clients, or the monster lurking in the shadows.
I raised the knife, but Robert only smirked.
"Get the grimoire!" he barked, noticing the book in my other hand.
Two of his men lunged toward me, and reality snapped back into focus. At the same time, everything seemed to slow down, like time itself had been stretched thin.
"Give it to them!" Nick shouted when he saw me.
I stalled. They’d been after the book all along, and Nick’s order to just hand it over was strange. But I had promised him I wouldn’t question his orders.
With all the force I had, I twisted and hurled the book into the trees so hard that it almost felt like my arm was going with it.
One of Robert’s men gave chase, but it made no difference. We were still outnumbered and outgunned.
The other tackled me to the ground, winding me. The knife flew from my grip again, but my hand instinctively closed around a nearby stone. I swung it blindly, catching my attacker in the shoulder. The hit wasn’t clean, but it was enough to throw him off.
The masked figure reappeared from the trees, the grimoire held tentatively in his muddied fingers. He presented it to Robert, who accepted it for the sacred relic he believed it to be. They now had the book, and our chances of escape hadn’t improved.
Robert scanned the pages, his expression twisted.
"What the hell is this?" he bellowed, flipping through the pages faster, each movement more frantic than the last.
His distraction rippled outward.
A thump, and Nick had managed to throw his attacker off his back. I took the opportunity to wrench myself free, scrambling up from the dirt like a reanimated corpse. Robert remained distracted, wholly absorbed in whatever was wrong with the pages.
He didn’t see me coming.
I charged, the stone still in hand, and swung at his head.
But Robert didn’t fall. He blitzed like a storm, lashing out with an outstretched arm.
I tasted leather and musty pages. He’d hit me with the grimoire.
Pain shot through my skull as I hit the ground, weak and spent, blood trailing from my lips.
He stormed toward me, his footsteps breaking the earth with the weight of an avalanche. I tried to squirm away.
"You bitch," he spat again, and then, all at once, he stilled, choking on a guttural roar.
Just a few paces from me, he began clawing at his back in withering despair. I didn’t understand until his knees buckled and he crashed onto his stomach.
My knife jutted from his back, and Nick stood over him.
A low, foreboding rumble shook the clearing. It wasn’t quite an earthquake. It was deeper, stranger. A humming sound that grew louder with each passing second. I covered my ears, holding my breath until it stopped.
When I finally dared to look up, Nick was staring at me, the same shock scarred on his features. The man who had been attacking him was gone.
I turned toward Mitch and June. Robert’s men were fleeing into the woods that had refused to take me.
The grimoire lay by my feet. I picked it up.
Its cover fell away in my hands, revealing a plain notepad underneath. The pages were the same size, but lined like an ordinary journal, mass-produced and modern. I blinked down at it, stunned.
June caught my eye. "Did it work? Is he dead?" she asked, her voice shaking. She was still hiding behind a tree, as if trying to decide whether it was safe to come out.
Robert lay on his side, his body slack in a way that left no doubt.
It seemed impossibly mundane. Anticlimactic.
After everything, it wasn’t a curse or a monster that ended him. Just a knife.
A man like him, undone by something so ordinary.
Nick had swapped the grimoire for a fake.
I didn’t know why he hadn’t warned me, but I assumed he had his reasons.
My best guess was that he wanted me to believe I was carrying the real thing.
Maybe that’s why the deity hadn’t taken it—if it ever wanted it in the first place.
At least the fake had done what it needed to: distracted Robert long enough for Nick to end it.
We didn’t go after Robert’s men, though June wanted to, still riding the adrenaline, but Mitchell stopped her.
Judging by how Robert had carried himself and the way the others had followed him, it felt safe to assume he’d been the one holding it all together.
The one with real power. They wouldn’t survive without him, and without the grimoire.
I sat down, covered in blood, and stared blankly into space.
After two years of being accused of murder, directly and indirectly, I had somewhat lived up to my reputation.
We’d killed a man. I was an accomplice, and I would have to live with that for the rest of my days.
But no matter how hard I tried to wrap my head around it—to feel guilt or remorse or anything at all—it wouldn’t come.
We killed a man to stop him from killing others, to save ourselves.
When I found Duane’s body, I went into shock.
Now, after seeing someone die, I felt a hollow calm.
June and Mitch acted like it was nothing.
But we still had a dead body on our hands.
Mitchell came back first, carrying a stuffed backpack and a shovel.
"Where did you get the shovel?" I asked, my brain too tired to process anything else.
"We packed it up, just in case. Grabbed some other stuff, too. Snacks and whatnot." He tossed a protein bar at me, but I didn’t catch it. It softly hit my chest and landed on my lap.
"Sorry," he winced. "Eat it. You’ll need the energy."
"He made me carry his stupid backpack," June whined. "It was so heavy!"
I buried my face in my hands and laughed wearily. Hearing her complain again felt like a breath of fresh air.
Nick was putting the real grimoire back into its cover, wrapping it with fabric before tucking it into his backpack. He’d stashed it in the woods near the clearing, keeping it hidden the entire time.
"They probably searched the motel room, too," he said. "Didn’t want to risk leaving it there."
"Can’t we just leave it here? Or destroy it?" I begged.
"No," he said abruptly. "We don’t know if it’ll calm it down, set it free, or piss it off. Let’s not risk it."
No one had the energy to argue. We all looked like we’d been through the wringer.
Nick’s eyes were sunken, his skin pale and clammy, and his clothes were torn and stained.
Mitch had a nasty gash above his eyebrow, and his lip was swollen and bruised.
June’s hair was matted and tangled, her clothes ripped and filthy.
She didn’t have any visible wounds, but she was limping slightly.
I probably didn’t look any better. My shirt was torn, and I was splattered with forest mud and blood, the bruises from before still in bloom on my face.
On the bright side, I was so tired that the pain barely registered.
"Wait here," Mitch said, nodding at the corpse on the other side of the clearing. "We’ll take care of him."
They hadn’t come back for two hours. During that time, June kept retelling how they fought and how she’d almost shot a guy. I asked how long I’d been gone, and she said,
"Like, five minutes? Maybe less?"
To me, it had felt like forever.
As we were leaving, she picked up the abandoned stag mask. "What happens to them?" she asked of the men who’d fled. "Are they going to die?"
Nick gave a slight raise of his shoulders, as if he didn’t care. And maybe he really didn’t.
I wasn’t sure I did either.