Andrew reached up and locked the door, not that it would do any good. Whatever was out there had demolished his car with its bare hands. If it wanted to come into the cottage, it could easily punch the door right off its hinges.

First things first. He got up and carried Kate back to the bed. The fact that she hadn’t woken up through all of the running, screaming, and mayhem worried him deeply. Could a seizure that went on too long lead to brain damage? Had her lungs constricted enough to cut the flow of oxygen to her brain? He was no doctor, though he’d been around enough to have a good working knowledge of the profession, but at the moment, his thoughts were too scattered to coalesce into rational thought.

“Oh God, I’m bleeding,” Ryker said. He’d been so obsessed with the burning, he must not have realized that his face had been flayed open. Andrew balled paper towels around his hand and ran the wad under the water. He took the chair next to Ryker and dabbed at his face. The towel instantly turned red. Nikki got to her feet and took the towel from him.

Neither Andrew nor Nikki spoke aloud what they were thinking.

The wounds were bad. The only positive thing was that Ryker’s eyes had been spared. The trio of jagged lacerations started at his hairline, the one above his right eye so deep, Andrew could see the dull white sheen of his skull through pulped flesh. They ran down his face, bisecting his eyebrows, skipping past his eyes and resuming on his cheeks.

The one in the center of his face was the worst. It had sliced his nose in two, sickeningly reminding Andrew of a split hot dog on a flat-top grill. It had also torn his lips apart. Blood ran into his mouth and poured from the chasm between the two halves of his bottom lip.

He needed stitches. A ton of them, and soon, before he bled to death.

“A sewing kit. Where did Kate pack the sewing kit?” he muttered to himself.

The crunch of rending metal had ceased. All was silent in the woods…for the moment.

Andrew raced to the closet in the bedroom and dug until he found his and Kate’s luggage. His wife loved to pack (or grossly overpack, as Andrew had lamented more times than he could count), preparing for every eventuality. She collected the little sewing kits sometimes found in hotels, always making sure to stow one in a pocket of her suitcase just in case a button needed to be sewn back on or Andrew once again ripped the seat of his pants, which he hoped had been a one-time thing.

Digging through the plethora of little storage compartments in her bag, his fingers seized a small plastic case.