“What was that?” Avery said, eyes suddenly wide with fear—suggesting she had a pretty good idea what the sound represented.

“I think it might have been gunfire,” Sarah Beth said, her mind going to the active shooter training they’d had a few weeks ago.

“Everyone—into the tornado shelter. Hurry!” a male voice yelled. Mr. Baker, she realized.

Doors began opening along the hallway and kids trickled out. Like Avery, the new arrivals look terrified. Instead of running toward the shelter, most of them stood frozen in place, staring down the corridor.

“C’mon, guys,” Sarah Beth shouted, “you heard Mr. Baker; we’ve got to get to the tornado shelter.”

She grabbed Avery by the arm and pulled her down the hallway toward the shelter, the place they had trained to go for both tornados and active shooter situations—though in central Tennessee and especially at St. George’s, she supposed, shooters were more likely than tornadoes. The shelter entrance sat smack-dab in the middle of the school, between the east and west halls. The room was long and windowless, with reinforced steel doors and a concrete ceiling designed to withstand an F5 tornado. It also was large enough to accommodate all the students and faculty and had battery lighting and self-contained ventilation, whatever that meant. Thirty feet ahead, Mr. Baker, the school’s chemistry teacher and boys’ dorm RA, waved his right arm and directed a river of kids toward the shelter.

Avery tripped, dropping her flashlight and almost taking Sarah Beth down with her.

“Ow, ow, ow,” the girl howled, rolling onto her side and clutching her knee.

Fresh gunfire echoed, this time closer than before.

“C’mon, Avery,” Sarah Beth said, grabbing her by the wrist.

“I got her,” Mr. Baker said, scooping Avery up in his arms. “We gotta go now, girls.”

All the kids in the hall were ahead of them now, running toward the shelter but also toward the sound of gunfire. As she ran beside him, Sarah Beth noticed that Mr. Baker was wearing a pistol in a holster on his lower back. He wasn’t an operator like Uncle Jed, but hopefully the fact that he was armed meant he could defend them if necessary. They quickly reached the first door to the shelter, where a logjam of kids blocked the entrance as they pushed and shoved in a panicked frenzy to get inside.

“No pushing. Step in and clear the door,” Mr. Baker barked, but then Sarah Beth saw his attention abruptly shift from the gaggle of kids to a dark shape with glowing eyes standing in the west hallway fifty feet away.

Lightning flashed outside, briefly backlighting the spindly, cloaked figure.

Gooseflesh stood up on Sarah Beth’s arms and the back of her neck.

She knew this shape.

She knew those eyes.

Victor . . .

He was here, at St. George’s . . . but how was that possible?