A chorus of screaming voices filled her head, so loud and shrill that her hands flew immediately to cover her ears. She looked at her classmates, assuming they were the ones screaming, but they all had their hands over their ears as well. Some of the kids had even collapsed to the floor and were writhing in pain. The screams were inhuman. Otherworldly. Demonic.

She turned to Mr. Baker, who, wearing an anguished look on his face, pulled his pistol and leveled it at Victor. But instead of squeezing the trigger, he just held the gun in midair, face tight with consternation.

“What are you doing?” she shouted. “Shoot him!”

Mr. Baker ignored her. She could see the cords in his neck straining and the veins on his temples puffing out. Then in horror, she watched him turn the pistol on himself. A tear ran down his cheek, and she understood what was happening. She looked away as he pulled the trigger and screamed as his body crumpled at her feet.

There you are, Victor said, his voice a parasitic worm in her mind. Now we can finally finish what we started.

Fear snaked around her chest like a python, making it hard to breathe. Panic followed along with its twin sister uncertainty. This was it. The culmination of her nightmares. The sum of all her fears. There was no place safe from him.

Not even St. George’s.

He had come for her, and this time there was no escape.

CHAPTER
FORTY-FIVE

ACCESS ROAD FOR ST. GEORGE’S ACADEMY

Maria braked to a stop halfway down the access road leading to St. George’s Academy. Ahead, she spied multiple armored assault vehicles—of the same design and black paint scheme she’d seen in the Dark Horizon warehouse during her last visit with Victor. One appeared to have run off the road and crashed into the berm beside the front gate. The second and third were parked in front of the row of balusters blocking the road ahead of the guard shack, one of the vehicles appearing to have smashed into the barrier.

“What are those trucks?” Rachel said from the passenger seat beside her.

“They look like armored personnel vehicles,” Maria said, squinting to see the all-too-familiar vehicles through the driving rain peppering the windshield.

“So the police are already here?”

“No, those don’t belong to Nashville SWAT,” she said, keeping her gaze straight ahead.

“How do you know?”

“Because I just know, okay?”

“Then why are they here?”

“I’m not sure,” she lied.

“Well, what are you waiting for? We need to get in there!”

Maria shook her head. “No way. Too dangerous. We have no idea what’s going on here. There’s a high probability we’ll be shot before we make it to the gate.”

“We have to do something,” Rachel said.