Sebastian tightened his arms around his brother’s middle before snapping the deputy’s pilfered handcuffs around his own wrists, locking the two of them in the embrace. Then he looked up into Nathan’s face. The ruse was over. He was smiling. “The smell, Nate? It’s retribution.”

He thumbed the wheel of the Bic butane in his hand.

The flame all but leaped from the lighter and raced with glee up the old man’s gas-soaked sleeves and across his shoulders, encircling the two of them in the blink of an eye. Sebastian Danner said nothing. He simply died. But his brother was another matter. He screamed as the fire licked around him and his thrashing made them look like an insane couple on the dance floor. He hammered at the dead man who held him until the arms came off at the sockets and he was free again. But it was already too late. The flames had spread too quickly, and pieces of Sebastian Danner’s clothes and skin were still stuck to him and feeding the blaze. Nathan staggered backward, screaming and cursing as the fire enfolded him like an orange cocoon. He collapsed on the grass and continued to burn even after he stopped moving.

There was shocked silence. The pop and crack of the flames was the only sound. All eyes were on the fallen master. Except for Billie. She was trying to pull Stiles away. “Chris,” she whispered urgently, “hurry, now’s our chance—”

“No,” he said. He was still hopelessly groggy, despite his bravado earlier, and her arms around him were mostly what kept him on his feet. “I can’t make it. Run yourself. I’ll hold them.”

“Oh, no, you don’t,” she said, throwing one of his arms over her shoulder and pulling him along. “I’m not leaving without you!” They backed away toward the road. If they could get down the hill, maybe to another house . . .

She felt eyes on her. “Oh God, they see us—”

“Just keep moving,” Stiles said firmly, gathering a momentum of his own now, turning and almost pulling her along. He chanced a look behind. The creatures had left their master and become a wall of white, yawning faces, their eyes intense and wanting as they came steadily forward. Danner was already forgotten, and without his coherence the communal whole was breaking up, and each cell had its own will and its own hunger, and about thirty other competitors for the same meal. It was that adversarial aspect that kept them from charging outright. They were watching each other as much as their prey, which worked to Stiles’s and Billie’s advantage. It gave them an extra few seconds of flight, got them that much closer to the open road.