She slings her arm up with the gun, and her other hand lifts to grab the keys, to pull him down to her.

He drives the scalpel into the meat of her left bicep.

She shrieks, finger jerking on the trigger—the gun goes off.

Wide.

Emma could cry because that’s it, that’s the end, an empty gun and a ringing in her ears—she wails in fury and despair, energy deserting her, it takes everything she’s got to throw the weapon at him.

Hoyt bats it aside.

She scrabbles away on her back, one arm with the blade handle protruding obscenely, she can’t feel it. Hoyt’s face victorious, his slow advance, like a man relishing what’s to come. Emma sobs, clenches her last fist, the crunch of metal as she clutches the keys.

The keys on the lanyard that slipped off Hoyt’s neck.

And now Emma Lewis with a terrible choice, and the sudden awareness that the thin, high screaming inside her head isn’t the screaming of Vicki or Tammy, it has never been their screaming, it is her own screaming, her own screaming—

She rolls sideways and throws the keys through the bars of Simon’s cage.

The lights go out.

Beyond the door of the chapel, a clanking sound as the steel gate in the great hall slides ponderously and automatically shut.

FBI found the circuit breakers, Emma thinks. It is her final thought, perhaps.

Scrambling forward on her stomach and knees, trapped and going nowhere in the dark, her breath gasping, the Butcher behind her, he might slice her Achilles tendons before he kills her, oh god please no—she rolls back over. Hoyt is staring down, smiling, he must believe he’s smiling, he’s slavering.

“Miss Lewis,” he says. Lips pulled back from his teeth, showing his gums.

Sprawled back, slippery elbows hurting, blood beneath her, blood thumping in her palms and fingertips, blood thumping in her head. She can only stare up at Hoyt’s expression. Her finger squeezes, spasming on an absent trigger.

Movement from the left.

And the most terrifying thing Emma has ever seen emerges from the shadows.

Simon Gutmunsson, free and unrestrained, walking closer, sauntering really. In the darkness of the asylum he resolves like smoke poured onto glass, gleaming like a phantasm when the moonlight hits him. White skin, red lips, his hair a beacon. Eyes glittering, fathoms deep.

Emma has time to think, He is out, he is out and you can’t stop him now, before the clamor in her mind takes over, older instincts kicking in.

She freezes, a prey animal trapped between two apex predators.

“Artist—” Hoyt starts.

“Surprise,” Simon whispers. He drives the edge of his hand into Hoyt’s throat.

While the man chokes, Simon puts a gentle palm over Hoyt’s mouth, backs Hoyt to the cage wall. Hoyt’s eyes bulge.

“Hello, Anthony.” Simon pins him tight. “I think you’ve been under the impression that I didn’t understand the game we’ve been playing.”

Hoyt struggles. Simon leans in, his eyes incandescent.