So how do you kill a monster? She’s done it often enough. You’d think she would remember something. But her brain is spinning around with things like an audit she has to finish, the CHECK ENGINE light on her car, and Grace’s next soccer game.

Grace. That centers her again, plants her back in her brain and her body. She can’t let this thing kill her. She’s got to be there for Grace.

She has no doubt that her daughter will win her fight. So she has to do the same. She will not let Grace grow up without a mom. More than that, she will not be cheated of the one thing that she always wanted for all her struggles, all the fighting she had to do. Grace was always her happy-ever-after. She will not let that go.

That’s when the answer comes to her. Godsdamnit, she thinks. This is going to suck.

She pulls her arm back and gives Wade a clear shot at her neck.

Wade yowls with triumph. He lunges, his mouth open wide, ready to tear her throat out.

Alana waits to see the white of his fangs, to feel the rancid heat of his breath in her face.

When he brings his head down, she puts her right arm down his open mouth, all the way into his throat.

Eat this, she thinks.

Wade rears up, choking, suddenly in pain and terrified. He shakes her like a dog, trying to get free.

Alana grabs something in Wade’s chest and holds on tight, in his gullet up to her shoulder.

He snaps and bites, his teeth punching through Alana’s skin and muscle, all the way to the bone, trying to chew her arm off.

In response, Alana tightens her grip on the wet and slippery thing deep inside him and does not let go.

He makes a noise like bones caught in a garbage disposal and shakes his head furiously. He kicks. He claws. He thrashes. Blood spouts from his nostrils.

Alana holds on.

His eyes roll and he falls.

But Wade still does not die. They could be locked like this forever. Alana doesn’t have that kind of time.

She finds her last reserve of strength and pulls as hard as she can, and comes out with Wade’s blackened, beating heart.

She thinks she sees surprise in his eyes, the last part of him that is remotely human, right before he stops breathing. He was stronger and faster and he was pure poison, inside and out. He thought he was going to win.

Still. How could it end any other way, really? Wade decided to become a monster. Alana kills monsters. It’s like math.