And still Thomas is beating him, one fist rising into the space above his head and coming down on chest, head, neck, like a toddler in a strop, hammering the floor. She bends down to him, tries to reach him, the mask on his face. He feels her tug at him, turns, goggles black and bulbous. Then he pins her, puts a hand around her throat, throws his weight on her. His fingers are slick with blood, move from her throat, to her face, her hair, tear at her clothing; his body heavy and hot. It’s Thomas, she reminds herself, struggling; Thomas. She manages to hook a hand around the rubber tube that juts from his jaws and yank it up, dislodge the mask; something dark rising in her worse than fear. Then Charlie is there, riding his friend’s back, pushing him down beside her. They hold him wedged between their bodies.

She watches the change: his mouth snarling, threatening her skin, the very teeth turned black with Soot. Then, like a child emerging from a tunnel, something else starts surfacing in Thomas’s eyes. Intelligence. Recognition. It is followed by such an intense burst of shame that she wants to turn away from him, not to burden him with her witnessing. And still his weight lies heavy on her, on her chest, her thighs. She scrambles away, bumps into the lump of flesh that is Julius, the mouth a cavity of tooth stumps, hair ripped out in clumps.

ф

“He was starved, weak. Skin and bones. Nothing but rage. He did not stand a chance.”

That’s the first thing Thomas says. His left shoulder is dislocated, his hands swollen to twice their size, his shirt ripped to shreds. “Renfrew was right all along. I’m a killer.”

“You were not yourself.”

“Wasn’t I, Charlie?”

He is crouching in a corner, chin curled into his chest. Thomas has yet to look at Livia. She wants to make it easier for him, but it’s hard, past the memory of his body forcing its weight on hers. Her face and shirt are covered with both cousins’ blood.

“It’s over now” is all she manages.

At this, his eyes rise. No tears. That same unblinking stare. Never flinching from the facts.

Not even now.

“Yes, over. My nature is out.” He rises, takes a step towards Mrs. Grendel, then stops. “You do it. See whether she is all right.”

Mrs. Grendel has yet to move. She is sitting on a stool in a corner of the kitchen, huddled into herself. One of her eyes is swelling shut. Other than that she is not visibly hurt. Livia crouches in front of her, tries to talk to her. But the woman stares right through her. It is not that she is unconscious and does not see. Her eyes look beyond, at Julius. On her large, ruddy, working-woman’s hands, the veins crisscross like parcel string.