David stayed there until the smell dissipated, until his senses regulated the still air, and eventually he gathered himself enough to stand, to complete his survey of the kingdom that had once been his. He took a deep, shuddering breath. He walked across the room and opened the door to the weight room. He smelled the body before he saw it—a thick, iron-like wave that swept out when he opened the door, mixed with garbage—and then he saw her lying there, this body splayed out in the center of the room, blood everywhere. Her skin was so unanimously red, her clothes so soaked through, that for a second he thought she had been skinned. He recoiled, pressed his hand over his mouth to keep from vomiting, and then he was racing inside, he was falling to his knees again and bowing his head, he was inhaling the scent of a person, registering the random, vicious cuts across every part of her upper body, and she was still breathing faintly, breathing and bleeding, and he was breathing, too, following her lead like a trail in a forest. He took one of her hands in his; the fingers were still warm. He didn’t know how to fight any of it, so he just held it there, he ran his thumb down her fingers to the knuckles, and he repeated it, this minute gesture, his heat into her, skin over bone, a frail bridge between them. With his other hand, he reached into his shorts for his phone. He called 911. When they asked for the address, David hesitated—he pictured a string of numbers and letters—and then he remembered.