Like that, Mookie turns, bounds up the stairs, his feet cratering each step. And as Candlefly turns his attention to the fleeing monster-man, Werth ducks down the hallway and hides.

Mookie is hell on two feet, the Beast that slouches toward Bethlehem. He is Behemoth and Leviathan. He is the end of the world surfing on a tide of blood and lava.

He hears his daughter scream. He moves fast. Skin tight. Muscles bulging. Bones heavy as oaken crossbeams. At the top of the steps is a Snakeface masquerading as the killer Lutkevich. Killed you once. Kill you again. The black-scaled Naga lunges, fangs out. Mookie punches through its face. Pulls the back of its head through its mouth. Then throws the lifeless blood-pumping body back down the stairs.

The other one–

Spall. Not-Spall. Golden eyes. Lithe. Climbing up the walls. Lunging at him from the ceiling. Mookie bats it to the ground like a badminton birdie.

Then he stomps on the monster’s head. Once. Twice. Three times, it’s red paste and porcelain bone. Plump brains ooze.

Mookie throws open the door.

He cries out for Nora – but her name is hardly a name, and in the hollow of his head he hears the echo of his ragged roar.

The shadow thing is lifted off Nora’s body. She feels the pressure gone. Feels breath fill her lungs and the noise flee her mind. The thing screams.

And then, just as her eyes open, she sees it torn in half. Its eyes drop to the floor like loose buttons before the entire creature disappears as if it never even existed.

Her father stands by the bed.

Except, it’s not her father. It can’t be him.

He’s bigger. Far bigger. Inhumanly bigger. It’s like what was fat is now all muscle, inches of sinew and tension – brawn in its purest form – layered onto his already prodigious form. His eyes are blood red. His lips peeled back, white teeth bared – a picket fence of crooked slats.

He growls something. It might be her name.Who are you? Like he no longer recognizes her. Who is she? Who she is, suddenly pouring out of her. Like an overturned glass, a broken teacup. She catches a glimpse of herself in a gilded floor-to-ceiling mirror standing in the corner. Nora now understands what someone means when they say a person looks “ashen”. Her color is indeed the pile of ash in an ashtray: the color of rain puddles and clay, the color of cemetery slabs. Monster-Mookie chokes the color – and the life – right out of her.

Chapter 25

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