At the same time, Gilpatrick noted that she crossed from standing at the teenager’s right to standing at his left, putting herself between him and Gilpatrick. Making it harder, but not impossible, for the teen to glance back over his shoulder.

“You—” Gilpatrick raised his voice.

Stupid, speaking up now. He saw the woman look back, and he knew he was playing with fire.

“—You want to grab a bite at the food court?” he tried. “My treat.”

There was no response. They didn’t slow down.

Was it a mistake, to make that final overture? Was that the kind of thing that got people killed?

Would it have been a mistake, to not speak up at all?

Merindah touched his arm. He turned away from the scene of the teenager and woman walking away.

“Which one was he?” she asked. “Or should I not ask?”

He hugged her, kissing the top of her head.

“Okay,” she said, hugging him back.

He stayed there, hugging her, as the walls of the shopping center were overtaken by the emptiness. Stars and nebulas, and a civilization being devoured.

The last things to go were him, Merindah, and the image on the one print Merindah had pointed out. Here, at least. A red, muddled background like clotted blood, men and women in their white forensic coveralls, and in the center, their ‘altar’, a metal barrel with concrete within, a slice of a desiccated face peering out where metal and concrete had been removed.

⊙

The scream was ten kinds of raw, and it was loud after the chaos of the shopping center.

Gilpatrick snapped to awareness. If it hadn’t been for the last coherent thoughts he’d had before the altered memory overtook him, it might have taken him a second or two longer to get his bearings again.

“I’m the one you want!”

The beast was at the center of the room. Marcial was half-awake, and half-alive. Her lower body was mangled.

With far less strength than a whole Marcial might have managed, she batted at the beast’s head with her weapon.

It was massive, he could see. Eight limbs, a body that unfolded around it like a flower’s petals, each ‘petal’ an armored, ‘furred’ length of body, with a limb stabbing out, ending in a paw that looked like licks of flame frozen in time, painted to look like red or blue steel.

“I’m the killer, I’m the one your host hates!”

The words were raw.

Gilpatrick found Rain in the jumble, navigating the detritus and crap that cluttered the room. He had a metal pole in each hand.

“Don’t!” Gilpatrick bellowed.

Rain stabbed it, slamming a spike into the armpit of one limb.

The beast reacted, rearing up, back—and Rain took quick steps, one hand still on the metal spear, to keep the weapon angled right, the base of it dragged in the white powder beneath foot and claw.