Grimy water flushed against his face. He could see Ash a few feet away. He spat the filth and tried pushing himself upright. He barely lifted himself an inch before his neck roared with heat.
He couldn’t fight.
Couldn’t move.
Couldn’t—
“Daaaad!”
Jake screamed from the edge of the clearing.
“Daaaad!”
Neck be damned. Trent dragged himself out of the trench. His heart burst as he spotted Jake’s face poking through a wreath of pine branches.
“Stay there, Jake! Don’t come closer!”
“But Ash and Grandpa—”
“Stay there!”
Looking at the makeshift dam, Trent realized Snare had locked Ash in a chokehold. Her head drooped sideways. Her eyes were closed. Dad reached for her, but the table tipped forward as he did. They were losing their dam. If it collapsed, there would be no stopping Snare. The beast would slaughter them all, including Jake.
Trent stumbled ahead, pain lancing through his neck. He ducked under the arm Snare was using to choke Ash and splashed down on his butt between his father and sister, blocking a leak and steadying the table with his shoulder. His neck roared.
“Snare!” he called. He brought Ash’s ruined hand to his mouth. “Here’s your fucking favor.”
He bit down on the seeping wound like it was his last meal. A metallic taste soaked his tongue. The beast hissed and pulled back, releasing Ash’s throat. The bite shocked his sister into consciousness. She screamed and yanked her hand away.
Trent tried to reclaim her arm, but Snare clapped its hand over his face. Massive bloody fingers closed around his cheeks, jaw, and eyes like a cursed mask. Through a gap, he saw Jake leave the thicket. Trent tried to shake free, tried to warn him.
A bloody thumb slid along Trent’s cheek. It left a greasy trail as it curled along his nose and into his eye socket. The pressure on his eyeball blacked out his vision. Heat flushed through his head. The pressure increased, harder and sharper.
Then the thumb punched through.
Ash shrieked as she watched Snare bury its thumb into her brother’s skull. With a soggy crunch, the thumb tip disappeared, followed by the joint, then the entire thumb. All the while, Trent roared at a pitch too extreme for human ears. His head spazzed. His body jerked. Then he abruptly stopped.
From somewhere—it could’ve been ten million miles away—came a boy’s screams. Jake had just watched his dad die, she realized. Gets his eyes back, and this is what he has to see.
The thumb withdrew, swollen and bloody. Trent’s head hung, his eye socket dripping with syrupy fluids.
His body was lifeless.
Gone.
All because he dared to oppose this goddamned beast.
No way will his death be in vain, Ash vowed.
As badly as she wanted to respond, to kill Snare, she couldn’t move. Her head pounded in a thousand places. Every breath was accompanied by agony. She tasted blood, swallowed it, coughed it up. Only one nostril received air, and not enough of it.
Trent’s body sagged toward their father. Another leak sprang beneath them, threatening to replenish the bend.
“Ashlee.” Dad grunted in pain. “Move toward—”
Snare punched him before he could finish. His head smacked the table, and he slumped against Trent.
“Stop it!” Jake screamed from the center of the clearing. “Stop hitting them!”
The beast turned its head to the sound.
“No…” Ash croaked.
Grunting, she leaned toward Trent, her shoulder bumping his. Water from the leak flushed against her thigh. A little closer and she’d block it. But before she could shift toward him, Snare grabbed her throat.
The pressure was unbearable. The word Deathgrip crossed her mind, and it had nothing to do with the eponymous band she had planned to open for tomorrow. As Snare’s grip tightened, alarms went off in Ash’s brain. She tried to strike her left hand but couldn’t move her arms. Couldn’t move anything below her neck. She sat there, a head waiting to pop.
The beast leaned closer, its breath suffocating. In its eye sockets she saw two pools of flowing darkness. In the left socket she saw the image of her ideal self—that stunning, unbroken woman she first met yesterday. In the right socket she saw Cheeto, alive and laughing. He jumped to the other socket, where he threw his arms around her ideal self. The two of them laughed as if he weren’t dead. As if she weren’t joining him. When they broke their embrace, a guitar magically fell into Ideal-Ash’s arms. She played. Cheeto sang.
None of it was real, but Ash couldn’t stop watching.
Everything became less painful. More peaceful.
“Let go of her!” a voice shouted to her left.
She tore her eyes away from the images in Snare’s empty sockets.
“Let go of her or I’ll hurt you!”
Jake knelt in the middle of the clearing. Whatever he held in his hand gleamed in the lantern light. A knife. He lifted it toward his face and angled the tip toward his eye.
“No…” Ash croaked.
Jake hesitated. He was crying. Breathing rapidly. His shoulders rose and fell as his hand trembled.
“Jake, don’t!”
He flinched as the knife stabbed his eye.
Snare hissed, releasing Ash’s throat to cover its left socket. Thrashing, the beast screamed, the noise torturing her ears. As Snare whipped back and forth, blood gushed, splattering her face and stinging her lips.
Ash wiped the muck away and checked the leak. A thin stream ran between Trent and her, no deeper than the potholes on the main road.
This was it. The last of Snare’s life source.
With the last of her energy, she shifted sideways toward her brother. Her leg settled beside his and blocked the leak.
She sighed with relief.
Then something tickled her left thigh.
More water.
Goddammit.
In plugging one leak she’d opened another. She couldn’t stop them both.
There had to be another way.
Do something great with that hand.
In front of her, Snare thrashed. Its head whipped back and forth between gore-slathered shoulders. Screams erupted from its gaping mouth, the jaws wider after every shriek. The noise reached a glass-shattering pitch before the mouth finally shut, teeth snapping together like a bear trap.
Ash knew what to do.
Her left arm lay numb at her side. She no longer felt pain, only exhaustion. Her vision darkened as her consciousness faded. It shouldn’t have been this hard to lift her hand, but she felt drained to her core, like she’d lost more than blood. Much more.
Snare howled in her face, its tongue flicking like a tortured lizard. Rancid breath poured from its lips as the shrieking went on—louder and harsher, punctuated by the snap of its teeth.
Ash stared into the beast’s mouth.
Then into its uncovered eye.
Within the dark socket, Ideal-Ash raced across a stage, her Gibson slung over her shoulder. She and Cheeto met at the microphone, and the crowd below them erupted in applause. It was a massive crowd. Larger than any she’d seen.
That was how she knew it was a lie.
She thrust her sacrificial hand toward the beast’s open mouth.
Her timing was dead-on. All five ruined fingers slid between the teeth. Ash leaned forward to poke the back of its throat and braced herself.