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Jake fought to flex his fingers, shooting fire up his arm as his mind groggily pushed away nightmares of Deirdre bearing down on him. With his watch pinned, he couldn’t tell how long they’d been asleep, but based on the lack of circulation in his arm, it had been a few hours at least. He didn’t want to move. Her body against his felt heavenly, energizing him with her every shallow breath. But he also didn’t want to have a non-functional arm, so he slowly shimmied his arm out from under her and rolled over on his back. She protested a little with soft murmurs but otherwise remained asleep.
The moment his skin left contact with hers, he regretted it, so he lightly reached out and laid his hand on her hip, causing her to sigh. Darkness enveloped the room, but his eyes could make out shapes here and there, adding to the odd sensation of being in someone else’s bedroom. The clock read 1:24am. He pondered on the weird juxtaposition of emotions coursing through his body. Dread of the manhunt mixed with an overwhelming sense of happiness and contentment.
As he lay there trying to fall back asleep, he felt a light buzzing in his wrist, followed by his phone ringing from the nightstand. The screen showed a Rose Valley number, but not one that came from his address book. It could have been a wrong number, he supposed, but that seemed especially odd since his cell phone didn’t have a local number. Jake avoided answering his phone in any case, especially at night, and tonight provided the best excuse of all to do so. It eventually went silent.
Almost immediately, it rang again. Shandi stirred and mumbled, “Who is it?”
“I don’t recognize the number.”
“Read it to me,” she said, her voice hoarse from sleep.
He read her the number to appease her.
“That’s Cam.”
Jake blinked. “Should I answer it?”
Shandi nodded and sunk back into the pillows. She didn’t seem terribly concerned.
Jake answered on speakerphone so that Shandi could hear. “Hello?”
“Jake. This is Sheriff Donner.”
“Hi, sheriff, what’s—-”
Cam interrupted the pleasantries. “Listen. I’m really sorry about calling you in the middle of the night like this. I just. I should have pulled the trigger. But I didn’t. I just wanted to tell you as soon as possible.”
Jake glanced at Shandi.
Cam continued before Jake said anything. “The beast attacked the jail earlier tonight. We lost a good officer. But also...”
He trailed off. Jake’s mind followed the sheriff’s train of thought as fast as he spoke, his blood going cold the moment the sheriff uttered his next words.
“Deirdre escaped.”
Shandi audibly gasped and immediately got out of bed. She turned on a lamp and searched around the room for her clothes. Jake sat up in bed in a panic, trying to process the news. Cam continued, thankfully oblivious to the fact that his ex-wife rushed around the room naked.
“It’s probably not a big deal. If she’s smart, she skipped town. But just to be safe, I’m going to send a deputy out to your place. Just to keep an eye on things.”
Deirdre’s zealotry had led her to attempt to murder him once, and Jake had a hard time believing that she would have walked away from her mission. Regardless of Cam’s promises of safety, Jake suspected that Deirdre lurked in the shadows of Rose Valley along with the beast now.
Shandi pulled on the last of her clothes, and moved towards him, having put together the implications of the conversation faster than him. Given his current location, sending a deputy out to Watermelon Ranch served no discernible purpose. Before Jake could react, Shandi began talking into the microphone.
“Cam? Don’t be mad, okay?”
“Shandi?” his voice cracked with surprise.
She gave Jake a strained look before answering, “Yeah. We can talk about this later, but right now I need you to know that Jake isn’t at his house.”
“Then where the hell is he?” Cam said, the volume of his voice escalating.
“He’s at mine,” Shandi said, closing her eyes to prepare for Cam’s reaction.
The line went silent. Shandi looked worried. Jake didn’t know what to do. He wanted to comfort her, but touching her under the circumstances felt exceptionally inappropriate.
Shandi couldn’t take the silence. “Don’t be mad, Cam. There’s not time for that. I promise that we can sit down, just the two of us, and have a sane discussion about this. But right now, we need to make sure Deirdre doesn’t get to Jake, right?”
The room fell agonizingly silent once again for what seemed like an eternity before Cam finally answered, “I’m on my way.”
The line went dead. “Oh, that’s not good,” Jake said.
Shandi sighed. “That’s not exactly how I wanted him to find out about us. But what’s done is done. The good news is that he’ll be here if Deirdre shows up.”
Jake half-joked, “Yeah, but the bad news is that he might kill me first.”
Shandi made a show of pulling him down to her for a kiss before responding. “No. He’ll be fine. He just needs some time to process it. You’re not his favorite person.”
She walked towards the bedroom door, glancing over her shoulder as she went. “It’ll probably be better for you if you have clothes on when he gets here, though.”
Jake looked down and surprised himself, somehow having forgotten that he didn’t have any clothes on. He found his garments strewn around the room, slipped them on as fast as he could and joined Shandi in the kitchen, where she busied herself making coffee. Though adrenaline served just fine as a wake-up call, the aroma of the coffee enticed him.
“Could you make sure the door is locked?” Shandi asked him.
Surely, they had locked the door, right? Who would leave the door unlocked when a monster roamed the streets? Jake rewound his memory to the previous night, dwelling on the sensations of them devouring one another, while Shandi haphazardly tried to get her key into the lock. Perhaps such a distraction had kept them from locking the door, after all.
Being unfamiliar with Shandi’s house, Jake couldn’t tell what the direction of the lock meant. He reached for the handle so that he could turn it to find out, but when he gripped it, he felt it turn from the other side. He jumped back. The door opened and there was a gun pointed at his face. He followed the muzzle down a rail thin arm and into the blue ocean of Deirdre’s eyes.
“Back up!” she yelled at him.
Jake backed up. Shandi rushed to his side and grabbed his hand, as Deirdre stepped inside without closing the door. She kept the gun level with Jake’s face, hovering only a few feet away. Even she wouldn’t miss at that range.
Deirdre’s eyes flicked down to their hands. “Isn’t that so sweet.”
Jake dropped Shandi’s hand. “Deirdre. Don’t do this. We know who the beast is. You don’t have to kill me.”
“The man that was the beast is long gone, Jake. You’re not going to get him back. And you’re not going to be able to kill him either. Don’t kid yourself.” Her eyes filled with a rage that Jake had never seen.
“How do you know, though? Can’t we at least try? You don’t want to kill me, Deirdre. We’ve been friends for a long time.”
“It’s the only way they’ve ever been able to stop him. The doctors killed three seekers to keep him dormant. The difference was that they knew what they signed up for. They knew the risks. I know you didn’t ask for this, Jake, but there’s no other option.”
Out of the corner of his eye, Jake sensed an imperceptible tensing of Shandi’s muscles. Having overpowered Deirdre once before, Jake feared that Shandi would try it again. Before he could stop it, Shandi lunged, and Jake instinctively stepped in front of her. Deirdre fired.
He screamed as pain roared through his right arm. He grabbed it with his left hand, feeling the warm sticky goo of his own blood ooze between his fingers. Shandi screamed his name. With his back to Deirdre, Jake fell forward into Shandi’s arms. She gingerly lowered him to the ground, then ripped her shirt off in one smooth jerk.
Jake winced as Shandi wrapped her shirt tight around the wound. He felt queasy. It looked like a serious wound, but he wasn’t losing consciousness or anything. Not yet.
He forced himself to look up at Deirdre, desperate to know where she stood and what her next move might be. She looked stunned, with the gun still out in front of her; the muzzle drifting with him towards the ground. But she looked less resolute now, her anger losing out to fear.
Once Shandi seemed satisfied with her triage work, she stood slowly, keeping her hands up where Deirdre could see them. Jake hoped that Deirdre’s willingness to fire had scared Shandi away from trying anything else stupid. Once Shandi stretched to her full height, Deirdre shifted the gun to Shandi’s face.
“Don’t move, you little bitch.”
Jake wanted to end it somehow. He couldn’t bear the thought of Shandi getting shot. He spent so much time worrying about whether the beast might come for her that he’d never considered that Deirdre might also want her dead. Jake would have bet on Shandi for any number of things, but not hostage negotiations.
“Listen, Deirdre. Just let me talk, ok?” Shandi said with remarkable calmness.
Deirdre didn’t answer, but neither did she fire her gun or make any move indicating she would. Jake took that as a good sign. Shandi did as well.
“His name is Billy Hargrove. He was a major in the army. He was assigned to Arrowhead Research. They did this to him. You can undo it.”
Deirdre shook her head. “No, I can’t. No one can. Billy Hargrove is dead! We can kill Jake, and then that thing will go dormant. We can kill it then, maybe. Cut off its head or something.”
Jake interjected, “Why didn’t they do that the last three times, then?”
Deirdre glanced down, seemingly contemplating the shaking that flowed through her entire body. She flinched as if she would point the gun towards Jake, but then thought better of it and kept it aimed at Shandi. Jake didn’t like it.
“I... don’t know. Maybe they didn’t know how to find him?”
Shandi jumped back in. “Or maybe they didn’t want to kill him. Maybe they knew they could save him eventually.”
Deirdre shook her head. Jake saw Shandi tense up. Please, Shandi, don’t do anything stupid.
Deirdre locked her elbows. The gun rattled as she decisively pointed it at Shandi again before answering, “You’re not going to confuse me. I know what I have to do. I know more about this than you could ever hope to. Killing the seeker is the only way!”
The intensity of the moment overwhelmed him, adrenaline surging as the pain in his arm throbbed in rhythm with his heart. The baby blue of Shandi’s shirt turned redder with every pulse.
Shandi gently kicked Jake’s foot and spoke again, “Right. Because the seeker is the one that controls the beast, right? He can make him do what he wants.”
“We have to do this, Shandi,” tears started forming in Deirdre’s eyes. “I don’t need to kill you, but we have to kill Jake.”
Jake pondered Shandi’s meaning. She wanted him to summon the beast. But he didn’t know how. Where would he even start?
Given that he didn’t see any other options, Jake closed his eyes and focused. He focused on Deirdre. He pictured her in his head. Her blonde hair. Her big blue eyes. Her imaginary form took shape in his mind. Worried that just Deirdre wouldn’t be enough, he thought about Shandi’s house. He described it to himself in vivid detail. He thought of every color, every corner, every material adorning the outside. He thought of her cars in the driveway. He thought of the entry way to the house.
Shandi and Deirdre kept arguing. Jake couldn’t pay attention. He had to focus. It took all his concentration. He tried to think of everything that the beast would need to understand his meaning. He thought of the backdoor to the house, where the beast had smashed in the last door. He thought of the stuffed animal Shandi had mentioned. He called the beast’s name. Billy echoed through his mind. He didn’t know if the beast even knew his own name anymore.
Though it was labored and difficult, Jake focused harder on pushing himself into a meditative state. The minutes melted away. Jake lost track of how long he focused on calling Billy. Every time Shandi or Deirdre distracted him, he pushed it away and went over all the details in his mind again. He pleaded for Billy to save him with all his waning strength, but nothing happened.
Jake gave up hope, realizing that his pleading would not save them. His efforts better served them by teaming up with Shandi to overpower Deirdre in some other way. Jake opened his eyes again and looked up at Deirdre. Her fingers tensely curled around the trigger, threatening to shoot Shandi at any moment. He took stock of his strength and wondered if he would be able to get himself over to Deirdre, to at least trip her and knock off her aim.
Though already overflowing with fear, Jake suddenly felt a new wave of it surge through his mind. It felt foreign, not like his own fear, but like an empathetic understanding of someone else’s. It took him a few seconds before he found the truth of the situation. The beast had arrived. He knew it. He felt it.
When he looked up again, Billy hulked in the doorway behind Deirdre. Jake looked to Shandi, her eyes wide with fear. Yes, the beast was here.
Billy’s massive frame surprised Jake, even though he had seen it in videos and pictures. The overwhelming fear made room for a small amount of fascination. He had brought this monster to them. He could direct Billy. He could save them.
Deirdre noticed them both staring at the doorway. At first, she seemed reticent to turn around, clearly wanting to keep the gun on Shandi, but as their eyes got wider, and the fear on their faces became more apparent, she couldn’t resist.
Deirdre let her arm fall to her side as she turned, somehow sensing that a gun wouldn’t save her. The beast let out an inhuman growl, chilling Jake to his bones. Time seemed to stand still. Jake’s heart pounded, and he regretted that he brought Billy here. He didn’t want to be responsible for Deirdre’s death. She spun back around, took two steps forward, and pulled the gun straight up to Jake’s face.
He panicked, pushing away his regret and scrambling to save himself from death. He couldn’t stop a bullet, but maybe he could stop Deirdre. He shut his eyes and forced himself to conjure the image of Deirdre in his head again. He tried to imagine her how she appeared right there in that moment, but his mind only presented Dee, from high school, with her effervescent smile and tireless drive.
Jake’s eyes snapped open. The beast pounced. The gun fired. Deirdre screamed.
