There was no point in trying to hide. There was no need to be stealthy about it, not now. We walked across the lawn toward the front of the house — battered, bruised, and covered in blood. Lightning flashed in the clouds, briefly illuminating Jeremiah and his white-cloaked followers as they stepped out of their vehicles.
When Jeremiah looked at me, I felt the hateful cold of the Deep One’s gaze in his eyes. He grit his teeth, fists clenched at his sides as those gathered behind him looked at us warily. I wondered how many of them remembered me, for I remembered them. There were new ones too, of course, but so many who stood behind him now had been there that night.
They’d stood in the church and praised the killing of a young girl who begged for their help. They’d watched in silence. They’d seen me thrown down into the dark.
Now, several of them were looking at me as if I were a ghost. Their sordid pasts had come back to haunt them.
Jeremiah was shaking with fury. His white suit was stained, flecks of blood across his jacket. Black liquid leaked from his nose and over his lip.
“How the fuck are you still alive?” he snarled. “Where is my Reaper?”
Zane grinned beside me. It was strange to see him like this, with the golden color in his eyes completely gone. He was black-eyed now — like the Archdemon. The air itself was hot around him.
“Where’s your new world, Jeremiah?” he said, tipping his head curiously. “I could have sworn you said you’d be free when you returned.” Jeremiah’s face contorted with fury.
“The final sacrifice is done,” he hissed. “It’s done! Raelynn Lawson has gone to God, and it’s thanks to me! All thanks to me!” He laughed shrilly, the sound far from joyful. “I did what my father couldn’t, I did what my sister couldn’t. Me! Me, me, me!”
“Someone sounds like they were spoiled as a child,” I muttered. Jeremiah took one lurching step toward me, but his movements were strange. They were too rigid, as if something was fighting against his own attempts to move.
“You say the sacrifice is done,” Zane drawled. “Yet here you are, still trapped in the broken body of a pathetic mortal man.”
Jeremiah snarled like an animal. His head twitched violently, his shoulders tense and hunched. The followers behind him were backing away, their eyes wide with fear, their cloaks drenched with the rain.
I stepped forward, staring at them one by one. Young and old, some familiar, some strangers. Some had been my teachers, my neighbors, some had gone to my brother’s funeral and comforted my mother as she cried. Some didn’t know me at all.
Did they do this because they were afraid? Because they were hopeful? Because they were desperate, or cruel?
Did it matter?
I lifted my gun. “This is your only chance. You have three seconds. Start running. One…”
There was a split second of indecision. The white-cloaks looked amongst each other, murmuring.
“Two.”
Some began to flee, sprinting back to their vehicles. Others lingered, staring at Jeremiah as if he would protect them. I smirked, my finger tightening on the trigger. “Three.”
The crack of gunfire destroyed whatever courage the white-cloaks had left. They all fled, as the man I’d shot collapsed to the ground. They shoved each other in their rush to run, more than willing to push their fellow worshippers into the line of fire to save themselves. I picked off another, then another, before Zane leapt into the frenzy.
Even with the chaotic screams ringing out behind him, Jeremiah stared only at me, his lip curled in disgust. He shook his head, his eyes bloodshot as he said, “Dispensable. All of them. Wastes of cowardly flesh!”
His voice deepened to a monstrous roar. There was a rumble, and the ground behind him burst open. A massive gray tentacle exploded from the dirt, lashed out and seized one of the white-cloaks as he fled from Zane. Zane leapt back, and the man screamed in Jeremiah’s grip as the tentacle tightened around him. It squeezed tighter and tighter until there was a sickening snap of bones, and his crushed body was dropped limply to the ground.
“I will not be defied!” Jeremiah roared. He gripped his head in his hands, his eyes gone purely white as if they’d been filled with fog. “You will not defy me, Juniper Kynes! You’re mine!”
His body hunched, then began to contort. I aimed and fired, pulling the trigger again and again. The slugs hit his body, tearing holes in his flesh and exposing gaping wounds full of black muck. He screamed, his body growing, his limbs elongating and new appendages bursting forth from his ribs. Thick tentacles sprouted from his body, as black liquid bled from his eyes and mouth.
I fired again, and this time the bullet struck his face. The side of his skull burst apart, but his eyes rolled in his head and focused on me again. His tongue darted out, hungrily licking his lips.
“Try again, Juniper.” He giggled. The black muck swelled to fill the space left by my bullet, and I was so shocked I could only stare.
“Juniper, move!”
Zane shoved me out of the way right as a massive tentacle shot forward. It grabbed Zane instead, coiling rapidly around him and squeezing as it lifted him into the air. He strained, thrashing wildly against it, and managed to get one arm free from its clutches. He dug his claws into the slimy flesh, nearly severing the tentacle in two. It dropped him, coiling back, but more were coming.
Jeremiah had lost all the humanity he had left. His arms and legs were gone; his body now supported by a mass of thick, coiling tentacles. His face kept warping, as if something else inside his head was trying desperately to get out. He lunged for us, the tentacles shooting out in every direction. I fired rapidly, hitting the first one, and then the second, but the third —
The third snapped around my chest. It dragged me down to the ground, my arms pinned to my sides. I tensed my limbs, fighting against the crushing hold before it could crack my ribs. But they were so strong that my arms were beginning to shake. The tentacle coiled tighter and tighter, the massive suckers squeezing against my arms and coming dangerously close to my throat.
Jeremiah stood over me, grinning widely. “No more running, Juniper.” Hundreds of voices were speaking in unison from his mouth, some of them rough and cruel, others screaming in agony. It felt like my brain was being squeezed, like my head was caving in. I kept struggling, all my effort going to keeping those awful gray limbs from crushing my chest. But at the same time, unbidden images were flashing in my mind.
The mine shaft. The dark. The tunnel. The Gollums waiting silently in their cavern. Tentacles coiling toward me out of the shadows —
“You never really could escape the dark.” Jeremiah laughed, his contorted face filling my vision. “All these years later, but you’re still just the little girl lost underground.”
A sudden force blasted against him, sending him skidding across the ground until he slammed into the side of the house. I gasped, scrambling to my feet as Zane put himself between me and Jeremiah. Everywhere the suckers had touched me, bruised rings of broken blood vessels remained, stinging my skin. My arms were shaking, my muscles cramped, but I growled through the pain and hurriedly reloaded the gun. I took aim, blasting chunks off the tentacles as they coiled wildly across the ground, and Jeremiah rose back up.
Zane’s black eyes stared him down. He stood lightly on his feet, and when he went in for another attack, he was too fast for my eyes to follow. Gashes ripped open across Jeremiah’s sprawling, monstrous form, Zane’s claws and teeth leaving a trail of blood as he dodged around the flailing tentacles.
Jeremiah roared, and Zane leaped away just before a tentacle struck him in the chest. The massive limbs were as thick as the trees themselves, and when they struck the side of the house, they shattered the concrete and burst pipes, sending water spraying out across the ground. I sprinted through the mud, braced myself, and fired, striking Jeremiah right in the head.
He roared again, twisting and flailing on the ground. I tumbled out of the way before one of his limbs could strike me.
“No!” Jeremiah’s face was morphing rapidly: human one moment, beast the next. Some of his limbs were shrinking, shriveling up and going limp like dead leaves. “This isn’t over! It isn’t…ah…” He shuddered, more black liquid oozing out of him. “God…why…don’t…don’t leave…”
“Your God won’t stay in a dying vessel.” I looked up, and Jeremiah did too. Zane had jumped onto the top of the house and stood right at the edge of the ruined wall. The air around him shimmered with energy and rippled with heat. Zane gave Jeremiah a bloody grin. “You’re broken, Jeremiah, and the Deep One is cruel and merciless.”
“No!” Jeremiah snapped, stumbling as his limbs returned to normal. All his wounds were visible now, bleeding thick black muck. I readied my aim again, advancing on him.
“Did you think the Deep One would be kind to you?” I said as he leaned heavily against the house, panting, his eyes darting left and right for an escape. “You and your family thought you could buy your way to power with the price of others’ lives. Your own sister, Jeremiah! You waited for your own father’s death to take his place! You murdered my brother!”
He grinned at me cruelly, stumbling away, toward the inside of the house. “Your brother begged me for mercy.” He laughed, barely able to keep his feet. “I’ll never forget how it felt to see the life go out of his eyes.”
“He trusted you!” I fired, the slug hitting him in the throat. Jeremiah choked, gurgling as he retreated into the ruined house, like an injured bug scuttling into its burrow. “You made him think you were his friend. I saw the photos of you together! He was kind! Marcus never deserved this!”
The tears streaming down my face were hot with fury. Jeremiah shrunk back into the shadows of the house, groaning, leaving a trail of black blood behind him. Zane jumped down behind me from the roof.
“He’s got no fucking power left,” I said. “Let’s end this.”
