And Zoey understood at once: the Hand of Light had arrived on Sawkill Rock.
She hocked up mucus and spat it in Briggs’s face.
“I don’t like cults,” she said, and fainted.
THE ROCK COULD NOT ALLOW any of them to leave.
One of the girls quietly, efficiently, took her mother to the police station for safekeeping.
(Not safe there, thought the Rock. Not safe anywhere.)
One of the girls awoke from a restless night plagued with caged dreams. She shivered and she longed. She thought of knives, of pills, of cliffs. She thought of an ending. But, oh, that wasn’t fair, because she wanted to live. The Rock felt the girl’s desperation like the pull of a building storm.
One of the girls tried to swim to freedom. When that failed, she spat and cursed. She fought and raged.
But the Rock, regretfully, could not allow her to leave.
The Rock could allow none of them to leave.
Not until it was finished.
Val
The Mark
Val awoke with a terrible feeling in the pit of her stomach. Her tired mind felt ready to spill over, like she’d spent the night reading a dense book written in antiquated language and tiny text.
Then a pain in her belly reached up and punched her. She shot upright, hands clutching her middle, and then, maybe because the idea of pain in such a place reminded her of pregnancy, she craved the sight of her mother.
Val climbed out of bed, grabbed the rose-colored silk robe from her desk chair, and crossed to the wing that contained her mother’s rooms. Val raised a fist to knock quietly on her mother’s door—but it was already open. She let herself in, bare feet sinking into the plush white rug that covered the floor.
“Mom?” She peeked at the bed, saw a mess of rumpled white sheets and abandoned pillows. The east-facing wall, painted such a pale blue that it shimmered silver in the moonlight, hugged three windows that stood cracked open. A cool night breeze fluttered the sheer curtains.
Standing there with the wind kissing her bare legs, Val felt a helix of dread unwind in her heart. The pain in her belly returned—a slow grind, now, like a pestle against the mortar of her insides.
She moved swiftly through the silent house, and when she entered her mother’s library, she went straight for the bookcase that hid the stone passage to the red room.
One book, two books, three books, four.
Where Val’s fingers touched the spines, soft warmth blossomed. She thought she felt the echo of Marion’s presence—her hand over her own, their joined fingers pushing the books back into their catches.
Val shook off the half-formed vision as the bookcase swung open. She couldn’t enter the red room with thoughts of Marion fogging her mind—not now that Marion had made a fool out of him by escaping him unscathed.
She walked downstairs, keeping her mind cool and open, and then she entered the red room and the pain in her belly exploded. At once she understood why her stomach had been hurting her, why her veins had been aching.
Because now, she was the only one to be anchoring him in this world.
Now, all his hunger and rage, all his desperation to be free—here at the end, in his last days of dependency—was for Val and Val alone to contain.
Her mother’s body, clad in her robe and nightgown, lay in a pool of blood on the floor—chest caved in, limbs torn, body twisted. Eyes open. Mouth gaping.
Val stood and stared, pain grind-grind-grinding in the pit of her torso.
Breathe through the pain, Valerie, her grandmother had instructed, years earlier. He can’t stand it when we beg.
She straightened her back and squared her shoulders. Her fists clenched and unclenched.
A measured voice drifted toward her from the door on the far wall: “Your turn.”
Dr. Wayland. The new Dr. Wayland—button-down shirt and tie underneath a sand-colored cashmere sweater. Biceps that could crush boulders, hands big enough to encircle Val’s head. Sharp clean jaw and flickering white gaze.
Dry-mouthed, she watched him approach the monstrous red-draped bed and sit on the edge of the mattress and pat it. He seemed insensible to the bloodless corpse at his feet.
“My turn?” she asked, proud of her uncracked voice.
His eyes narrowed. “Don’t stall.”
But Val would stall if she damn well pleased, because her mother was dead. She’d been torn apart and gutted, and Val figured she deserved a few minutes to process things. She deserved to keep this morsel to herself—this moment, this warped grief.
This body.
She resisted the urge to run her hands over her own arms, torso, face, just to make sure it was all there. It was magnificent, this body—not because it was beautiful and strong, though it was, but because it was hers. With a radiant burst of clarity, she decided that she was not going to let him touch her. Not that way. Not tonight.
Not ever.
Val crossed her arms over her chest and cocked her hip to the side, attempting to be playful. Sometimes he liked that. “I guess Mom pissed you off, huh?”
He watched her, unblinking. The lines of his jaw shifted and re-formed. “No. You did.”
It required every ounce of the strength that had been beaten into Val to keep her facade from shattering. “Is that so?”
“You let Zoey hurt me while you stood there and watched. You didn’t help me when they began attacking me. They got away.”
No, Val wouldn’t think about Marion. She’d scrape her brain clean until the only thing left was the bright shiny middle—untouched and unspoiled.
“I didn’t realize you intended to kill them that night,” Val said, trying on her own unblinking, scary-as-shit look, because maybe that would make her feel less like running back up the stairs screaming—never mind that he would catch her, never mind that running would just make things worse. “I thought you simply wanted to observe Marion. See what the ‘big deal’ was. Not that there is a big deal, there’s nothing going on between us. In fact, I think you’ve grown a bit paranoid.”
She paused, and then did lick her lips, damn it, because she had started to ramble. Because he wasn’t moving, not a muscle, not a hair or a blink, and her courage was fading as quickly as it had come. “Do you even know that word? Do they have it where you come from? It’s not a good one. It means you’re losing your mind.”
He watched her for a long moment, and then he said, “Come here, Valerie.”
And Val—Val said, “No.”
Another long moment, and then at last he moved, clasping his hands on his lap. A darkness juddered around his body, obscuring his hair, his sleeves, his shoes.
His false form was losing cohesion. Very, very not good.
He was getting hungry again—already, so soon after Quinn.
He would need to consume one more, her mother had estimated. One more kill, one more meal, and he would break free of them.
And now Val was the only one left to stop him.
“I noticed something interesting on your mother’s chest,” he said, voice pleasant. “A scar in the shape of a handprint. Do you know what caused that?”
Val’s palms tingled, remembering.
“I don’t know what Mom got up to when I wasn’t around,” Val said, trying to sound bored, not sure if she was succeeding. “She was into some weird stuff, I know that. Well.” Val gave him a little smile. “And you know that, too.”
“You understand, don’t you?” he said, ignoring her. “I killed your mother so that I could make you my queen. I’d like to keep you close to me from now on. That seems to be the wisest course of action, to keep all my eyes on you. And she was getting old, anyway. I prefer the way you look. I very much prefer it.”
A jolt of something hot and sharp shot up from the ground and smacked Val’s kneecaps, her wrists, the hollow of her throat with an indignant electric crackle—as if it had been called to her by her own frantic will.
Burn him, the feeling seemed to say.
Val kept her fists closed, to hide the white-hot pulsars she could now feel simmering in the center of each palm. The ground trembled slightly under her feet, like the Rock was coming awake beneath her soles. It reverberated up through her every bone, left her boiling.
“I’m not going to sleep with you,” she declared.
Then he smiled, such a wide, giddy smile that Val took a step back.
“Fine,” he said agreeably. “But you will take my mark.”
And the next thing Val knew, Dr. Wayland was gone, and she was on the floor. Blackness slammed down on the red room. Something sharp—a scalpel, or a claw—pierced the cotton of her shorts and the skin of her belly and drew a wide grin between her pelvic bones.
Val screamed. Fists still closed, she was too shocked to use them, but she knew she must keep them that way. Don’t let him see don’t let him see. A power surged through her that was not hers, but his. Dark and oily, it wriggled and writhed, coating her innards, burrowing into her bones. He was a ship dropping anchor on her ocean floor, securing himself against her solidness, her humanity.
Val gagged, turned her face away from him. She knew that once he’d finished marking her, she would be his. She would bear the brunt of him—his hunger, his anger, the pain he felt at being stuck in this world half-formed. Until he killed once more and broke free, Val would be the thing that allowed him to survive. She was his host. His alien power crawled into her belly and nestled there like a parasite, just as it had happened with her mother, and her grandmother, and all the Mortimer women before them since Deirdre had made that long-ago deal with the devil and doomed them all.
Val dared send out one desperate thought to the Rock. In that cold room of stone, she was surrounded by earth. Sawkill was her home, and she had given her blood to its soil more than once, and her pain was so complete, so excruciating, that it afforded her a primal sort of understanding: the Rock and the light in her palms were one and the same.
So she thought to the Rock, delirious with agony: Please, hide. Don’t let him find you.
And the Rock obeyed. The white light hiding in Val’s fists faded, seeped back into the ground where it had been born. She was left alone on the floor beside her mother’s body—alone, with the light gone from her palms, and a new, slick darkness coating her insides. Alone, with a smoking mark curving across the pale flesh of her belly—a black moon on a trembling white sky.
Marion
The Queen
Marion walked into the empty living room of her family’s cottage. Every step she took crunched glass under her feet; the mirrors and windows still stood vacant, shattered by the Collector’s roar.
But the monster itself was nowhere to be found.
Marion wasn’t sure what she had been expecting, coming back here. If the Collector had been waiting for her, then . . . what? She couldn’t have fought him alone. It was foolish for her to have returned, yet here she stood. She searched the shadows for signs that what had happened hadn’t really happened, but the evidence was everywhere: The kitchen chairs strewn across the floor. The ruined cabinets where the Collector, flung aside by Zoey, had smashed into them. The fragmented windows, framing the world in tidy square mouths lined with uneven teeth.
Marion listened to the quiet.
She had taken her mother to the police station, which was brightly lit and freshly, constantly full of people, now that a third girl had gone missing.
Quinn. Jane.
Charlotte.
Marion clutched the starfish charm around her neck and inhaled. She thought she could still smell Charlotte’s scent in the air of the cottage, and if she was wrong, if it was simply her imagination creating Charlotte’s scent, then she didn’t want to know that. She was appreciative of her imagination, if that was the case.
She didn’t ever want to forget—not Charlotte’s scent, not her voice, not the texture of her hair.
Her phone beeped. A text from Zoey:
Meet me at Grayson’s immediately. 34 Herring Way.
Then, a few seconds later:
He finally finished translating.
The Tighe house was humbler than most on the island—a cheerful blue-and-white farmhouse that Marion thought would look more at home somewhere in the Midwest, surrounded by fields of corn.
Marion arrived before Zoey did. Grayson greeted her at the door, looking a little ruffled and unbalanced. His eyes were bloodshot and puffy, circled by shadows.
Marion knew the feeling.
“Hey, Marion.” Grayson beckoned her inside. “Please, come in.”
He led her to the living room, and Marion took the opportunity to inspect him. Hands shoved in his pockets, sleeves rolled up to his elbows, brow furrowed as if deep in thought. Long and lanky frame, all knobs and sinews. His eyes, blue and guileless behind the square black frames of his glasses, flicked over to Marion as she settled in an oversize armchair.
“Zoey told me what happened last night,” he began, standing awkwardly by the fireplace. “At your house.”
Marion nodded. “I figured she would have. It was terrifying—”
“Not only that.” Grayson drew in a breath. “About what you said to her. About us.”
Marion’s chest tightened with shame. She crossed her arms over her middle. “Oh.”
“Yeah. Look—”
“I’m sorry, really, I was . . . I’d just found out about Charlotte, I haven’t been sleeping—”
Grayson waved her quiet. “It’s fine. I mean, it’s not fine, but I get it.” He sat down in a chair opposite her, rested his elbows on his knees. “I don’t know what you’ve heard people say about us, but whatever it is, none of them know what they’re talking about. Zoey can tell you the rest someday; that’s not my place, but I’ll tell you this much: I love her.”
He laughed a little, shrugging. He dragged a hand through his hair. “I love her, and if it were up to me, we’d still be together. So don’t believe whatever bullshit you hear about me, or about her. And for God’s sake, Marion.” His gaze sharpened. “Don’t ever say anything like that to her again.”
Marion shook her head. “I won’t, I promise. It was . . .” She swallowed her excuses. “It was shitty. I was wrong. I’m really sorry.”
Grayson nodded once. “Good. Thank you. And . . . really, Marion.” His expression softened. “I’m so sorry about Charlotte.”
For a moment Marion couldn’t speak. She nodded tightly. “Thank you. I appreciate that.”
The front door slammed open and shut. Zoey clomped in, kicked off her sneakers, threw herself down onto the sofa, and tossed the book onto the ottoman. She’d ridden her bike over; her oversize, bright-pink rain jacket smelled of the sea-kissed woods.
“You really should lock your door, Grayson,” she admonished, not looking at Marion. “Are your parents here?”
He shook his head. “They’re down the street at the Davies’ house, trying to convince them not to pack up and leave Sawkill.”
Zoey snorted. “They should leave. And so should anyone else who can.”
Marion tried not to think of the terrible truth that Zoey had shared with her: if her father was right, neither Marion nor Zoey could leave the island. Not while the monster still lived.
Not while their bodies could do the things they could do.
There are always three.
“Where are your dad and Briggs?” Marion asked, somehow managing to speak.
“Dad and Briggs and all the other knights,” Zoey replied, “are setting up headquarters at the hotel, since our house doesn’t have enough room.”
“Setting up headquarters? What does that mean? Shouldn’t they be out there hunting this thing?”
Zoey glanced at Grayson. “Somehow I don’t think it’s gonna be that simple.”
Marion followed her gaze. “What did the book say?”
Grayson, looking slightly ill, stood up, retrieved a folder of papers from the end table, sat back down, and stood up once more. “How about some water first? Any
one want some water? Good.”
Once he’d left, leaving the folder sitting in his place, Marion cleared her throat. “Zoey?”
Zoey glared at the hearth, arms crossed. “Yes?”
“You’re still mad at me.”
“Yes.”
Marion’s eyes stung. “I’m sorry I said—”
“I know.” Zoey blew out a sharp sigh. “Let’s not talk about that right now, okay? We have bigger problems on our hands.”
Grayson returned with three glasses of water.
Marion took the offered glass, clinging to it like a lifeline. She wanted to move closer to Zoey but couldn’t find the courage for it.
“All right.” Grayson opened his folder of papers. “I don’t know how to begin, really.”
“At the beginning,” said Zoey, brooding over her glass of water. “That’s usually a good option.”
“Yes, but . . .” Grayson scrubbed a hand through his hair, then paused, and looked sheepishly first at Zoey, then Marion, then Zoey again. “I feel sort of weird doing this. Like I’m some asshole professor mansplaining the situation at you.”
“Look,” said Zoey, “while Marion and I were out fighting literal monsters with our superpowers, you were sitting here with your dictionaries, obsessively translating this stupid book. You’ve earned your time in the sun. Lecture away, Professor Asshole.” Zoey reclined in her chair. “Oh, and I assure you, the minute you start mansplaining anything to me, I’ll be the first one to let you know about it.”
Grayson smiled softly at her. “I have no doubt about that. All right. So.” He looked back at his notes. “I think I’ll start at the least terrifying thing and then work my way up from there.”
Marion raised an eyebrow. “Grayson, that is so not re-assuring.”
“Sorry. Okay. We’ll start with the queen.” Grayson took a deep breath. “The Collector—well, first of all, according to this book, that name is unique to Sawkill’s monster. Other monsters around the world, the Hand of Light refers to them by different names, according to the local legends and lore that have built up through the centuries around the monsters’ reputed existence—Kula, Le Mangeur—”
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