Dark-red tentacles whipped, the suckers glowing in the dim light, and the coy wolves fled as Bob grabbed the sorcerer’s arm and yanked. The arm ripped loose and Bob shot up into the sky with it.
Jared, Sarah said. We’re coming.
The ogress is here, Jared warned.
Mallory shrieked and collapsed to the floor, as his mother kicked her. Maggie wrapped her legs around Mallory’s neck. The otter gurgled into silence, trying to reach the knife strapped to her thigh.
Georgina and the sorcerer broke through the wall in their battle, the cold of the night pouring into the room.
Sarah! Jared thought, fighting the zip ties.
Almost there.
He rocked back and forth, then realized he could stand, hunched over, carrying the chair like a turtle shell. He waddled awkwardly to the wall. He slammed the chair over and over, willing it to break, increasingly desperate until it gave a satisfying crack and he shook himself free.
Jared lurched towards his mom. He was halfway across the living room when he was pulled up short and dragged down, the coy wolves surrounding him, nipping at him. Jared tried to stand and they sank their teeth into his legs. He hit the floor again, punching and kicking desperately. A satisfied yipping and then he was dragged through the open front door. Gravel. Gravel driveway. He tried to get up, but one of them tore into his side and he screamed.
“Bob!” Jared shouted. “Bob!”
But Bob was hovering over the sorcerer, wriggling his tentacles.
As his life ebbed from the bite to his side, it burned. He leaked life. He felt quick, furious bites and then he stopped moving. They sniffed him. One of them licked his face, letting him know that he was going to enjoy eating Jared’s tender cheeks, the soft muscle of his tongue. You ruined everything, the coy wolf thought. Now we’ll ruin you.
A high, sweet whistle overhead made all the coy wolves pause. Then came another whistle, lower, more guttural. An acrid, dark-red cloud descended from the sky. The coy wolves sank their teeth into Jared’s arms and dragged him back towards the house.
Sophia emerged from the cloud. Her hair was wild and her eyes stared but did not see. She wore blood, blood over all, all over, blood soaking her clothes so they were the colour of blood. All of the coy wolves’ heads exploded and their bodies fell limp.
The red cloud covered them, and she stood over him, staring at nothing. She crouched down and touched his bloody side, then she put her hand inside him. He screamed, and his throat went raw with his scream, and all the time, all the time, all the time, he felt all the time coming to an end. She pulled her hand back and licked it.
Sophia, he thought. Please.
She leaned over as if she was going to kiss him good night and bit into the soft flesh between his shoulder and his neck, and she tore away skin and she crouched beside him, chewing as he gurgled to silence, waiting to die, waiting for the pain to end, ready for it to stop.
Phil leaning over him. Time to cut the lazy glue! We’re going to meet again and we’re going to go fishing on the lake. It was just my time, kiddo.
She tore another strip of flesh from his shoulder.
His limbs leaden. Leaking past the point of no return.
I still love you, he told her.
The invisible birds whistled overhead. The fight raged on somewhere far away, the ogress roaring. Sophia Thing chewed. I don’t care.
I suppose you don’t.
You mean nothing.
I’ll always be a part of you. Ha ha. Get it?
The Thing didn’t care about puns. The Thing was endlessly hungry. Didn’t care that he was trying to make a joke, but then he felt Sophia remember the things he remembered, his Sophia, the woman who texted him from exotic ports of call, bored because her new husband’s Viagra wasn’t working.
It hurt when you left, he thought.
The Thing stopped chewing, and he felt Sophia’s irritation.
It hurts now, getting eaten.
The invisible birds went silent.
But if anyone’s going to kill me, I don’t mind that it’s you, Sophia.
Sophia took a breath, blinked. She spat out his blood and wiped it away with the back of her hand. Her regret was like knives, ripping her inside. He could feel her coming back to her body, afraid, and she laid her hands on his chest, sending power thrumming through his veins. He felt his wounds healing. He felt warmth. The red cloud surrounding them faded and they lay together in the cold looking up at the sky as a single star broke through the clouds. She raged, raged incoherently, but underneath he felt her grief, sour and metallic, and it wanted to drag her down like an anchor, and he wished he was strong enough to turn so he could hold her.
Sophia touched him again—legs, side, shoulder—and the wounds closed enough that he could move.
“Go,” she said. “Save your mother.”
32
I AM AS INEXORABLE AS THE WAVES
Mom? Jared thought.
Busy, she thought back, and he could feel his mother trying to choke Mallory to death between her thighs, concentrating hard on being the last fucking thing she saw, the girl stabbing her thigh with her stupid fucking dollar-store knife as Maggie tried to shove her bandaged stump down the ugly bitch’s shrieking maw.
His mother’s other wrist was still zip-tied to the chair and Mallory was close to hitting some vital bits.
Georgina had ogress legs now, attached to her big, soft chicken torso. The sorcerer was missing a leg now too, wriggling and spitting lightning alternately at Bob and the ogress. They fought in the open field beside the house where the Tricksters were clawing themselves from their living graves, dragging themselves towards the fight.
A rusty minivan bumped past him along
