Chapter 21: The Next Attack
The moon was a sliver of bone in the black sky. Luke watched Liv’s house from the shadow of a neighbor’s oak, the weight of the animal skull mask a familiar pressure against his face. The cheap suburban tract home glowed with a sickly yellow light. He’d listened to Amy’s frantic call to Nancy earlier, the woman’s voice tight with fear. We’re leaving tonight. Jin’s packing the car. We can’t stay here. Liv was trying to slip away. To take her sacred, scarred life somewhere beyond his reach. An unacceptable proposition.
He’d seen Jin carry two suitcases to the SUV in the driveway. Now, through the kitchen window, he watched Liv hug her mother, a tall, slender girl with dark hair falling over her shoulders. She looked fragile. Breakable. He flexed his gloved hands. It wouldn’t take long. In and out. A family tragedy, a final footnote. He’d use the knife tonight. Quiet. Personal.
Personal.
He moved across the lawn like a thought of violence given form, silent in the damp grass. The sliding glass door to the kitchen was unlocked, a final, trusting oversight. The cool air from the house washed over him, carrying the scent of lemongrass and packing tape. Amy’s back was turned, folding a sweater at the kitchen island. Liv was just stepping into the hallway, calling up the stairs for her father.
Luke’s first step onto the linoleum was deliberate. The second brought him behind Amy. His left arm snaked around her waist, yanking her flush against his chest, while his right hand brought the knife’s serrated edge to her throat. She froze, a tiny gasp escaping her. “Don’t scream,” he whispered, the mask muffling his voice into something subterranean. “Scream, and I open her neck right here.”
Liv turned. Her face dissolved. “Mom?”
“Upstairs,” Luke commanded, the knife pressing a dimple into Amy’s skin. “Get your dad. Now.”
Liv stumbled backward, then turned and fled, her footsteps pounding on the stairs. “Dad! Dad, he’s here!”
A moment later, Jin charged down, wild-eyed, a baseball bat in his hands. He skidded to a halt in the doorway, taking in the scene. “Let her go.”
“Drop the bat,” Luke said, monotone. He adjusted his grip on Amy, feeling her heart hammer against his forearm. Jin hesitated, his knuckles white on the handle. Luke nicked the skin. A bead of blood welled and traced a path down Amy’s collarbone. She whimpered.
The bat clattered to the floor.
“Kick it away.” Jin did. “Now walk to me. Slowly.”
Jin took shaky steps forward, his hands raised. As he came within arm’s reach, Luke shoved Amy away with brutal force. She slammed into the refrigerator and crumpled. In the same motion, Luke pivoted, the knife flashing upward. It wasn’t a kill stroke. It was a message. The blade sank into the soft juncture of Jin’s right shoulder, a wet thock piercing the cotton of his shirt.
Jin grunted, more shock than pain, staggering back. Luke yanked the knife free. Blood immediately began to blossom, dark and slick. “Liv!” Jin yelled, clutching the wound.
Luke was already moving, ignoring the fallen man. He could hear Liv’s frantic footsteps overhead, then the sound of a window screeching open. She was going out a second-story window. Fine. He liked the chase.
He was out the front door, rounding the house, when headlights swept across the driveway. A beat-up sedan screeched to a halt, doors flying open before it fully stopped. Scott emerged from the passenger side, his face a mask of terror. Dale and Michelle piled out behind him.
“Liv!” Scott screamed, his voice cracking.
Luke saw Liv drop from a first-floor roof overhang, landing hard on her feet in the side yard. She saw Scott and the others and sprinted toward them. Luke charged. He was faster, a predator in full stride. But Dale stepped into his path, a can of pepper spray raised. “Back the fuck off!”
Luke dodged the blinding spray, swatting her arm aside. He didn’t stop for them. His target was Liv. Scott, stupid and brave, darted forward and grabbed Liv’s hand, pulling her toward the car. “Go, go, go!”
Michelle flung open the back door. Scott shoved Liv inside and tumbled in after her. Dale scrambled back into the driver’s seat. The car peeled out, tires screaming. Luke watched them go, his chest heaving. He turned and ran into the darkness between the houses, a faster route parallel to the road.
The sedan couldn’t navigate the tight grid of frat houses like a man on foot. Luke cut through backyards, vaulting fences, his breath steady behind the mask. He heard the car skid to a stop a block over, doors slamming, frantic voices. They were on foot now, too.
He crested a fence and saw them. Scott and Liv were sprinting together down an alley, while Dale and Michelle veered off to the right, trying to flank or distract. A split-second decision made in panic. He kept his eyes on Scott, that slight figure pulling the girl along.
They burst out onto a street throbbing with bass. A massive frat house loomed, every window blazing with light, bodies pressed against the glass. Without hesitation, Scott dragged Liv toward the chaotic glow, up the steps, and into the seething mass of the party.
Luke followed. He pushed through the crowd just inside the door. The air was thick with sweat, cheap beer, and cloying perfume. A hundred conversations died as people turned, taking in the skull mask, the dark clothes, the knife in his hand. For a second, there was stunned silence.
Then someone screamed.
A stampede began. The crowd became a thrashing, single organism of panic, surging toward the exits, drinks dropping, phones clattering to the floor. Luke shoved through the current, a rock in a raging stream, his eyes scanning. He saw a door at the back of the main room swing shut. A basement.
He reached it, turned the handle. Locked. He could hear frantic scrabbling on the other side, furniture screeching against concrete. He took a step back and kicked, hard. The frame shuddered.
Inside the basement, Scott’s phone screen cast a ghastly blue light. “Dale. Basement of the Sigma Chi house. He’s here. He’s breaking in.” He threw his weight against a musty sofa, heaving it against the door. Liv dragged a heavy workbench over, adding to the barricade.
Another kick. The wood around the lock splintered.
“The window!” Liv hissed, pointing to a high, narrow rectangle of glass near the ceiling, crusted with dirt. Beneath it was a pile of discarded furniture: a broken desk, a moldering armchair. Scott climbed onto the desk, his fingers just brushing the sill. “Come on!”
Liv climbed up beside him, her shoes slipping on the particleboard. Scott laced his fingers together, creating a step. She planted her foot, he boosted, and she scrambled, her torso through the window, kicking wildly. “I’m out! I’m out!”
Strong hands grabbed her arms from the outside, pulling. Dale and Michelle, their faces pale in the night. “Scott, now!” Michelle yelled, reaching back down.
The door exploded inward in a shower of wood splinters. Luke stood in the wreckage. Scott jumped for the window, his fingers closing on the sill. Luke crossed the room in three strides. His hand clamped around Scott’s ankle, yanking him down with terrifying force.
They fell together, crashing onto the old armchair, which collapsed under their weight in a cloud of dust and rotting fabric. Scott’s head snapped back, cracking against a chair leg. Luke lay still for a moment, the wind knocked out of him, the mask askew.
Scott saw his chance. He held his breath, extricating himself from the tangle of limbs and broken wood. He crawled on his belly, inch by inch, around the periphery of the room, behind a rack of old water heaters. Luke didn’t move. Scott reached the shattered doorway and fled up the stairs into the empty, trashed party house.
From outside, Dale saw Scott escape. She saw the killer prone on the basement floor. “He’s down!” she shouted to Michelle, who was holding a sobbing Liv. “Stay with her.”
“Dale, no!” Michelle cried.
Dale didn’t listen. She dropped through the window, landing in a crouch, a kitchen knife she’d grabbed from Liv’s house held ready. She approached Luke’s still form. She raised the knife, aiming for his back.
Luke’s hand shot out, seizing her ankle. He yanked, and she fell forward. In a fluid motion, he rolled on top of her, his own knife finding the space between her ribs. It wasn’t a stab. It was a plunge, deep and final. He leaned close, his mask right beside her ear. “Wrong move,” he breathed.
Dale’s eyes widened, her mouth forming a silent ‘O’. A gush of hot blood soaked her shirt.
From the window, Michelle and Liv screamed, a harmonized sound of pure horror. Luke looked up at them, then twisted the knife before pulling it free. He stood, leaving Dale gurgling on the concrete floor.
Scott, who had been hiding in the kitchen, heard the screams. He ran back toward the sound, skidding to a halt at the top of the basement stairs as Luke emerged. Scott pressed himself into a closet doorway, shadows swallowing him. Luke walked past, his boots heavy on the floor, and out the back of the house.
Scott waited until the silence was absolute except for the weeping from outside the window. Then he ran down into the basement.
The scene was a slaughterhouse tableau. Dale lay on her side, blood pooling around her in a shocking, glossy circle. Her breath came in wet, rattling hitches. Michelle and Liv were crouched beside her now, having jumped down, their hands fluttering helplessly over the wound, trying to stanch a life that was already pouring out onto the cold floor. Scott fell to his knees, the coppery smell filling his nose, the sound of Dale’s dying breaths the only thing in the world.