Chapter 36: Tides Turn
His eyes, fixed on Nancy who was still twisting the knife, burned with apocalyptic fire.
Scott gasped, the world narrowing to the hot, tearing focus of the blade in his side. His vision pulsed with each heartbeat. Nancy leaned in, her breath sour with fury. "You ruined everything," she spat, her fingers tightening on the hilt to pull it out and stab again.
A shadow blotted out the flickering candlelight.
A huge, gnarled hand closed around Nancy's entire forearm. The bones made a sound like stepping on a bundle of dry twigs. She shrieked, high and piercing, as Luke wrenched her away from Scott. He flung her backwards like a ragdoll. She sailed through the air, crashing into a support pillar with a wet crunch before slumping to the floor.
"YOU DO NOT TOUCH WHAT IS MINE," Luke roared, his voice a landslide of gravel and hate.
Nancy's boning knife, slick with Scott's blood, clattered to the concrete. Luke turned, his distended talons slicing through Scott's iron manacles with a shriek of shearing metal. The chains fell away. Scott collapsed forward, but Luke caught him, his touch surprisingly gentle despite the nightmarish form. With his other hand, he tore the ropes binding Liv from the chair as if they were cobwebs.
He looked down at Scott, holding his shuddering body. The demonic fury in his eyes fractured, and for a second, the man was there, swimming in a sea of torment. "I'm sorry," Luke rasped, the words labored and painful. "For all of it. I am so… fucking… sorry, Scott."
He lowered Scott to the ground beside Liv, who was frantically trying to stand on numb legs. Luke turned his terrifying gaze to Michelle, who was pushing herself up from the wall, her nose bleeding. "Get them out of here," he growled, a command laced with a final, desperate authority. "Get them the hell out. Now."
Michelle didn't hesitate. She lunged forward, grabbing Scott under one arm while Liv got the other. They hauled him toward the stairs. Scott cried out, his hand clamping over the weeping knife wound, but he moved his feet, stumbling with them. Behind them, Luke turned to face the dozens of other cultists who had backed into a corner.
Rainne, Veronica's bandmate, held a length of pipe. James, his face a mask of betrayed spite, picked up a fallen crowbar. Lennox, Michelle's publisher, held a knife. Phil and Amy stood empty-handed, frozen. Others watched completely open mouthed.
As Michelle, Liv, and Scott reached the top of the basement stairs, Liv looked back. She saw Luke standing before the huddled group, his monstrous silhouette framed by the growing fire. Nancy's body had knocked over several of the thick black candles. Flames now licked hungrily up the old, dry wood of the pillar and were spreading across a stack of mildewed boxes.
Liv slammed the heavy basement door shut. Her eyes darted around the dilapidated kitchen. She grabbed a rusted mop handle and jammed it through the door's exterior handle, twisting it until the wood groaned and the mechanism locked.
From behind the door, Luke's voice boomed, clear and terrible. "You wanted a god? You get a purge."
Then the screaming started.
It wasn't one scream, but a chorus. Rainne's was cut short by a sound like a watermelon dropped from a height. James yelled, a guttural cry that dissolved into wet, choking gurgles. There was a sickening crunch, the splinter of bone, and Lennox's shriek pierced the air before being abruptly silenced. Phil sobbed, begging, "Please, no, we were following the path—" before his words became a strangled howl. Amy, Liv's mother, just screamed and screamed until something heavy and final thudded against the door.
Scott, leaning against Michelle, pounded a weak fist on the wood. "Luke! Luke, stop! Don't!"
"Scott, we have to go!" Michelle hauled him back, her strength fueled by that terrifying, silent power.
"He's in there! The fire, he'll—"
"He wants us to go!" Liv yelled, her own face streaked with tears for the mother she had just heard die. She pulled Scott's other arm. "Move your feet or I will drag you!"
They staggered through the blood-smeared hallway, past the room with the cage, toward the broken fire exit. The screams from the basement had stopped. An unnatural silence replaced them, broken only by the growing crackle of the fire below and their own ragged breaths. They burst out into the cold night air, collapsing onto the overgrown lawn just as an orange light began to flicker in the basement windows below.
Scott stared at the light, at the house that held every ghost of his life. "He saved me," he whispered.
"He's burning it down," Michelle said, her voice hollow. She pressed her hand hard against his bleeding side. "Hold this. Keep pressure."
"To stop them," Scott gasped, pain shooting through him. "To stop himself."
Inside the burning basement, Luke stood amidst the carnage. The bodies of the cultists lay broken around him, arranged in a crude circle. The flames climbed the walls, consuming the painted symbols, blackening the ceiling. The heat was immense, a physical weight. He walked to the center of the room, the epicenter of his ruined ritual, and sat down cross-legged on the concrete.
He welcomed the inferno. He pictured Scott, safe now, away from him. The fire would cleanse this place. It would cleanse him. The searing heat kissed his greyish skin, his clothes smoldering. He inhaled thick, toxic smoke, willing it to fill his lungs. He closed his eyes and waited for the darkness.
The beams above him groaned. A section of the ceiling collapsed, pouring burning timbers and rubble directly onto him. It buried him in an avalanche of fire and shattered wood.
Minutes passed. The fire roared, consuming the old house.
Then, from within the pyre, a blackened hand thrust upward, scattering burning debris. Luke pushed himself to his feet. His clothes were ash. His skin, where the fire had touched it, was charred and cracked like a riverbed in a drought, but already, underneath, new pink flesh was knitting itself together. He looked at his hands, turning them over in the firelight. The hunger was still there. The possessive, obsessive need for Scott was still there, a furnace in his chest hotter than the flames around him.
The fire hadn't killed him. It had only remade him, again.
He threw back his head and howled, a sound of perfect, desolate agony that was swallowed by the crackling roar. To keep Scott safe, he realized with a clarity that was his final punishment, he could never see him again. He had to stay as far away as possible. Forever.
He turned and vanished into the deeper, untouched shadows of the basement, leaving the house to burn behind him.