The two of them soared across the open area above the horse stalls, passing clear of the flames reaching from below. The runner wheels screeched along the old track overhead, but they kept moving.
The second loft materialized out of the smoke.
Behind them, Mallory heard the fiery demon giving chase.
Less than five minutes had passed since the gunman entered the barn, and every second of it had been agony.
Tim hissed when another corroded steel spike cut into his skin, skin now slick with blood from numerous lacerations. Groaning, he forced himself to breathe through the pain and keep working.
He had no other choice. He had to help Mallory.
Tim shifted another loop of the wire off his feet. It came away with a shred of bloody cloth. He had to be careful how far he pulled or how fast he moved; too much pressure on one side of the entangling wire caused more barbs to bite into his flesh on the other.
“Come on… Come one… Come on,” he growled through his teeth.
One by one, he slipped the rusty coils down, off his skin, over his shoes.
He had three tight loops to go when Mallory screamed.
Tim let go of the last two circles of barbed wire that still clung to his shins, letting them drop back into place. Instead, he turned his full attention to the concussive blasts of demolition now coming from the barn. It sounded like a wrecking ball tearing through the place.
He sat motionless, staring, listening. Insects settled on his sweat-glazed skin and landed in the rivulets of blood that trickled down his legs, into the fabric of his socks.
Whatever was happening in there had to be the work of something massive, something entirely unearthly this time, and the idea that he’d be able to do anything about it seemed comical, at best.
He also had the fire to consider now. Tim noticed it the last time he’d chanced a quick glance at the building, and the unmistakable shimmer of orange light appeared far brighter than before. The place was going up. Between that and the rage of demolition, Tim had the heart-wrenching feeling that Mallory was already—
He heard her.
During a lull in the roar of devastation she shouted, “The silo!” Then she and another person dashed across the open loft loading doors, each silhouetted by the firelight.
She was still alive.
And he knew how she planned to escape. He’d explored the barn dozens of times before. The loft. The chute. The silo. It had to be how she was getting out.
The silo’s exit hatch had a locking bar on the outside. It was old but sturdy, and if it was down, they’d be trapped.
Tim pushed the thought aside.
The locking bar wouldn’t be down. He’d make sure of it.
Tensing, he shoved off the last coils of barbed wire without heed to the pain.
Mallory let go of the rope and landed at the barn’s second hayloft, stumbling to a halt beside Derrick.
“We made it,” he cried.
Mallory turned on him and slapped him across the face. “You bastard!” she shouted. “What were you thinking?”
Smoke dominated this less-ventilated portion of the building and she gagged and coughed between words. But she was thankful for it. Had she missed the rope when Derrick tried to leave her, she’d be a burning heap right now.
The idea intensified her anger, and before he could say anything, she swung at him again. This time he parried the blow—
“Get the fuck away from me!” he yelled.
—and punched her in the face.
Mallory’s head rocked back, and for a moment everything went dark. She staggered away, clutching her mouth. Pain stung her lips, the flesh pulsing to her heartbeat. She looked to the hand she’d cover her mouth with and saw blood glistening on her fingertips.
Her gaze flicked to Derrick.
Rather than meet it, the boy glanced at the burning behemoth, prompting her to look. The monster blazed forward, completely engulfed in flames. It shook the building with each stride, punching through the stable walls and tearing away support posts that blocked its path.
Derrick pulled the hem of his shirt over his mouth and nose. “Go,” he ordered, pushing Mallory in the direction of a trap door leading downward.
Fresh tears filled Mallory’s eyes, but her fear urged her onward.
She scurried down the ladder—jumping the last six feet—and spotted Elsa huddled in the corner of the room.
“Elsy,” she cried. The girl had tucked herself into a ball, knees up, arms clasped around her legs, head buried in her chest. “Elsy, get up. We have to get out of here.”
The roar of the inferno vibrated in the air. Perspiration streamed off Mallory’s face, mixing with the hail of dust and debris that floated down from the building’s rotted timbers.
She heaved Elsa to her feet and dragged the girl across the floor. Derrick had already dove into the chute and clambered out of sight.
Elsa stumbled at first, then started moving on her own. Mallory lunged into the chute ahead of her.
The passage quaked in correspondence to a thunderous crash behind them. Mallory’s mind conjured an image of the creature flinging itself through the walls of the tack room, imploding the aged framework under its bulk in one last effort to seize her before she got out of reach.
Why me? Why does it want me?
But when she looked back, the beast had taken Elsa.
Mallory gaped, and a bullet of grief put a hole in her heart.
The chute had been cut in half. A burning heap of ravaged lumber now occupied the area where Elsa should’ve been.
Because of me, because I went first.
Wracked by sobs of anguish but unable to repress the animalistic urge to get away, Mallory hurried up the shaft, toward the silo. Hot air rose at her feet. She maneuvered her way through the opening and dropped to the floor.
“Oh, yeah,” Derrick breathed in the darkness. “No way that big-ass thing can get in here.”
“Help me find the way out,” she demanded.
Except for a weak orange glow pulsating through the chute, the silo was a pitch-black void. Mallory’s hands quested in the dark. She hunted for the exit hatch, unable to remember its exact position in correlation to the barn chute.
She alternated between searching the wall and wiping tears from her eyes. “We have to find the others and get the hell away from here. We may not have much time.”
Derrick’s labored breaths haunted the darkness like unseen ghosts. “What do you mean?” he wheezed.
She remembered how the stranger had seemed so unstoppable, able to resist their harsh attacks without the slightest sign of discomfort. And even when they had eliminated their opponent, the second beast had arrived, having taken shape from the medley of refuse scattered about the floor. Was it possible the two attackers were the same being? And if so, could it switch bodies again? She didn’t want to believe it, yet—
“Oh, my God,” she cried, realizing where she was.
“What?” Derrick pleaded.
Mallory trained her attention on the gloom above their heads. A lightning pulse lit the sky. Its blaze shone down through the silo’s broken cover and illuminated the suicide dummy overhead, dangling from its noose.
Mallory gasped.
Rather than hanging motionless, the dummy thrashed about, fighting its securing line like someone who’d survived the drop from the gallows only to die of strangulation.
“Oh, shit,” Derrick screeched, flattening to the wall. “What the hell is that?”
The lightning faded, and two globes of searing-hot light distended out of the darkness, radiating from the eye sockets of the dummy’s pallid mask.