Page 208 of Stay Scared

Rook moves.

All three of us turn toward him.

His gloved fingers twitch against the restraint. The cracked beak shifts.

He is alive.

Cade steps in front of me, and Ash pulls me back against his side.

There it is. The thing they’ve both been fighting all night, still sharp enough to bite.

Rook looks at us through the broken mask, his breathing rough beneath it.

“You still chose them.”

Cade starts toward him.

I catch the waistband of his torn shirt. “Stay.”

He stops with his weight pitched forward.

Rook laughs once, weak and wet. “You think they changed?”

I am too tired for him, too bloody and too angry.

I lean around Cade. “I think you lost.”

That kills the laugh.

Rook jerks against the restraint. Nothing moves.

I look at Ash. “House lights.”

Ash lingers beside me, one hand still around my waist, his eyes moving over my face and every place Rook touched.

Then he releases me and crosses to the old property switch.

Ash wraps his bloody hand around the plain mechanical handle.

Rook thrashes once more.

Ash pulls.

White operational lights explode across the red room, swallowing the portable lantern.

Every crack in the paint becomes visible. Every broken section of steel. The shattered observation window. Blood across the floor.

Rook is strapped crookedly against a chair he tore apart, trying to turn it into a weapon.

The room is suddenly ugly in the most ordinary way.

Cade looks down at his bleeding palms. Ash stands beneath unforgiving white light with half his shirt stained dark.

I catch my reflection in the remaining observation glass.

Bruised and cut.

Still standing.