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To hiht He wasn’t in bed either, or crouched on a staircase, hugging his knees, wishing he were anywhere else Instead, he stood in a swirl of icy wind and stinging snow, and his was the hand with the haht, the handle slick with Lena’s blood Gore dribbled over his face, bathed his neck He sucked ar he’d ever tasted, and he wanted more

"P-please, Chris," Lena said "H-help her He liked that, too "No one can"

"B-but" Lena’s eyes dripped blood instead of tears "I d-don’t

want to die"

"You should’ve thought of that before you Changed Someone has

to die"

"Yes, someone must" It was another voice, a person Chris also

kneell Jess was suddenly there, silver hair lashed by wind into

a Gorgon’s curls, the snow spinning itself into a long white gown

"Someone will," Jess said

"But not me!" Lena cried "Why does it have to be--" "You’re already lost, girl" Jess’s voice ind "But you are not,

Chris Leave this place This is a fight you will not win here You don’t

belong in the Land of the Dead"

"Hell you say," said his father, as now grinning down at

another body This one was jittering and twitching in an enorore Chris looked and saw that it was Peter, splayed

on his back, his head as broken and misshapen as a Halloween pu about," his father

said to Jess, "and he belongs to me, with me, my blood" "There’s a time you must kill, Chris, but also a time to heal" Jess’s

eyes were black ht, Chris on the left, like the twin angels of his nature--his

father and Jess--but he couldn’t tell which was good Maybe neither

was, entirely "Leave the thing with a father’s face," Jess said "Go

back It’s not yet your tiing--both

Chrises swung, their ha--but when they connected,

they collapsed into one Chris, one ha sound as Lena’s scalp tore The ha bone before passing to the softer pink cheese of her brain Lena crumpled When the hammer pulled free, he

looked up to find that Jess had disappeared

"That’s ob of brains froers in his mouth "Yum--"

And then the scene shifted in a quick jolt, as if a hand jae push, catapulting Chris from

this horror to somewhere entirely different--and Chris had one

second to think, A nighthtmare, this isn’t real, it’s not-- Chris’s chest suddenly erupted in a spray of raw agony An electric

blaze streaked through his body, all the connections sizzling to life

Now he registered that the air arm--inside, sourgle of water, the creak

of a spring, the rustle of cloth The insect-like tick-tick-tick-tick-tick

of a clock Bed, bedroo There was a strange pressure on his chest--hand, a

,

drawing down and across, sketching some symbol like a pen over

blank paper What folloas a swirl of sounds, whispers and the

guttural hed down by

ues: Durch das Blut und das

Wasser seiner Seite

Where was he? He reh the trees--Lena, run, run--and then an oily blighthisin the water

There was that splashing sound again, close by, and now soust of fear blasted

through hi ed shriek "No!"

His eyes snapped open at the same instant that the hands on his side

jumped away like startled birds So alive to a roo, "No! Don’t touch et away