Through the constant hiss of the rain, Gansey heard a scrape across the floor upstairs, and another bang as something fell over.
“It’s not just the blood,” Ronan said. His chest moved up and down with his breath. “Something else got out, too.”
The door to Ronan’s room was closed. A bookshelf had been emptied, tipped on its side, and pushed in front of it. The books were hastily piled beside the knocked-over telescope. Everything was silent and gray as the rain beaded on the windows. The smell Gansey had noticed downstairs was more prominent up here: moldy, sweet.
“Kerah?” croaked Chainsaw from Ronan’s arm. He made a soft noise back at her before lowering her onto Gansey’s desk; she disappeared into the rain-black shadow beneath it. Switching the crowbar to his right hand, Ronan pointed to the box cutter on the desk until Gansey realized he meant for him to take it. He dubiously extended and retracted the blade a few times before glancing at Noah. The latter looked ready to vanish, either from a lack of energy or a lack of courage.
“Are you ready?” Ronan asked.
“What is it I’m preparing myself for?”
Behind the door, something scratched on the floorboard.
Tck-tck-tck. Like a mallet dragged across a washboard. Something in Gansey’s heart thrilled with fear.
Ronan said, “What’s in my head.”
Gansey didn’t think there was a way to steel oneself for that. But he helped Ronan push the bookshelf out of the way.
“Gansey,” Ronan said. The doorknob was turning on its own accord. He reached out and held it still. “Watch — watch your eyes.”
“What’s our plan?” Gansey’s attention was on Ronan’s grip on the doorknob. His knuckles were white with the effort of keeping it from turning.
Ronan said, “Kill it.”
He flung open the door.
The first thing Gansey saw was the disaster: Chainsaw’s cage flattened, the perch splintered. The mesh cover of a speaker was bent like a clam near the threshold. A computer keyboard wedged beneath an overturned stool. A tattered shirt and pair of jeans sprawled on the floor, at first glance a corpse.
Then he saw the nightmare.
It moved from the rear corner. Like it was a shadow, and then it was a thing. Fast. Black. Bigger than he’d expected. Realer than he’d expected.
It was as tall as he was. Two-legged. Clothed in something torn, black, greasy.
Gansey couldn’t stop staring at the beak.
“Gansey!” Ronan snarled, and then he swung the crowbar.
The creature hurtled to the floor. It twisted out of Ronan’s reach as he swung again. Gansey became aware of a claw. No, claws, dozens of them. Massive, shiny, curled to needle points. They snatched at Ronan.
Gansey darted in, slashing at a limb. The creature’s clothing parted beneath the blade. It leapt up, straight at Ronan, who blocked it with the crowbar. With a mighty flap, the creature launched itself through the air and perched on the doorjamb, hands between its legs, clinging like a spider. There was nothing human about it. It hissed at the boys. Red-pupiled eyes snapped shut and open. A bird. A dinosaur. A demon.
No wonder Ronan never sleeps.
“Close the door!” snapped Ronan. “We don’t want to play hide and seek in there!”
The bedroom seemed too small to shut themselves in with a monster, but Gansey knew Ronan was right. He slammed the door just as the creature flew at him. Hooks and beaks, black and twisted. At the same instant, Ronan hurled himself, pushing Gansey to the floor.
In a brief, crystal moment, pinned beneath both Ronan and the beaked creature, Gansey saw the thing’s claws seize Ronan’s arm, and with hyper-awareness, saw matching scabs crisscrossed beneath the fresh ones. The beak darted for Ronan’s face.
Gansey stabbed the box cutter blade into the waxy black flesh between the claws.
The thing made no sound as it reared back. Ronan swung again with the crowbar, and when it glanced off the creature, he aimed a fist instead. The two of them stumbled over the corner of the bed. The nightmare was on top of Ronan. Both of them fought soundlessly; Ronan could die, and Gansey wouldn’t know it until after.
Sweeping a hand across Ronan’s desk, Gansey seized a beer bottle and smashed it against the creature’s skull. Instantly, the smell of alcohol filled the room. Ronan cursed from beneath the monster. Gansey snatched one of the thing’s limbs — was it an arm? Was it a wing? Rrevulsion coursed up his throat — and swiped at its body with the box cutter. He felt the blade make contact, bite into greasy flesh. Suddenly, there was a claw around his neck, a claw shoved into the thin skin under his chin. Hooked like a fish.
He was aware of how tiny the blade of the box cutter was. How insubstantial in comparison to the bristling claws of this thing. He felt a warm trickle into the collar of his shirt. His lungs filled with the fecund smell of rot.
Ronan smashed the crowbar into the creature’s head. And then he smashed it again. And once more. Both Gansey and the thing crumpled to the ground; the weight of it was an anchor on Gansey’s skin. He was caught, impaled, snarled on this grip.
The box cutter was taken from Gansey. Gansey, seeing what Ronan meant to do, stretched his arms for that still-grasping beak. So it was the creature holding Gansey holding the creature. And then Ronan cutting its throat. It was neither fast nor bloodless. It was as ragged and slow as cutting wet cardboard.
Then it was over, and Ronan unhooked the claw carefully from Gansey’s skin.
Released, Gansey scrambled back from the creature. He pressed the back of his hand to the wound on his chin. He couldn’t tell what was his blood and what was its blood and what was Ronan’s blood. Both of them were out of breath.
“Are you murdered?” Ronan asked Gansey. A scratch came down his temple and skipped across his eyebrow to his cheek. Watch your eyes.
A soft probe with Gansey’s fingertips revealed that the actual wound under his chin was quite small. The memory of being caught on the claw wouldn’t soon leave him, though. He felt perilously undone, like he needed to hold on to something or be washed away. He kept his voice even. “I think so. Is it dead?”