Page 127 of Into the Dark, We Go

One of Robert’s men gave chase, but it made no difference. We were still outnumbered and outgunned.

The other tackled me to the ground, winding me. The knife flew from my grip again, but my hand instinctively closed around a nearby stone. I swung it blindly, catching my attacker in the shoulder. The hit wasn’t clean, but it was enough to throw him off.

The masked figure reappeared from the trees, the grimoire held tentatively in his muddied fingers. He presented it to Robert, who accepted it for the sacred relic he believed it to be. They now had the book, and our chances of escape hadn’t improved.

Robert scanned the pages, his expression twisted.

"What the hell is this?" he bellowed, flipping through the pages faster, each movement more frantic than the last.

His distraction rippled outward.

A thump, and Nick had managed to throw his attacker off his back. I took the opportunity to wrench myself free, scrambling up from the dirt like a reanimated corpse. Robert remained distracted, wholly absorbed in whatever was wrong with the pages.

He didn’t see me coming.

I charged, the stone still in hand, and swung at his head. But Robert didn’t fall. He blitzed like a storm, lashing out with an outstretched arm. I tasted leather and musty pages. He’d hit me with the grimoire. Pain shot through my skull as I hit the ground, weak and spent, blood trailing from my lips.

He stormed toward me, his footsteps breaking the earth with the weight of an avalanche. I tried to squirm away.

"You bitch," he spat again, and then, all at once, he stilled, choking on a guttural roar.

Just a few paces from me, he began clawing at his back in withering despair. I didn’t understand until his knees buckled and he crashed onto his stomach.

My knife jutted from his back, and Nick stood over him.

A low,foreboding rumble shook the clearing. It wasn’t quite an earthquake. It was deeper, stranger. A humming sound that grew louder with each passing second. I covered my ears, holding my breath until it stopped.

When I finally dared to look up, Nick was staring at me, the same shock scarred on his features. The man who had been attacking him was gone.

I turned toward Mitch and June. Robert’s men were fleeing into the woods that had refused to take me.

The grimoire lay by my feet. I picked it up.

Its cover fell away in my hands, revealing a plain notepad underneath. The pages were the same size, but lined like an ordinary journal, mass-produced and modern. I blinked down at it, stunned.

June caught my eye. "Did it work? Is he dead?" she asked, her voice shaking. She was still hiding behind a tree, as if trying to decide whether it was safe to come out.

Robert lay on his side, his body slack in a way that left no doubt.

It seemed impossibly mundane. Anticlimactic.

After everything, it wasn’t a curse or a monster that ended him. Just a knife.

A man like him, undone by something so ordinary.

Nick had swappedthe grimoire for a fake. I didn’t know why he hadn’t warned me, but I assumed he had his reasons. My best guess was that he wanted me to believe I was carrying the real thing. Maybe that’s why the deity hadn’t taken it—if it ever wanted it in the first place. At least the fake had done what it needed to: distracted Robert long enough for Nick to end it.

We didn’t go after Robert’s men, though June wanted to, still riding the adrenaline, but Mitchell stopped her. Judging by how Robert had carried himself and the way the others had followed him, it felt safe to assume he’d been the one holding it all together. The one with real power. They wouldn’t survive without him, and without the grimoire.

I sat down, covered in blood, and stared blankly into space. After two years of being accused of murder, directly and indirectly, I had somewhat lived up to my reputation. We’dkilled a man. I was an accomplice, and I would have to live with that for the rest of my days. But no matter how hard I tried to wrap my head around it—to feel guilt or remorse or anything at all—it wouldn’t come. We killed a man to stop him from killing others, to save ourselves. When I found Duane’s body, I went into shock. Now, after seeing someone die, I felt a hollow calm. June and Mitch acted like it was nothing. But we still had a dead body on our hands.

Mitchell came back first, carrying a stuffed backpack and a shovel.

"Where did you get the shovel?" I asked, my brain too tired to process anything else.

"We packed it up, just in case. Grabbed some other stuff, too. Snacks and whatnot." He tossed a protein bar at me, but I didn’t catch it. It softly hit my chest and landed on my lap.

"Sorry," he winced. "Eat it. You’ll need the energy."