Page 132 of The Midnight Knock

Sarah was suddenly in motion. She pulled the pillows from her head and neck, sprang from the bed, and made a grab for the knife in Hunter’s hand. When the man easily backed away from her, Sarah turned instead to Ethan.

The woman’s face was all panic. “Listen to me—you can’t do this. If the ceremony’s been going for a long time, then stopping it now isn’t just going to return things to normal. We’ve created a loop, a pocket dimension in the fabric of space-time. We’ve done things that shouldn’t even be possible. If we were to prevent the ceremony from beginning again, that pocket would start to collapse in on itself. There’s no telling what it would do.”

Sarah’s eyes caught something over Ethan’s shoulder. He turned, just in time to see Penelope Holiday, her hair soaked with water,standing in the doorway of room 4 with Stanley’s massive Desert Eagle in her hand. The gun was aimed at Ethan’s head.

“We’re not going back to Stockton,” the girl said.

She didn’t look quite like Penelope. There was a childish sort of fear on her face, the look of a kid far out of her depth. She held the gun clumsily, like she was startled by its weight. It took her three tries to cock the hammer.

Plenty of time for Ryan Phan to make his move.

Earlier in Ethan’s room, when he’d motioned Ryan inside from the cold, he’d explained that he was worried Penelope—or more appropriately, Adeline—might do something desperate. Right on cue, Ethan heard Ryan pounding up the front porch. Ryan slammed into Penelope’s side, a flying tackle. The gun went off with a deafening boom, and everyone, even Sarah, fell to the ground.

There was a gasp as a chunk of the back wall exploded near someone’s shoulder. Ethan’s head swiveled to the back hall. He hadn’t even noticed Fernanda follow Kyla inside.

No time to worry about that. Springing to his feet and heading outside, Ethan found Penelope—or at least Penelope’s body—kicking and flailing in the parking lot. The girl was bawling like an infant. “I don’t want to go back! I DON’T WANT TO GO BACK!”

Ryan kept her pinned down easily. He shushed her. He seemed to know exactly which of the two girls he was dealing with. “It’s all right, Addy. It’s going to be all right.”

“What in thefuckdo you think you’re doing?”

Stan Holiday was standing on the porch outside room 7, clad in a pair of basketball shorts and a white wifebeater, his eyes blurry from sleep. He looked ready to sprint across the parking lot. Maybe try to break Ryan’s nose a few more times. He added, “What are you doing to her? How the fuck are you evenhere?”

Kyla took care of this problem. Stepping out of room 4, she raised the service pistol in her hand and fired, twice, at the window next to Stanley. One bullet pinged off a metal bar and ricocheted into the dark. The second shattered the glass, rooting Stanley to the ground.

“Turn around,” Kyla said. “Go inside. You have no idea what you’re dealing with here.”

Stanley didn’t seem convinced, however. It wasn’t until Hunter followed Ethan into the parking lot that the big man got his act together.

Hunter said, “Go. Now.”

Stanley went. He turned around, closed his door, and turned off the lights.

Ethan realized, in that moment, that Stanley knew exactly the sort of man Hunter was. That the big man—or the outfit—might have had reason to hire Hunter, once or twice.

And maybe, in the course of that business, Hunter might have met Penelope and Adeline before tonight.

Ethan never got the chance to ask. He heard rapid footsteps—running footsteps—coming from the direction of the office. Turning on his heel, raising the shotgun, he found Thomas barreling toward them with a fire poker in his hand and a look of pure horror in his eyes. He didn’t speak. He didn’t scream. He just ran in their direction, looking ready to cave in everyone’s skulls.

Hunter withdrew the Colt .357 Python from where Ethan had tucked it in the back of his jeans. Casually, without even a beat to aim down the sights, he fired a round into Thomas’s kneecap.

Thomas’s leg seemed to detonate. He collapsed into the dirt—nowhe was screaming—and tried to cradle his knee to his chest. He screamed even harder when the joint let out an awful, wetsquelchand bits of cartilage came away in his hands.

“Why?” Thomas screamed. “Why?”

Hunter crossed the parking lot. Kicked the fire poker away. Dug through the man’s pockets even as Thomas still writhed and gasped and moaned. Hunter aimed the Python into the man’s face. “What did you do to the eggs? The ones that were on the office’s mantel?”

So, Ethan thought. Hunter had noticed their absence too.

Thomas said, “Couldn’t… couldn’t let you… They’re gone. Threw them… threw them out into the dark.”

Which was, of course, when the Guardians of the mountain let out one of their hair-raising chorus ofSHRIEKS, as if to remind everyone they were still very much an ongoing concern. Ethan saw movement past the ring of the mercury lights. Saw dozens of yellow eyes.

“If the eggs are out there, we’ll never find them,” Kyla said.

“Sarah has one,” Ethan said. “It’s on the table. Someone could go take a look. They’d be safe.”

“I don’t think we’ll have time for that,” Hunter said, rising to his feet.