We move down the hall. Low music pulses behind the next door. Someone turned the volume up enough to shake the walls.
Brooke opens the door.
The smell reaches me before anything else. It carries the thick metallic weight of blood that has already begun to dry.
The overhead lights buzz faintly while the scene comes into focus.
A girl lies on the tile floor.
She can't be older than twenty. Her skin has already gone pale beneath the harsh white lighting, and her eyes remain open, fixed on the ceiling as if she had been staring there when everything ended. Blood has pooled beneath the back of her head and shoulders, spreading across the white tile in a dark stain that has begun to thicken along the edges.
Her body sits twisted at an angle that immediately explains how she died.
But that is not the worst part of what I'm looking at.
A man is between her legs.
His pants hang halfway down his thighs while his hips move slowly against her corpse. The motion shifts the girl’s body slightly across the floor with every push forward. The man grunts each time he forces himself into her.
A wolf mask covers his face.
For a moment my brain refuses to accept what it is seeing. My grip tightens around the knife until the handle presses hard into my palm.
He turns his head toward us slowly, like we interrupted him.
“I got this,” Brooke says quietly beside me.
Before I can respond, she moves.
She rushes him.
The man snarls and pushes himself off the corpse while yanking his pants upward with one hand. His other hand reaches for the knife lying beside the girl’s shoulder.
Brooke is already moving.
Her blade flashes into view as she pulls it free while charging toward him.
They collide near the center of the room.
The man swings the knife toward her head in a wide, desperate arc.
Brooke drops beneath the swing and drives her shoulder into his chest hard enough to send him sliding backward across the tile. His shoes skid through the blood on the floor as he struggles to stay upright.
His hand shoots out and grabs a fistful of Brooke’s hair before yanking her forward with enough force to pull her off balance. His other hand comes across her mouth with a violent slap that cracks through the room.
Her head snaps back from the impact.
The second his hand connects with her face, I move.
I close the distance in two strides and drive my shoulder into his back, slamming into him hard enough to break his balance. My hand grabs the collar of his shirt and jerks him away from Brooke before he can swing again.
Blood appears along Brooke’s lip as she steadies herself. Her arm drives forward.
The blade punches into his chest. The knife sinks deep between his ribs while he screams behind the wolf mask.
I step fully behind him and grab his shoulder to hold him upright.
My knife comes across his throat in one clean motion.
