For a single heartbeat, the world was quiet.
Elias was sobbing into my shoulder, his body shaking with the release of twenty years of isolation. I could smell the earth on him, the stale sweat, and the faint, lingering scent of the peppermint oil he used to mask the rot in his cellar. He wasn’t a monster. He wasn’t a killer. He was just the boy who had handed me a candy bar through a vent because he didn’t want me to be sad.
“I found you,” I whispered, smoothing his matted hair. “It’s okay. The game is over.”
Then, the world exploded.
It started with a sound like the sky tearing open—the screech of metal doors being forced by a battering ram.
CRASH.
The heavy steel doors at the far end of the mill flew open, banging against the corrugated walls with a violence that shook the dust from the rafters.
Then came the light.
Beams of blinding white tactical light cut through the shadows, slicing up the darkness of our sanctuary. They swept across the rusted machinery, the piles of sawdust, the silent “jurors” tied to their chairs.
“POLICE! GET ON THE GROUND! SHOW ME YOUR HANDS!”
The voice was amplified, booming, mechanical. It wasn’t a person; it was the voice of the Dragon.
Elias stiffened in my arms.
The transition was instantaneous and terrifying. The weeping child vanished. His muscles coiled, hard as iron, and he shoved me away with a force that sent me sprawling onto the dirty concrete floor.
“No,” he gasped, scrambling backward on his hands and heels. He shielded his eyes from the lights, his face contorted in a rictus of animal panic.
“Elias, wait!” I scrambled up, my hands raised. “It’s not what you think!”
He looked at me.
The look broke me. It wasn’t anger. It was a profound, shattering heartbreak. It was the look of a dog that has been kicked by the hand it licked.
“You brought them,” he whispered. His voice cut through the shouting of the police like a razor blade. “You told the Dragon where the castle was.”
“I didn’t!” I screamed, turning toward the doors.
Figures were pouring in. Black tactical gear. Helmets. Rifles raised. They moved like insects, swarming the perimeter.
“Don’t shoot!” I shrieked, waving my arms frantically. “He’s unarmed! He’s sick! Do not fire!”
“ELARA VANCE, MOVE AWAY FROM THE SUSPECT!”
I recognized the voice. Sheriff Miller. He was behind the wall of shields, safe, barking orders to kill the thing he hated.
“He’s not a suspect!” I yelled back. “He’s surrendered!”
I turned back to Elias. “Elias, listen to me. Stay down. Just stay down and we can fix this.”
But Elias wasn’t staying down.
He was looking at the floor.
At the gun.
The .38 revolver I had dropped. It lay on the concrete between us, a black piece of steel catching the strobing red and blue lights that were now filtering in through the high windows.
“No,” I breathed.
“The Princess lied,” Elias muttered. He was rocking back and forth, his eyes darting from the gun to the encroaching line of police. “The Princess is a trick. She’s not real. She’s a doll sent by the bad men.”
“I am real!” I took a step toward him. “I’m Elara. I’m your friend. Look at me!”
“FALSE!” he roared.
He lunged.
He moved with a speed that defied his size. He threw himself across the floor, his hand snatching up the revolver.
“DROP THE WEAPON!” a dozen voices screamed in unison.
The sound of safeties clicking off was a chorus of death.
“Elias, don’t!” I threw myself forward, trying to grab him, trying to tackle him, trying to do anything to stop the inevitable physics of the moment.
He scrambled to his feet, backing up until he hit the conveyor belt of the main saw. He looked wild, a cornered bear surrounded by hounds.
He raised the gun.
He didn’t point it at me. He didn’t point it at Julian, who was tied to the chair nearby, conscious now and struggling against his bonds, his eyes wide with horror.
Elias pointed the gun at the light.
He pointed it at the faceless wall of black armor advancing on his home.
“LEAVE HER ALONE!” Elias screamed. “GET OUT OF MY CASTLE!”
He wasn’t attacking them. He was defending. He was the Knight, standing at the gate, holding back the dragon fire with a snub-nosed revolver and a broken mind.
“Elias, put it down!” Julian shouted, his voice hoarse. “They will kill you! Put it down!”
Elias looked at his brother. For a second, just a fraction of a second, the madness cleared. He looked at Julian tied to the chair, surrounded by the dead bodies of the “jurors.”
“I tried to save you,” Elias said softly. “I tried to save everyone.”
“I know,” Julian choked out. “I know you did.”
“TARGET ACQUIRED,” a SWAT officer yelled. “HE’S WAVING THE WEAPON.”
“Wait!” I screamed, running into the no-man’s-land between the police and Elias. “I’m in the line of fire! Hold your fire!”
I stood with my back to the police, facing Elias. I spread my arms wide, making myself a human shield.
“Shoot through me,” I hissed at the darkness behind me. “Go ahead, Miller. Shoot the journalist.”
The advancing line hesitated. The red laser dots dancing on Elias’s chest flickered and moved to me.
“Elara, move,” Elias said.
His voice was calm now. The frantic energy had drained away, replaced by a terrible, heavy resolve.
“No,” I said, tears streaming down my face. “I’m not leaving you. Not again. We made a pact. E + E.”
He smiled. It was the smile from the crawlspace. The jagged, broken smile of a boy who had found a friend in the dark.
“You have to go, Princess,” he said. “You have to go to the high ground. The water is rising.”
He looked past me, at the wall of police.
“They won’t hurt you,” he said. “Not while the Knight is watching.”
He raised the gun higher. He cocked the hammer.
“Elias, please—”
“RUN!” he screamed.
And then he did the one thing I couldn’t stop.
He shoved me.
He reached out with his free hand and pushed me aside, throwing me out of the line of fire with a strength that sent me flying into the piles of sawdust.
I hit the ground hard, the breath knocked out of me.
“NO!”
Elias stood alone in the spotlight. He leveled the gun at the lead officer.
“BANG!” Elias shouted.
He didn’t pull the trigger. I saw his finger on the guard. He didn’t pull it. He just shouted the word.
But the police didn’t wait for the joke.
The air inside the mill disintegrated.
CRACK-CRACK-CRACK-CRACK.
The sound was deafening, a staccato rhythm of thunder that echoed off the steel roof. Muzzle flashes lit up the gloom like strobe lights in a disco from hell.
I watched, paralyzed, as Elias’s body jerked.
One hit. Two hits. Three.
Dust puffed from his coat. Blood misted in the bright tactical lights, turning the beams pink.
He didn’t fall immediately. He stood there, swaying, absorbing the violence of the town that had rejected him. He looked surprised. He looked down at his chest, at the red flowers blooming on his dirty shirt.
The revolver slipped from his fingers. It clattered to the floor, useless.
He looked at me.
He was on his knees now. I hadn’t seen him fall.
“Elara,” he mouthed. No sound came out.
And then he tipped backward.
Behind him was the open pit of the main saw—a deep, concrete trench filled with the rusted gears and stagnant water of the mill’s underbelly.
He fell into the dark.
There was no splash. Just a heavy, wet thud as he hit the machinery below.
“CEASE FIRE!” someone screamed. “SUSPECT DOWN!”
The shooting stopped. The silence that followed was ringing, sharp and painful.
I lay in the sawdust, staring at the empty space where he had been standing. The air smelled of cordite and blood.
“Elias!”
I scrambled up. I ran toward the pit.
“Secure the girl!” Miller shouted.
Heavy hands grabbed me. Rough, gloved hands dragging me back.
“Let me go!” I fought them. I kicked and scratched, screaming like a banshee. “He fell! He needs help! Let me go!”
“He’s gone, ma’am,” a faceless officer said, pinning my arms behind my back. “Stop fighting.”
“He’s not gone!” I shrieked. “He survived the river! He survives everything!”
I looked toward the pit.
Julian was there. He had tipped his chair over and was crawling, still bound, toward the edge. He peered over the lip of the trench.
He froze.
He stopped struggling. He just stared down into the dark, his face going slack.
“Julian?” I whispered.
He looked up at me. His eyes were dead.
“Elara,” he said, his voice cracking. “Don’t look.”
I went limp in the officer’s grip. The fight drained out of me, leaving nothing but a cold, hollow void.
The Sandman was dead.
The game was over.
And the silence of Oakhaven rushed in to fill the space he left behind.