The Lair by Emily McKay Page A

a goddamn serial killer and I just freaking hated it.
    It helped, somehow, knowing Merc hated it, too. We both threw up more than once, but we worked quickly and were finished loading the bodies into the back of the truck within an hour.
    Afterward we cleaned up the best we could. Out by the tree line, the dirt was sandy and there were a few dry patches. We used that to scrub off most of the blood so that we wouldn’t waste precious soap. We had both worked barefoot—shoes were too difficult to clean and too hard to come by if they were ruined by blood splatter—and despite the cool weather, we both stripped off our shirts and scrubbed them in the dirt, too. Sand absorbs a lot of blood.
    A little bit off in the woods, we had set up a primitive bathroom. Water, which we pumped up from Bear Lake, was stored in a tank. There were tubs for washing up and a gravity-fed shower. There was very little privacy, which didn’t matter much because it was too miserably cold for anyone to linger out there. Usually, people signed up for time in the bathroom weeks in advance. Today it was predictably empty. I washed out all my clothes myself and Merc did the same. I put my jeans back on wet.
    The last thing we did before going in was shovel buckets of sand across the stains in the parking lot. It helped. A little. The stains would fade slowly, from the concrete and from people’s minds, but covering up the blood made it possible to pretend today hadn’t happened.
    I couldn’t look anyone in the eyes as we walked back into the caves. I thought about what Lily had said about the Roman generals who led the charge into battle, who were the first to kill and, if need be, the first to die.
    After today, that didn’t seem like bravery or even stupidity. Charging into battle seemed smart, because the general who died in battle never had to bury his own men.
    Because this was the stuff you never got over. This was the stuff that haunted you until the day you died. The stuff you never thought you could do but did anyway, because if you didn’t do it, who would?
    But through it all, through the horror and anguish, through the bitter cold and aching muscles, I felt this awful relief, because at least Lily hadn’t been there. Because as hard as this was, there was nothing on earth, no fear great enough, no horror bad enough, no promise binding enough that would have given me the strength to do this to her.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN
    Lily
    Carter might have called after her, but she didn’t stop. If she had, she would have lost it. She couldn’t have stopped to look at a single body. She just couldn’t. Because none of them would have been just bodies. All of them would have been Mel.
    She would have been back in that church parking lot where her sister had had her heart ripped out of her body while Lily stood by, unable to do a damn thing.
    If she had stopped for even a moment, she never would have recovered. And the last thing Carter needed was for her to go completely catatonic on him. Especially when she’d just spent the last several hours trying to convince him that she could handle herself and whatever was outside base camp.
    So she bolted for the cavern, each step making her more nauseated. Her head spun and so did her stomach. Whatever drugs Dawn had given her had messed with her system, but still she ran.
    She thought she’d be okay once she made it inside, but there was more blood there. Not on the ground like outside, but on the people. Those thirteen were not the only victims. The Ticks had caused a lot of damage before they’d been brought down.
    That’s when the panic set in. When it hit her that those bodies out there weren’t Mel, but real people. People she knew. People like Shelby. People like McKenna.
    Oh, God. McKenna.
    Heart beating wildly, she scanned the crowd for McKenna’s distinctive, swollen belly. She didn’t see McKenna among the victims in the triage area, but she hadn’t looked at any of the bodies outside. She