Gigi was dead. And the pounding on the suite door started up again.
He wiped his mouth with the back of his wrist and came up slow, knees sending complaints up the chain. The saber felt heavier; his hands had turned it slick. Blood crawled toward the drain like it had thoughts. The bathroom light hummed. He could taste acid bright as a whistle.
The pounding hit the door twice more—full-body strikes, not polite knocks. The deadbolt vibrated in the plate.
"Gavin!" a voice ragged as gravel shouted. "Gav, open! They're behind me!"
Madison. He knew the size in the sound. Six-eight, three-ten, centered his mass like a tree that did squats. Four years in the same offense; the man could pull and erase a linebacker like deleting a sentence.
Gavin swallowed and found his voice. "Say the left guard call from Philly last year."
Breath on the other side, quick and short. "Rattlesnake—Rattle—damn it—Rattlesnake 23!"
"What's my check if the Mike walks up?"
"Sugar. You go Sugar."
"Where'd I take you for your birthday?" He didn't have time to care how it sounded like a couple's fight. Verification mattered. Curiosity killed people in horror movies. Sloppiness killed them in real life.
Madison hit the door with his shoulder again. "Bourbon and crab legs at that place with the guy who calls you coach."
"Okay." He moved to the door. "You bleeding?"
"Not—" A swear. "Knuckles. Not a bite. Not a bite."
"Show me." He hated himself for it and meant it. "Press your forearm to the gap, palm up. Slow."
Silence, then the whisper of skin on wood. A thick forearm slid into the light at the bottom edge, hair flattened with sweat, skin marbled red by pressure. Gavin crouched, blade low, and scanned from wrist to elbow. Scrapes. A long shallow rasp that looked like he'd kissed drywall at speed. No crescent bite. No missing piece.
He let himself breathe. "Okay. On my count. When I crack it, you wedge and pivot. I'm behind the door. We're not inviting anybody."
On the floor, safety glass from the shower winked like a spilled jar of salt. His vomit made the tile treacherous. He toed a bathmat over the worst of it. The saber point tapped the marble once and that felt like a signal. He shifted his feet to where he'd be strong—inside foot back, outside forward, hips loose. Read the field, even if the field was thirty square feet and tiled.
Madison's voice lowered. "Two of 'em out here. Maybe three. They don't talk, man. They… they push."
"Eyes on me," Gavin said, and realized he was saying it to himself. "On three."
He thumbed the deadbolt. Metal complained. The door inhaled into the frame as tension changed. The world on the other side pressed back like weather.
"One."
He placed his shoulder where it would stop a hit without breaking his collarbone. He didn't have a helmet. He had decisions.
"Two."
He lifted the latch. The line between choices narrowed to a slit as thin as a whistle's mouth.
"Three."
He pulled. The door came an inch, then three, then Madison's shoulder forced a wedge of space and then there was a sound like fabric tearing as one of the figures in the hall met wood at speed. Heat and stink rolled in with him—cologne gone sour, fear sweat, copper. Something's fingers—too many knuckles, slick—found the edge and reached, seeking meat.
Gavin slid behind the door like a practice drill, caught the reaching hand with the saber flat, and rapped the knuckles. Dull blade or not, steel is steel. The hand recoiled. Madison pivoted his hips and came through with both feet, using mass like a weapon. Wood slammed bone outside. Gavin yanked the door closed, jammed the bolt, and leaned his weight into the slab until the whole frame shook twice, then went still except for the deeper, animal thud of bodies testing a barrier.
They held their breath together. The pounding resumed, frantic at first, then rhythmic, then frustrated. Finally it skittered away, attention deficit for violence.
Madison slid down the wall until he found floor. He breathed like a locomotive changing grades. His knuckles were flayed to shiny pink. One thumbnail had torn halfway. The look he gave Gavin started to be a grin, then understood the bathroom tableau and aborted.
On the tile, Gigi lay half in shadow, hair threaded with glass, face turned toward the door as if she'd been stealing a look. There was no poster left in her. Just the quiet after an engine spins itself to smoke.
"Jesus," Madison said softly.
"Don't," Gavin said. He didn't mean don't swear. He meant don't name this; we can't hold the name. "You bit?"
Madison shook his head. "Not even touched. I ran. I know you hate that. I ran, man."
"I love that," Gavin said, and meant it more than any end-zone speech he'd ever given. "Show me again."
Madison turned his forearms, then calves, lifting the cuff of his shorts. Scrapes, yes. The kind you got from corners and panic. Nothing had that particular smooth chunk taken out. Nothing that looked like teeth had voted.
"What happened," Gavin said. It wasn't a question so much as a request to reality to explain itself.
Madison rubbed his mouth with the back of his wrist and left a line of sweat. "Downstairs turned. Security didn't turn first. They tried. You know Tommy? Tommy got his hand bit through his glove and kept swinging. Couple of guests—man—couple of guests went under tables like dogs and wouldn't get out when your man with the mic told them to. People threw bottles. One of the girls had blood on her face and she was… laughing."
"The cops?" Gavin said, though he hadn't seen lights make order tonight, only color.
"Outside. Sirens. Somebody fired. Not us. Then everybody wanted to be near the people with guns so they ran toward it." Madison's voice frayed. "You been upstairs the whole time?"
He didn't answer that directly. The answer was the bathroom and the saber and a decision he didn't want stuck to him. He said, "We have to move."
Madison nodded too fast. "Yeah. Yeah. Where?"
"Not here." He looked at the suite like a diagram: one door, one big window that didn't open, one bathroom that was now an open wound. "Upstairs is a cul-de-sac. If the hall fills, we die when the door fails."
Madison followed his look, taking the measure. He had the kind of intelligence that didn't need vocabulary. "Stairs. Back stairs."
"Service corridor." Every house like this had one, and he'd noticed it because rich houses bragged through their utility. Since when do you do home architecture, he thought, but his brain answered: Since you lived in film sets.
He stepped into the bathroom and grabbed two towels off the warmer. One he tossed to Madison. The other he threw over the most obvious glass teeth along the path. He forced himself to look at her. He managed not to apologize. Apology wouldn't get anybody out. He did take the diamond off her finger—he didn't care about the diamond; he cared about the implications of leaving it—then he stopped, sick at himself, and put it back exactly where it had been because he was not going to be that person tonight.
"Gav," Madison said, low. "You okay?"
"No." He kept moving. "But I can still count."
"Count what?"
"Routes." He tested the saber's balance. Decorative or not, swing it like you mean it and it was a pry bar with ambitions. He checked the deadbolt again and listened at the seam. Nothing close. Just the house sounding like a mall after hours—a huge air system breathing, pipes tick-ticking, far-off shouting like movie audio through a wall.
Madison held his hand up. It trembled like a leaf in a fan. He stared at it, annoyed. "I can block," he said, as if he needed to declare it. "I can push them where you want them."
"That's the whole game," Gavin said. "We do it our way, we live."
He almost said if they're sick and didn't. Saying zombie felt like giving it rules.
They did fast inventory with eyes: lamp—too soft; low sofa—good as a moving barricade; glass coffee table—no; fireplace tools—yes, poker beats pretty sword. Gavin handed Madison the poker. Madison tested the weight and nodded once with a look that said he'd make that work.
The door moaned as somebody tested it from far too close. A breath, a palm. The soft rasp of skin. Madison froze, eyes widening, and pointed at the seam. The gentle, petting sound went away and was replaced by a childlike pat that made everything in Gavin want to run.
"On me," he whispered. "When we open, you go first and take left. I take inside right. Move to the corner. Your job is to keep the lane clear. Break knees if you have to."
Madison's mouth worked. "I'm not trying to—"
"I didn't say head. Knees." He swallowed. The coaching voice came out of him like it had been waiting for permission. "Low. Fast. No wrestling."
Madison nodded, grateful for orders. Orders made a room feel like it had walls again.
Gavin pressed his ear to the door. The hall on the other side had shapes—a shuffle, a heel scuff, the tiny ceramic clink of somebody stepping on a broken thing that used to be for wine. To the right, farther away, a door slammed and someone said don't, don't, don't under their breath until the words ran out and became sound.
He lifted the latch. He didn't turn it yet. He said, "On three."
Madison rolled his shoulders and set his feet like a man about to pull a sled. He wouldn't look at the body in the bathroom. He looked at Gavin. "Three," he said, getting ahead because he hated counts.
"Don't freel—" Gavin stopped himself and smiled for the first time since the speakers had bragged. "Okay. We're freelancing. But together. One—"
The house flinched. Somewhere below, a different break happened—deeper, structural, a noise a building made when a car introduced itself to a wall. Sirens dopplered, then chopped abruptly. Power hiccuped; the lights skimmed dim and then returned with loss in them.
"Two," he said, riding the moment so he wouldn't second-guess.
From the base of the door, a low moan rose—the kind humans made when they had forgotten language, where pain wore a person like clothing. It sounded close enough to step on.
Madison whispered, "Gavin."
"I hear it." His hand on the latch was dry now, like his body had burned through every spare fluid and left only decision. He pictured the stairwell where the air would be narrower and the echoes would equal numbers. He pictured the exit sign's little red rectangle and the way people always thought red meant stop when tonight it meant through here.
"Three."
He turned the latch.