I didn’t have time to process the confusion or fear; I just had to get out of the way before someone found me here again.
I crawled along the ground to the foot of the nearest tree and folded myself into its shadows. The grass was cold and wet as it seeped through my jeans, and I heard a snail crunch beneath my knee. My heart galloped in my chest; my pulse a high, thin staccato in my temples.
What the fuck is happening to me?
The sound of a key in a lock. Resting my palm on a misshapen gnarl, I risked a glance around the knotted trunk.
Mordue. She obviously performed a search of the tower every night at midnight.
She was the dean of the university. Didn’t she have better things to do? Didn’t she trust a security guard?
Then I remembered the aching sadness in her voice as she reprimanded me the night before. This was personal to her. I made a mental note to check whether she had a connection to any of the original victims. Someone she mentored, perhaps?
She slipped into the building and pulled the door closed behind her, locking it from the inside.
I waited for her silhouette to appear in one of the open windows of the Observatory, but the pain in my hands overtook me before that could happen. I looked down to survey the damage.
Even in the near-darkness, the blood running down my fingers was unmistakable.