“Mandy,” said Rusk. “I’m sorry if this hurts.”

He rushed the monster, sending a strong straight punch in its face’s direction. The monster ducked, caught Rusk’s wrist, clamping down hard and twisting, and a shot of pain ran up Rusk’s arm. He winced but leaned in instead of pulling away so that when the monster tried to flip him, they both ended up on the ground. Rusk yanked free his arm. He’d landed underneath the monster, but he was used to this position. He wrapped his legs around the monster’s middle and squeezed, pinning its torso between his legs as he dealt with the flurry of slaps that were headed toward his face.

The monster was brutal and relentless, but it wasn’t a fighter. It never blocked. It only attacked, harder and harder, until either it or Mandy was out of breath and Rusk’s forearms were covered in black, blue, and red.

But if nothing else, Rusk could take a hit like a hero.

The moment he had a free lapse in the tension he sent a hook toward the monster’s left temple. The twist of his hips made sure it connected. He hit hard enough to knock Mandra out, but the monster kept her body moving, barely even stunned. It tightened Mandy’s fists and swung over and over and over again, forcing Rusk back on the defensive, but Rusk never let the monster out of his leg guard, taking each hit and the flashes of pain they produced with a practiced but jostling posture of patience. He flowed with each strike, glancing them by turning a cheek, an elbow, a spin of the wrist. But he couldn’t outlast the monster forever and he knew it. He’d have to counter eventually, and harder than before. An unprompted image in Rusk’s mind of Iya Tarfell’s sword slashing through Mandy’s neck, removing her head from her body, made him feel suddenly queasy.

He couldn’t do that to Mandy. He couldn’t.

The chain full of keys slipped out of her collar to dangle over Rusk, and in a split-second decision he grabbed hold, yanking as hard as he could, strengthening his fist with the solidity the key’s provided. The monster made Mandy yelp, and it sounded too much like her, too startled to be fake.

“I’m sorry,” said Rusk, breathless to his own ears. He yanked harder, switching the position of his hips, straining with the weight of her and the torque of the keys on the chain.

The monster pulled back, arching Mandy’s spine until the chain cut into her neck and drew blood from either side. The cuts deepened with the chain pulled taut, terrifyingly close to her arteries, and in a millisecond of panic Rusk let go of the keys.

The monster jerked backward with the release of the hold, finally off balance enough for Rusk to reverse their positions, landing on top of Mandy instead of under her. He sank in his hips to keep the monster from escaping, cringing at how much bigger he was than Mandy even with the monster inside, how much weight he had to press into her, and apologized in his head the entire time he held her sprawled in the pin beneath his larger frame.

When did she get so slight?

He realized he’d never been this close to her before, not even when she’d acted as his crutch the first time he faced off with the bullies. Rusk knew he’d grown because he had a spurt last year, but maybe this was how tiny Mandy always was. The thought rattled him. He didn’t want to crush her.

The monster writhed and screamed, tossing every which way, staining the collar of Mandy’s tunic dress with more of her blood as it smeared off her neck onto the fabric, turning it a deeper crimson.

“Stop.” Rusk’s voice caught in his throat but he forced the words out. “You’ll hurt yourself if you move the wrong way. Please Mandy, stop.”

Mandy didn’t stop. She thrashed harder. Or the monster inside her did, but Rusk couldn’t find it in himself to separate them anymore. He had to find a nonviolent way to end this.

“Your keys,” said Rusk, grasping at the only clue the monster had given him. In a flash he remembered it wasn’t that she collected the keys, it’s that she was looking for a specific one. She’d told him that herself. “Which one are you looking for? Which key would end the search?”

She stopped thrashing. When she stared up at him, it was her eyes, those pretty brown irises, and they were full of unshed tears. The ghoulish features sank away in that moment, stretching time into oblivion as a million unsaid concepts passed between them, so many promises between each drop of rain. She didn’t speak. Maybe she couldn’t. Maybe it wasn’t the monster that prevented her from it. She sniffed, once, lightning flashed, and the moment was over.

The ghoulish face returned. The monster was back to bare its teeth, now pointed instead of pearly and straight in their rows inside Mandy’s mouth, and with an enraged holler the monster lifted Rusk right off of itself and threw him to the side.

He rolled through water and blood and mud, becoming caked with slimy leaves and debris. A shattered bone protruding out of the mass grave caught his arm when he scurried back up to his feet, adding another gash across his right arm, but Rusk’s attention was entirely focused on Mandy.

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The monster was making her rise, taking its time first kneeling then testing its weight then slowly shifting to curl up to full height.

“Why do you care so much about her keys?”

“Because she cares about them and I care about her.”

The monster cackled. Halfway through the laugh, the sound abruptly ceased. The monster choked out a gurgling noise and coughed, hacking so hard Rusk worried Mandy might have damaged her lungs.

He might have damaged her lungs.

He felt his jaw go slack. He felt the rain descend in rivulets down his back. Cold and unrelenting and rivers of it that made him shiver uncontrollably.

“My hero,” said Mandy. Her voice was tiny, the words barely there, but Rusk heard them carry on a gust of wind even with the torrential rain beating down. “You’re the only one who ever did. Even my father walked away.”

“I’m gonna get you out of this,” said Rusk in his best hero voice. It was hollow, shallow, full of fear. But he meant it. “But you have to help me get rid of the monster. I’m not your hero yet. I can only help you save yourself.”

Mandy stood there twitching, her face deforming and reforming in sporadic mirages.

“You have to fight it if it’s already inside. I can’t hurt you anymore. I can’t.” Rusk dropped his arms in defeat, staring at Mandy through sheets of frigid rain. It poured through the canopy with fresh thunder and lightning, drenching, drenching. Crying. Relentless and painful from within and without.

“Okay,” said Mandy shakily. She reached to her chest and took hold of her keys. “The last key. I found it already. It opens a box. A box my father left. But when I opened it, when I opened it…”

Rusk took a step closer.

He’d never seen Mandy cry before. Never. Not once.

She melted into sobs.

And he ran for her. If the monster was taking her, it’d have to take him too. Forget heroics, no human could ignore the fit of despair that rolled off of Mandy, the waves of sorrow that dwarfed the storm. She crumpled into his arms and wept. He held her, watching as her face flitted between monstrous and the saddest version of herself he’d ever seen, and it was the most helpless he’d ever felt in his life. Not even the time a monster came for him compared.

“Shh, Mandy. It’s okay. You’re okay. You can fight it. I’m here. I’m here.”

“You’re the only one. You’re the only—” She went slack in his arms. Her arm dropped to her lap and the keys fell with the motion. The chain was slick with rain water and Mandy’s blood dripped to reach the keys, but none of them stained, and soon the red was washed away. “The box was empty.”

All the air left Rusk’s chest in a rush of anger at the audacity of Mandy’s father.

“He left, and he told me to get the key for the box thinking I’d never find it, and then when I opened it, the box was empty.” A strained noise erupted from her. It was a whine and a choke and it was anguish. “Now I’m empty too.”

“You’re not empty! You’re not. God, you’re not.” Rusk hugged her in earnest. “The only person who’s empty is your father. Not you. You’re not this monster. You never deserved any of this.”

Mandy sniffed. Her pale, frail hands curled over Rusk’s scars. “You never told me how you got them.”

“A monster. But I survived.”

“You survived.”

“I survived.”

Mandy inhaled. It was sharp and purposeful and it seemed she took in all the life of the forest in that singular respiration, all the dark and the light, the flies and the leaves and the rain. Then she straightened out a bit inside Rusk’s arms, and he hesitantly, only slightly, released his grip on her. She turned her face up toward his and in her eyes there was a hardness, a determination. Her old self, or part of it. The monster wasn’t gone, but it was buried. For the moment.

“My father is awful,” said Mandy. “And I hate him. But girls aren’t allowed to hate their fathers, are they?”

“They can when their father’s a jerk.”

She didn’t laugh, but she did give Rusk the satisfaction of a faint, tired smile.

“I’m not gonna run off like him,” said Rusk.

“But isn’t that your dream?” The monster’s eyes returned, there but also not, behind Mandy’s true expression. Or maybe under it. To darken. To taint. To prod until she’d break. But her voice was still her own. “To run off and be a hero?”

“Heroes don’t run away from problems. They solve them.”

“Mine you can’t solve. They’re too deep. There’s no monster. There’s only me. Even the person who caused my problems is gone. I don’t even know where he is anymore.”

“That’s the monster talking. You have to force it out.”

“What if I can’t?”

Rusk tightened his hold on her. “You can. Be my hero. Show me how it’s done. You’ve always been better at things than me. Come back and stay. I don’t want the monster. I want you.”

Mandy shoved the monster deeper inside herself and came back, at least on the surface.

“Will you stay?” asked Rusk tentatively.

“Rusk. You’re clinging. Can’t breathe.”

Rusk released her entirely, feeling the blush climb up his neck all the way to his ears. But when he saw her falling backward he stretched out an arm to catch her. She was light. His eyebrows pushed together in concern. It seemed like the monster was gone, but Rusk didn’t know for sure. All he had to go on was Mandy’s appearance, her voice, her actions. Monsters could lie. Could they lie this well? He could feel his heart thumping all the way in his bones.

“I’m so tired,” said Mandy, her eyes half-lidded and slow between blinks.

The clouds were passing on, but there was no sun. It was the middle of the night and Mandy didn’t have a place to go where someone could watch over her. There was no way Rusk was leaving her alone. A hero wouldn’t do that, not when she was like this, and more importantly, neither would a friend.

“I’ll carry you,” said Rusk, and then immediately added on in case the monster was listening. “If you promise not to strangle me.”

“I won’t.” Mandy took a shaky breath and clarified. “I won’t let it.”

So Rusk walked home with her slung across his back, anxious the entire way, and weary from the rain and the fight with the monster. After she’d fallen asleep he cried himself, shaking with the emotion of having almost lost her, not knowing if she was better for good or if this was another of the monster’s tricks.

There was a moment where he nearly dropped her and had to catch himself before she slid into the mud. His muscles shook with fatigue by the time he got to his cottage doorstep, and the apprehension of telling his parents descended in full force.

But a hero took responsibility, so he knocked on his own door in an echo of receding thunder.