Slow.
Across the floor inside.
Isaac and Marlon looked at each other.
Nobody had to say it.
Somebody was in the house.
Marlon's hand came up, two fingers, wait.
Isaac ignored that immediately.
He edged forward until the back door opened against his shoulder and he could see into the kitchen.
Dark counters. Yellowed cabinets. Sink under the window. Old linoleum with the same fake tile pattern he remembered hating as a kid because it always looked dirty even when it wasn't.
The house smelled wrong.
Not just old dust and shut-in air. There was bleach under it. And under that, thin and metallic, something sweeter and worse.
His stomach tightened.
Another drag.
Longer now. Wood against something heavy.
Upstairs.
Marlon leaned in close, voice barely there. "Isaac."
There was a dark mark on the floor just inside the kitchen.
Not big. Just one smear near the doorway, like something wet had brushed a shoe and kept going.
Isaac stared at it for half a second too long.
Then he stepped inside.
The floor felt softer than he remembered, like the whole house had rotted inward while nobody was looking. The refrigerator hummed from somewhere ahead. A clock ticked in another room, slow and cheap and much too normal.
Marlon came in behind him and eased the door wider without letting it bang.
"Call Ty," Marlon whispered.
"No."
"Isaac."
"No noise."
He was already moving through the kitchen.
Every step hit memory first and reality second.
Table used to go there.
Mother used to keep coupons in that drawer.
He split his chin on that counter edge when he was seven and lied about crying.
None of it helped.
The drag came again.
Closer to the front of the house. Upstairs hallway, maybe.
Isaac crossed into the narrow hall. The living room opened off to the left, dark except for the weak spill from a streetlight through bent blinds. The staircase rose on the right.
At the bottom step, he stopped.
There were marks on the wood.
Fresh.
Not a puddle. Not even a proper trail. Just broken streaks, like something had been wiped and then stepped through and wiped again. Enough for his brain to recognize before it wanted to.
Blood.
Marlon saw it too.
His voice got even lower. "We go out. We call somebody."
Isaac shook his head once.
Marlon grabbed his arm.
Hard.
"Think."
Isaac looked at him.
Then up the stairs.
Another drag.
A woman's shoe came into view for a second at the top landing.
Just the heel. The side of it.
Then it vanished again around the upstairs corner.
Isaac's whole body locked.
His mother owned those shoes.
Not maybe.
Not close.
Owned.
He tore free of Marlon's hand and went up.
"Isaac—"
He took the stairs too fast and too quiet at the same time, every muscle drawn so tight it hurt. His sore shoulder flared white-hot when he clipped the railing and he barely felt it.
Halfway up, the smell got stronger.
Bleach. Copper. Heat trapped in old carpet.
At the top, the hallway was lit by one lamp shoved on the floor near the wall, its shade crooked. Yellow light bled low across the baseboards and left the upper half of everything in shadow.
He saw her before his brain let him.
His mother was on the floor at the far end of the hall, being dragged backward by the wrists.
Her hair had come loose and half covered her face. Her blouse was dark from the chest down, soaked through in patches that looked black in the dim light. One leg bent wrong under her. Her head bumped once over the wood strip between rooms and rolled with the motion.
No resistance.
No sound.
No help me.
Nothing.
The man dragging her looked up.
Same beard.
Same ordinary face.
For one impossible second his expression didn't change at all, like Isaac showing up here was only mildly inconvenient.
Then he let go of her wrists and came.
Fast.
The knife flashed once in the yellow light.
Isaac jerked back so hard his heel slipped on the top stair.
"Marlon!"
The man was already on him.
Marlon hit Isaac from the side before the blade did, driving both of them down one step as the knife carved air where Isaac's throat had been.
The attacker came again immediately. No yelling. No threats. Just work.
Marlon got one forearm up in time.
The knife bit deep.
Marlon made a raw sound through his teeth and slammed his shoulder into the man's chest anyway.
All three of them crashed into the narrow stairwell at once.
Isaac hit the wall hard enough to rattle the framed nothing that still hung there from when the house was occupied. His bad shoulder lit up so bright his vision went white at the edges.
The knife came back.
He caught the man's wrist with both hands on instinct.
Hot skin. Tendons. Strength he didn't expect.
The blade hovered six inches from his face, shaking.
The man smelled like detergent and sweat and something chemical, like he'd washed up before coming here.
"Get off him!" Marlon shouted.
He slammed into the attacker again from the side, blood running down his forearm and dripping off his hand onto the stairs.
The knife skidded, nicked Isaac across the cheek, and buried itself into the banister instead with a hard wooden thunk.
Ty's voice exploded from downstairs.
"What happened?"
Then, louder, instantly stripped of all humor:
"MARLON?"
The attacker ripped the knife free.
Isaac kicked.
Not clean. Not trained. Just hard and ugly, heel driving into the man's knee.
The man stumbled one step and that was enough.
Marlon grabbed Isaac by the back of the shirt and hauled him down two stairs at once.
"Move!"
They nearly fell over each other getting down the tight staircase.
The attacker came after them anyway, quick feet, knife low now.
Ty appeared in the hall below with a piece of broken fence picket in both hands like he'd pulled it from God knew where.
Jadah was behind him, face white and furious.
"Back!" Marlon shouted.
Ty didn't back.
The man hit the last three stairs in a rush and slashed for whoever was nearest.
Ty swung on instinct.
The wood cracked across the attacker's shoulder with a hollow smack that would've been funny anywhere else on earth.
The man grunted, stumbled sideways, then drove his elbow into Ty's jaw hard enough to spin him into the wall.
Jadah screamed his name.
Isaac was on the man before he'd even decided to move.
He caught him around the middle and rammed him into the narrow table by the living room entrance. The table flipped. A lamp smashed. The house went half dark.
They hit the floor together.
The knife hand was under them somewhere.
Bad.
Really bad.
The man twisted with brutal efficiency, not panicked, not sloppy. He got a knee into Isaac's stomach and all the air left in one awful burst. Isaac barely kept hold of the wrist with the knife.
"Isaac!" Jadah yelled.
The man's face was right there now. Calm gone. Still not wild, though. Just annoyed. Focused.
Up close, there was a shallow scar through one eyebrow Isaac hadn't noticed before.
The man drove his forehead into Isaac's nose.
Pain burst hot and immediate. Isaac's grip broke for half a second.
That was enough for the knife to come free.
Marlon kicked the man in the ribs.
Once.
Then again.
The second one landed with his full weight behind it.
The attacker rolled, knife flashing up blindly. Marlon jumped back, not fast enough. The blade opened his thigh through the jeans and he hit the wall with a strangled curse.
Ty came off the wall spitting blood and tackled low.
This time the man went down hard.
All four of them crashed into the base of the stairs in a heap of limbs, curses, breath, and old wood shuddering under impact.
The knife skidded away across the hall.
Jadah saw it first.
She dove.
Not away from it.
To it.
"Jadah, don't—"
Too late.
Her fingers closed around the handle just as the man rolled free of Ty and started up.
He saw the knife in her hand and changed direction so fast it was disgusting.
He lunged.
Jadah stumbled back, eyes huge, knife held wrong, too high, too far from her body.
Isaac launched himself between them.
The man hit him like a door kicked off the frame.
His back slammed the stairs. Pain shot through his shoulder and down his arm so violently his fingers went numb for a second. The knife flew from Jadah's hand and clattered somewhere under the overturned table.
The attacker's forearm drove across Isaac's throat.
Not enough to crush.
Enough to pin.
Isaac clawed at it, vision tightening.
Above them, from the second floor, something slid heavily across the floorboards and stopped.
Everybody heard it.
Everybody.
The man did too.
His eyes flicked up.
Just once.
But that once changed his face.
Not fear.
Urgency.
He looked back down at Isaac like the whole room had just moved to a worse stage of the plan.
Then, from outside the front of the house, tires screamed.
A car door slammed.
And a voice Isaac had never heard before shouted from the porch—
"Move now."