October 11, night. Moira's basement.

Moira's basement was dark and smelled of laundry detergent and mildew. A lightbulb swung overhead and cast its pendulous shadow over the muddled silhouettes of all the refuse the old woman had collected throughout her life. Wrapped away from the light were all the useless broken pieces that their owner could neither discard nor bear to display, and amidst all of it Carrie searched for the pipe that was feeding bane goo into Moira's kitchen sink.

She could see a likely cluster of thick pipes behind one of the sagging plywood shelves that cramped the basement, but no matter how she stretched, she couldn't reach the knob that promised to close its valve. "Ben," she called, but he didn't answer. "Ben!"

He had been sitting on the stairs up to the hall, cradling his massive lupine head between his leather-padded paws. "What?" He sounded better now, more coherent, and Carrie felt some relief. Paul had slammed Ben between his pointed ears with a cast-iron wok no more than ten minutes ago, and Carrie had thought she'd seen blood matting Ben's fur when she'd planted him on the steps. She heard the wood creak as he stood. Then he said, "Need help finding the spout?"

She gave it another stretch, but the pipe valve was at least six inches out of her reach. She tried again, pushing a clatter of bric-a-brac out of place on its shelf. "Yeah. If this is it, I might need you to twist it closed."

She heard him coming up behind her, his steps still slow and staggered. Then she felt his hot breath on the back of her head as he leaned in over her. He wedged his way into the gap and made the shelf scrape aside. Then he reached out to brace himself against the pipes, and she felt part of his staggering weight on her hip, then her thigh, as he pawed around as if trying to find something on the floor. "Oh, excuse me," he said. "That's not a pipe, is it?"

She scowled in irritation. "No, it's not." She tried to use the extra space he'd created between the shelf and the wall to reach the valve, but the effort tore at the back of her hand. She pulled it back to suck on the wound. "Can you reach this thing in the corner here?"

He let out a noise that sounded less like a grunt of effort than a dark and satisfied sigh, and she felt him pawing around between the legs of her jeans. "This thing? Sure. I'll even give it a nice twist for you." He pinched her groin, and she banged her shoulder against the plywood as she wheeled on him. It hurt dimly, but the sudden, humiliated burn in her face and neck eclipsed the pain.

"What the hell is wrong with you? Stop it." She could feel the weight of her pistol in her sweaty left palm, but she kept its muzzle pointed at the ceiling.

Ben clamped his hands around her wrists and squeezed until pain shot through her gun hand. The pistol clattered to the floor. "Nothing's wrong with me," he said, forcing his muzzle up against the side of her face. His indrawn breaths sounded like snarls, and Carrie heard herself whine as she tried to pull away. He said, "It's your fault we haven't fulfilled the litany, not mine."

She felt her heart bang against her sternum, and a sudden surge of fear made her kick at his legs and feet as fiercely as she could. He took advantage of her instability and pushed her down to the floor, using his weight to pin her against the concrete. She banged the back of her head in the fall, and the sharp agony of it wrenched tears from her eyes. She felt him trying to pull the hem of her blouse from her jeans with his muzzle, and that was when she started screaming. "Ben, what the *fuck* are you doing? Let me go. Stop it!" She tried to pull up her knee, to get him in the throat, to free her fists, or to bite him through his fur. He was so heavy and so huge. She had never thought of Ben as huge, even in Crinos, but now she knew that he was big enough to do whatever he wanted with her. She felt weak and small, and her screams sounded pathetic.

"What, I have to explain the birds and bees to you, too?" he said as calmly as if scolding her for having left her textbooks in the dorm. It had been settled between them, who was in command. "Shut up. No, actually, don't shut up. I think I like it better when you scream." He settled his weight more evenly on her, and she felt the breath wheeze out of her lungs, cutting off her voice. He had her arms pinned against her sides, and he was butting his muzzle against her mouth as if trying to smother her further. She could feel the heat of his wretched lust against her thigh, and panic gave her a surge of reckless strength. She wrenched her arm free from his grip and reached for her gun.

It lay just beyond her grasp. Her fingers flicked its butt, and it began spinning in place. A ragged noise exploded from her, half scream and half sob. "Ben. No!"

"Yeah, that's perfect. Keep doing that," he said. He slavered at her throat, and she could feel the points of his teeth putting dents in her neck. "You do a good job of sounding scared." He darted up and licked the corners of her eyes.

Carrie couldn't feel anything. Ben's tongue, his weight, the dim burning of her arm and the fading throb on the back of her head all felt insubstantial in comparison to the urgent need to get away. Her hand was free. She couldn't reach her gun. She slapped the concrete with her palm and then banged her elbow against the unfinished plywood edge of the storage shelf. Her hand wrapped around to the litter of wealth there and curled around something cold and smooth and heavy.

She had slammed Ben in the head with it before she realized that Moia had tucked it away for a reason. He clutched his head and yelped, and she caught sight of something that gleamed silver even under the orangey glow of the hanging bulb, a cake server from someone's wedding set. She thought she saw an inscription on the handle: Love.

She grunted, and the cake server nearly left her grip as Ben threw his weight onto her again and snarled at her throat. His eyes had gone narrow and bestial, and she turned her head aside and raised the cake server like a knife.

It caught the light from the hanging bulb and shone like a wedge of moon. Then she stabbed down with it and felt a satisfying resistance as she wrenched the blade of the server toward her.

She had caught the gun with the spade-like scoop of the server, and it slid into reach. Fumbling, she managed to jam her fingers into the right places and shoved its muzzle hard enough against the side of Ben's head to leave a mark. She fired, fired again, kept firing until muzzle flash and gunpowder had obliterated the first gentle imprint of the pistol against Ben's temple.

He recoiled from the gun. The first blast tore the skin on his skull as it injected hot gases under his scalp and the wound burst. He curled on his side and howled with pain, then like a bottom-heavy toy rebounded to lunge for the gun. A second bullet caught him in the chest. He missed his mark and tumbled in a blood-soaked knot near the stairs. After four more shots he was out cold, and the blood was running out of him like water to pool on the dark and slippery floor of the basement.

Carrie fired until she ran out of bullets. Some hit; some missed. But she couldn't stop herself until the gun did nothing but click under her jerking index finger. Only then did she hear how fast her heart was beating and how shuddery her breath had become. She snatched up the cake server and held it in a fist that felt like it would never unclench with an arm that felt like it would never stop shaking. There was a long gash from Ben's claw on her forearm. She thought her head was bleeding, and her pants were soaked from the involuntary release of her bladder. She hadn't noticed then, but now she felt like a tissue made of human flesh, dripping with cast-off fluids.

She grunted. It was a savage sound. She forced the shelf aside with her shoulder and reached the pipe valve, twisting it as hard as her numb hands could manage. Still clutching the cake server, she stumbled past Ben, up the stairs, and into the safety of darkness.