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Max waits patiently the next day when Billy immediately wants to inspect her, knowing that he will be there as soon as she returns from school. She wonders sometimes, if there is something about school specifically that makes him this uneasy or if it's just because she has to spend large amounts of her day without him there. She has to admit that she's anxious without him - she isn't certain if the vivid night terrors are supernatural or merely a product of her own fucked-up psyche, but she does know that Billy makes it better.
He isn't quite as aggressive and agitated today, and when she sing-chants "Do-you-want-eggs-and-toast?" lilting up and down to finish on a soft low note, she finally gets him to reply this time.
"With-jam-and-ba-con," he agrees, copying the cadence she used with easy swinging grace.
Little does Max know that Billy is not calmer because the threat is gone, he is calmer because he's determined that he must be patient. Eventually, this thing will come for Max - and come properly, not the awful, sticky little tendrils that try to haunt her at night - and Billy will be there when it does. He will be waiting.
In the meantime, Billy keeps Max just at the edge of his senses, wandering away from her whenever they are in an area where he can reasonably be assured that other people are nearby. He can tell that this...maybe not upsets her, exactly, but confuses her, at least. It makes the frightened blues of her deepen into an anxious, twisting indigo, her cinnamon-heat taste on his tongue became a dampened earthy clove. His distance is what makes her so anxious, but Billy will not explain it to her. She will be much more than worried if he tells her that he is laying a trap.
He does not know for certain, but Billy suspects that this thing - man, woman, beast, he doesn't give a shit - will try to avoid making its move when it can sense that Billy is around. It sends prickle of cold fear and hot rage through him, but he knows that if he wants to catch this thing, it will have to believe that Maxine is venerable. Defenseless. It will have to believe that it is the predator, when Billy has already positioned it as nothing but his prey.
Spring Break has barely begun when Billy's patience is well rewarded.
She is with her weird little friends and even without the cold rotten scent sharpening in the air, Billy would know that something has gone wrong because he can hear the screaming. Billy knows that they can't see it, can't sense it the way he can, but all of the Weird Ones seem to have a learned feel for when something creepy or unnatural is happening. The boys are shrieking their stupid little heads off, and it makes Billy's ears ring like a bell.
Robin flinches as an eerie, spine-tingling howl splits the air from somewhere uncomfortably close to their current position. Still, Max is frozen like a statue at one of the little outdoor picnic tables, eyes glazed over and staring into space at absolutely nothing. Seeing nothing, reacting to nothing. "Steve..."
"Max! MAX!" Steve barks, grabbing at her shoulders and giving her a shake, which does nothing to move her. There's a pinched cast to his features and he mutters "I don't like this..."
At a higher, anxious pitch, Robin repeats "Steve!" and he turns to figure out what she could possibly find more alarming than Max having some kind of seizure-
Well, it's Billy actually - Billy looking sharper and more aware than he ever has in the past eight months, teeth bared as he comes barreling around the corner from a stand of trees straight toward them. Fair enough, Steve supposes. That's a fairly decent cause for alarm.
More specifically, he goes straight for Max.
Steve steps out, makes a move to intercept Billy from reaching her. Even he isn't completely sure why, there's just something about the near-feral aspect of his expression that has his instincts screaming 'stop him! stop him!', but Robin grabs the back of his shirt, dragging his momentum backward. "He knows," Robin whispers in his ear as they both breathlessly watch him reach Max. "He knew something was wrong with her without even seeing her, Steve."
Their mouths drop open as two inky shapes of darkness begin forming about both siblings as Billy reaches out to touch her. It happens swifter to Max, especially quick around her upper arms where his hands have grasped her, as though whatever Billy is now can reveal the hidden things happening only in the mind, until they can see eight long, spine-shivering legs around Max's body. A giant hairy spider molesting her in the shape of a dark blue-gray mist.
Around Billy, the shadow boils into a black and indigo-hued mass - not attached to his body, like what has happened to Max, but growing around him. Forming huge, hulking shoulders and bulging forearms ending in clawed hands. A thick neck with a long muzzle, filled with enormous teeth. Its head rears back and howls, the same panic-inducing sound they heard earlier emerging from its - his? - jaws.
With a powerful swipe of claws, the Billy-wolf creature knocks the demon spider away onto the brown and green bed of new spring grass, Max suddenly back to the past with an unsteady gasp. Apparently unsatisfied with simply deterring it, he follows the spider with a loping leap down to the grass and opens his great sharp maw.
Steve, Robin, and all of the kids watch with a mixture of awe, revulsion, and numb horror as the Billy-wolf cracks through the bloated shadow-body with a disgustingly visceral crunch. It squeals and twitches and thrashes and tries to get away but a few more swipes of those dark indigo-black claws removes some of its legs. Max shudders in place, unaware of the tear running down her cheek. The memory of the spider trying to trap her in a web has stayed with her - she doesn't think anything has ever scared her more.
He is not happy until he has devoured it all - fat thorax, twitching legs, and all, snarling and growling as he chews through its mist-stuff, until there is absolutely nothing left. Until there is only the wolf.
Tremulous and embarrassingly teary, Max's hand twitches, instinctively reaching out for him. Hesitantly, she calls "...Billy?"
The head turns, huge jaws still open to reveal the white fangs and black tongue inside. A strong breeze blows past the stand of trees, and the shadows peel away with it.
Billy kneels in the grass next to nothing, looking like nothing except himself and staring just over her right shoulder, blue eyes unfocused and distant. For the first time in eight months, he volunteers something without her directly asking for it. Low and soothing as a child's lullaby, he croons his reply: "No-more-night-mares, no-more-mon-ster."
Max's shaky knees carry her far enough to let her collapse on the ground next to him. She lets the relief take her as she buries her face in his chest. Blank-eyed, staring what only he sees, her brother embraces her with an uncharacteristic gusto and Max clutches him with both hands.
In the Upside Down, Henry Creel stares down at his own fingers. He has the appearance he was born with again, the stripped down adaptation he has survived within this place has vanished. A muscle in his eyelid begins to twitch violently as he stares at his own pristine cuticles.
That useless, thick-necked white trash - that grimy, Neanderthal meat-puppet ate his powers.