Billy's gone.
Ruby Buckley's world ended with him.
But Hawkins isn't done with her yet.
When strange deaths begin again, Ruby is pulled into the heart of the storm. Between shadowy nightmares, the town's newest outcast, and someone she was never s...
( songs for the chapter ) solitude // black sabbath lonesome town // ricky nelson
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The Upside Down's version of Skull Rock loomed above them like a rotting monument, familiar in shape, but warped in every possible way.
The stone jutted at wrong angles, fissured like a jawbone cracked open long ago. The whole thing seemed to pulse faintly, as if remembering the breath of something ancient and malignant.
The fog moved around their ankles with a mind of its own. Not drifting, breathing. Expanding and contracting like a slow exhale. The vines threaded along the stone twitched in lazy, hungry pulses, and the air... God, the air tasted metallic and stale, like the inside of a dead lung.
Ruby tried not to think about what that implied. She failed.
Above them, the bats still churned in a chaotic cyclone, wings, screeching, teeth, motion.
They tore at the sky like it offended them. Each shriek ricocheted off the rock, vibrating through Ruby's ribs, her teeth, the thin and terrible tether still stretching somewhere in the dark toward Vecna.
Robin's hand was clenched in hers, knuckles white, grip almost painful. Ruby squeezed back with matching ferocity.
If the bats found them, they'd be ripped apart in seconds. And if they found them because of her, if he sensed her again, Ruby didn't know what that meant. For her. For the people she loved. For the ones dragged down here because of her.
The shriekstorm slowly drifted away. The leathery beating softened, softened, until only the background noises of this hellscape returned: distant thunder, some creature's wet snarl, the low groan of vines shifting beneath soil as if the world itself were restless.
"Oh... okay." Robin finally breathed. Her voice was thin. She pushed shakily off the ground, brushing damp ash from her pants. Her fingers slipped from Ruby's. "That was close."
"Yeah," Eddie whispered. "Too close."
Ruby stood too, giving her knees a second to remember what stability felt like, and that was when Steve's legs buckled. He slumped backward into the rock wall, sliding halfway down it with a muffled groan.
"Oh, sh...shit." His voice was tight, strained. One hand braced against the stone.
"Steve? Steve?" Ruby's voice cracked around the edges. Panic ignited so fast it made her vision blur. She rushed to him, heart thundering in her throat. "Jesus."
"I'm fine. I'm fine." He wasn't. Every syllable trembled.
"No. You're not." Ruby touched his shoulder, hot, shaking, streaked with sweat and blood and grime. "You're losing blood. Come on, sit. All right?"
