As Kathy's words echoed around the clearing, Jo felt his heart drop into his stomach. 

"Hold her still."

The words meant 'keep her in place', meant Catori was the intended sacrifice. He wasn't sure how they had missed that. Her connection to the dead. All of the things done targeting her. They had taken Cisco and his finger, but he was meant to escape. Kathy meant to kill Catori from the beginning, ever since she found out, however she found out. She was so close to dead that a sacrifice was perfect. 

The two men--one of them Rothson, who they had trusted--moved towards her and as hard as Jo tried, he couldn't get away from the hold on his own arms. There was blood in his mouth, and mixed with the taste of salt. He was crying.

 This was it. It couldn't be, it shouldn't have been, but he should have known that they weren't invincible. That messing with things like this meant someone would die. These were adults. They were just kids. 

But just before they could reach her, Catori spun, and time seemed to slow to an impossibly slow crawl. There was a shout, and a thick, terrible squelching sound.

They may have all only been teenagers, but Catori was different. Fear made him freeze, made him weak and angry but unable to fight. But the savage, terrified smile on Catori's face as she had spun reminded him of the way she had lost herself that day in the woods. It looked crazed, but he knew it was fear. She had told him. 

What he'd forgotten was that when Catori was scared, she turned violent. There was an anger in her, deep and broiling, and fear made it easy to come free. They shared that, in some ways. But on top of that, she never hesitated. 

Maybe it was because of her relationship with death. To Jo, to the others, death was something to be reverent in the face of, to be wary of. 

To her, it was just another part of life. One she only had control over when she wielded it. 

And when the pained and haunting scream of someone mortally wounded met his ears, the clearing stilled completely. Everyone--Kathy, Rothson, even Vivienne, who'd been clutching Everette and dragging her back into the woods--froze. Jo could see Cisco, held back like he was, eyes wide as he moved to block Kas' view of the scene. 

Catori had been holding her heels. She'd taken them off in the woods while following Rothson, claiming they made too much noise. She was right. But now, he almost wondered if the real plan had been to use them as weapons. Because when the man who had screamed dropped, he was grabbing frantically at a black stiletto embedded in his eye.