Martin left us with a quick, tense nod, vanishing into the dim, frost-bitten streets before the sun came up. He was going back to check on Carter, his concern for his family outweighing his reluctance to let us move ahead without him. He’d wanted us to wait, to slow down like I knew Carter did, but I couldn’t. Neither could Charles. Too much was in motion, and Martin still wanted answers from Shelta about whatever was brewing between Patrick and Autumn. I prayed there was nothing to it… and we were just chasing ghosts. But I was scared that I was wrong.

  Even with the monster in me stirring again, relentlessly whispering in the corners of my mind like in my early days, I still thought of her. I still wanted Autumn to be safe… wanted her to be happy; even if that happiness meant she wished I was gone for good.

  By then, it was only Charles, Alex, and me. The streets around us were skeletal in the waning hours before dawn, draped in the silence of a city getting colder by the day. The sleeping life didn’t want to come back out as sunrise approached. People wanted to stay inside, in the warmth of their homes.

  Charles didn’t need us to guide him; his strides cut through the vacant sidewalks with purpose, the way of someone who’d walked these specific routes more times than he could count. He was leading us to the pits. The wind came off the river sharp as razors, funneling between buildings and rattling old signs on their rusted chains. Trash half-buried in frozen mud from the gutters skittered and scraped across the pavement when it broke free, carried by a restless breeze that reeked faintly of exhaust and damp cement.

  We stopped at the edge of a deserted side street where a manhole cover lay under a crust of ice, its surface filmed over in frost so thick it dulled the letters cast into the iron. Charles slammed his fist into the cover, the shock ringing through the air like a muted bell. The ice fractured in a spiderweb pattern, splinters skittering away. Without hesitation, his claws extended, and he slid them into the narrow seam between the cover and the street. A single, twisting motion, and the lid came free, ice pulverized to powder under the torque of his grip.

  Without a word, Charles dropped into the hole, swallowed instantly by shadow. Alex followed, her boots clanging briefly on the ladder before the darkness took her too. I lingered for one last look at the city. The skyline was a jagged black cutout against the pale smear of the approaching dawn, every rooftop slick with the first frost. The air felt colder… in more ways than one; like the cold was grasping everything, squeezing the life from it.

  I couldn’t shake the question: when I came back up, if I came back up, how much would this place have changed? Would I have changed?

  I gripped the rim of the opening, swung my legs into the void, and descended into the earth. The lid slid back into place above me with a grinding clank, the world of light vanishing as it sealed shut. The streetlamps above became nothing but memory, and the only thing left was the stench and the sound of my own breathing echoing in the black.

  The iron reek hit me before my boots even settled in the muck. Wet stone, rot, and something faintly metallic, like the ghosts of old blood baked into the walls, filled my lungs. My feet squelched in a thin layer of black water that hid what I was stepping on, the temperature a grim reminder that we were far beneath the frostbitten streets above. My eyes went black without thought, the monster inside tightening its grip, drinking in every detail like a starving thing.

  Charles was already moving, his pace purposeful, boots slapping against the wet brick as if the walls themselves might close in if he lingered. He didn’t even glance back at me. Alex was the tether between us, halfway down the tunnel, trying to keep up with him without leaving me too far behind. She stood briefly in the open stretch, framed in the dim yellow glow of a distant maintenance bulb, before disappearing toward the curve. She waved, sharp and impatiently, seeming more herself now and less of the weird flirtatiousness from earlier.

  I picked up my pace, the urge clawing at my insides… not the urge to follow, but the darker one, the one that never really left me. The need to feel life slip away under my hands. The urge was constant, a low drumbeat in my skull, whispering that everything that breathed was a potential offering to the thing inside me. It even crept into my gaze now, brushing over Alex’s tattooed back with a flicker of imagined violence I immediately crushed. No… I couldn’t kill her… she was like me… she killed true evil. She was in control, putting reins on her inner monster and commanding it… like I needed to.

  Then there was Charles…it wasn’t that I wanted to kill him. It was that I could. The thought slithered in uninvited, curling around my focus. He was fast, but I could be faster. His claws were sharp, but mine could be sharper… longer. The monster inside me calculated the weight, the speed, the strength it would take to tear him down in this narrow tunnel, where the walls would choke off his escape.

  I shook my head… forced it back… forced myself to remember he was a friend. More than that, he was helping me. Still, the thought lingered like the aftertaste of something bitter. The monster was reminding me that it was constantly there… waiting for me to slip and let it run free. But… it had to be someone worthy… someone who met my standards.

  Charles was leading me toward the pits because he believed in their infallibility. He believed nothing could break them, but he also believed, in some small way, that I might be able to.

  He’d seen me kill before: Mercy, Phineas, Peter. All of them were tied to whatever darkness bred down here. Maybe he thought I could carve through the pits the same way I carved through those he viewed as “immortal.” Maybe he thought that setting me loose was the only way his family would be safe.

  We pressed deeper into the city’s underbelly, the brick tunnels giving way to the yawning mouth of something far older than the streets above. The air grew wetter, heavier, the man-made corridors bleeding into vast natural caverns that plunged into blackness. Water from the melting ice topside trickled down the walls, feeding shallow streams that glistened faintly in the dark. The meeting of cold from above and warmth from the earth below birthed a rolling mist that curled along the floor, hiding the uneven ground.

  Ahead, the tunnel opened into a jagged expanse of stalagmites and stalactites, their dripping fangs catching what little light filtered through. The sound of water dripping echoed endlessly, like the heartbeat of some massive, sleeping creature. The cavern felt alive… not with people, but with something else, something ancient and patient, waiting for us to step deeper into its gut. I’m not sure if the other two felt it, but I did… and I knew what it was. It was the Primeval of Hunger.

  And the monster inside me stirred again, whispering that down here, in this darkness, no one would see. No one would stop me. My very own Primeval… the Primeval of Annihilation wanted to be let out. He wanted to run free and claim another of its brethren… and destroy.

  My black eyes made everything plain to me; every detail was sharp, each subtle shift in the air as we descended deeper and deeper into the dark. Every foothold was certain, every grip precise as I chased after the two vampires. Yet… the deeper we went, the more I saw these two much differently. Charles and Alex’s faces both carried the faint glow of red in their eyes now; predators sharpening their senses, tuning themselves to the pitch-black depths. Their movements were quick, precise… but different.

  Charles moved like water, flowing from step to step, his body unstrained. But I could sense something. His mind was knotted; fear for his family clung to him like a sickness. He didn’t need to tell me; it was in the way his movement never ceased, and he never made time for anything else in the long rush.

  Alex, though… she was a storm in motion. Her speed was raw, and the way her body shifted was more aggressive, as though she was fighting something in her movements. And every so often, she’d glance back at me, not long, just enough to send a glare into my chest before darting forward again to match Charles’s pace.

  I hated that she was here. Or at least… I told myself I did. I didn’t want her tangled in this. I wanted to do what I had to and not have to worry about someone getting in my way. But she wouldn’t have listened if I’d told her to stay away. She never did. And truth be told, some part of me… some wrong part, wanted her close. That look in her eyes earlier when she pinned me wasn’t just playful… it was something else. Something I couldn’t name without further time… to see it again.

  There was silence between us all. A mutual, unspoken agreement not to stop until we made it there, though for different reasons. Charles had his own shadows to wrestle. Alex… maybe she was second-guessing her choice to follow me down here. Or maybe she wasn’t second-guessing at all. And me? My silence was different. My mind kept wandering back to the surface, to the life I’d left dangling by a thread. Autumn… the thought of her moving on, of casting me aside; it dug deep into me, no matter how much I tried to shrug it off. Frank, too, was dealing with the werebears and dipping back into Hunter’s Breath after swearing it off. I hated leaving him in the middle of it. The human part of me ached over all of it, wishing I could have stayed to help Carter figure it all out. But the human part isn’t always in charge.

  I had things of my own to do. I had Death's work to accomplish. As much as I wanted to be elsewhere, I had to dive down into the filth of this world and do what I did best. Kill.

  The Primeval inside me stirred at the thought, curling its claws through my thoughts. Urges seeped in uninvited, visions of Alex’s throat under my hand, of Charles’s spine snapping like a dry branch. I didn’t want them dead. I didn’t. But the thing in me didn’t care what I wanted when the need to kill was so strong.

  Its voice was low and visceral, but somehow steady and patient as it spoke in my mind.

  Kill them! It’ll be easy!”

  I tried to push it back, focus on the stone under my boots, and the breath in my lungs. But I could feel the Primeval watching through my eyes, breathing through those same lungs. It liked Alex’s scent… her pulse, feeling the inhuman blood concentration swirling throughout her body as she ran. It felt her warmth even across the distance to her. I liked it far too much. I could feel something inside the monster that focused on something specific inside of her. It was something that I could not identify. I could feel what it was looking at, but it meant nothing to me; yet I felt the importance that it held to Myordrakien.

  My mind pulsed, sending the surge of sensory perception out, and my mind enhanced the sprinting image of Alex in my blackened eyes. The world almost seemed to slow as I watched her bounding ahead of me in the caverns beneath St. Louis. There was an echo of something within her. A faint light of something burning within her. It started in her core… right where her heart should be, and then it trailed up into her head. It wasn't necessarily vampiric… no, it was something else.

  Charles was just ahead of her, and I felt nothing of the same in him. My sensory pulse echoed throughout his tissues and cells as well, but it found nothing like what I felt in Alex. I looked back at her, and it was still there. It seemed to shimmer and move, coiling into her head at times, and then rushing back down into her chest, like a living thing trying to find its way inside something… or find its way out.

  Myordrakien stirred in my mind and body, trying to make me run faster and make it to her. I allowed it to happen, but I kept a hold on the reins.

  Alex glanced over at me as I appeared beside her, matching her pace. I stared at her as we ran and jumped through the treacherous caverns of impaling spikes beneath the city. She looked at me with a strange look, wondering what I was doing now. It was out of character for me, I knew that, but I couldn’t help but be intrigued at what the monster was looking at. We stayed like that, running side by side, until Charles found what he was aiming for.

  The last few moments before we’d descended had been my last moments to think clearly, and I knew it. Down here, in the pits, there was no room for self-reflection. No time for anything but the pull forward. Whatever Death had planned, and Myordrakien wanted down here… and with Alex… I was going to keep moving in that direction. As much as it hurt to be pulled deeper into the monstrous world by the same forces that took my life from me… part of me wanted to go deeper. I was this monster now… plain and simple. If I was bound in a pact between Death and the Primeval of Annihilation, I wanted to have one hand on the wheel right beside both of them.

  We had gone deeper than I had ever before, down into a silence so thick it pressed against the skin. The air felt heavier here, older. Then Charles stopped dead. No sound, no warning, just an abrupt halt that made Alex and me freeze behind him, our eyes drawn upward in unison.

  It rose from the cavern floor like something half-born but stuck. It was a black spire clawing its way out of the stone floor. At first, I thought it was just another jagged pillar of rock, the kind that littered this place in droves. But no… the longer I stared, the more wrong it became.

  It had a similar color to the cave walls in places, but where the caverns were more an earthen brown, this obelisk was marble black. It had a creeping darkness that seemed to leech into the air around it. The stone wasn’t weathered like the rest of the cavern. It was too sharp, too deliberate, its edges cruel and serrated as if it could cut into flesh with only a whisper of contact.

  Fifteen feet across at its base, the thing tapered upward into a lethal point that vanished twenty feet overhead, stabbing into the cavern’s ceiling. But it wasn’t just size that set it apart… it felt foreign and intrusive. As though it hadn’t grown from the earth at all, but had pierced up through it, some black tooth driven upward from a buried jaw. And the longer I looked, the more I felt that the stone itself was aware of us. Not like an object, but like something waiting.

  As Charles stepped closer, the atmosphere seemed to tighten, pulling toward the black spire as though the cavern itself was holding its breath… like it didn’t want what was about to happen. Then, at the base where it pierced the stone floor… something came alive.

  A deep, hellish red crack began to glow, faint at first, then slowly crawled upward in a deliberate, serpent-like climb. The light was not steady; it writhed inside the stone, almost alive, carrying with it a faint vibration I could feel in my bones. The moment it reached eye level, the energy surged brighter and lit up the space around us, bathing the stones in a horrific red sheen.

  Charles stopped just short of touching it. With slow, deliberate movements, he raised his left arm and unbuttoned his cuff with his right hand. His expression was calm, but there was something… resigned in it. He rolled his sleeve up past his forearm, revealing skin pale, even under the cavern’s crimson gloom. His silver hair fell from its well-kept position as he looked down at something along his arm. That’s when I saw it… the mark.

  It wasn’t a wound. It wasn’t ink. It was something burned into him, a jagged symbol forged in living flesh. The same deep crimson bled from it, glowing like molten iron within his pale flesh. It almost looked like when you put a bright ass flashlight on your skin and can see the light still shining through the flesh of your hands or fingers. Lines and curves etched in a strange, glowing shape I didn’t recognize but instinctively distrusted. It pulsed… not just in brightness, but in a heat I could feel from where I stood.

  The obelisk answered without warning. The red vein in the spike began to pulse in perfect rhythm with the mark on Charles’s arm, each flare and dim of light a silent heartbeat shared between them. The tempo slowed, each pulse heavier, more deliberate, until both mark and spire locked into a steady, unbroken glow.

  Then came the sound, low at first, like the earth groaning, before rising into a grinding roar as stone shifted. The ground shook as the surface of the black pillar began to split apart, its jagged faces screeching and scraping against each other. Inside the stone pillar, in the space between, something grimmer than the spire yawned open.

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  A mouth… no other word for it… jagged and uneven, tearing the shape of a grin into the cavern floor. The entire circumference of the spire peeled back in uneven shards, folding outward to reveal the core of what it hid. Inside was not stone, but a raw wound in the earth. The tunnel beyond glowed with that same hungry red light, the walls lined with fatally sharp stone barbs and hooks of menacing stone. The all jutted inward like the teeth of some subterranean predator, and this tunnel led right into its belly. The air that poured from it reeked of iron and ash.

  All the while, the red within it pulsed in sync with Charles’s arm. Whatever was down there, it knew him. It answered his call and opened the path forward.

  I found myself staring too long, caught in the rhythm of the faintly pulsing light. There was an otherworldliness in that hole… a pull, a whisperless summons that slid cold fingers behind my thoughts. No wonder I had never found it before. It wasn’t meant to be found. Not by me. Not by anyone without a mark to ask for permission. It was buried… hidden from me, but waiting for Charles.

  I felt something within my core, sitting right there with Annihilation. It was recognition. Inside that open maw of stone that dropped straight down into the earth, I felt something that could only be described as Primeval. It felt the same as the Unseen. It felt just like its world… that hellfire dimension that tried to shred my body with fire every step of the way. This would be dangerous… maybe even for me.

  I glanced at Alex, tilting my head toward the pit yawning open in the earth. “You sure you still wanna come?” My voice was low, laced with the monsters as it was almost swallowed by the red-lit atmosphere.

  She didn’t even glance at the hole. Her bloody gaze stayed locked on mine, unwavering. “Yep.”

  Something passed between us then, silent and heavy. There was no hesitation, no flicker of doubt. She was already there with me, in her head… and in her blood. She wanted this… and no one else could understand… but I did.

  I started forward, the heat from the pit brushing against my face. “Alright. Let’s go.”

  But Charles’s voice cut through, sharp enough to halt my step. “Wait.”

  I turned, watching him fight for the right words, his jaw tight, the red mark on his forearm burning faintly. Alex tilted her head at him, curious but not rattled.

  “Once you’re in,” he said finally, his tone as heavy as the rock around us, “you can’t come back out. Not unless you have a mark like me.” He raised his arm, the dull crimson still simmering in his flesh like a coal that refused to die. “Once it closes behind you, you’re trapped. Only someone with a mark can get you out. And when I leave… that won’t be me.”

  The way he said it, cold, final, no embellishment. It told me more than the words. This wasn’t a warning for our sake. It was a statement of fact. He wanted us to understand this was not a team mission where he’d come back for us. This was a descent, and for most, descents like this had only one ending.

  I didn’t bother replying with words. I just nodded once. A grim acceptance.

  Alex’s silence was more telling. She didn’t so much as blink. Her shoulders stayed squared, her stance loose but ready. No wavering, no quiet reconsideration. If anything, the heat from her eyes was sharper, the set of her jaw more certain.

  That look on Alex’s face, and the feeling I had in my own mind…it reminded me of something random. It popped into my head so fast, but clearly. It was a history lesson I had in high school. A story about a Spanish conquistador… I think his name was Cortez or some shit like that. He rolled up to wherever it was he was going with all his men, came there for battle… to conquer. He made landfall… then burnt the boats they came in. They had no choice but to fight… to push forward… to kill. If they wanted to make it out alive, they had to win. I forgot some of the details over the years… but the message stayed in my mind.

  In that moment, something twisted between me and Alex; not soft, not tender, but binding in its own brutal way. We weren’t walking into this as allies. We were going in as predators. Two killers, side by side, stepping willingly into a place made for tearing flesh and breaking souls.

  The Primeval inside me… Myordrakien shifted, stretching under my skin like he could taste what was waiting below. Its hunger to kill tangled with my own need to unleash him… until I couldn’t tell which of us I was anymore. Was I still Sam… was I Myordrakien… or something new… something made from both? Alex didn’t know it, but she was walking into my hunting ground. No… our hunting ground. Mine, Myordrakien’s, and Death’s… but she was welcome to join.

  The pit pulsed with its own heartbeat, slow and deep, as if the earth was calling us down with the eerie red light. I knew with absolute certainty that what lay ahead would be slaughter. Not survival, not escape, but pure unadulterated slaughter.

  “Neither of you plans on coming out, do you?” Charles’s voice was more observation than question. His eyes lingered on Alex first, studying the subtle burn in her stare. I knew what he saw, what I’d seen in her before; the quiet, unspoken wish for an end. Not the kind of death born from fear or failure, but the release she hoped might erase the weight of her monstrous existence.

  When his gaze shifted to me, there was no such hope reflected. What he saw instead was detachment. The dull, cold acceptance that my life… if it could still be called that… wasn’t mine to begin with. That I’d been claimed by Death, twisted into his creature, and that whatever I was now… was just a tool for his work. He couldn’t understand what he saw… but I knew what it truly was.

  Charles studied us both for a long moment, as if committing the sight to memory. Then he gave a slow nod.

  “We’ll never see each other again after this,” he said, the words heavy, final. “No matter how it plays out. It was nice knowing both of you. If you somehow do make it out… protect the ones you love. That’s what I’ll be doing.”

  He turned and walked into the shadows, the sound of his footsteps swallowed quickly by the cavern’s stillness. Then the ground began to rumble, a low, grinding growl, as though the earth itself was straining to seal the wound in its flesh. His mark was moving away from the spire, and the pit was closing.

  I met Alex’s gaze. No words… just that silent understanding again. We stepped forward together, toward the narrowing mouth, the nauseating red glow bleeding out against our faces.

  I plunged into the light, the cavern swallowing me whole, and felt Alex drop in right behind.

  The air tore past us as we fell, faster and faster. The walls rushed up in a jagged blur, a forest of stone spines, hooked and serrated like teeth, closing in so tight in places I could almost feel their bite. They weren’t just rock. They looked too deliberate, too hungry, and certainly a part of this mysterious place we now entered.

  The opening above shrank quickly to nothing, sealing the surface world away. Down here, there was no sky, no escape; just the red-lit descent into the belly of the earth. The further we fell, the wider the chasm became, its shape tapering upward like we had dropped in through the needle’s eye of some massive, unseen beast.

  The floor came fast, fifty, maybe sixty feet below, and I hit hard enough to send a shock up my legs. The sound of impact thundered down the tunnels, chased immediately by Alex’s landing beside me, just a touch softer. The vibrations of our impacts kicked up dust and light debris on the new rocky floor.

  We straightened in unison, shoulders squared, eyes ignited, mine pools of black, hers burning red. We waited for movement… something alerted by our quick drop into enemy territory.

  The tunnel ahead gaped like an old wound, its walls uneven and alive with the suggestion of growth. This wasn’t something carved by hands or tools. It was something born. Something that had grown over centuries, twisting and bending as though it had a will of its own. The walls curved inward in places like ribs, forcing us to walk under the shadow of their jagged edges. The entirety of the place was illuminated enough that a human could see thanks to the red light that emanated from the walls. The red glow snaked through stones across the walls, ceiling, and floor in all directions. Random bright spots lit up the darkness of the underground, and smaller tracing paths through the stone surroundings lit up the spaces between the brighter areas. The light inside the stones moved… it felt alive.

  There was no choice in direction. The path sloped downward in a slow, deliberate crawl, the air thickening with a damp, metallic tang.

  I glanced at Alex. Her lips curled faintly, not in a smile, but in the readiness of a predator before the first strike.

  “Guess there’s only one way to go now,” I said, motioning down into the dark.

  The Primeval stirred inside me, its hunger pressing against my thoughts. Alex and I stepped forward, side by side.

  We move forward through the red haze, fully on alert and ready to lash out. Neither of us spoke for a little while as we moved silently. The red glowing veins in the rock walls around us created a strange atmosphere that reminded me of Freddy Krueger’s boiler room. I thought of the old movies for a few moments as we walked, remembering old times. It was quickly pushed away by the Primeval. He had no time for that kind of shit. It meant nothing to him… he just wanted death.

  The heat of the earth clung to the air, an invasive warmth weaving together with the pit’s oppressive red. Shadows bent unnaturally across the chamber from the ambient light, stretching and curling along the jagged “teeth” like something alive. The drip of water from above was the only other sound, slow and deliberate, each droplet landing in the ankle-deep pool with a hollow plip that echoed just a little too long.

  The walls here felt closer even though the space was wider. It wasn’t their shape, it was the way they leaned. Like they were listening. Like they were pressing in to taste us. Every surface seemed to exude a faint vibration, almost imperceptible at first, but the longer we stood there, the more it crawled into our bones.

  I could feel the hunger. Not from anything moving in the shadows, but from the stone itself. It radiated an old, starved patience, the kind of stillness that only existed when something was waiting to feed.

  Suddenly, Alex’s eyes caught firelight. We had entered a new area… and there were people… and a fire not too far ahead of us. The weird part, though, was that I couldn’t hear them… not like normal.

  The red in Alex’s eyes was smoldering low but sharp as she saw them. She didn’t look afraid. She looked like she was analyzing the place, ready to tear into whatever came next. I felt the same pull. Myordrakien stirred within me, its deep pulse syncing with the slow drip of water, with the quiet throb of this cavern’s appetite… like I was blending into the area somehow. The Primeval was doing something on its own that I wasn’t familiar with… but I didn’t resist it.

  We moved toward the fire in a slow, circling approach, keeping to the jagged edges where shadow and rock formed cover. Our boots barely broke the surface of the shallow pool, but even the faint ripples seemed quieter here. Every would-be disturbance felt like it was hushed somehow.

  The pillars of stone rose in uneven rows, like the vertebrae of something titanic. We moved between them as we made our way to these unfortunate souls. Some of the pillars twisted, spiraling toward the ceiling in forms too organic to be mere geology, some moved sideways, and we crawled over them. In the stillness between the drips and the crackle of the fire, I thought I heard something else… a faint scrape of stone, far off, but deliberate.

  Alex froze, her head tilting slightly. She heard it too, but she didn’t look at me. She was in the middle of stalking her prey… completely in her zone.

  The fire crackled low beside a massive stone pillar, throwing warped shadows against the jagged “teeth” of the cavern. Three shapes lingered just beyond the light; three vampires, the smell of their blood hitting my senses before their movements registered. Their smell was thick, metallic, and old. But Alex caught them first.

  She didn’t speak. She didn’t wait. She simply moved.

  The ankle-deep pools of water should have betrayed her approach, yet she flowed through them like a phantom, the surface barely disturbed. The first vampire didn’t even turn before her claws punched into his neck, all ten sinking deep like hooked knives. Bone popped under the force of her grip, and in a single wrenching motion, she tore his head free. It came away ragged, spine still clinging in strands, a wet crunch snapping through the chamber.

  The other two recoiled instantly, eyes wide, leaping ten feet straight up from shock and fear. I didn’t give them time to recover. I drove forward, boots splashing, my black talons slicing out of me… ready for the kill.

  One male vampire twisted in midair to face me, but I was already on him. I collided hard, my momentum crushing his defenses. My elbow came down like a hammer into his temple; the crack was sharp, wet, final. His skull dented inward, and a dark bloom of blood ran down his face as his limbs went slack. He dropped with a strange stillness, almost convincing me he was dead.

  The third, a woman, didn’t wait. She turned on her heel and bolted for the opposite side of the chamber, the mouth of another tunnel yawning black beyond her. She had a head start, and for a moment I thought she’d make it, until a sharp crack echoed overhead.

  Alex hurled a jagged spear of stone that she ripped from the cavern wall, spinning end-over-end, whistling like a screaming banshee. It impaled the frantic and snarling vampire woman between the shoulder blades, the impact hurling her forward into the rock face with a sickening thunk. She slid down, coughing blood into the shallow pool.

  Alex was already there, her crimson hair snapping like a whip behind her. She hit the wounded vampire hard, the two of them skidding through loose gravel before Alex’s fangs found her throat. There was no hesitation… only the savage rhythm of tearing… and drinking. Alex fed like the pit itself had loaned her its hunger. She pinned the woman with a knee, claws raking across her ribs, sucking the life out of her in long, deep pulls.

  The firelight danced off her face, her mouth painted red, eyes glowing like blood red stars. I’d seen this before… Alex in the grip of the hunt. Every motion is efficient, simple… merciless. She was like a shark attached to another sea creature. Once her jaws were locked… she wasn't letting go. She thrashed and shredded her prey.

  I stayed still, letting her work, sending my pulse out into the cavern. My senses rippled through the space, through the tunnels behind us, and deeper into the earth ahead. Nothing living stirred… at least I didn’t hear anything like before. I wasn't sure what that was about.

  But then… that changed. A faint ripple in the water behind me alerted me to someone. It was too careful to be random. I turned just as a fourth vampire, gaunt and pale-eyed, crept from the shadows. He must have been drawn by the scent of spilled blood. His fangs flashed as he lunged, a dagger clutched in his hand. That was new…

  I met him halfway. My talons raked through his forearm, severing muscle and bone, forcing him to drop the blade along with his lower arm. He snarled, swiping at my throat with his only available hand. I caught his wrist, twisting until the bones snapped like dry wood. His scream echoed off the cavern walls… then cut short as I drove my other hand clean through his sternum. My claws tore through his heart, ripping it free in a gush of blood so hot it steamed in the air around me.

  I dropped the twitching corpse beside the fire, the heart still pulsing faintly in my palm before I crushed it to pulp. The pit felt quieter after that. I slung my hand down, casting the gore from my grip with no remorse. The deaths around me… even the ones caused by Alex… they were… intoxicating. I felt good… but it wasn't enough. It would never be enough.

  Alex didn’t look up from her feeding; she’d moved on to drain the second vampire, the one I’d only thought I’d killed. His words came out in a broken mumble before her teeth sank in, ending him in a violent shudder. Blood coated her mouth, her neck, her chest, soaking into her shirt.

  The three bodies around the campfire, and the fresh one at my feet, were nothing but meat now. The cavern’s vibrating hunger in the walls was sated for the moment. But… our’s wasn’t.

  After about ten minutes, Alex was done feeding. She found me sitting near the campfire, the flickering light dancing over my hands as I cleaned them in a shallow pool of water at my side. Blood and grit slid off my skin, but I didn’t bother wiping the few stains from my clothes.

  I looked up at her… she was a mess. Blood dripped from her hair, soaked her torn shirt, and traced jagged lines down her arms. But she was untouched.

  “Man, you really don’t know how to do that cleanly, do you?” I said, voice rough, trying to cut through the thick silence with a joke.

  She smirked, lips curling just enough to show sharp teeth. “If you have another suggestion, I’m all ears,” she shot back, tone sharp like a blade.

  The fight had faded from our bodies, but the high… the raw rush of power still thrummed through us. It was like a dark intoxication, a slow-burning fire under our skin. Those four… they hadn’t stood a chance; not against us… an Anthropophagous vampire… and a growing Primeval.

  I reached over and grabbed a crumpled piece of cloth I’d pulled from the vampire Alex had stabbed with the spear. Tossing it toward her, I caught the flicker of surprise in her eyes.

  “I’m assuming you don’t wanna keep going like that,” I said, nodding at her soaked, bloodied shirt.

  The snark fled her face, along with the shit-talking she had cocked and loaded. It was replaced by something almost like gratitude. She blinked fast, like she was trying to hide it even from herself.

  “There are a few holes in the back from where you hit her with that big-ass rock spear,” I admitted, voice softer now, “but there weren't many options? Better than what you got.”

  She turned away, pacing slowly to the small stream of water dripping from the cavern ceiling. Without a word, she stepped beneath the steady trickle of water, and it spilled over her skin, washing away the sticky blood. She slipped her shirt from her shoulders and tossed it away into the shallow pool at her feet.

  Usually, this is when she’d shoot me a glare, call me a creep, or some other insult. But she didn’t. Instead, she just glanced back at me for a long moment… naked from the top of her head to her beltline. Her eyes were sharp, unreadable… and she just stared, not hiding herself from me. Finally, she turned away, letting the water carve clean lines down her bare back and chest.

  I tried not to look. Really, I did. I stared at the fire, poking at the embers with a stick, pretending I wasn’t burning alive inside with the thoughts I was having about her. But the split second she took off her shirt, all tight muscles, tattooed arms and back… dripping hair that fell around those large breasts. I was staring! And yeah… I felt like a creep for it. But it wasn't just me who was staring… I felt Myordrakien staring too, seeing that same strange light… or energy coiled inside of her. It rested in her chest now, not moving as much as it had been before, but it was there.

  There was something dangerous in that moment, something unspoken and electric. Two killers, still tasting blood, still carrying the weight and thrill of death heavy in their veins. It was like the air between us had energized… charged and waiting. But neither of us was willing to break the silence, but I had a thought that we both were desperate to reach across it.

  It made me feel guilty… thinking about Autumn during this. But… if she was alright… then that meant she truly wanted me to leave. Besides all that… I looked around at what I had just done. The brutality of these kills. This wasn't a place for someone like Autumn… or any of the Chasse family, for that matter. This is where monsters dwelled.

  The pit around us seemed to pulse with that same hunger, but it was… changed. It wasn't a hunger for blood, flesh, or the kill; it was hunger for something else… something also primal. It was what was charging between us in that moment.