The sun still bled out across the city, creating the supernatural barrier that would prevent Alex’s travel with me. The sun being harmful to her again was going to make things more difficult with travel, but ultimately, it was no real concern. She’d lived for decades that way, so she was plenty experienced. Thankfully, she didn’t need to come here with me, regardless of the sun. She allowed me to do this on my own. I think part of her wanted me to have these meetings alone so I could have close, intimate moments with my friends before we left to do what I had to. Maybe she thought I’d need it to leave this place… for a while at least.

  I wasn’t sure how long I’d be gone, but I wanted to do it right this time. To tell them I’d be coming back, so they didn’t have to worry, or assume the worst. Usually, I just dipped out so fast and unexpectedly that they had no clue if I was ever coming back, or even alive. But I was coming back. They were my family now as well as my family in Texas. There was a comfort knowing that whatever happened when I went home, I’d still have the Chasse family after it was over.

  Then images of their faces, watching me slaughter all of those people in their woods, popped into my head. They were terrified of me in that moment. But that’s what I wanted. I wanted them to see the true monster inside. I wanted them to see the things I would do to those who deserved it, those I was sent for, or to the people I faced down when a hard decision had to be made. However, I knew that they already understood that… in a way. They had just never seen me cut so loose before, especially when there were humans involved.

  The only true wild card in this situation was Jane. Her nature, that beast inside of her, was always unpredictable. Not just in her but in every other werewolf I had met. There was just something so wild, chaotic, and feral in those yellowish-orange eyes that didn’t fully let me understand what they were thinking or going to do. But with Jane… I trusted her words. She would have been cutting ties with those of the pack that moved against her and her family. I just don’t think she fully grasped the reach Clive had on members of her family as well. I think there was a piece of it, too, that made it all worse for her. Some of them may have thought what they were doing was the right thing… and they died for it.

  All of this played through my mind as I rushed through the falling dusk over the city. I stuck to the shadows until the shadows flooded the world, and then I moved freely. My body was still solid, but I think subconsciously I was shifting the outer appearance of my form to look like a shadow, similar to the way it appeared when I was trying to form clothes. My entire body was Primeval now, my tissues as well as the inner power. Combining all of this gave me abilities I don’t think I even fully understood yet. So much was happening that was instinctual ever since I returned to the surface world. Figuring this out on the road, in a more calm way, with Alex had me looking forward to our trip… even though seeing my family again scared the shit out of me.

  As I rushed through the darkness, only about two miles away from Carter’s house, that familiar, ominous chill fell over the air. It was subtle at first, but then it increased in so much intensity that my steps slowed, and I found a dark huddle of trees to fully stop in as I observed what I felt around me.

  Rapid pushes and returns of my enhanced sense brought back nothing but empty air and open ground, littered with the forms of trees. There was nothing there, but I could have sworn that I felt…

  “Sam,” the all-powerful voice behind me shook the air as it spoke my name.

  I felt the hair raise on the back of my neck as I spun around in the dirt, laying my eyes upon the one being that could always get the jump on me. It was Death, appearing as a carbon copy of myself, only looking slightly less murderous in the obvious ways, but equally, if not more deadly, than I could ever be in a cold, calculating, inevitable way. This doppelganger of myself stood about six feet from me, shoulders squared and staring straight into my eyes. We stared in silence, two pairs of void-black eyes locked in a standstill.

  I finally broke it, nervous about what this might be about. I had so many plans… so many things I had already started moving towards in my mind that if he sent me away on a vision quest now, I was going to be beyond pissed off.

  But something told me this might be something other than that. If he wanted me to go somewhere, kill someone, he’d have sent a vision. No… this was about…

  “You know what I’ve been doing?” I asked quickly, cutting off my own thoughts. “You know who I’ve been talking to?” I asked the otherworldly entity.

  Death nodded slowly before speaking. “I didn’t create the watchers, and they are bound to another. I cannot reveal their true nature, but as you already know now, I can speak about this one in particular.” Death eyed me cautiously, which was new. He was never cautious looking… only coldly certain.

  The chill in the air around me sharpened, and Death felt more deadly than ever before. The knowledge of Abel and what he truly was changed something in Death. It was not because he feared him, I knew that for sure. Abel was just a man, albeit an extremely important one, I gathered from Death's reaction. I think it was whatever Abel was connected to. Whatever made him a watcher was what Death was wary of.

  I could see him analyzing the rules and bindings inside his labyrinthine mind.

  “You know what he told me?” I asked.

  Death only nodded again and then said, “You wish to know if it’s true?”

  I nodded back, holding my breath before I even noticed I was doing it. This was the moment when all of my plans to go home could be shattered.

  “There is a section of time coming up where I won’t send for you. Nothing is required of you for the moment. However, don't believe everything the watchers tell you,” Death warned.

  I took a sharp, willfully silent breath before I asked, “Why? If what he said is true, then why should I be wary of him?”

  Death responded quickly, “The watchers are not bound to me; therefore, they do not have the same goals or intentions. They can interfere with previously laid plans. If you listen to one of them and believe them without question, you can be led astray. Then you will lead my plans astray. There is much behind the scenes with all of this that I cannot tell you, just like I couldn’t tell you the full truth about what you had become, or who I was, in the beginning. You had to come to those truths on your own. This is very much the same. I’m sure with a little deductive reasoning, you can understand more about what I’m saying.”

  The story has been taken without consent; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

  I stared at him for a good minute or two, trying to parse together what he was saying. It looked like he was waiting, waiting for me to tell him the answers I was looking for. And then it hit me, he was allowing me to speak out loud, and if I were right, maybe he’d verify it.

  A swell of excitement burst through me, as this was the most open about a secret Death had ever been with me. He wanted me to know, but was bound by secrecy until I had already discovered it. Maybe this was some kind of loophole that he had figured out a long time ago with another of his hands in the world.

  I started slowly, “So… Abel is a watcher, and he knows things… sees things,” I remembered all of my times with the old man. “He still looks and feels completely human to me. But he’s been around for a very long time. He's not bound to you… But,” I struggled on the next part.

  It was a thought I had, but it felt wrong. I almost felt like Abel was immune to Death. But I knew that wasn’t right. Death had already told me that everything lives and dies in its own strides. That had to be the same with Abel. Especially seeing as how there were other watchers in the world, just based on how Death spoke about “them.” Maybe they cycled through just like the hands of Death did, just in their own way.

  “Correct,” death answered my thoughts, cold and calculating.

  My eyes darted up quickly at Death’s quick interjection into my mind.

  “So if he dies, then that’s it. He’s just a man.” I said more confidently out loud.

  “He is just a man,” Death said it as well.

  “But I know he’s not against me. He seems like he actually wants to help in some way. He was elusive… just like you. The first few times I talked to him, I knew he was hiding things. So what does that mean? Is he bound to some kind of secrecy just like you?”

  “Is he?” Death asked me, inversely telling me that I had to tell him either with my thoughts or my words. It couldn’t be a question.

  I nodded to myself, sure that it was true. “He’s bound to secrecy. He’s only able to reveal things to me at certain times. But it’s different than you, though.”

  Death nodded emotionlessly, “That it is.”

  I started bringing it all together, we’re trying to piece every little thing I was slowly understanding into a greater picture.

  “So Abel is a watcher, bound by secrecy, because he’s bound to something… like me. But it’s not you,” I said to Death. “Even you’re bound to certain secrets that you can’t reveal to me, even though I’m your hand in the world.”

  I looked deeper into my mind as I said the things out loud. I felt like something was blocking me, almost like the universe itself was trying to keep me from figuring it out. Like I wasn’t meant to know it yet. But that’s when it hit me.

  “So it’s something like you, not Death, but something equally as powerful. Not a Primeval, though,” I said more to myself as everything started clicking.

  It wasn’t that big of a stretch because Abel had said himself he was not bound to a Primeval. I just didn’t feel the same weight carried by his words at the time. Verifying all of this with Death made things much more real. His words carried greater authority than Abel’s did to me. He was a force in the world. So that meant…

  “So there are other things out there? Things like you…” I spoke out loud, but Death never moved an inch and never showed one single clue that I was right. But then I realized I had formed that in more of a question. “The Primevals from before weren’t alone. There were many aspects of them out there… still are… that’s why I’m here as the monster. Death isn’t alone either,” I realized as my words filled the space between us.

  Death nodded even slower than ever before, marking the gravity of this revelation. It made the whole world shift a little.

  I felt something inside me churning, a mix of an old human nervousness and a slight fear of the unknown beyond Death's reach.

  “No… I am not. Just as Myordrakien was meant to be the end-bringer of his era, so am I. I’m just the next cycle’s annihilation,” Death started speaking more freely. “In a manner of speaking.”

  I felt a pit drop in my stomach as his words sank in, and I felt a wave of information coming. The harsh reality of everything made the world feel colder now… even for me. Not cold in a physical sense, but isolated… alone, like a danger as inexorable as Death itself lurked in many different places around me, and I had never known.

  There were others like Death. They weren’t my enemy; I knew that, but Death was not aligned with others. Maybe it was just the very nature of his being. Death was the polar opposite of life. Maybe there was a Life entity out there, maybe there was something like the Unseen… or Hunger too, just this next era's version of them. Not a Primeval but a force of nature.

  Or maybe it hadn’t happened for some of them yet, because the Primevals of those aspects of the world hadn't passed on like they were supposed to. The Unseen may be… but Hunger still had two more relics in the world, so that meant its essence wasn't fully dispersed. Not like Myordrakien’s was when the other Primevals murdered him and broke their cycle. That was when Death appeared and…

  Death spoke coldly over my thoughts, nodding with a surprised look on his face and a sign of approval.

  “You're starting to see it, aren't you?” It wasn’t a question, but it was formed as one. Telling me by not telling me that I was on the right track.

  “As we continue hunting down the rest of the Primevals, this world will change. You already understand that Hunger’s essence is spreading over the world, changing things, realigning things with how they were supposed to be. As the world changes, humans will change too. Aspects long concentrated in single beings will be spread out, and there will be more changes not only to supernatural… but human beings as well. As we continue, we make great changes. But as always, there is a balance. There is something that has to oppose me as we oppose the Primevals. There are scales so great and so complex that you can’t fathom the realities they span… worlds that lie beyond yours.”

  For the first time since I saw the Unseen Primeval, standing like a titan and towering over me in its realm, I felt small and helpless in a world way too big for me. It felt like, back when Death fully revealed himself to me, when I realized the truth. Even in this Primeval body, my hands were shaking.

  Then, as quickly as it had started up, Death retracted his aura, and the chill in the air ceased. Just as quickly, he shifted topics back to the original subject.

  “Abel was correct, though. You do have time. Just as Jon told you all that time ago,” Death said before shifted like liquid shadow to appear as Jon… my monstrous predecessor. Then, he spoke in Jon’s voice, “Latch onto your people here. Connect with them while you have them. Because when I call, it’s time to move. There will be places that your family and your friends simply cannot go. I don’t think you would want them to if you knew where it was, and what you would be facing.” Death eyed me… deathly serious. No pun intended. “Use your time wisely, because I won’t warn you before it happens. One day you will be with your family, the next you will be with me. And our next fight… It will take much time… and much effort.”

  And just like that… there was a searing light in my eyes that blinded everything from sight. There was a ringing that blotted out all sound. It was a noise that made Alex and Autumn's psionic feeding pale in comparison.

  When it subsided and my eyesight returned, Death-Jon was nowhere to be seen. I couldn’t feel his aura of power at all. He was gone. Death had said what he wanted to say, and he had left.

  I took a sharp breath and exhaled it like a shotgun blast, and then I exploded from my place as I sprinted towards Carter’s house. I became one with the shadows again, bleeding more into the darkness than a physical entity should be able to. I melded into shadow, becoming darkness and speed at the same time.