The skittering bugs moved slowly throughout the cracks and crevices of the factory. I could still feel them, moving in sluggish creeps and crawls, trying not to be noticed by me. They could sense me… and they feared. A crow had come to land on the outer roofing that still hung in the air, but it flew away quickly.

  I had a stray thought, was that one of those crows? The kind that led me to that little boy… Calvin… I think that was his name. That seemed like it was so long ago now. So much had happened. My world had blown up… well, it had been left behind. That world seemed old… small… inconsequential to the massive scale of power that I faced now. The Primevals changed everything. It made those old times, when I was just a new monster, seem easy. But I would never forget the little boy's face, even if his name was uncertain in my mind. I would never forget that part of myself that started all of this. The part that was trying to right wrongs with this monster inside… even if it was through dark means to feed the urge to kill. I just carried a little heavier baggage around with me.

  I heard a rustle coming from Alex’s direction, and I shifted my awareness. I saw her rising, opening her eyes for the first time since the Primeval's offspring backhanded her across razor-sharp terrain like a fly, or some kind of ragdoll. She leaned up slowly, supporting her upper body with her tattooed arms, her blood-red hair falling behind her as she moved upright, and her pale white skin contrasting with the dirty concrete floor. She brought her legs up under her, remaining seated, but coiled them up in a way that made her look innocent in those dreary shadows. She had this wondrous look in her eyes as she scanned the area, like seeing for the first time. That was saying something… since she had already lived as a type of vampire for decades up to this point, and supernatural senses were already commonplace for her.

  “Alex…” I beckoned to her, trying to get her to become aware of me as I retracted the aura of death and killing intent I knew poured off me.

  Her eyes shifted quickly, finding my location in a millisecond. She looked like a machine, rapidly responding, her eyes shifting from observation to kill mode. She stared at me for one full second, and then softened.

  “Sam…” she said, feeling a dryness in her throat that made her voice sound slightly different. She swallowed. “We’re out…” It was an acknowledgement more than a question.

  “Yeah… we made it out,” I said, watching her carefully.

  She eyed the place around us, obviously noting that this was not the depths of the earth beneath the city of St. Louis, where she had remembered being. She took in the place, the sounds, and the scents, and was eerily calm. It was hard to figure out what to say next.

  After a few more moments, I asked, “How are you? What do you feel like?” I tried to get her to express what I knew she was already examining.

  “I feel…” she searched for the right words. “I feel different. I know something happened… but I don’t know what it is.” She sharply looked over her shoulder like she aimed to kill something, her eyes flaring deep crimson and fangs slipping out longer than ever before. There were actually a few new ones I didn’t remember her having. Her entire front six teeth on her upper jaw were fanged now, although the two front teeth were barely sharpened, but enough for me to spot a slight warp. The other four were elongated and razor sharp. Her bottom teeth had shifted slightly as well, but only to accommodate the fatal weapons now protruding from above.

  “What is it?” I asked her quickly, scanning the area with my blast of sonar pulse. Upon the quick return of my signal, there was nothing. What was she looking at?

  “I thought I heard… a voice.” She shook her head and then trailed off, placing a hand over her forehead and right temple. She rubbed her head for a moment.

  “Alex… you need to understand what happened down there,” I tried to explain. “Things are going to be different.”

  Alex lifted her face back up to mine and had a look that was new for her. She had no snark or annoyance in her eyes, once the confusion cleared. She looked willing and ready to listen. She was staring at me and waiting to hear what I had to say.

  It was weird… and very out of character for her.

  “I killed the elder, but it fucked you up pretty good. I was trying to help you heal and… I found this thing inside the corpse of that spider. Something Hunger told me about,” I stopped after that.

  I noticed that the moment I said “Hunger,” Alex’s head twitched slightly like she was about to look over her shoulder again. Still, there was nothing behind her, but I noted it all the same.

  “It told me that her children, the elders, carried pieces of her power within them. They are relics of her Primeval power, pieces that were split from the whole when it was trying to hide away a long time ago. That’s why I need to kill all of them. To get all the pieces together and disperse them into the world as it was meant to be…” Even as I said the words, Alex’s eyes looked far away. As I explained things, she was experiencing something else.

  It was the relic… it had to be doing something to her.

  “She talks to me…” Alex blurted out quickly. “She didn’t want me to tell you that…” she struggled as she said it. “But she’s telling me things. Warning me about you…” Alex’s eyes narrowed ever so slightly, like she was guarding herself, but not fully believing the voice inside her head.

  “Hunger is talking to you right now?”

  She slowly nodded, obviously listening to something else at the same time. “She says that you’re supposed to be dead… they killed you a long time ago… and you were never supposed to be here.”

  I took a brief pause, trying to figure out this new dynamic and what it meant. I was never trusting of Hunger, but Myordrakien trusted the deal they made. But again, after Alex’s words, I got a feeling that she was still trying to hang on and make moves to save her ass. I felt within myself, to the other side of this existence, to the darkness where Annihilation waited. I felt a rumble from the depths of my being. It wasn't words, but it was a feeling. Whether it was Myordrakien talking or the fusion that was happening between us, implanting his implied thoughts… I wasn't sure. But I knew what it meant; play along… trust in the bargain… for now.

  “Not me, but what I have inside me…” I corrected.

  “I feel it,” Alex admitted. “Like… some kind of connection between us…”

  “Like a resonance… vibration or something,” I asked, remembering the feeling I got when my Primeval sense bounced back from the elder.

  “Something like that,” Alex said as she analyzed the strange connection she felt between us. “She says that something else came for them after they killed you… It,” she corrected at the end, referring to the monster inside me. “Something she ran from… hiding deep in the ground.” She didn’t know it, but she was speaking about Death.

  It sounded like Alex was getting the same info that I got from the memories Hunger showed me. This might not be a bad thing, and might help her understand me and my role here better. I waited as I saw her far away stare again. I could tell that Hunger was talking to her. I let it continue, trying to allow her to finish explaining things. Trusting in the deal. She had said that we would need a vessel to contain the relics until it was time to disperse her power across the world. Alex was never intended for this… but here we were.

  Then, a twinge of fear shot through my mind. What if Hunger was lying to her, and I couldn’t hear it? What if she could corrupt her somehow, and I wouldn’t be able to stop that from happening?

  I was about to speak out, but I felt another voice roll through my mind that shook me to my core. It wasn't Myordrakien’s ravaging will… but the slow creeping whisper of Death. Not the cell-shaking, powerful voice he commanded me in, but a soft voice that nudged my mind.

  “Let Hunger believe she’s in control. Trust her… for now…” Then his voice was gone.

  It was the same vague feeling I got from my Primeval side. This must be a part of Death’s plan. He wanted this to happen. He knew that Hunger might be plotting against me, but… I remembered things he had said before. He accounted for things I couldn’t. He made moves from so far away that I could never comprehend that role. In that instance… I trusted blindly. I didn’t need anything else. I was here now to serve in this role, to be the Hand of Death in this world. If he needed me to let this play out, I would. Plus, I had a little bit more peace that if I was about to fuck something up, he could speak to me, warn me to stop; in this world at least.

  Then I wondered, could he sense me inside the Pits? Was it cut off from him like the Unseen’s world… that hellfire dimension? The only reason he was able to get in there to help me kill that Primeval was because I carried the Death blade inside the Unseen’s world. Peter Grimwood took me on a one-way ticket trip to be slaughtered by his Primeval. But it didn’t work out like that. We destroyed the Unseen and its domain.

  Images of the hellscape collapsing in on itself replayed through my mind, and it sent a shiver down my spine. If I killed Hunger the same way, would her body crumble? Would St. Louis fall into a hole in the ground, swallowing hundreds of thousands in the process? That’s when I realized the importance of Death taking the blade from me before I went down there. I was thankful he was keeping me on his path. I knew that would not be the path he was aiming for, maintaining the balance and all that. He wouldn’t allow me to fuck up his plans and cause a natural disaster that swallowed the lives of that many people.

  Alex huffed a breath and exhaled, shaking her thoughts free.

  “Certified yapper!” she said, more to herself, with an annoyed tone.

  “What? I asked, snapped up out of my thoughts.

  “It talks a lot…” she winced a little as she said it. “Some of what she’s telling me is… good, but it’s too much. I can kind of… tune her out.” Alex looked like she was focusing on something.

  “So you’re still in control?” I asked.

  “Yeah… but she’s in here… through this relic. She said her other children have cut her off… that we need to find them and kill them all. She probably shouldn’t have said that, because now I know I can do the same.”

  I nodded, trying not to say too much since Death wanted me to allow Hunger to think whatever plans she had were still going her way.

  “So… one down, seven to go,” Alex said, ready to spring back into action. She stood up slowly, twisting and stretching her arms and legs, feeling out her body after the relic took root. Her eyes cut over to a crack in the wall where the sun poured into the dank building. “Well, maybe after sundown…”

  She said it so casually that I realized she didn’t know yet the full extent of what had changed. Hell… I probably didn’t either, but I knew one thing.

  “Alex… you’re different, now. On our way here, you… I walked through the light with you. You didn’t burn.” I tried to just be straightforward to get it out there.

  Her eyes went blank for a moment, and then she cocked her head to the side as she stared at the rays of sun coming in from the decayed wall.

  Alex was hesitant at first, but then she slowly walked over to the wall with no other suggestion. She examined the rays beaming straight in at the angle created by the hole in the wall. She slowly lifted her left hand and carefully brought it up to the border that separated light from darkness. With a few slow breaths and a lot of inner turmoil, she slipped her fingertips gently into the lights, barely testing the waters. She had a look on her face, like confusion and sadness all at the same time. But the moment she was inside the sun, all of it was replaced with that same wonder from before, when she first opened her eyes again.

  “How…” she trailed off, unable to make sense of what was happening. She slowly slipped more of her hand, then her arm, into the sunlight. She shifted her arms, trying the other side to see if there was a difference. It was the same. She wasn’t burning.

  She bolted from place, blurring in a red shift to the doorway that led out to the exterior of the building. I thought she'd sprint right into the light, but she stopped at the border of the shadows. It was like she still didn’t trust it. Like everything she had just done with her arms was a dream that couldn’t be repeated. She mirrored her experiments from inside, and she slowly felt her arms through the edge of light. Then, it was like she melted through that barrier, and she walked fluidly into the light. She stood right in the middle of a sunny spot in the opening beside the factory… like a normal person.

  I could hear her shaky breaths, terrified and overjoyed all at the same time. She didn’t know what it meant… or what it would change. She was just living in that moment, feeling something I couldn’t understand. I had never been restricted in such a way as she had. Being bound in darkness as part of your existence was a vampire problem I didn’t have. So for her… this was something she never thought she’d have again.

  I followed her to the outside area, staying far enough away that she could have this very personal moment without interruption. She looked so full of emotion and excitement as she walked around in the sun that it didn’t feel like it belonged to her. She was always cynical and hated her existence. Now, though, with her face trembling and bare feet walking through the light snow and ice that coated the area… she looked happy.

  Then… she bolted. She disappeared from sight and sprinted in the direction of the city before I realized, standing in shock at it all.

  “Well, shit…” I trailed off, admiring the speed at which she moved.

  She was fast… very fucking fast.

  As I ran after her. I may have broken into a nearby store to re-clothe myself since all I had lingering in the factory was some old, tattered pants that had barely survived a transformation in my early days. My pulse sense made it easy to do this without getting close to people.

  I also got clothes for Alex. Her shirt was basically strings and small patches at this point, and her pants had been pretty much destroyed, also. I grabbed some random shit out of a display that looked about her size, and I continued on my way. If we were caught out in public, normal people would probably call in some kind of complaint about two people running around naked, or close to it. Plus, with the winter setting around the city, it wasn't something normal people would be doing, let alone surviving.

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

  It took me a little while to catch up to where I felt her lingering. She was in a random park, just across the street from some small businesses and a diner. I had followed after her quickly, scouring the city with my pulse sense to get a ping on her. The park was completely covered in a light snow, the benches had a thin sheen of ice that refracted the sunlight in interesting ways.

  She just stood there, breathing in the cold air, basking her full body in the sun like she was on vacation, and it was the first time she’d seen this beautiful expanse. Only this was some no-name park in the middle of St. Louis, smashed up beside some old diner that looked like it had already been through its best days.

  I glanced around, keeping a lookout for people who might see us and get a weird vibe. I saw some people inside the diner glancing out the window, but I don’t think they saw us. They carried on and…

  Just then… something collided with the back of my head. It was a light impact, but it was cold, and wet. I felt it get into every opening in my new coat and shirt, shifting down my neck and back in cold trickles.

  “Mother… fucker…” I whispered as I realized what it was.

  A snowball. A very loose and mostly melted ball of snow that Alex lobbed in my direction. I spun around, annoyed and looked at her. She was still there, slowly packing another one as she laughed to herself, living in some kind of reality that didn’t fit the Alex I knew. She was like a kid, just full of excitement and wonder at this new state of being she was in; being playful enough to throw a snowball at me.

  Before she refocused on her next ball, I had already hurled one at her from where I stood. It creamed her in the side of the face as she had glanced down to get another handful of the slush.

  “You asshole,” I heard her laugh as she flung bits of ice and water from her face with a free hand.

  The next few minutes felt like we were transported back in time. At least that’s what it felt like for me. It reminded me of when I was a kid, and the few times it actually snowed where I was from in Texas. It was a straight-up snowpocalypse. Me and my twin brother, Seth, taking on both my sisters, our parents, and any of the people that lived near us. Throwing snowballs so hard, all day long, that we’d throw out our arms. Nursing them for days from the soreness.

  Alex and I ran in circles, dodging balls of ice, laughing, cussing when we’d get hit from not paying attention. It was… fun. I was breathing heavily after jogging through the park and hiding behind some small metal pillar that held up an awning over some picnic tables. It wasn't from exhaustion or effort; it was excitement. It was… weird to feel that again. Foreign almost to me now, but it was very welcome. I could see it in Alex’s eyes, too. It was something she hadn’t experienced in so long. For a few minutes there in that park… we weren’t monsters. We were unburdened by the truth behind everything… existing as versions of ourselves we had forgotten for so long. We were free.

  However… all things must end, and it was Alex who slowed from the fun. She slowly slung off the wetness from her hands and walked over to me. Her face still at peace, but her mind shifting to something else. She saw the clothes I had dropped into the snow and looked down at herself. The rags she was still wearing were very out of place, reminding her of what had happened down below the city just hours ago. She picked the clothes up out of the snow and blurred out of sight and into the trees at the back of the park.

  A few moments later, a fully clothed Alex strode out of the shadows. She paced past me, brushing my hand with hers to pull me in the direction of the diner across the street. She kept moving as I watched her, now clothed in dark jeans that fit snuggly against her form, a dark green shirt that covered her chest fully, I'm sure she hated that, and a light winter coat. I didn’t grab her shoes, though, and I'm sure that might look weird. But fuck it… I wasn’t her butler.

  I waited a moment before following, keeping about twenty feet between us as she led the way into the diner. The door jingled as she entered. I saw her wipe her feet off on a small rug at the entrance before moving to a table on her own. It was one of the open tables at the front windows that overlooked the park we had just played in. She eyed me through the glass as I approached the front door.

  I pushed through the diner entrance and wiped my feet off on the same small brown rug that had wording made to it. It read, Welcome In. I glanced up from the rug, following the wet bare footprints that led to the table where a red-haired woman sat, still staring out the window.

  I sat down in the booth across from her, watching her gaze out the window. She was looking into the park, staring at where we just were, but not. I think she was thinking about something else… or maybe listening to Hunger again.

  “I used to come here…” Alex said randomly. She sifted her gaze back to me for a moment. “Before… you know.”

  I nodded, knowing she meant before she was turned into a vampire… when she was human.

  “My folks would bring us here when I was little. Though it looks different… older,” Alex noted as she gazed around at the peeling wallpaper and cluttered knick-knacks.

  “I’m sure it's been a while,” I said.

  “I think about this place a lot… I think that’s why I came here. It’s closed at night… so I can never come here… not usually. It’s some of the only good memories I still have of my family… before I lost them.”

  I nodded but didn’t understand., It didn’t seem like she was talking about becoming a vampire.

  “Lost them?” I asked, showing my confusion.

  “They didn’t approve of Jerry, or the motorcycles, or his friends. MY dad was furious when he found out. Mom was more… understanding,” she tried to find the right word. “She told me that she had a rebellious streak in her youth… and that I just needed to get it out of my system.” Alex smiled to herself as she remembered the painful memories. It was hard to figure out what she was going through in that moment. “The tattoos really set her off, though. That was when she started giving out ultimatums.”

  I nodded, not wanting to interrupt or say the wrong thing. But I was also just watching her, trying to see if Hunger or the relic was doing anything to her. I sent out pulse waves into her as she sat there talking. I was listening but also examining, to make sure it was still her in control. If I could even tell that about this new situation.

  “They never gave Jerry a chance… and that was all I needed to know. Dad would never meet him, Mom met him once, but said Dad wouldn’t approve. I started spending time with them at their club… the bar where it happened,” she spoke of the night she was turned. “Some nights I would stay with Jerry, not even telling them where I was. That’s when it really fell apart. Mom wasn't as understanding as before.”

  Alex stopped for a moment, shifted a little more to the middle of her side of the booth, and closed her eyes, like she was reliving something. “It happened right here. Mom and I met… she wanted to talk me into speaking with Dad again. She said that he wanted me home… that he only wanted what was best for me.” Alex motioned to where I sat. “She sat right there… and she said, ‘you either come home with me right now… put all this behind you… or don’t ever come home again.’” Her words shook for a moment at the end, like even now, her mother's words hurt her.

  A silence fell between us as I felt the weight of what she was in. She came here, not just for the good memories, but for one so powerfully bad that it was a cornerstone of who she was. It was… hard to wrap my head around.

  “So was Jerry…” I tried to ask, but she already knew where I was going.

  “Jerry was real. He was a man… through and through. His father had beaten him a lot growing up. He was a biker too, it's where Jerry got it from, but his dad had a drinking problem and a bad attitude toward his family. Jerry killed him one night…” her words fell like an executioner's blade. We sat there in it for a moment. “His dad was beating him and his mother really bad one night. Jerry was around fifteen, I think. But he shot him dead. It was all in the papers back then, and my dad knew about Jerry from that.”

  “How did you meet him?” I asked, truly interested.

  “We met by chance, at the library of all places,” Alex laughed musically at the memory. It was nice to hear her happy about something. “It was totally random, but we kept going back to see each other. That’s how I got to know him so much without mom and dad finding out. They just thought I was at the library studying for school.”

  “You said once that he was older than you by a few years, right?” I asked, remembering past conversations.

  She nodded with a smile, proud to talk about Jerry. “He was about three years older, but he was very respectful of the difference, not some sex-crazed hoodlum like my dad thought. They thought I was blind to his ways, falling in with a degenerate like a naive child. Jerry was… mature. He had to be to survive his household back in his younger days. It forged him into a tougher, sterner person.”

  “So when your parents kept saying you couldn’t see him…”

  “It just pissed me off,” She said quickly. “They didn’t know Jerry like I did. He was very aware that my parents didn’t like him, but he didn’t let it get to him. He also didn’t want to get me into any trouble with them, offering to take me home when he knew they were out looking for me. But I just wanted to be with him. He made me feel at home in a way that I didn’t. I didn’t have to pretend to be like one of the cookie-cutter girls at school. I just wanted to be me… and felt like I could be with Jerry. His buddies were all so welcoming to me, treating me like a sister they never had. I started spending more time there at their club than with my own friends from school.”

  “Is that where you got these?” I slowly pointed over to her exposed wrist, just the hint of one of her tattoos showing from beneath her jacket sleeve.

  Alex lifted her arms, shimmying her coat off so she could show me all her tattoos with real enthusiasm. She pointed to a skull with two purple orbs where the eyes should be, drawn over her inner forearm.

  “Jerry had a buddy named Tim who ran a tattoo shop. He’d do them for us for cheap, or just a case of beer. This was my first… supposed to represent their club, the Wraiths.”

  I nodded, “Wraiths? Any kind of connection to our world?”

  “Yeah… someone just thought it was cool,” Alex laughed at the honest truth.

  She flipped her arms over in all different directions, explaining to me the different reasons for the different tattoos throughout her time with Jerry. They were like a story, each one a representation of something they had done or experienced together. She even had one tucked inside her right elbow that represented her family, after they disowned her. It was a small red heart that was wrapped in barbed wire and enveloped in flames. It was probably only the size of a quarter, nestled right beside a familiar-looking guy wielding a scythe.

  “It was supposed to be something like: the heart was my family, the barbed wire wrapped around, but stabbing the heart was the bonds that kept us together, and then the flames were the pain and anger that I felt from it all. The fire that burnt all of us from the situation with me, Jerry, Mom, and Dad.” She looked at me quickly, catching herself. “I know, I know, real artsy kind of stuff.” She said it like she was preparing for me to make fun of her or laugh about it like we usually did.

  “No, no, I'm interested,” I said quickly. I didn’t think it was the time to start making light of the situation.

  “Well,” she continued, still gauging if I had some smartass remark to throw at her. “We were into that kind of symbolism back then. Jerry had all kinds of tattoos for things. His entire arms, back, and neck were covered. I only had my full sleeves and the few connecting them on my back.”

  I looked at them all, realizing at one point they had been individual tattoos that weren’t part of a whole, but the connections came later. I reached out and touched Alex’s arm in between two distinct sections of ink to the wispy lines that seemed like designs between the images.

  “What would you call this part?” I said as I touched her firm skin.

  Once I knew I was done with my arms, Tim wanted to connect everything… said it would bring it all together. Jerry already had something similar done, so I agreed. I loved how they turned out,” she spoke more to herself, like she was reliving the first moment she saw the finished product, examining all the ink again, and the memories they brought.

  We sat in silence again, staring between her arms, the empty table, and the window out to the park. During the deep conversations about her past, the waitress walked up and took an order from us. We got coffees and I told the waitress to bring us a shitload of sugars and stuff. I knew how I liked things, extremely sweet or sour. Alex was the same way, so we’d make some drinks that could induce a diabetic shock.

  We sat there, slowly drinking the piping hot coffee. She didn’t look at peace anymore, still calm and reminiscent, but conflicted with something inside. I sensed all around and throughout her… she seemed like herself. Changed… but still Alex.

  “After they disowned me, I never went back to my family. I lived with Jerry for a few years, moving on and hating my mother for what she said… my father for making her do it. I was so angry back then. But then… when it happened… when those vampires came to the club and slaughtered all my friends; when they took everything from me… I wasn’t… me anymore.” She said it with a cold embrace of acceptance. I could almost see reality slipping back into her face. She lifted her arms for a second, “All this... the tattoos, the diner, the park… all these memories are from the girl I used to be… before I became this thing. After I was turned, I tried to go back to my mom and dad, to show them that I was alive, and ask for their help. I didn’t know what vampires were back then, so I didn’t know what I was,” she admitted. “All I knew was that I had slaughtered those monsters with my bare hands… like a ravenous animal. I drank their blood like it was the air I needed to breathe. I became something else inside the club… among the bodies of all my friends… of Jerry.” She was quiet for a moment, remembering things. “But when I went back… all I felt was the thirst… and the urge to drink my parents dry.”

  I knew that feeling. Returning to only figure out that the people you sought so desperately had become something else when you stood before them. They were… prey… a resource to feed the urges, thirst, need, whatever you wanted to call it. The monster inside wanted them for something else. We had both felt that pain.

  “I made a decision back then. I vowed to myself that I would stay away from my family. I had to. If I didn’t, I knew that all of the anger and resentment I had towards them would amplify my urges, and I would eventually kill them. I had to disconnect, to become emotionless in a way to keep myself from humans… from my parents. TO hunt only vampires, I had to become a machine… targeting only one thing, and staying away from humans as much as possible,” she explained her mindset from back then. “The first few years were hard, but after a while… things became routine. I stopped hungering in general for blood, but craving vampire blood specifically. It's more potent, tastes better to me, and makes me stronger than them.” She stopped speaking, shaking her head like she was trying to shake certain thoughts away. Then she got back to her main point. “I never spoke to my parents again. I knew they were around, but I never went to them. I kept an eye on them every now and then, but as long as they were safe… I stayed away.”

  As soon as she said the last part, I felt us coming full circle to something. It was something she had said to me many times.

  “They lived a full life, as happy as they could be after losing a daughter. But they lived…” Alex reiterated. “That’s why you need to stay away from the Chasses.”

  There it was.

  “They’re hunters, Alex… they’re already in this…” I said, explaining why I thought it was different.

  “A few days ago… I might have actually seen things your way. But feeling this,” She lifted her arm to point into her chest. “Feeling what I have inside me, hearing Hungers voice…”

  I looked at Alex and raised a finger to tell her to be careful as her voice rose a little. I looked around at the people in the area, just a few old folks eating their midday meals. No real threats… but you never knew.

  “This is all beyond them… you carry more than they are ready for. If you bring this on them… they won't survive this kind of power. The threat you pose to normal people is too big to just think things will work out. Look at me… just one of those elders could have killed me with a single move. There are seven more of them out there… and we have no idea who they are… or what they can do.”

  I shook my head at her words. I felt the same sense of annoyance I always felt when she spoke about this, but less now. Maybe that was because I had merged more mentally with my old human self and the Primeval of Annihilation, both of us becoming more one than ever before. Still, I felt the same need to cling to my friends… to everything they meant to me. Although I couldn’t deny that there was a part of me now that was highly aware of how big my world had gotten, and how dangerous it was for those still bound in the human world.

  But the trick was… that’s where I wanted to be. Past all the bullshit, the danger, all the urges, and everything… I just wanted to live small… be a part of a family like the one Alex was talking about having with Jerry. For just a split second out in the park, throwing snowballs with her… I felt that… and I think she did too.

  She eyed me with this look that I couldn’t place, slowly smirking to herself. I felt something pulse between us… that same resonance that I felt when connecting to her or the elder with my pulse sense, though it didn’t come from me using my sense. I think she had just done something… and I felt a bridge between us. A Primeval connection… something ancient, yet new.

  Alex stood quickly, her mood shifting instantly from the serious quiet of our deep conversation to a playful wryness that confused me. She walked straight to the door, and it jingled open. I sat there in shock for a moment at the abruptness of her departure. So did the waitress, and a few old folks who still poked at their bacon and eggs. I saw her run away through the park and back into the trees where she had changed out of her rags. Her whole mood shifted again, from seriousness to something playful.

  From the depths of the trees, I heard her speaking to me, “Come find me…”

  My senses picked her up easily, speaking to me not just across the distance to my enhanced senses, but somehow… instinctively, she was speaking through this weird Primeval bond that we now shared. We were connected somehow, but not in the way that I resonated with the elder before we killed it, or the other elders still out there. It was different somehow… charged with something.

  I was hesitant at first, feeling a storm of emotions burn through me from her words at the table, and now this strange shift in her personality. Then, more followed.

  “Let me see what you’re really made of…” Her words filled my senses with more than just audible noise. There was some kind of intent that rode along with her banter. It was playful… and competitive. No… that wasn’t the right word… it was tension of some kind. Like she wanted to test her new strength and power, but also something else more… urgent and primal.

  I stood, and I moved after her. The same primal urge in my mind pushed me forward, my pulse sense echoing out into the city to feel the resonance of her location. I was going to find her… but then… I don’t know what would happen.