It was night again. Many nights had come and gone after my talk with Carter. I hadn’t heard from anyone, not Frank, not Carter, not Autumn. However, I didn’t expect to hear from her again… not unless it had something to do with the family, or a hunt. I was numb to it now, forcing that truth and all the emotions that came with it to the depths beneath the monster. The Primeval was good at occupying the forefront of my mind, blocking out and eclipsing any other problems I had. He was the ultimate reason for everything, my greatest problem… trial, current predicament. So I carried on, hoping for a name and a vision… something to give me purpose.

  Yet, purpose never came. At least not in the way I thought.

  I was in Forest Park, the open expansive fields speckled with trees near the zoo, which was all but empty at this hour of the night. The only others lingering in the area were young kids up to no good and the few monsters that lurked in the shadows. I caught a whiff of a vampire somewhere near one of the running trails through the massive park. I figured, why waste a good opportunity?

  I expanded my senses, forging them into a single force that sought out this vampire. My sense of smell, hearing, and sight all overlaid together into one presence that surged outward toward the origin of the blood concentration I smelled. It wasn’t just the sum of the parts when my senses came together, but each one amplified the other, creating an exponential effect that I was slowly starting to master. This was the pulse sense I had been practicing for a little while now. It was becoming easier to activate on the fly, outside of a vision and the hunting process that came with it. As all of my attention focused in the direction I knew the creature was, a sensory pulse shot out of my mind and surrounded me quickly, followed by a high-pitched ring in my mind that shifted my attention to an exact spot.

  As soon as this new ringing started, I had to move. It was so grating on my ears, and my mind also, that I had to get there as fast as possible, if only to just stop the fucking noise rattling my brain.

  I moved through the park about a quarter mile from where I started, only to find my prey cornering its own. The vampire was female, blonde-haired, blue-eyed, with a wicked grin on her fanged face. She was barefoot, wearing a blue dress that only fell to her mid-thighs with a single strap across one of her shoulders. It was very revealing, showing a lot of skin. It reminded me of something Alex might wear behind the bar.

  “What’s wrong?” She asked a young man while pouting a fake sad face. She had lured him in, gotten him alone, and cornered him before exposing what she was. “You don’t want me anymore?” She teased, leaning forward slightly to expose her cleavage and mock him after he listened to his baser instincts. She dripped faux sadness into her voice and movements, shrugging theatrically.

  The young Hispanic guy’s heart was about to explode; he was so afraid of her supernatural features: her twisted visage, her razor-sharp claws that were still painted a very pretty blue, now lengthened to kill. Then there were her deadly fangs, sharp and terrifying, which had him in fight or flight mode. However, his body couldn’t determine what he was going to do, so he just stood there frozen in fear.

  “What the fuck?” He said shakily under his breath. “What is this?” He asked as he tried to step away from her to the side a little. Not fleeing, just moving slightly in confusion, unsure of what to do.

  She countered his footsteps to keep him blocked into the small alcove and the trees near a little pond of water.

  “Oh no, you’re not leaving me. You promised me a night I’d remember,” she mocked his previous statements. “I need to remember this… I want to remember this,” she was really laying it on thick, acting like this guy was some young stud that was about to rock her world, really playing the part.

  She reached out for his jacket collar, grabbed him half-heartedly just to watch him squirm and lean backwards away from her monstrous form. She was just playing with him. But I could tell she was soon ready to stop playing games and take him right there in the open. She’d do it quickly, before another passerby would see, and then she'd have to deal with that.

  I had had enough of watching. It was time for me to have a little fun. I moved through the shadows completely unseen by her. Whether it was my own innate ability to evade and slip through the senses of others, or she was just so focused on this young man, I was unsure. In any case, once I was standing about five feet behind her, she took notice, already too late to do anything to escape my grasp. She let go of the young guy and turned to face me.

  I always appeared human when I tamped down the monstrous power within me to hide amongst the monsters. So she had no idea what had come for her.

  “What do we have here, another friend to play with?” She tried to act intrigued and in control. But I could sense the worry she hid behind her mask. I had gotten the jump on her, and she had no idea until it was too late. “I guess I could make this work. But there’s only one of little old me to go around. What am I going to do against two strapping young men?” She loved it. It seemed like all of this was right up her alley, a little play she put on quite often from the look of it.

  Honestly, I was growing tired of it.

  I looked around her at the guys still shaking in fear. I spoke very calmly and as clearly as possible. “If you want to run, now is your chance.”

  His eyes shot open wide as his brain registered my words. He gave a quick glance towards the blonde vampire before twisting around and hauling ass right around the edge of the alcove. He very ungracefully stomped through mud and water on his way out of the danger.

  The blonde vampire girl gave her best pouty face and looked at me like she was let down. “Now, why would you go and do that? Now I have to spend less time with you. I’m going to have to stop him before he gets too far. A lot stricter rules here nowadays,” she said as she stepped forward towards me. I saw the muscles in her exposed flesh start to tighten and clench down as she prepared for an attack, but she didn’t get a chance to.

  I felt the monster roiling inside me like a storm. It had been agitated ever since I got the text from Autumn. The words it had spoken to me, “Hunger… Kill…” had long faded. But I could still feel the same unspoken will behind them. It wanted what it wanted, and it only amplified each day that passed when I didn’t feed it. He wanted death… and Myordrakien could sense the creature in front of me. Murderous intent started to spill out of me… filling the area with something palpable. Something this vampire was starting to feel; looking more and more like a helpless victim by the second, her monstrous fa?ade fading.

  I cranked my fist back as fast as I could and swung with all my might. I punched her in the chest, trying to blow through her sternum and destroy her heart with a single motion. It was more of a test of my strength and speed than anything else in the moment. Unfortunately, she was able to shift her weight around as I swung at her and raised an arm to partially block me. I heard the slight crunching of bone as her limb absorbed the impact and she went flying through the air. It reminded me of hitting a balloon at a birthday party; still intact for the most part, but I had just pushed it away. She sailed and flipped through the air, unable to control herself. She ricocheted off a small tree at the water's edge before splashing into the small pond.

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  She hit the water, and a large splash went out as she submerged beneath the water. I gritted my teeth and cursed under my breath, wishing I had chosen a different attack, because I didn’t want to get wet.

  In just a split second, she was back up to the surface, treading water a few feet out from the edge, staring at me with bloodshot crimson eyes. She felt the strength in that hit. Now she knew she wasn’t standing amongst another human to consume for food. She was about to fight something inhuman, like herself. However, she seemed unafraid, just angry. She swam quickly to the side and launched herself back up to dry ground.

  “I’m going to kill you,” she said, not caring who or what I was. She lowered herself into a more active fighting stance, ready to take me on.

  I was honestly a little impressed at the balls she had to stand up against me after I shattered her arm and flung her across the area.

  My attention shifted to my right as the pond itself exploded. A large form of something much bigger than me was almost ejected from the water. It took us both by surprise, as even the vampire woman couldn’t respond in time before this new creature descended on her.

  I didn’t know what the fuck it was at first, but I quickly started seeing the details. All I saw was a blur of limbs… long, glistening, and jointed. There was a nightmarish mass of chitin, the color of rotted bark. Its shell was ridged and hairy, like a grotesque, armored coat with hundreds of bristling fibers twitching as it moved. The joints moved too fluidly, too purposefully, like it wanted to be seen… like it knew we were watching. Its face, if you could call it that, was a nightmare of clustered eyes, beady and soulless, reflecting the moonlight in tiny pinpricks. But worst of all was the maw. It wasn’t just a mouth… it was a grinder of interlocking spines, twitching open in anticipation, glistening with venom and bits of meat from some earlier kill.

  It directed itself towards the vampire girl as this massive fucker shot out of a pond like a trapdoor spider, slamming into the drenched bloodsucker.

  She had no time to do anything before the full weight of this absolute terror slammed her to the ground. Two of its front legs speared clean through her; one just under her collarbone, the other punching through her lower gut and out her back. Then that horrible mouth descended. It clamped around her midsection with an audible snap, followed by the grotesque, crackling rip of bone and flesh being torn in half. A huge chunk of her torso vanished in a mess of blackened blood and shredded muscle. I heard a scream, but it was the faintest thing I had probably ever heard from a dying supernatural.

  After it had already pulled away, a faint glowing red light emanated from its facial area. What looked like streams of blood or streaks of ethereal red light shot between the decimated form of the girl and into this massive spider’s mouth. There was no physical contact, but like a flow of a river going from one place to another. It was accompanied by a strange ringing hiss that started as the many eyes on the spider’s face narrowed… focusing.

  I noticed that the vampire girl’s body was completely unmoving. I don’t know if she was paralyzed or already dead. The surprise of this sudden attack threw me off, and I lost my focus on the blonde-haired girl. I was more intrigued than anything else… frozen in unbelief at this literal monster.

  Parts of the girl’s body started to wither and turned into a strange husk of colorless, bloodless tissue. I watched as her entire body was siphoned away, and she was nothing more than a mummified corpse with a huge chunk missing out of her torso. In a few short moments in the darkness of Forest Park… the vampire had been slain in a way I had never seen.

  The spider clattered around on its eight legs, spinning around to face me quickly before pouncing. Before I knew it, the nasty fucker was already coming for me next. It was huge, the size of a damn pickup truck. It sailed towards me in the dark shadows of Forest Park, aiming for my impending doom. However, it didn’t know who it was fucking with… and I didn’t hold back.

  I jumped towards it, raising my right foot, and put every ounce of strength I had into it. I kicked it in its face just above its open maw… right in the eyes. A squelching noise came from beneath my boot as I busted many of its eyes. We parted with the kick, and it shot in a new trajectory back towards the pond. A faint hissing squeal emanated from it as it sailed away from me.

  It landed in the water back where it came from, and I was ready for it to attack again. But as soon as my senses picked it up under the water, I saw it fleeing. It wasn’t looking for a fight after that quick exchange; it was running back to wherever it had come from. I wasn’t going to let it get away that easily, though.

  This was a straight-up monster. Not just in name but in form. This was the first time I had seen an actual creature like this. Every other time I interacted with some kind of monster, it was humanoid in nature, except for the massive form of the Unseen Primeval in its hidden realm. Even the werewolves were humanoid. The devourers were humanoid. This spider was something out of a B-rated 80’s horror film.

  Being as big as it was, it posed a significant threat to any living being in the vicinity. So, I gave chase, ready to take this thing out. But more than that, I wanted to see where it would try and go. Where had it come from? And why hadn’t I seen anything like it before?

  I followed it into the water as my senses exploded, tracking any sign of it through the disturbed bubble-filled world beneath the pond. I could sense the disturbed path that it had taken; the water's current was disrupted from the spider's retreat.

  As I dove into the pond and swam like hell underwater, I realized quickly that this wasn’t just a pond. This was connected… There were tunnels, tunnels that connected all of the bodies of water in Forest Park. It had squeezed its body inside a tunnel of murky water and was still inside. I swam down, not impaired in the least by the change in our arena. My senses remained sharp as I tracked it with my pulse sense. I powered my way into the tunnel. The water was murky, but it was starting to clear in the tunnel. I knew the moment that it saw me, because it made a sound underwater that sounded angry at my intrusion on its territory.

  I gripped the walls of the tunnel to help propel myself forward faster through the water. The moment I started closing in on it, it scurried even deeper into the tunnel. It was fleeing from me. Then, it disappeared out the end into another larger open body of water. I followed, coming out and slowing as my momentum entered the larger expanse of liquid. I sensed the spider move further away near the edge, where the pond met the land.

  When I reached the surface, I saw a bunch of neon signs lit up in a structure at the water's edge. It was a restaurant, a bar, or something. The hum of voices filled my ears… There were people everywhere, and none of them were in a panic. It seemed… uneventful… silent. The only thing that I actively noticed was how bright the surface of the water was as it reflected the many different neon lights.

  The world was completely calm around me… no sign of a spiny monstrosity ripping and tearing through the civilized world above the water’s surface. They either didn’t see the spider, or it didn’t leave the surface of the water, and it was still down below. However, I saw something near the edge of a small wooden dock that told me otherwise.

  Some fresh foot and handprints climbed up the wooden dock and walked away towards the restaurant. The handprint started off as small, jagged lines that were carved into the wood, which were also dripping with water. However, those lines turned into small wet handprints. Then, the prints walked down the length of the dock towards a gravelly path. The feet were too small… like the feet of a woman or a kid.

  The realization came upon me quickly, and as soon as it did, I retreated back into the water. Whatever that spider was, it could transform… shapeshift into a humanoid form.

  Was it a spider turning into a human, or was it a human that could transform into a big ass spider?

  I was unsure. But I knew that if they could transform, it could be hiding in plain sight at the restaurant, or could have already made its escape through the crowd.

  I glanced around as I lowered myself back into the water, trying to be as quiet as possible. However, I didn’t see anything obvious. Everyone around looked so normal. I slowly submerged myself back underwater and retreated to a less populated area of Forest Park. I had to make myself scarce before someone saw a black-eyed man with a murderous aura swimming in the dark… very close to where a body was lying… mummified.