Carter had to go home once we were ready to leave the bar and meet Charles. Eleanor had called, said she needed him to come home. Shelta had called Eleanor in the middle of the night while we were out. After looking into the situation surrounding her nephew, Patrick, and Autumn, she’d seen something. She hadn’t told the details over the phone.

  “I’ll check it out… see what she found out. But don’t be too nervous, Sam.” Carter could see the worry on my face and was trying to dull the stress he could obviously see on my face. “If it was bad, she’d have told us more over the phone. El and I will look into it.”

  Carter didn’t have more than that, just that quiet, heavy look like he didn’t want to go yet… but had no choice. He could see the seriousness and a sort of… finality, about what I was doing. This wasn't just some hunt. I was going down into the source of the darkness.

  “If you can…” Carter looked back as he was starting to leave, “Try to see us one more time… before you head down there.” He said the words, but we both knew that wouldn’t happen.

  “I’ll try.” But I didn’t promise. If Charles agreed to help me, everything would move fast; too fast for goodbyes. “Take care of Autumn… And if Peter did something to her with that brush… I'll be there when I get back,” I struggled.

  My human side tried to squeeze out this small sentiment, but it was all I could say with everything warring inside of me. The monster was too ferocious in my mind, too good at eclipsing my human side… trying to take over everything.

  In a few short moments, it was just me and Martin, trekking through a part of town that felt like it had been abandoned in the early morning hours. Streetlights hummed above cracked pavement. Cold air crawled in through the seams of our coats as it whipped faintly down the streets and between buildings. Everything smelled like decay to me… the dead trees throughout the city, their discarded leaves that blew through the streets. All of it was tied to the cold grasp that killed or dimmed almost all greenery with its light frost. The hour was dead, past 4 a.m. Everywhere was quiet… only the monsters roaming at this hour.

  Martin glanced up at a chipped, plaster sign above a glass door that looked like it hadn’t been cleaned in months. He motioned with his head into a darkened alley beside the small diner that we had arrived just beside.

  “We stop here,” he said, his voice low and cautious as he got me into the shadows and off the streets. “I’ll go in first and speak with him. He might need some calming words before you bombard him with your request,” Martin was blunt. “He’ll be worried about his family.”

  I gave a nod, though I barely heard him. The thing inside me was stirring again, clouding my mind with a fog that refused to clear until I had fully planted this next step and spoke with Charles. The monster… it wanted to move; to dig and descend into the pits. Charles was the key, and I could feel the Primeval part of me clenching, grasping mentally for the man who was mere feet from my position. But I had to hold back; let Martin do his thing to try and get Charles to help me. If I just went straight at him… he was liable to say fuck you, not wanting to risk anything with his own family.

  I leaned back against the alley wall as Martin went in. Broken glass crunched beneath his boots as he rounded the corner out of sight. The door let out a dull chime as he entered, then silence. It was just me now, shrouded in the darkness like a predator lying in wait.

  That was when I heard it. A sound like metal scraping across bricks above me somewhere, quick and violent. Then the air whistled with a rush as a red blur descended from the rooftop like a blade. I barely got my head up before the full weight of her slammed into my chest. The blow cracked against me hard enough to throw me through the alley, spine smashing against cold brick before I hit the ground. It wasn't enough to hurt me, but it was enough to rock my body weight off my feet.

  My talons were already halfway out before I saw the hair fall around me; thick crimson strands coiling over my face like spilled blood. The weight on top of me didn’t move, but pinned me to the ground. Her thighs clamped tight around my hips, her fingers stabbing into my shoulders. Her breath ghosted against my cheek. It was Alex.

  Her eyes burned, not with rage but… something playful but sharp. She wasn’t here to actually attack me… just annoy me. She wanted to play a game.

  Her grin twisted as she leaned in close, just a whisper away from my throat. “Did I startle you?” She seemed excited… it was weird, and very out of character. She was pressing herself against me very… very closely. I could feel every inch of her firm body smashing against mine: her coiled legs, the taught muscles… so many other things.

  I didn’t answer right away. Just stared up at her, expression empty, every muscle in my body locked down to keep from reacting. My heart thudded once. Then again, louder… louder… it beat hard like when I could feel the Primeval heartbeat from out in the fields; yet this time it felt more… personal. It was like the Primeval and I were intertwined more… it influenced my own thoughts and pushed more… human urges forward. The monster inside me wanted to break loose and show her what true strength looked like… to…

  No… stop…

  “What are you doing?” I asked, flat, trying not to sense the way her body against mine felt.

  Her smile widened, like she was trying to provoke something worse out of me. “I’ve been thinking for a while now… wondering if I could get the jump on you?”

  I gritted my teeth… struggling not to rise to it; knowing what she was doing and trying to keep the Primeval on a short leash was… taxing. We stayed like that for a moment in the shadows of the alley. She sensed something in my eyes, which were completely blacked out, and then she leaned up a little, her hair falling to one side as she held herself on top of me, her tattooed arms holding herself up on my shoulders.

  “What’s the matter?” she whispered, and then with a mischievous smile, began sliding lower.

  Her arms let go of my shoulders, no longer pinning me with force… just gravity and proximity. She let her full weight settle on top of me, her large breasts that she used as lures for vampires pressed deliberately against me… the loose neck of her shirt opening to expose more of her skin to me. Her skin was warm through the thin fabric, soft and… vulnerable in a sense that didn’t match what I knew about Alex. Her breath was even warmer than I imagined as it brushed against my cheek. She was close… too close, and I didn’t understand what this was. Her eyes ran red, staring into mine, watching me watch her. She was studying my reaction. Her smirk lingered just inches from my lips.

  “You don’t like being this close?” she cooed mockingly, her tone velvet-soft but laced with venom. A tease… or maybe it was a dare.

  I didn’t move. My jaw was tight, teeth locked together, not from fear… but from the war happening in my mind. My human side… well, at least it was the rational side, was trying to keep its footing, trying to stay calm and cold. But something darker inside me… it had other ideas. I wanted to say it was just the monster… but I knew the truth. Part of me… Sam wanted this…

  I could feel it pushing at the back of my mind, whatever this strange combination of feelings was stirred with Myordrakien’s urges. That’s when I realized, the monster wasn’t recoiling from her closeness… it was leaning in. It was breathing deeper, wanting. Not in the romantic sense; no, this was something ancient and animal… something primeval. It wanted to take. It whispered how easy it would be… how she was already right here, warm and straddling me like prey that thought itself predator. And worse than that… I didn’t know if it was only the monster. If I were honest with myself… we wanted to take her in every way!

  Alex had always had that way about her: the power, the confidence, the reckless heat she dragged into every hunt and fight I had been a part of with her. She was dangerous, not just for other vampires, no question. But it wasn’t just the kind of danger you fought in this supernatural world. It was the kind you let close, just to see how far it would go, even when you knew you shouldn’t.

  I tried to keep my face flat, my gaze cold, even as she leaned further in, her low-cut shirt exposing so much of the shape of her chest from this angle… taunting. My eyes dropped repeatedly as my will broke, then recovered, only to break again.

  “What are you doing here, Alex?” I asked, voice quiet but sharp as I was trying to cut through the tension.

  She didn’t answer. Not right away. Instead, she hovered there; her lips parted slightly, her weight still pressing against mine, the air between us charged like something was about to explode. Then slowly, languidly, she pulled back. Only a little.

  “You’re no fun,” she said, the same wicked smile still playing on her face. “Always so tense. It’s almost cute.”

  She rose onto her knees, straddling me still, and then, without warning, her hand cracked across my face. It was a loud, sharp slap. My head jerked slightly to the side from the impact, the sting immediate, but shallow. It was calculated.

  She was already laughing as she stepped off me, putting distance between us like it was part of some private performance. I think she truly wanted to create some distance, unsure if I would retaliate.

  She ran a clawed hand slowly through the river of blood she called hair as she groomed it to fall over one shoulder. She turned her back slightly, glancing over her shoulder with that same rueful, biting grin. Her fangs slipped past the even line of her other teeth before she spoke. Her boots clicked softly against the wet pavement as she shifted her weight from one foot to the other.

  “That,” she said, motioning to her chest with her chin, “was for looking.”

  I let out a quiet breath, trying not to show the heat that had bloomed in my face; rage or desire, I couldn’t tell which. Maybe both. I stared down at the ground, just long enough to pull the beast back into its cage, to steel myself. I didn’t want to give her the satisfaction for… whatever this had been. She was trying to do something to me… even if it was just to mess with me in some way.

  When I looked back up, my eyes had gone colder, back to the emotionless voids I had kept them in before she leaped from the rooftop.

  I didn’t step toward her, didn’t rise to her bait again. I just stood, brushing the alley grime from my coat and straightening.

  “What do you want?” I asked again, quieter this time, but with more weight. “Why are you here?”

  She tilted her head, almost admiring the restraint in me like it was some quaint little miracle. Her smile faded slightly, not gone, just resting in the corners of her mouth.

  “Maybe I just wanted to see how far you’d go with little old me,” she said.

  And then, for a split second, we were both silent. Just watching each other as we both knew why she was truly here.

  “You’re starting to sound like that bitch in the blue dress,” I spat at her. “The one that spider took a fucking bite out of.”

  “Is that supposed to be an insult?” Alex asked with a scoff. “As much as I wanted to kill her, she was pretty hot!” Her words were her unadulterated, honest opinion.

  I just shook my head, unsure what was up with her attitude, but I also needed another minute or two to calm down. She had riled me up, and the monster, in many ways.

  “I told you I want to go down to the pits. I took it that, when Martin left the bar with you and Carter, you’d be aiming to meet Charles. I tagged along from a distance… trying to see if I could follow you without being noticed. Can’t have you leaving me behind,” she said with an unashamed look on her face.

  I just stared at her for a moment, slightly more annoyed that she had just imposed her presence on what I had going on. She was following me. I figured she’d continue following me until I made it into the pits. So, whether I wanted it or not… it seemed like she was coming with me.

  “I saw Carter leave Martin’s bar just before you two,” Alex noted. “What were you doing with him?” Her tone shifted as she inquired about what she saw. “Did he really have to be there? Or did you need to talk to him about their affairs again?”

  I already knew why she was asking. She told me I should distance myself from the Chasse family. At least in a way that didn’t put me as close as I had been since they learned my secret, and had traded my life for Eleanor’s. Alex had strong opinions… but she didn’t know everything. She wasn’t me.

  “You knew I went to find him. He got hold of Martin when we couldn’t,” I said, annoyed.

  Alex stayed silent for a moment, glaring at me with her eyes open a little bit wider than normal. It wasn’t a surprise look; it was more of an analyze-every-single-thing-I-said-and-did kind of look. Like she was my teacher, and she was grading the results of my work.

  We looked at each other in silence for a few moments; neither of us was able to find words to bridge the gap of silence. After the mention of my time with Carter, we both fell silent, and the whole mood shifted.

  Her playful demeanor had vanished, and now she was more introverted with her thoughts, becoming closer to the Alex I knew. It was odd because she was never this playful and physically close to me before. She was normally the polar opposite of that; standoffish and annoyed. Her whole attitude seemed to have shifted recently, and these last few encounters we had together were… odd. The way she held me down seemed very intentional, like she was testing me more than the monster inside of me. Seeing what I’d do, or if she could pull me in with her usual tricks and physical appearance, like she could with the vampires she hunted and killed.

  Thankfully, Martin returned outside with Charles in tow. The old black vampire came down to the alley with the even older silver-haired vampire. When they rounded the corner and saw both Alex and me there, they didn’t break stride or ask any questions. That actually surprised me. I wasn’t sure if Martin knew she was trailing us or knew she would turn up. Charles didn’t question it either, but he seemed not to care in any way. His demeanor was not casual.

  In that moment, four of the deadliest creatures in St. Louis met together in a dark alleyway. It was pitch-black and half frozen from the winter that had crept in, and thankfully, it was hidden from the rest of the world. It was only us there as we spoke about my plans.

  Charles began without a word from me, “You wish to go down to the pits?”

  “Yes,” I said without hesitation. “I’ve tried to find a way in ever since I knew there was something else down there. I can’t get in. I’ve chased things around down there, but it’s only ever ended with them getting away, and leaving me ghosted in a dead end.”

  Charles nodded in understanding. “Yeah, that makes sense. It isn’t just about knowing the way; it’s about having access.”

  “How do I get that?”

  “You don’t just get access, Sam. You have to be given it by an Elder. The pits are not just a location. They are a domain. The remnants of something far older than this city, even this world as we know it. When you have access, it will open up for you. You cannot get in on your own.”

  He knew a sliver of the real truth. However, even Charles was uninformed about the Primeval aspect of the pits.

  “But you can?” I asked, knowing where he was going with this.

  “I… I can,” he murmured, eyes distant, voice barely holding steady. “But if I go down there with you… they’ll know. They’ll see me with you, and that’ll be all it takes. They’ll kill me. Not quickly or cleanly, and after that… they’ll come for my family. I know they will. They already suspect. I’ve seen the way they watch me when I am down there. I’ve heard the silence when my name is spoken. If I move now, if I choose you over staying hidden… they’ll make examples of the ones I love. They’ll butcher them. Every last one. I… I couldn’t live with that. I can’t… watch everything I’ve tried to protect get dragged into the dark just because I help you with this.”

  I was silent for a moment. Unsure of what to say. Thankfully, Alex had a good idea.

  The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation.

  “What if you just let us in? Open the door, but stay behind. Let us go inside and be closed in?”

  Charles looked taken aback for a second, unsure why he hadn’t thought of that. Then again, it would be a straight-up death wish based on what he said next.

  “You’d be locked inside with everything the pits have to offer. There would be no escaping the pits without a mark. Or someone willing to use their mark to let you out. I don’t think you’ll find someone as willful as me to help you.”

  I thought about it for a moment, what it meant to go down there and have the door locked closed behind me. I reached inside myself and tried to analyze what I felt in the monster at this new revelation. All I felt deep in the recesses of the cage where he stayed was the same thunderous beating… that… and the urge. The need to slaughter and kill; not to devour anything physical, but to taste death as lives were claimed. The Primeval was completely unchanged, ready to move… now.

  “Will you do it?” I asked Charles with no hesitation.

  Martin stepped in, “Sam, you can’t just go down there and be locked in. You can’t come back…” As soon as he said the words, he knew he didn’t know if that statement was true. Not after everything that happened with Peter, when I was supposed to be locked away in some alternate dimension. He altered his statement. “There’s a high probability you won’t come back. There are things down there you couldn’t imagine.”

  “I have to go! I already spoke to Carter; he knows more than you do right now. If he’s willing to tell you what I told him, he can do what he wishes.” I tried to dismiss any intervening so we could get this show on the road.

  Martin had a surprised look on his face, realizing what I meant. I knew the moment we all left here, he was going straight for the Chasse house. He wanted to hear the secrets that I told Carter about myself and the entity.

  “If we’re doing this… it has to be soon. Very soon,” Charles muttered, his voice somehow hoarse with dread. He wasn’t just nervous, he was unraveling. “I’ve heard whispers… muted screams beneath the surface. There’s movement down there. Things… I’ve never witnessed are… changing. The kind of changes that never go back. My family’s been packed for days. I’ve been waiting for the strike. I think they’ve finally found me out.”

  He dragged a trembling hand through his silvered hair, gaze fixed on something that wasn’t even there; something he’d already accepted would come for him.

  And then… “That we have.”

  The voice cut the air like a scalpel, high-pitched and childlike. It felt wrong… too pleased and steady for its young tone.

  We turned, and at the mouth of the alley stood a little girl. She couldn’t have been more than four feet tall. Blonde hair in matted strands clung to her hollow, pale face, and her eyes… her eyes were… murderous. They weren’t wide with fear or confusion. They gleamed with delight… a feral, twitching delight.

  “We just wanted you to lead us to some new friends,” she giggled, head tilting too far to the side. “Didn’t think we’d find other traitors.”

  Then it happened.

  Her body spasmed with a wet, snapping sound, like ligaments tearing under pressure. Flesh peeled back from her tiny arm as it elongated… no, unraveled into something horrific. It wasn’t a limb anymore. It was a ten-foot weapon of coiling, glistening muscle and jagged bone, like a living blade forged from pure organic material.

  Before any of us could react, the arm lashed forward with a sickening squelch.

  Martin gasped, frozen mid-turn. The spear of meat and bone had torn straight through his abdomen. For a split second, he hung there like meat on a hook. Then the limb whipped sideways, flinging him like garbage into the shadows. He hit a rusted metal dumpster with a hollow clang that echoed like a death bell.

  I blinked, stunned, the metallic stench of blood thick in my throat.

  Her "arm", if you could still call it that, was twitching violently, nerves exposed, cords of slick tendon pulsing as if hungry. A sheen of oily, black ichor poured from the cracks in her shifting flesh, mixing with the blood that still clung to the tip like syrup over a butcher’s knife. She grinned wider. Her gums were torn, and her teeth were too sharp and numerous.

  Charles moved first, fear forgotten and replaced by raw instinct. Alex followed without hesitation. Both of them lunged for the thing wearing a little girl’s skin. But then something happened that made them stop.

  The girl's small frame convulsed with a sickening crack, bones snapping like dry twigs beneath her skin. Her body ballooned outward in a wet, violent metamorphosis; muscle swelling unnaturally fast beneath the surface, tendons writhing like snakes under flesh that split and stretched to accommodate a far more grotesque form. Her pale skin peeled away in ribbons, revealing wet, red sinew beneath. Jagged lengths of bone burst through her back and shoulders, jutting like crude armor, twitching and clacking as if alive.

  And then, in a blink, the child was gone. In her place stood a full-grown man, tall, wide, and radiating menace. His skin was dark brown, raw, and pulsating with oily black veins. Dreadlocks hung down his back like twisted cords, soaked in some fluid that reeked of rot and brimstone. Bone jags flexed beneath his skin, pushing out in rhythmic pulses with every breath he took, like the body couldn’t contain what was inside.

  His voice rumbled low… too calm for the lethal vibrations that warped it, “You had your chance to remain with us, Charles. Now… we want your head.” He turned slightly, almost as an afterthought. “And anyone with you.”

  Then chaos exploded.

  Charles struck first, his hand shimmering with preternatural speed as he closed the distance. Alex followed a split second behind, fangs bared, eyes burning with fury.

  But the man wasn’t phased.

  From his forearms, grotesque blades unfurled; bone-like cleavers nearly three feet long, serrated and cruel, held together by thick bands of blackened tendon and muscle. The weapons grew from him, not attached, but part of him. Every movement oozed the black oily fluid that dripped steadily from the ragged joins of his body.

  He slashed outward. A brutal whoosh of air carved through the alley as he cleaved the space between them. Alex twisted her body just in time, the bladed arm missing her by inches, but Charles wasn’t so lucky. A spray of blood burst from his ribs as the jagged edge tore into his side, cutting deep. Charles staggered back, but didn’t fall, his snarl more furious than pained.

  I was still… watching. Not because I was frozen, or held in place, but because I couldn’t look away. I’d seen monsters. I was a monster. But this? This was new… raw… perfectly made for pain.

  I should have moved. But I didn’t. Not until the dark figure turned toward Charles again, raising that massive, oozing cleaver-arm to finish it.

  I launched myself forward, boots slamming against the slick concrete. The thing sensed me and spun fast, slashing with its bone blade.

  I didn’t dodge. I let it hit. The jagged weapon tore into my side with enough force to shake my entire frame. The impact thundered through my ribs, splitting flesh and crunching something beneath. But I didn’t slow. I let it happen. Because I wanted him close.

  His grin widened with a monstrous smugness that was all things confident.

  “Big tough guy, huh?” he sneered as his voice vibrated inhumanly. “You don’t even know what you’ve got yourse…”

  I grabbed him by the throat and lifted. His words choked out mid-sentence, crushed under the weight of my grip. His eyes widened, and for the first time, something flickered across his face… surprise… then fear.

  He’d expected me to collapse. Expected me to bleed, seize, scream from the oily corruption that was no doubt laced into his flesh. But it didn’t work… not on me. Whatever poison or black magic his kind bled into others, I didn’t feel a fucking thing. Nothing but the burn of sliced skin, and that was nothing these days.

  My hand closed tighter around his throat, and I saw the realization settle into his eyes like a sinking weight. He wasn’t choking from air loss… he was choking on fear.

  My fingers lengthened, black talons extruding from cracked flesh, shining in the alley’s gloom. My mouth split wider than it should’ve, teeth stretching into jagged shards as the heat built in my gums and hands.

  Now I was going to show him what it meant to face something worse than him. Something ancient… something Primeval.

  I reached out with my left hand while my right held him aloft by the throat. I use my left hand of razors to reach his shoulder and rip his arm from his body, slicing through prehensile tendons and bone with my talons. He had almost no reaction of pain as I severed his arm… like it didn’t mean shit. However, blood and oily liquid spurted from his shoulder and cast itself across me and the ground. I tossed the arm over about ten feet away from us as I held him in place.

  The thing in my grip screamed—not with a mouth, but with every inch of its grotesque, shifting flesh. Its form melted between my fingers, the human fa?ade dripping away like wax under flame. Bones bent and cracked. Skin sloughed off in greasy sheets. What remained was a pulsating, sinewed mass—raw muscle, tendon, and gristle writhing like a sack full of snakes.

  It wasn’t a man anymore. It wasn’t anything. Just meat—raging, spasming meat that fought to reshape itself.

  I growled and reached deeper, plunging my other clawed hand into the churning mess, forcing my grip around something solid—some internal bone, perhaps a spine or femur, trying to relocate. My fingers crushed down like a vice. It bucked against me, the shrieking muscle convulsing and trying to twist free, but I held it. No escape.

  Then Martin reappeared—bloodied, face pale but burning with vengeance. Whatever the oily venom had done to him, he’d shaken it off.

  Without a word, he snatched up the twitching severed arm I'd lopped off earlier—still flopping like a dying fish—and hurled it with a roar. It spun through the air, trailing black fluid like smoke, and slammed onto the rooftop beside us with a wet slap.

  “He’s a shape-shifter!” Charles yelled, panic cracking in his voice as he backed into a defensive stance. He watched with a horrified gaze as I held the undulating thing in my grasp, its muscle writhing with obscene determination, bones splitting open like blossoming flowers to grow new limbs.

  “He can reabsorb parts of himself!” Martin called out, ducking under a flailing whip of sinew. “You can’t kill him like this! Keep cutting—tear him down faster than he can grow. He’s feeding off stored biomass!”

  The form I held began to warp again… flesh bubbling, rearranging with the sick sound of meat being mashed beneath gears. Before my eyes, the thing shrank, skin crawling like insects beneath a new disguise. Hair whitened, bones restructured, and in my hands now dangled the fragile body of a hunched, elderly woman, her face lined with false age, her cloudy eyes wide with pathetic, human fear.

  “Please… son…” she wheezed, her voice trembling. “Let me go. I’m just an old woman.”

  It was a lie, a sick mockery; but… not going to lie, seeing that thing wear the skin of someone’s grandmother was one of the creepiest fucking things I’d ever witnessed. It wasn’t just shapeshifting. It was performing.

  I snarled and brought my foot down with thunderous force, stomping hard just above the knee. Bone cracked. The scream that followed wasn’t human.

  Then, I lifted her by the throat. The false old woman writhed and gagged in my grip as I hauled her body upward, and with a vicious twist, her leg tore free at the knee, trailing torn muscle and blackened veins. I tossed her to the ground like trash. And still… she regrew.

  Right before my eyes, the severed stump twitched, a bleached bone nudging out of the raw meat like a tooth pushing through gum. Muscles laced around it with hideous precision. Oily, tar-black fluid bubbled from the growing flesh like pus from an infected wound. Skin stretched and sealed, as if watching an animal knit itself together under a microscope.

  Then the form shrank again. The false woman melted away. Limbs retracted, and the texture of the flesh changed. The next shape took hold: a shorter, leaner man. He stood five feet seven at most, his skin brown and clean, his face now that of an average Hispanic male. He looked harmless, forgettable even, but his posture was tense… wary. He’d lost the swagger. He wasn’t trying to overwhelm us anymore. He knew I was stronger now, and that frightened him enough to take me seriously.

  He turned his attention to Charles, perhaps thinking he still had the upper hand with his words.

  “Give yourself up now, Charles,” he said, voice smooth and manipulative with a Hispanic accent. “Maybe… maybe we’ll let your family live.”

  It was a desperate bluff, wrapped in false kindness.

  Charles didn’t hesitate.

  “I’ll never let any of you touch my family,” he snarled, voice like steel. “Never.”

  I was still advancing, blood-slick talons flexed, eyes void-black, and the urge for death growing. This thing was strange… but now, I knew this thing could die. I was going to rip it apart piece by piece until it did.

  Alex let out a surge of power as her eyes flared up into a deep red, and her face shifted into the violent killing machine she hid. Her fangs bared and her hair almost vibrating as it stood on end, a little bit like a cat when angered. It was very subtle, and I don’t know if anyone would actually notice it if they didn’t have supernatural senses like me.

  She dove at the smaller man, ripping her claws into his face as he tried to block her attack, but she was fast, and he was weakened. He pushed her body to the side as she came by him and tore at him with her claws. He swung a kick at her as he pivoted his foot, changing it into an axe-like shape of jagged bone. He buried it into her shoulder in a downward sweep that was so vicious, it pinned her to the ground.

  Martin was on him quickly, and Charles was joining him fast. They both got hold of each of his arms and drove him into the wall. They held him back with one arm each, their free arms plunging into his chest over and over, grabbing hunks of meat and throwing them away as far as possible. I could see torrents of blood that were spilling out of this shapeshifter and hitting the ground, but then I saw the blood pull at its feet and slowly crawl back up to its body. He was pulling resources back into himself to stay alive. It was so weird… ultimate control of his own body… even when detached from itself.

  I ran over and started grabbing and kicking pieces of his body that had been torn away. I sent them flying further down the alley to try and keep it from the shapeshifters' reach.

  Alex staggered back to her feet, her breath rasping through bloodied lips. Her side was torn open where the axe-kick had landed, bone-deep, a wound that should’ve ended her, but her body was already stitching itself back together. Muscles writhed beneath the torn skin, knitting and pulling tight, the wound closing in real-time like watching flesh melt in reverse. A vivid red line, raw and still wet, slashed across her ribs where the jagged bone-blade had carved through her clothes and laid bare far more skin than she probably intended. But she didn’t falter.

  With a snarl, she launched forward again, the sound of her boots slapping against blood-slick concrete.

  The shapeshifter was still squirming, half-formed limbs wriggling in desperate attempts to flee, bones growing where they shouldn’t, tendons flicking like cracked whips in a mindless panic. It gurgled and twitched, caught mid-shift as the two older vampires pinned it to the wall.

  Alex crashed into him in a blur of speed, her palms slamming into the shapeshifter’s malformed chest with the force of a car crash. The sound of bones caving in filled the alley with a sharp, meaty crunch.

  Now all three of them, Alex, Charles, and Martin, were on him like rabid animals. No elegance, no choreography. Just violence. Hands tore into him, pulling meat from bone, snapping joints out of socket, peeling layers off like paper. A clawed fist tore out a slab of shoulder. Another buried into his stomach and pulled upward, spilling steaming entrails onto the alley floor in a thick, ropey mass. They slung pieces of flesh and bone as far behind them as they could. It reminded me of a dog digging a hole, kicking the dirt behind them. Only this was more bloody.

  Bits of him were flung into walls, dumpsters, puddles… anywhere that wasn’t near the core of him. He was unraveling fast, his grotesque body trying to shift between forms but being physically torn apart too quickly to stabilize.

  “Take the head!” Charles barked, voice ragged and winded as he pinned what was left of a flailing arm against the wall with his knee.

  Alex didn’t hesitate.

  She shoved her hand into the shapeshifter’s throat like she was reaching into wet earth. Her claws spread the flesh apart in a V-shape, muscles tearing with a wet rip-rip-rip as she dug deeper. There was no precision… just raw force. A moment later, her hand found the spine. With one explosive yank, there was a sickening crack-pop, followed by the tearing sound of connective tissue snapping apart.

  The spine came free with the head still attached, trailing a dripping length of vertebrae and shredded nerve. The head writhed in her hand, its eyes still blinking, its twisted face snarling. Even severed, it refused to die quietly. It shrieked in some guttural, ancient language; words that made no sense, but felt like curses flung from the mouth of a demon.

  Alex didn’t even blink. With one motion, she hurled the head to the concrete and stomped… repeatedly.

  Brain and skull sprayed in every direction, shards of jawbone skidding across the alley. Black ichor burst from the ruined skull like an oil geyser, splattering the ground in thick, viscous gobs. Still, she stomped… again, and again, and again; her boot coming down with unrelenting, full-force fury. The sound was rhythmic and grotesque, wet and crunchy. She stomped until the face was gone. Until it was nothing but flattened tissue and pulp.

  The body sagged instantly in Martin and Charles’s grip. Whatever sick life-force had fueled it… was finally gone. They let the ruined torso drop, but not before hurling it in the opposite direction of the rest of the scattered limbs, separating every piece.

  Alex, panting, slowly stepped away from the crater that used to be a head. A pool of black oil spread out beneath her feet, much more than before; thick, glistening, bubbling slightly as if reacting to the air.

  I stood there, clutching what was left of a foot and an arm. The tendons twitched weakly in my grasp… residual nerves still firing, I guess. I didn’t even notice I was squeezing until the bones beneath my palm snapped.

  The alley was silent. Alex stood over the ruined remains of the head, gore staining her boots. Martin and Charles wiped their hands, flicking chunks of meat off their fingers. And then… all three of them looked at me and what I was holding.

  No one said anything. It was just… silence.

  I finally broke it with a huff, voice low and dry, “…What the fuck was that?”

  We were fighting a battle against something that can regrow body parts, and I was holding severed limbs in my arms. Charles had said it in the scuffle, and I knew to keep the pieces away from this thing's core so it couldn’t absorb them and regain its biomass. Now that it was dead, I tossed the limbs to the ground and shook my bloodied hands off to get as much of the nasty blood and oil from me as I could.

  We all took a moment in the aftermath of the fight to clean up as best we could before we walked out of the dark alley and into the city. The three vampires were breathing heavily right after the fight, like they were truly exerting themselves to fight this thing off. Shapeshifters were strong!

  What got me was the way it changed. First, it showed up as a little girl, which was creepy as hell. Then it turned into a big ole’ dude, like tripled the girl’s size. And then shrunk down into a little old lady somewhere in between. Shapeshifters were by far the craziest creatures I think I had seen yet. That was some otherworldly shit right there. Well, I guess it wasn’t as strange as the Unseen Primeval that I fought in the other dimension.

  I guess by the earth’s standards, this was the weirdest thing.

  “I think… if we’re going to do this, it needs to be right now,” Martin said first.

  Alex just nodded beside him, understanding what he meant.

  “It has to be now. I can get you down there tonight, but then I have to get my family and get them out of the city. That shapeshifter didn’t just follow me here. He already knew… they already know,” Charles spoke slowly, but I could hear the panic in his voice. “But that means you will have to find your own way out. It’s either right now… or not at all,” Charles said to me.

  I wasn’t hesitant for a second. After killing the shapeshifter, I felt good. I felt in control ever so slightly, more than before. The monster had been sated, and I could think clearly. I had things that popped into my head, things I wanted to do before I went down. But I knew that was a bad choice.

  I couldn’t argue with Charles’s wishes. He was my only way down there, and ultimately, this was what Death wanted. He wanted me down there in the pits. He didn’t care about my interpersonal relationships. Plus, I could feel the monster; he was writhing beneath the surface, waiting to be unleashed fully once we got down in there. He had a taste of death, and it was satisfying, but it only chummed the waters. It helped me with control… but it wanted more.

  “All right. Let’s go,” was all I said to Charles.

  About thirty seconds later, four people walked out of a dark alley, still slightly covered in blood. Alex’s clothes were disheveled and ripped, as well as Martin's and Charles’s. I still looked fine, just bloody. There was a small fire burning in the alley, the last effort to fully seal the shapeshifter's fate. Charles had done something in the shadows that I wasn’t paying attention to. He lit the fluid on fire, and the black oily substance lit up like gasoline, spreading everywhere the shapeshifter's body parts had been.

  As we walked out into the city, the entire alleyway went up in flames.