The pain was a constant, a dull, hot throb in her shoulder that pulsed in time with the waves. It was a living thing, a piece of Kimo he had left inside her. A poison. Her own blood, her vampire blood that should have been knitting the flesh closed, was a sluggish, useless thing, held at bay by the unnatural venom of his bite.

  She lay on the thin mattress in the guest room, staring at the ceiling fan as it wobbled on its slow, arthritic rotation. Click. Whirr. Click. Whirr. The sound was the only thing in the room besides her own ragged breathing.

  Fool.

  The word wasn't a flash. It was a slow, grinding stone in her gut. Hours of it. Fool. Fool. Fool.

  It was the taste of her own blood in her mouth. The memory of his smile, a perfect, beautiful lie. The feel of his hand on her wrist, a grip of iron.

  I could smell it. The darkness in your calls to the darkness in me.

  His words echoed in the quiet room, coiling in her gut. He had seen her from the start. Not as a girl, not as a surfer. As a fellow predator. As a tool. And she, blinded by a pathetic, desperate need to feel normal, had walked right into his open hand.

  She closed her eyes, but the images seared the inside of her eyelids. His face, rippling, changing. The teeth. The cold, glowing eyes. The taste of her blood on his lips.

  Her fault. All of it. She had brought this darkness to this house, to this family.

  She had trusted him. She had flirted with him. She had let him get close. And in doing so, she had led him straight to the people she loved. She had put a target on her own family.

  A soft knock on the door made her flinch, every muscle in her body going rigid.

  “Frankie?” Dee Dee’s voice, soft, hesitant. “Can I come in?”

  Frankie didn't answer. She couldn't. The shame was a physical barrier in her throat. How could she face her? How could she look at her friend, the one who was supposed to be the brains, and admit that she had ignored every warning, every red flag, every scream from her own instincts?

  The door creaked open anyway. Dee Dee stood in the doorway, a small, worried silhouette against the hallway light. She held a bowl of something that smelled faintly of ginger and herbs.

  “Your grandmother made this,” Dee Dee said, her voice a gentle murmur. “She said it will help with the… with the bite.”

  She set the bowl on the bedside table. Frankie didn't look at it. She couldn't move.

  “It’s not your fault, you know,” Dee Dee said softly, her words a stark contrast to the hurricane of self-blame raging inside Frankie’s head.

  Frankie let out a short, harsh, humorless laugh. “Isn’t it? I’m the one who went with him. I’m the one who didn't listen.”

  “You’re the one he targeted,” Dee Dee corrected, her voice firm. “He chose you. He manipulated you. That’s on him. Not you.”

  Dee Dee's words made perfect sense. Clean logic. But the knot in Frankie's stomach only tightened. She had nearly gotten them all killed. Ted. Dee Dee. Luring them into her own stupid, reckless plan.

  She rolled over, turning her back on logic, on kindness. A long, heavy silence stretched between them.

  Frankie could feel Dee Dee’s stare on her back, a mixture of pity and frustration. Finally, with a soft sigh, Dee Dee left, closing the door behind her, leaving Frankie alone with the throbbing in her shoulder and the slow, steady rhythm of her own failure.

  Exhaustion was a drug, a heavy, gray fog that filled her head and her limbs. She must have slept, a shallow, dreamless state that was less like rest and more like a temporary death. When she opened her eyes again, the soft, gray light of pre-dawn filled the room.

  The house was quiet. Too quiet.

  She sat up, the pain in her shoulder a sharp, insistent reminder. The village had been a place of whispers and fear before. Now, it was a tomb of silence. No birds. No distant sound of a truck on the road. Just the low, indifferent hiss of the ocean.

  She pushed herself off the bed, her body a collection of aches and pains. She needed to see. Needed to know.

  She tiptoed through the house, a ghost in her own family’s home. The living room was empty, the furniture draped in the pale, ghostly light. A half-empty coffee mug sat on the table, a testament to a sleepless night.

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  She found her mother in the kitchen.

  Maka stood at the window, staring out at the ocean, her back to the room. She was a statue carved from worry, her usual vibrant energy replaced by a heavy, weary stillness. She held a steaming mug in her hands, but she wasn't drinking.

  The thought of telling her, of laying the whole, ugly, impossible truth at her feet, was a physical terror. Mom, the monsters are real. And by the way, I’m one of them. The words would break her. They would shatter the already fragile world she was trying so desperately to hold together.

  Frankie’s throat closed up. She couldn’t do it. She couldn't add her own monstrous truth to the burden her mother was already carrying.

  As if sensing her presence, Maka turned. Her face was a ruin of exhaustion. The deep laugh lines around her eyes were just lines now, etched by sleeplessness and fear. Her gaze fell on Frankie, and her expression was a complex, painful mixture of love, terror, and a deep, unnerving confusion. She knew something was wrong. Not just with the island. With her daughter.

  “Kaikamahine,” she said, her voice a low thing. “You’re awake.” She took a half-step forward, her hand outstretched, then seemed to think better of it, letting it fall back to her side. The small, aborted gesture was a chasm between them.

  “I’m fine,” Frankie lied, the word thin and brittle.

  Her mother’s eyes flickered to the makeshift bandage Dee Dee had wrapped around her shoulder, a dark, spreading stain of blood already soaking through the clean white gauze. Then back to her face. The question was there, sharp and terrible, in the space between them. What have you done?

  “No, you’re not,” Maka said, her voice flat. “Nothing is fine.”

  She turned back to the window, her shoulders slumping. “They’re getting ready,” she said, her voice barely a whisper. “Another search party. Your grandfather… he’s trying to hold them together. But they’re scared. And scared people… they look for something to blame.”

  Frankie felt a wave of dizziness, the world tilting on its axis. She was supposed to be the protector. The hero. But she was just a curse. A plague she had brought to this house.

  The strength that hummed in her veins, the speed that moved in her muscles, the darkness that lived behind her eyes—it wasn’t a gift. It was a poison. And it was infecting everyone she loved.

  She backed away, out of the kitchen, out of the suffocating weight of her mother’s fear.

  She couldn't breathe. She needed air.

  The beach was a wasteland of fear. The tide was out, revealing a wide expanse of dark, wet sand. More totems had appeared in the night, a grotesque, scattered forest of driftwood and teeth, planted along the high-tide line like a declaration of ownership.

  Kimo was no longer just hunting. He was claiming his territory. He was preparing for his final sacrifice.

  The fear in the village was a physical thing now, a thick, greasy smoke that clung to everything. Frankie could feel it, a low, constant thrum of terror that vibrated in her bones. Kimo was feeding on it, his power growing with every passing hour, with every new whisper, with every new totem he planted in the sand.

  Frankie stood at the edge of the water, the cool foam washing over her bare feet. The pain in her shoulder was a dull, constant fire. The exhaustion was a lead weight in her limbs. She felt… empty. Hollowed out. The fierce, burning resolve she had felt after the attack had cooled, leaving behind nothing but the cold, dead ash of despair.

  She had failed.

  She had failed her friends, the village, and her family, bringing the monster to their door. This island that was supposed to be a part of her, her heritage, her home.

  She looked down at her hands. They didn't feel like her own. They felt like a stranger’s. The hands of a creature that brought nothing but death and fear.

  Too much vampire, not enough Rivera.

  The thought was a whisper at first, then a roar. She was a monster. A failed protector. A curse masquerading as a gift. What right did she have to fight for these people? Her very presence was the poison. Her blood, the thing Kimo needed, was the key to their destruction.

  Maybe… maybe the best thing she could do for them was to disappear.

  The thought, once it took root, was a seductive, calming thing. A surrender. A release.

  No more fighting. No more hiding. No more guilt.

  She stepped into the water.

  Cold.

  A shock that felt like clarity. An embrace.

  Another step. Water swirled at her knees, pulling.

  The sun bled out on the horizon. A beautiful, dying thing.

  She was the ugly part of it. The wrongness.

  She could just walk out. Let the ocean take her. Let Kimo have his victory. It would be a last sacrifice. A way to end it. To protect her family in the only way she had left. By removing herself from the equation.

  The darkness that lived inside her, the cold, still thing that was no longer human, did not fight the idea. It welcomed it. It was a homecoming. A return to the quiet, to the cold, to the dark.

  She took another step, the water now at her waist, its pull stronger, more insistent. The horizon swallowed the last sliver of the sun, and the deep, velvety blackness of a moonless night plunged the world.

  The darkness pressed close.

  A comfort. An end.

  No more pain. No more guilt. No more fight.

  Just silence.

  The last flicker of her resolve guttered. Went out.

  She closed her eyes.

  And let go.