The dust tasted like drywall and old pennies.
Frankie coughed, waving her hand in front of her face. The air inside The Gilded Anchor was a white haze. A sick angle tilted the floor, resembling the deck of a sinking ship.
The SS Borealis had plowed through the pier and halfway into the dining room. Its black iron bow sat motionless among the crushed mahogany tables, a mountain of rusted iron. It was cooling, the metal groaning as it settled. Ping. Tick. Groan.
Behind her, the restaurant was a mess of panic.
“My leg! I can’t move my leg!”
“Where’s the exit? The door is blocked!”
“Fire! I smell fire!”
Frankie tuned them out. She didn’t want to—the part of her that was just a seventeen-year-old girl wanted to cover her ears and curl into a ball—but the other part took over. The part that had spent the last two years hunting things in the dark.
She shut out the panic. The screaming faded. The hum took over.
Individual wavelengths of sound. The crackle of a severed electrical wire sparking near the kitchen. The hiss of a broken gas line. The rapid, thudding bass of a hundred terrified hearts beating in unison.
She threw her senses forward, toward the wall of black metal.
A vessel this size, running dark, crashing into a town? There should be shouting. A captain barking orders. A crew screaming for help. The frantic rhythm of people trying to survive a collision.
Silence.
No voices. No footsteps on metal grates. No heartbeats.
Just the thrum.
Louder now. Not an engine. No rhythm. No combustion. Just a scream trapped in the metal. It felt like a migraine trying to drill its way out of her skull.
“Frankie!”
Damon grabbed her shoulders. He spun her around.
Gray dust streaked her face. His white shirt was torn at the collar. But his eyes were clear, wide with panic.
“We have to go,” he shouted over the noise. “The gas line is hissing. This whole place could blow.”
“There’s no one on the ship,” Frankie said. Her voice sounded strange to her own ears. Detached. Cold.
“Who cares?” Damon pulled her arm. “That’s good! That means we don’t have to save anyone. Come on!”
He tugged her toward the kitchen doors, where a crowd was bottling up, trying to escape through the service exit.
Frankie planted her feet. She was wearing heels, but she felt rooted to the slanted floorboards.
“Damon, listen to me,” she said. “A ship doesn’t just crash itself. If there’s no crew, who was driving?”
“Autopilot! A ghost! I don’t care!” Damon yelled. He pointed at the wreckage. “Gas line’s gonna blow, Frankie. We have to move.”
He was right.
She had promised. Just ten minutes ago. Hawaii. Surfboards. No more spilling blood.
She looked at the silver charm around her neck. Ride the drop.
But she wasn’t in Hawaii. She was standing in a destroyed restaurant with a ghost ship standing over her like a tombstone. And that thrum was burrowing into her bones. If something was on that ship—something that didn’t have a heartbeat—and she walked away…
What if it got off?
What if it followed them home?
“I have to check,” Frankie said.
“No,” Damon said. He stepped in front of her, blocking her path to the hull. “Don’t do this. Not tonight. You’re not the Slayer tonight. You’re my date.”
He gripped her arms. His hands were shaking.
“Please, Frankie.”
Frankie looked at him. He was terrifyingly human. He wanted to live. He wanted her to live. It was the smartest, most logical choice in the world.
She reached up and touched his face. She wiped a smudge of dust from his cheek.
“I can’t,” she whispered.
Damon’s expression crumbled. He didn’t look angry. He looked defeated.
“Frankie…”
“Get the people out,” she said. Her voice hardened. Command tone. “The gas line is leaking. You know where the shut-off valve is on the exterior wall. You can stop it before it ignites.”
Damon hesitated. He looked at the kitchen doors—the bottleneck of terrified tourists—and then back at her.
“If you go on that ship,” he said, his voice low, “you’re breaking the deal.”
“I know,” Frankie said.
“Don’t die,” he said.
“I won’t.”
Damon let her go. He stared at her for one second longer—a look that felt like a goodbye—and then he turned. He sprinted toward the kitchen, shouting orders, mobilizing the crowd.
Frankie turned back to the monster.
She kicked off her heels. She didn’t need them.
She tore the slit in her red silk dress higher, up to her mid-thigh. Freedom of movement.
She ran.
Debris crunched under her bare feet. Glass. Wood.
Pain shot up her heels. She ignored it.
She reached the hole in the wall.
The cold night air hit her. It smelled of brine and rot.
The SS Borealis was massive. From the outside, it looked like a cliff face made of riveted iron. It had plowed through the wooden boardwalk, burying its keel in the sand and mud below. The SS Borealis wrecked the gangway, leaving twisted metal hanging uselessly from the side.
Frankie looked up. The deck was thirty feet above her.
Normally, impossible.
Tonight, necessary.
Scuppers ran down the hull. Rusted. Jagged.
She jumped.
She caught the first hold. The metal bit into her fingers. She ignored the pain. She hauled herself up, muscles in her back firing.
Thrum. Thrum. Thrum.
The closer she got to the hull, the louder it became. It wasn’t just a sound anymore. It was a physical vibration. The metal she was clinging to was buzzing, like a high-tension wire.
She reached for the next hold.
Her hand slipped.
Something wet coated the metal.
Frankie gasped, her feet scrambling for purchase on the vertical wall. She slid down a foot, her fingernails screeching against the iron, before her toes found a rivet.
A sharp piece of rust sliced her instep.
She froze, hanging twenty feet in the air.
Warm blood trickled down her foot.
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She looked at her hand.
Slime.
It wasn’t algae. It wasn’t sea spray. Clear slime. Thick. Like mucus. It trailed from her fingers in long, sticky strands. It was warm.
Ships were supposed to be cold.
Frankie wiped her hand on her dress, leaving a shimmering streak on the red silk.
“Gross,” she whispered.
Fog rolled off the deck in waves, heavy and white. It spilled over the side of the ship like dry ice.
She started climbing again. Faster this time.
She vaulted over the railing and landed on the deck.
She crouched low immediately. Instinct.
Silence.
The chaos of the restaurant was gone. The screaming sirens from the town were muffled, distant, as if she were underwater.
Here, there was only fog.
It was thick, suffocating. It swirled around her ankles, curling like smoke. It reduced visibility to zero. She could see the outline of a winch near her, a coil of rope, but beyond five feet, the world dissolved into gray nothingness.
And the sound.
The thrum was everywhere. The steel deck plates vibrated under her feet. It buzzed in her fillings. It felt like standing inside a microwave.
Frankie stood up slowly.
“Hello?” she called out.
The fog swallowed the word. No echo.
She walked forward.
Her bare feet made no sound on the wet metal. The deck was slick with the same slime she’d found on the hull. It coated everything. The railings, the floor, the cargo containers stacked in the shadows.
She passed a crew station.
A coffee mug sat on a small table bolted to the bulkhead.
Frankie touched it.
Ice cold.
The coffee inside had a skin of mold on it.
She frowned. This ship had just crashed. It had been moving. Someone had to have been steering it. But the mold… it looked like it had been sitting there for weeks.
She kept moving toward the bridge. That’s where the answers would be.
The superstructure of the ship stood out of the fog—a tower of dark windows.
Frankie paused.
Sensation. From the kitchen. From the water.
Eyes.
She spun around.
“Who’s there?”
Nothing but gray swirls.
She strained against the thrum.
Drip. Drip. Drip.
Condensation falling? Or something else?
Ozone. Brine. And something else. Sweet. Like flowers left in a vase too long. Like rot masked by perfume.
She took a step back.
Her foot bumped into something soft.
Frankie looked down.
A boot. A heavy black work boot.
She followed the leg up.
A man was sitting against a coil of thick rope. He wore a blue jumpsuit with the Borealis insignia on the chest. He tipped his head back, resting it against the metal coil.
“Hey,” Frankie said. “Are you okay?”
He didn’t move.
Frankie knelt. She reached out to check his pulse, her fingers trembling.
“Sir, the ship crashed. We need to—”
She touched his neck.
She recoiled, scrambling backward on her hands and heels.
He was dry.
Not just dead. Empty.
His skin was like parchment—papery, gray, and pulled tight over his bones. His eyes were gone, leaving hollow, sunken sockets. His mouth was frozen in a wide, silent scream, the jaw unhinged and hanging too low.
There was no blood. No wounds.
Vacuum-sealed. Sucked dry. Like a juice box squeezed flat.
The skin was stretched too thin over the skull.
Get off the ship, her brain screamed. Get off now. Hawaii. Go to Hawaii.
She stood up, her legs shaking.
She turned back toward the rail.
Then a sound.
Not the thrum.
It came from above. From the bridge.
Insects. Big ones. Or like a radio static trying to form words.
Frankie froze.
She looked up at the darkened windows of the bridge.
Pale blue light. Sickly.
It pulsed in time with the thrumming.
Frankie swallowed. The taste of copper was strong in her mouth.
She shouldn’t go up there. She should jump off the side, swim to shore, grab Damon, and drive until the gas tank runs dry.
But the light…
It was rhythmic.
SOS?
Or a beacon?
If there was a survivor up there—someone cornered by whatever did this to the crewman—she couldn’t leave them.
She clenched her fists.
She grabbed a heavy iron wrench from a nearby tool rack. It was cold and rusted, heavy in her hand.
“Okay,” she whispered to herself. “One look. Just one.”
She moved toward the stairs leading up to the bridge.
The fog seemed to thicken as she climbed, resisting her, pushing back against her chest. The slime on the handrails was thicker here, almost like a web.
She reached the top of the stairs. The door to the bridge was open.
It swung slightly in the wind. Metal groaning.
Frankie stepped over the threshold.
The bridge was dark, lit only by the intermittent flash of failing consoles. Sparks showered down from a broken panel in the ceiling.
“Hello?” she whispered.
The bridge was empty.
No captain. No helmsman.
The wheel was spinning slowly on its own, locking left, then right, driven by the broken hydraulics.
But the center console—the captain’s station—was active.
A screen was glowing. That electric blue light.
Frankie walked toward it. The floor was sticky. Her bare feet made a sucking sound with every step.
She reached the console.
Grainy image. Static. It showed a woman. Blonde hair, slicked back. A captain’s uniform. She was sitting in this very chair.
But her eyes.
On the screen, her eyes were glowing. Two bright blue stars in a pale face.
She wasn’t speaking to the camera. She was staring past it. At something off-screen.
Frankie leaned closer.
The audio crackled.
“…found it,” the woman’s voice rasped. It sounded layered, like two voices speaking at once. “They are awake.”
Then, the woman on the screen turned. She looked directly into the camera lens.
And smiled.
Frankie felt the blood drain from her face.
The smile was too wide. Too many teeth.
“We are here,” the recording said.
The screen went black.
Frankie stared at the dark monitor.
We.
Behind her, the door slammed shut.
Frankie spun around, raising the wrench.
“Who’s there?”
The thrum spiked. It became a screech.
The glass windows of the bridge began to vibrate.
Frankie backed up, hitting the console.
From the shadows of the corner, where the fog had pooled the thickest, something moved.
It unfolded.
It had been crouched so tightly it looked like a pile of rags. But now it stood up.
It was wearing a crew uniform. Or, parts of one.
The figure twitched. Jerked. Like a puppet on strings held by an epileptic god.
“Help…”
The voice was wet. Gurgling.
Frankie lowered the wrench slightly.
“I can help you,” she said. “I’m here to help.”
The figure stepped into the flickering light of the sparks.
It was a man. Or it used to be.
His skin was pale, veins glowing with a faint blue light. His mouth was open, jaw hanging slack.
But it was his eyes that stopped Frankie’s heart.
They were solid electric blue. No whites. No pupils. Just light.
And moving under the skin of his face—beneath the cheeks, across the forehead—were ripples.
Worms.
White shapes shifting under the dermis.
The man jerked forward.
“Run,” he gurgled.
Then his head snapped to the side. A violent, bone-breaking crack.
His expression changed. The fear vanished. Replaced by a blank, terrifying calm.
He looked at Frankie.
He smiled.
“Fresh,” he hissed.
He lunged.
Frankie swung the wrench.
It connected with his shoulder—a hit that would have shattered a normal man’s clavicle.
He didn’t even flinch.
He slammed into her, driving her back against the console. He was heavy, impossibly dense. And cold. Freezing.
Frankie gasped as the man knocked her breath out.
He grabbed her wrists. His grip was like a vice made of ice.
He opened his mouth.
A white, segmented head—like a lamprey—poked out from his throat. Teeth chattered.
Frankie screamed.
She kicked out, planting her bare foot in his chest. She engaged her core, channeling every ounce of her supernatural strength.
“Get… off!”
She launched him backward.
He flew across the bridge, smashing into the radar array. The machinery sparked and died.
He hit the floor.
But he didn’t stay down. He scrambled up on all fours, his limbs moving at jagged angles. Joints bending backward. Wrong.
He hissed.
Frankie didn’t wait.
She turned and threw the heavy wrench through the front window of the bridge.
The glass shattered.
Frankie dove.
She sailed through the broken window, out into the fog, falling thirty feet toward the ruined deck below.
She tucked and rolled as she hit the metal, the impact jarring her teeth.
She didn’t stop.
She scrambled to her feet and ran for the rail.
Behind her, from the broken window of the bridge, a sound tore out into the night.
Not a scream.
A signal.
A shriek, high and thin. It shattered the fog.
It was a dinner bell.
Frankie vaulted over the side of the ship.
She fell toward the mud and the debris, the red silk of her dress whipping in the wind, terrified by the certainty that she wasn’t just leaving a ship.
She was bringing something with her.
