Not a sound I can hear with my ears but something I feel in my bones, in the mark on my shoulder, in the very marrow of me.A frequency that resonates with something ancient and hungry, and every pulse of it makes the frost on the walls grow thicker.
I have two choices, hide in my room and let this thing hunt the clubhouse unchallenged, or do something about it.
Fuck hiding.
“Fire!”I scream, my voice cracking with cold and fear.I slam my fist against the nearest door, Vex’s door.“Wake up!Something’s in the building!”
I move to the next door, pounding hard enough to hurt my hand.“Get up!Now!”
The shadow stops.
It turns, though it has no eyes, no face, I can feel its attention lock onto me like a predator spotting prey.The temperature drops another ten degrees in an instant, and my next breath feels like swallowing razors.
Then it lunges.
The shadow explodes across the hallway, no longer a creeping tendril but a wave of black ice and malevolent intent.It moves faster than anything that size should be able to, and I barely have time to throw myself backward before claws of frozen darkness slash through the space where I was standing.
They hit the wall instead, and wood splinters with a sound like gunfire.Frost spreads from the impact point in a starburst pattern, and I can see actualgougescarved into the timber, deep enough to expose the insulation behind.
“Help!”I’m screaming now, scrambling backward on my ass, my feet slipping on the frost-slicked floor.“Somebody help!”
Doors slam open all at once.
Vex is first, of course he is, exploding out of his room with his eyes already white and glowing.He takes in the scene in a heartbeat, me on the floor, the shadow looming, the frost everywhere, and snarls like an animal.
“Get back!”he roars, positioning himself between me and the creature.
Prophet appears at the top of the stairs, barefoot and shirtless but somehow still commanding.His eyes go wide when he sees the shadow, and he starts chanting in a language I don’t recognize, his hands moving in complex patterns that leave trails of golden light in the air.
More doors open.Blade, Fury, Ranger, Hollywood, they pour into the hallway, weapons drawn, their various supernatural natures on full display.White eyes, elongating claws, skin that ripples with barely contained power.
The shadow doesn’t retreat.
It expands instead, spreading across the ceiling and walls like oil on water.Tendrils shoot out in multiple directions at once, and suddenly it’s not one threat but a dozen, each one tipped with claws of black ice that look sharp enough to cut through bone.
One goes for Hollywood.He dodges, his movements inhumanly fast, but the claw catches his shoulder and he screams, a sound of agony that makes my blood run cold.Where it touched him, his skin turns black with frostbite, spreading outward like poison.
Another tendril lunges for Blade.He shifts mid-dodge, and suddenly there’s a massive grizzly bear where the man was standing, roaring defiance at the shadow.His claws rake through the tendril, and for a second, it seems to work, the shadow recoils, hissing.
But it’s not enough.
There are too many tendrils, too much of it, and every second it grows stronger.The frost on the walls creeps toward the doors, toward the brothers, and I can see ice forming on their skin where the cold touches them.
The mark on my shoulder explodes with pain.
It’s not a gradual burn anymore.It’s agony, white-hot and freezing cold all at once, and I cry out before I can stop myself.The sound cuts through the chaos, and suddenly every tendril stops moving.
They all turn toward me.
“Tessa,” the shadow whispers, and the voice is like glass breaking, like ice cracking on a frozen lake.“Mine.Mine.”
The tendrils converge, shooting toward me in a coordinated strike that I have no hope of dodging.I’m still on the floor, still too slow, and they’re too fast—
Vex hits me like a linebacker.
He tackles me into my room, his body covering mine as the tendrils slam into the doorframe behind us.The door explodes inward, wood and metal shrieking as they’re torn apart, and suddenly we’re rolling across his floor in a tangle of limbs.
Vex comes up on top of me, caging me with his body, his fangs fully extended and his eyes blazing white.“Stay down,” he growls.
