The air shifts, turning heavy and cold, thickening with something distinctly off. Oxygen feels displaced, breath suddenly scarce.
I pick up my pace, my sneakers squeak against concrete. My car is maybe fifty feet away, a beacon of safety in this suddenly hostile space.
That’s when I hear it.
A sound similar to fabric tearing. Or bones cracking. Something wet and organic that makes every hair on my body stand up.
I freeze.
“Hello?” My voice echoes in the empty garage, thin and stupid. Because what kind of idiot calls out when every instinct is screaming to run?
Silence answers me.
Then a manic, evil kind of laughter follows. A laughter that doesn’t sound human. It sounds sharper, hungrier, the kind of sound predators make when they’ve cornered prey.
Suddenly, three figures step out from behind a concrete pillar twenty feet ahead. Young men, maybe early twenties, wearing clothes that look as if they’ve been through a war. But it’s their eyes that make my stomach drop.
Red.
Glowing in the dim emergency lighting.
“Well, well,” one of them says, and his voice has an accent I can’t place.Old. Wrong. “Look what we found.”
My brain tries to rationalize it.Contact lenses. Drugs. Some kind of prank.But my body knows better.
My hands start to heat, from fear, from panic? I have no idea why this keeps happening.
“I don’t want any trouble,” I say, backing up slowly. “I’m just trying to get to my car.”
“Oh, we know,” the second one purrs, moving with a fluidity that’s all wrong. Too fast. Too smooth. As if gravity doesn’t quite apply to him. “We’ve been watching you. Waiting for you.”
The third one inhales deeply, and his eyes flutter closed in appreciation. “She smells…different. Not quite human.”
Run.
The thought screams through my head, primal and absolute.
So, I turn and bolt.
My exhausted legs find energy I didn’t know I had left, powered by pure terror. Behind me, I hear their laughter, followed by footsteps that shouldn’t be able to move that fast.
I make it maybe twenty feet before something slams into my back.
The impact drives me forward, and my hands scrape across rough concrete when I hit the ground hard. Pain detonates through my palms and knees. My bag tears free, skidding across the garage floor as its contents explode in every direction.
Before I can scream, before I can even process what’s happening, hands grab me, spin me over. One of them is on top of me, his face inches from mine, and up close I see what my mind was trying to deny.
His canines are too long, too sharp. Actual fangs that gleam in the yellow light.
“Please,” I murmur, my hands coming up to push against his chest. “Please don’t—” The instant my palms make contact, heat erupts from my hands like a bomb detonating. Crimson-gold fire explodes outward, brighter and fiercer than it’s ever been, not just a glow but actual flames that burn without consuming me. The man screams, a high, inhuman shriek, and throws himself backward. Where my hands touched him, his shirt was smoking, flesh beneath seared black.
“What the fuck!” he howls, scrambling away.
My thoughts exactly!
I stare at my hands, at the fire dancing across my palms alive and aware. It doesn’t hurt, but it should hurt. It should be burning my skin to charcoal. Instead, it feels right, natural, as though I’ve been carrying this fire my entire life and only now remembered how to wield it.
The other two creatures hiss, their red eyes fixed on my burning hands.
