Ten yards.
Finn’s hand found mine. Not a grab, just his fingers threading through mine in the dark, quiet and certain. I closed my hand around his and held on with everything I had left in me.
My mind was still forming the question when it was already over.
One second we stood at the mouth of the passage, the gray light of my street opening up ahead of us, close enough that I could see the cracked planter by the stoop.
The next—
It filled the gap.
A man.
No. Not anymore. The remnants of a man.
Massive. Shoulders broad enough to swallow the exit whole. A construction vest, neon yellow, hung open across a torso that had partially caved on the left side—three ribs jutting through the skin at broken angles, something dark leaking steadily from between them, unhurried, as though the body had simply accepted the arrangement. His jaw had come unhinged on the right side. Gray, fibrous flesh dangled from between his molars and swayed as his head snapped toward us.
His eyes found me.
Empty. Fixed with that absolute, terrible focus.
From the collapsed chest, something rose. Wet. Guttural. A sound no living thing should make.
And it was looking at me.
“Libby—” Finn’s voice was behind me, sharp and urgent.
Too late.
It lunged, closing the distance in a single stride. I twisted, throwing my weight sideways, but my boot caught the rain-slick concrete at an awkward angle, and my leg shot out from under me.
I hit the ground hard. The pavement came up fast, my chin clipping it first, then my shoulder. For a moment, I couldn’t tell which way was up—just a flat, ringing silence where sound should have been, my body refusing to remember how breathing worked. Before I could gasp, before I could roll—
It came down on top of me.
The weight alone nearly finished what the fall had started. Two hundred and fifty pounds slammed me against the pavement, pinning my hips and stomach, driving my spine into the concrete until my vision compressed to a single bright point and then nothing. Its hands, massive and gray, fingers thick as rebar, clamped down on my arms with a grinding pressure I heard before I registered as pain.
Its face dropped toward mine.
The smell hit first—hot and rancid. At this distance, I could see everything: gums blackened and peeling back from cracked teeth, a tongue swollen purple-black, too large for the mouth that held it.
I bucked and shoved and kicked. My hands drove against its chest, my fingers sinking into something soft where the ribs had ruptured—wet and yielding, giving under the pressure with a sound like a boot pulling free of deep mud, a sound that had no business coming from a person. I yanked my hand back, coated to the wrist in a dark, thick fluid that existed somewhere between liquid and solid. Its head jerked downward, jaw working in rapid, mechanical repetition—open, shut, open, shut—teeth grinding together inches from my throat and closing the distance with every snap. Its hands dragged me upward, towardits mouth, and I could see the strings of old saliva stretching between those broken teeth, could see something dark and pulpy lodged deep in its throat—
“No—GET OFF—!”
Then the weight shifted violently, a blur of fast, savage movement above me, and the thing’s head wrenched hard to the side. Its grip on my arms broke for a fraction of a second.
Finn.
He’d come in from behind me. I hadn’t seen him move, hadn’t heard him cross the distance. One second the thing’s face hung inches from mine—the next, Finn had its head locked in one hand, fingers dug into the divets behind its jaw, wrenching it backward and exposing the temple—
And drove the knife in.
The blade sank into bone with a wet, crunching collapse. Something inside gave way entirely. Dark fluid—thicker and blacker than blood—erupted from the entry point, spraying across my face, hot and foul. It found my lips. Copper, rot, and a nameless chemical taste filled me.
The thing convulsed, every muscle firing at once in a full-body spasm that slammed its weight onto my chest one final time, driving an uncontrollable cry from me. A low, gurgling sound escaped its throat, fading out like a signal losing its source.
Then nothing.
