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36

JENSEN

T he sound is primal and hungry. Aubrey and I spin toward it simultaneously, weapons raised. There, illuminated by the inferno that was once the cabin, stands Adam—his pale form silhouetted against the dancing light, eyes reflecting an unnatural blue.

“He wasn’t inside,” Aubrey breathes, disbelief evident in her voice. “He saw the trap.”

Or he escaped.

But there’s no time to process the failure of our plan. Adam launches himself toward us with that unnatural speed, covering the distance between us in seconds. I shove Aubrey aside and pivot, narrowly avoiding his first attack as clawed hands rake the air where I’d been standing.

“Run!” I shout, bringing my rifle to bear.

Aubrey rolls to her feet with impressive agility, gun already tracking Adam’s movement as he circles back for another attack. Her first shot cracks through the night, catching him in the shoulder. The impact spins him but doesn’t slow him.

“We need fire!” I yell.

Adam’s lips pull back in a grotesque parody of a smile, revealing teeth too sharp to be human. Unlike the mindless snarls of the other hungry ones, there’s terrible intelligence behind his eyes. He circles us predatorily, keeping the burning cabin at our back, using it as a shield against any attempt to drive him into the flames.

“Lainey fought you for three years,” Aubrey says, her voice steady despite the terror I know she must be feeling. “We can finish what she started.”

Adam’s face contorts at the mention of Lainey’s name, a guttural growl emanating from deep in his chest. His features twist with something that might almost be grief if it weren’t so perverted by the hunger. He tilts his head in that unnatural way I’ve come to associate with the hungry ones, studying Aubrey with predatory focus.

“You abused her,” I growl, the rage I’ve been suppressing finally finding voice. “Controlled her. Turned her into something monstrous. And now you’ll burn like the rest of them. I pray only she knows true peace.”

I fire a shot at his kneecaps, hoping to slow him down, to buy us time to think. The bullet blasts his knee open, blood and bone flying, staggering him momentarily. Aubrey takes the opportunity to put more distance between us, circling toward a fallen tree that offers some cover.

Adam’s head snaps up, nostrils flaring as he scents the air. His gaze fixes on Aubrey with hungry intensity. The McAlister blood—he can smell it in her.

“We are ending this,” she says coldly, her gun aimed at his head.

Adam’s response is another snarl as he gathers himself to attack again. I edge toward a fallen branch—a potential improvised weapon if I can get it into the flames.

He sees my intention, those icy eyes tracking my movement. He lunges again, this time toward Aubrey—perhaps recognizing her as the greater threat with her firearm training, or simply driven by his obsession with the McAlister blood she carries.

Aubrey fires, getting him in the eye. The impact staggers Adam, black fluid spraying from what’s left of his eyeball, but he keeps coming. She dodges at the last second, rolling across the snow with practiced precision.

I seize the opportunity, grabbing the branch and charging toward the burning cabin. If I can get it ignited, we’ll have a chance—a flaming weapon that can do permanent damage to the monster before us.

Adam recovers faster than I anticipated, whirling to intercept me before I can reach the flames. His clawed hand catches my jacket, yanking me off my feet with inhuman strength. I crash to the ground, air driven from my lungs by the impact, the branch spinning from my grasp.

“Jensen!” Aubrey shouts, already moving to help.

Adam looms over me, those unnatural blue eyes gleaming with hunger and triumph. His weight crashes down on my chest, pinning me to the snow. I struggle, fighting for leverage, for breath, for any advantage against his supernatural strength. His hands close around my throat, claws digging into my skin, drawing blood that steams in the frigid air.

The world begins to dim around the edges as oxygen deprivation sets in. Through narrowing vision, I see Aubrey charging toward us, her face a mask of desperate determination. She doesn‘t shoot—too risky with me pinned beneath Adam—but instead leaps onto his back, wrapping an arm around his throat in a practiced chokehold.

Adam roars, releasing me to deal with this new threat. He throws himself backward, attempting to crush Aubrey between his body and the ground. She anticipates the move, disengaging at the last second to roll clear, drawing her knife as she comes up in a fighting stance.

I suck in desperate breaths, scrambling to my feet as Adam turns his attention to Aubrey. She darts forward, blade flashing in the firelight, catching him across the forearm as he raises it to defend himself. The wound barely slows him, just a minor inconvenience.

“The knife,” I rasp, my voice rough from near-strangulation. “Heat it in the fire!”

Understanding dawns in her eyes. She feints toward Adam, drawing him into a lunge before pivoting away, using his momentum against him. The move carries her toward the burning cabin, close enough to thrust the blade into the flames for a critical moment.

When she pulls it back, the metal glows red-hot—a weapon that might do lasting damage to the hungry one before us. Adam recognizes the threat, hesitating for the first time, actually backing away as she advances with the heated blade.

“Not so confident now, are you?” she taunts, the glowing knife held before her like a talisman.

I circle behind him, grabbing my fallen rifle, looking for any opening. Adam’s attention is fixed on Aubrey and the burning knife. It’s quickly losing heat, but it’s the first thing that’s provoked genuine fear in him since we encountered him.

Adam snarls, rage overcoming caution. He lunges at her, a desperate, all-or-nothing attack. Aubrey sidesteps, slashing with the heated blade as he passes. The knife catches him across the face, and for the first time, his flesh doesn’t immediately begin to heal. The wound smolders, black fluid hissing where the hot metal cauterized as it cut his cheek.

A shriek of pain tears from Adam’s throat—a sound more animal than human. He stumbles, clutching at the wound that refuses to close, his features contorted with shock as much as agony.

I seize the moment to grab another branch, this one smaller but more manageable. I thrust it into the flames licking at the cabin’s collapsed walls, igniting the end into a makeshift torch. Now armed, I move to flank Adam from the other side, trapping him between us.

His head whips back and forth, assessing his options, calculating odds. For a moment, I think he might surrender to the inevitable, might accept his defeat.

Instead he charges directly at me, accepting the burning torch as the price of reaching his target. The flaming wood catches him across the chest as we collide, setting his ragged clothing alight, but his momentum carries us both to the ground.

I lose my grip on the torch as we fall, the burning branch spinning away into the snow where it hisses and dies. Adam’s weight crashes down on me for the second time, his burning clothes searing my skin even as his claws rake across my chest, tearing through jacket and shirt to the flesh beneath.

Pain explodes through me, hot and immediate. I hear Aubrey shout something, but it’s lost in the roaring of blood in my ears. Adam’s transformed face hovers inches from mine, teeth bared in a snarl of triumph, eyes gleaming with that unnatural blue.

A shot cracks through the night—Aubrey, her aim precise despite the chaotic struggle. The bullet catches Adam in the back of the head, a kill shot on any normal human. He jerks with the impact, momentarily stunned, black fluid spraying from the wound.

“I thought you were out of bullets,” I wheeze.

“I got lucky,” she says.

The luck is enough. I leverage my legs beneath him and push with every ounce of remaining strength, throwing him to the side. Rolling clear, I scramble toward the cabin’s burning remains, toward the one thing that might end this nightmare permanently.

Adam recovers too quickly, already regaining his feet despite the smoking wound in his skull. He turns toward Aubrey now, perhaps recognizing her as the more immediate threat.

She fires again but there’s only an empty click.

“Fuck,” she says, and then she’s running away.

I reach the burning remains, heat searing my face and hands as I grab a flaming timber from the pyre. The wood burns my palms, but I barely register the pain—too focused on reaching Aubrey before Adam can.

She trips on a hidden root beneath the snow, going down hard. Her gun spins from her grasp, disappearing into the darkness beyond the firelight. Adam is on her in an instant, clawed hands closing around her throat, lifting her bodily from the ground with that unnatural strength.

“AUbrEY!” Her name tears from my throat, raw and desperate.

I charge, burning timber raised like a club. Adam turns at the sound, still holding Aubrey aloft, her feet kicking uselessly as she fights for breath. Our eyes meet across the distance—his inhuman blue, mine wild with fury and fear.

The bastard smiles, a silent promise of what’s to come. Aubrey’s struggles grow weaker, her face paling as oxygen is cut off.

The distance between us seems endless, my legs moving through snow that suddenly feels like quicksand. Adam’s grip tightens on Aubrey’s throat, her eyes beginning to roll back. In those eternal seconds, I see our future crumbling—the tentative connection we’ve formed, the possibility of something beyond these mountains, beyond this nightmare—all of it dying with her.

Not again.

Not like Lainey.

Not like everyone else I’ve failed to save.

Not her .

With a roar of my own—as primal and savage as anything the hungry ones have voiced—I close the final distance. The burning timber connects with Adam’s back with bone-crushing force, driving him forward, away from Aubrey who crumples to the ground, gasping for breath.

Adam whirls to face me, his back smoldering where the flames have caught his tattered clothing, have seared into the inhuman flesh beneath. Black fluid oozes from the wound, hissing and steaming in the frigid air.

I press the advantage, swinging the burning timber in wide arcs that force him to retreat, to give ground. Each near miss causes him to flinch, to recoil from the flames that can cause permanent damage to his regenerating flesh.

“This is for Lainey,” I snarl, driving him back another step. “For Cole.” Another swing, another retreat. “For Hank and Red.”

Adam backs toward the burning cabin, seemingly unaware of the trap he’s setting for himself. His focus is entirely on the flaming weapon in my hands, on avoiding its touch at all costs. Behind him, the collapsed structure continues to burn, a pyre waiting for one final offering.

From the corner of my eye, I see Aubrey stagger to her feet, her movements unsteady but determined. Her hand closes around a burning piece of wood from the edge of the fire—creating her own flaming weapon to join mine.

Adam’s head whips back and forth, calculating odds, realizing too late that he’s been maneuvered between us and the inferno behind him. For the first time, his confidence seems to waver, his movements becoming more desperate than calculated.

Aubrey and I advance in unison, driving him back one step at a time, our fiery weapons creating a wall of flame he can’t penetrate without injury.

Five feet from the burning cabin.

Three feet.

Two.

Adam feints to the side, trying to circle around me, to find a gap in our defense. I anticipate the move, cutting him off, my burning timber catching him across the chest. His clothing ignites again, flames spreading across his torso with unnatural speed.

A shriek of agony tears from his throat as he claws at the burning fabric, at his own searing flesh. The sound is hardly human anymore—a high, keening wail that resonates in my bones.

“Now!” I shout to Aubrey. Together, we lunge forward, our burning weapons connecting simultaneously with Adam’s chest, driving him backward with combined force.

He stumbles, arms windmilling as he fights to keep his balance. One more step back—directly into the heart of the cabin’s burning remains. The flames leap to welcome him, engulfing his form in a searing embrace.

Adam’s scream rises to an impossible pitch as the fire consumes him—not just his clothing, not just his flesh, but the very hunger that animated him. His struggles become frenzied, inhuman, his transformed body thrashing against the inevitable.

Then, suddenly, he goes still—a blackened silhouette against the raging inferno, arms outstretched as if in final supplication. Then, finally, he crumbles from his eerie pose, collapsing into the heart of the fire, ash mixing with ash, returning to the mountains that created him.

I turn to Aubrey, relief flooding through me.

“We did it,” I breathe. “It’s done.”

But as I reach for her, the ground beneath our feet shifts violently. The intense heat from the fire has destabilized the snow pack, triggering an avalanche on the slope above us.

“Oh, fuck. Run!” I shout, grabbing her arm and pulling her parallel to the slope.

We sprint away from the burning cabin, snow cascading down toward us in an unstoppable wave. The roar is deafening, like a freight train bearing down upon us. I pull Aubrey alongside me, both of us struggling through knee-deep snow toward the tree line.

I risk a glance and see a wall of white bearing down, gaining on us with terrifying speed.

We won’t make it.

Aubrey stumbles, her exhaustion from the fight finally catching up to her. I grab her arm, trying to haul her forward, but the delay costs us precious seconds. The leading edge of the avalanche is almost upon us.

“Go!” she shouts, pushing me away. “Jensen, run!”

Instead, I shove her toward a massive pine tree just ahead. “Climb!” I order, giving her one final push before turning to face the wave of snow, as if my body alone could somehow shield her from nature’s fury.

The avalanche hits me first, the force of it sending me tumbling. I manage to grab the trunk of the pine, anchoring myself as the snow rushes past. But Aubrey isn’t as lucky. Though she’d reached the lower branches, the sheer power of the snow tears her away before she can climb higher.

“Aubrey!” I scream, helpless as she’s swept away in a churning mass of white.

When the initial surge passes, leaving me half-buried but alive, I tear myself free and stagger in the direction I last saw her. The landscape is transformed, smoothed into alien contours by the avalanche’s passage. Even the cabin is gone.

“Aubrey!” I call again, desperation mounting as silence answers me. I search frantically, looking for any sign of her. A dash of color against the white catches my eye—the edge of her black jacket, barely visible beneath a mound of snow. I dig with bare hands, ignoring the pain as ice crystals tear at my skin.

She’s unconscious when I uncover her, blood streaming from a gash on her temple. Her chest rises and falls with shallow breaths, but her skin is already taking on a bluish tinge from cold and lack of oxygen.

“Stay with me,” I murmur, gathering her limp form in my arms. “Don’t you dare die on me, Aubrey Wells.”

I can only hope she’s still good at taking orders.