CASSIE
Water dripped in the distance, and dampness lingered in the air. From the dust-coated window three stories above my head, slivers of sun and blue sky peeked into the cavernous warehouse. I laid on my back on the dirty floor amid the debris of empty spray paint cans and discarded fast food wrappers, and tried to focus on counting the wooden beams crisscrossing below the tin roof. One of my arms was chained to a rusted metal pipe extending from the wall, and I’d bloodied my wrist trying in vain to free myself.
The agent who dragged me into the building by the hair of my head was not a man. He was a Ragespawn and I was surprised that it hadn’t tried to kill me yet. I took a deep breath to keep from hyperventilating as he walked toward me.
Crouching near my shoulders, he tilted his head and studied me. I was afraid to antagonize him by staring back at him, but at the same time afraid to look away in case he thought it was a show of weakness.
“Where is it?”
“Where’s what?”
“The ship!”
The door leading into the warehouse opened, and my father rushed in. He’d been acting a hundred different kinds of crazy, but I was thrilled to see him. Though dogmatic about getting to the truth, he would never condone the agent hurting me.
“Why is she here?” He shoved the agent aside and went to work taking the cuff from my wrist.
“Dad,” I whispered and opened my arms to hug him. The second he pulled me into him, I saw he had the same narrow pupils the agent had. I screamed and stumbled backward, throwing myself against the wall. Ohmygod. A Ragespawn.
His hand closed around my throat, lifting me off my feet and pinning me in place. “You will tell me what I want to know.” His fingers dug into me, and I clawed at his grip, trying to remember everything I’d learned about the Ragespawn. Their bite was poisonous. If he bit me and broke the skin, the acid in his saliva would invade my bloodstream, and affect me the same as if I had rabies.
The other agent unhooked a two-way radio from his belt when garbled voices came across the frequency. He put it close to his ear, listened for a second, then said. “Rick Simon tracked your SUV. We need to move, now.”
My father… The creature posing as my father, kept his grip on my neck and pulled me behind him, leading the way to a small, brown car. After popping the trunk, he shoved me inside. “We’ll take her to the destruction chamber.” The lid closed, shutting out the brightness of the day. Oh my God. My father… He was dead, his body hosted by this creature.
“Please,” I screamed in the tight, cramped space. I screamed until my throat was raw. I had to save myself. I shifted away from something poking me in the back. Wrenching my arm around behind me, I closed my fingers around the edge of a tire iron. Inch by inch, I dragged it in front of me. My father had talked about the chamber my freshman year of high school. No one, whether human or alien, had ever survived it, he’d said. A strange calm flooded me. I couldn’t escape what they had in store for me, but I could make sure I left them with something to remember me by. I squeezed the tire iron as the car bumped across railroad tracks. Keeping it close with one hand, I used the other to try to find an emergency trunk release lever, but came up empty.
Dad had taught me how to escape a fire. How to free myself if my car was ever trapped under water. Survival skills I’d rolled my eyes at, thinking he was overreacting. Now he was forever gone, taken over by the creature hosting in his body. Tears eased from my eyes and trickled down my face as I tracked my fingers along the back of the trunk. My dad—that monster Mom and I had been living with—was a Ragespawn. I shuddered and cried harder as I pushed the tire iron against the brake light. I tried to remember when my father had first started acting differently. The camping trip. He’d probably been attacked by a Ragespawn while I was being attacked by an alien.
Pain, grief, and fear swept over me. I’d lost so much that night. I had to force myself to push my emotions aside for now and concentrate on trying to survive.
If I could shove the brake light out, I could get my fingers through the opening and maybe another driver would notice.
I shoved hard and the brake light cover popped off. The elation was cut short when the car swerved, and then stopped. Footsteps crunched near the rear and the key was inserted. I readied the tire iron and when the agent who’d taken me raised the trunk, I stabbed the sharp end of the tool deep into his thigh. As the blood spurted, I leaped from the trunk and ran hard toward the road behind the car. Adrenaline gave my feet wings. Almost there. Almost there…
The dad creature grabbed me. “Flee, and I’ll kill Jason, then your mother, and Sydney.”
He didn’t have any of them or Jason. No way. Jason would have fought. I bit my lip. Unless he thought about how much it would hurt me if he injured or killed my father. He would have hesitated for my sake, not realizing Dad was now a Ragespawn. He wouldn’t have wanted to be the one to kill my father. I stopped running, but walked backward away from him.
The dad-Ragespawn stepped over his comrade writhing on the ground trying to yank the tire iron out of his body. He held up his phone. “One call, and within minutes I can have agents swarming around the people you love. My agents. Not human ones.”
“Rick Simon will find you.”
“He won’t be a problem. We have his wife.”
The creature wouldn’t hesitate to take another human life. I was screwed if I didn’t get out of here.
I started running again, but didn’t make it to the main road before something hard hit me in the back of my calf. I cried out as my legs tangled with the tire iron and I went down. Shrieking, I scooted away from the blood on the tool.
The Ragespawn’s hands closed around my upper arms in a bruising grip and he hauled me to my feet. His acrid breath washed over my face when he leaned closer. “You want me to show you your fate if you don’t cooperate?” He turned and dragged me with him back to the other agent. Kneeling, his hand still locked around my wrist, he tore into the other agent’s abdomen using his one hand and his teeth. When he pulled out the intestines, I turned my head to the side and vomited.
Wiping his mouth with his sleeve, eyes feverishly bright, he stood. “I’ll do this to all the ones you love and I’ll make sure you’re awake for every second of the same unless you give me the information I want.”
“What information?” I tried not to look at the blood flowing across the gravel, turning the white rocks into pebbles of red.
Anger darkened his face. “Tell me where the ship is and the extent of Jason’s powers.”
“I don’t know.” I tried to think of what I could do to stall him, to keep him from killing me. I had to last until Jason found me. I knew he would come for me.
He yanked my arm up behind my back until the shoulder popped out of the joint and I yelped, nearly blacking out from the pain. “We can play this your way.”
He led the way to the car, opened the back door and shoved me inside. I twisted up into the seat to take pressure off my arm.
He slammed the door closed and pressed his hand against the hinges, searing the door in place. I quickly slid across the seat to the opposite side and pushed open the other door. If I could—his hand came down across the back of my head and the world went dark.
JASON
“They have my wife!” Rick Simon shouted into his phone, then hung up. With a loud curse, he threw the phone across the parking lot. The lot was filled with local police cars, and one officer unrolled a swatch of yellow caution tape around Sydney’s car. FBI agents wearing somber expressions and a general air of impatience began questioning witnesses, including Sydney.
I threaded my way around a woman juggling a toddler on her hip and talking excitedly to the police as I approached Rick. The guilt over Cassie’s abduction was eating me alive. I felt guilty for leaving her alone with just one agent to protect her. “Where was she taken?”
“I don’t know.”
The lie was meant for me to keep my distance, to leave recovering Cassie to the experts, but no one was as expert at dealing with an alien than another alien. I crowded him, forcing him to take a step back. “Don’t make me hurt you.”
“You need to think about your actions.” Swiveling his head, he checked to see who was within earshot. “I’m doing all I can to get my wife back and keep the alien aspect of this under wraps. The second these guys know a supernatural was involved, they’ll look at the people Cassie hung out with. Who do you think they’ll find? Hmm?”
I didn’t care what happened to me as long as she was safe. “Let them find me.”
“What good will you do her if you’re locked away?”
I scoffed at his ignorance. “You think there’s a human prison that can hold me?”
Rick raised his eyebrows. “When it involves keeping aliens in lockup, my people learned from our mistakes during the Great Extinction.”
“So did mine.”
He raked a hand down his face. “I don’t have time to argue with you. I want to find my wife.” He pushed past me.
I dogged his footsteps. “I’m your best chance at getting both Cassie and your wife back alive.”
Stopping so abruptly I nearly plowed into him, Rick spun to face me. Indecision warred on his face for a few seconds, and then he marched over to a car. “I won’t be able to keep the other agents from killing you if you get caught in the building.”
“Understood.”
He opened the door and took out a two-way radio. “Take this in case we get separated so you’ll know when agents are closing in on you. Our Intel says the agent who took my wife and Cassie are holding both of them at the destruction chamber.” He met my gaze with a steady stare. “Cassie’s father has her but he isn’t himself.”
“What do you mean?”
“His body has been hosted by a Ragespawn. We received confirmation of that this morning. I was on my way to her house to inform Mrs. Grant when the call came in that Cassie was abducted.”
The information rattled me. Posing as an alien hunter was the perfect cover. I should have guessed. Cassie had been living with a Ragespawn all this time and had been in danger all along, but not like she was now. The creature no longer had its cover to mask what it was. A cornered alien was the most dangerous of creatures.
We got into his car and Rick drove past the blockade. I hoped we weren’t already too late.