By the time the third drunk teenager threw up on the expensive carpet in the next room, Mia Ashford was entirely done with this particular night’s carousing. If not for Zoe’s insistence that she simply could not attend a party at the Emery Fletcher’s mansion without someone to watch her proverbial back, Mia wouldn’t be in this gaudy mansion at all. Worse, with Zoe now occupied, Mia’s remaining company was less than lovely.
Mia was fast running out of ways to politely decline pick up attempts that didn’t involve violence, and with Chad and Gerald—or was it Chaz and Jerome?—she was right on the verge. Yes, it’s nice you own a private pool on the top floor of a Hatten skyscraper. No, I don’t care to visit tonight. Mia quite enjoyed swimming, but only pushing herself faster in a lane all her own.
She certainly had no interest in lounging uselessly in a bikini.
The room she now occupied had ceilings high enough to contain a second story, windows along one entire wall looking out onto tall green trees in a dark night on a well-lit lawn, and even an ostentatious marble fireplace, for all the use that was in Dios. It was obviously for show, lacking even wood.
A rather overcomplicated chandelier hung overhead, fake candles lit with dozens of lights, and several pieces of gaudy artwork lined the walls. Mia didn’t know if the artwork was Pre-Break or not, but it wasn’t the type of artwork she’d hang up. Mostly naked people draped in silky clothing, grabbing apples or consulting gods, were not among her favorites.
After politely refusing yet another offer to depart Emily Fletcher’s mansion for “an even more awesome after party” Mia stood, brushed couch fuzz off her pattered gray leggings, and waved a cheery farewell to the two now disappointed boys who’d entirely failed to chat her up. She walked off to find Zoe Carter, her best friend.
They’d made their appearance at the Emily Fletcher’s party. They’d been seen. Now it was time to drag Zoe off to a seedy dive bar, one with live music and aged liquor.
Perhaps Mia would even invite Logan along. Logan seemed nice.
It wasn’t that Mia didn’t enjoy parties. She simply preferred a well-stocked bar with people who did real work to a house full of expensive furniture, pretentious artwork, and wealthy kids with far more money than sense. Also, the bar selection was terrible.
How could Emily Fletcher, fledgling pharmaceutical magnate, stock so many different brands of alcohol and neglect at least one good whiskey? Mia preferred Bismark herself, but she’d even have settled for Golden Bird or even Bolt 40. Beer was fine, but whiskey?
Whiskey was where drinking got really good.
The room next to where she’d left the boys was empty, and the one beyond that was where Zoe had last headed with Logan. The rooms of the Fletcher mansion looked scarcely used, like a model house with model furniture, but Mia suspected Emily’s parents spent more time in their Hatten apartment than their Presea mansion.
When one’s house had this many rooms, it seemed most furniture was kept for show. Several people drank and chatting in the next room, and two eagerly groped each other on one of the luxurious patterned couches, but none of them was Zoe or Logan. What to do?
Mia headed for the bar in the massive front lobby, by the big double doors leading to the front courtyard. She’d text Zoe from there and adjust her route accordingly.
Mia wasn’t truly worried about Zoe. Before Chaz—or had his name been Chary?—attempted to sell her on becoming his pool girl, Zoe had given Mia a quite obvious thumb’s up, behind her back, as she stumbled off with Logan. Zoe had been drunk, not impaired.
Mia felt confident Zoe was fine. She had a good feel for people, and Logan had struck her as a genuinely sweet guy, at least in tonight’s conversation over drinks. He was also quite lovely, a brown-haired baseball player with a strong chin and an athletic build.
If Zoe planned to hook up with him tonight, good for her. Still ... even if Mia couldn’t convince them to leave with her, Mia needed to check on them. She’d never forgive herself if Zoe got into trouble because her best friend abandoned her at a dull party.
The lobby of the Fletcher house was as ostentatious as the rest of it, a large round room with a golden marble floor. Chairs sat along the wall, as well as soft-lit lamps, and a large polished staircase with golden railings lead up to the second floor. The second floor was supposedly off limits, but really, if was full of rooms where people could shag in private.
Once Mia arrived at the bar, she crossed her arms on the bar and pulled her phone out of her simple black handbag. She popped off a text to Zoe—U OK?—and took one more look at Emily Fletcher’s seemingly luxurious drink selection before she departed. There had to be something behind that bar that would make her ride back to Lynbrook more pleasant.
She settled on an apple brandy in a glass snifter. She held it under her nose just long enough to appreciate the subtle cider smell, then sipped appreciatively as she leaned against the wall. This wasn’t Bismark, but it wasn’t bad. At least the Fletchers chose good brandy.
No response from Zoe. Not worrying, in and off itself, but they’d agreed to respond to texts in under a minute when separated. Mia held her drink one hand and plucked out her phone with the other, typing one-thumbed.
HEY. U OK?
Another minute. No response. So Zoe was either actively enjoying Logan now, and had willingly set aside her phone—or Mia had misjudged something tonight, whether the alcohol content of Zoe’s drink or the noble intentions of one Logan ... whatever his last name was.
Mia wasn’t leaving without an answer. She set down her half-empty snifter with a hint of regret, clutched her phone in both hands, and punched in the code that would turn it into a tracker for Zoe’s phone. They’d enabled tracking on each other’s phones, so this was fine.
The small glowing screen flashed pure white as an arrow displayed, pointing toward the staircase and up. There was also an approximate distance, though fine phone tracking was never precise. Even in a house this big, it would be enough.
The arrow pointed to the second floor, which suggested Zoe and Logan had headed up together. Mia headed up the steps without a look back, and no one challenged her.
It was darker on the second floor, and many doors were closed. Sounds that were certainly interesting came from behind some of them, but Mia’s phone didn’t point through those doors. She let those fortunate lovers enjoy their privacy. Zoe waited ahead.
The hallway had carpet thick enough to swallow Mia’s black flats, and the walls were a decidedly off-putting shade of beige. Mia passed another painting—this one of a naked woman in some sort of open clamshell—and walked forward quietly.
The arrow on her phone led her straight ahead, then around a corner, then to a closed door with a boy leaning against it. Mia’s eyes narrowed as the boy’s eyes met hers, cool and unworried. He was tall, muscular, dark-haired, and absolutely not Logan.
There were many reasons this boy would be “guarding” a closed room with Zoe and Logan in it, and very few of those reasons were good. Mia felt an unpleasant churning in her stomach and wished she’d passed on the brandy. Still, too late to turn down that drink.
She tucked her phone into her handbag and dropped her handbag in the hallway, to ensure both hands were entirely unobstructed. She strode straight for the closed door and the boy leaning against it. She waved as she approached. “Is Zoe in there?”
“Occupied,” the dark-haired boy answered, which wasn’t an answer. He smiled, or rather, smirked. “Unless you’re looking for a good time. I could certainly do worse.”
Mia stopped a few paces away and offered her sweetest smile. “Please step aside.”
The boy’s smirk faded to a frown. “Occupied. Go somewhere else.”
Mia pointed past him, ensuring her extended finger was close enough for dark hair to grab. “I think not. My friend’s in there, and I’d like to check on her. Even if she is occupied.”
Dark hair’s scowl grew even less pleasant. “I said get lost, you dumb bi—“
As he attempted to grab her outstretched hand, the rest of what he might have said was cut off. He got himself yanked off balance for his trouble, toward her.
Mia delivered one perfectly-placed blow to his solar plexus, then gently pressed down on his shoulder. The boy gasped in a futile attempt to breathe, then collapsed aside. He wouldn’t even have a mark, after, so it was his word against hers.
Mia gave the door handle a single jiggle—locked, quite soundly—and stepped back. Then, with no regard for the scandal kicking down a door in the Emily Fletcher’s mansion might cause, she delivered a kick to what she felt was the best impact point by the lock. After all the annoyances tonight, kicking a door open was cathartic.
A standing lamp lit the room inside with soft light. A fine four post bed held two people, one atop the other, with the luxurious patterned comforter stained with blood and gore.
Mia blinked, stepped forward, and blinked again. The comforter was stained with what now? What was this odd trick of the light?
At first glance, the figure atop the other figure—the woman atop the other figure—seemed to be engaged in a passionate necking session, except, again, for all the sopping blood. Had Mia’s last brandy contained some sort of party drug? Was this some horrific trip?
The figure below, judging from his missing shirt and impressive physique, was—or had been—Logan, the nice brown-haired boy. Except Logan seemed to no longer have much brown hair, or much head. The woman atop him chomped eagerly on what might be loose scalp.
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Mia doubled over and vomited like the last person she’d seen in the room below. It came so abruptly it knocked the wind out of her. The smell had just hit her sensitive nostrils, and the smell was utterly horrid, like an open sewer but much, much worse.
Behind her, someone gasped. Then, they shrieked. The dark-haired boy howled as footsteps thumped away behind her.
Mia rose and wiped her mouth. “Zoe?” she whispered.
The woman’s head snapped up. It was Zoe, without doubt, except Mia had never seen Zoe’s teeth stained with this much blood before, or watched her chew quite so vigorously on parts that were simply not meant to be chewed. Zoe’s green dress was absolutely ravaged.
Something rose behind Zoe, no, atop her. It moved sinuously, like a snake, and a four-fingered flower opened and closed. Zoe’s dress was backless, and this snake ... seemed attached. How would an odd snake attach itself to Zoe’s back?
Mia opened her mouth to scream, but nothing emerged but a soft huff, like wind in trees. Zoe rose from her former lover—her meal—and crawled forward, then leapt off the bed like some sort of eager dog. Zoe rose to her full height, almost the same as Mia’s.
Zoe stared with newly bloodshot eyes, visibly filled with an emotion Mia only then understood. Hunger. Absolute, insatiable hunger.
What in the absolute fuck.
Her best friend in the entire world clicked like the alternator on the old ICE car her uncle had once tried to resurrect. It was a grating, rhythmic sound. Zoe advanced, arms hanging at her sides. Yet her arm swayed hypnotically behind her head.
Mia dropped into a balanced combat posture long before her mind caught up with her body. Her body, at least, remembered what to do when it was threatened. She hadn’t spent twelve years training at her uncle’s dojo, with Camilla and many others, to lose her wits at the sight of her best friend growing a third arm and turning into ... this.
Though she did feel rather witless, right now.
As Zoe charged her with a shriek, Mia’s body reacted as her body had been trained. She set her balance, measured Zoe’s angle of approach, and estimated her speed. She stepped forward into Zoe, the moment before she arrived, and used Zoe’s charging momentum to flip her over and past. Zoe crashed to the carpet with a loud shriek, but this wasn’t great.
Zoe stood now between Mia and the only door out, and Zoe was already scrambling to her feet. She clicked again, crouched low. The hand on her third arm snapped hungrily.
Mia had slipped into some sort of insane nightmare, but she never gave up, not even in a nightmare. “Zoe,” she said again. “It’s Mia. It’s—“
Zoe charged once more. Mia lowered her shoulder and aimed at Zoe’s core, impacting hard enough that breathe wuffed past her ear. Yet even as Mia leapt past Zoe, that third arm whipped about and slammed into her side.
The impact sent Mia flying. When the stars cleared, she sat in the ruins of what had once been a fine oak dresser. Mia’s bones and body ached, but she was alive.
Had she just busted apart an entire dresser? How hard had she been flung? Her body tingled like she’d just let every limb fall asleep, and they’d all just woken up at once.
Mia stumbled to her feet as Zoe did the same, but no—this thing, whatever it was, could not be Zoe. Zoe was kind, and good, and had a laugh that instinctively made one smile. Zoe enjoyed draft beer and bar darts and a fast electric car. Zoe did not eat people.
The thing ahead of her wasn’t Zoe, but it did, it seemed, want to devour her. And Mia Ashford wasn’t about to stand for that.
Many feet thumped in the padded hallway. Gasps and quiet yelps emerged from beyond the door to Mia’s side, from people. Zoe’s gaze shifted, and her eyes widened. Her bloody teeth bared as she sighted weaker prey.
She charged.
Mia could easily escape now. She might even hop out the window and take her chances with a landing from two-stories. The grass was soft, and she’d trained to tumble.
Yet the thing that had once been Zoe Carter was charging a hallway full of drunken teenagers who didn’t have twelve years of martial arts training. While they might be a bit spoiled and immature, they did not, any of them, deserve to be eaten.
Mia launched a spinning back kick.
Her foot hit the cannibal as she reached the doorway. This time, the thing that was not Zoe Carter flew into the wall hard enough to make a dent. It slumped into a sit, eyes wide and dazed. As Mia lowered her leg and resumed her stance, the tingles stopped.
She’d never kicked anyone that hard. She’d certainly never kicked anyone across a room. She had training and focus, but she wasn’t a superhero.
But if this was a nightmare, super strength made sense. And it must be a nightmare, it must, because Zoe Carter would never eat Logan or anyone in this expensive and entirely underused mansion. Mia needed to wake up.
But first, she needed to keep Zoe down.
Mia stepped forward, brushed her hands against each other, and scowled. “Had enough?”
The third arm of the Zoe thing slammed into the wall with four fingers open, sucking like a leech. It hauled the Zoe thing’s limp body to its feet despite her legs wobbling like a drunk’s. The thing dropped itself, finding its feet, and leaned forward.
Mia danced back, almost to the window, and beckoned. “Well now, come along.”
The monster shrieked and charged like it had before, no smarter, it seemed, than it had been when Mia entered the room. She met it as before, with a single step forward and a single manipulation of balance and momentum. She sent it past her and out the window.
Or rather, straight through it. Fine glass and find wood shattered cataclysmically.
Mia turned to stare out the broken window just in time to see the Zoe thing clamber to its feet two stories below. Blood stained its tattered green dress. The thing ripped the dress off, exposing what had been Zoe to the world. Only blood-stained underwear remained.
It was now clear now that the arm on Zoe’s back hadn’t been attached. Its origin point matched Zoe’s freckled skin. That arm had grown there.
As the all-but-naked monster that had once been Mia’s best friend loped off across the fine Presea courtyard grass, arm atop its back swaying as its four-fingered hand snapped at the breeze. Mia thumped to her knees and watched through blurry eyes. Was she crying? When had she started to cry? That certainly wasn’t what she’d intended.
This wasn’t actually a nightmare. She needed it to be, but it was not. She was awake.
She had utterly no idea how to continue being awake in a world like this.
People clustered around her now, standing, some touching her shoulder, but Mia didn’t hear them. Her world faded to a dull roar, with just her breathing and her heartbeat to guide her. She stood. She walked out of the newly ventilated room. No one stopped her.
After whatever they’d just seen, not a single one of them dared.
Mia had just stumbled out of the front door when blue and red lights lit the mansion. She sat on the steps, holding herself and shuddering, as several sleek black Dios PD autocars arrived at a decent clip. Behind her, the shouting grew to a cacophony.
Mia knew what might happen next. She hopped up and hurried aside just before the doors slammed open. Men and women in blue uniforms emerged from their autocars and were quickly overwhelmed but a screaming, panicking, drunken mob of terrified kids.
Mia walked away from them. She walked past the police cars and walked across the nice wet grass. She walked in the cool, clear night, and for a moment, her best friend hadn’t eaten that nice Logan boy and gotten herself tossed out a window.
But only for a moment.
Mia had just reached the huge open gates at the end of the expansive courtyard when another vehicle arrived, a big black autotruck with a logo on the side. A blue 9 with a circle around it. Mia knew that logo well. They sponsored her uncle’s dojo in Lynbrook.
What was a truck from Cloud Nine Engineering doing way out here?
A tall, white-haired woman in black armor stepped out of the passenger seat. It took Mia a moment to confirm that yes, this woman did have an actual sword sheathed across her back. Unusual to say the least. Private security? Mia knew Cloud Nine offered private security.
Two more soldiers in dark armor with motorcycle like headgear, led by a man with dark-skin and circuit boards tattooed along his shaved head, hopped out of the truck. They jogged past Mia, into the courtyard, and Mia belatedly noticed the man carried a giant sword.
Mia barely noticed the sword. She was not terrified. Not any longer. She was simply numb, and she really needed a stiff glass of Bismark.
The white-haired women with the sheathed sword stopped as she passed Mia, then spun to face her. Mia glanced into her green eyes, almost without meaning to, and noted the soft green glow behind those eyes. That glow was all too obvious in this perfect dark.
So. Glowing eyes. People with swords. All well and good. It certainly wasn’t the strangest or most horrible sight Mia had witnessed tonight. She looked away and kept walking.
“I’ll be damned,” the white-haired woman said from behind her. “You there! Stop.”
Mia stopped, then glanced back. “Excuse me?”
The woman walked closer. “Your eyes. You’ve changed.”
Mia was really not in the mood to have her brain challenged right now. “If you’ll excuse me, I have somewhere to be.”
Mia had just turned and walked away when the woman’s gloved hand landed on her shoulder. Mia snatched it and twisted without thinking, yet this time, she didn’t flip the woman who’d grabbed her. She ended up trapped in an arm lock, and found the white-haired woman crouched low with one leg stretched out.
This woman had counterbalanced herself to avoid Mia’s throw. The woman released her, stepped back, and beckoned. “That was excellent. Try again?”
Mia blinked.
“Try to take me down again,” the woman said. “You’re good. How old are you? How long have you been this strong? Did you get your strength tonight, or prior to tonight?”
Mia suddenly felt very tired. “I have absolutely no idea what you’re talking about.”
The white-haired woman frowned. “You saw her, didn’t you? The Mute. Where is she?”
Suddenly Mia was quite alert again. “The what now?”
“It had a third arm growing out of its back,” the white-haired woman said. “Did it kill someone up there? Did it try and kill you? Where is it now?”
After a moment of utterly destroyed silence, Mia sank to her knees again. “What’s going on?” she whispered. “I’d really like to know what’s going on, now.”
The white-haired woman frowned. “Tell me where the Mute is, first.”
The Mute. Zoe Carter. Zoe Carter could be that, Mia supposed, if she ate people.
Mia pointed, generally, in the direction the all-but-naked body had fled. “It ran off across the lawn. East, I think? I believe it was headed east.”
The woman spoke into her comm-link, relayed Mia’s update, and stepped forward. Yet she didn’t touch Mia’s shoulder again, or attempt to grab her in any way.
“I have answers,” the woman said. “I can’t give them to you now, because I need to put down the thing you saw before it kills anyone else. But if you stay here, I’ll tell you everything.”
“Everything,” Mia whispered.
“Everything,” the woman said, and pulled her gleaming blade with a quiet ringing sound. “Back soon.”
The woman turned, white ponytail flying, and took off across the lawn at a pace that seemed rather impossible for any woman who wasn’t a ghost.
Still, the white-haired woman’s eyes glowed. Mia considered leaving as she’d intended, but the woman’s words haunted her. She needed answers.
No one else tonight had offered any.
The night didn’t end, but the woman soon returned. Her name, she assured Mia, was Hahna Sato, and she, like Mia, was Hallowed. That meant they were both super strong and, apparently, mutated by the panacea ingredient inside several kinds of popular liquor.
And these things—these Mutes—were what happened when one drank that liquor and did not become Hallowed. That had been the fate of Zoe Carter, who was, Sato assured her, quite dead. Zoe had been dead since she turned, and now she wouldn’t eat anyone else.
As for Zoe’s murder, her absence would be attributed to a tragic fall from a second story balcony. The sightings of blood and gore would be dismissed as drunken teenage gossip and/or mass hysteria brought on by a gas leak that filled the mansion. There would be no investigations and no consequences, certainly not for the Emily Fletcher or her parents.
As for Mia, she wasn’t going home. She truly wanted too, and quite fervently insisted, but Sato was just as strong as her and quietly insistent about what would happen if Mia did leave. She’d turn into a cannibal monster, just like Zoe had, and then Mia would tear her own family apart before Sato finally put her down.
Why not take a day or two to learn what she could do with these new powers? Why not take a day or two to recover at Cloud Nine? Sato offered not just answers, but a deeper understanding of what Mia was now, and Mia felt a need to understand.
Yet as she drove back with Sato, in the seat of Sato’s truck, Mia found what she truly needed was a nap. As horrific as her last night as a civilian had been, she didn’t dream.
The next morning, high on the top floors of Cloud Nine Engineering, Mia started training. She hadn’t asked for these powers or this strength, but she had a responsibility now, to Dios, to Lynbrook, to her family. She had to stop the thing that Zoe Carter turned into from eating anyone like Logan the baseball player again.
Also, she had absolutely no intention of turning into a cannibal herself.