The aluminum bat cut the fog.

  PING.

  The sound was sharp, ugly. It echoed off the quiet suburban houses like a gunshot.

  Damon had swung with everything he had. The bat connected solidly with Sarah Miller’s shoulder.

  She didn’t stumble. She didn’t scream.

  She didn’t even blink.

  The bat rebounded, vibrating in Damon’s hands. He gasped, the shock traveling up his arms.

  Sarah stood there. She was wearing a floral bathrobe, soaked in mud and dew. She cocked her head at an impossible angle, like a bird listening for a worm. Her jaw hung loose, swaying slightly with the wind.

  Those blue eyes—electric, solid, empty. Dead—locked onto Damon.

  “Damon, get back!” Frankie screamed.

  She was ten feet away. Too far.

  Sarah moved.

  It wasn’t a lunge. It was a blur. One second she was standing still; the next, she was inside Damon’s guard.

  She backhanded him.

  It looked like a casual swat, a gesture to shoo away a fly. But the force lifted Damon off his feet.

  He flew backward. He hit the wet grass hard, rolling; the bat clattering away into the darkness.

  “Damon!”

  Frankie’s vision narrowed. The red ring in her eyes pulsed. The world sharpened into high-contrast targets. Threat. Prey. Kill.

  She pushed off the pavement. Her bare feet tore up the manicured lawn. She crossed the distance in two strides.

  Sarah was already standing over Damon.

  Damon was scrambling backward on his elbows, coughing. He looked up, eyes wide with a terror that went beyond fear.

  Sarah leaned down.

  Her chest heaved. A convulsing, wet spasm.

  She opened her mouth. Wider.

  The skin of her cheeks tore. Rrrrrip.

  It sounded like wet paper. Her jaw unhinged completely, the mandible dropping to her collarbone.

  A sound came from her throat. Haaaack-click-click.

  “No!” Damon yelled. He threw his arm up to cover his face.

  Sarah vomited.

  It wasn’t bile. It wasn’t blood.

  White slime. A geyser. And inside the slime, writhing like noodles in boiling water, were worms.

  Hundreds of them. White. Segmented. thrashing.

  They hit Damon’s arm. They hit his chest.

  They didn’t just slide off. They latched on. They bit.

  Damon screamed. He flailed, slapping at his bare skin.

  Frankie hit Sarah like a freight train.

  Shoulder to chest.

  There was a sickening crunch of ribs. Sarah’s body flew sideways. She flew, crashing into her own prize-winning hydrangea bush. Branches snapped. Blooms exploded in a shower of blue and purple petals.

  Frankie didn’t stop.

  She spun toward Damon.

  “Get them off!” Damon shrieked. “Frankie! Get them off!”

  He was clawing at his forearm. One of the white worms was burrowing. Its head—a tiny, black-pincered nightmare—was already under the skin.

  Frankie dropped to her knees. She didn’t hesitate. She grabbed the worm’s tail.

  It was slippery. Strong. It fought her grip.

  She pinched hard, her fingernails cutting into the parasite. She yanked.

  Pop.

  The worm came free with a wet sucking sound. It thrashed wildly in her fingers, trying to bite her thumb.

  Frankie crushed it.

  Blue ichor squirted onto her hand. It burned, cold and acidic.

  She brushed the rest of the slime off Damon’s chest.

  “Are there more?” she demanded. “Damon, look at me! Did any get in?”

  Damon was hyperventilating. He stared at the small, bleeding hole in his arm.

  “I… I don’t know. I blocked it. I think I blocked it.”

  A rustle from the bushes.

  Frankie stood up slowly. She positioned herself between Damon and the hydrangeas.

  The jacket—Damon’s heavy canvas coat—felt suffocating. She wanted to rip it off, to fight unencumbered, but she needed the armor.

  Sarah rose from the crushed flowers.

  She looked broken. Her chest caved in where Frankie had hit her. Her bathrobe was torn, revealing gray, translucent skin underneath.

  The story has been taken without consent; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

  But she wasn’t slowing down.

  She twitched. Her head snapped left, then right. Pop. Pop.

  Click. Click.

  The sound was coming from inside her mouth. Echolocation. Or communication.

  “Frankie,” Damon whispered from the ground. “Her chest. You crushed her chest.”

  “I know,” Frankie said.

  “Why is she standing up?”

  “Because she’s not Sarah,” Frankie said.

  The thing that used to be Sarah Miller smiled. The unhinged jaw made it a horrific, gaping maw.

  It screamed and charged.

  This time, Frankie was ready.

  She met the charge head-on.

  She ducked under Sarah’s flailing claws—fingernails that had been ripped away to reveal jagged bone spurs.

  Frankie drove her fist into Sarah’s stomach.

  It felt like punching a bag of wet cement. There was no give. No breath to knock out. Just dense, cold meat.

  Sarah didn’t fold. Instead, she wrapped her arms around Frankie. A bear hug.

  The grip was like a vise. Steel. Crushing.

  Frankie felt her own ribs creak, squeezing out her breath.

  Sarah lowered her face toward Frankie’s neck. The white worms in her mouth chattered, eager to transfer.

  Close. Too close.

  Frankie roared.

  She summoned the strength that terrified her mother. The strength that didn’t belong to a teenage girl.

  She broke the hold. She shoved her arms upward, shattering Sarah’s grip.

  She grabbed Sarah by the shoulders and spun her around.

  Frankie secured a chokehold. Rear naked choke.

  She tightened her grip. She felt the vertebrae of Sarah’s neck against her forearm.

  “Sorry, Sarah,” Frankie gritted out.

  She twisted. Hard.

  SNAP.

  The sound was Loud. Final. The sound of a spine being severed.

  Sarah’s head flopped to the side. Her chin hit her own shoulder.

  Frankie let go, stepping back, expecting the body to fall.

  It didn’t.

  Sarah stood there. Her head dangled uselessly, swaying like a broken doll’s. The neck clearly broken, the connection between brain and body severed.

  But the body turned.

  The arms raised.

  The legs adjusted their stance.

  Frankie stared, horrified.

  “How?” she breathed.

  Sarah’s body lunged again. The head flopped backward, eyes staring up at the night sky, while the claws reached for Frankie’s throat.

  It wasn’t the brain driving the body.

  It was the worms. The colony. They were threading through the muscles, bypassing the nervous system.

  “Frankie!” Damon yelled. He had retrieved the bat. He swung at Sarah’s knees.

  CRACK.

  Sarah’s left leg buckled. She fell to one knee.

  But she kept crawling. Dragging herself. Clawing at the grass.

  She wasn’t stopping. She wouldn’t stop until disassembled.

  Frankie realized the truth then. The rules of vampires didn’t apply here. The rules of biology barely applied.

  Sever the head. Maybe that stops the signal.

  Frankie moved.

  She straddled Sarah’s back, pinning the woman to the lawn.

  The body bucked wildly beneath her, strong as a horse.

  Frankie grabbed Sarah’s hair—roots graying, dyed blonde.

  She pulled the head back.

  The blue eyes were still glowing. Still watching.

  She pulled.

  She didn’t use a knife. She didn’t have one.

  She used brute, terrifying force.

  She braced her foot against Sarah’s shoulder. She gripped the base of the skull.

  She tore.

  Skin stretched. Muscle tore. Tendons snapped like rubber bands.

  Frankie screamed with the effort, a sound of pure exertion and disgust.

  The head came free.

  Frankie fell backward, the severed head tumbling from her hands. It rolled across the grass, coming to a stop near the driveway.

  The body under her seized.

  It convulsed once. Twice. A violent shudder that rattled its teeth.

  Then, it collapsed.

  Frankie scrambled away, crab-walking backward on her hands and heels. She was panting, her chest heaving. Blue slime and gray fluid coated her hands.

  “Is it…” Damon lowered the bat. He was leaning against the fender of a parked car, looking like he was about to be sick. “Is it dead?”

  Frankie watched the body.

  It wasn’t moving.

  But it was changing.

  “Look,” Frankie pointed.

  The corpse on the lawn smoked.

  It wasn’t burning. It was melting.

  The skin lost its cohesion. It turned liquid, sliding off the bones. The muscles dissolved into a thick, gray sludge. Chemical sludge. Gray soup. It smelled of ammonia and ozone—sharp, chemical, burning the inside of Frankie’s nose.

  Within seconds, there was no Sarah Miller.

  Just a skeleton sitting in a pool of gray soup.

  And the worms.

  Hundreds of white worms wriggled in the sludge. But without the host, they were dying. They curled up, turning black, popping like bubbles.

  Frankie stood up. Her legs felt shaky.

  She looked at her hands. The blue slime was drying, flaking off like ash.

  She wiped them frantically on the grass.

  “It’s not magic,” Frankie whispered.

  She looked at Damon.

  “Vampires turn to dust,” she said. “Ghosts vanish. This thing melted. Like plastic. Like meat.”

  Damon walked over to her. He didn’t look at the sludge. He looked at her face.

  He reached out, avoiding the slime on her jacket, and touched her cheek.

  “You okay?”

  Frankie laughed. A short, hysterical bark.

  “Okay?” She gestured to the skeleton on the lawn. “I just ripped my neighbor’s head off, Damon. With my hands.”

  “She was already dead,” Damon said firmly. “Frankie. She was dead before she hit the ground.”

  “Was she?” Frankie asked. Her voice trembled. “How do we know?”

  “Because of the worms,” Damon said. He held up his arm. The spot where the worm had tried to burrow was red and swollen, bleeding sluggishly. “That wasn’t a person. That was a suit. They kill the brain to control the body.”

  Frankie looked at his arm.

  “Let me see.”

  She grabbed his wrist. She leaned in, sniffing the wound.

  It smelled of blood. Iron. Damon.

  No rot. No ozone.

  “You got it out,” she said.

  “Yeah,” Damon said. “Thanks to you.”

  He looked down at the pile of gray sludge.

  “This isn’t a contagion,” he said. “Or a spill.”

  “No,” Frankie said. “It’s an invasion.”

  A light flickered on in the house across the street. A curtain twitched.

  “We need to go,” Frankie said. “Now. Before the cops come. Before anyone sees this.”

  “Where?” Damon asked. “Your mom isn’t home.”

  “Dee Dee’s,” Frankie said. “She has the books. She has the tech. And she has a basement.”

  Frankie started walking toward the driveway, stripping off the ruined canvas jacket as she went. She stood in just the vintage slip and sneakers, shivering in the cold mist.

  She didn’t care about the cold anymore.

  She cared about the silence.

  Because as they walked away from Sarah Miller’s remains, the silence of the neighborhood wasn’t peaceful.

  It was waiting.

  From the dark houses lining the street, Frankie heard it.

  Thrum.

  Thrum.

  Thrum.

  A rhythm. Calling and answering.

  Behind a picket fence to her left: Click-click.

  From a garage to her right: Click-click.

  They weren’t the only ones awake.

  “Run,” Frankie whispered.