Chapter One

Allison

I careen across the grass, stumbling over a hole in the ground, and stagger sideways while my boots bump into things I refuse to look at, things that might be human bodies. I can’t stop. Not now. Maybe never. Anyone on the ground is beyond saving, anyway. Overlapping screams pierce the air behind me, but I cannot look back. Green sparks ignite in the unnatural twilight, sizzling and snapping, nipping at my skin. My foot slips in the mud, and my ankle twists sideways, but I keep running. Don’t look down, don’t look down. I can’t help them. No one can.

Ahead of me, a hulking figure seizes a smaller one around the neck and jerks its hand. The crack of bones snapping resonates in the air.

The smaller figure crumples to the ground.

Bile surges into my throat. All I can do is gulp it down and keep moving even while my muscles burn.

The ground falls away. I sail through the green-sparked air to smack down hip first. Clawing for a handhold, I lose the remnants of my balance and tumble down a hillside, spinning and spinning as I hurtle sideways down the slope toward where I’d sat to eat my lunch earlier today. The slope that’s now drenched in blood. The warm liquid clings to my skin and infiltrates my mouth, its taste tangy and salty with a hint of sweetness that makes me gag. I slam into a barrier. Though I’ve stopped moving, my head keeps whirling, trapped in an illusion that the world is spinning. I choke back my gorge, but it tastes of blood. Oh God, no. I heave myself up onto my hands and knees. There beside me lies the object that halted my fall.

The headless remains of a human being.

I can’t focus on anything else, my gaze riveted to the gruesome sight. Pain still throbs inside me from my tumble down the hill. But I just slump here, immobile, my heart pounding so hard my chest hurts while the pressure of nausea thrusts up into my throat. I slant sideways and retch, over and over, until my abdominal muscles ache and my throat burns. When at last the heaving subsides, I struggle to catch my breath.

Out of the corner of my eye, I glimpse the dead man.

So many lifeless bodies litter the area, but I’d managed to avoid looking directly at them until now. This one… Christ, it’s impossible to avoid seeing that.

I must keep moving. The beast chasing me will catch up any second.

With an effort that screams agony through my muscles, I hoist myself up and run.

~~~~~

The apocalypse began at two o’clock on a sunny Wednesday afternoon, but no one in this city noticed anything unusual at first. We kept going about our business, even when the sky turned a darker, more intense shade of blue like nothing seen on earth before today. I was in the public library shelving books near the front windows when I realized something had changed, something more than the color of the sky. I felt the change deep inside me, and I heard it too. A silence deeper than the void of outer space enveloped the world while an irresistible impulse seized me, luring me outside.

I pushed through the doors and shambled across the portico, past the tall pillars, and out onto the street.

People poured out of vehicles and other buildings, all of us mindlessly drawn down North Main Street toward the viaduct. We crossed the bridge to gather on the grassy hill just past the trail that skirted the river, as if waiting for something to rise up from the water below and land in front of us. We glanced at each other in confusion. Why had we come to this place? Why was the sky a deeper blue than ever before? We didn’t speak to each other, but somehow, I knew we were all thinking the same thing.

What on earth is happening?

High above us, the eerie sound of music started up, softly at first, then escalating into the strains of a string symphony like none ever heard in this world. The music surrounded and infiltrated me, the melody beautiful and terrible and mesmerizing, its purpose and meaning beyond comprehension. It vibrated through my soul, wringing tears from my eyes. All around me, people sobbed and dropped to their knees, their gazes glued to the cobalt sky, as hypnotized by the music as I was. I fell to my knees too, helpless to understand what was unfolding around me. Deep inside, though, I sensed the horror hidden beneath the beauty.

If only I had understood a few seconds earlier…

No, nothing would have changed. A power beyond imagining had unleashed itself on the world.

The music froze on a single, discordant note that stretched on and on, making my ears ache and pulsating through my flesh. Then the music stopped—and an unearthly roar erupted, impregnating every molecule of air with its cacophony. I slapped my hands over my ears, but the roar penetrated into me so deeply that I couldn’t breathe. And then…

The sky split open.

A rupture in the fabric of the world distended across half the horizon, from high above down to ground level, while a shredding noise grated on my eardrums and reverberated off buildings throughout the city. The hole in the sky disgorged a river of writhing shapes that spilled onto the earth, spreading outward as the amorphous shadows became creatures with arms and legs and heads. They growled and screeched like demons sent up from hell itself.

And then they came for us.

The demons grabbed human beings and tore them to shreds. Screams of agony and terror echoed around me, mingling with the wet sounds of flesh ripping and the cracking of bones. I stood frozen, unable to even blink, witnessing events in mute horror as the creatures ripped men, women, and children asunder. My heart pounded so hard and fast that it robbed me of breath.

A creature raised the severed head of a human being, hoisting it high, and roared in triumph.

Run. Do it now, before those things come for you.

I bolted back down the hill, clinging to the only coherent thought in my mind. This can’t be happening. But it was. While I fled toward the bridge, fireballs shot out of the rip in the sky and slammed into the earth. The green sparks had snuffed out, and the only light emanated from the meteorites crashing down on the city. But they weren’t objects from outer space. They came from another world, from the place on the other side of the rupture in the heavens.

Buildings exploded. Trees burst into flames. Pavement melted. I scrambled up the hill and onto the bridge, heading for…I didn’t know where. Anyplace but here.

At the center of the bridge, hunkered a huge beast.

I halted so quickly I almost tripped over my own feet, and a frigid chill iced through me from my skin down to my soul. Behind me, demons rampaged. Ahead of me, this creature blocked my only escape route. He must’ve stood over six feet tall, a mountain of muscles and wild black hair with a scruffy beard that hid most of his features except for the scar that slashed across his cheek. Every flash of the fireballs lit him up. His long, battered leather coat fluttered around his thighs. It was black, just like his shirt and his worn leather pants that stretched tight over his thighs. I glimpsed hints of tattoos revealed by his partially unbuttoned shirt.

The beast stood there, legs spread, as if he had no intention of allowing me to pass. His gaze landed on me, and his lips peeled back from his teeth, though not in a smile. He sneered at me, fisting his hands at his sides. Jabbing a finger toward me, he growled, “You.”

That beast wanted to kill me. I sensed it, though I had no idea what I had done to enrage him. He must have come through the rupture, which made him an alien monster like the others. What could I do? Behind me lay carnage and death. Ahead of me, maybe I could still find a place to hide or a way to escape.

I whirled around, and before he had time to react, I ran as fast as my battered body could go.

And the beast barreled after me.

~~~~~

That’s how I wind up pelting across the viaduct yet again, dodging other creatures and getting stung by molten fragments of the fireballs that hurtle past overhead. Every explosive impact makes the earth shudder beneath my feet. I need to escape, that’s all I know. The hoarse bellows of the beast pursuing me reverberate off the shattered carcasses of the buildings that once formed a city. Now it’s a wasteland. Where can I hide? How can I get away from that monster? More creatures, just as terrifying, maraud through the city. I can’t get away.

But I must try.

My legs tremble, and my ears ring. Any second, I’ll pass out. I know this. I have no choice but to stop and rest, though I realize the beast will catch up to me if I do. There must be someplace I can hide, for just a few minutes, long enough to regain my strength and catch my breath. I race past a building I would probably recognize if it weren’t reduced to rubble, but up ahead, I see a structure that seems mostly intact. It’s a pharmacy. I’d never visited the place, but I drove past it every day on my way to work.

I risk glancing over my shoulder.

The beast is nowhere in sight.

Maybe I’ve caught a sliver of luck. Veering onto the cracked sidewalk, I leap through a broken window into the pharmacy building. Shelves lie broken and scattered while their contents have sprayed across the blood-spattered floor. I leap over the biggest pile of rubble and drop to my knees, breathing so hard that black spots speckle my vision. I take a long, slow breath. Then another. And another. The ringing in my ears has subsided, and those black spots no longer obscure my sight.

In the gloomy space, I notice a refrigerated case nearby, one that would’ve held beverages, though its glass front has been smashed. Crawling over the debris, I feel around inside the darkened refrigerator until my fingers close around a plastic bottle. Of what, I don’t care. I need to drink something, anything.

When I pull out the bottle, I realize it’s water. Thank heaven. I unscrew the cap and guzzle the still-cold liquid.

I allow myself a few minutes to finish my drink and rest. Then I know I need to get moving again. As I make my way over the rubble and out the window, I move cautiously so I can scan the vicinity. Just as I step out onto the sidewalk, a solitary fact at last sinks into my brain.

Though it’s afternoon, the world is cloaked in twilight. Sure, I’d noticed the semi-darkness before. But the fact the sun had been vanquished didn’t hit me until right now. No stars glitter above me, either. Fireballs keep hurtling out of the tear in the sky, seeming to emerge from a black, disk-shaped hole at the center of the rupture. A rim of silvery fire surrounds the disk.

Behind me, footfalls crunch on rubble.

I spin around and yelp as I slam into a manlike creature, stumbling backward.

The beast who had pursued me seizes my upper arms and drags me into his body. His impossibly broad shoulders encompass me. He hoists me off my feet. My boots dangle several inches above the ground. My face is so close to his that I feel his scruffy beard rasping over my chin.

“Everything that’s happening”—He snarls his words while spittle peppers my face with every syllable he utters—”it’s all your fault.”

This brute speaks with a British accent. That’s weird, considering where we are, but I have bigger issues to worry about now. It feels like a rock has gotten stuck in my throat, and swallowing hard does nothing to alleviate the constriction. Though I don’t want to do it, I force myself to meet his unearthly gaze and not cringe at the brilliance of his golden brown irises. “What are you talking about?”

“This happened because of you.”

“No.”

He spins me around, my feet touching down on the cracked pavement, and cuffs my wrists behind my back with his much bigger, rougher hands. I try to kick him, but he lashes one leg around both of mine. “Stop fighting. It won’t help.”

His fingers wriggle as he ties something around my wrists. Rope? Not sure, and it hardly matters. I’ve been captured by a monster who blames me for the apocalypse unfolding around us.

“Kick me again,” he snarls into my ear, “and I’ll bind your feet too. Understand?”

I nod.

He shoves me forward while keeping hold of my bindings. “You’re coming with me.”

“Where?”

“Somewhere else.”

“Who are you?”

“If you must have a name, call me Dax.” He yanks on my bindings, making me trip over a lump of shattered pavement. “No more talking, Allison, or I’ll gag you too.”

He knows my name. He knows.

I shut up and let the beast haul me down the streets of what used to be a thriving city. It’s metamorphosed into a wasteland populated by monsters and whatever survivors remain. The world has died. Whatever is replacing it seems like nowhere any human would want to live.

This used to be Fort Worth, Texas. What will it become now?

Chapter Two

Dax

I give the girl a shove every so often to ensure she keeps moving, despite the nasty looks she flashes me over her shoulder. Allison Dahl is the reason for all of this. I know it, and she must know it too, though she refuses to admit the truth. This world has been laid waste because of her. And I’ve been trapped in hell for the same reason. The time has come to extract the truth from her by whatever means necessary.

Screams and unearthly roars echo through the ruins of this metropolis. I have no idea where in the mundane world I’ve wound up, but the city’s name hardly matters now. It no longer exists, not in any form its residents would recognize. I haven’t recognized myself for five years. Allison thinks I’m a monster, I’m sure, and she is correct. I have become one of the things mundane humans fear will crawl out from under their beds to devour them.

The only creature I want to devour is Allison Dahl. But she wouldn’t like the way I’d fuck her. No, she seems like one of those women who would never allow a man to defile her in filthy ways. I haven’t been with a normal woman in far too long, which is the only reason Allison’s body intrigues me. Even through the dirt and blood spattered over her from head to toe, I can tell she has a body any man would want to sink his cock into for hours.

I don’t have time for that.

Allison stumbles over a chunk of pavement that’s been blasted out of the ground and nearly falls flat on her face. She catches herself just in time, despite her bound hands. Her dark hair falls around her face, but I can still see the deep blue of her eyes as she glares up at me.

No, I will not help her. She destroyed the world.

We need a place to hide, a location where I can interrogate her and find out the truth behind what has happened today, and even earlier, when events were set in motion. A safe place? No such thing exists anymore. Fireballs rain down every few minutes, slamming into any remaining structures and igniting whatever they touch, while silver tongues of lightning punch into the ground. Every strike, of lightning or fire, makes the ground tremble beneath our feet.

I don’t know this city. But Allison does.

“Where can we hide?” I ask, stabbing a finger into her back, between her shoulder blades.

“How should I know? Everything’s destroyed.”

“Think of something, or I will break your fingers one by one until you give me the information I need.”

“Do you seriously think threats help? I can’t focus with all this…” She chokes back a sob. “There’s no word for how horrible this is.”

“Of course there is. It’s an apocalypse. Judgment Day, if you prefer that term.”

“Whose judgment?”

Someone screams from high above us, and a dark shape flies off the top of a half-destroyed building. The body smacks down a few feet to our left, hitting with a wet crunch of bones and flesh.

Allison jumps and yelps, then turns her head away, squeezing her eyes shut.

I swallow hard, refusing to glance at the human being who just hit the ground, and shove my prisoner onward. “Keep moving. And think of a place where we can hide. You have two minutes to come up with something, or I will remove your smallest finger with a very dull blade.”

She sniffles but keeps trudging forward, sidestepping other bodies and climbing over heaps of rubble. We’ve just mounted a large pile when she freezes.

“Keep going,” I snarl.

“Wait. I think I see a hiding place.”

She uses her shoulder to point toward something ahead of us.

From our vantage on the mountain of debris, we have a good view of this section of the city. I have no idea where in the old world I’ve landed since nothing here resembles anything I remember, and I certainly have no idea how this new world being thrust upon us has changed the topography. But Allison seems to recognize a structure. I squint in the direction that she indicated.

“I don’t see anything,” I growl. “You’re delaying.”

“No, I am not. It’s an underground place.”

“What sort of place?”

She turns toward me, her pale face colored by the glow of a fireball streaking across the sky. “There are tunnels under the city. I guess we’d be relatively safe there, at least for a while.”

“If it’s underground, how can you see it from here?”

“Can’t. But I do see the remnants of the stockyards, and the tunnel is under that, under what was East Exchange Avenue. Don’t know what it is now.”

I gaze down at the remnants of buildings ahead of us. “What city is this?”

“Used to be Fort Worth, Texas. Why do you care what city this is? You’re a monster from another dimension or something.”

“Or something, yes.” I don’t care if she calls me a monster. That belief serves my purposes. I’d never visited America until I was thrown into this city. “Take us to the tunnel.”

“I’ve had enough of you pushing me around. If you want me to take you to a good hiding place, better start being at least marginally polite to me.”

“Polite?” I slant toward her, bringing my face to within millimeters of hers. “This is only the beginning of the apocalypse. Etiquette is a bygone concept, you stupid chit. Haven’t you noticed the world is being torn apart around us?” I grab her bound hands roughly and force her to bend all the fingers on her right hand except for one, the smallest digit. Then I bring out my knife, holding its long blade to her hand. “Your choice. Do what I say, or lose a finger. Afraid I can’t bandage it with clean gauze or disinfect it with alcohol. You will develop an infection and die slowly while in great agony.”

“You’re evil. Do you know that?”

I chuckle like the beast she thinks I am. “Of course I’m evil. But so are you.”

“Me? I—”

A roar erupts behind me, reverberating off the remnants of the buildings. I glance back, searching the darkness but not seeing the source of the animalistic sound.

I seize Allison’s arm and start dragging her toward the location she’d indicated a moment ago. “Something is coming. You’d better take us to that underground hideaway now, or we might both wind up as puddles of blood and pulverized bone.”

“Please untie my hands. I can’t move very fast this way.”

She does have a point, though I dislike admitting it. With at least one creature approaching us from behind, we need to find sanctuary, fast. I remove my leather belt from her wrists and stuff it into my pocket. “If you try to run, you lose two fingers.”

Though she puckers her lips, and I’m certain she wants to curse at me, she doesn’t do it.

I grasp her arm again and urge her to move.

Allison struggles to keep up with my pace as we scramble down the other side of the rubble mound, but she doesn’t complain or fight against my hold on her arm. Whatever creature had roared before issues the same noise twice more, sounding closer every time. Soon, we reach a street that has less damage than in the other parts of this city that I’ve seen. The human carnage seems not to have reached this area yet, since I haven’t noticed any bodies, alive or dead. None of the buildings look sturdy enough to qualify as a safe hideaway, so I let Allison lead me toward the place she had called the stockyards.

We pass by structures I can’t identify, and I don’t ask her what they are because it doesn’t matter. She stumbles twice as we navigate more rubble. My hand on her arm is the only reason she doesn’t fall, and I keep hold of her strictly because I need her alive to answer my questions, not because I give a toss about her well-being. At last, we come to a place where the ground slopes downward, leading us into a gloomy space beneath the city.

Allison stops near the entrance to the tunnel. “It’s dark in there. Don’t suppose you have a flashlight or something.”

“You think I had time to grab a torch before the Echo thrust me into this world?”

“The Echo? What are you talking about?”

As if she doesn’t know. She must. Once I have her in a reasonably secure location, I mean to interrogate her and get the answers I know she must have.

I drag Allison back over the rubble mound we had just scaled and head for a large structure on the other side of what’s left of the street she called East Exchange Avenue. The building seems like a shopping mall. Allison trips and crashes to her knees, hissing in a breath when her kneecap strikes a sharp piece of broken asphalt. Her entire face wrenches with pain. I start to reach for her, to help her, but stop. I shouldn’t care if she’s injured. I don’t care. Let the cow get herself up off the ground.

She clambers to her feet, favoring her knee, and glowers at me. “Thanks so much for the assistance.”

“Better get used to helping yourself.”

I clamp a hand around her upper arm once more and haul her toward the building. One half of it has collapsed, but the other side seems to have minimal damage as far as I can see. One pillar of the portico that leads to the mall’s entrance has been shattered, leaving the roof tipped at a precarious angle. We hurry toward the glass doors. Some of the panes have cracked, and the frames have been warped, but I manage to yank one door open.

The lights are still on in here. They flicker but provide just enough illumination to show me the way. I have a feeling the power won’t stay on for much longer, not with the impacts of fireballs and lightning shivering through the ground. The sounds grow closer every second.

“We can stay here,” Allison says. “Can’t we?”

“No. The storm is getting closer, and I doubt this building will survive it.”

“Storm? I thought this was an apocalypse.”

“It’s the same thing.”

We pass a restaurant, but the kitchen seems to be on fire, and the flames consume more and more of the dining area. As we hurry through the building in the flickering light, I spot what looks like a shop. I tow Allison along as I search for a torch—a flashlight, she said—or something else I can use to light our way. Finally, I discover an electric lantern.

“That needs batteries,” Allison says.

“Obviously,” I growl. “Do not speak again unless I ask a question. You are my prisoner. I could kill you—”

“Thought your favorite threat was to cut off my fingers with a dull knife.”

“Shut up.”

Allison lifts her chin. “Screw you.”

The arrogant girl has no idea how much I need to take her up on that unintentional offer. I ignore her comment and hunt among the toppled racks and shelves in the store until I locate what I need—a package of twelve alkaline batteries, double-A size. To insert them into the lantern, though, I’ll need to let go of her arm. Unacceptable. If I release her, she will run.

“Open this,” I say, handing her the package of batteries.

Despite the fact I’m gripping her arm, she can still use both hands to open the package. And she does that, though she glowers at me first. She keeps flashing me disgusted glances while she struggles to tear open the plastic and cardboard packaging. Once she’s completed her task, she thrusts the batteries at me.

I hold out the lantern. “Put them in here.”

She puckers her lips, but then snatches the lantern from me and inserts the batteries. She shoves the lantern at me again. “Here. I hope you get electrocuted using the stupid thing.”

Every time the chit defies me or insults me, the beast within awakens, and the heat of lust rushes through me. I despise her, but I wouldn’t mind shagging her.

I lean in until the whiskers of my beard graze her cheek. “Do not speak to me that way unless you want me to ravage your body for my own pleasure, strictly to silence you.”

“If you try that, I’ll find a way to slit your throat.”

“No, you won’t. You’re a weakling, not a warrior.”

I’ve never forced myself on a woman, but I can’t think of a better threat to intimidate her.

Before she can say anything else, I clamp my hand tighter around her arm and drag her through the store toward the entrance. Allison digs her heels in, pulling with all her strength to stop me. She accomplishes nothing more than to make me growl again. But I stop at the store entrance just long enough to shoot her a dark look.

“We should stay here,” she says. “It’s a safe place, and we can probably find food in one of the restaurants.”

“This is not a safe place. The apocalypse began over the river, but it’s coming this way like a plague of insects swarming across the earth. Unlike locusts, this plague will rip you apart in seconds.”

“I haven’t seen a single living thing since we got to the stockyards district.”

Thunder explodes above us as a bolt of lightning punches through the roof right over our heads, plunging deep into the earth beneath the building. Debris and dust choke the air, but through the haze, I see a massive chunk of the ceiling teetering on the verge of tumbling down to crush us. Just as I push Allison, compelling her to run, the ceiling slab crashes down mere feet away from us. We both fall down amid the debris, tripping on the chunks of concrete that once formed the foundation. The lightning tore it apart. Hard, sharp edges slice into our skin, but we have bigger problems right now.

In the corridor outside the store’s entrance, figures move around amid the shadows.

Allison is coughing. In the shaft of muted light that shines down through the hole in the ceiling, I can tell she’s bleeding from multiple cuts. I’m bleeding too, but I don’t care.

Because the real beasts are about to find us.