Sheryl and Karen stood side by side in front of the living room window, their reflections barely visible in the glass. Outside, Bayou Mounds stretched away in clusters of streetlights and distant office buildings, the city pulsing with life that neither woman cared about anymore. The clock on the wall read eleven-thirty. Derek had left an hour ago to meet friends. The house was quiet except for the hum of the air conditioner and the occasional creak of settling wood.

  Karen broke the silence first. “How long have you known?”

  “About what?” Sheryl’s voice was flat, distant.

  “About me. About what I am now.”

  Sheryl turned her head slightly. “Since the moment you walked through that door three days ago. I could smell it on you. The change. The virus is bonding with your cells, restructuring everything.”

  Karen’s jaw tightened. “I didn’t ask for this.”

  “You would have eventually.” Sheryl’s reflection smiled faintly in the glass. “Everyone does once they understand what it means. The power. The clarity. The freedom from all the bullshit rules normal people live by.”

  Karen’s hands clenched at her sides. “I have a strong urge to kill.”

  Sheryl didn’t react. “I know.”

  “How?”

  “Because I do too. It’s what we are now. It’s what we’re built for.” Sheryl turned away from the window and walked to the kitchen. Pulled two wine glasses from the cabinet and filled them from an open bottle of Merlot sitting on the counter. She handed one to Karen. “You feel guilty?”

  Karen took the glass but didn’t drink from it. “I should. But I don’t. That’s what scares me.”

  “The virus strips away the parts of us that hold us back. Guilt. Empathy. Fear. All the emotions that keep humans weak.” Sheryl took a long drink. “You’ll adjust. Everyone does.”

  “Who else is there? You said there were others.”

  “I don’t know yet. But I can feel them. It’s like a frequency running underneath everything. Background noise that only we can hear.” Sheryl set her glass down and walked back to the living room. She stood in front of the window again, arms crossed. “Someone is coordinating this. Someone who came first. I can feel her in my head sometimes, giving commands I don’t consciously hear but follow anyway.”

  “Her?”

  “A woman. I don’t know who yet. But I will.” Sheryl’s reflection in the glass looked taller than it should be, shoulders broader. “She’s building something. An army, maybe. A pack. Whatever you want to call it. We’re part of it now, whether we like it or not.”

  Karen finally took a drink. The wine tasted metallic. Her taste buds had changed. Everything tasted different now. “What do we do?”

  “We find more.” Sheryl turned to face her cousin directly. “I want you to find vessels.” Sheryl’s tone was clinical, detached. “Not everyone survives the change. Most die within seventy-two hours. Heart failure. Organ shutdown. The virus is aggressive. It needs strong hosts. Your job is to identify who can handle it.”

  “And yours?”

  “Same. I’ll know who’s strong enough just by looking at them.” Sheryl walked to the kitchen table and picked up a business card sitting near a stack of mail. She held it between two fingers, studying it. The cardstock was expensive, with embossed lettering catching the overhead light. “But there’s someone else we need to meet first.”

  Karen stepped closer. “Who?”

  “I don’t know her name yet. But I have her card.” Sheryl handed it to Karen.

  The card was simple—black text on cream background. No logo. Just a phone number, and two words: Acquisitions & Development.

  “Who gave you this?” Karen asked.

  “I found it in my purse three days ago. I don’t remember anyone giving it to me. But I know I need to call her.” Sheryl took the card back and set it on the table. “She’s waiting. I can feel it.”

  Karen’s throat tightened. “This is insane.”

  “This is evolution.” Sheryl finished her wine and set the glass in the sink. “You can fight it if you want. Pretend you’re still human. Pretend you still have a choice. But we both know that’s a lie. From the moment you were bitten, your old life ended. Now you’re something else. Something better. The sooner you accept that, the easier this gets.”

  Karen stared at the business card on the table. Her reflection stared back from the darkened window behind it, distorted and unfamiliar. She barely recognized herself anymore. The woman looking back had yellow eyes and a predator’s stillness.

  “What happens if I don’t want to help you?” Karen asked quietly.

  Sheryl turned and looked at her cousin for a long moment. “Then you’ll die. The pack doesn’t tolerate weakness. And neither does she.”

  “Who?”

  “The one who started all of this. The alpha.” Sheryl walked toward her bedroom. “Get some sleep. Tomorrow we start hunting.”

  Derek sat across from Joe in a booth at Rosie’s Diner on Industrial Boulevard, picking at a plate of fries he wasn’t hungry for. The place smelled like fryer grease and burnt coffee, and the fluorescent lights overhead buzzed with a frequency that always gave him a headache. The TV mounted above the counter was tuned to Channel 6 news, volume low but audible.

  Joe was on his second burger, talking between bites. “Bro, did you see what happened to that RV in Mississippi?”

  “Yeah.”

  “I’m serious, man. They showed pictures on the news this morning. That RV had these huge claw marks up the front. Looked like something flipped it over multiple times. And the bodies...” Joe paused, swallowed. “The guy’s throat was completely ripped out. The woman looked like she’d been thrown into a tree hard enough to snap her spine.”

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  Derek kept his eyes on his plate. “They said it was dogs.”

  “No freaking dogs did that.” Joe leaned forward, lowering his voice. “I’ve been hunting my whole life. I know what bear attacks look like. I know what gators do to people. This ain’t that. This is something else.”

  Derek finally looked up. “Be careful out there.”

  “You too, man. For real.” Joe grabbed another fry. “My girlfriend’s parents won’t even let her leave the house after dark anymore—the whole city’s on lockdown. Businesses are closing early. It’s martial law.”

  The waitress dropped their check on the table without a word and walked away. Derek reached for it, but the TV caught his attention. The news anchor’s voice cut through the diner noise, sudden and urgent.

  “Breaking news out of Bayou Mounds. Police are responding to reports of multiple fatalities at a house party on the north side. Early reports indicate as many as nine victims. Authorities are calling this the deadliest attack yet...”

  The screen cut to footage of a residential street blocked off with yellow tape. Police vehicles lined both sides, their lights strobing blue and red across the houses. A detective stood in front of the cameras, microphone shoved in his face.

  “The city of Bayou Mounds is under a mandatory curfew until further notice,” the detective said. His face was drawn, exhausted. “No one should be outside after nine p.m. We are dealing with a deadly predator, and we need the public’s cooperation to ensure everyone’s safety.”

  Joe was staring at the screen too, his burger forgotten. “Man, what the hell is going on?”

  Derek stood and threw cash on the table. “I gotta go.”

  “Yeah. Me too.” Joe followed him out into the humid night. They stood in the parking lot for a moment, neither moving toward their vehicles. “Hey, Derek?”

  “Yeah?”

  “You got a gun?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Good. Keep it close.” Joe walked to his truck and climbed inside. Derek watched him drive away, taillights disappearing down Industrial Boulevard.

  Derek sat in his own truck for five minutes, staring at the diner’s neon sign flickering against the dark sky. Then he started the engine and drove.

  The gun shop on the west side of Bayou Mounds was still open when Derek arrived at seven-forty-five. He’d called ahead, told them he was coming. The owner had agreed to stay late. Business was good right now. Everyone in the city wanted protection.

  Inside, rows of rifles and shotguns lined the walls in locked cases. Handguns sat behind glass counters. Ammunition boxes stacked on shelves like groceries.

  The clerk was a heavyset man in his fifties, reading glasses perched on his nose, wearing a faded LSU polo. He looked up when Derek walked in.

  “Help you?”

  Derek walked to the counter. “I need two AR-fifteens, a twelve-gauge, one forty-five caliber pistol, and two Glock nineteens.”

  The clerk’s eyebrows rose. “That’s a lot of firepower.”

  “You’ve seen the news?”

  “Fair enough.” The clerk pulled out a clipboard and started filling out forms. “ID and background check will take about twenty minutes. You got a carry permit?”

  “Yeah.” Derek handed over his license and permit. He hesitated. He’d done some doom scrolling and read what killed werewolves.

  Regular bullets didn’t.

  “One more thing. You do custom rounds?”

  “Depends. What kind?”

  “Silver bullets.”

  The clerk stopped writing. Looked up. “Silver?”

  “Yeah.”

  “That’ll cost extra. Silver’s expensive to work with. Plus the labor.”

  “I’ll pay whatever it takes.”

  The clerk studied Derek for a moment, then nodded slowly. “Alright. How many do you want?”

  “Five hundred rounds. Mixed calibers. Enough for everything I’m buying.”

  The clerk whistled.

  “That’s gonna run you close to three grand just for the custom ammunition.”

  “I don’t care.”

  “Okay.” The clerk went back to his paperwork. “Give me two weeks for the silver rounds. Everything else you can take tonight once the background check clears.”

  Derek waited in a folding chair near the window, watching cars pass on the street outside. His phone buzzed—a text from his mother.

  Where are you?

  He typed back—gun shop. Be home soon.

  Buy extra ammunition.

  Derek stared at the message. His mother had never texted him about guns before, and never cared what he did with his money. The message felt off, like someone else had written it using her phone.

  He pocketed his phone and didn’t respond.

  Twenty-three minutes later, the background check cleared. Derek loaded the rifles, shotgun, and pistols into his truck along with twelve boxes of standard ammunition. He drove home with the guns rattling in cases behind him, the weight of them somehow comforting and terrifying at the same time.

  Joe left his girlfriend’s apartment at ten-thirty, which was already past curfew but close enough to her place that he figured he’d make it home without getting stopped. He drove his Ford F-250 along the back roads outside Bayou Mounds, avoiding the main highways where police were setting up checkpoints. The fields stretched endlessly on both sides, tall sugar cane swaying in the humid breeze. The radio played classic rock at a low volume. Joe hummed along, tapping his fingers on the steering wheel.

  Movement in the cane on his left. Just a flash, there and gone.

  Joe slowed down, squinting into the darkness. Probably a deer. The fields were full of them this time of year.

  Then something massive exploded from the cane and slammed into the driver’s side door with enough force to send the truck veering off the road. Joe’s head bounced off the doorframe, stars exploding across his vision. The truck careened into the field, tires chewing through dirt and stalks, finally stopping thirty yards from the road.

  Joe groaned, reaching for his phone. His hand was halfway to his pocket when the driver’s side door was ripped clean off its hinges and thrown fifteen feet into the cane.

  Standing in the empty doorframe was something Joe’s brain couldn’t process. Eight feet tall. Covered in black fur. Muscles rippling beneath the coat. Yellow eyes burning in a face that was part wolf, part something worse.

  Joe tried to scream. His lungs wouldn’t work. The creature grabbed him by the chest, claws punching through his shirt and into flesh, and hurled him out of the truck like he weighed nothing.

  Joe hit the ground twenty feet away, rolled through the dirt, and came up gasping. Pain exploded through his ribs. At least three broken, maybe more. He scrambled to his feet and ran into the cane, stalks whipping against his face and arms.

  Behind him, he heard it following—heavy footsteps. Branches snapping and breathing that sounded like a furnace bellows.

  Joe made it ten yards before claws raked down his left leg, tearing through denim and muscle, scraping bone. He went down screaming, clutching his leg, blood pouring between his fingers. He tried to crawl. Got three feet.

  Jaws closed around his back, teeth punching through his spine. Joe felt himself lifted into the air, legs dangling uselessly. He could smell the creature’s breath, hot and rancid, mixing with the copper scent of his own blood.

  The creature shook him once, twice, like a dog with a chew toy. Joe’s ribs snapped. His collarbone shattered. Then the jaws released, and he was flying through the air again, crashing into the dirt fifteen feet away.

  He tried to breathe. Couldn’t. His lungs were filling with blood, drowning him from the inside. He stared up at the moon, bright and full overhead, and thought about his girlfriend. About the discussion with Derek.

  They were right; this is no dog.

  The creature appeared above him, blocking out the moon. Joe tried to say something. No sound came out. Just blood bubbling past his lips.

  The creature’s jaws closed around his throat and tore it out in one savage motion. Blood sprayed across the dirt in wide arcs. Joe’s body convulsed once, then went still.

  The creature stood over the corpse, chest heaving, steam rising from its fur. It tilted its head back and howled, the sound carrying for miles across the empty fields.

  Bones cracked. Fur retracted. Muscles contracted beneath shifting skin. The digitigrade legs straightened into human form. The muzzle collapsed back into a human face. Within ninety seconds, the eight-foot monster was gone.

  What remained was a man. Tall, powerfully built, completely bald, his dark skin glistening with sweat and blood. He stood naked in the moonlight, breathing hard, staring down at Joe’s body with eyes that showed no remorse.

  He turned and walked back through the cane toward the road, leaving Joe’s corpse cooling in the dirt behind him.

  Bayou Mounds slept through another night of slaughter, unaware that the virus was spreading faster than anyone could track. Unaware that the monsters weren’t coming from outside.

  They were already here.