My phone buzzed unexpectedly, and I jerked slightly, my nerves on edge after everything that had happened. After unleashing the monster in front of my friends. I plucked it from my pocket as I sat on the couch of Martin’s safehouse, completely alone in the dark. When I flipped open the screen, the message made my heart skip a beat.

  ‘I need to talk with you.’ It was from Autumn.

  The text message raised numerous questions. She had texted me out of the blue, on her own. I hadn’t reached out to her. The way she wrote it was hard to read because I couldn’t infer the emotion or inflection in the words. She hadn’t used any punctuation, just a quickly tapped out text message to reach out.

  It could be the start of things or the end of them for good. I feared what happened at the lamp brewery would be the ending, and she had to do it quickly.

  I took a deep breath and steeled myself, lifting the phone to my face. I probably looked like a little old man, staring daggers at a screen point blank in my face as I slowly tapped out the text message on the clacking keys. I had to make sure I said exactly what I meant.

  ‘When and where?’

  I felt like an idiot for how seriously I took typing out those three words. I was just really stressed internally about this meeting; I had been both anticipating it with great eagerness but also dreading like something else I was going to have to give up.

  Only about thirty seconds after I sent it, I got a reply.

  ‘The parking garage on the corner of Olive and 9th Street. Meet in one hour?’

  ‘I’ll be there,’ I texted back and then jumped from my seat.

  I froze in place for a second as I turned left and then right, looking for my shoes that I had kicked off as I reclined back on the couch. Then I started looking for my phone, which I realized was still in my hand. Then I fumble fucked around looking for the keys to the motorcycle which were hanging by the door where I knew I’d left them. I was nervous, a very strange thing to feel after so long as the monster. She wanted to talk, and I wasn’t sure what to expect. This human girl had me all spooled up, and I was anxious. Me… The monstrous killing machine, bound to some otherworldly entity. It was a very odd situation.

  I thought the roar of the motorcycle would block out my thoughts, but it didn’t. The thrumming engine only blocked out anything else that could have been a distraction. It gave my thoughts full range to run free and play out all sorts of different scenarios. It was a true suffering the whole way there. Once I got to the parking garage, I realized she didn’t say exactly where, but I had a pretty good idea of where she'd be, or where she’d end up once she arrived. I drove the motorcycle up every level until I got to the very top, bordered by a small wall that dropped off down to the pavement at the bottom. I found a spot on the far side, away from the ramp that entered up, and parked my motorcycle. I killed the engine, lifted my leg over, and stood there looking around in the quiet late afternoon. The fall sky was colorful, and getting close to sunset. She wasn’t here yet. So I tried to find a place to sit down as I waited.

  As I sat listening to the rolling tires in the city surrounding me, feeling the vibrating hums of the engines as they came and went, I remembered that night. The night everything fell to shit. When the Chasse family discovered I wasn’t human… I wasn’t one of them. It seems so long ago, but it also seemed like yesterday. The only thing filling the gaps in between now and then was visions, chaos, and destruction

  I heard some light voices laughing and getting louder as footsteps neared the top of the stairwell in the corner. I stiffened in response, pulsing my eyes to black as I scanned the people coming up. There were three girls and one guy, just a group of friends, completely human, completely unaware. I watched the college-aged kids shuffle across the top layer towards their vehicle.

  The guy and one of the girls glanced my way as they moved, hurrying a little bit more at the sight of some hooded weirdo hanging out in a parking garage. Their headlights cut across me as they followed the one path back down and out of the structure. I felt a few of their heartbeats thumping faster with adrenaline and fear as they passed closer to where I stood. They calmed as they descended the structure.

  Only a few more minutes of sitting in the dark, and I heard a different car approaching up the ramp to the top level. Headlights burst over the edge of grey concrete as a familiar black sedan rolled to a parking spot close to my motorcycle.

  Through the driver’s side mirror, I could see Autumn’s reflection. She glanced out her window at my motorcycle and looked around the area for me. As I started moving towards her, she saw me in the mirror's reflection and took a brief pause before opening the door. After a quick calming breath and a flutter in her heartbeat, she stepped out of her black car and into the darkness of the parking garage.

  She was beautiful... an image of some kind of angelic creature I could never attain. Not in my past life... definitely not deserving in this one. She was strong and confident, agile and smart. Her brown eyes took me in from across the way, and her dark brown hair hung loosely down behind her. She was wearing tight jeans and a light jacket for our meeting. She was... something.

  I wasn’t sure how to start, or if she would, so I just slowly walked over towards her with a light smile, ready to accept severance… acceptance… or maybe something in between. I leaned against the concrete wall at the edge of the top level, looking out across the street below and the surrounding buildings. Autumn mirrored my movements, standing about a foot beside me, looking out in the same position. She held a relaxed stance and a calm demeanor, actually looking somewhat at peace as she stood there in silence.

  There was a long while that we didn’t speak. I think I was more just waiting on the inevitable, and she was probably thinking about all the time we’d spent together, and everything she'd seen. Everything she’d learned about me.

  “I have a theory,” Autumn said suddenly, her voice low and pulled taut with something deeper. She turned to face me, leaning her side into the coarse stone edge of the rooftop wall, her arms loosely folded like she needed the pressure to hold herself together. Safe from what was coming.

  I didn’t look at her at first. I kept my eyes fixed on the dark stretch of city below us. “Theory about what?” I asked, careful to keep my voice even. Detached. Safer that way.

  “You,” she said. “You and… the monster.” She winced as the word left her mouth, but I didn’t flinch. It was honest, at least. “Your relationship with it,” she added, gentler now.

  I turned to face her, mimicking her lean against the wall. “Alright,” I murmured with a light smile, trying to seem as unthreatening as possible. “I’m listening.”

  “You told us… it’s always hungry… for death. Always whispering, always waiting to kill. But you’re the one who decides when to let it out. You choose when it wakes up and who it gets to tear apart.”

  I didn’t correct her. She wasn’t wrong.

  She glanced at me, hesitant, then pushed forward anyway. “And then I think about all the times you’ve saved us. Not just the big battles. All of it. You watch us. You stay close. You step in right when we need you, but never just outright unleash it all the time. You don’t just kill. You protect.”

  I let out a breath. A laugh wanted to form, but it was hollow. “You make it sound like I’m some kind of guardian angel.” IT was a far cry from what I knew… what I felt inside of me.

  “No,” Autumn said quietly. “You’re something else.” She looked up at the moonlight and laughed softly, bitter at herself. “I realized… you only show up when it really matters. When it’s about to go sideways. Like you’re holding everything back until there’s no other choice. And when you let it out… when you become that thing… there’s no hesitation. You don’t flinch. You decide.”

  I didn’t respond. Her words stung in a way I hadn’t expected. She didn’t see hesitation, but I lived inside it.

  She kept going, pushing through her nerves like she couldn’t stop now if she tried. “It’s like a weapon, isn’t it? That’s how I see it now. Not a curse, not entirely. Something you use.”

  I turned my head slowly, watching her. “A weapon,” I repeated, the word thick on my tongue. “It doesn’t feel that clean… or controllable.”

  “It never is,” she replied. “But we all carry one. My training, my fists, my mind, my guns, they’re tools. Just like yours. I can put them down. So can you. That’s what makes you different from everything else we fight. You choose to be the monster.”

  The genuine version of this novel can be found on another site. Support the author by reading it there.

  I closed my eyes at that. “You make it sound easy.”

  “It isn’t easy… I know that,” she assured me with fear in her eyes, that I was taking what she said the wrong way. “It’s terrifying to think you have to keep it under control… All that rage and power pushing against you, calling out to be unleashed… but you do,” she said, voice trembling. “You fight it… you control it. And maybe that’s why I can’t stop thinking about it. Why I can’t stop thinking about you.”

  I opened my eyes and looked at her fully. Her gaze was already on me, searching, pleading.

  Silence bloomed thick between us. She stepped closer, and I didn’t move away.

  “I know what you say about the need,” she said softly. “That it builds. That it burns. That you can’t ignore it forever. But tell me something… have you ever killed someone who didn’t deserve it?”

  Her voice barely trembled, but her eyes… her eyes were wide and wet and unwilling to look away. Like she already knew the answer, but had to hear it out loud. Had to make me say it.

  I didn’t answer. Not right away. My silence hung like a blade between us.

  She stepped even closer until we shared breath. “After that night… right here when we found out,” she motioned to the garage around us. “I see you, Sam… the real you. And I don’t care what’s living inside you or what you become when it gets bad… when you let it out of the cage. You’re still the one who saves us. The one I got so close to before. You’re just carrying more weight… more responsibility. You’re still you… and more.”

  I swallowed hard, but my throat burned like acid.

  “I see a hunter,” she whispered, brushing her hand lightly against mine. “One who carries something no one else could. Who picks it up when we can’t… goes even further when we can't. A hunter who never stops carrying it even when it takes from him.”

  I stared at her, stunned by the honesty, by the desperation underneath it. “You don’t know what it’s like inside,” I whispered. “It’s not clean. It’s not controllable. It’s me, Autumn. I’m not holding the leash… I am the thing on it.”

  Her hand tightened around mine, fierce and shaking. “Then let me help you.”

  My breath hitched, and I couldn’t stop the longing that twisted up through me. This girl… this reckless girl meant it. Every word. And part of me, the part still pretending I could ever keep her safe by staying away, crumbled under the weight of it.

  “And what about the others…” I asked, my voice quieter than I meant it to be. My throat was dry. “The ones from the fields. The ones your mom saw. They’re part of this too… and I don’t know what they are. Not really.”

  Autumn didn’t answer right away. She looked down, nodding slowly like she was forcing herself to accept something she hadn’t quite wanted to before. Her voice, when it came, was quiet.

  “I think we’ll cross that bridge when we get there,” she said. “And when we do… we’ll help you through it.” She added her entire family to it, and I could tell that they had all spoken on this already. She swallowed, then added, more shakily, “Just stay. Stay here with us. With me.”

  I wanted to believe her. God, I wanted to believe someone could say that and mean it the way she did. It just didn’t seem real.

  She stepped into me and wrapped her arms around my back, slow and deliberate. It wasn’t tentative. It was possession, like she was afraid I’d vanish if she didn’t hold on. Her grip tightened, inch by inch, until I could feel her heart through her chest, beating fast and afraid.

  I stood still for a breath, maybe two. I didn’t trust myself to move. I was scared… scared that if I held her, the thing inside me might reach back. That she’d feel it breathing under my skin and pull away.

  But she didn’t. She stayed. I pulled her close, tighter like I could crush the dread clawing up my spine just by burying my face in her shoulder. I sucked in her scent as her hair caressed my face. She was… intoxicating.

  She leaned back, just enough to see me. Her eyes flicked to my lips, hesitant. And then she kissed me, slow and cautious, like she was touching something sacred and cursed all at once. Like she didn’t know if it would hurt her… or save me.

  The kiss lingered. It wasn’t desperate. It was reckless, a step taken in full awareness of the cliff she stood on. When it finally ended, the silence that followed felt deafening.

  “You’re still you,” she whispered, her forehead pressed to mine. “You’re just… more.” She said it again, more to herself. She paused, her mouth twitching like the words that came next were too heavy to carry. “I’m sorry it took me this long for us to…”

  “No,” I said quickly, cutting her off. My voice was rough. Shaky. “You don’t need to apologize. I…”

  “Neither do you,” she said, and this time her voice cracked like glass. The words spilled from her like she couldn’t keep them down anymore. “I know you didn’t choose this. I know what they did to you. Mom told me everything she remembered from that place. Everything you’ve… given up.”

  Her fingers curled into the front of my jacket, yanking us closer like she couldn’t stand even an inch of distance. Her eyes were shimmering, wide, almost scared of the thing she was about to admit.

  “I just don’t want there to be any more silence between us. No more pretending. No more wondering if I should say something. I want this. I want you.”

  She was trembling now, not because she regretted it, but because she meant it. The kind of truth you can’t take back once it’s said aloud.

  I just stared at her. I couldn’t speak. I didn’t trust myself to. Something thick and hollow was caving in my chest, and I was terrified that if I opened my mouth, it would all come out wrong… that I’d tell her what I’d seen behind the veil, what I felt watching, giving visions. The entity

  Its power still crawled across the edges of my memory; so vast it shook the ground, so old it made my own hunger feel like a child’s scream in the dark.

  But she didn’t pull away, and she didn’t flinch. She stayed. And I did the only thing I knew to do; I wrapped her in my arms again and didn’t let go.

  I didn’t know if I’d ever deserve this. But I knew, if the day ever came when the thing inside me snapped its leash, I’d rather face the end with her in my arms than alone. It was selfish… I know that. But I couldn’t stay away from her… not when I had my freedom between the visions.

  We stayed like that for a long time; long enough for the fear to settle, but never long enough for it to fade. Because deep down, we both knew the truth: This wasn’t over. Something else will come for me… and I’d be gone again. And next time… it might not let me come back.

  “Kayla’s not bad, you’d like her,” Autumn said, her voice soft as she stretched beside me on the couch. “It’s her dad who’s the problem. He’s supposed to be the leader of their side of the family, but… he picks the kind of plans that get people killed.”

  I tilted my head to look at her. “Do you ever talk to her about it?”

  “I’ve tried,” she said, sighing. “But… she loves him. She loves her uncle too. That whole side of the family, they’re just… hardened. Different from us. They’ve lost people and decided it’s just the cost of the fight. No second-guessing, no planning for safety; just action and sacrifice.”

  She shook her head and frowned, like the thought still sat wrong in her stomach. “I don’t know. Maybe she just doesn’t want another battle on top of all the others. Doesn’t want to turn around and have to fight her own family too.”

  I paused, taking her in; her knit brow, the way she looked far off like she was still standing in some past argument she never finished. “She’s lucky to have you looking out for her now,” I said. “Even if she doesn’t see it yet.”

  Autumn glanced over at me with a soft smile, and for a second, it felt like the whole world had been folded into this room… this couch, this closeness, this moment.

  We’d ended up at her place after everything. After the rooftop and the parking garage, after everything between us finally cracked open. She drove, and I let her. Left my bike up on the top level like I didn’t care whether I’d ever go back for it.

  And now here we were. Back in her little dorm apartment, crammed full of mismatched pillows and takeout containers and that smell of worn books and incense I always remembered from before. As much as we’d said things had changed… and they had, it still felt like those early days again, when we were first getting close. When I was still learning what it meant to hunt alongside them. When they didn’t yet know what I was.

  Autumn had her arms wrapped around my arm, both hands clutched tight, her body pressed warm and close beside me. She rested her head on my shoulder, and we just… stayed there. Talking. About her family. About mine. About things we hadn't let ourselves say for a long time.

  I could feel it every time the conversation got close to my wife and my daughter. The life I left behind. Autumn’s breath would hitch, her lips part just slightly, like she wanted to ask, like she needed to, but then she’d stop herself, bite her lip, and swallow it down. And honestly… I was grateful. I wasn’t ready yet either.

  There were still miles of space we hadn’t crossed between us. Landmines buried in shared silence. But we didn’t need to dig them up tonight. Not yet. Right now, we were both just glad to have made it back to each other, through the death and destruction. Back to this.

  She shifted after a while, reached for the remote, and clicked on the TV. The sudden flicker of light filled the dark room, and she started flipping through apps until she stopped on YouTube.

  Then she typed in one word. Fails. I laughed.

  She played a video and tossed the remote aside, then settled in again with her arms looped back around me, her head against my chest like it belonged there.

  For the next twenty minutes, we watched strangers wipe out trying to rollerblade down stairs, slam into mailboxes on bikes, or completely botch cooking tutorials with flying eggs and broken dishes. We didn’t talk. We just laughed. Honest, open, ridiculous laughter that neither of us had let ourselves feel in what felt like a lifetime.

  And when someone in a video went too far, someone face-planting off a roof, or a toddler taking a spill that looked too intense, Autumn would frown and gasp, her hand over her mouth.

  “Oh no! I hope they’re okay,” she said every time, like she meant it.

  She flipped to another compilation after the first ended, and then another. And we just kept going, stretching out the night with laughs, letting it wash away the shadows that still clung to our skin. There were so many things left unsaid, so many horrors waiting on the edge of tomorrow, but tonight was simple. It was everything I wanted.

  Eventually, somewhere in the middle of a guy trying to ride a cooler like a surfboard, I felt her breathing shift slower… heavier. She’d fallen asleep, arms still looped around me like I might disappear if she let go. I didn’t move because, for the first time in what felt like years, I didn’t want to be anywhere else.

  In this fragile, borrowed piece of normal, I realized something I was too scared to even give a thought. Whatever came next… whoever I had to become… I knew I’d fight tooth and nail to protect this. To come back to this girl and this closeness with her, no matter what I had to do. Even if I had to become the monster again and again, slay countless visions to do it. This is what I wanted.