It felt weird being back home again. I had been back before, but this time was different. I think it was because I knew that I was back to show myself for real this time. No more fears of what might happen, the what-ifs and excuses were over.

  I had been back in the area for about a month now, slowly watching and following from a distance. I had to make sure I knew what I was walking into. I needed to get a little bit better idea of where my family was mentally.

  I knew it would be an extreme shock for me to just roll up on them and be like, “Hey guys, not dead, I’m back, and I’m a straight-up fucking monster!”

  Yeah… that wasn’t going to end well. So I tried to be a little bit smarter. Definitely not taking my time because I was nervous or anything… I was definitely doing this.

  The first person I went to was Vicky. I had hoped it would be as easy as just showing up and showing myself, but that quickly disintegrated.

  When I saw her… she was still her. Exactly the same, in all the ways that mattered… and that somehow hurt more than if she’d changed.

  Vicky stood in the kitchen of our old home, like she’d always belonged there. Her blonde hair had grown longer since the last time I’d seen her, thick and a little unruly, pulled back into a simple ponytail that just brushed her low back when she moved. A few loose strands had already worked free, catching the light as she paced. She was in scrubs, soft, worn-in navy ones with a faint crease down the leg; clearly fresh out of the dryer. The fabric hugged familiar lines: strong thighs, narrow waist, shoulders that carried both exhaustion and stubborn resilience. She looked real… solid… alive.

  Her face stopped me cold. Five years hadn’t dulled her beauty. If anything, it had sharpened it. I stared with my enhanced senses, even from a distance, and through the window, there were faint lines at the corners of her eyes now, earned ones, the kind you get from squinting into early mornings and smiling through long shifts. Her skin was warm and healthy, just the slightest flush in her cheeks. And her eyes… still that impossible blue, bright and piercing against her pale hair. She wasn’t trying to look nice. She didn’t need to. She’d never needed to.

  She moved through the kitchen on autopilot, muscle memory guiding her hands as she filled the coffee pot. When the machine sputtered instead of starting, she let out a quiet, irritated huff under her breath. I could hear it; every sound was too clear now, the soft exhale through her nose, the faint muttered complaint she aimed at the appliance like it had personally betrayed her.

  “Of course,” she mumbled, tapping the side of the machine a little harder than necessary.

  The sound of it clicking back to life followed, along with a strange bark of life, then a gurgle of water heating. Her breathing was steady but tired, just a little uneven from someone already bracing for a long day. I could hear the fabric of her scrubs shift when she leaned against the counter, the quiet scuff of her socked feet on the tile as she waited. She rubbed her eyes once, dragged her fingers down her face, then exhaled again… longer this time.

  It was all so human. So achingly normal.

  She was in her element, doing the small, forgettable things that make up a life: making coffee, getting ready for work, existing in a space we had once shared.

  That’s when the memories hit. How many mornings had this been us? Side by side in this same kitchen. Me stealing sips from her mug, her pretending to be annoyed. Me leaning in to kiss her cheek while she complained about being late. How many times had I watched her move through the house exactly like this, half-awake but determined, already thinking about patients and schedules and responsibilities? It used to be every day… but… not in a long time. Now it was just her… and Ben.

  The realization cut deeper than I expected. It wasn’t jealousy, not really, but something rawer. A sense of having been replaced in the rhythm of the house. Of having removed myself and left a space that had been quietly filled because it inevitably would be.

  For a moment, something ugly stirred in me. A sharp, irrational flicker of betrayal. Not because she’d done anything wrong… but because seeing her live without me made the cost of my absence impossible to ignore. I was the betrayer. Now that the fear was gone, now that I understood what I was, now that I had control… it was hard to even remember the terror that had kept me away. The panic had convinced me that distance was safer. Back then, all I knew was that I had to keep whatever kind of monster I had within myself away from her at all costs. But now… all I could feel was the weight of the choice I’d made afterward.

  I had let go. I had disappeared… ghosted the woman I loved. Walked away from a life we built together at such a young age and left her to carry the aftermath alone.

  Seeing her like this broke something in me. I spiraled for a full day after. It wasn’t the fear of her seeing what I am now that haunted me. It was the fear of the look on her face when she realized I’d been alive the whole time… and still chose not to come home.

  I was still damaged from the final ending with Alex… there was no doubt about that. I had really believed that she was coming with me… that she would help me. But she had so much going on inside of her that I was just willfully blind to. I chose not to see something that was staring me in the face. It was hard to adjust after what happened on the roof of her apartment building… turned to dust and only lingered for a moment before passing on to the next world.

  The whole way down to Texas was one long, silent walk of loss and sadness. But the sadness was not because I lost Alex… it was because she had finally found her end… the end she wanted. I was sad because I knew I wouldn’t get that kind of peace for a very long time. She finally outran the monster inside… parting ways and returning to who she truly was.

  I had no way out… not anymore. I was bound to this monster until Death was done with me, and I passed it on to whoever was next in this dark chain of slaughter. However, knowing all of this and dwelling on it actually grounded me and let me regain my composure to continue my approach toward my family.

  Going to Vicky first seemed hard. The more I thought about it, the more I thought I should go to someone else first. I could show myself to Seth, maybe, and then once I had him back, he could help me make Vicky as prepared as possible.

  I didn’t go to Seth immediately. First, I roamed the area and just wanted to see everyone again. I followed my dad to and from his work, watched him as he checked the water wells, and drove around the area. I saw my sisters as they both came and went from their houses, picking up their kids from school, meeting up with each other for lunch, all kinds of stuff. IT was so good to see them all just… living… surviving.

  But when I first found Seth and Vicky… it was very hard. Part of me just wanted to run straight out into the open and come straight to them. I wanted to show myself right there and then and bring them in to the tightest hug I could, never letting them go. I knew they carried a weight; I could see it in their eyes. It was something in the back of their mind that stayed no matter what they were doing. I wanted to end that for them. I wanted them to see that I was still here. But that would probably have them running from me as fast as humanly possible.

  But then one night, something forced my hand, and I had to make a move and begin the process of revealing myself to my brother much faster than I actually wanted.

  Everyone was at Vicky's house... my house. Mom dad Sydney, Sarah, Seth, and all of the spouses were there. All the kids were rolling around and wrestling in the grass... it made me laugh.

  The moment I saw little five-year-old Caydee marching out of the house with a juice box in one hand and a fistful of Cheeto puffs painting her fingers orange... something weird happened. I think it was a panic attack.

  I felt a wave of some kind of lightheadedness swarm my mind. A cold, clammy ache crawled over my skin, and I couldn't control my breathing for a minute. The moment I saw her... everything just kind of shifted. She was my daughter... mine. There was something in her face, the way she looked... how much she resembled my brother's kids. She looked like me... just like they looked like him. Obviously, they had different mothers, so there were differences, but there was a hint of something in all three of them that told you they were related. They were the kids of a set of twins.

  I tried to keep my focus on other things, but I failed. The whole time Caydee was in the backyard, wrestling with our cousins, all I could do was kneel in the woods, lean against the tree, and just observe her. Everything else in the entire world fell away, and I just watched my daughter play in the grass for a while as I tried to control my breathing.

  I felt a new kind of pain that I hadn't felt before. It felt slightly familiar, reminding me of the night I had first seen her and stood over her crib when she was just a baby, but it was different now. Seeing how much of her life I had already missed and seeing how much she looked like me, knowing that she was mine... I don't know. It was hard to put into words. I just felt a connection to her stronger than I ever expected, just from a look… from first sight and onward.

  The only way I was able to get my mind back on track was because all of the kids had gone inside. I could hear them turn on some sort of cartoon just from the sound of the voices and the colorful flickers of light that reflected off the wall. Once all the kids were inside and out of my sight, I finally turned to see what everyone else was doing in the backyard where I had gone missing.

  It was a painful thing to watch, hearing your whole family talk about how they knew they needed to move on. Even Dad was ready, telling Vicky how he could help her out and build something that would last for this little memorial she wanted. But I could see something in Seth’s eyes.

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  He was here to support everybody, but he was not onboard. It was something about his face; it was my face too. I could see what wheels were spinning in his mind because it was the same look I'd have if I were in his position. I wouldn't be able to let go knowing he could still be out there. Knowing that no one had ever given a definitive answer. I knew that I'd linger the rest of my life until I saw his body with my own eyes. I'd always think he was still out there.

  They had all finally wrapped up for the evening, and Seth and Shelly were the last to leave. However, when they were finally almost out of the house and in the truck, Seth leaned out of the driver's side window and yelled back to Shelly that he had to go to work. Then Ben quickly came out, they spoke, and then they both drove off together.

  It pained me to leave my old house, Vicky, and little Caydee, but I had to follow Seth. His heartbeat had grown fast and erratic after the phone call he had. I didn't pay enough attention to the words being said through the little buzzing speaker, but something had rattled my brother.

  As my brother's truck hauled ass across town to the construction site, I trailed them in the woods, sticking to shadows and cover as I moved like a ghost through the night. I used my enhanced senses to listen for other cars that might be near, as I had to cross roads and open sections of land where I'd be in full view. No one should be able to see me at night, but if someone got lucky and just happened to be looking in the right direction, at the right time, with the right amount of streetlights or moonlight bouncing off the ground, they could potentially see something haunting that they'd never forget. But thanks to my Primeval pulse sense, I was able to get a good grasp of people in an area, and where they typically were not. I could move through the empty places while maintaining my brother's position.

  In only about half an hour, the truck finally came to a stop, and I settled at the edge of the tree line around what looked like a new subdivision that was in the early stages of being built. It was very early, and a lot of excavation was still being done to level the place out for whatever kind of design they had. However, the moment I got there, I smelled something powerful. It was that same smell that I knew very intimately. It was death.

  More specifically, I felt reminded of a certain smell from an old enemy. The elder whom I fought towards the end of my time in St. Louis. The ancient entity was basically a living skeleton. It wasn't the way he smelled when he was alive, but the scent that came out of his bones when I was destroying him. It was a very fleeting thought, but it did stick out when I smelled the scent in this area.

  I sent out rapid pulses of my senses, trying to get a gauge on the area and see if something or someone was near that shouldn't be. It didn't take me but a few seconds to realize the massive hole that was in the ground near an excavator.

  There was a scent wafting out from the hole as well as streams of blood. I could definitely see the streaks going into the hole where people were dragged inside. Claw marks were carved through the dirt and mud, not by a creature but the desperate grasping claws of human hands. Those streaks of blood were straight lines as they were pulled inside this hole in the ground. Then, other patterns of blood looked like the hole had thrown up and splattered flesh and blood like a shotgun blast in the immediate area outside of the hall.

  The pulses of my Primeval sense told me everything in my immediate area was empty. Even down in the hole, there was nothing, just the remnants of bodies, blood, and bones. The bones were no longer in a skeletal shape, but all separate.

  There were a lot of bones down there, more than just from whatever kind of night crew this place had. This looked like a den... or a nest of some kind of creature that had just been uncovered. Years, if not decades, worth of bodies we're down in that hole. The scattered bones of countless victims lying silent in the earth as my Primeval sense washed over them back and forth.

  I felt myself stepping forward, feeling the need to take control of this situation... to reveal myself to Seth and Ben so they wouldn't get themselves killed. However, thankfully, Ben snapped out of it while Seth remained locked in a strange silence as he stared at the gore hole.

  I faintly heard Ben’s voice say that they needed to call the cops. Then he followed up by actually doing it. I took one more step backwards to replant myself in the shadows of the tree line. I kept my pulses going, waiting to feel something enter my sensory domain, and then I would make a move. But, until then, I'd let the cops arrive and watch this scene unfold.

  As I waited, I watched Seth and Ben, but I also dove deeper into the hole with my senses. The bones were weird, obviously bashed and broken, torn apart by something that rivaled my own destruction at times. Some of them, though, looked intentionally destroyed, but it was hard to tell. It was enough to see a pattern, but I couldn't really be sure, not without going into the hole myself.

  I reached into my pocket anxiously as I watched my brother and my old friend brush against the dark world that was my new domain. It made me feel weird, and I didn't like it. As I watched the scene playing out before me, I felt my hand graze the edge of my cell phone. My knee-jerk reaction was to grab it, pull it out, and make a call. I knew somebody who could help me, who could help them. But it would change my approach. Shit… this whole situation was going to change my approach.

  After a few more minutes, my hand let go of my cell phone as I heard a new sound. It perked my ears up immediately, something I always had to watch out for, especially in the early days of St. Louis. It was the sound of sirens. Police, ambulance, probably a fire truck in there too. Whatever Ben had said to the police had gotten people moving, and they were almost here.

  Once all of these emergency services showed up, they swarmed the area. Police came up and met Seth and Ben as they jogged over, completely out of breath just from the adrenaline flow. They pointed rapidly and made wild claims that the police didn't believe initially. Not until they witnessed for themselves the horror of the construction site. The massive hole was only filled with dark bones and blood.

  I fully let go of this cell phone in my pocket, and I just sat back and watched. I could feel the weight of the cell phone in there, the thoughts that I had still there and still likely going to happen... just not right now. I needed to stay focused and listen to everything that was said by Seth, Ben, and the police.

  Hours had passed, and the hole was still surrounded. The longer the police and everyone else remained, the more anxious it made me. Seth and Ben had left long ago. The police had taken very in-depth statements from them near the edge of the construction site. They didn't want them contaminating the crime scene any more than they already had, so they took statements, their information, and told them to go home. They told them not to go anywhere or leave town because they would be in touch. I think it was obviously playing for everyone to see that Ben and Seth were in no way, shape, or form responsible for this horrific sight. They were both pale and ready to puke at the scent alone.

  I almost left and followed the guys back to Vicky’s, but I let them go, knowing that they were safer away from this place. I had a strange feeling about it, like something seemed familiar through the feelings and images I got back as my sense is washed throughout the shallow depths of this hole. This was not some great network of caverns and tunnels like Saint Louis had. This was very local and isolated. It was bigger than the construction site itself, but not by much. It was probably only about the size of a few football fields in all directions. Maybe a quarter to a half a mile.

  I kept waiting throughout the night to find a time to slip past the many police officers who were taking pictures and bagging anything that could be considered evidence. I wanted to get to that hole and drop down inside and see with my own eyes what lay beneath. I could tell from my senses that even though this thing might be almost half a mile in diameter, it was probably only twenty feet deep. It was not even by any means, but the deepest part was around that depth, with most of it being more shallow or pockets that were just below the ground. The tunnels that connected this near-surface cavern were very small, too, not impossible for me to get through easily, but nowhere near as comfortable as standing up straight and walking. That told me that whatever had been down there was not some gargantuan monster. It could have been multiple things… Like a pack or something.

  I racked my brain as I thought back over all the monsters and types of supernaturals that I had studied at the Chasse family home. However, I was conflicted. There weren't a lot of subterranean creatures. The only reason I thought it was something subterranean was that this was such a small, isolated area. All the monsters that live beneath St. Louis weren't subterranean, but that's because the pits were basically a big fucking landscape made up within the corpse of the Primeval of Hunger. No, this was something that made this place itself. It pulled its prey beneath the earth like some kind of trap door spider.

  Then I realized that I was looking at this from a weird angle. The excavation crew had obviously busted into this place. They created a hole that let whatever was inside of it out. So that meant...

  And only a single pulse of my sensory wave, I found two hidden openings in the ground, only a few hundred yards away. It was behind me in the tree line.

  In only about two minutes, I had found the opening, shoved some bushes out of the way, and jumped feet first down into a hole with loose dirt falling around the edges where my elbows grazed. My feet thudded dully on the softer floor of this place. This was not like the caves beneath St. Louis at all. That was all stone... rock. This was literally dug by something. Once I got through the smaller opening, probably smaller to hide from civilization above, the dirt tunnel opened up, and I could stand up more easily. I did still have to slump my shoulders and cocked my head to the side, but it was manageable.

  Not only was it small, but it was completely pitch black. Luckily for me, I had the ability to shift my eyes into black voids that could light up the darkest of places. In an instant, the subterranean world was revealed to me, and what I saw was something that my sensory pulse could not do justice to.

  About twenty feet in front of me was the opening to a much larger dug area. It looked as though it was just a grouping where lopsided tunnels were dug with not much thought, most of them interconnecting, but leaving oblong and unsymmetrical pillars of earth still standing throughout this more open area. Whatever had dug this had dug in supports as well, not completely clearing out the area. It was smart. It knew how to build, or at least how not to get killed in a cave-in.

  The floor of this place is what really gathered my attention. I had seen it during my inspections with my Primeval senses; however, seeing was believing. The entirety of the floor of the massive opening beneath this surface was littered with bones. They were so thick that you couldn't even see the dirt anymore. They had actually been smashed down into the dirt to create an uneven but almost completely solid floor. That's when I noticed with even more scrutiny that the pillars that had been left standing had bones embedded in them. I could barely make out a few ball-and-socket joints that were sticking out of the surface of these strange pillars, but they were filled with bones. Were they strength, meaning the structure of this place, or something?

  As I made my way to a more central area, I came upon what I can only describe as the skeleton of a Native American tent. It was four large bones that leaned together like a teepee. A strange rope or string was holding them together at the top as the bases were spread out. Many bones dangled from it with the same strange lines that I was starting to suspect were human hair. There was a strange stillness inside this dirt den of bones. I picked up a mangled skull and looked at claw and teeth marks that were obviously scattered around it. I dropped that and picked up a much larger femur that had been sheared and twisted apart. They all looked so weird... so polished yet carved up. I couldn't make sense of it as I hadn't seen anything like this in my time with the Chasse family. The whole place gave me a sinking feeling that I couldn't shake.

  Then, flashlights started appearing down one of the tunnels. Actually, it wasn't one of the tunnels; it was the opening carved into a tunnel by the excavator. The police seemed to finally get brave enough to come down into the hole and see what they could find. If you asked me, that was pretty stupid and straight-up reckless of them… but that was my cue to leave, regardless.

  I sent out more pulses of my senses to make sure that they hadn't found the tunnel I was leaving through. Thankfully, they have not, and I clawed my way out of the ground through a narrow dirt tunnel and sprang forward into the darkness that was very quickly becoming sunrise.

  As I ran off into the distance of this band of trees, I finally pulled out my cell phone, and I made a call.