I was already trying to keep a low profile, being that I was in the vicinity of my old home and all, but skulking around a graveyard in broad daylight with a hood on really pumped out the grim reaper vibes. I wasn’t trying to, and I was actually reining in any kind of Primeval or Deathly aura that may be emanating from me. It was more just the look I always had, the black hoodie layered beneath my dark brown jacket, dark jeans, and boots. Some would think me crazy anyway for wearing heavy coats and hoodies in the Texas heat like this, but that kind of shit hadn’t bothered me for a long time.

  I had to stay busy… to keep hunting this thing, to keep my mind busy. Not only that, but I had to make progress on this while Carter and all of them made progress with Seth. They were going to help me set the groundwork to reintroduce myself without just showing up and exploding his aorta from just sheer stress alone. Not only that, but the supernatural had touched down here at least twice; once with me, and now with this Gravemarrow.

  I liked the name, Chupacabra, better. I don’t know why, I just did. It fits the area more. I remember hearing that name a lot as a kid. People told stories, mostly jokes, about seeing a chupacabra. Not like a scary thing, more like seeing a unicorn, or something special. It was always bullshit, of course, but it still got the memories moving.

  While the Chasse family helped me, I helped them, and my own family. I moved like a ghost through the town, inspecting anything I could find that was tied to this fucker. It was weird, though, because this was the first time I had really hunted a non-humanoid creature… especially on my own. I had killed things like devourers before; those hunched over, humanoid-dog-like things that I first saw on the rooftops of St. Louis when Peter Grimwood was fucking running wild. Then I saw them again in the Unseen Primeval’s realm as well. Those things had once been human… but these… from what Carter and Eleanor had told me, they had never been human. Most chupacabras… gravemarrows were animals that got a specific taste for something. That something is bone marrow. But it wasn’t as simple as eating the marrow and then venturing forth as a monster. Someone did this.

  It was a ritual, a way to create things to serve and do your bidding. People in ancient days created these fucking things to hunt down and kill people. However, the kicker was that almost always, the gravemarrows would get loose, stop obeying a master after their untimely death, and then would run wild. Once one was made, it could reproduce… apparently, that’s how the big invasion happened in Mexico. Here, though… we were pretty sure it was just one. The amount of tunneling was impressive, but based on the bestiary descriptions, it seemed like just one, at worst two.

  The real question, though, was who created it? It couldn’t have just wandered in off the street from somewhere else. Once nested, these things stayed local, only making different burrows depending on more advantageous supplies of their food source… bones. Well, their inner contents. The graveyard made sense… but why the area planned as a new subdivision…

  But another bump in the road that I was facing was… I couldn’t track this thing.

  I could track it easily if it were in the area. My senses would pick it up on my figurative radar, but this was no living, breathing entity with a soul. It was basically just a straight-up fucking monster-creature-beast thing. I couldn't use my Primeval tracking methods as I had in the past when I was tracking someone subconsciously as I moved after a vision from Death, or tracking people down when I finally learned how to actively hone in on the ability. No matter where this thing was right now… I couldn’t track it. The physical trail stopped in the dirt chambers beneath the ground… and just disappeared. My senses ended there… and it was so fucking frustrating.

  I was pacing through the headstones of a graveyard, analyzing everything I could see with my enhanced senses. Heartbeats of birds above me in the trees filled my ears with their rapid flutter. A few random people on the outskirts of the cemetery were mumbling to lost loved ones, breathing emotionally, and distant car engines hummed out their existence. I moved through it all, blocking out everything else in the moment to follow a scent that I had picked up from the hole.

  Carter and Frank found another hole. Another gravemarrow burrow beneath the local cemetery. They called me as soon as they found it once they got to town, and before they went to meet Seth. I had to investigate inside of it for them just to keep them all safe. With me around, there was no reason to risk any of them going into the dirt tunnels.

  I had to say, it was good to have them here with me. I was already struggling with what I was trying to do here with my family, but I was also still struggling with what had happened before I left St. Louis. Alex… and the choice she made to finally leave this monstrous life after fighting for so many years. We had gotten close… really close, and that didn’t make things any easier.

  I was happy for her… I really was. Just knowing that she had moved on… to whatever came next for people like us… I knew that she was with Jerry now… probably looking down here at my dumb ass now and then. I hoped she’d be proud of what I was doing. It felt weird to think that… like she was an aunt or mother or something… she was way older than me technically. I shook that weird thought away. She definitely was not. We were just… close… in a lot of ways.

  Alex was a female vampiric version of me; a monster made much stronger than the rest… but fighting it at every turn… killing anything deemed a true monstrosity. It's how we bonded… what drew us together initially. Then there was the whole Primeval thing, the shard of Hunger… it was… complicated. That’s not even getting into what all went down with Autumn.

  Needless to say, I came down to Texas to regain my family, but I think I was also trying to get away and not have to be around anyone for a while. I soon realized that I didn’t want that at all. Now that I had them here with me… I was elated.

  “Do you still smell it?” Eleanor asked as she paced around a small stone structure that probably housed a few people who were related to one another.

  “I do… but I still can't tell what it is,” I answered her.

  Eleanor walked around in her familiar black jeans, leather jacket, and a few hidden silver blades, as well as a fully loaded silver pistol tucked inside her coat.

  I bet that shit’s hot, isn’t it?” I asked, motioning toward her coat.

  “Yeah… it is,” she huffed. “So, the quicker we finish here, the better.” She was not a fan of this heat down here. She wiped a few beads of sweat from her forehead. “The humidity here is something else!”

  We continued to pace around as I followed a smell that I could almost see as I ramped up my senses to the max. Eleanor followed me through the cemetery as I stayed away from one potential onlooker. We ended up slowly coming to a stop at a large rectangular building. Most of the plots here were normal coffins buried beneath the soil. But a few small mausoleums rose from the ground, and this one had something interesting sitting outside its doors.

  The structure was cold grey stone, carved to look like four pillars supporting the four corners of the place, and normal stone walls filled the space between them. The black, wrought iron door had a lock built into it. However, it was unlocked… and sitting in the loose dirt and grass that sporadically littered this place was a stray piece of thin metal that was unmistakable. It was a lockpick.

  “Now, why would a monster need a lockpick?” I asked with more amusement than required.

  “Look at you go. You could have been a detective…” Eleanor joked with me as she strolled over to check out my find.

  I laughed lightly as I tried to talk in a British accent, “I think I could have. By golly, this clue could crack the case. The assailant used this lock-picking device to break in.” I tried to joke for a second, but it didn’t land. At least, Eleanor didn’t laugh, and then I felt like an asshole.

  Swing and a miss. I guess I just felt so comfortable with Eleanor that the old me popped out sometimes. The version of myself that I was with my brother back in my unbothered, human days before all of this.

  “Maybe not the creature itself… but the maker,” Eleanor suggested, not laughing in the slightest at my joking behavior that was probably out of character. “Or it could be unrelated… kids or something.”

  I prayed that she was just so engrossed by the find that she didn’t hear my bad accent. Maybe she did and was just treating me like one of her own family members, like Frank, and ignoring some dumb shit they said.

  I picked up the thin, strangely shaped pick and inspected it. I took in everything about it, running it under my nose twice to pick up any trace scents that may linger, and…

  “What’s that?” I asked as I scrunched up my face at the smell.

  “What is it?” Eleanor asked with a curious expression, moving away from where she was inspecting to where I now stood.

  “It smells like… pickles… mixed with a chemical smell. I don’t know,” I shook my head as I handed her the small object.

  Eleanor pulled her loose, dark hair back into a ponytail as she knelt to meet me where I was squatting. Her deep brown eyes inspected the lockpick and even took a small sniff of it with a weak smile.

  She shook her head with an oh-right-I-don’t-have-heightened-senses kind of look, “I don’t smell it.”

  I didn’t expect her to, I was just sharing what I had found. “It’s very faint… but it's there. It reminds me of something,” I struggled to place the smell. I sighed after a few seconds. “Maybe like a doctor's office,” I was reaching for something.

  Eleanor handed me back the pick and looked closer at the mausoleum in front of us. She ran her hand over the old, simple lock that was built into the gate that barred the entrance. It was unlocked and ready to just be pulled open. When she grabbed the bars, they swung instantly, not even latched, just appearing closed.

  “Well… looks like whoever that pick belongs to got in. Must’ve just dropped it after…” she guessed. “Gravemarrow isn’t really going to be much of a practiced lock breaker.”

  I followed Eleanor into the small, musty concrete building. As we entered, I felt the same familiar scent trailing slightly into the structure and going straight to a wall that had a rectangular panel ajar. I moved on the same path, seeing what the trail led to.

  Eleanor followed me now, not asking questions, just letting me work in silence as I unleashed my enhanced senses and read the world like normal people couldn’t. I placed my hands on the broken edge of what appeared to be a sort of vertical covering that sealed up a cutout made into the wall. It was a slot for a body, and every wall inside this place had many. I pulled at the border of this broken seal, and it crumbled away in an instant. Whoever was here before me had thrown it back up in a real half-ass fashion. Real dickhead move, as now whoever was inside would be fully exposed to…

  There was nothing inside the cutout. No box… no body… nothing but the lingering traces left behind that told me a body used to be here. I could smell the remnant decomposing tissue that had flaked off. There was a layer of dust or grit on the bottom of this cutout that had been disturbed when its contents were stolen. I enhanced my eyes, shifting them to complete black orbs that gained much greater detail in front of me. There was a newer, thinner layer of dust where the original had been scraped away. Probably from this seal being broken and not sitting right, letting in the shifting air and dust particles with it.

  “I think that was fresher than most graves in here,” Eleanor suggested as she motioned to a few flowers, cards, and a few leftover funeral programs with the face of a middle-aged man on the front.

  Eleanor handed me one of the programs after she finished reading it.

  “His name was Ken Wilder, 42, cancer…” She gave me the basics. “Entombed three weeks ago.”

  I glanced up from the program to the hole in the wall, “And now he’s gone.” I sniffed the air again as I stepped away from the empty slot. I focused my senses… all of them into that familiar surge, and the scent trail came alive. It came straight in and straight out on the same path. This person didn’t wander or check out anyone else inside the tomb. It couldn’t tell me how much time the person was here for or what they did, but it told me where they went. They came for this man, took him, and left. At some point along the way, they dropped this lock pick.

  “Can you track the sent?” Eleanor asked me as I stepped back out of the mausoleum.

  I pulsed my enhanced senses out and traced the path back out of the graveyard and down an adjacent sidewalk. My sonar-like pulse had nothing to latch onto, as I couldn’t use my Primeval sense to hunt down the gravemarrow or a dead man. It just didn’t work that way. However, I could trace a scent manually, just like I used to do in the good old days, when I was just a plain-Jane, unknown monster hunting the streets for murderers, rapists, and the scum of the earth.

  I nodded, “Follow me.”

  Eleanor pulled the gates to this place shut, an old metallic groan echoing out through the silent cemetery. A few people looked over at us, but we just kept moving. I followed the trail of the strange scent, and we left the empty grave behind.

  “Where are we going?” Eleanor asked as I kept putting more and more distance between us and the graveyard. “I thought it would lead to another entrance to the burrow beneath the cemetery…”

  She was right, I half expected it to as well, but it didn’t seem that way. We were moving now, heading deeper into the city… to a more populated area.

  “I’m also starting to wander… where are the chupacabras? Or gravemarrows… whatever?” I said ominously, expecting to have already run into one by now. Especially since we just found another nest.

  Where would they be if not in their own nests?

  “I’ve been thinking the same thing…” Eleanor said, a tinge of worry laced behind her voice.

  An hour later, we were committing enough felonies to put us away for life. Carter and Eleanor kept a collection of counterfeit credentials that would have impressed a federal forger: badges, laminated IDs, embossed paperwork with official seals. I’d never asked where they came from. I wasn’t sure I wanted to know. My hunts had never required this kind of theater. But theirs did. They needed to blend in, gain access, and disperse as a forgotten memory to normal people. This was how they did that.

  Eleanor flashed a badge at the front desk with practiced ease. She gave the nervous girl her curt spiel about official business that sounded way too rehearsed to me, but the girl totally bought it. The receptionist barely hesitated before allowing us through the employees-only area, giving us really thorough directions that made me think she deserved a raise.

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  Once back in a sterile white hallway, I followed my senses. The smell almost blended in with the medical atmosphere as soon as we hit the parking lot, but after some focusing, I was able to isolate it from everything else, and we were on our way. Eleanor played the leader, staying just a step ahead of me as I followed the invisible thread. She had the badge, so she let me lead from behind, sending her inconspicuous signals when we needed to make any moves. She kept her eyes peeled for any potential problems with her fake identity. We definitely didn’t want to run into any real law enforcement and have them start asking questions, so we stayed pretty subtle once inside, only trying to fool the everyday civilians of the world that would bow down to authority.

  A few minutes later, we passed into a long hallway that had an arrow pointing down to the end and marked in black block letters:

  MORGUE.

  I could feel the temperature drop immediately as we got closer; the refrigeration back here was strong. I assumed it was for storage to keep bodies from decomposing.

  “What about now?” Eleanor asked quietly, her posture straight. “Anything?”

  She looked every bit the federal agent she claimed to be after changing clothes, sporting a very believable female business suit once she realized we’d have to play pretend for a while. It worked because anyone who crossed our path in the generic hospital hallways veered out of our way almost instantly.

  I inhaled slowly, sorting through cold metal, antiseptic, stale air. Then I turned down the corridor.

  “This way,” I said as I continued to lead us down the hallway closer to the morgue.

  She moved ahead of me, trying to take point, but her eyes tracked my movements. They’d never made me a badge. I’d never needed one because, in my short time pretending to be a normal hunter with them, they hadn’t done this. They seemed to operate differently outside of their hometown of St. Louis. I wondered if it was because they just had more contacts in official positions back there, while here they were more unknown and disconnected?

  The scent grew stronger near two brushed-steel doors at the end of the hall… faint and sour. Eleanor pushed through the doors that marked this as the actual morgue. Inside, refrigerated drawers lined the walls in symmetrical rows. Each silver compartment once held the quiet weight of the dead, and a few still did.

  The coroner stood on the far side of the room, glancing at us as we entered unannounced.

  After a brief introduction, handled smoothly and confidently by Eleanor, we began to make real progress.

  “Dr. Marcus Eaton,” he said, offering his hand without hesitation. His grip was firm, dry, and professional. He stood at average height with a solid build, neatly trimmed beard, and dark hair combed carefully back from his receding hairline. His scrubs were crisp beneath a spotless white coat. He looked like a man who believed in order and procedure… looking at us like we were out of place.

  “And this is my partner,” Eleanor said, gesturing to me as she displayed her badge just long enough to establish authority. “We’re investigating a missing body from Briar Hollow Cemetery. Exhumed without authorization sometime in the last forty-eight hours.”

  Marcus blinked, confused. “A body was stolen? From a cemetery?”

  “That’s correct,” Eleanor replied, very calm and direct. “We’re tracing possible points of origin before burial. We need to verify whether the deceased passed through this facility.”

  Marcus frowned, not defensive, just concerned. “We don’t release remains without documentation. Not ever. But if you have a name, I can check our records.”

  Eleanor gave him one. He moved immediately to a nearby terminal, fingers tapping across the keyboard. The soft hum of refrigeration filled the silence. Eleanor shot a glance toward me, urging me to do my thing.

  I slowly paced around the perimeter of the room, garnering concerned glances from the coroner. He didn’t say anything, though. With my back turned to them, I flared my senses, eyes turning black, and I took in the room. I dissected every scent in the ambient air that flowed in and out of the room. I felt my monstrous heartbeat thudding loudly in my ears and chest as I summoned more of Myordrakien to let me look deeper into my surroundings.

  “Yes,” he said after a moment. “The decedent was here. Three days ago. Standard autopsy. Released to a licensed funeral home twenty-six hours later.” He turned back to Eleanor. “All paperwork was filed properly.”

  “Any irregularities?” Eleanor asked.

  “As I said… all filed properly.” He was irked.

  “Apologies… we have to consider all possibilities,” she answered evenly. “Including someone bringing the body back here.”

  Marcus studied her for a second, then nodded. “Back here,” he almost laughed. “There is no reason we would bring a body back that has already been examined. You’re welcome to look. I have nothing to hide.” He opened his arms and allowed us to inspect the place.

  He led us down the wall of refrigerated compartments and began opening them himself. Metal drawers slid free with a hollow whisper. Most were empty. About ten held bodies wrapped in white sheets, identification tags looped around pale toes.

  “I’ve worked here eleven years,” he added as he moved. “We log every movement. Every transfer requires two signatures and a timestamp. It would be extremely difficult to remove a body without it being noticed.”

  “Difficult,” Eleanor repeated. “But not impossible?”

  He gave a reluctant nod. “In theory.”

  Eleanor’s eyes flicked to me.

  “What about bringing one back?” I asked, interrupting the conversation, and also ensuring my eyes and face were completely normal.

  “As I said, there is no reason to bring a body back to the hospital after it has been released to a funeral home. Unless the police have ordered it with a warrant to exhume a body for another look or something… some criminal cases require this. But I have no such knowledge of anything like that at this time.

  I began opening drawers on my own, pulling each tray out fully. I didn’t need to see the faces, but I forced myself to look anyway. Five bodies in, I realized the scent wasn’t clinging to the occupied compartments.

  It drifted farther down toward the empty ones. I stopped at a vacant slot and slid the tray free. Stainless steel. Recently cleaned. The sharp bite of disinfectant stung my nose. But beneath it… there. It was faint, sour, and unmistakable.

  The body had rested here.

  “How long ago was this compartment used?” I asked.

  Marcus glanced at the number above the drawer. “That one?” He stepped closer. “A few weeks ago.”

  “After that?” Eleanor pressed.

  “Sanitized. Reset for intake. Standard procedure.”

  I looked up at him. “Who else has access to this room?”

  The question came out harder than intended.

  Marcus stiffened slightly but didn’t retreat. Then he began rattling off anything that popped into his brain that was fit to answer the question. “Pathology staff, certain nurses with clearance, security personnel, and environmental services during scheduled cleanings.” He met my eyes steadily. “And my morgue techs, naturally. But they’re all above board, I assure you. Basically… it isn’t open to the public, but I’m not the only one who can walk in.”

  “Are there cameras?” Eleanor asked.

  “In the hallway. Not inside the morgue itself. Privacy regulations.”

  That seemed weird to me. I think Eleanor thought the same based on the small jump in her heartbeat at his words.

  “Any missing logs, paperwork, unauthorized accesses?” Eleanor asked.

  “None that I know of, but then again, I’m not really looking for things like that. Why would I? This is the first of any kind of wrongdoing I am aware of,” he said firmly. “And if there were, I would tell you.” He spread his hands slightly, not defensive, just earnest. “I assure you,” he continued, voice steady, “if a body connected to this facility has gone missing, I want to know how. That reflects on my department. On me.”

  I watched him closely. His pulse remained even. No sharp rise in fear. No spike of deception. Just professional concern, and maybe a hint of wounded pride.

  Deep down, the thing inside me stirred in quiet agreement. It wasn’t him.

  I let the tray slide back into place with a soft metallic click. I’d hoped the trail ended here, that the answer was simple and standing right in front of me. But it wasn’t.

  The scent was real. The body had been here. And someone with legitimate access had brought it here for a reason… and moved it again. Which meant the trail didn’t stop in this room. It spread through the hospital like veins. And whoever took that body was probably still walking these halls.

  “But why would someone bring it in there just to bring it out again?” Eleanor asked me as we drove away from the hospital.

  I shook my head, my own confusion becoming more and more frustrating. “I don’t know. The scent only comes in and out of the morgue. It’s nowhere else in the hospital.”

  "You don't think it's him, though?" Eleanor asked about the coroner, Dr. Eaton.

  I shook my head slowly, certain about my decision.

  "No... It's not him. I can feel it. He had no hint of anything that would link him to what we've found so far. He's just... unassuming. He might be a little uptight... but he's not the guy we're looking for."

  “I'll talk to Carter, see if we can get a list of hospital employees with criminal records or any ties with the supernatural... specifically to things related to what we know about gravemarrows.”

  “How can you manage that?” I asked. “It's not like these kinds of people just post that on their online profiles...”

  Eleanor smirked a little, but remained serious, “There are certain markers we look out for. It's not perfect, but, depending on the type of threat we’re hunting, certain things can help us identify possible identifiers in people.”

  “How do you mean?” I asked, intrigued.

  I hadn’t learned this type of hunting method from them before. I guess I was outed as a monster too quickly, and I didn’t get this kind of training or experience with them.

  “Well, vampires, for example, have people that serve them sometimes. They are sometimes referred to as familiars, thralls, or sometimes just servants or slaves. They do it in an attempt to gain the powers of the vampires… they want to be turned. Most often, they just end up as food; rightfully so, as they tend to help do all sorts of disgusting and unforgivable things for their “masters” during the daylight hours.” Eleanor air quoted as she explained all this, the car veering off into the other lane for a second. She made a look with her face like whoopsie, and then slightly swerved back into the correct lane. Then she continued, “Every situation is different, so different markers may appear. For a vampire’s familiar, we might identify someone with ties to a blood bank. They could work there and get caught stealing, try to buy from them under the table, or be caught lingering in the area too much and gain unwanted attention from people who called the police. Butcher shops are another one. Anyone coming in and trying to buy animal blood in large quantities or too often can make people notice. Say we were hunting a werewolf, the butcher shops might take notice of someone coming in once a month and buy large quantities of meat just before a full moon. It would be like clockwork, and someone's bound to notice something… any detail that could give us a lead.”

  “How could you possibly find any of this out?” I asked, knowing there wasn’t any kind of search engine they could just look this kind of stuff up in.

  “With boots on the ground. We go places, talk to people, ask these kinds of questions. If we’re wrong, they’ll answer pretty quickly that what we are asking sounds too weird and tell us to leave. But if it is happening, it's usually something they have already picked up on, but their brain just told them to look the other way. That it's probably nothing. That’s when we find our lead.”

  I nodded to myself as I stared out the window beside me. I tried once again to send out a pulse of my Primeval sense… but nothing. I tried to focus on anything from the burrows, the graveyard, even the lockpick itself. I even tried to just look for an abstract person, or the existence of the thing that was causing all of this behind the scenes. But… nothing.

  “So… what markers are we looking for when it comes to chupacabras?” I asked, returning my senses to normal and looking at Eleanor.

  “It’s gravemarrows,” Eleanor corrected mockingly… but also seriously. Then she said, “First, we gather back with everyone, and compile everything we know so far.”

  We continued driving for a little while, neither of us saying anything for a few moments. I was deep in thought about these creatures and what kind of dark rituals were required to spawn something so strange and horrific. I was dwelling on who this person could be and how they eluded my senses. But my thoughts were then interrupted by Eleanor.

  “How are you doing with all this? Being back here, seeing your family again?” Eleanor asked me, shifting gears and getting more serious and personal.

  I took a deep breath and a slow sigh, exhaling into an answer. “It's... a lot. I came here ready to just reveal myself, but... I guess nothing's simple.”

  Without missing a beat, Eleanor asked unapologetically, “Are you scared of what your brother will think?”

  I froze for just a second and then slowly nodded, “Yeah... I am.”

  “Just remember, Sam. Remember how we all felt when Allen came back... changed. How our family was reunited and made whole. Remember how we all felt when Autumn was given a second chance... how I was given a second chance.” That last part made her eyes glassier than they were before, and she slowed her words as she began getting a knot in her throat. “That's our family... Your family, too. Now, this is your blood family; they are going to want you back. We just might have to help... facilitate their realization a little.” Eleanor looked at me with a heartwarming smile, “and we're happy to do it.”

  I nodded and smiled at her, unable to say anything in response to the abrupt shift in our conversation. It was a stark contrast to the last few hours, going from hunting down a ravenous creature that sucked the goo from your bones to talking about our deep bonds forged over the last few years. Over the hardships and reckonings that had occurred throughout our time together.

  “I know I've told you all already, but I really can't thank you guys enough. I know you all had a lot to do back home in St. Louis after everything that happened.” I tried to say without getting too choked up myself.

  Eleanor shook her head, “It's nothing, Sam. We're happy to be here. As we said already, it's really not as big a deal as you think.”

  When I had first made the call to Carter, he was very receptive to the idea of coming down and helping me introduce myself to my family again. It was shocking to say the least because I knew that they were still trying to get a foothold in the supernatural world of St. Louis. They were using Autumn and Martin as the new de facto leaders of whatever else went bump in the night, after I killed the Primeval of Hunger beneath this city. Most things ran, but the things that stayed needed to be kept in check. The plan was that Martin and Autumn would use their status as the oldest and strongest things left to rule with an iron fist and keep the area in check.

  However, as Eleanor and Carter had explained to me very thoroughly once they arrived a few days prior, the supernatural world was not what they thought it would be in the post-Hunger world. Martin was surprised at how few creatures were left. Even the ones that reached out to contact Martin about the future of the city hadn't stayed long before fleeing for greener pastures. To the supernatural world of St. Louis, the city was just too dangerous for them.

  It was now common knowledge amongst them that hunters dwelled within the city. They didn't know that it was the Chasse family, or even who or where they were, but the thought that there were unknown hunters in the area was only one thing; not to mention that they had powerful entities of their own at their disposal, which was a game-changer. No other monsters within the city really knew about me, not specifically. But they did know that some kind of creature existed within the city that was stronger than even the elders of the pits. They didn't even know about Hunger, only that the Elders were backed by a strange power, and it seemed that all of it had died in the depths of the earth. Coupling this with the fact that a new monster had arisen and was actively engaged in ruling over what was left with Martin... no one wanted to stay.

  Autumn was a very effective deterrent, as no one knew what her unusual powers were capable of, nor if the dark monster that caused all of the destruction and annihilation of their hidden world would step back out of the shadows at a moment's notice.

  “I thought you and Autumn were speaking more frequently now?” Eleanor asked me with real confusion. She knew that Autumn knew all of this and was bound to have told me something.

  I guess she hadn’t for some reason… whatever it was.

  It was true, Autumn and I had been staying in contact… almost daily. Sometimes multiple times a day. She had a lot to deal with, and Martin was good, but he was no Alex. That's who Autumn needed. But I was the next best thing. Another monster that couldn't be quantified in the normal world. She wasn't exactly on my level, obviously, but she was a step between me and the normal supernatural world. Primeval adjacent, I liked to call it.

  “We are,” I assured Eleanor. “Sometimes, though, it's really hard to gauge a situation through text alone. Plus, I don't want you guys to feel like you have to be here if you have more important things going on.”

  “Sam, seriously, St. Louis is becoming something none of us realized it would be after everything you did. Shelta has said that when she looks forward in her visions, it's almost like this city is untouched by the supernatural world. It's so mundane that we are all starting to seriously consider a shift.” Eleanor shifted her tone as she continued, “Now don't quote me on this, but Carter and I have been doing a lot of talking and,” Eleanor slowed and looked at me hesitantly before continuing. “Depending on how all this goes with your family, we could potentially be moving our entire home and company to a new location. If St. Louis becomes a safe haven, we aren't really going to be needed there anymore.”

  I looked at her, shocked. Carter hadn't said anything about this. Neither had Autumn. I felt this strange anxiety in my chest, and it made my heartbeat start to rise. An effect of the human part of me that still remained, even though it was all mental.

  “Where would you go?” I asked nervously.

  “Well, I don't think I should really say yet, because we wanted to talk to you about it together,” Eleanor said. “But if the darker part of this world has made a home down here, near the people you care about, it wouldn't be such a strange idea to put down roots somewhere close by. We won't stop being hunters, and if there's hunting grounds down here... that's where we'll be?”

  I leaned back in my seat, looking back out the window at this new information. My mind was spiraling and running in a million different directions.

  Could that really happen? Could they move down here? Could everything with my family go so great that they could all get to know each other?

  It was almost too good to believe... I wanted it to be true, but I knew better than to get my hopes up. Then another stray thought hit: would Autumn stay in Saint Louis? Or... would she come down here too?

  I leaned back in my seat even deeper somehow, almost feeling it swallow me as I thought deeper on future possibilities, and future entanglements as both of my lives came crashing together. Part of me was worried, but part of me, the bigger part, was hopeful. Unfortunately, I was extremely hopeful, and I was worried about being let down.