Frankie’s eyes opened.

  Gray pressed against the window. Thick. Wrong.

  She sat up. Her breath caught. The light—it should be golden. Should be morning sun filtering through the porthole. But this wasn’t light. This was absence. The air outside looked solid. Congealed.

  She’d woken to strange things before. Vampires developed instincts. Right now, those instincts screamed.

  She swung her legs out of the narrow bunk. The boat rocked beneath her feet. She moved to the cabin door, pushed through to the deck.

  The fog was a physical thing. Cold and wet on her skin, thick in her lungs. She blinked hard, tried to force her eyes to see through it.

  She focused. Pushed her vision past human limits, reaching for the shapes hidden in the dark. Nothing. Just gray. A wall she couldn’t pierce.

  The ocean—gone. The sky—gone. The bow of the boat disappeared maybe ten feet out. The deck seemed to fall away beneath her feet. She gripped the railing. The wood felt slick under her palms. Wrong. Everything was wrong.

  “Dee Dee.”

  Her voice died a foot from her lips.

  She turned. Peered into the other cabin. Ted was sprawled across the lower bunk, one arm dangling off the side. Dee Dee sat up on the upper bunk, rubbing her face.

  “Frankie?” Dee Dee’s voice came out small. “What’s happening?”

  “Get out here.”

  “Why? What—”

  “Now.”

  Ted groaned. Rolled onto his side. “Dude, it’s like… What time is it?”

  Frankie didn’t answer. She turned back to the deck. The fog curled around the mast. Slow. Deliberate. Her enhanced hearing caught nothing. No distant waves. No seabirds. No hum of other boats. The silence was absolute. Unnatural. Her supernatural senses had never failed her before.

  Did you know this story is from Royal Road? Read the official version for free and support the author.

  They were failing her now.

  Dee Dee climbed down. Ted followed, stumbling. They pushed through to the deck.

  The smell hit.

  Frankie gagged. Covered her nose with her forearm. Old brine. Rot. Something dead and waterlogged and ancient. The stench coated her tongue. Her vampire senses—meant to detect blood, life, warmth—recoiled from whatever this was.

  “Oh God—” Ted doubled over. His shoulders heaved.

  Dee Dee’s phone lit her face. Blue-white.

  Tap. Swipe. Tap.

  Her frown deepened. “No signal.”

  “Nothing?”

  “Not one bar. GPS is dead.”

  She shoved the phone in her pocket. Moved to the console.

  The radio switch clicked.

  Static.

  She spun the dial. More static. Nothing else.

  She slammed it off. Her hands shook.

  “Radio’s dead.”

  “How?” Frankie’s voice came out sharper than she meant.

  Dee Dee grabbed the compass mounted to the console. Tapped the glass. The needle spun. Fast. Wild. No pattern. No north. Her breath quickened—Frankie heard the shift in rhythm.

  “This doesn’t make any sense.”

  Ted fumbled in his pocket. Pulled out his grandfather’s compass. Brass casing worn smooth from decades of handling. He flipped it open. The needle whirled like a top.

  “Dude. This thing survived Nam.” Ted’s voice cracked. “Gramps carried it through the jungle. What the hell could—”

  Frankie turned in a slow circle. Her vampire vision strained. No sun. No horizon. No sound except water lapping against the hull and their ragged breathing. The world had shrunk to this boat. This gray. This suffocating nothing.

  “Could be magnetic,” Dee Dee said. She clutched the compass tighter. “Solar flare. Atmospheric anomaly. Something with the Earth’s magnetic field disrupting—”

  “In English, brainiac.”

  Dee Dee shot him a look. Her eyes were too wide. “Science is failing us, and I don’t like it.”

  Ted shifted his weight. Looked at the fog. Looked back at Dee Dee. “So what do we do?”

  “I don’t know.”

  The words hung there. Frankie’s skin crawled. Cold usually didn’t bother her. But this wasn’t weather. This cold had teeth. It bit through her skin and settled in her bones.

  “We need to move,” she said.

  “Where?” Ted spread his arms at the gray void. “Pick a direction. They’re all equally screwed right now.”

  Frankie opened her mouth—

  The sound cut through the silence.

  Low. Deep. A ship’s horn. Massive. The boat rocked hard as if shoved. Waves slapped the hull. The horn blasted again. A dying bellow from something huge and hidden.

  And impossibly close.