The plan, a whisper. The chaos that followed, a scream.

  The metallic clang of the wrench hitting the hull did not just echo in the water; it was a dinner bell. One moment, the deck of The Crimson Thirst was a silent, ghostly tableau. Next, it was alive.

  Figures swarmed from the shadows of the rotting superstructure, pouring out of doorways and unfolding from the darkness under the tattered sails. Not just the Jetty Crew anymore. Other lost souls of Norchester, their faces pale and twisted, their eyes glowing with that same malevolent red light. They moved with the twitching, unnatural speed of spiders, their human forms contorted by the monstrous power that now animated them.

  “Go!” Damon yelled, his voice a burst of bubbles. “Go, now!”

  They abandoned the last bomb. The mission was over. Survival was the only thing that mattered. They kicked frantically, swimming through the black water toward the distant, fragile safety of the Sea Hook. It was like swimming through tar, every foot an eternity. Behind them, the sickening splash of bodies hitting the water signaled their pursuit.

  Frankie, watching from the boat, saw it all. Her blood ran cold. She gripped the engine’s pull cord; her knuckles white. Start the engine. Run. The logical part of her brain screamed. But she could not. Not without them.

  Damon reached the boat first, hauling himself over the side with a desperate surge of strength. He immediately turned and reached for Ted, who struggled in the water, his movements clumsy with terror.

  Just as Damon grabbed Ted’s arm to pull him aboard, the first vampire surfaced beside them. Sketch, his lanky frame impossibly fast in the water. He lunged, his teeth bared in a silent hiss.

  Frankie reacted without thinking. She grabbed a heavy, wooden boat gaff and swung it like a baseball bat. The hook caught the creature in the shoulder, and with a surge of her unnatural strength, she flung him back into the water.

  But it was too late. Another one was already climbing over the other side of the boat. And another. And another.

  They boarded their small fishing boat.

  The fight was a chaotic, desperate melee on the unstable, rocking platform. The salty spray of the ocean mingled with the coppery tang of fresh blood, a sickening perfume that clung to the air. The thunderous crash of waves swallowed shouts and snarls against the hull, a relentless rhythm that both amplified and obscured the sounds of battle. The vampires were not trying to kill them with bites. They were just… fighting. Brawling with a savage force. The slick, cold deck beneath their feet offered no purchase, threatening to pitch them into the churning darkness below.

  Damon was a whirlwind of motion, his surfing skills translating into a surprising, agile fighting style. He used the rocking of the boat to his advantage, dodging and weaving, landing powerful blows. But he was outmatched. For every one he knocked back, two more scrambled onto the boat.

  Ted, just hauled aboard, was no fighter. He grabbed an emergency flare from the boat’s safety kit, holding it like a club. One vampire, a girl he vaguely recognized from his chemistry class, lunged at him. He swung the flare wildly.

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  She caught his arm, her grip like iron. She twisted.

  A sickening snap echoed over the sounds of the fight.

  Ted screamed, a high, thin sound of pure agony. His arm hung at a horribly wrong angle, the bone clearly broken. He stumbled back, his face white with shock and pain, and collapsed against the boat’s console, out of the fight.

  Frankie saw it happen. She saw Ted go down. She saw Damon, his face now bleeding from a long scratch on his cheek, being overwhelmed, pushed back by the sheer number of attackers.

  And something inside her broke.A white-hot surge of energy, hotter than any fever, flooded her veins. The world, which had been a chaos of fear and motion, suddenly snapped into sharp, predatory focus. The monster came out to play.

  The fear. The control she had been trying so desperately to maintain. The voice of the human girl who feared her own power.

  It all shattered. And the monster came out to play.

  A roar of pure, animalistic rage tore itself from her throat. Not a human sound. The sound of a predator uncaged.

  The vampires on the boat actually flinched, turning toward the source of this new, terrifying sound.

  And in that moment of hesitation, Frankie launched herself.

  She did not step or climb. She flew. She leaped from the deck of the Sea Serpent across the ten-foot gap of black water and landed with a deck-shuddering thud on the rotting timbers of The Crimson Thirst.

  She did not have a plan. She did not have a weapon, other than the sharpened stake tucked into her belt. She only had rage.

  She fought with the raw, uncontrolled power of her new instincts. She was not a skilled martial artist. She was a hurricane of violence. She moved with a speed that was a blur even to the vampires' eyes. Her fists struck with the force of hammers, shattering bone. She grabbed one creature and used him as a shield, a weapon, before flinging him into the ship's mast with a sound like a sack of wet cement hitting a wall.

  She was a whirlwind of destruction, her movements fluid, deadly, and utterly terrifying. She fought not with skill or grace, but with a pure, animalistic fury, a dance of death on the deck of a ghost ship.

  For every vampire she incapacitated, two more seemed to take its place. They swarmed her, their numbers overwhelming. A lucky blow caught her in the side, staggering her. Claws raked at her arms, tearing through her jacket. She was being buried under a tide of pale, snarling bodies.

  She was losing.

  And then she heard it.

  From the dark, ornate doorway of the captain's cabin at the stern of the ship, she heard a sound that cut through her rage, that focused her fury into a single, sharp point.

  A muffled cry.

  Dee Dee.

  Her friend was in there. With him.

  The rage transformed. It was no longer a wild, chaotic storm. It was a spear. A single, burning point of purpose.

  Get to the cabin.

  She let out another roar, this one full of a new, desperate focus. She stopped fighting defensively. She started plowing forward. She was no longer trying to win a battle. She was just trying to cross the deck. She shoved, she clawed, she tore her way through the horde of bodies, her eyes locked on the cabin door.

  She was a shark fighting its way through a school of piranhas, ignoring the bites, the scratches, the blows. Her only thought, her only instinct, the only thing left in the world was the door.

  She was ten feet away.

  Then five.

  She lunged for the doorway, her hands outstretched, the cries of her friend the only sound in her ears.