Page 122 of Death Valley

I seize the moment to grab another branch, this one smaller but more manageable. I thrust it into the flames licking at the cabin’s collapsed walls, igniting the end into a makeshift torch. Now armed, I move to flank Adam from the other side, trapping him between us.

His head whips back and forth, assessing his options, calculating odds. For a moment, I think he might surrender to the inevitable, might accept his defeat.

Instead he charges directly at me, accepting the burning torch as the price of reaching his target. The flaming wood catches him across the chest as we collide, setting his ragged clothing alight, but his momentum carries us both to the ground.

I lose my grip on the torch as we fall, the burning branch spinning away into the snow where it hisses and dies. Adam’s weight crashes down on me for the second time, his burning clothes searing my skin even as his claws rake across my chest, tearing through jacket and shirt to the flesh beneath.

Pain explodes through me, hot and immediate. I hear Aubrey shout something, but it’s lost in the roaring of blood in my ears. Adam’s transformed face hovers inches from mine, teeth bared in a snarl of triumph, eyes gleaming with that unnatural blue.

A shot cracks through the night—Aubrey, her aim precise despite the chaotic struggle. The bullet catches Adam in the back of the head, a kill shot on any normal human. He jerks with the impact, momentarily stunned, black fluid spraying from the wound.

“I thought you were out of bullets,” I wheeze.

“I got lucky,” she says.

The luck is enough. I leverage my legs beneath him and push with every ounce of remaining strength, throwing him to the side. Rolling clear, I scramble toward the cabin’s burningremains, toward the one thing that might end this nightmare permanently.

Adam recovers too quickly, already regaining his feet despite the smoking wound in his skull. He turns toward Aubrey now, perhaps recognizing her as the more immediate threat.

She fires again but there’s only an empty click.

“Fuck,” she says, and then she’s running away.

I reach the burning remains, heat searing my face and hands as I grab a flaming timber from the pyre. The wood burns my palms, but I barely register the pain—too focused on reaching Aubrey before Adam can.

She trips on a hidden root beneath the snow, going down hard. Her gun spins from her grasp, disappearing into the darkness beyond the firelight. Adam is on her in an instant, clawed hands closing around her throat, lifting her bodily from the ground with that unnatural strength.

“AUBREY!” Her name tears from my throat, raw and desperate.

I charge, burning timber raised like a club. Adam turns at the sound, still holding Aubrey aloft, her feet kicking uselessly as she fights for breath. Our eyes meet across the distance—his inhuman blue, mine wild with fury and fear.

The bastard smiles, a silent promise of what’s to come. Aubrey’s struggles grow weaker, her face paling as oxygen is cut off.

The distance between us seems endless, my legs moving through snow that suddenly feels like quicksand. Adam’s grip tightens on Aubrey’s throat, her eyes beginning to roll back. In those eternal seconds, I see our future crumbling—the tentative connection we’ve formed, the possibility of something beyond these mountains, beyond this nightmare—all of it dying with her.

Not again.

Not like Lainey.

Not like everyone else I’ve failed to save.

Nother.

With a roar of my own—as primal and savage as anything the hungry ones have voiced—I close the final distance. The burning timber connects with Adam’s back with bone-crushing force, driving him forward, away from Aubrey who crumples to the ground, gasping for breath.

Adam whirls to face me, his back smoldering where the flames have caught his tattered clothing, have seared into the inhuman flesh beneath. Black fluid oozes from the wound, hissing and steaming in the frigid air.

I press the advantage, swinging the burning timber in wide arcs that force him to retreat, to give ground. Each near miss causes him to flinch, to recoil from the flames that can cause permanent damage to his regenerating flesh.

“This is for Lainey,” I snarl, driving him back another step. “For Cole.” Another swing, another retreat. “For Hank and Red.”

Adam backs toward the burning cabin, seemingly unaware of the trap he’s setting for himself. His focus is entirely on the flaming weapon in my hands, on avoiding its touch at all costs. Behind him, the collapsed structure continues to burn, a pyre waiting for one final offering.

From the corner of my eye, I see Aubrey stagger to her feet, her movements unsteady but determined. Her hand closes around a burning piece of wood from the edge of the fire—creating her own flaming weapon to join mine.

Adam’s head whips back and forth, calculating odds, realizing too late that he’s been maneuvered between us and the inferno behind him. For the first time, his confidence seems to waver, his movements becoming more desperate than calculated.

Aubrey and I advance in unison, driving him back one step at a time, our fiery weapons creating a wall of flame he can’t penetrate without injury.

---