The taxi driver was prattling on about politics but his words had no more weight than the sound of cars passing them on the highway. Emily wished he'd shut the hell up and put the peddle down. She just wanted to get home.

She might have yelled at him to hurry but raising her voice, even speaking, had become something she wasn't sure she wanted to do. The taillights in front of them streaked across her vision and a small hand pounded its palm against the inside of her forehead searching for a weak point. The car's air conditioning coaxed a slug's trail of icy sweat down her neck. In a thought that lay somewhere between horror and amusement, Emily realized that if the taxi was too slow reaching her destination, the chatty cabbie's tip was going to be the awful mess she'd leave behind.

She pushed the image from her mind along with all the unpleasant feelings that were hastily turning it into a reality. But the brief window of emptiness was disturbed by the memory of Amy.

Was she okay? Where was she?

When Emily woke up around eleven, the girl was gone. It didn't take a detective to figure out she had run away. The broken screen in the bathroom made it pretty clear she had snuck out. Although it didn't explain how she got down from the third floor.

Emily wandered the street for hours in vain before calling Max.

"I have a problem," she told him. Wasn't that what she was always telling him?

"Did you reach Davenport? It's okay. This is a secure line. You can talk."

"I never got there. And now she's gone." Emily did her best to explain what had happened. When she was done she asked, "What should I do?"

"Go home."

"But she out there all alone and..."

"Listen to me: she can take care of herself. She sent trained soldiers screaming into the night. If Amy wants to do this alone, I don't think you can stop her. And you have other responsibilities."

"Aaron. I know I should get back to him. But I feel like I'm abandoning her to the Agency."

"If she keeps her head down, she'll be okay. There are no agents actively in pursuit. So long as she doesn't attack anyone no one will come poking around after her."

"So suddenly they don't care anymore?"

"Oh, they care. The just think—or hope—that she's out of the country and someone else's problem."

"But what if she screws up and brings them down on her?" It was like following a knot that twisted around itself with no beginning or end. No matter how much she wanted to believe Max her mind always came back to the certainty that Amy needed help.

"Then she screws up. I know you feel close to her, but you're not going to do her any good wasting your time looking for her. For all you know she got on a train or took a boat out."

"I don't think she took a boat." Of everything, that was the one thing Emily was sure of. How many times had Amy bitched about getting on that stupid boat?

"Well, whatever. The point is she's been gone for approximately eight hours. Personally, I wouldn't have the first idea where to look for her. If she was determined and got in a car, she could be as far as Kentucky by now. Your search radius is nearly a sixth of the continental U.S. and the longer you look, the bigger it gets. Go home, Em. Get back to Aaron. I'll come by and check on you in a few days."

She had boarded the first flight back to Phoenix. It felt like the longest journey she had ever taken. The migraine started while waiting at the gate and blossomed with every mile but at least the taxi got her home before she hurled. They pulled into her driveway and Emily paid him with the cash she had gotten in New Orleans.

It was only when she was unlocking the door and the cab was halfway down the street. She realized the driveway was empty. Where was Lauren's car? Panic added oil to her fingers and the keys slipped in her grip.

After a short lifetime of struggling with the lock she opened the door to the dark entryway.

"Hello?" she called. "Aaron? Lauren?"

In the silence that greeted her, she rushed through the house, smashing light switches on with her fist as she went. She scrambled up the stairs and burst into Aaron's empty room. Tears were starting now and she wanted to scream for him again but her throat was constricting into a sob. With the ultimate sense of loss, Emily stumbled down the hallway checking the bathroom, knowing he wouldn't be there. She got to her room and didn't want to open the door. With it closed he might be in there. Not knowing was the closest thing she had left to hope.

That bitch Lauren had stolen her boy. Why? Why would she do that? What was Emily thinking leaving him with that twisted woman?

The bedroom door swung open. The TV was on a blank screen and cast the room in an eerie blue light. DVD boxes with cartoon superheroes littered the floor. There was someone in the bed. She was across the room before she knew her feet were moving. The warm bundle in her arms slowly loosened the grip constricting her heart.

"Aaron?"

"Mom?" His voice was still in the realm of sleep. "What's wrong? Why are you crying?"

"What are you doing in here sweetie?" She pulled his hair back and kissed him. Kissed that fragile skin around his eyes.

"Grandma said I could watch movies in here until you came home."

"Where is grandma?"

"After you called, she had to leave."

The horrible crone couldn't even stick around a few more hours. She had to skip out the second Emily told her she was coming home. Anything could have happened with him here, all alone.

"But she said I could come and visit her when I wanted."

"Did she?" That would never happen. Not if Emily had something to say about it.

"Mom? What's our family business?"

Emily squinted at her boy unable to fathom where this question had come from.

"Grandma said she'd teach it to me when I was older, like she did for you."

The nausea Emily was holding at bay exploded along with a spike of fury. She got up and pushed herself back to the bathroom as her vision exploded with colors. She imagined bashing in Lauren's head just like she had done to that creep back in Vegas. Lauren's face was vivid in her mind as it collapsed under the blows. She would never let her drag him into that life. She'd kill her first.

Emily fell to her knees in front of the toilet and let out gouts of sickness. It erupted from her mouth and nostrils in thick, boiling streams. She coughed and gagged until she could breathe again. When she opened her eyes, the bowl was splattered with dark, almost black blood.

***

Once switching on the bedside lamp was all that was needed to banish the monsters under the bed. The pale rays of dawn proved that innocent time was long gone. The watery, pastel light did nothing to shed the horror of the night. No parents stood to guard the boundary between reality and imaginations. Darkness or light: there were monsters everywhere.

Amy shivered but kept her blood splattered hands away from her body despite the desire to wrap them about herself for warmth. The phantom cold clung to her skin ignoring the fevered air around her.

The grimy streets were fading from their hard carbon solidity into a soft toad-belly gray. A levee rose up on her right in an unbroken wall, which she followed unsure of where it would lead but happy to be unburdened of the need to choose for a little while.

The night kept looping its way through her brain. Amy tried to think of other things. She went through her favorite books, recited song lyrics, closed her eyes until the pressure hurt and tried to squeeze all thought from her head, but eventually it would derail and she'd crash back to the moment she found herself at the house.

Of all the things that Ylva had warned her about, why hadn't she said anything about the house?

Something was off about it from the moment she stepped onto the street. It was like an animal that had died and had been left uneaten to rot. But as she got closer, the smell of charring meat wafting from the barbecue in the front yard seduced her and made her ignore the underlying odor as nothing more than one more stench in this ramshackle neighborhood.

Amy had planned to walk briskly past the place and ignore the men and women hanging around outside. But that smell called to her hunger and slowed her in her tracks.

She couldn't remember which one of them spoke first. Was it the thin man called Edgars, who had been sweating over the grill? Or the one named Marcus who was seated on the steps with a beer in one hand and a beefy arm around Gladys. But one of them called to her, then the other one joined in. They were making fun of Amy for the way she looked—the way the aroma of the sizzling meat made her eyes widen and her mouth water. Then Gladys said, "The poor girl's hungry. Give her something, Edga'."

Missy was a woman not much older than Amy but a lot skinnier, with tallow skin and straw for hair. She was sitting on an old kitchen chair in a patch of weeds and she said, "Would you like something, Girlie. It's okay we don't bite."

Marcus laughed at that. It wasn't much more than a chuckle and a grin, but each time Amy remembered, it grew into a riotous cackle.

Soon each of the women, there were six in all, were trying to coax her in and feed her like she was some stray mutt they had taken a fancy too. But Amy was too starved to hold on to her pride or her wariness and it wasn't long before she was seated on her own wobbly kitchen chair eating sausages wrapped in bread with grease running down her arm.

The people she was with seemed to be having a party but there was nothing special in it. There was no birthday or graduation. No Fourth of July or Halloween. It was like they did this all the time. Occasionally, friends of Marcus would come by and one of the women would go into the house with them. But before long, they'd be back outside grabbing a beer or some vodka, which they poured into red cups along with soda.

When Amy said she should go, they'd give her more food and were always amazed by her ability to polish it off. They asked her questions about herself and where she was from. Amy ended up spinning a story about getting into an argument with her boyfriend, Moore, and taking off for a while. It was a mishmash of stuff she'd read and the things she'd been through in the past few days. She knew she couldn't tell them the truth.

Almost without her noticing, it became night. She had gone in to use the bathroom before she left. With her stomach full, the stink that seemed to live in the walls of the house came back with renewed strength. It tickled her nose and whispered to her to leave. Almost in response to her revulsion, the house bloated with the presence of people, like a tick drawing blood into its belly. The atmosphere outside the bathroom door was thickening as the men and women outside crammed themselves inside. Amy no long wanted to be there. She'd prefer the rank hotel Emily had rented or the lonely night. Anything was better than here.

When she came back out to the living room they were all there. Marcus patted an empty seat next to him. "Have a seat, Amy."

"I really should be going."

"Where you going to go?" Gladys asked her voice slurred. "You don't want to go home. Stay here and have some fun."

"Edgars is making you something special," Missy said.

The scrawny chef was in a dried up, cracked leather arm chair. He had downgraded from the flame he had been using in the yard to a disposable lighter. He held it under the bottom of a spoon. The heat released a fetid odor as sharp as bile.

"No thanks," Amy said and headed for the door.

Marcus moved fast for such a big man. She quickened her steps when she sensed him coming up from behind her, but with his long reach, he was able to get a hand on her shoulder before she could reach the door.

Amy was swung around and manipulated like a play thing.

"Let me go."

"You ate an awful lot of our food. You had no problem with our hospitality before, its' rude to reject it now."

There was something so demeaning about the way he spoke to her while holding her in place.

If he knew what she was, he wouldn't do this to her. Amy's fists tightened at her side. Her thoughts were back at the marina watching all those pathetic men fleeing from her. Through gritted teeth she said, "This is your last warning."

Marcus just laughed—that cackle that kept coming back to Amy in her delirious memory. He pulled her back into the room, dragging her feet across the worn out carpet.

Amy opened her mouth and began to scream.

She saw the fist coming. The slab of clenched fingers pivoted in space in front of her, heading toward her with lightning speed, but not so quickly she couldn't have reacted. But part of her brain never believed it would hit her. Perhaps because she thought the scream would work quicker. Perhaps it was because she had never been hit like that.

So it was surprise she felt before the searing pain in her jaw kicked in. The blow lifted her off the ground and sent her clattering against the wall.

"Screaming causes trouble," Marcus said. "We don't like trouble here. You're going to learn that fast."

The sharp taste of blood was in her mouth without any of its glorious flavor. Being her own, it soured her stomach instead of awakening it. But her pride was hurt more than her body. When he advanced on her, Amy's thought was hell no. I'm not letting him do that again.

Without any concern for the consequences, she called forth the beast. Willed it to come to the surface and take over.

"Now you yell again and you won't be conscious for this next part, which is a shame because it's the best part."

"It sure is," Missy said.

Marcus held her down and called out, "Edgars, get that needle over here."

Amy waited for the change to come, but it never did. She was imprisoned in his hands by the time she realized the beast was too wild to come when called. She struggled in the strong grip, very aware of how bad her situation had become.

"We've got a fighter. Don't worry, sweetie, you won't fight the next time."

"Lucky. Lucky," Gladys said. "Nothing like the first time."

Amy hated all of them. She sensed how each of the women had had a moment like this and they all stayed here with these monsters. They should have fought but they didn't. This wasn't a house she was in but a hyena den, filled with filthy scavengers. If she could, she would kill them all. Rip them to shreds.

A low rattle came from chest up through her bared teeth. It was not the sharp scream like at the marina but it was oddly familiar—something she had heard before in a dream. A bestial noise with meaning as clear as anything she'd ever heard.

Marcus released her left arm and hauled his hand back to hit her again. It never descended to her. He used it instead to fend off Gladys, who flung herself on his back, fire engine red nails raking at his forehead and dug into his throat.

"What the hell are you doing," he yelled and shuffled backward trying to fling her off. But his balance was poor from bending over Amy and he skidded to left and knocked over a lamp. It crashed to the floor and the shade came off. The bare bulb set the room into an alternate reality of distorted shadows.

Another one of the girls, the redhead, slithered across the floor and gripped Marcus by the ankle. With his leg held in place, his momentum tripped him and he went down on his side. The redhead took small but voracious bites at his calf and a dark stain seeped across the leg of his pants.

There was a loud scream from the other part of the room. The other four women were on Edgars. His skin was being rent and consumed. His face was a mask of wet scarlet. He thrashed about but couldn't free himself, while Missy pulled veins from his wrist with her teeth.

Amy scurried away unable to take her eyes off the carnage. When she reached the door, she tore herself away from the scene so she could get to her feet and dash out of there. But the last image was frozen on her retinas.

Redhead had gotten through the fabric of Marcus's pants and was greedily chewing up chunks of raw meat, while  Gladys peeled a strip of flesh from Demarcus' cheek, the end of it seized in her lips, which were smeared with blood in a clown-like rictus. Marcus's back molars grinned at Amy from the gory window in his face. They seemed to laugh that same horrible cackle.

It had been a sight straight out of hell. It was nauseating and exciting.

Exciting because she had done it. She had made them finally fight back.

The images continued to flash without end. Amy couldn't stop them. Her skin would not warm despite the heat of the rising day. Amy just kept walking. Eventually she reached an off ramp for the interstate and headed up to the endless stretch of concrete. She still had no plan of where to go. Just away.

Away from that house and what she had done.