The first thing I noticed when I yanked the door open was the silence.

  Not the usual kind of silence, either. This was the dead, suffocating kind. The highway traffic was gone. The buzz of the neon sign outside was gone. Even the cicadas that had been screaming into the humid later afternoon become night… also gone.

  Something had pressed the mute button on the world.

  The second thing I noticed was the smell.

  Ozone. Paper. Like lightning had struck a library.

  “Daniel?” Elly’s voice carried from the parking lot. Sharp. Urgent. “We’ve got company!”

  I didn’t even have to look. My stomach had already plummeted. Collectors. The parking lot was crawling with them.

  Dozens. Maybe more. They stood in loose formation, tall, thin silhouettes that looked human only if you didn’t stare too long. Their torsos were wrong—square and hollow, their ribcages opening outward into yawning slots like post-office drop boxes. Each one glimmered faintly with shifting light inside, as though a storm of paper scraps churned in their chests.

  Their heads were tilted, cocked just slightly too far back, all of them staring at the motel like they were waiting for it to blink.

  And the worst part? They’d surrounded the hatchback.

  “Back inside!” I hissed, grabbing Lily’s wrist. “They can leave in the car and we can barricade—”

  “No.” She shook me off, her copper hair flashing in the motel’s jaundiced light. “You can’t fight inevitability with a dresser blocking a door, Daniel. You fight it with fire.”

  Dammit. She was right. How could I have thought to hide? Where were my balls? I’d faced down the Eidolich. Granted, I’d almost had an army with me, including a dragon, but how much worse could these be?

  Elly was crouched beside the driver’s door, one hand already scrawling a sigil in midair. Sparks hovered between her fingers, twitching like fireflies on caffeine.

  Eury stood in front of her, statuesque in a swimsuit. She hadn’t been lying about going for a dip. Her arms were loose at her sides, mirrored lenses catching the sickly yellow glow of the nearest streetlamp, and the white one-piece she was wearing made her look like a goddess dropped into a horror movie—gold hair whipping in the wind, jaw set, every line of her body promising violence.

  The first Collector stepped forward. Its hollow chest yawned wider, and a slip of paper slid out, fluttering toward the ground, but landing on a chair that Eury’s shapely behind had just recently vacated.

  The collector didn’t read anything. Not in words. But the air rippled, and suddenly one of the motel’s plastic patio chairs collapsed inward, folding flat like it had just been sketched instead of built.

  “Oh, that is so not good,” Lily muttered behind me.

  “No kidding,” I whispered, hurrying down the stairs. Not for the first time, I wished I’d been gifted with flight, not powers-cancelling spit.

  Unlike us, the Collectors didn’t rush. They never rushed. That was what made them worse than anything else we’d fought. They moved with the inevitability of a tide. Slow, steady, patient. Because they always got what they came for.

  Unless we screwed up their plans this time.

  Lily closed her eyes, and when she opened them, the air sizzled. A wave of pheromonal pressure rolled out, not aimed at me—never me—but blasting through the open doorway and into the lot. The air shifted like a heat mirage. I heard shouting—angry, desperate shouting—from the rooms next to us. A couple burst out onto the balcony above, screaming obscenities at each other and tearing at each other’s clothes in equal measure.

  The Collectors paused. Just for a second. Like the ripple had disturbed their still pond.

  Eury moved first, enraged, intensified by Lily’s powers. She didn’t even glance back at us. She just lifted her sunglasses with one hand, eyes flashing like molten metal—and the nearest Collector froze. Literally. Its boxy chest crusted over with calcified mineral in an instant, jagged white growth spreading up its throat and across its arms.

  A case of content theft: this narrative is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

  It didn’t shatter. It just… folded flat. Collapsed into two dimensions, chalk lines against the pavement.

  The others kept coming.

  “Daniel!” Elly’s shout. I turned in time to see her fling a sigil across the hood of the hatchback. It sparked, then burst outward, a flare of light that staggered the next wave of Collectors.

  “Null them!” she screamed.

  Right. Because that was so easy.

  I ran down the last flight of stairs, knees nearly giving out and heart punching the inside of my ribs. I swung my arm at the nearest one. My sweaty palm connected with its hollow chest—and every hair on my body stood on end. Sparks shot from the slot, crackling like a copier machine on fire. The paper storm inside shrieked as my null effect surged through it.

  The Collector twitched, glitching between three dimensions and two like a bad hologram. Then it folded sideways, crumpling into itself until it was nothing but a flat sheet sliding under a car tire.

  I staggered back, breathless. “Okay. That worked.”

  “Then keep going!” Elly barked, sweat slicking her hairline.

  The fight dissolved into chaos.

  Collectors surrounded us in eerie half-circles, their movements stilted, puppet-like. Lily lashed out with waves of pheromonal compulsion, turning motel guests into weapons—two drunk guys from the second floor charged down the stairs, bottles in hand, smashing them across the blank faces of the nearest monsters. It didn’t kill them, but it slowed them.

  Eury was a force of nature. Every time she lifted her glasses, another Collector froze into brittle mineral. Some cracked apart when they collapsed, others flattened neatly like pressed flowers, their forms vanishing into the pavement.

  Elly darted between us, her gloves sparking with runes, carving protective wards into the asphalt. Each one flared as a Collector stepped over it, slowing them, making their paper-slips burn to ash before they could flutter free.

  And me? I bled.

  Not by choice. One of them caught me across the shoulder with its too-long robotic mailbox fingers. It crushed, bruised, and lacerated my flesh. My hoodie shredded, hot pain blooming across my chest. I stumbled, caught myself, and instinct took over.

  I grabbed the wound, scooped a palmful of blood, and flung it.

  The effect was immediate.

  The blood exploded midair, a spray of scarlet sparks that detonated like a grenade. Three Collectors convulsed, their forms stuttering, their boxy torsos collapsing inward before they winked out entirely.

  The rest froze with heads cocked toward me.

  Every. Single. One.

  “Oh, crap,” I whispered. I’d just given the scent to the hounds.

  “Daniel!” Lily’s scream. “Run!”

  Too late. The Collectors all moved at once, their slots yawning open, slips of paper flying like confetti in a hurricane. Each scrap burned faintly with inked words I couldn’t read. They swirled toward me, threatening to stick to my clothes, my skin, or anywhere else they could find purchase.

  “Don’t let them tag you!” Elly shrieked. “That’s how they mark—”

  The spider tap-danced on the car, shouting. “WATCH YOUR FLANK.”

  A hand yanked me backward. Eury, strong as a vice, dragging me out of the storm. Her hair curled and hissed like snakes despite remaining blonde, her eyes flashing gold as she turned the air itself to stone. The tag papers brittle already, crumbled into dust before they could stick to either of us.

  “Idiot,” she snapped, even as she shoved me behind her. “Do you want to be collected?”

  “I didn’t—They just—”

  “Shut up and stay behind me.”

  The Gorgon woman from the motel room dropped amongst us. Coat flaring, eyes bright with the same power as Eury’s. She swept her hand outward, and a wave of calcification tore through the lot like frost across glass. Five Collectors froze solid mid-step.

  For the first time, the tide turned.

  Between Eury’s relentless gaze, Elly’s wards, Lily’s pheromonal chaos, and my unwilling blood bombs, we started pushing them back. One by one, they folded flat, glitching out of reality.

  Until none were left.

  Just dust. Paper scraps. Silence.

  The night sounds bled back in—cicadas, traffic, the buzz of the neon sign overhead.

  I collapsed against the hatchback, chest heaving. My sleeve was soaked through, crimson against gray. My blood still fizzed faintly where it had hit the pavement, eating little pockmarks into the asphalt.

  Lily crouched in front of me, touching my jaw with trembling fingers. “You absolute moron,” she whispered. “Do you know what you just did?”

  “I was effective?” I rasped.

  Her laugh was watery. “Effective.”

  The Gorgon strode across the lot, her serpents whispering. She knelt, brushing her fingertips across one of the flattened remains. The paper crumbled to dust under her touch.

  “They won’t stop,” she said simply. Her gaze flicked to me, unreadable. “Not until they’ve logged you.”

  Eury joined her, arms crossed. “Tell us something we don’t know.”

  The woman’s lips curled faintly. “You’ll need allies. Stronger ones than these.”

  Lily bristled. “Excuse me?”

  The Gorgon ignored her, turning to me. “Think on my offer.”

  Then she turned and walked into the night, coat swirling behind her, gone before I could summon a retort.

  For a long time, none of us spoke.

  Elly finally broke the silence, sinking down on the curb with her head in her hands. “We’re so screwed.”

  Eury stood tall, still statuesque even with streaks of dust across her jeans. “Not yet. Not while we’re together.”

  Lily wiped her face, smearing her mascara. She looked at me with something equal parts furious and terrified. “You can’t keep doing that. Throwing your blood around like it’s nothing. It’s not nothing, Daniel. It’s part of you. Now they know you!”

  I wanted to tell her I knew. I wanted to tell her I didn’t mean to.

  But all I could do was laugh—sharp, brittle, empty. “Yeah. Welcome to my life.”

  Because I’d seen the way every Collector in that lot had turned toward me at once after I’d let them sample my DNA.

  Rats scurried away, running back to report to their master. They’d feed Willard and Tin Can the updates, but I knew this wasn’t over. Not by a long shot.