Keys in the ignition. One turn. The engine caught and roared to life beneath us, vibrating through the seat, through my bones.
And that’s when she ran.
Not stumbled. Not lurched. Not dragged.
Ran.
Faster than anything moving like that should have been able to move. The broken gait replaced by something fluid and horrifying, her legs pumping, her arms swinging, her head still wrenched at that impossible angle as she closed the distance in seconds.
A sound tore from her throat—raw, guttural, inhuman. Not a scream or a moan, but something between the two that vibrated at a frequency I felt in my soul, in the base of my spine, in the primitive part of my brain that knew now what it meant to be prey.
She hit the hood of the truck at full speed.
The impact rocked the vehicle forward. Metal buckled under her hands—actually buckled, denting inward—and I screamed. She was right there, right there on the other side of the windshield.
Her fingers splayed across the hood, nails—some of them missing, torn out at the root, the nail beds raw and oozing—scraping against metal with a shriek that cut through my scream, through the engine, through everything. She dragged herself forward, pulling her body up onto the hood with a strength that didn’t belong in that broken frame. Her face pressed toward the windshield, and it was fully visible for the first time.
The left side just gone. Not damaged, but gone. The cheek had been ripped away, exposing the full row of her teeth from front to back, the gums dark and bloody, the jaw muscles visible and working as her mouth opened and closed. One eye was intact, wide and white-rimmed, and locked directly on me. The other was an empty socket, dark and empty and leaking something thick down what remained of her face.
Her mouth opened wider, and she slammed her forehead into the windshield.
The glass cracked.
Her face hit the windshield again.
The crack spiderwebbed outward, a jagged starburst spreading across the glass, and blood—thick, dark—smeared where her skin met the surface. She pressed into it, grinding her ruined face against the fracture as if she were trying to push through by force alone. Her mouth yawned open, and her teeth snapped down against the glass with a sound like stones cracking together. Once. Twice. Again. Each bite leaving a wet, red print on the windshield.
Her one eye found me through the blood and the cracks.
It didn’t blink.
“Fuck!” Callan snarled.
His hand slammed the gearshift into reverse. The engine screamed, a roar that matched the one still emanating from the thing on the hood. The tires spun, caught, and the truck lurched backward so hard my head snapped against the headrest.
Her body slid. Her fingers scrambled for purchase. The ones that were gone left wet, red trails where the exposed nail beds dragged across the paint. She held on. The truck was moving, and she was holding on, her body flattened against the hood, legs trailing behind her, that horrible mouth still working, biting at nothing.
“Get off!” The words ripped out of me before I knew I was screaming. My voice didn’t sound like mine—too high, too thin. Panic had stripped it down to something barely human. “Get off!”
She didn’t react to my voice. Didn’t flinch. Didn’t eventurn toward the sound. But her fingers tightened, knuckles white beneath the blood, and she started pulling herself forward again, dragging her body up the hood toward the cracked windshield—toward us.
With each exhale, a fine mist of red sprayed from her open mouth and speckled the glass.
Callan jerked the wheel hard to the left.
The truck swung violently, tires shrieking against asphalt, and the momentum did what speed had yet to. Her body shifted sideways; her left hand lost its grip, fingers peeling away from the metal. She scrambled, that one remaining hand clawing desperately at the hood, leaving a long, curved streak of blood as she slid.
Her body hit the pavement, and I heard it—not just the thud of impact but the sound of bone meeting asphalt. The sound was wet and hard at the same time, and it went through me.
Callan didn’t stop.
The engine roared, and the truck shot forward toward the lot entrance.
I was shaking. My whole body. Hands, arms—everything. Could still hear that wet, rattling sound even though we were moving, even though she was behind us, even though—
I looked in the side mirror.
I shouldn’t have.