The Hunter Among Us

His mouth tightened. “Not exactly.”

The answer carried a small fracture of pain. Veyra recognized the sound. Pain made humans careless.

She moved closer to the edge, where the pier lights thinned and the black water showed between the boards. “There’s shelter in the caves.”

“Those caves are closed.”

“Only to people who follow signs.”

“You know them?”

“I know where they go.”

He studied her. “What’s your name?”

“Veyra.”

The borrowed mouth shaped the word smoothly. She had chosen it from a dead language buried in an old broadcast, a sound with no owner left to claim it.

“I’m Daniel,” he said.

She had no need to remember it. Names were for the living, and Daniel would not remain so for long.

A wave struck the pilings. The sound rolled beneath their feet like something large turning in its sleep.

Daniel glanced toward the shore. “I should probably get back.”

Veyra let her gaze drift to the narrow path between the warehouse and the cliff. “Then go.”

He looked at her again.

She did not smile. Smiles invited trust too quickly. Instead, she stepped toward the far end of the pier, where the last lamp flickered over the cave mouth.

After three breaths, Daniel followed.

The tide caves opened beneath Blackglass Pier like cracks in a burned bone. Veyra slipped through the first entrance sideways, one palm against the wet stone. The human image made her body look narrow and fragile, but the shape beneath it pressed against the borrowed skin with restless strength. She had to remember each movement: bend the knee, place the heel, keep the fingers curled like fingers.

Behind her, Daniel cursed as his shoulder scraped the rock.

“Careful,” she called.

“You could have mentioned the entrance was this small.”

“You came anyway.”

His flashlight swung across the cave wall. Water shone in the beam, green and slick. Barnacles clung to the stone in clustered teeth.

Veyra kept moving.

The tide was wrong.

She felt it in the pressure against her inner membranes, in the sudden cold that climbed around her boots. The moon had drawn the water higher than the charts predicted. Each retreating wave left a thinner strip of stone. Her feeding chamber lay beyond two chambers and a submerged passage. She had used the route many times, but never with the sea rising this quickly.

Daniel caught up. “Wait.”

She stopped beneath a low shelf of rock.

“What?” she asked.

He lifted the flashlight toward her face. “You’re not from around here, are you?”

“Neither are you.”

“I’m from Harrow.”

“That is not here.”

His laugh came out thin. “No. It isn’t.”

A pulse of blue light flashed beneath his jacket.

Veyra saw it through the fabric. A small device, secured against his chest.

“What was that?” she asked.

Daniel’s hand closed over it. “Nothing.”

“Show me.”

“Why?”

The water surged into the cave behind them. It reached Veyra’s ankles, cold enough to sting through the human skin. Daniel turned and shone his light toward the entrance. The passage had narrowed to a sheet of black water.

His breathing changed.

Veyra heard the quickening rhythm and felt a corresponding response in the borrowed chest. The body wanted to imitate fear. It wanted to run.

She hated that impulse.

“Is that a beacon?” she asked.

Daniel backed away from her. “I said it’s nothing.”

“You activated it.”

“I didn’t.”

The blue pulse came again, brighter this time.

Daniel looked down. “Damn it.”

Veyra crossed the space between them. He raised one arm, but she caught his wrist. Human bones were delicate. She could have broken it with a small turn.

His eyes widened.

“Let go.”

“Give me the device.”

“What are you?”

The question entered the cave and seemed to remain there.

Veyra tightened her grip. Beneath the human face, the image slipped. Her pupils narrowed into dark horizontal seams. The skin along her cheek rippled as the borrowed features struggled to hold their shape.

Daniel stared.

She had seen that reaction before. Shock, then denial, then the desperate need to make the impossible ordinary.

“You’re sick,” he whispered.

“No.”

The tide struck the wall behind him. Water climbed to his knees.

Daniel jerked against her. “Let me go!”

Veyra released him, not from mercy but because the cave floor shifted under the force of the incoming water. He fell hard, his flashlight spinning away. Its beam strobed across the ceiling.

“Move,” she said.

He scrambled toward the higher ledge. “You brought me here!”

“Yes.”

The admission stopped him.

Veyra reached for the beacon clipped beneath his jacket. Daniel slapped her hand away.

“Why?”

“Because I need to leave.”

“You need to leave?” He stared at the water pouring around his legs. “You dragged me into a flooding cave and you need to leave?”

“I did not drag you.”

“You lied to me.”

“I showed you a path.”

“You knew this would happen.”

“No.”

The word came too quickly. It sounded human.

Daniel saw that. His fear sharpened into something else. “You’re trapped.”

Veyra looked beyond him, toward the submerged passage. The route to her chamber was already drowning. Water hammered through the cracks, carrying bits of shell and torn weed. Her image required breath. Her true body did not, but the disguise did. If she remained within it, the rising water would fill her lungs and force the skin to split.

She could abandon the image. She could tear through the human shape and cross the cave in her own form.

Daniel would see.

Then the signal from his beacon would lead others here.

She needed silence. She needed food. She needed the chamber.

Veyra seized the front of his jacket and pulled him upright. “Take off the device.”

His face twisted. “Go to hell.”

She struck him once.

The blow sent him against the rock. His head snapped back. Blood appeared at his temple, bright even in the failing flashlight.

He slid into the water.

Veyra crouched and reached beneath his jacket. His hands clawed at her arms, but his strength was already failing. The beacon came free with a metallic snap.

The blue light pulsed against her palm.

A voice crackled from it.

“Unit Seven to Daniel Mercer. Confirm status.”

Veyra froze.

Daniel’s eyes opened. “They know I’m here.”

The voice came again, distorted by static. “Daniel, respond. Your emergency beacon is transmitting from Blackglass Pier. Search team is mobilizing.”

Veyra looked at the device.

The beacon had not merely called for help. It had named the place.

The cave seemed to contract around her.

Daniel reached for the beacon. “Please.”

The word was quiet. Not a challenge. Not a threat.

Veyra stared at him.

She had heard humans beg before. They begged when they understood the end. Their voices became small, stripped of all the shapes they used in daylight. But Daniel’s plea carried something she had not expected: not fear for himself alone.

“Please,” he said again. “My sister will hear it.”

Veyra’s fingers tightened around the beacon.

A memory surfaced from the signal archives she had consumed during her first months on Earth. A woman standing beneath a hospital awning, pressing a phone to her ear. A man’s voice saying, I’m coming home. The woman had answered, You always say that.

The image had stayed with Veyra for reasons she did not understand.

She looked at Daniel’s face and saw the same unfinished promise.

Then the water rose to his chest.

Veyra pulled him toward the ledge. He tried to crawl, but his injured leg dragged uselessly behind him.

“Help me,” he gasped.

She could have left him. The beacon had already done its damage. The search team would come, and she could escape through the upper fissure. But the tide had sealed that route. The only path remained the feeding chamber.

She hooked one arm beneath his shoulders and hauled him through the water.

Daniel cried out. “You’re going to kill me.”

“Yes.”

His hand closed around her wrist. “Then why save me?”

Veyra did not answer.

The submerged passage swallowed them.

Cold crushed the borrowed body. Water filled her ears, her sleeves, the spaces between her fingers. Daniel thrashed against her, spending what little air remained. She forced him forward, feeling the stone scrape his jacket and tear the skin beneath.

Her own lungs burned.

The human image was failing. Her fingers lengthened inside the gloves. The joints in her wrists shifted. Light from the beacon smeared across the water in blue pulses, each one revealing the pale ridges beneath her skin.

Daniel saw them.

Even underwater, she heard his scream.

They broke into the feeding chamber together. Veyra dragged him onto the shelf above the tide line and tore away the human face before it could suffocate her. The disguise peeled back in wet strips of light, collapsing around her like a discarded reflection.

Daniel lay still.

For one moment, Veyra watched his chest.

It rose.

He was alive.

The beacon pulsed beside his hand.

Veyra fed quickly.

When it was over, the chamber had gone quiet except for the tide breathing through the stone. Veyra crouched beside the remains, her true form hunched beneath the ceiling, limbs folded close. Warmth spread through her body, repairing the damage from the cold passage. The hunger receded.

She had what she came for.

Then the beacon spoke again.

“Daniel Mercer, respond. Search team entering the pier access road.”

Veyra picked it up.

A second voice cut through the static, nearer and clearer. “We have a signal inside the tide caves. Marking the location now.”

Beyond the chamber, water thundered through the passage.

Veyra looked down at Daniel’s face. The human features were already losing their borrowed arrangement, but the scar across his knuckle remained visible. A small, ordinary mark. The kind a sister might recognize.

The beacon flashed blue in her hand.

Above Blackglass Pier, engines began to growl.

End of chapter one. 39 more chapters and about 81,141 words in the full book.