Surviving Darkness, Loving Fiercely

Surviving Darkness, Loving Fiercely

I. HAWKINS

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The Arizona desert stretched endlessly before us, a shimmering ribbon of highway cutting through red rock and scrub. My best friend Emily and I were three days into our cross-country road trip, the initial excitement long gone, replaced by heat and boredom. Then Emily pointed. "Are you seeing this?" Far off the road, a figure stood, impossibly tall, waving. I dismissed it, thinking of a stranded hiker, already slowing the car. But Emily grabbed my arm, her face drained of color, eyes wide with a terror I' d never seen. "Don't get out of the car," she choked out. "Look at its legs." They were too long, bent at a sickening, backward angle. Then it moved, not walking, but scrambling with inhuman, insect-like speed, closing the distance in seconds. "Run!" Emily screamed. "That's not human!" My foot found the gas pedal, tires spitting gravel as we fishtailed onto the highway. It scraped against the trunk, a sickening thud, then impossibly, kept pace, a spindly shadow in the rearview mirror. We were safe, for a moment, after escaping the desert monster, only to have our tires slashed outside a shady garage. The mechanic and his goons tried to corner us, but a deputy' s timely arrival saved us. We thought it was over. We were wrong. News reports followed us home, showing our "Desert Wendigo" was appearing nationwide. The world wasn't safe. And we knew its dark secret.

Introduction

The Arizona desert stretched endlessly before us, a shimmering ribbon of highway cutting through red rock and scrub.

My best friend Emily and I were three days into our cross-country road trip, the initial excitement long gone, replaced by heat and boredom.

Then Emily pointed. "Are you seeing this?"

Far off the road, a figure stood, impossibly tall, waving.

I dismissed it, thinking of a stranded hiker, already slowing the car.

But Emily grabbed my arm, her face drained of color, eyes wide with a terror I' d never seen. "Don't get out of the car," she choked out. "Look at its legs."

They were too long, bent at a sickening, backward angle.

Then it moved, not walking, but scrambling with inhuman, insect-like speed, closing the distance in seconds.

"Run!" Emily screamed. "That's not human!"

My foot found the gas pedal, tires spitting gravel as we fishtailed onto the highway.

It scraped against the trunk, a sickening thud, then impossibly, kept pace, a spindly shadow in the rearview mirror.

We were safe, for a moment, after escaping the desert monster, only to have our tires slashed outside a shady garage.

The mechanic and his goons tried to corner us, but a deputy' s timely arrival saved us.

We thought it was over. We were wrong.

News reports followed us home, showing our "Desert Wendigo" was appearing nationwide.

The world wasn't safe. And we knew its dark secret.

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For five years, I was the invisible glue holding Damien Crawford together. I was the one who pulled him from a burning car until the skin melted off my back, and I was the one who donated bone marrow when he was on death's door. I even gave up a full-ride scholarship to MIT just to be his nurse. Yet, he believed his mistress, Hadley, was his savior. To him, I was just the maid's daughter who changed his bedpans—a piece of furniture he could abuse while he planned his wedding to another woman. But his cruelty didn't stop at verbal abuse. When my father suffered a massive heart attack, Damien refused to let me use the car, choosing to comfort Hadley over a fake panic attack instead. His mother even slashed the tires to ensure I couldn't leave. While my father died cold and alone, Damien stabbed a needle into my hand just to teach me a lesson about "respect," oblivious to the fact that the scars on my skin were the receipt for his life. He didn't know he was torturing the only person who had ever truly loved him. But the girl who begged for crumbs of affection died along with her father that day. I picked up my phone and dialed the number saved simply as a dot. "He's dead," I whispered to the man on the other end—Anderson Morrison, the city's most feared Don and my sworn protector. "I'm coming," he replied, his voice lethal. "And I'm bringing the army." It was time to show Damien that he hadn't just mistreated a maid; he had declared war on a Queen.

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4.1

I watched my husband sign the papers that would end our marriage while he was busy texting the woman he actually loved. He didn't even glance at the header. He just scribbled the sharp, jagged signature that had signed death warrants for half of New York, tossed the file onto the passenger seat, and tapped his screen again. "Done," he said, his voice devoid of emotion. That was Dante Moretti. The Underboss. A man who could smell a lie from a mile away but couldn't see that his wife had just handed him an annulment decree disguised beneath a stack of mundane logistics reports. For three years, I scrubbed his blood out of his shirts. I saved his family's alliance when his ex, Sofia, ran off with a civilian. In return, he treated me like furniture. He left me in the rain to save Sofia from a broken nail. He left me alone on my birthday to drink champagne on a yacht with her. He even handed me a glass of whiskey—her favorite drink—forgetting that I despised the taste. I was merely a placeholder. A ghost in my own home. So, I stopped waiting. I burned our wedding portrait in the fireplace, left my platinum ring in the ashes, and boarded a one-way flight to San Francisco. I thought I was finally free. I thought I had escaped the cage. But I underestimated Dante. When he finally opened that file weeks later and realized he had signed away his wife without looking, the Reaper didn't accept defeat. He burned down the world to find me, obsessed with reclaiming the woman he had already thrown away.

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