light, maybe a heat mirage. He didn’t know if that was possible in the middle of the night and he didn’t care.

Five minutes and as many drinks of coffee later, the engine stalled.

Riley cursed, shoved the cup back into the holder, and quickly guided the car onto the emergency lane. He wasn’t all that surprised. Middle of the night, nobody around, in a hurry…. Of course the truck would pick this moment to get crotchety. If you could count on nothing else, you could always count on Murphy’s Law. He pushed open the door with his elbow, cringing a little when the capricious hinges creaked loudly in protest. The night was warm and quiet, the only sounds around the ever-present buzzing and chirping of insects and the rustle of wind in the hardy little shrubs all around.

Deciding that a break was a break, Riley took a moment to stretch the kinks out of his back and take a deep breath. The air smelled like desert, dry and dusty with a hint of sage and bee brush. Above him, the sky was pitch black and glittering with stars, remote and familiar at the same time. Weary as he was, he found he appreciated it; big cities offered their own comforts, but he’d grown up in the boonies and there’d always be a part of him that preferred the simplicity out here to the complicated bustle of city life.

As pretty as the stars were, though, streetlights would’ve been nice.

The moon was full and bright, dipping the whole world in silver, but the luminescence was superficial, more likely to create shadows than vanquish them. Riley grumbled a curse and reached over to dig his flashlight out of the glove compartment before he climbed out of the truck and popped the hood.

“All right,” he muttered, leaning forward. “Let’s see….”

There was silver all over the engine block, and it had nothing to do with the moon. It was moving, shifting, slithering around. Riley stared at it uncomprehendingly for a second, his fatigued mind too sluggish to go from

“huh-pretty-what-the-hell” to “gah-moving-get-away!” in time to duck when the writhing mass attacked.

It hit him right in the face.

Riley stumbled back a step, dropping the flashlight. He tried to grab the thing, pull it off him, but his fingers sank into smooth, silky matter without encountering resistance. It slipped through his hands like greasy ashes, flowed over his skin like solid smoke. It was everywhere, coating his

throat, his shoulders, tracing his jaw, stroking his lips and forcing them apart relentlessly. Eyes wide, heart hammering frantically, awake now and all too aware, Riley clenched his teeth and shook his head wildly, trying to get it off, keep it out. Thin noises of protest rose from his chest, the sounds of an animal caught in a trap, but the creature didn’t care, didn’t stop. Cool and slippery, it edged in, opened him up, invaded his mouth and nose and poured itself down his throat while he jerked and clawed at it. He panicked, gagged, breath stuttering through airways that suddenly felt cramped and too narrow. Like drowning on dry land. Choking on wet cement. Blackness swirled at the edges of his vision and Riley fought that as well, scared to death of losing consciousness, of giving in, of not knowing what was happening to him.