“A Fury. Yes, I see it,” Eli finished for me, his voice calm as ever.

“You see it?”

As the words left my mouth, another shriek—more like a whine—echoed below me and I twisted back, still clutching Eli’s hand. Two more beasts stepped out from the trees to the far right of the first one, these clearly larger. And then several more, emerging from the trees like black fog. How many were in those trees? Too many! Even one was too many!

“Of course I see them,” Eli said. “They’re right there, aren’t they?”

I could hardly breathe now. “They’re between us and the town.” Breathe. “How are we going to get out of here?”

A chorus of haunting cries echoed around me, to the left and right now. More Fury—I dared not look. We were surrounded by them!

“God help us,” I whispered.

“They’re pretty far from home,” Eli said. “They normally stay much closer to their hosts.”

“We have to get back!” I cried.

“To where? There?” He was looking directly at Haven Valley, and when I lifted my eyes, I couldn’t at first comprehend what I was seeing.

The town I’d grown up in looked nothing like I knew it. A black fog hung low to the ground within the red perimeter. It rippled with long writhing cords or maybe snakes that stretched from building to building, as if they were some kind of plumbing system, only above ground. The same black fog was concentrated around each home, curling and coiling with long tendrils. All of this I saw in a single glance.

But it was the Fury in the fog that threw my mind into complete disarray. Hundreds of wraiths, thousands maybe, swirled around the search parties, hovered around the homes, drifted in and out of the walls, trailed by the fog wafting around them like a stubborn foul scent. So many Fury, smothering the town. Where there were some outside the perimeter, there were a hundredfold inside that rope.

Like a growing symphony, their sound reached me, distant at first, then growing in volume, a terrible high-pitched wail mixed with a soft, throaty, guttural roar. The sound was as horrifying as the sight. And it came from inside the perimeter.

Haven Valley was infested with Fury!

“What’s happening?” I cried. “Why is . . .” I didn’t even know what my question was because I was staring at the impossible.

“Shadows,” Eli said.

“Shadows?”

“Darkness. Blindness. Fear. Fury. They’re all the same thing.”

“But . . . they’re inside the perimeter?”

“Where they’ve always been.”

“We have to tell them!” But my mind was immediately thrown back into the impossibility of what I was seeing. No, this couldn’t be. We were protected from the Fury inside the perimeter! I was seeing something that wasn’t there.

“This isn’t real,” I ventured, spinning back to Eli.