The creature inched closer to Michael, those bloody jaws yawning open farther than seemed possible. A horrible smell wafted from the thing’s mouth, putrid and rank. Michael pictured the remnants of past meals—pieces of small animals stuck between its teeth, rotting. Decaying. It was the smell of death, pure and simple.

Michael looked away from it, tried to focus on Kaine’s eyes, which bored into him, stern with their unspoken command: Do not move.

A low growl came from within the creature, guttural, primal. Michael could see in his peripheral vision that the monster was only moments from devouring his entire head. The smell was rancid, and he fought to stop himself from gagging.

Then, from somewhere, from everywhere, a whisper. Like a blade scraping on dried bones. “Don’t…resist. Become…a part…of us. Kaine…is irrelevant. We…are…one.” The voice of a wraith.

Another wave of sour breath washed over him, and the very tips of the creature’s teeth lightly brushed against his forehead. Michael couldn’t hold still one more second. In a burst of energy, he snapped.

He twisted his body and brought his elbow up, smashing it into the side of the creature’s head, right on the corner of its impossibly huge mouth. It shrieked, a horrible sound that was a thousand times louder than its whisper. As it spun away from him, the other dark figures swarmed in, filling the world with darkness. Formless hands tore at his shirt, his neck, his arms and legs, lifting him into the air. He struggled, but their grasp was firm, pulling him until he was close to the ceiling.

“Kaine!” he shouted. “Help!”

“I told you not to move,” the Tangent responded with a sigh, as if they were just playing some game.

Michael opened his mouth to yell, but before he could form the first word, the creatures threw him violently. His body flew as if shot from a cannon, and he slammed into the programmed wooden wall of the tree house, exploding through it. Shards of wood swirled around him as he tumbled in the air. The world spun, and in a flash of pain he crashed into a tree and fell to the ground, landing across its massive root.

A scream finally escaped his lungs. It felt like he’d just crushed several organs and broken even more bones than that. He rolled into a ball, unable to isolate which part of him hurt more than others, and closed his eyes. He opened them just in time to see dark shapes flying from the hole in the tree house and descending on him like huge bats.