Two in the morning. The grandfather clock in the hallway had just finished its chiming when the scream tore through the house.
Kael's eyes snapped open. His mother's voice? That couldn't be his mother's voice. She never screamed. Not when Mira broke her favorite vase. Not when Father cut his hand at the workshop. Never.
The scream came again. Higher. Sharper. Like metal scraping against his eardrums.
Should he get up? Should he help? His fingers clutched the blanket until the fabric creaked. Every muscle in his thirteen-year-old body locked rigid against the mattress.
"Stay back!" Father's voice boomed from downstairs. "Clarissa, get the children!"
The children. Him and Mira. But where could they go? The only exit was down those stairs, toward whatever made Mother...
This... something crashed below. Wood splintering. Glass breaking. Then came a third voice, whispering in sounds that shouldn't exist. Not words. Not any language meant for human throats. The syllables scraped and clicked and hissed.
The temperature plummeted. His breath misted in the suddenly arctic air. Twenty degrees? Thirty? The water in his washbasin crackled as ice formed on its surface. Blue light seeped under his door, wrong and cold, painting frost patterns on the floorboards.
Get up. Move. Do something.
His legs refused. His arms shook. Thirteen years of safety, of warm dinners and bedtime stories, had made him soft. Had never prepared him for this moment when courage mattered.
Another crash. His mother's voice: "Please, not my family! Take anything, but not..."
Silence.
No, no, no. He forced himself upright. His bare feet touched floor so cold it burned. One step. Two steps. Three steps to the door. His hand hovered over the brass latch, trembling like an autumn leaf in a storm.
Open it. Father needs help. Mother needs...
His father's roar cut off mid-sound. Like someone had sliced it with a blade. Something wet hit the ceiling below. The sound... rain on a roof? No. Thicker. Warmer.
Kael's hand fell away from the latch. His knees folded. He sank to the floor and pressed his back against the door. Made himself small. Made himself nothing.
Coward. The word blazed in his mind. Worthless, pathetic coward.
Footsteps on the stairs. Was that Mira's rhythm? The one-two-skip she always did? But the weight was wrong. Too heavy. Each step cracked like breaking bones.
"Kael?" His sister's voice drifted through the wood. But stretched. Pulled like taffy. "Brother, come see what I found..."
Don't answer. Don't move. Don't breathe.
The footsteps stopped outside his door. Breathing that hitched and whistled, as if the lungs behind it had forgotten their purpose. The brass doorknob turned. Metal grinding against metal. Slowly. So slowly.
The door swung inward.
Mira stood in the hallway. Her head tilted right. Too far right. Her ear nearly touched her shoulder at an angle that should have snapped her neck. The silver hairpin blazed in her dark hair. Its blue stone pulsed with internal fire that cast no warmth. Behind her, shadows writhed on the wall. Too many limbs. Too many angles. Like someone had drawn a child's picture of a spider and given it life.
"There you are." Her mouth moved, but the words seemed to come from somewhere deeper. From the hairpin itself? "Mother and Father are sleeping now. So peaceful. So quiet. Don't you want to sleep too?"
She stepped into his room. Frost spread from her bare feet, racing across the floorboards in crystalline spirals. Her nightgown hung wrong. As if her body beneath had... rearranged itself? One arm dangled past her knee. The fingers had too many joints. Seven? Eight?
Hide. Hide. HIDE.
Kael scrambled backwards, rolled left, and dove under his bed. Dust and terror filled his nostrils. Through the two-inch gap between floor and bedframe, he watched her feet pivot. Left foot. Right foot. Mechanical precision. Searching.
"Where did you go, brother?" The voice sang now. A lullaby filtered through broken glass. "Hide and seek? I love games. Remember when we played in the garden? You always hid behind the rose bush."
She checked his wardrobe first. The oak doors exploded outward. Wood blackened at her touch, aging decades in seconds. His clothes fell out, instantly rigid with frost. She moved to his desk next. Lifted it with one impossible hand and tossed it aside. Papers swirled. His drawings ignited in the blue light, becoming ash before they hit the floor.
The feet turned toward the bed.
"Found you."
The bed lifted. For one horrifying instant, he saw her face... features flowing like melted wax. The hairpin's light bled from her eyes, her nostrils, the corners of her mouth. Blue tears that steamed in the frigid air.
Kael rolled right, pushed off with both hands, and crashed through the window.
Glass teeth bit into his arms. His shoulder. His face. He tumbled onto the slanted roof, sliding on frost-slick tiles. His fingers clawed for purchase. Found nothing. The edge rushed up...
Impact. His shoulder struck the garden shed's roof first. Then his ribs. Then everything else in a cascade of bone-deep pain. The eight-foot drop to the ground drove all breath from his lungs. Black spots danced across his vision like dying fireflies.
Get up or die. Get up or die. Get up or...
He forced himself to his knees. To his feet. Blood ran warm down his arms. The only heat in a world gone arctic. Above, the thing wearing Mira's face watched from the shattered window. Its head tilted the other way now. A full ninety degrees. Neck bones jutted against skin like tent poles.
"You're bleeding," it observed. "Red is such a pretty color. But blue is prettier. Don't you think blue is prettier?"
It moved to climb through the window. One leg emerged, bent in three places...
Pain exploded from Kael's birthmark. Not normal pain. This felt like someone had pressed a white-hot brand between his shoulder blades. Searing through skin and muscle to mark his very bones. He screamed. Stumbled. Nearly fell.
The thing wearing Mira recoiled as if slapped. "What... no... the mark..."
Confusion leaked into its voice. "You're... how? But that's not possible... AGHH"
What was it talking about? Just what was the mark did it protect him?
The hesitation saved him. Kael ran. His bare feet slapped against frozen ground, leaving bloody prints in his wake. Through the garden gate. Down the alley. Past the Hendersons' fence where Mira had found her robin's nest just this spring. Three blue eggs. She'd been so proud.
His lungs burned. His feet went numb. Still he ran. Crashed through hedges. Stumbled over roots. Put distance between himself and whatever his sister had become.
Behind him, blue light pulsed from every window of his home. Like a diseased heartbeat. Like a beacon calling to things that shouldn't exist.
He ran until his legs gave out at the edge of town. Collapsed in a drainage ditch as dawn painted the eastern sky gray. His body shook. From cold. From shock. From the crushing weight of realization.
I left them. I left them all to die.
The birthmark still burned between his shoulders. Pulsing with each heartbeat. Protected, the thing had said. Protected by what? From what? And why hadn't it been enough to save his family?
His fingernails were caked with blood. His own? His family's? He couldn't tell anymore. Couldn't think beyond the single, terrible truth.
He was alive. They were not. And that would have to be enough.