Chapter 1
Michelle had learned to smell the difference. The fully turned the hollows carried a stench of meat left too long in summer heat, sweet and wrong. But the ones like him smelled of ozone, cold earth, and sulphur.
She ran through the skeletal remains of a shopping district, boots crunching glass, her breath ragged. Three men armed with a crowbar, a chain, and hunger in their eyes that had nothing to do with the virus. They’d spotted her near the pharmacy, and they’d been tracking her for six blocks.
“Little rabbit,” one called out, laughing. “There’s nowhere to go. The hollows got this block locked down tight, come out, and we’ll make it quick.”
Michelle pressed her back against the rusted hulk of a delivery truck, knife trembling in her grip, six inches of steel. It had saved her twice, she prays with everything in her that it saves her now.
A shadow peeled itself from the alley across the street.
He moved like smoke given muscle too fluid, too silent, the men didn’t see him until he was among them, the crowbar swung, he caught it barehanded, the metal groaned, bent.
Michelle didn’t blink. She was certain she didn’t. But one man was on the ground, throat crushed, it doesn’t look like he’ll be getting up anytime soon , and another was flying backward into a brick wall, spine cracking like a wet branch. The third tried to run, the shadow caught him by the hair, yanked his head back, and exposed a throat that pulsed with frantic life.
Then the shadow looked at her.
Eyes of burnt amber, ringed with a hemorrhagic red that should have looked monstrous. Instead, they looked like embers banked in hearths. His skin was pale, almost translucent in the dusk, and beneath it, dark veins traced paths like ink spilled under parchment. Not a hollow but not human either.
“Don’t,” she whispered, knife raised.
He dropped the body. It hit the asphalt with a dull, wet sound. He stepped over it, boots making no noise, and the streetlight caught him fully. Tall, broad-shouldered dressed in black tactical gear that had seen better days. And those amber-fire eyes locked on her with a focus that made her feel bare.
“Michelle,” he said. His voice was gravel and velvet, a bass that vibrated in her sternum.
“How do you know my name?”
“I know every survivor in my territory.” He stopped three feet away. Close enough that she could see the pulse in his throat, slow, and draggy maybe thirty beats a minute.
Shes close enough to smell him.
“You were on the east bridge three days ago, pharmacy yesterday, For a human as small as you, you are quite the survivor .”
“Human,” she repeated, tightening her grip on the knife. “What does that make you?”
His mouth curves predatorily. “The king of the monsters, little rabbit. And you’ve been hopping across my lawn.”
He reached out, she slashed. He caught her wrist gently, terrifyingly gently and squeezed until her fingers went numb. The knife clattered to the ground. He didn’t hurt her. He simply held her there, her pulse hammering against his thumb, her whole body trembling with adrenaline and the sudden, awful realization that she was warm and he was cold and the contrast made her breath hitch for reasons that had nothing to do with fear.
“Those men would have sold you to the breeding camps south of the river,” he said, his thumb tracing the frantic beat of her radial artery. A touch too intimate. A touch that said I own your pulse now. “Or kept you for themselves. The world is a meat market, Michelle. You know this.” He breathes slowly.
“So you’re what? My savior?My knight in shining armor?” She spat the word, trying to pull away. His grip didn’t tighten, but it didn’t yield, an immovable object. “You killed them. That doesn’t make you good. That makes you the bigger monster.”
“Yes.” He leaned in. His breath was cool against her cheek, smelling of winter and copper. “I am the biggest monster. And you’re coming with me.”
“I’d rather die.”
“Would you?” His free hand came up, not to strike, but to tuck a blood-matted strand of hair behind her ear. The gesture was so unreal in its tenderness, coming from a man who had just murdered two people with his bare hands. He slung her on his shoulders before she could say another word.
Michelle’s face burned. “ Put me down you oaf.” She screams thumping his
" I won’t leave you here to be torn apart by men or hollows. My compound is three miles north, walls , running water, food and Safety.” He paused. “And chains, if you force my hand.”
“What a lucky girl I am!.”
“ luxury is dubious in any world.” He set down only to pull a pair of flex-cuffs from his belt. He snapped one around her wrist, loose enough not to cut, tight enough to remind her she was caught and clipped the other to his own belt. “Walk. Don’t run. I don’t want to carry you, but I will. And I think we’d both prefer you walking.”
He turned and started north, and the cuff pulled her forward. She had no choice but to follow, stumbling after him like a leashed thing, her face hot with humiliation and something far more confusing.
They walked through the corpse of the city. The hollows shambled in the distance, but they didn’t approach. They smelled him, Michelle realized.
“What’s your name?” she asked, hating the smallness of her voice.
“Zack.”
“Just Zack?”
He glanced back, those burning eyes catching the moonlight. “Zack is enough.”
“What a joy?”
He faced forward again, his broad back a wall she wanted to both beat against and hide behind. “For now, I’m the man keeping you alive. Try to remember that when you’re plotting to stab me in my sleep.”
The compound rose out of the darkness like a fortress from an older, bloodier age. Concrete walls twenty feet high, topped with razor wire that gleamed silver. The gate groaned open at his approach, and Michelle saw the guards.
Men. Or the shapes of men. Pale skin, dark veins, eyes that caught the light like animals. They wore fatigues and carried rifles, and they moved with the same eerie grace as Zack. Half-turned. Still thinking. Still human enough to nod respectfully as he passed, their gazes sliding to her with curiosity that made her want to cover herself.
“Sir,” one said. “We heard gunfire near the pharmacy.”
“Handled, doubled the patrol on the south sector. The raiders are getting bold.” Zack didn’t stop. He pulled her through courtyards lit by generator-powered floodlights, past gardens growing in raised beds, past a mess hall that smelled of actual cooking meat. Civilization. Brutal, strange, but civilization.
He led her to a building at the center. Private. Secure. He unlocked a door and tugged her inside.
The room was spare but clean. A bed. A bathroom with actual running water—she could hear it, holy God, running water. A small kitchenette. And windows barred from the outside.
Zack unlocked the cuff from his belt but left the other bracelet on her wrist. He stepped back, giving her space, and leaned against the doorframe. Watching her with that terrible, patient focus.
“Shower,” he said. “Eat. Sleep. The door locks from the outside, but the interior bolts are yours to control. No one enters without my permission. Not even me.”
Michelle rubbed her wrist, staring at him. “Why? Why save me? Why bring me here? You don’t even know me.”
“I know you’re alone. I know you’re fierce enough to cut me when every other survivor in this city would have pissed themselves and begged.” He pushed off the doorframe, closing the distance between them with two slow steps.
He stood so close that she had to tilt her head back to meet his eyes. Close enough that the cold radiating from his skin made her nipples peak against her will, made her aware of every inch of her own filthy, sweat-sticky body. “And I know that when I look at you, I don’t feel like a monster. I feel like a man who hasn’t touched something warm in a very long time.”
His hand lifted, hovered near her cheek, then dropped. He turned and walked to the door.
“Zack,” she called.
He stopped. Didn’t turn.
“If you lock me in here... if you keep me like a pet...” She swallowed, her throat dry. “I fucking swear, I’ll fucking kill you in your sleep .”
Finally, he looked back. And he smiled. A real smile, bloomed, full of promise. “I wouldn’t want you to, Michelle. Easy things break. I want you unbroken.”
The door closed. The lock clicked.
Michelle stood in the silence, her heart thundering, her wrist still tingling from his touch, and realized with a sinking, thrilling dread that she was not afraid he would come back.
She was afraid she would want him to.
