Prologue

Amanda

Six years earlier…

An angry yowl echoed from the carrier at her feet as she glanced around the nearly empty waiting room of her veterinarian’s office. More and more people were holing up in their homes, and it was starting to feel as if the whole country was under some sort of self-imposed quarantine.

“Almost time,” Amanda cooed at the disgruntled cat within the carrier. Soon Hades was going to absolutely hate her, and she couldn’t say she would blame him.

“I’ll take him back if you want.” Jun chuckled, shaking her head and rolling her eyes. “You can’t even take your own cat into the room to get neutered.”

“He’ll hate me!” Amanda pouted.

“Why? It’s not like you are the one chopping off the jewels.” Hades hissed, and her best friend stuck her tongue out in his direction. “Oh, hush, you. The vet recommended it so do not go getting nasty with us.”

“Will you really take him back there for me?” Hope welled up inside her chest and she turned pleading eyes on Jun. Amanda was a major softie when it came to animals, and the thought of her cat, who was basically her baby, being in any sort of pain tore at her heart. Even though it was for his own good, it still didn’t sit well with her.

“If you do it, you will cry again, and you know the staff hates when you get emotional. It upsets all the animals.” She wasn’t wrong at all; Amanda was a crier. The staff here practically groaned anytime she walked into the building, but she couldn’t help it. “You are twenty-four years old. You would think this would not be a problem.”

“Age has nothing to do with my feelings, Junafer.” Crossing her arms over her chest, Amanda sank down into her chair and turned her face away.

The TV that sat up in the corner of the room was tuned in to the news, and they were showing yet another dark, unfocused video of what people were claiming were alien abductions. The scrolling text along the bottom of the screen talked about how there had been a couple thousand reports filed across the globe of missing persons, both men and women, and strange ships in the sky or aliens roaming around cities.

“Can you believe this?” Amanda asked, watching as the footage stopped on a blurry outline of something the witness swore was a massive alien.

“They are all baliw, all of them!” Jun huffed as she scrolled through her phone.

It did seem like everyone was going crazy. “Hard to believe that so many people are buying into all of this. It’s like Bigfoot sightings. Nothing is really visible in any of the videos.”

It wasn’t that she didn’t want aliens to exist, or even that she didn’t believe they were out there, but to think that beings who were advanced enough to travel through space were dumb enough to be caught on camera just didn’t seem right. This had to be the work of a bunch of enthusiasts.

“We had a couple come into the hospital last night who swore up and down they saw one of those things.” Her friend’s dark brown eyes rolled up toward the ceiling dramatically. “They ran into the waiting room screaming about the end of days and that we should be running for our lives.”

“Yikes. People are losing their minds.”

“It made me feel like I was back home. Just a bunch of superstitious nonsense being spread by people who want to believe in every conspiracy out there. Panic over anything and everything.”

Amanda couldn’t help the snort that left her. As a very proud Filipina, Jun had told her many stories about where she had been born and raised, many of them included far fetched tales of creatures meant to scare children into behaving. The current alien panic reminded her of the Aswang stories she had been telling her since the day they met in the emergency room of the local hospital. Jun had been the nurse taking her vitals after a very unfortunate incident with a horseshoe crab.

Contrary to popular belief, horseshoe crabs didn’t use their tails, or telson, as a weapon, and they were normally about as far from dangerous as you could get, but Amanda was a master klutz. While attempting to flip one of them over as it struggled in the surf, she tripped and managed to impale herself on the upright telson. Luckily, both Amanda and the little arthropod managed to come out mostly unscathed. A quick cleaning and a little stitch had gained her a lifelong friend.

“Hades?” The vet tech called from the doorway as she walked out. When her eyes landed on Amanda, she sighed. “Do you have your tissues?”

“I’m going to bring him back for vitals and the hand-off.” The poor tech’s shoulders sagged in obvious relief. “I’ll be back.”

With a quick goodbye and boop to Hades’ nose, Amanda held back the tears as she watched the three of them disappear down the hall. Her big Maine Coon might be an absolute jerk to most people, but he was her snuggle bug and she would always worry about him when he was away from her. It wasn’t long before Jun came back out into the waiting room looking a little disheveled. Obviously, Hades hadn’t wanted to go along with the plan.

“Bad?” Amanda attempted to hide her grin behind her hand.

“Well, I don’t think I have any holes in my clothes, so this might be a win.” A few clumps of hair fell to the ground as Jun brushed herself off. “We need coffee.”

Amanda nodded, slinging her purse over her shoulder. “We definitely need coffee. My treat.” The nectar of the gods made everything better.

* * *

The light of the Florida morning warmed her skin as they exited the small coffee shop, turning back toward the vet clinic where Hades should be recovering. Each step along the uneven concrete sidewalk made her feet feel heavier and brought on an unexplained anxiety within her. Maybe the extra shot of espresso had been too much? Probably, but she shrugged and blew into the hole on the lid of her to-go cup as they continued on, the muffled sounds of distant cars and voices floating down the street.

Tampa had always been a busy city, full of tourists bustling around, filling the small shops and restaurants. You never needed a reason to be out here, but there was far less traffic now. Sure, there were still spring breakers littering the beaches, but the usual cast of Tampa’s characters had all but disappeared. A scream sliced through the quiet and Amanda whipped her head around in the direction it had come from, expecting to see some college age students messing around, but what she saw had the cup slipping from her hand.

A massive hulking figure had its arms clamped tightly around a young woman on the other side of the street. Her blonde hair was tangled around her face as she struggled against the creature’s chest, calling out for someone to help her.

“Are you seeing what I’m seeing or was the coffee too strong?” Jun breathed in disbelief, but Amanda barely heard her.

She was too focused on the alien, the real life, honest-to-gods alien that was currently abducting a woman in plain sight. Its face struck her as eerily familiar and she gasped. She knew those features and would never forget them. They were so similar to the creature she had been dreaming of since childhood, that she could have sworn she glimpsed during her dives into the gulf as she pursued her dreams of becoming a marine biologist.

While this alien was slightly different than the one she remembered, he was no less fantastic. A circle of blunt-tipped protrusions sat regally on the top of its sloped head like a crown. All six red eyes, three on each side of the alien’s long skull, suddenly narrowed on Amanda, its flat nostrils flaring wide, and the fleshy tendrils that hung like vines from the sides of his face wiggled as he took a terrifying step forward.

That one step was enough to snap her out of whatever trance she had been in.

Reaching down, Amanda snagged Jun’s hand. “Run!” Their feet pounded the pavement, and neither one of them dared to look back to see if the creature was following. When the pair reached the vet clinic, Amanda shoved Jun inside and slammed the door, pressing herself against the metal and wood as she fumbled with the locks.

This couldn’t be happening. These weren’t some gray aliens with big heads and eyes beaming people up. That alien had been far too similar to the creature she had grown up calling her imaginary friend, and imaginary friends were not real.

“This isn’t happening. This can’t be.” But even as Amanda whispered the words, she knew everything was about to change.