Prologue

“Quiet today.”

Daniel glanced across the patrol car at his partner.

“It’s always quiet.”

Martin sighed and rested an elbow against the door. “You say that like it’s a good thing.”

“We live in a town where Mrs. Keller called us because someone moved her garden chair.”

“Someone stole her garden chair.”

“They moved it three houses down.”

“Still theft.”

Daniel snorted.

Outside, the town drifted past at the speed of a lazy afternoon.

A handful of people sat beneath the awning of the café on Market Street. Someone had left a bicycle leaning against a lamppost. Two children were drawing something across the pavement with colored chalk while their mother talked to another woman nearby.

Daniel lifted two fingers from the steering wheel.

“Afternoon, Peter.”

The elderly man crossing the street raised his shopping bag in reply.

“Daniel! Tell your mother I still have her bowl!”

“I’ll tell her.”

“You said that last week!”

Martin waited until they had passed him.

“Thrilling.”

“Shut up.”

“I don’t know how you handle the pressure.”

“Twenty-three years of training.”

Martin laughed and turned his face toward the open window.

It was warm. Not unpleasantly so. Somewhere nearby, someone was mowing a lawn. Birds chattered from the rooftops and the trees lining the road.

Daniel slowed at the intersection.

The light changed.

He accelerated.

Something rattled beneath his seat.

Daniel frowned.

“What was that?”

Martin looked at him. “What?”

“You didn’t feel that?”

“Feel wh—”

The patrol car trembled.

Only for a second.

A plastic bottle in the cup holder tapped softly against the console.

Then everything was still again.

Daniel took his foot off the accelerator.

Around them, other people had noticed it too.

The woman beside the children had stopped talking. One of the café patrons was standing now, looking down at the table as if it had done something unexpected.

A dog across the street began barking.

Martin leaned forward.

“Was that an earthquake?”

“Here?”

“That’s why I’m asking.”

Daniel pulled the car against the curb.

Earthquakes happened, of course. Somewhere. Occasionally there would be a report of one on the southern coast or beyond the mountains.

But here?

Daniel opened his door.

“Come on.”

They stepped onto the street.

“Everything all right?” someone called from the café.

Daniel looked around.

“I think so.”

He wasn’t sure why he’d said it.

Probably because that was what people expected a police officer to say.

The dog was still barking.

“Maybe construction?” Martin said.

Daniel stared at him.

“Underground?”

“I don’t know.”

A second vibration passed through the street.

This one lasted longer.

A nearby shop window shivered in its frame.

The conversations around them stopped.

Daniel felt it through the soles of his boots.

One second.

Two.

Three.

Then it faded.

Someone laughed nervously.

“Definitely an earthquake,” Martin said.

Daniel reached for the radio clipped to his shoulder.

Before he could press the button, it came alive.

“—any units near North District, we’ve got reports of—”

Static swallowed the voice.

Another transmission immediately cut across it.

“Dispatch, this is Twelve, we’ve got some kind of ground movement on—”

“—multiple calls coming in—”

“Say again?”

“—bridge is—”

Three people were talking over each other.

Daniel looked at Martin.

Martin wasn’t smiling anymore.

Daniel pressed the button.

“Dispatch, Seven. We’re on Market Street. We’ve felt it here too. What’s going on?”

Nothing.

“Dispatch?”

Static.

Then a voice, distant beneath the noise.

“—not just you.”

Daniel lowered the radio.

The ground moved again.

Hard.

A woman screamed.

Daniel stumbled sideways and caught himself against the patrol car. Somewhere behind him, glass shattered.

The café tables jumped against the pavement.

“Everybody away from the windows!” Martin shouted.

People began moving.

Not running yet.

Daniel saw confusion more than fear. People looking at each other, waiting for someone else to tell them what they were supposed to do.

The shaking stopped.

For half a second.

Then returned.

Daniel waited for it to fade again.

It didn’t.

The pavement vibrated beneath him.

The dog across the street had stopped barking.

Daniel looked over.

The animal stood rigid at the end of its leash, ears pinned flat, staring down the road.

Its owner tugged at it.

“Come on.”

The dog didn’t move.

A deep sound rolled through the town.

Not thunder.

Too low.

Daniel felt it in his chest before he understood that he was hearing it.

Martin turned slowly.

“What the hell is that?”

Daniel didn’t answer.

The street buckled.

Twenty meters ahead of them, the asphalt rose.

Not cracked.

Rose.

An entire section of road lifted upward as if something enormous beneath it had pushed a hand against the earth.

A parked car slid sideways.

Someone screamed.

Then everyone started running.

“Get back!” Daniel shouted. “Get inside! Move!”

He grabbed an old man by the arm before he fell. Martin was already sprinting toward a woman who had been knocked to the ground.

The sound grew louder.

Windows shattered one after another.

A crack tore through the wall of the pharmacy.

Daniel watched the upper corner of the building separate from the rest.

“Martin!”

Martin looked up.

“MOVE!”

They ran.

Brick and plaster crashed into the street behind them.

Dust exploded outward.

Daniel threw an arm across his face.

He heard screams.

Car alarms.

Metal twisting.

Somewhere, a child was crying for her mother.

The radio on his shoulder screamed with voices.

“—building collapse—”

“—we need ambulances—”

“—the entire road is gone—”

“—what the fuck is happening?”

“—all units, all units—”

Then nothing but static.

Daniel coughed and forced himself upright.

“Martin?”

“Here.”

Martin emerged through the dust, blood running from a cut above his eyebrow.

“You okay?”

“Yeah.”

He wasn’t.

Neither of them was.

The ground was still moving.

Daniel turned toward the intersection.

And froze.

There was something in the air.

At first he thought it was smoke.

Then heat.

The space above the broken road seemed to tremble, the way air shimmered above hot asphalt in summer.

Except the afternoon wasn’t hot enough for that.

And the distortion was getting larger.

“Daniel.”

“I see it.”

A line appeared.

Thin.

Vertical.

Black.

Daniel blinked.

The line widened.

Not much.

Perhaps the width of his finger.

Behind it was darkness.

Then color.

Daniel took a step backward.

The opening spread with a sound like fabric tearing underwater.

A meter.

Two.

The edges weren’t smooth. They twisted and branched, vanishing and reappearing faster than his eyes could follow.

And through the opening—

Daniel forgot about the earthquake.

There was a forest.

For one impossible second, that was all his mind allowed him to understand.

Trees.

Except no tree Daniel had ever seen reached that high.

Black trunks disappeared into a canopy far above. Pale leaves reflected a dim violet light.

And beyond them, hanging in a sky that was not theirs, were two enormous moons.

Martin whispered something.

Daniel didn’t hear him.

Something moved between the trees.

Fast.

Coming toward them.

Daniel’s hand went to his pistol.

“Back up.”

“What?”

“Back up!”

He drew.

Something burst through the opening.

Daniel’s brain supplied the closest word it had.

Dog.

It was roughly the size of one.

Four legs.

A head.

A body.

Then it moved, and the comparison fell apart.

Its front limbs were too long, its shoulders rising far above its narrow hindquarters. Pale grey skin stretched tightly over a body with no visible fur. Its joints flexed at angles Daniel couldn’t understand.

There were no eyes.

No sockets.

Nothing.

Smooth skin covered the place where a face should have had them.

Along either side of its skull ran a line of tiny pits that opened and closed as it moved.

The thing ran directly toward him.

Daniel raised the pistol.

“STOP!”

Some distant part of his mind knew how absurd that was.

It didn’t slow.

Its mouth opened.

There were no fangs.

There were hundreds of tiny teeth.

Row behind row of them.

Daniel’s finger tightened against the trigger.

The creature was ten meters away.

Five.

Three.

At the last instant, it twisted.

Its body folded sideways with horrifying speed.

It passed Daniel close enough that he heard its feet scraping against the broken asphalt.

Then it was behind him.

Running.

Daniel spun around.

The creature didn’t look back.

It simply ran down Market Street.

Away from them.

Away from the opening.

Another shape burst through.

Then another.

Three of the creatures now.

All running.

One slipped on the fractured road and struck the ground hard. It scrambled desperately for purchase, claws carving white lines into the asphalt.

It regained its footing.

Ran.

Daniel slowly lowered his pistol.

“They’re…”

Martin swallowed.

Daniel looked at him.

“They’re running away.”

Martin stared past him.

Toward the opening.

The birds were gone.

Daniel hadn’t noticed when they’d stopped singing.

Another shape appeared between the impossible trees.

This one wasn’t running on four legs.

It walked upright.

Slowly.

Daniel raised his pistol again.

The figure stumbled through the opening.

For a moment, neither man moved.

A woman.

At least Daniel thought she was a woman.

She was roughly human in shape. Two arms. Two legs. A face that his mind desperately wanted to recognize as familiar.

It almost succeeded.

Her skin was dark. Not brown, not black—something closer to charcoal, with faint pale lines beneath the surface that traced her throat and disappeared beneath what she wore.

They pulsed.

Once.

Softly.

Daniel stared.

Her clothing—or armor, perhaps—fit close against her body in overlapping sections of a material he couldn’t identify. It wasn’t quite metal. It caught the light without reflecting it.

One hand clutched a long, narrow weapon.

The other pressed against her side.

Dark blood ran between four fingers.

Four.

Daniel counted them without meaning to.

Then she raised her head.

Her eyes were wrong.

There was no white.

No iris.

No pupil.

Only a smooth expanse of burnished copper that shifted subtly as she looked from Martin to Daniel.

She said something.