Crimson Hollow

The first body was found at the edge of the water just before sunrise.

By the time the sheriff’s lights painted the cypress trees blue and red, half of Crimson Hollow had already heard. In a town that small, death traveled faster than daylight.

Isla Belle stood barefoot on the damp grass in her thin white nightgown, her chest rising and falling too fast, her arms wrapped around herself like she could hold her own bones together.

She had seen this.

Not guessed it.

Not imagined it.

Seen it.

The girl in the water.

The pale hand.

The silver chain around her neck catching in the reeds.

The bloodless skin.

The open eyes.

Even the fog, thick and low, dragging across the bayou like something alive.

Every detail had come to Isla in a dream less than six hours before, so vivid she had woken up choking on a scream, nails dug into her palms, heart pounding so hard she thought it might split open.

And now here it was.

Real.

Exactly as she had seen it.

She should have run back home the second she spotted the patrol cars from her bedroom window.

Instead, something pulled her here.

Not curiosity.

Something worse.

Recognition.

A deputy tried to guide her back. “Miss, you can’t be here.”

But Isla barely heard him.

Her eyes were locked on the body stretched near the bank, half tangled in roots and swamp grass. The girl couldn’t have been older than nineteen. Her blonde hair floated around her face in the dark water, and her skin looked wrong—too pale, too empty, like all the life had been carefully taken out of her and nothing had been put back.

No blood.

No torn flesh.

No sign of a struggle.

Just two small punctures near her throat.

Tiny.

Neat.

Deliberate.

Like a secret.

A shiver crawled up Isla’s spine.

“Isla.”

She turned at the sound of her name and saw the sheriff pushing through the crowd. Sheriff Cade Mercer was broad-shouldered, aging, always worn around the eyes like sleep had abandoned him years ago. He had known Isla’s mother before she died, and ever since Isla came back to Crimson Hollow three weeks ago, he had been watching her with the strange carefulness people used around breakable things.

“You need to go home,” he said quietly.

“I dreamed this.”

The words slipped out before she could stop them.

His face tightened. “Now’s not the time.”

“I’m serious.” Her voice cracked. “I saw her. Last night. I saw all of this.”

He glanced around to make sure no one else heard, then stepped closer. “Go home, lock your door, and don’t tell anyone that.”

Isla stared at him. “Why?”

But before he could answer, a low murmur rippled through the crowd.

Someone else had arrived.

Every head turned toward the black car rolling silently down the dirt road.

It was old, sleek, polished like a blade. Too elegant for a town like this. Too dark. Too expensive. It moved through the morning mist like it belonged to another century.

When it stopped, the driver’s door opened first.

He stepped out slow, tall and lean in black from head to toe, with dark hair that fell just enough over his forehead to make him look careless, though nothing about him felt careless. He shut the door and lifted his eyes toward the shoreline.

Toward the body.

Toward Isla.

Her breath caught.

Because she knew him.

Not really.

Not in any normal way.

But she knew that face.

She had seen it before too.

In another dream.

Standing at the foot of her bed.

Watching her sleep.

Lucien Voss.

Even his name sounded like something whispered in church after someone died.

He didn’t look surprised to see her.

That was the worst part.

He looked like he had been expecting her.

Every instinct in her body screamed to look away, but she couldn’t. His face was beautiful in a way that made people uneasy, like a statue that might suddenly move if you turned your back. Sharp cheekbones. Pale skin. Eyes so dark they seemed black at first glance. He was the kind of man mothers warned their daughters about, not because they could explain why, but because danger had a way of making itself attractive.

Then the passenger door opened.

This one stepped out with a grin.

Lighter hair. Golden-brown. A crooked smile that made him look less dangerous than he was. He leaned against the car like this was entertainment, like the police tape and dead girl and terrified townspeople were all part of some show he’d seen before.

Damon Hale.

The second face from Isla’s dreams.

The one who smiled while the world burned.

He looked directly at her and gave the smallest tilt of his head, like they were sharing a secret.

Her stomach dropped.

No.

No, no, no.

This wasn’t possible.

She had never met these men in her life.

Yet she knew, with the terrible certainty that only nightmares can give, that one of them would kiss her.

And one of them would ruin her.

Sheriff Mercer swore under his breath. “Damn it.”

“You know them?” Isla whispered.

He ignored her and walked toward the road.

Lucien remained still, his gaze lingering on the body only a second before returning to Isla. Damon, on the other hand, looked amused by the entire scene. He scanned the gathered crowd, then the trees, then the water, like he was checking for something unseen.

Or someone.

Isla took a step back.

The fog thickened around her bare ankles.

Then she heard it.

A whisper.

So faint she almost thought it came from inside her own head.

Run.

She spun around, but no one stood behind her.

Just the bayou.

The trees.

The reeds shifting in the wind.

Run, Isla.

This time it was clearer.

A woman’s voice.

Soft.

Urgent.

Familiar.

Her mother’s.

The cold rushed through her so fast her knees nearly buckled.

Her mother had been dead for four years.

She stumbled back again, then looked toward the water.

The dead girl’s face had changed.

Her eyes were no longer staring blankly upward.

They were looking directly at Isla.

And smiling.

A scream tore from Isla’s throat.

Everyone turned at once.

The deputies rushed toward her.

Sheriff Mercer barked something she couldn’t hear over the roaring in her ears.

When she looked back, the dead girl’s face was still again. Empty. Lifeless. Normal, if anything about death could ever be normal.

But Isla knew what she saw.

Just like she knew those men by the road were not strangers.

Just like she knew her mother’s voice had been real.

Just like she knew this town was hiding something rotten beneath its polished front porches and church hymns and sweet tea smiles.

Something ancient.

Something hungry.

And it had already noticed her.

Lucien started toward her then, slow and deliberate, his expression unreadable.

Sheriff Mercer stepped in front of him. “Stay away from her.”

Damon laughed under his breath. “That won’t help.”

Isla’s pulse pounded in her throat.

Lucien’s eyes never left hers. “It’s begun sooner than I thought.”

Her lips parted. “What?”

But he didn’t answer.

Instead, he looked past her shoulder toward the trees.

All the warmth left his face.

In one blur of motion, he lunged.

People screamed.

A deputy shouted.

Something black shot out of the fog at impossible speed, not man, not animal, but something in between, all teeth and shadows and rage.

It was heading straight for Isla.

Lucien caught it midair.

The impact sent both of them crashing into the mud.

The thing shrieked, a sound so inhuman it made the whole crowd recoil. For one horrifying second, Isla saw claws, sunken eyes, skin stretched too tight over bone, and a mouth slick with fresh blood.

Then Damon was there too, moving too fast to track.

There was a snap.

A crunch.

Silence.

The creature lay twisted in the grass.

Dead.

Or maybe deader.

The crowd stared in stunned horror.

No one moved.

No one breathed.

Lucien rose first, one hand streaked with black blood.

Damon wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, smiling like this was exactly the kind of morning he enjoyed.

Sheriff Mercer looked around wildly. “Nobody says a word about this. You understand me? Nobody.”

But it was too late.

Because Isla was staring at the creature’s lifeless face.

And under the ruined skin, beneath the monstrous shape, she recognized it.

It was the blonde girl from the water.

Or at least, what had become of her.

She backed away so fast she nearly fell.

“That’s impossible,” she whispered.

Lucien looked at her with something close to pity.

“In Crimson Hollow,” he said, voice low and devastatingly calm, “you’re going to learn that impossible is where the story starts.”