Monsters are real.

Jessie coughed in the dark, trying to get her bearings. Her left arm felt like it was on fire, sliced open from something—shards of glass, likely—and doused with eighty proof alcohol from the bottles that had tumbled from the shelves. Moans, crying, and screams punctuated the darkness. Complete panic and mayhem had erupted as the club goers stampeded toward the exits. Her stomach pitched at the smell of rotten eggs. She brought her hand up to cover her mouth as she gagged. What the hell had happened? One minute things were normal, the next she was watching Mason kill one of her friends.

Her uncle had murdered Immortalis. My God!

Nate had taken her possessed uncle down. A normal human male wouldn’t have been able to do that single-handedly, not in Mason’s state.

After that, an earthquake. Never mind that earthquakes were supposedly rare and unremarkable in Minnesota. She’d been airborne for what seemed like an eternity. Weightless as the world dropped. Or maybe it was just the club? When the tremors had ceased, they’d come to a bone-cracking stop.

Her stomach twisted, and her head pounded. She gingerly fingered the goose egg swelling on the back of her noggin.

“Jessie, you okay, gorda?”

José. She coughed again. “Yeah. Be careful for the glass. I think it’s everywhere. Is Drake with you?” And where was Dante? She heard glass crunch underfoot and smelled José’s cologne as he leaned closer to be heard over the sounds of chaos. “Drake’s unconscious. We have to get out of here.”

Jessie, where are you?

Nate? Her skin prickled. She’d heard his voice as clearly as if he were actually speaking to her. It wasn’t the first time either, which only fueled her increasing alarm that Nate was…more than human. Then again, maybe she’d hit her head even harder than she’d thought.

José’s hands came under her knees and against her back like he was going to lift her. She pushed away from him. “No, help Drake instead. I’ll see about getting us some light so we can find the—”

She was going to say exit, but after what had happened, she wasn’t so sure she’d like what she’d find outside these walls either. Call it instinct. Maybe survival. She reached for the flashlight velcroed underneath her work station.

“No, Jessie. It’s too late for—”

The emergency generator restored power to the building. The lights and club music resumed like nothing had happened, yet the screaming and pushing of the crowd seemed amplified now that they could see the terror and panic reflected in one another’s faces. Jessie’s muscles locked, watching people trample each other, clawing their way to the exits like animals. Most of them were bloody and dirty from the rubble of the earthquake. Their costumes and the club’s Halloween decorations created a macabre scene from Hell that had come to life.

“Dante!” she yelled toward all corners of the club, knowing it was futile, but needing to anyway.

No one could get out. They pounded and shoved, but the exit doors wouldn’t budge. How many people were under that mass, trampled by now? Please don’t let Dante be one of them.

Jessie’s heart thundered against her rib cage, and she was short of breath. We can’t die in here. Not like this. She swung to her left. Terrible emotion opened her mouth and squeezed her chest. Drake. Slumped back against his station, eyes wide open, a corkscrew embedded in his skull. “Oh my God!”

José grabbed her. “He’s gone, Jess. We need to get out of here!”

“How? We’re trapped!” she yelled back.

“Jessie!”

She glanced toward the dance floor. Her heart surged to see Nate pushing through the throng as though people were mere gnats. He vaulted the counter, pulled her from José’s grasp, wrapped his arms around her and buried his face in her hair. She could swear his heartbeat slowed next to her ear. But then, she was crazy, right? She was hallucinating all of this. Nate was human, and he hadn’t vaulted countertops, shoved entire groups of people down like paper dolls, or commanded the floors to come alive beneath their goddamn feet.

Please let it all be a bad dream.

Because if it wasn’t, she was falling in love with a monster.

She swallowed back a wave of nausea and pushed out of his arms. “What happened here? You know, don’t you?” His guarded expression cleared more of the fog in her head. It also made her more afraid. “Jesus, t-there’s been some kind of natural disaster, right? Or…or has the next world war started? Was it a bomb? I saw Mason—” Her voice broke as she raised her hand, mimicking Mason when he’d cut Immortalis.

Nate cupped her face, staring intently into her eyes. “Stay with me, Jess. I need to get you downstairs. It’s the safest place right now.”

“What are you even saying? There is no downstairs anymore, Nate! In case you didn’t feel it, we just had an epic earthquake. Nobody can get out because all the doors are blocked. They’re killing each other trying to get out!”

“I don’t have time to answer your questions. I’ll take care of this, I promise.”

But he couldn’t. How could anyone? It would take an act of God to fix this.

New screams erupted near the DJ platform. Nate grabbed her arm, pulling her past José, steering her toward the hallway. She yanked her arm free of his grasp and turned to look toward the commotion.

Mason.

Dorian stood guard over her uncle, who was tied up and thrashing so hard his chair overturned. She lunged toward Mason, but Nate scooped her up and pushed his way through the crowd. She could hear Mason’s wild grunts and furious hissing over the music. No human could make sounds that loud. She looked over Nate’s shoulder and found Mason’s eyes trained on her. Yellow. Glowing. Just like Eugene’s.

Another monster.

Nate turned into the hallway. She couldn’t see what was happening on the dance floor any more. “No! Put me down! Mason isn’t right. We need to stop him before he hurts anyone else. And I have to find Dante!”

Nate squeezed her more tightly, immobilizing her arms so she couldn’t wriggle free. “Your uncle is sick. I’ll take care of it and find Dante, but I need you downstairs.”

“Sick? I saw him murder someone in cold blood. And his eyes…”

“How long has your uncle been involved in the occult?” he asked.

Everything inside her froze. “What?”

“How long has he used or owned occult objects like Ouija boards, skulls, charms or amulets, items of the Zodiac, tarot cards, crystals, dragon figures, or even Yin and Yang symbols?”

Jessie shook her head, not able to follow. Mason had accused Nate of hiding occult items in the downstairs storage room, but now Nate was saying the same of Mason?

“His eyes were yellow,” she blurted as Nate stopped at the storage room door he’d shown her a few hours ago. It felt like years. He set her down carefully like he was afraid she’d collapse at his feet. “Earlier in the night. I thought I’d imagined the same thing about the club promoter’s eyes. What the hell is going on and what are you?”

He searched her eyes. He looked so human. He was going to tell her something important. She could feel it. She moved closer to him, but wrapped her arms around her trunk. The next few moments passed in a blur. Nate raised his arms as though shielding her, speaking in a tongue she didn’t recognize. The door to his private sanctuary flew open of its own accord. “I’m sorry, Jessie.”

She had a fleeting glance of an attractive salt and pepper-haired man who approached the head of the stairs above them before Nate shoved her inside the room and slammed the door, leaving her inside the warm space alone. The unknown man’s husky laughter carried down the stairs and through the door along with what sounded like screams from the main level.

She flung herself against the solid wood. She twisted and shook the door knob until her vocal chords ached with her vows that Nate would be sorry. Oh, he would.

The son of a bitch had locked her in.