CORBIN

AN EAR-PIERCINGLY loud wail yanked me from my sleep. I shot upright before my mind could even register what the sound was. A low groan slipped past my lips, and I blinked rapidly to try to clear my vision.

Where the hell was I? The last thing I remembered was being at the club with Hannah, celebrating her twenty-third birthday, getting wasted, and singing god-awful karaoke with a few too many shots under my belt. My head throbbed just at the thought of it.

"It's going to be okay, Sylvia," Another voice assured, forcing me to look up.

And fuck, my stomach dropped to my chest.

Firstly, I wasn't in a room, or a building of any kind for that matter. It was the inside of one of those moving vans, lined with cages that were filled to the brim with people. People like me.

"What the fuck?"  I whispered in my dry, gravelly voice. "What the fuck?!"

A shadow shifted near the back of the van, and I caught a glimpse of glowing eyes—not human eyes. My chest tightened, every instinct screaming at me to bolt, even though there was nowhere to run. My hands trembled as I gripped the edge of the nearest cage, the metal biting into my palms.

"Shh," a low hiss came from somewhere behind me. "Keep quiet if you want to live."

"What the hell do you mean if I want to live?" I sputtered, the hangover now forgotten and subsequently replaced by confusion and fear. "What's going on? Where the fuck am I? Who the fuck are you—"

"Will you shut up!" Someone else growled. "You're gonna get us all killed."

Killed? As in Six Feet Under, rigor mortis killed? My stomach turned over, bile rising to the back of my throat. I pressed myself harder against the cold metal of the cage, wishing I could disappear into it.

This...this was not where I was supposed to be. I was supposed to be back at Hannah's dorm, sleeping off my hangover before we got brunch and laughed about all the dumb shit we'd done. Not—this. Not whatever horror-movie level hell-on-wheels I'd woken up in.

Hannah! Fuck, did they get her too?!

The van jolted hard, throwing me against the bars. Pain shot up my arm and I hissed, but the sound was drowned out by the wailing from another cage. Someone banged on the bars, and I caught a glimpse of pale fingers curling through the slats before a voice snarled at them to stop.

My pulse was everywhere—in my ears, my neck, my temples. I could feel it like a drumbeat under my skin.

This wasn't real. This wasn't real.

The glowing eyes at the back of the van blinked slowly, lazily, like they knew they had all the time in the world. As the van rattled over a bump, the creature shifted, its silhouette spilling across the metal walls. Too long arms. Too many teeth. My breath hitched and my body froze. Predator.

"Don't look at it," someone whispered. I couldn't tell who—it was like the voice slithered between the bars themselves. "If you look, it notices."

I tore my gaze away, staring instead at my own knees, which were shaking so hard they rattled against the floor.

"What is it?" I whispered back, my throat tight, as if I'd swallowed glass.

"Collector," came the reply. "Keeps order. Eats the ones who don't follow it."

My mouth went dry. My skin prickled. My stomach felt like it had dropped out of my body and stayed behind on the road.

I wanted to scream. I wanted to fight. I wanted to wake up in my shitty dorm bed with a hangover and regret. But I didn't. I just pressed myself tighter into the bars and tried not to breathe too loudly.

Somewhere in the distance, outside the van, there was a sound. Not sirens, not traffic. A low, rising whistle like a kettle screaming. The glowing eyes at the back snapped toward it, and a ripple of tension passed through the cages like a current.

"Stay down," the whisper came again, sharper this time. "Stay quiet. If you move now, you're dead."

And for the first time since waking up, I realized they weren't exaggerating.