Not far behind them, the headless body of the Creeper that had just lost its skull started to wobble and push itself upright.
Wet, jointed insect limbs snaked out from the stump of its neck, clawing blindly at the air like they were hunting for something to grab.
The next second, the headless torso swung toward the two of them.
"No… no!!"
Scott stumbled backward in pure panic.
His eyes locked on Micki in front of him, turned ice-cold, and with every ounce of strength he had left he shoved her straight at the monster.
"Go eat her! Don't eat me!!"
Micki's eyes flew wide open. Her scream never made it out.
The Creeper's massive wings snapped open behind her like a giant Venus flytrap and swallowed her whole. The fleshy cocoon pulsed once, twice. Blood immediately started dripping from the bottom.
Scott didn't even look back. He spun and sprinted screaming into the darkness ahead.
Soren watched the coward run with flat, cold eyes and sent a single thought to the girl beside Patty.
Alessa's clear eyes turned pitch black in an instant. The corner of her mouth curled up in a tiny, vicious smile.
She hated nothing more than the kind of trash that sold out their own friends just to save their skin.
Far ahead, Scott was still running flat-out, completely blind to the thick fog now rolling in around him.
He gasped for air, legs pumping, until buildings suddenly started appearing through the mist.
"People?! Anybody?!"
Pure relief exploded across his face. He jumped in place, waving his arms like a maniac. "Help! There's a monster! Somebody save me!"
"Zzzz—"
The sound of metal scraping across pavement drifted out of the fog.
Scott's face froze mid-shout.
A hulking humanoid shadow wearing a giant triangular helmet stepped slowly into view, dragging an enormous rusty blade behind it…
"Ah! Stay back! What the hell is that?! NO!!!"
…
"Schlick—"
The fleshy cocoon in front of Soren split open.
The Creeper rose again. A clean white human skeleton lay scattered at its feet, every scrap of meat licked clean.
Its belly bulged. A round lump traveled upward from its stomach until a head that looked exactly like Micki's sprouted onto the neck.
A heartbeat later the face twisted back into the Creeper's hideous grin.
"You learned that bone-licking technique from who, exactly?"
Soren stared at the picked-clean skeleton with pure disgust. "I'm officially calling you the ultimate simp."
The newly grown head locked eyes with Soren. The greedy hunger was gone.
It finally understood this meal was one it couldn't beat. Its wings beat hard, legs coiling to launch it into the sky.
"Run?"
Crimson light exploded in Soren's eyes. Demonic power roared around him like flames. "If I let you get away today, I'll take your goddamn last name!"
He blurred forward, slid underneath the Creeper, and launched straight up.
The monster panicked and flapped its massive wings, trying to climb higher.
Soren, already in mid-air, stomped down again. His body shot even higher, soaring above it like a king. Then he slammed one boot down onto the Creeper's back with everything he had.
BOOM!
Both figures cratered the asphalt. Dust billowed outward.
Inside the cloud, a giant purple skeletal hand formed out of thin air and clamped onto the Creeper's leathery wings.
"Open… UP!!!"
"Riiiiiip—!"
With Soren's roar the incredibly tough wings were brutally torn off its back in one savage yank.
"Guh… guh… guh—!"
The Creeper screamed through its ruined throat. It tried to scramble away, but Soren kept it pinned under his boot.
Staring at the monster still writhing on the ground, Soren frowned.
"How the hell do you actually kill this thing?"
It woke up every twenty-three years. Even if you blew it to pieces and burned the chunks to charcoal, it would just crawl back out of whatever corpse was handy once the next cycle hit.
If there wasn't a corpse, it could apparently just respawn anywhere.
Raw destruction clearly wasn't going to count as a permanent kill for the system.
Soren glanced at the quest panel floating in his mind.
[Quest Objective: Permanently kill the Creeper]
[Rewards: 2000 points]
[Bloodline Awakening +2%]
[Special Drop: Ancient Demon Essence (Regeneration) ×1]
The system didn't explain what the hell the Ancient Demon Essence even was.
"Guess I have to rip its core out?"
While he was thinking, Patty had already dragged Jack and his son out of the wrecked pickup.
"Cough, cough…"
Old man Jack spat a mouthful of blood. He looked beat-up, but nothing fatal.
The stubborn father who'd spent his whole life being tough shrugged off his oldest son's help and limped over to the monster.
He stared down at the thing still thrashing on the ground, eyes burning with pure hatred.
"You goddamn animal!"
Jack roared and stomped the Creeper's head a few savage times.
After he'd vented, he wiped blood off his face and looked up at Soren, who was still deep in thought.
"You're trying to figure out how to finish it for good, right?"
Jack gave a tired grin. "Brute force won't cut it. Burn it, shoot it, chop it into hamburger—doesn't matter. When the time comes, it'll just crawl back out."
Soren raised an eyebrow. "How do you know all that?"
"To get revenge for my boy, I dug up every single legend this county's got."
Jack glared at the monster and kicked it again for good measure. "It ain't some mutated animal or alien."
"It's a god. A fallen god."
"Camazotz."
Jack spat the strange word like it tasted bad.
"Over two thousand years ago in Mayan mythology, it was the bat god of death, night, and sacrifice. Lived in the underworld they called Xibalba."
"Back then it didn't have to scavenge like a starving hyena. Fanatical priests would climb the altar, cut open the victim's chest, and offer the still-beating heart straight to it."
Jack pointed at the sky.
"Those organs weren't just food. They were fuel that kept its divine power and immortality burning."
"Later the Mayan empire fell. Temples collapsed. Believers died off. No more sacrifices. Its power started to fade. The god-body began to rot."
"To keep from disappearing completely, this once-mighty god had to crawl out of the underworld and start hunting its own meals."
Soren listened, eyes narrowing at the pinned Creeper. "So it's been eating people all this time just to patch its rotting divine body and stay a god?"
"Exactly."
Jack nodded. "Over the centuries, time and lost power have eaten most of its memories."
"The twenty-three-year cycle isn't random. It's tied to an ancient star calendar. When the stars line up, it gets a short burst of energy—long enough to wake up, hunt for twenty-three days, and rebuild itself."
Jack pulled a bone knife from his pocket—the one he'd found in the sorghum field where his youngest son Billy was taken.