Colt nodded. He couldn’t think of anything else to do. Susan came to a stop at the curb and opened the door to a midsize SUV that was waiting for them. It was an expensive model with bumper stickers that read “I heart my corgi” and “My child is a RIC honor student.”
“Hop in,” Susan said in a pleasant tone.
Colt looked back at Stan, who gave him a nod of reassurance. Colt reluctantly slipped into the passenger’s seat, and Susan closed the door before climbing into the back with her son. Stan took the driver’s seat and leaned over to look at Colt. “Better buckle up. The roads are awfully slippery tonight.”
At first, Colt thought he was joking. The blank, if pleasant, smile on the man’s face told him otherwise. With trembling hands, he managed to get his seatbelt fastened on the fourth try, and Stan pulled onto the road.
Colt had no idea where the strangers were taking him, but it couldn’t be anywhere worse than a jail cell. Whatever fate that awaited him when they reached their destination, he knew he deserved it.
Chapter 4
As it turned out, whatever sinister plans the family of friendly psychopaths had in store for Colt lay behind the pristine veneer of their quaint suburban home. Bright flowers lined the stone walkway that led up to the three-story Tudor, and the smell of freshly baked bread filled Colt’s nostrils as soon as Stan led him inside.
Colt wasn’t sure what he’d been expecting, but it certainly wasn’t the set of an interior design magazine. From the cheery yellow paint to the whimsical collection of glass animals on the fireplace mantel, it was all so normal. In fact, it made the Jones family residence look downright quirky in comparison.
“Welcome to the Brown family mansion,” Stan said with pitch-perfect dad joke delivery as he let the door fall shut. He shrugged out of his jacket and seemed about to take Colt’s when he looked at the bloodstained leather and thought better of it. “Ronnie, maybe you’d better find some clean clothes for Colt to change into. I’m sure he’ll want a shower soon.”
The boy nodded and seemed relieved for the chance to disappear upstairs. Colt looked around the home, wondering if he’d died in the mugging and ended up in some kind of twisted version of the afterlife. It made as much sense as anything else that had happened to him over the last hour.
“Let’s see if I can get the blood out of this,” Susan said, gently freeing Colt of his leather jacket. It wasn’t nearly as soaked as the rest of his outfit, but his jeans and shirt were a lost cause. Susan held the jacket up to the hall light and frowned, cocking her head to one side. “Is this machine washable?”
“Who are you people?” Colt asked, finally gaining the presence of mind to voice the question that had plagued him ever since the alleyway.
Susan smiled kindly and went to stand beside her husband. “How rude of us,” she said, draping the jacket over her arm like the fact that it was stained with a dead man’s blood didn’t bother her in the least. She raised a perfectly manicured finger to her lips and sucked the blood off her fingertip. “My name is Susan Brown, and this is my husband, Stan. You’ve already met our son, Ronald.”
Colt swallowed. “Let me rephrase that. What are you?”
Susan looked at Stan, and the middle-aged man smiled. “We’re the same thing you are, Colt. We’re ghouls.”
“Ghouls?” Colt echoed in disbelief. “You were serious about that? Like the monsters in fairy tales?”
“More or less,” Stan said. His smile widened until he was showing teeth.
Colt leaned in for a closer look, but they were all perfectly normal. No sign of fangs. He reached to touch his own only to find that the sharp spindles had receded into his gums, and his fingers had gone back to their normal color and length.
“The transformation you experienced back there is temporary,” Stan said, answering the next question Colt was going to ask. “It’s called a shift, and it happens when we get worked up, usually during a hunt.”
“A hunt?” Colt frowned. “What was that you said back there, about a First Hunt?”
“It’s a rite of passage for ghouls who reach physical maturity,” Stan explained. “It always happens at the age of twenty-five, when the human brain finishes developing. Ghouls just go through a slightly different kind of maturation.”
“A second puberty, in a sense,” Susan added. “Only instead of acne and insecurity, you get fangs and claws and your eyes turn black. Plus, the mood swings are a bit more intense,” she added with a wry smile.
“But I’m not a ghoul,” Colt insisted. “I’m just…a guy.”
“If that were the case, you wouldn’t have eaten the man in that alley,” said Stan. His tone was clinical and without judgment, like he was simply discussing the weather and not the fact that a man was dead and the killer was standing in his living room.
“He attacked me. He pulled a gun, I—I just snapped,” Colt said, looking down at his bloody hands. “I’ve never...this can’t be happening. This can’t be real.”
“It’s a lot to take in for one night,” Susan said in a motherly tone, guiding Colt toward the stairs. “You’ll feel better once you get cleaned up and have a nice cup of tea. Go ahead, bathroom’s the first door on the left.”
Colt climbed the stairs on autopilot. When he reached the top, he heard rock music blaring from behind a closed door further down the hall. The “KEEP OUT” sign on the door left no doubt that it was Ronnie’s room.
Colt found the bathroom, and sure enough, there was a clean set of clothes waiting for him on the wide vanity sink. He closed the door and unbuttoned his shirt, letting out a hoarse gasp when he saw the piece of flesh stuck to his lapel. He brushed it off onto the floor and held his breath, grabbing a bunch of toilet paper to pick it up before flushing it.
The appetite that had been so irresistible in the alleyway had vanished entirely. Now all Colt could do was try not to think about the human flesh mingling with his steak dinner in the pit of his stomach. He had a feeling it would be so much worse on the way back up. He washed his hands in the sink until they were almost raw and then turned the shower on as hot as it would go.
Colt still didn’t feel anywhere close to clean once the water was running clear down the drain, but he didn’t want to overstay his welcome in someone else’s bathroom. He dried off and changed into the clothes Ronnie had laid out for him, uncertain of what to do with his own. He found a plastic bag and stuffed them inside, tied off the top, and decided that would have to do for the moment.
On his way out of the bathroom, Colt’s foot hit something hard and furry. He heard a fierce snarl and looked down to find a normal-sized dog with gold-and-white markings and a notable lack of legs staring up at him. Upon further inspection, they were more like furry stumps with absurdly big feet stuck on at the bottom, and the dog’s tail was barely a nub. A corgi. He didn’t consider himself someone who knew dog breeds, but he’d seen enough viral videos to recognize this one.
The dog bared his fangs and snapped at Colt before waddling down the hall toward Ronnie’s room. He reared up on his back stumps, clawed wildly at the door until it opened, and then darted inside. The door shut hard.