Chapter 2

The epicenter of the disturbance was a stretch of old-growth forest the locals called the Dead Zone. According to my sensors, this was where reality was thinnest.

I tracked the energy signature through the underbrush, moving in silence. The trees here were wrong. Some grew upside down, their roots clawing at the sky, their branches buried in the earth. The fog was a vibrant, toxic purple.

I wasn't alone. I could smell him—expensive cologne, cedar, and the deep, underlying scent of a predator. Silas was parallel to me, about fifty yards east.

*Competition,* my wolf growled. *Chase. Bite.*

"Shut up," I whispered to her.

Suddenly, the ground beneath me lurched. It wasn't an earthquake. It was a gravity shear.

One second I was running on mulch; the next, "down" became "sideways."

I yelped as I was flung horizontally, slamming into the trunk of a massive redwood. The air rushed out of my lungs. Before I could scramble for purchase, the gravity shifted again, threatening to drop me into the gray sky like a stone falling into a pond.

"Grab on!"

A hand clamped around my wrist.

Silas was braced against a tree root that was still obeying standard physics. He hauled me in, his grip iron-tight. I slammed into his chest, burying my face in his suit jacket.

For a second, the world stopped.

The contact didn't just feel like skin on skin. It felt like sticking a fork into a power outlet. A jolt of white-hot static blasted through me, so intense my teeth ached.

"Gah!" I shoved him away, stumbling back onto the stable patch of earth. "Static! Your suit is made of polyester or something?"

Silas was shaking his hand, looking at me with wide, stunned eyes. "It’s Italian wool, Vane. And that wasn't static."

The air around us crackled. The purple fog swirled violently, forming a vortex above our heads. A tree branch near us exploded into sawdust.

"We need to move," Silas snapped, his voice tight. "The fluctuations are spiking."

"I noticed!" I scrambled up. "My EMF meter is going haywire. It’s off the charts."

"Forget the meter." Silas moved with a fluidity that shouldn't have been possible for a man in a suit. He grabbed my shoulder to steer me away from a patch of grass that had turned to liquid glass. "We need shelter. The readings indicate a psychic storm is hitting in less than five minutes."

"The Lighthouse," I gasped, pointing north. "It’s on the ridge. It’s built on bedrock. Should be stable."

We ran. We ran not as rivals, but as a unit, falling into a synchronized stride that felt unnervingly natural. When I went left, he covered my right. When he stumbled over a shifting root, I hauled him up.

We burst through the heavy iron door of the abandoned lighthouse just as the sky ripped open. It didn't rain water; it rained sound—a deafening, screeching feedback loop that shook the stone walls.

Silas slammed the deadbolt home. We collapsed on the dusty floor, chests heaving, wet, bruised, and tangled together in the dark.

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