Chapter 1

CHAPTER

ONE

MAGGIE

I didn't want to check on the damned chickens.

Don't get me wrong, I love those feathery mother cluckers with my whole heart. I even put a sparkly disco ball in their coop after being inspired by a chicken influencer, of all things.

It looked cute, for a while, and I think the hens might have noticed it.

The fowl influencer didn't share how quickly the disco ball would be covered in shit.

I guess that's not the aesthetic for social media.

"Maggie May," my grandma calls again, a plaintive note in her voice. "Please go see what's causing that ruckus."

"I'm going, Gran," I call back. "Just gimme a sec to finish this pot," I add under my breath. Soap bubbles cling to my chipped nail polish. The rice I accidentally burnt while checking my grandma's sugar levels and then making sure she got the right dose of insulin is extremely determined not to budge from the bottom of the pan.

I pause, the sound of the hens' screeching louder than ever, and shake my head, wiping my soapy hands on the back of my jeans and abandoning the pot in the sink.

"I'll be back," I threaten it.

It doesn't have the audacity to respond, which I'm grateful for because if the pots start talking back, I need to get my gran's old house checked for carbon monoxide again.

"Maggie May," my gran calls out again, her voice so feeble it damn near breaks my heart.

"I'm going, Gran." I shove my feet into the serviceable if heinous muck boots by the back door, and the screen slams behind me, the night air damp and warm.

The sole goose of Gran's flock honks noisily, a sure sign the chickens aren't just throwing a hen party.

Something is definitely riling them up.

I grab the shotgun from where my grandma insists on keeping it on the freakin' porch table, and with the gun in one hand and the huge, heavy flashlight in the other, I march my butt down the dirt path to the chicken coop.

I have zero intention of killing anything, but best believe if that damned fox is terrorizing my chickens, I will fire it. In the air. Safely away from the animal.

Weeds brush against my legs and I shiver, making a mental note to check myself for ticks when I get back inside.

Again.

I blow out a sigh, tendrils of my hair flying off my forehead only to stick right back, thanks to the soggy night air. August in Texas is not, in fact, a joke. Summer in Texas does not come to play.

I didn't count on being back here, a gun in one hand, muck boots on my feet, but my sister needed help with my grandma, and I certainly wasn't about to tell the two of them no.

Not when they're just about the only people in the universe I love with my whole heart.

The light of the moon casts strange shadows on the path ahead of me, and then fades completely as clouds obscure it.

I shiver in spite of the heat, the creeping sense of dread I've had at night growing. The hair on the back of my neck stands on end.

The flashlight turns on with a satisfying click, and the high-powered beam illuminates the path ahead.

Something rustles in the underbrush, and I freeze.

Slowly, I swing the light to the thicket of trees to the left of the henhouse, where my girls like to roost during the day while the goose, Ken, wanders around eating grass.

Nothing's there.

Just trees.

I let out a whoosh of breath, adrenaline pumping through my veins. My heart hammers against my chest, and a mosquito drones near my ear.

Great. Ticks and mosquito bites. The perfect end to my day.

"Not in the big city anymore," I mutter to myself, although I've come to realize I didn't like that stupid job as much as I wanted to.

Maybe I didn't like the city, either.

I love taking care of Gran's little farm. I love her brick-paved vegetable garden, loved helping her care for it and relearn how to make pickles this summer.

A mosquito lands on my cheek and I fumble at it for a moment, then remember the last thing I want to do is whack myself in the face with the shotgun or the damned Maglite.

Yeah, I didn't like the city or my so-called career.

But still, fuck these giant-ass mosquitoes.

Grimacing, I turn back to the henhouse, determined not to let my overactive imagination or the mosquitoes get the best of me.

The hens have gone quiet.

Completely quiet.

That eerie sense of wrongness slithers down my back again, cold sweat breaking out on my forehead.

"It's okay girls, I'm here," I whisper at them. "And Ken," I tack on, expecting him to honk at me in recognition.

Nothing. No sound at all.

"I swear to god, if the fox managed to get in there, I am gonna give it rabies," I snarl, well and truly pissed off at the thought that my sweet girls might be in there hurting.

I jog to the back of the henhouse, where I repaired some loose paneling just a few weeks ago, fully expecting the worst.

What I am not expecting, however, is the creature lying in a heap behind my beloved coop.

"What in the name of Popeye's Chicken & Biscuits is that?" I whisper-scream.

The hens cluck again in apparent agreement with my consternation.

My stomach turns.

It looks human—but it is very clearly not. Blue light crackles and glows from tears in the creature's skin, spikey protrusions on its arms and back.

It moans, and the sound pulls me out of my morbid fascination and into terror.

I hardly realize I'm pumping the shotgun the way my daddy taught me when he was still alive, a full decade ago.

The creature moans again, and I swallow hard, my palms slick with sweat against the flashlight. It rolls over, some of the spines retracting into its glowing skin.

"Nevesna ta linga," it moans, one huge hand going to its thigh, where blue-red liquid pours from a gash there.

My eyes drop, then widen.

Not an it, after all. Nope. It's got parts that, again, look vaguely human and entirely inhuman all at once. Big parts. Real big.

Whatever the creature is, it's definitely got a penis. A big one. And it's pulsing, glowing with the same blue light as the rest of him.

I recoil slightly, torn between that strange sense of fascination and self-preservation.

"Nevesna ta linga," he repeats, his eyes opening. Blue. Glowing blue and so stunning that I can hardly move. "Nevesna—" He jerks his head, motioning at something behind me.

I don't know what has me moving—some latent animal instinct I didn't know I possessed, or maybe it's the whisper of noise behind me.

A split second passes. I drop the flashlight and it thuds to the ground, narrowly missing my foot. In the same motion, I swing the old twelve-gauge shotgun up to my shoulder.

I squeeze the trigger, the night so dark I see the glow of the shotgun shells before the bark of it half deafens me.

"Nevesna nata lingani." The thing behind me utters, a certain satisfaction in his voice.

Alien.

My brain lands on the word as I stare at the thing dying on the ground in front of me.

Aliens. Plural.

More than one.

I take a step closer, half-listening to the strange words the spiked alien behind me utters. Not like it's rude not to listen, since I can't understand a damned word my guy's saying.

My nose wrinkles.

The new alien, the one I killed, is ugly as sin. Thin, coarse hair covers the body, pants concealing the parts I surely do not want to take a closer look at. Bizarrely long arms reach nearly down to the thing's feet, which are clownishly large and covered in the same nasty-looking hair.

"Bless your ugly heart," I say, a frisson of guilt moving through me. "I didn't mean to kill you, but aliens shouldn't sneak up on nice ladies in the dark behind their chicken coops." I nod at my own pronouncement, like this is a very normal thing to say.

"Ten chicken coop commandments. Chicken scratched on the stone," I continue, a small part of me realizing that talking to myself like this is not, in fact, a good sign.

A mosquito hums again, and I slap at my throat where I feel it land. I expect to find the mosquito squashed against my neck when my fingers land.

"Oh, shit," I manage. No mosquito. A hard, tufted object. The world swims around me and I blink, staggering backwards before sinking to the ground in a puddle. The world tunnels, and that overly large blue hand clasps my hip.

"Nevesna ta linga," the glowing alien holding me pronounces, a sad, resigned note to his voice.

"There was more than one, huh?" I ask. I blink once, twice.

Everything goes dark.