[A/N] Yes. I am posting again (finally). Welp, this chapter wasn't easy to write. Hopefully you'll enjoy it, though. Thanks for all the support you guys have been showing me so far! It really keeps me going!

Enjoy!

"They can't save you"

"No. But I can save them" – Kali Prasad and Jane Hopper.

"Ah, shit. Mrs. Sinclair is gonna kill me", said Steve as he looked up at the Ferris wheel.

A few people started gathering around, most likely friends and family of the passengers inside the Ferris wheel. A nervous rumbling chat ran through the dark silhouettes around the park. Steve made sure to keep Will close in case anything happened. Knowing the boy's history, that was a wise choice to make.

"T…They're gonna be fine, right? I mean… El is there", the boy spoke.

"Yeah, why wouldn't they be fine? It's just a blackout", the teenager said.

Will looked up at Steve with an expression that showed a mature and rational concern rather than the childish fear of the dark.

"It's not just a blackout", he said "It's the Upside Down".

The teenager frowned.

"What? No; listen. The power just went out, okay? This has nothing to do with that place", Steve tried to comfort him.

Will didn't look away from the Ferris wheel.

"It has", Will said "It, I don't know how… I guess this feels familiar to me"

The boy's voice was shaking, but there wasn't a trace of doubt in it. Steve gulped and looked at the ride once again. Suddenly, Mrs. Sinclair wasn't his main concern anymore.

"Will!".

The nearly-insane screech caught not only Will's attention, but also startled almost every other person nearby. Before the boy knew it, Hopper and Joyce came running towards them through the crowd and the woman pulled her son into a tight hug.

"Oh, Will, thank God you're okay".

The boy would normally try to unwrap himself from her arms and tell her she didn't have a reason to worry, but this time he remained still and silent for there was a real risk there, one that the boy couldn't see or hear. Not without his now memories.

"Oh, God. Please tell me Jane isn't there!", Hopper said, looking up at the ride.

Steve just glanced at the cop, wishing that he could do something, anything about it, but right now no one at the fair knew what was actually happening, so their best bet was stay there and pray for the power to come back on.

Hopper's hand instinctively went to his belt, but it didn't reach anything. The chief wasn't there on duty, so he didn't have any of his gadgets with him, which meant that he would have to go back to the jeep if he wanted to communicate with the station. He was just as helpless as any of those bystanders.

"Hopper?", a vaguely familiar masculine voice called.

Joyce, Steve, Will and the chief turned around to see a panting and horrified couple in the dark, which were immediately recognized as Nancy Wheeler and Jonathan Byers.

"'The hell are you two doing here?", Hopper asked.

"I… We…", the boy started explaining.

"We have to get out of here now!", Nancy interrupted "We don't have much time".

"Kid, listen. It's not that simple…", Hopper started.

"She's right", Will said, sounding more scared than ever, which was something alarming when it came to Will Byers "Something bad is going to happen".

It immediately clicked for Joyce and Hopper. The feeling of safety that they had learned to live with for the past months had blinded them from the obvious truth. That blackout wasn't normal. Joyce knew better than anyone that the lights were the first symptom of the presence of that awful place that haunted her life for a year.

The thought of the Upside Down made Hopper realize what had actually killed Jason Allen's dog. The wounds on the animal, the way the cuts were deep in the abdomen and the teeth marks on the throat... It was the same damn thing that had killed Bob Newbie.

He looked at the Ferris wheel again.

"Oh, no", he barely murmured.

"Let's go!", Nancy yelled with an urge that didn't quite felt that it came from her.

"We can't!", Steve said, pointing at the ride "The kids are in there!".

The girl widened her eyes. That was exactly where the shadow was heading when it immersed her in that dark, cold cloud of ashes. She didn't know it, but something in the back of her brain made her feel that the shock between the two immense beasts would affect her world as well.

"We gotta get them out of there!", Nancy said "You need to do something!".

"I can't! Even if I had my radio with me, it'd take over twenty minutes for any units to arrive", Hopper explained.

"You don't understand! The Ferris wheel is about to…!", the girl's sentence was interrupted by a blow of cold air followed by a misty red light that highlighted a gargantuan silhouette hovering right above the Ferris wheel.

Mere moments later, the ride seemed to knock itself out of its own foundation and started to descend towards the ground; slowly at first, but then it started gaining speed as it leaned to the side. Metal creaked and screws snapped lose while the crowd dispersed to avoid getting hit by the metal structure.

"No!", Hopper's voice was somehow louder than all of the screams around.

As loud as the desperate cry could be, it was hopeless. The Ferris wheel was already leaning sideways and it was just a matter of time until it crashed and killed everyone in it, including Jane. Hopper could already imagine the shock and the loud metallic clang that would be followed by the death of yet another one of his daughters.

That's when they all heard Jane screaming.

It took a second for Jane to realize that she couldn't do it. It felt like trying to lift a fridge with her bare hands. The Ferris wheel was simply too big and heavy for her. Her nose spilled blood faster than ever before as she gave everything that she had to try to stop the falling ride.

Everything felt so slow; Mike's warm breath on her head was barely noticeable as tears started to roll down her cheeks. She couldn't save him, she thought, closing her eyes. Uninvited memories came in brief flashes, almost feeling like they were in slow-motion in her rushing mind.

She opened her eyes, which now were red with many cracks plainly visible within them and let out a sob laden with a heavy mix of anger, fear and sadness. The sob turned into a loud cry, which eventually grew into a scream while the memories fueled her rage.

"Sorry", he said, seeming a bit embarrassed after trying to touch her wrist "I just never saw a kid with a tattoo before. Eleven… What does it mean?".

Why were people always asking her that? And why was that boy being gentle to her? It almost felt as if he was afraid of hurting her, unlike Papa. She pointed at herself as if the words were needless.

"Eleven", El spoke.

"Is… Is that your name?".

She nodded.

"Um, okay… My name is Mike, short for Michael", it was the first time she heard his name "Maybe we can call you El, short for Eleven".

It was the first time she heard her nickname.

"It's day 353", his voice echoed in the darkness.

El walked closer to him.

"I had a bad day today. I don't know, I...".

Every single day he would sit there, in her little fort, and pick up his radio.

"I guess I wish you were here".

And he would call her.

"I mean, we all do".

Always on channel eleven.

"If you're out there, just, please, give me a sign",

But she would never answer.

Jane walked through the static water in the dark and knelt in front of him. Their eyes met and, only for an elusive moment, she allowed herself to believe that he could see her as well.

"Mike", she called.

His chin dropped and he pulled the radio away from his face.

"Eleven?".

She couldn't take it anymore. Mike was suffering without of her. She was also suffering, struggling every single day to keep the 'Don't Be Stupid' rules, to stay low and not be discovered by the bad men until some day, in a distant future when 'soon' arrived, she could talk to him: 'Mike, I'm here. I'm okay'. 'I can hear you'. 'I miss you. But that day seemed to crawl further away at every minute.

Well, 'soon' was too far away and she had run out of patience.

El carefully reached out for his face. All it would take for him to notice her, to see her was a touch, a single touch. Her hand was shaking. Would Hopper ever know that she did that? If so, would the bad men know, too? She didn't care. She needed Mike.

Now he had also run out of patience. Mike angrily shut down his radio and got up from his fort, frustrated.

They both cried for each other on that Halloween night.

Every breath you take,

She felt… Weird. In a good way, hopefully.

Every move you make;

He was waiting for her when she opened the door of the gym, with no sign of Will, or Dustin, or Lucas… Or Max around this time.

Every bond you break, every step you take, I'll be watching you.

Their eyes met at the same instant, both kids speechless.

Every single day, every word you say;

They obeyed to that invisible force that always drove them closer, not daring to look away from each other's eyes. Mike opened a goofy smile and broke the silence filled only by the song and by the other kids chattering.

"Y-you look beautiful".

Not just pretty; 'beautiful'! She blushed and looked at her feet in embarrassment, hoping that he wouldn't notice her childish smirk.

Every game you play, every night you stay, I'll be watching you.

Mike glanced at the students scattered around the place, either dancing or chatting, except for Nancy and Jonathan, who were in charge of serving the drinks and taking pictures and Dustin, who was nowhere to be seen.

"…Do you wanna dance?".

Oh, can't you see… You belong to me…

"I… Don't know how", she replied.

He shrugged.

"I don't either. Do you wanna figure it out?"

She nodded.

My poor heart aches with every step you take.

They held hands and shyly walked to the dance floor. Mike clumsily helped El out with the basic movements and soon they were dancing together in the Snow Ball.

Every move you make, every vow you break; every smile you fake, every claim you stake, I'll be watching you.

Just like he had promised.

Since you've gone, I've been lost without a trace; I dream at night, I can only see your face; I look around but it's you I can't replace.

Mike was quiet, which wasn't exactly bad, since El had never been talkative, but the boy was rarely silent in her presence. He just kept dancing with her, staring into her eyes while she stared back into his.

I feel so cold and I long for your embrace;

She didn't remember how it happened, but she would never forget that it did. She was ready for the kiss this time. It had startled her last time, but now she knew what to expect. She didn't know how much she needed to kiss Mike until then.

The kiss faded back into a timid stare and they both smiled. El rested her head in his chest, like she had seen people doing in the TV. She wasn't quite sure why, but this felt like the right time to do it.

While resting in Mike's arms, she closed her eyes and her smile widened. Everything was okay. 'Soon' had arrived. She had a dad, one that wouldn't ever hurt her and Mike was finally there with her. Nothing bad was going to happen ever again. She was sure of it.

I keep crying, baby, baby, please…

It all felt slow.

Everything flashed blue and red. The lights of the ambulances and police patrol cars (the only lights to be seen in miles) flooded the crash scene. People were talking… Why were they talking so loud and so fast, though? She looked through the cracked window of the cabin, which now faced upwards, showcasing the clouds above. Her head, her nose and her ears felt like they were literally burning. Jane had only felt like that twice before.

Voices coming from the other cabins showed that her aching mind and bleeding nose weren't hurting in vain, though. She had made it. She stopped the Ferris wheel mere inches from the ground. The whole thing bounced up before it even hit the floor, pushed by the magnet-like energy and then slid back down without enough speed to harm anyone, or so Jane hoped.

She moved back to see Mike and for an instant she was frightened he didn't make it. Her weak hands could barely hold his shoulders while she inspected the boy. His eyes were closed. He wasn't moving.

"Mike?", she whispered.

He didn't respond.

"Mike", she tried to scream again, but her sore throat only allowed a painful croak to come out.

She couldn't muster enough strength to shake him awake, so she helplessly stared at him until the tears started rolling down her face. She hugged Mike, pushing her head into his chest just like she used to do when they were alone with each other.

Except that now they weren't alone.

"Cal, help me out!", she barely heard the voice of one of the policemen who worked for her father "Kid, look at me; we're gonna get you both out of here, alright?".

It took her a while to understand that the officers Powell and Callahan had crawled in the ruined ride to rescue her and Mike. The officer with glasses knelt next to the boy, pressed his head against his chest and nodded to himself.

"They're alive, chief! Thank god, they're alive!", Callahan said while picking him up.

Jane felt Mike being pulled away from her and immediately started to protest.

"No…", she mumbled "Mike… Mike".

There was nothing else she could do while the officer picked him up from the floor and pulled them both out of the cabin.

"Kid, listen to me", she saw Powell talking to her as he gently picked her up from the floor "He's gonna be alright. He's just unconscious. You're gonna see him later, I promise".

"Pro…Mise…?", she barely whispered.

"Yeah, big-time promise", he said.

Jane closed her eyes and let everything go dark as pain wrecked her body and the familiar smell of blood filled her nostrils. Rushed footsteps approached the two officers and Hopper immediately started talking:

"How bad is it?"

"Pretty bad, chief", Powell said in an equally worried voice "You should take her to the hospital.

Hopper went quiet for a brief moment.

"Alright, save the ambulances for the other victims; we don't know how many more people can be injured. I'll take Jane to the hospital myself".

"You sure, chief? She looks really messed u… Alright, alright! I was just saying. You don't have to look at me like that!", Callahan said.

Jane was handed to someone else and the smell of blood was somewhat masked by the scent of cigarette and a sweet feminine fragrance.

"It's alright. It's alright sweetie. Just breathe, okay?", she heard a familiar voice speaking.

She was on Joyce's arms. Knowing that felt comforting. Joyce was the closest thing to a mom that she ever had; even closer than Terry. She unconsciously pressed her body towards Joyce for protection and groaned again. The woman started walking. She heard Nancy talking way to fast to Hopper for her to understand what she was saying.

"What the hell just happened?!", Jonathan exclaimed somewhere behind her.

"We'll tell you guys in the way, we need to get the hell out of here!", Hopper spoke, walking beside Joyce.

Somewhere near, Max was crying. Was it because of Mike? Maybe not, maybe the ride had almost hit her. Had she possibly been in the ride? Jane didn't know and didn't care. All that she knew was that her sobs sounded annoying.

They eventually left the crowd and they left the flashing lights behind; which was relieving to El, and they got in a car. It didn't feel like Hopper's car.

"Why aren't we taking them to a hospital?!", Nancy's question was followed by the dry click of a sit belt being buckled.

"Because they'd ask questions at the hospital", Joyce spoke, carefully leaving El in one of the backseats "They'd see her tattoo and that's exactly what we don't want to happen".

"What about Mike? What if…!".

"Nancy", Joyce interrupted, getting in the driver's seat and turning the vehicle on "I've been dealing with this for a whole year and I know that there is nothing they can do about it at the hospital that we can't do ourselves at home. They're fine. Mike is not hurt and El is just drained".

By then, the car was already moving. The noise of the engine was bothering El. Someone was sitting beside her, but whoever it was, they were too quiet for her to recognize who it was. The thought that it could be Mike had driven her to slightly open her eyes and recognize Will's silhouette in the dark. Beside him, Mike sat motionless.

Nancy was about to ask what Joyce meant with 'drained' when El started crying again.

"Mike…!".

"Hold on, sweetie, we're almost there, we're gonna be fine, alright?".

Jane could only recognize horror in Nancy's and Will's faces before she passed out.

The barking could be heard for over a mile. Chester wasn't quite the quietest dog in Hawkins. Standing up on the couch and supporting his front paws on the window sill, the Byers' dog barked to the pitch black night outside, wagging its tail. It could feel a strange energy in the dark and all it could do was trying to scare it away.

Chester barked for what seemed to be an unnecessarily long amount of time before the six lights glided into view and the so familiar humming of motors approached the house. Whining, the dog left the window and walked to the front door, where it would wait for his owners to open it. A primitive instinct drove the mutt to believe that Joyce's presence would fix everything, that she would somehow make that gloomy atmosphere fade away. The door was opened, the hinges croaked in the dark.

And suddenly the Byers' living room was filled with noise. A panicking Joyce walked in, followed by Will, Jonathan, Steve, who carried Mike on his arms and Nancy, who carried Jane on hers. Once inside, Jonathan left the room to get an emergency flashlight in the tool shed.

"Here, put her over here", Joyce said, gesturing to the couch as Steve carefully placed Mike on an armchair.

Nancy obeyed, carefully placing Jane on the couch. There was so much blood that it soaked her hands and part of her clothes. Hopper, who had arrived practically at the same time at the Byers' house with Lucas and Max, was slamming the door shut and running to the couch.

"How is she?", he asked.

"She passed out", Joyce informed, eyeing the girl worriedly.

Hopper went to the couch to check El. She had dry blood spilled all over her clothes, leaking from her nose and ears. Her skin was white as paper and her hands shook, even though she was still unconscious.

"Ah, shit", he mumbled "Alright, we're gonna need some bandages to clear the blood. How's the boy holding up?"

"He's alright; he's just knocked out", Nancy said, standing next to the chair where her brother lay down.

"Alright, great", Hopper pinched the bridge of his nose, trying to think straight "How about you two? Are you okay? Any wound, any scratch?".

The question was to Lucas and Max. The girl was completely silent, breathing heavily as Lucas hugged her closely and refused to let her go. Next to the couple, Will stood in silence, white as paper. Lucas seemed to be the only one who had recovered from the shock already.

"Yeah, we're fine. No one else got hurt", Max spoke for both of them, looking at El "She saved us".

Jonathan came back in the room with an old red torch that was starting to show signs of rust in its metallic edges. He turned it on, bringing a glimpse of proper light to the room. The torch flickered when he pointed it at Nancy. Only the girl noticed how Chester was whining at her in a corner.

"Get that out of my face!", Nancy said, trying to cover her eyes from the light.

"Sorry", Jonathan said, putting the object down on a table with the lens facing up so it could spread some light across the room, like a lamp.

Under better illumination, they could actually see how much blood covered Eleven's clothes and Will felt like he would throw up if he kept looking at it for too long. Her blue clothes were completely taken by red stains and her face was a complete red mess.

"Oh, Jesus!", Hopper said.

"Alright, you've seen enough, time to go", Steve said in a surprisingly responsible way as he tried to lead Lucas, Max and Will to Will's room.

"But what about…?", Lucas protested.

"It's gonna be fine! Now, move!", the teenager commanded.

Joyce left the room as well to get bandages, clean clothes and a bowl of water to clear the girl's blood, which she immediately started doing. She managed to clean the blood from her nostrils and ears, but her clothes were a whole different story. Mrs. Byers sighed. They'd have to wait for her to wake up to put clean clothes on her.

From the corner of the room, Nancy shivered and looked at Hopper and Joyce. She wanted to feel sorry for Jane. She loved the girl and after all she had done for all of them… Something kept her from feeling anything for her. What scared her most was the fact that she knew that the Shadow Monster was keeping her from sympathizing with El. She looked up at the two concerned parents.

"Mrs. Byers, I need to tell you something", she started, then looked at Jonathan, who looked back at her in confusion "I need to tell something to all of you".

"God damn it!", Kali hit the steering wheel with both her hands.

She stared at the patch of the road in front of her, only a dark and misty forest around for over a mile. She took deep, angry breaths as she tried to clear her mind. She had been tracking Jane down for two damned days until she finally spotted the girl minutes earlier at the fair. Much to the older girl's horror, her sister was barely conscious and covered in blood when she finally saw her. Her immediate reaction was to chase down the police chief and inquire about Jane's state. And God help him if she didn't like the answer.

Easier said than done, the thirty-year-old van she drove all the way from Pittsburgh wasn't fast enough to keep up with the chief's jeep and the two other cars. Now, after driving straight for about ten minutes with no other vehicles on sight, Kali found herself facing a bifurcation on the way and that's where she stood now, at the edge of a tantrum. Much to her despair, the headlights of the van started to flicker.

"You've gotta be kidding me", she hissed, hopelessly eyeing both sides of the road.

She pulled over to the side of the road and parked the van, but did not turn the engine off. Even though it seemed that they'd go off at any second now, the headlights were the last two things keeping her from the overwhelming darkness.

Kali had grown up in the worst scenarios someone could ever imagine for a child, including the cold hell that was Hawkins' lab, which meant that she wasn't easily frightened, but the darkness was what terrified her the most, which was why she had chosen to live in the city, where there were always lights all around at all times, unlike her tiny cell in the lab. She could not think of that room without remembering the pain; physical and psychological.

And now she was back there, in Hawkins, the one place she would never want to go back to, and her only source of light was slowly fading away.

Usually Mick would solve that problem in a heartbeat, but Kali couldn't afford her gang of puppets anymore. They were mere failed experiments of hers. Helpless people whose pasts she had erased from their minds and replaced with fake memories and stereotypical backgrounds. Their sanity had lasted for a fairly long time, almost a two years before they all went mad.

Kali felt a sharp twinge of guilt when she remembered that she had almost made the same thing to Jane. She had almost made the girl think that Brenner was still alive, that she had a different life, a different past. If Jane hadn't resisted that night, she would be as doomed as those poor souls she left to rot in jail…

The headlights went off.

"Shit", she whispered, desperately trying to distinguish any shape, any silhouette in the forest, in vain.

Her breathing was now heavy and quick. Her eyes flew from a side to another in the deathly quiet road. Her hands were firmly gripping the steering wheel. One hellish minute had passed when a weak spot of light on the distance called her attention.

It was a little yellow dot on the end of the road to the right that reminded the girl of the colorful neon lights on the streets of Chicago. It seemed to be moving a bit, as if it had a mind of its own, but she couldn't tell if that was the case or if it was an illusion caused by the distance.

Kali left the car without even closing the door. Even walking had become challenging. It felt like an invisible force would try to crawl towards her legs and grab her feet at any moment now. She tried to leave the irrational fear aside and just focus on the light, whatever it was.

She inhaled deeply, trying to remain calm. A light source was an almost certain evidence of human presence and if there was a person in the road, she could easily manipulate them.

"Hello?", she called.

No one answered, but the light now definitely moved a bit.

"Can you help me? My car just broke down and I'm trying to find my way to the town", she spoke in her most deceptively innocent voice.

The light was still moving in the distance, hovering in the darkness. It swung from a side to another like a Jack o' lantern hanging in a pole in Halloween. Kali looked back at the vehicle, but she couldn't even see it in the dark. Going back wasn't an option anymore. All that was left to be done was investigating the light.

She exhaled, wishing she hadn't left her pistol in the glove compartment.

Although she was walking, it felt like she wasn't making any progress at all. Nothing around seemed to change. Her only reference point she had was the tiny light at the very end of the street, which seemed to be getting further away instead of closer.

Finally, she realized that she was approaching it.

The yellow light was stronger than she imagine. From far away, it seemed to be just slightly luminescent, barely able to light up its surroundings. Now, she realized that it was almost as strong as a campfire, though it wasn't bright orange like a flame. She still couldn't see exactly what it was, since it was behind a bush.

A deep growl made the girl stop walking and gasp. That surely wasn't good. Maybe it was a camper who had left their dog taking care of the tents. Yeah, they could have left a flashlight on so they would know where to come back to. But if so, why would someone set a camp right there, on the side of the road? She wasn't sure if she could manipulate dogs easily.

Her concern quickly turned into panic when the light got up from the floor and stood on two legs. Horror was visible in her face lit up by the vivid yellow light when she watched it as it moved. It wasn't a flashlight or a fire.

It was alive.

The light came from two yellow stripes on an animal's sides. It was almost as if those patches of its skin were transparent and the light emanated from inside its body. Asides from the stripes, the rest of the creature was white as paper. Reaching ten feet tall on its two legs, it had reptilian limbs with long claws on their ends. The arms, which were now four feet above the ground, had hands that looked a lot like a human's, with the claw on each thumb bigger than the other ones. The long tail touched the ground as it stood up. The round head had a half-reptilian, half-amphibian appearance. Frills blossomed from it like horns and the lower jaw split in half when it opened its mouth to growl.

The most terrifying for Kali was acknowledging that, no matter how much she tried, she couldn't manipulate that thing with her mind images.

It had no eyes.

With a sharp fleeing instinct, the girl did not wait until it was close enough to reach her; she turned around and ran aimlessly in the darkness. While desperately hoping to stumble across her car so she could get her pistol, she could hear it running after her, shrieking in what she could only imagine to be anger. Whatever was chasing her, it was fast.

When the light that the monster emanated reached her, revealing part of the path ahead, she knew she was going to die, no matter how much she ran, no matter where she ran.

Kali yelled and held back bitter tears when the creature reached for her with its hand and its claws sunk deep in her left arm. Somehow, she understood that it wasn't chasing her. It didn't want to chase her. No, it was playing with her like a cat walking around a wounded mouse. She felt like it wasn't running as fast as it could and that the awfully painful slash on her arm wasn't nearly as bad as it could have been. The more she thought about the monster that chased her down, the more she realized that she somehow felt a connection with the beast, the more she felt like the energy that emanated from within its mind was similar to hers. It felt terribly familiar.

It leapt past her.

The huge reptile landed on its four legs, as big as a car in front of the girl and it roared, making her stop. It wasn't playing anymore. With blood covering her arm and pain scattering across her body, Kali panted in exhaustion and fear as it stood up in two legs and walked closer to her. She couldn't help but give a step back at each step it took forward.

The thing opened its mouth and split its jaw open, letting a long and black tongue slide out. It was confident; it was convinced that its hunt was over.

Something else growled.

It got both the Kali's and the monster's attentions, though the girl didn't dare to look to the side, unlike the creature. The monstrous grunt sounded like bubbles floating to the surface of water at first, but then it grew into a deeper, louder and wilder roar.

Surprisingly, the monster completely ignored Kali to focus on the noise. It turned its body aside to look at the forest in search of the source of the sound, as if daring whatever was there to come out.

The dare was accepted.

A sound that could only be described as a gruesome and ear piercing screech echoed through the deserted road and a slender figure pounced on the monster's head. At first, Kali thought that it was a person, but once it reached the light, it was clear that it was another creature. It had also long arms and legs that ended in claws, but it was hard to tell if it was a biped or a quadruped, since it was hanging on its opponent neck at the moment. Instead of a face, it had five lips that opened like a flower to reveal a vivid red mouth full of little, sharp teeth.

It furiously grabbed the glowing creature's neck and started to lacerate it with its claws, pouring a weird green blood. The larger creature reached for its attacker with its hand, but the faceless monster was just barely out of reach. Taking this opportunity, the smaller monster spread its mouth open and bit its rival's neck.

With a roar fueled by wrath and pain, the larger creature threw its aggressor aside with a swing of its neck and the faceless monster rolled on the pavement. It quickly got up and roared at its opponent. When it did, the sound was not only heard, but felt. The lights of Kali's car, only a few feet away from the monsters went back on and so did all other lights in the distance. She could see luminescent spots flickering on far away in the distance. She frowned. Did that thing just bring the power back on?

That didn't matter. Kali couldn't afford to stay there much longer. As soon as the fight was over, she would be the next target. She had to find somewhere to run.

Something flickered far away in the distance. It was a peaceful blue light beyond the woods. Several yellowish spots of light flickered on near it. Windows. It was a house. It was far, but not as far as the rest of the town. She glanced at her van and at the fighting monsters, then back at the blue light. She hesitated for a bit, but finally turned around and ran towards the house.

Next chapter Preview: Nancy's confession brings chaos to the scenario. The adults are partially relieved when one of the kids wakes up, but things aren't looking so good for the other one.