Gray light pressed through the plastic sheeting, and the salt smell hung thick as sea breath. Marcus blinked against the pale morning, his arm reaching across the sheet to find nothing but cold fabric. He pushed himself up, the bare concrete floor chilling his feet as he stood, and there she was—Emily, framed by the unfinished window, a silk robe hanging loose from her shoulders, her red hair spilling down her back like a curtain of fire against the gray sky. She stood utterly still, watching the ocean with a stillness that made his stomach drop in a way no amount of bravado could explain away. Something in the set of her shoulders had changed overnight—a guard up where there had been none, a door closed that he hadn't noticed being open.
"Emily." His voice came out rougher than he intended, still graveled with sleep. She didn't turn. He took a step closer, the cold concrete biting at his bare feet. "Everything alright?"
When she finally faced him, her green eyes held a guardedness that hadn't been there when she'd gasped his name in the dark, and he saw it—the shape of a secret she'd already decided he wouldn't get to carry. Her hand drifted to the back of her head, fingers pressing against her skull like she was holding something in place, and he recognized the gesture for what it was: worry wearing a mask of composure. "I have to go out," she said, and the word business landed flat as a stone skipping across still water. He watched her pull the robe tighter, cinching the belt with a finality that felt like a door closing. "Business," she repeated, as if trying to convince herself.
"Are you coming back?" The question hung between them, heavier than he'd meant it to be. She looked at him for a long moment, her gaze traveling his face like she was memorizing it, and something flickered behind her eyes—a calculation, a weighing of how much to give. "I always come back," she said, but the words landed like a promise she wasn't sure she could keep, and he felt the weight of them settle in his chest. She turned toward the door, her bare feet silent on the concrete, and he stood there in the empty room, listening to her footsteps on the stairs, each one pulling something taut inside him.
At the top of the stairs she stopped, and when she turned back, her face had transformed—bright, open, the guardedness swept away like clouds burned off by morning sun. "It isn't you, Marcus," she said, and a smile curved her rosebud lips. "It's just part of my mystery mission that I have to deal with today. And I don't like surprises like that when I didn't even get my morning cup of..." She paused, her green eyes catching the gray light, and her voice dropped to something almost teasing. "You." The word hung in the air between them, an offering and a question, and he felt the tension in his shoulders ease a fraction as she turned and disappeared down the stairs, leaving him alone with the echo of her footsteps and the taste of a promise he wasn't sure he'd been given.
He heard her moving through the unfinished house below—the slide of a drawer, the whisper of fabric against skin—and he sat on the edge of the mattress, palms flat on his thighs, listening to the small sounds of her becoming someone ready for the world. When her footsteps crossed the concrete floor toward the front of the house, he stood and moved to the window, pressing his shoulder against the cold frame. She emerged a moment later in fitted athletic wear, the red hair pulled back from her face, and the transformation startled him—this was not the woman who had gasped his name in the dark, but something leaner, more focused, a creature of purpose. She didn't glance back at the house, didn't hesitate at the driveway where a car sat untouched. She simply began to jog, her strides easy and fluid, eating the road in a rhythm that spoke of distance she intended to cover.
He watched her until she rounded the bend and disappeared behind a stand of wind-bent pines, and the silence of the house closed around him like a held breath. The people she said would hurt her—the words surfaced unbidden, and he turned them over like stones in his palm, testing their weight. She'd said it so casually, so offhand, as if danger were just another errand on her list, and he'd let it pass because she was warm in his arms and the night had been soft. Now, in the gray morning light, the casualness of it curdled in his gut. He pressed his hand flat against the cold glass, watching the empty road where she'd vanished, and the frailty of her—the slender shoulders, the delicate bones of her wrist when she'd reached for him—rose up in his mind like a accusation. She looked so breakable, so easy to take advantage of, and yet she ran toward something alone, without a car, without a weapon, without anyone watching her back.
"Jesus," he muttered to the empty room, and the word hung in the salt air like a confession. He pulled on his jeans and stood in the unfinished bedroom, the plastic sheeting rattling in the wind, and tried to talk himself down from the ledge of his own imagining. She knew what she was doing. She'd made that clear—the guarded eyes, the careful distance, the way she'd offered him a job and a key but never the whole truth. She wasn't his to protect, wasn't his to worry over, and yet the worry had already taken root, spreading through his chest like the salt damp through the walls. He thought of the way she'd touched the back of her head that morning, fingers pressing against her skull like she was holding something in, and he knew—with the certainty of a man who'd learned to read the silences in other people—that whatever she was running toward had teeth.
He moved through the house, his bare feet finding the cold concrete, and stopped in the kitchen where the brass key still sat by the fridge, the expense card in the drawer where she'd left it. He picked up the key, turned it over in his calloused hand, and the weight of it felt like a question he wasn't sure he knew how to answer. Ten thousand a month. A house by the sea. A woman who came and went like the tide, who gave him her body and her first name but nothing else, who ran alone toward people who wanted to hurt her. He set the key down, and his hand lingered on the cold metal for a moment longer than necessary, as if he could anchor her to this place through the force of his wanting alone. Outside, the wind picked up, and the plastic sheeting over the window snapped like a flag, and he stood there in the half-finished kitchen, a man who'd built things with his hands his whole life, suddenly aware that the one thing he wanted to build—something lasting with her—might be the one thing he couldn't.
He walked to the window and looked out at the empty road one last time, the gray sky pressing down on the sea like a lid. Somewhere out there, she was running, her red hair a beacon against the muted world, and he had no way to reach her, no number that would connect, no thread to pull her back. He pressed his palm to the glass, and the cold seeped into his skin, and he made himself a promise he knew he might not be able to keep: if she came back, he wouldn't let her run alone again. The road stayed empty, and the house settled around him, and the silence felt like a held breath waiting for her return.
Her feet hit the pavement in a rhythm she didn't have to think about, the road a gray ribbon unwinding beneath her. The house was already a memory behind her, Marcus's face still burned into the back of her mind—the way he'd looked at her like she was something fragile, something he could lose. She'd hated leaving him like that, hated the guardedness she'd let him see, but the thread had pulled her awake before dawn with a violence that left no room for explanations. Someone was hurting. Someone was afraid. And she could feel it the way other people felt weather in their bones—a pressure behind her eyes, a cold knot in her stomach that had nothing to do with the salt wind off the sea.
She ran faster, her breath coming in sharp bursts, and the thread tugged her east along the coastal road, past the wind-bent pines where the asphalt cracked and the houses thinned to nothing. Whatever was happening, it was close now—she could taste it, copper and fear on the back of her tongue, the familiar rot of Camus's work. Three blocks from where Cynthia had been taken, and the pattern was repeating itself, a loop she'd walked into with her eyes open. She'd bought this house to be close to the hunting ground, to be close to him, and now the choice felt less like strategy and more like fate tightening a noose. Her legs burned, her lungs ached, and she pushed harder, the silk of her athletic wear clinging to her skin, the twin seeds in her womb pulsing in quiet protest against the violence of her pace.
She rounded a bend and saw it—a jogging path cutting through a stand of oaks, and beyond it, a flash of motion too frantic to be morning exercise. A woman's scream, cut short and muffled, and Emily's body reacted before her mind caught up, her hand already rising as she broke into a sprint across the uneven ground. The world sharpened around her, every detail crisp and terrible: the man's broad back hunched over a figure pinned against a tree trunk, his hand clamped over the woman's mouth, her eyes wide and white with terror above his fingers. Emily felt the cold spike of Camus's power in the air, familiar and wrong, and she knew—this was his work, his hand reaching out from whatever skin he wore now, and she was three seconds too late and one second early, and neither would save her from what she had to do next.
"Hey!" Her voice cut through the morning like a blade, and the man's head snapped up, his eyes finding her with a predator's quick assessment. She felt the thread pulse between them, a sick recognition that made her stomach turn—he was a vessel, a conduit, but not the source, not Camus himself. Just a man doing the demon's bidding, his mind already half-unmade by the power that rode him. Emily's hand closed into a fist, and she felt the electricity gather in her palm, ready to send him to his knees. But the woman's eyes met hers, and something in them stopped her cold—not a plea for rescue, but a warning, a desperate shake of the head that said run, run, you don't understand what he is. And in that frozen moment, the man smiled, and Emily saw the thread shift, saw it reach past her toward the house she'd left behind, toward Marcus standing in the unfinished kitchen with her key in his hand.
She understood then, with a clarity that cut through the morning like glass: she hadn't found him. He'd let her find him. The thread wasn't a trail she'd followed—it was a lure he'd laid, and she'd walked into it with her heart pounding and her guard down, thinking she was the hunter when she'd been the bait all along. The man's smile widened, and she felt the cold spike of Camus's attention settle on her like a weight, and she knew—whatever she did now, whatever power she unleashed, the demon had already seen the shape of her wanting, had already tasted the fear she carried for the man she'd left behind. She raised her hand, electricity crackling along her fingers, and the woman on the ground screamed again, and the morning shattered into a thousand pieces she couldn't put back together.
The electricity gathered in her palm, a storm waiting to break, and the man's smile only widened—as if her power were exactly what he'd come to collect. But Emily had spent forty years reading men like him, reading the confidence that came from borrowed strength, and she'd learned that the loudest threats were always the ones standing closest to the edge. She didn't aim for his chest, didn't waste the bolt on the vessel when the source was what mattered. She sent it wide, a crackling arc that severed the air beside his head, and the force of it threw him sideways, his grip on the woman torn loose as he crashed against the oak trunk. The woman scrambled away, sobbing, and Emily was already moving, her hand finding the victim's shoulder, her power sweeping through the trembling body in a single cold pass—no rot, no seed, no trace of Camus's work beyond the terror in her eyes. Just a woman who'd been in the wrong place when a demon needed a stage.
"Run," Emily said, and the word carried a weight that sent the woman stumbling toward the road without looking back. She didn't watch her go. Her body was already turning, already orienting toward the house three blocks away, toward the unfinished kitchen where Marcus stood with her key in his hand, and the cold knot in her stomach tightened into something harder than fear. The man was pushing himself up from the ground, shaking his head, and Emily felt the thread pulse between them—not Camus's power, but the demon's attention, a sick recognition that told her he'd seen her face, felt her strength, and was already recalculating. She couldn't leave him alive to carry that message. She couldn't leave him at all.
She raised her hand again, and this time there was no hesitation, no calculation of mercy. The power that had lived in her spine for fourteen years, the blade and the fire she'd carried since the old county morgue, surged up her arm and out through her fingers in a single devastating bolt. It struck the man mid-rise, and for one impossible moment he hung there, outlined in white fire, his mouth open in a scream that never came. Then he was gone—not burned, not thrown, but unmade, shredded from existence like a page torn from a book, leaving nothing behind but the smell of ozone and a faint shimmer where he'd stood. Emily stood in the sudden silence, her chest heaving, and the power settled back into her spine with a satisfaction that made her stomach turn. She spared one glance at the empty space where the man had been, then turned and ran.
She didn't take the road. The road was for people who had time, who could afford to be seen. She cut through the trees, her feet finding the cliffside trail above the bay, and when she broke through the last stand of wind-bent pines, she had a clean view of the house below—the unfinished shell, the plastic sheeting rattling over the broken window, the shape of Marcus moving through the kitchen. She stopped at the edge of the cliff, her breath coming in sharp bursts, and she felt the power stirring in her chest, the blade and the fire that had never been meant for anything but destruction. There was a trick she'd never shown anyone, never trusted anyone to see, and she'd hoped to save it for Camus himself. But Marcus was down there, unaware, and the demon had already tasted the shape of her wanting. She couldn't let him be a target. She couldn't let him be a lure.
Emily raised her hand, and the air in front of her began to tremble, to condense, to burn. She'd spent weeks practicing this in secret, in the hours when Katherine was asleep and the house was silent—learning to make the air itself her fuel, her launch, her landing. Now she called it forward, and the air exploded around and behind her body, a concussive burst that sent her hurtling off the cliff's edge like a cannon shot. She arced over the water, the wind itself burned for fuel, no resistance left to slow her, and the house rushed toward her with impossible speed. Below, she saw Marcus turn, saw his head lift at the sound of the explosion, and she knew—this was the secret he'd have to learn, the truth she'd hoped to keep buried a little longer. She came down hard on the gravel drive, a focused burst of air catching her like a rocket's afterburner, and she landed in a crouch, her hair wild around her face, the power still crackling along her skin. Marcus stood in the doorway, his eyes wide, and she saw the question forming on his lips—the question she didn't have answers for, the question that would change everything between them.
Marcus's brain took a full second to catch up with what his eyes were reporting. One moment the drive was empty, the wind rattling the plastic sheeting, and the next she was there—crouched like a sprinter, gravel still settling around her feet, her red hair a wild corona against the gray morning. His mouth opened, but the question died before it reached his tongue, because her head was tilted up, her green eyes fixed on something above and behind him, and the look on her face was not the look of a woman who'd just done something impossible. It was the look of a woman who'd just realized she was being watched.
"Marcus." Her voice was low, urgent, a blade drawn in a quiet room. "Get inside. Now." He didn't argue. He'd learned enough about her in one night to know that tone wasn't a request. He stepped back, his bare feet finding the cold concrete of the doorway, and she moved past him in a fluid motion, her body already coiling with a tension he could feel in the air around her. She didn't look at him. Her eyes never left the roofline, and when he followed her gaze, he saw it—a shadow that didn't quite belong to the house's geometry, a darkness that seemed to breathe.
"Emily, what the hell is—" The words caught in his throat as the shadow moved. It unfolded from the corner of the roofline with a languid grace that made his skin crawl, resolving into a figure that was somehow both there and not there, a silhouette against the gray sky that seemed to drink the light around it. He heard Emily's breath catch, felt the air around them begin to vibrate with a power he could feel in his teeth, and then she was moving—not running, but launching, her feet leaving the ground in a burst of concussive air that threw gravel against the siding. She arced through the air like she'd been shot from a cannon, and he saw it then, the white-gold flame that enveloped her fist as she streaked toward the shadow on the roof.
Holy shit, he thought, the words absurdly calm in the chaos of his mind. She's a goddamned superhero and I couldn’t tell. The thought was ridiculous, a deflection, a way to keep his feet rooted to the ground when every instinct screamed at him to run. But the figure on the roof moved with a speed that made Emily's charge look slow, sidestepping her strike with an ease that spoke of centuries of practice, and Marcus saw the shape of it more clearly now—a woman's form, lean and predatory, with eyes that caught the gray light like chips of obsidian. Camus, he thought, the name surfacing from something Emily had let slip in the dark, and he felt the cold knot in his stomach tighten into something harder than fear.
The two figures clashed on the roofline, a burst of white-gold flame meeting a shadow that seemed to swallow it whole, and Marcus stood in the doorway, his hands clenched into fists at his sides, feeling the weight of his own uselessness like a physical thing. He couldn't reach her. Couldn't help her. Couldn't do anything but watch as the woman he'd held in his arms an hour ago threw herself at a demon with nothing but fire and fury and a secret she'd never meant to share. The shadow figure laughed, a sound that carried down to him like broken glass, and he heard Emily's voice cut through the morning air, sharp and defiant: "So much for being the bait." The words landed in his chest like a stone, and he understood, with a clarity that made his stomach drop, that he'd been standing in the middle of something he couldn't even see the edges of.
Marcus's hands were useless things at his sides, and he hated them for it. He'd built decks and framed walls with these hands, driven nails through pressure-treated lumber until his palms sang with the impact, and now they hung empty while the woman he'd held against his chest an hour ago traded blows with something that shouldn't exist. The shadow figure moved on the roofline with a fluidity that made his stomach clench—every dodge, every counter, every shift of weight spoke of a body that had been fighting for a very long time, longer than any human body had a right to. Emily was fast, impossibly fast, but he could see it even from here: she was reacting, not leading. The shadow was pulling her moves out of her, baiting her into patterns, and Emily knew it too—he could see it in the way her jaw tightened between exchanges, in the way she'd started pulling her punches, holding something back even as the white-gold flame flickered around her fists.
Then the shadow moved differently, and Marcus's breath caught in his throat. The figure dropped from the roofline in a single fluid motion, landing on the gravel drive with a grace that made no sound, and for the first time he saw her clearly—a woman, lean and sharp-featured, with hair the color of a raven's wing and eyes that held the gray morning light like they'd swallowed it. She was beautiful in the way a blade was beautiful, all edges and intention, and she wore a cock that strained against the front of her dark trousers, the shape of it unmistakable even through the fabric. Marcus's mind stuttered on the detail, tried to file it away as something he'd misread, but the woman's hand found it with a casual possessiveness, adjusting herself as she smiled at Emily, and the gesture was so deliberate, so knowing, that he felt the air leave his lungs. "You're stronger than I expected," the woman said, her voice a low rasp that carried across the drive. "But strength was never the question. It's whether you know what to do with it when it matters."
Emily's shoulders dropped a fraction, and Marcus recognized the shift—she was no longer preparing to fight. Something in her posture had gone soft, almost yielding, and the change was so sudden that he nearly called out to her, nearly broke the silence that had settled over the drive like a held breath. "You're right," Emily said, and her voice was steady, almost conversational, as if they were discussing the weather. "I don't know what to do with it. I've been running on instinct, on fear, on the hope that I could outlast you. But that's not how this works, is it? You've been doing this for a century. You've worn a dozen skins, learned a dozen ways to break a person." She took a step forward, and Marcus saw her hands come up, palms open, empty. "I can't beat you. I know that now." The shadow woman's smile widened, and Marcus felt the cold knot in his stomach tighten into something harder than fear—he was watching Emily surrender, watching her give something away that he didn't understand, and every instinct he had screamed that this was wrong, that she was walking into a trap she couldn't see.
"Emily, don't—" The words tore out of him before he could stop them, and both women turned to look at him, two pairs of eyes fixing on his face with an intensity that made him feel like a specimen pinned under glass. Emily's gaze was different, though—softer, almost apologetic, and he saw her mouth form a word that might have been his name before she turned back to the shadow. "He doesn't know," she said, and the shadow woman laughed, a sound like broken glass. "No, he doesn't. That's what makes this so delicious." The shadow moved then, faster than Marcus could track, and Emily didn't dodge—she let the woman close the distance, let those predatory hands find her shoulders, let herself be pushed back against the side of the house with a thud that sent dust from the unfinished siding drifting into the gray air. Marcus's feet moved before his brain could stop them, but Emily's hand shot out, palm flat, a command that froze him mid-stride. "Stay," she said, and the word carried a weight that made his legs lock. "Please. Stay."
Marcus's legs locked like the command had reached through his ears and into the marrow of his bones, and the helplessness of it burned. He stood on the cold concrete of the doorway, his bare feet numb, watching the shadow woman's hands move over Emily's body with a possessiveness that made his stomach turn—trailing down her sides, gripping her hips, pulling her flush against that lean, predatory frame. Emily's eyes found his over the shadow's shoulder, and there was something in them he couldn't name, something that wasn't fear and wasn't surrender, a calculation so deep it looked like acceptance. The shadow woman's mouth found Emily's throat, and Emily's head tilted back, exposing the pale column of her neck, and Marcus heard himself make a sound that might have been her name, might have been a prayer, might have been nothing at all.
"You're going to watch," the shadow woman said, her voice a low rasp that carried across the drive like it was meant for him alone. "That's the part of this you don't get to look away from." Her hand came up, fingers threading through Emily's red hair, and she pulled Emily's head back further, forcing her to meet Marcus's gaze. Emily's lips parted, and he saw the word form there—stay—before the shadow woman's mouth claimed hers, swallowing whatever she'd been about to say. The kiss was brutal, possessive, a claiming that left no room for doubt about what was happening, and Marcus felt the cold knot in his stomach tighten until he couldn't breathe. This was the trap, he understood suddenly, the one Emily had walked into with her eyes open. She'd said she couldn't beat this thing, and she'd meant it—but she'd also meant something else, something she couldn't say with the demon's hands on her skin.
The shadow woman broke the kiss and stepped back, and Marcus saw the dark trousers hit the gravel, heard the soft sound of fabric falling. She stood there in the gray morning light, naked from the waist down, and the cock that jutted from between her legs was thick and veined, already hard, the head glistening with a slickness that made his mind stutter. Emily's hands came up, not to push away but to pull—her fingers finding the shadow woman's hips, drawing her closer, and Marcus watched Emily lower herself to her knees on the gravel drive, her red hair spilling around her shoulders like a curtain of fire. She looked up at the shadow woman, then at him, and her voice was steady when she spoke, steady and clear and meant for both of them: "This is how it has to be." The shadow woman's hand found the back of Emily's head, guiding her forward, and Marcus stood frozen in the doorway, his hands useless at his sides, watching the woman he'd held against his chest an hour ago take the demon's cock into her mouth.
The sound Emily made was soft, almost reverent, and it carried across the gravel drive like a secret. Marcus watched her mouth stretch around the thickness of it, watched her hands find the shadow woman's thighs, watched the way her throat worked as she took it deeper, and the wrongness of it sat in his chest like a stone. This wasn't surrender—he could see that now, see it in the way Emily's eyes stayed open, fixed on the shadow woman's face, see it in the way her hands moved with purpose rather than desperation. She was doing something, something he couldn't see the shape of, and the shadow woman's head tilted back, a low sound of pleasure escaping her lips, and Marcus realized with a cold clarity that he was the only one in this driveway who didn't know what was about to happen. Emily's hand moved, a subtle gesture against the shadow woman's thigh, and the air around them began to shimmer.
The shimmer thickened, and Marcus saw the shadow woman's eyes go wide—a predator finally sensing the trap beneath her feet. Emily's hand pressed flat against the gravel, and the air around them turned to syrup, then to stone, and the shadow woman's body locked mid-motion, her cock still buried in Emily's mouth, her face frozen in a rictus of dawning horror. Emily pulled back slowly, deliberately, a string of spit connecting her lower lip to the glistening head, and when she rose to her feet, her green eyes held no surrender at all—only the cold patience of a woman who had spent forty years learning to wait. "You wanted to know what I'd do with my strength," she said, her voice soft and terrible. "This is it."
Marcus watched the shadow woman strain against the invisible bonds, watched the muscles in her jaw knot and her obsidian eyes burn with something that might have been fear, and he felt the cold knot in his chest loosen just enough to let him breathe. Emily circled the frozen figure slowly, her fingers trailing through the air beside the shadow's cheek, and the gesture was almost tender, almost loving, the way a cat toys with a bird it has no intention of eating. "A century of wearing skins," Emily murmured, "and you never learned the one thing that matters. You can't feed on someone who isn't afraid." She stepped closer, her hand coming up to cup the shadow woman's jaw, and Marcus saw the power gather in her palm—white-gold, hungry, the same fire that had unmade the man in the trees. "And I stopped being afraid of you the moment I realized you were just another vessel. Just another broken thing that got handed a power it couldn't carry."
The shadow woman's lips moved, fighting the invisible pressure, and a single word escaped—a name, raw and desperate, that Marcus didn't recognize but saw land in Emily's chest like a blade. Emily's hand dropped, her composure cracking for just a heartbeat, and in that heartbeat the shadow woman's bonds shattered with a sound like breaking glass. She moved faster than Marcus could track, her body a blur of dark motion, and when she stopped, she was behind Emily, one hand fisted in that cascade of red hair, the other gripping the waistband of Emily's athletic wear. "You think you know what I am," the shadow woman hissed, her voice a razor's edge against Emily's ear. "You think your little trick makes you my equal. Let me show you what a century of hunger actually looks like."
Marcus's feet were moving before his brain caught up, his bare soles slapping against the cold concrete, but Emily's hand shot out again—not a command this time, but a plea, her fingers spread wide, her eyes finding his with a desperation that stopped him cold. "Don't," she said, and the word was a wound. "Please, Marcus. Don't." And then the shadow woman ripped Emily's clothes away—the fitted athletic wear shredding like paper, the fabric falling in ribbons around her ankles—and Marcus stood frozen on the edge of the gravel drive, his hands useless at his sides, watching the woman he'd held against his chest an hour ago get forced face-down into the dirt. The shadow woman's knee pressed into Emily's spine, pinning her, and Emily's cheek ground into the gravel, her red hair fanning out around her like a pool of blood.
Camus's cock was harder than granite, glistening in the gray morning light, and Marcus watched the demon spit into Emily's exposed cunt—a thick wad of saliva that landed with a wet sound against her pale flesh, trailing down the cleft of her ass. Emily's body jerked, a sound escaping her that was half gasp, half whimper, and Marcus saw her fingers curl into the gravel, her knuckles white, her whole frame trembling with a tension he couldn't read as fear or something else entirely. "This is what you wanted," the shadow woman said, her voice carrying across the drive, meant for him as much as for Emily. "To see her claimed. To watch her taken by something you can't fight." She positioned herself, the head of that thick, veined cock pressing against Emily's entrance, and Marcus heard himself make a sound that might have been her name, might have been a prayer, might have been nothing at all—and then she thrust forward, burying herself to the hilt in one brutal, unrelenting motion, and Emily screamed.