Up ahead, a huge gate.

  A pearly gate.

  An actual pearly gate. No shit.

  And standing in front of it, a dude in a toga, with a beard.

  It was surreal.

  It was amazing.

  It was heaven.

  “Jesus Christ,” I swore.

  “Yep,” He said. “Wassup, bro?”

  “I can’t believe I made it.”

  “Well, here you are.”

  “I’ve done some bad things.”

  “You certainly have. Plus there’s your die-hard atheism.”

  “That wasn’t a deal-breaker?” I asked.

  “Gotta say, it was a close call. But you saving your friends, that put you over the top.”

  “Jack and Phin made it?”

  “Alive and well, thanks to you. And meth. When Dad created meth, he got a bad rap. But it raises base dopamine levels by ten times.”

  “You’re preaching to the choir, Jesus.”

  “You made it to paradise, Harrison Harold McGlade. Welcome.”

  I shook His holy hand. Which was also a holey hand. Heh heh.

  I also noted, with a bit of a shock, that my old hand was back. No more prosthetic limb.

  “Cool,” I said.

  “I know, right? You’re also your ideal age. Thirty-three. Everyone here is thirty-three.”

  “Young enough to be attractive, but old enough to not be annoying.”

  “Yep. The perfect age. What do you want to do first? You can talk to other dead people. Have all of your burning questions answered. Relive the favorite moments of your life. Spy on Earth.”

  “Can I spy on people in the bathroom?”

  “You mean haunt the crapper like a ghost? Of course. You can do anything you can imagine.”

  “Are there drugs?” I asked.

  Jesus laughed and slapped my shoulder. “Dude, it’s heaven. We got all the best drugs.”

  “Sex?”

  “Of course. We got the best orgies, too. What did you think heaven was? A bunch of uptight, judgmental goody-goodies, singing gospel hymns? It’s lit up here. Party central, 24/7. You want to join a crack-smoking daisy chain with Cleopatra, Einstein, Jimi Hendrix, and Mae West, while Mozart DJs?”

  That was exactly what I wanted. “You betcha. But you knew that already.”

  “Of course I did.”

  “Thanks, Jesus.”

  “Enjoy your eternity, Harry. You deserve it.”

  I was about to ask the Messiah to point me to the crack-smoking daisy chain DJed by Mozart, but then I remembered Sam.

  “Is Samantha going to be okay?” I asked.

  Jesus winced, sucking in air through his teeth. “Unfortunately, no. Without you to help her parents find her, she’s going to be horribly murdered.”

  Aw, crap.

  “I need to go back,” I told Jesus.

  “Are you sure? You barely made it in here. If you go back, you might not make it in again next time. I gotta warn you, Harry. Hell is pretty bad. Only three channels on cable. The weed is subpar. And there’s all that eternal torture.”

  “Sorry, Jesus. I gotta go save her. See you later?”

  He shrugged.

  I opened my eyes, and gazed into the sweet, concerned faces of Jack and Phin, leaning over me.

  My BFFs. Bringing me back. Making sure I was okay. Taking care of their boy because they missed me so much and couldn’t live without me.

  “McGlade, you jackass!” Jack screamed. “You were supposed to watch Sam!”

  I blinked away some death, which was still stuck in my eyes. “Blood took her. She’s the nurse. She tried to kill us all.”

  “Who, Harry?” Phin shook me hard enough to whack my head against the floor. “Who’s Blood? Who took Sam?”

  “You know I’m not good with names and faces.”

  Phin made a fist, which wasn’t a very BFF thing to do. Especially since I just saved his life. And his wife’s life. And left the eternal bliss of heaven to help them out.

  “I’m trying her cell,” Jack said.

  There was a beeping sound, and Jack hurried over to Sam’s sparkly phone, still on the nightstand.

  Jack’s shoulders slumped. “We can’t track her. I’m calling the police.”

  Through the haze of pain and near-death experience and my BFFs hating my guts, something tugged at my brain.

  Actually, two things tugged at me. One of them having to do with that dream I had. That was the one I still couldn’t put my finger on.

  But the other was easy to remember.

  “Aliens,” I said. Then I locked eyes with Phin. “I know how to find Sam.”

  BLOOD

  I’d made duplicate keys of all the hospital doors.

  Or, technically, Flesh did. Sometimes I had trouble telling us apart.

  I wasn’t sure which key opened the lock, but I got it on my fourth try, then pulled the patient bed through, when something caught my eye. On Samantha’s neck.

  One of those key finder devices. On a silver chain.

  Not an immediate threat. But a possible future threat.

  I quickly yanked off her necklace, dropped it to the floor, and tried to crush the rechargeable device with my heel. But I was wearing my comfortable gym shoes with the extra padding, and the device didn’t so much as crack.

  So I picked it up and jogged down the hall, stopping at the nearest laundry chute, thinking about dropping it down, then coming up with a smarter move.

  If this town’s dim-witted authorities ever figured out that Jack, Phin, and Harry were murdered, and a child abducted, and somehow followed the electronic trail to the tracking device, it was a wise move to let one of my peers take the blame.

  “Good afternoon, Nurse Bantam.”

  “Hello, Nurse Shelby.”

  As I brushed past her, I slipped the key finder into her vest pocket.

  Then I went back to the little girl, locking the door behind me, and was surprised to see Flesh already there with her.

  “I’ve decided we’re going to try something new.” He grinned. “Let’s eat her alive.”

  JACK

  The most dangerous animal on the planet was a mama bear protecting her cubs.

  Blood was about to find out just how dangerous.

  After trading phones with McGlade, Phin and I followed the tracker app, him limping a few steps behind me, until we cut through an EMPLOYEES ONLY door and into a service hallway and arrived at the location of the key finder he’d given Sam.

  Except there was a major problem. We stood in the exact spot where Sam was supposed to be, but there was nobody there. We were alone.

  I called Harry and put him on speakerphone. “There’s nothing here.”

  “Who is this?”

  “It’s Jack. There’s nothing here.”

  “How’d you get my phone, Jack? And why do I have yours? Is this some sort of backwardland?”

  “Dammit, McGlade! Focus!” I couldn’t wrap my head around the awfulness of this situation and the words tore out of my throat like yanked fish hooks.

  “Sorry. I think I’m still a little bit dead. I also smoked some weed because of all the pain. Aren’t you in pain?”

  I was too upset to feel pain. “We’re on the mark where the key finder is supposed to be.”

  “That’s weird. You know they removed my patella? My kneecap. They didn’t give me a new one. Maybe that’s why I kept thinking of that old case we had. The woman who killed her husband and cut off his… hey, wait a sec. Floors. You’re next to the blinking dot?”

  “I’m standing right on it.” I turned a full circle, searching the empty hallway. “There’s nothing here.”

  “You’re on the wrong floor, Jackie. The key finder doesn’t do three dimensions. Sam’s on a different floor, above you or below you. The cops are on their way. Do you need my help?”

  I hung up on him and sought out Phin. “Want to try up or down?”

  “Down? Maybe Blood is taking her to the morgue. For some… privacy.”

  We hurried as fast as Phin could move, getting to a service elevator, pressing the call button. My mind was churning as fast as my heart was pumping. Panic. Fear. Probably meth.

  I glanced at the phone app. The key finder was also on the move.

  “So Blood is the same person as fake Kertis?” Phin asked. “Disguising himself as a nurse?”

  I didn’t know, and at that very moment I didn’t care. All I cared about was getting my daughter back.

  “Which nurse?” Phin continued. “Did we meet any nurses that were big and tall? Or was fake Kertis the disguise? A woman who put on shoe lifts and a muscle suit?”

  “I think we’re about to find out,” I told him as I stared at the blinking dot on Harry’s phone.

  “Why?” Phin asked.

  “I think Blood is in this elevator.”

  I pocketed the cell and swapped it for the Glock. No bullets, but even an unloaded gun can mandate compliance.

  The lift stopped.

  The doors opened.

  Nurse Bantam.

  Phin shoved her back inside and forced her against the elevator panel, pulling her arm behind her back in a hammer lock as I pressed the barrel of the .45 against the side of her head, letting her see my face, and the gun.

  “Where’s our daughter?” My voice was as black as my heart.

  “What? What are you talking about?”

  I patted her down, finding Sam’s silver necklace in her scrubs vest pocket, the key finder still attached.

  “That’s not mine,” Nurse Bantam wailed, her bloodshot eyes wide with fright.

  Harry’s phone rang. I ignored it.

  The elevator doors closed.

  “Tell me what you did with our daughter,” I repeated.

  “I didn’t do anything with your daughter. Did someone take your daughter? I’ll do whatever I can to help. But I didn’t take her.”

  Phin’s phone rang. “It’s McGlade. Maybe he knows something.”

  “I remembered what I wanted to tell you,” Harry boomed on speaker. “It’s—”

  I cut him off. “I got her, Harry. I got Blood. It’s Bantam. Nurse Bantam.”

  “With the polka dot scrubs?” Harry asked.

  Nurse Bantam had on solid blue scrubs. “Polka dots?”

  “Blood. She was wearing polka dot scrubs.”

  “Nurse Shelby,” Phin said. “She’s the one who wears polka dot scrubs.”

  “I passed Nurse Shelby in the hall!” Nurse Bantam yelped. “She was on the third floor! She put that in my pocket!”

  I wasn’t sure what to believe, but I hit the 3 button while I was figuring things out.

  “Look, Jackie, remember the patella case?”

  “Quiet for a second, McGlade. I need to think.”

  Phin muted him. “Someone has our little girl,” he said to Nurse Bantam. “It’s you, or Nurse Shelby.”

  “It’s not me! I swear!”

  “Did you see Sam with Nurse Shelby?” I demanded.

  “No! She was all alone!”

  The elevators doors opened, and we maneuvered the nurse into the hallway. “What’s on this floor?” Phin asked.

  “Nothing. It’s mostly closed off. Used to be classrooms. They want to convert it to extra beds for Covid patients, but no contractors want to work in the hospital. They’re all afraid.”

  That made some sense. But one thing didn’t.

  “If this area is closed off, why are you here?”

  She didn’t reply.

  “I’m not having a good day,” I whispered, “but I guarantee I’ll make your day even worse if you don’t answer me.”

  “I smoke,” she began to cry. “This job has gotten so stressful you wouldn’t believe it. The beds keep filling up. People are dying. We never get a break. Half the nursing staff has quit. I need to take a time-out when it gets too rough. Some me-time.”

  “Weed?” I asked.

  She nodded. That explained her red eyes.

  “If you brought a little girl down here to drink her blood, where would you do it?” Phin asked.

  “I told you, I don’t have your—”

  “Where would you do it!” I screamed, slapping the gun against the wall.

  “There’s a whole closed ward—Ward C—it has an operating theater in it but it’s all locked up!”

  “Show us.”

  Our trio stumbled down the hallway, coming to a large, formidable door. Phin confirmed the lock was equally formidable, and neither of us was in any kind of shape to attempt kicking it down.

  I felt the need to scream in frustration. “Do we call security?”

  “Yes,” Phin said. “But I also know where to get a key.”

  FLESH

  Here we go…

  The power worked, but nine out of ten lighting fixtures were missing. Doors, furniture, shelves, cabinets, ceiling tiles; it all had been torn out during the initial demolition, prior to the local construction company union voting to abandon the remodeling due to Covid restrictions. Even some of the walls had been knocked down, pink insulation hanging out like guts, giving the ward an abandoned, derelict, almost haunted kind of energy.

  A few emergency lights, including those that illuminated exits, still glowed faintly, allowing Flesh and Blood to navigate the unswept floors, following the roundabout path to the operating room.

  Flesh liked the space. It felt private. Secure.

  Exciting.

  The theater had been built when the hospital had been built, back in 1953, and medical students and doctors had come from hundreds of miles around to see the first organ transplants in the state, the first plastic surgeries to repair burn victims, the first cardiac pacemaker, the first hip replacement.

  But what was once new had faded into obsolescence. The medical school attached to St. Erasmus moved to a bigger facility in a bigger city in 1998, and the ward had been shuttered permanently in 2005. SARS-CoV-2 had promised a rebirth of Ward C, but the grand reopening became a grand failure. Like most promises.

  Flesh had discovered the entrance while exploring the hospital and duplicating keys for every out-of-reach area. He’d been decent at picking locks since his youth, enough for him to make a career out of it, but the easier solution for multiple entries were master keys; manufacturer sets sold specifically to locksmiths to open every lock they produced.

  Prior to the pandemic, Flesh had dreamt of taking a live victim into the theater and taking his time with the feast, enjoying a fresh meal in peace. With Blood.

  But Covid had waylaid many plans, and Blood never seemed jazzed enough about the idea to offer her full support.

  Flesh would bring it up once a month, when the full moon tugged at his soul and begged his inner animal to run wild. But Blood always wanted to play it safe and simple. Why attract attention? Why take such a big risk for such a tiny benefit?

  Her rationale made sense. Rita and Larold Goodall, the killers of hundreds, had settled down, slowed down. Once prominent gossip, the Peeper and the Destiny Drac had devolved into urban legends.

  Flesh longed to be a werewolf. A wild beast, running free and terrorizing the countryside.

  Instead he felt more like a domesticated puppy, wagging his tail for scraps.

  Once her gig at the hospital had been solidified, the routine—and subsequent rut—began. Blood liked to brag that no one had filed any police reports since 2016. She took pride in staying under the radar.

  For the most part Flesh didn’t mind. They’d been a perfect team since grammar school. They’d never been caught. They’d never even been questioned. They could satisfy their appetites without raising any alarms.

  That ended now.

  The death of the Goodalls had aroused something in Flesh that could no longer be contained.

  He needed to feast on the living.

  He needed to bite into warm, squirming flesh.

  And Blood would join him.

  And nothing would stop it.

  They pushed Samantha’s bed into the operating theater, and Flesh let out a howl, feeling his whole body engorge as his voice echoed over the empty seats above.

  This.

  This right here is my moment.

  This right here is the reason I was born.

  He removed a ball gag from his front pocket, purchased online from a sex shop.

  For the little girl’s screams.

  To hold her still, the steel surgical table in the center of the operating theater, built into the floor when it opened almost seventy years prior, retained its brass buckles and stiff leather straps.

  This meal could last for days. If the girl was strong enough.

  And happily the overhead theater light worked, strong enough to turn night into day.

  “I’m not sure about this.” Blood had seemed hesitant since Flesh first arrived through the parking lot entrance.

  “You’re going to love it,” he reassured her. She looked pale, but Blood always looked pale in bright lights.

  He turned his attention to the kid. “What’s she on?”

  “A mild sedative. I know you said you wanted her…” Blood hesitated. “Awake.”

  “Don’t get squeamish on me, Blood. In a few minutes you’ll be drinking from an open wound. Like a real vampire. And I’ll chew her flesh. Like a real wolf.”

  Blood crossed her arms over her polka dot scrubs, petulant. “I’m not a vampire. I have a medical condition.”

  “So do I. But mine is inherited. Yours is acquired.”

  Or psychological. But I’m not going to open up that can of worms.

  “You’re not a wolf,” Blood stated. “You aren’t related to wolves.”

  “Wolves, monsters, what does it matter? We have an opportunity. A tremendous opportunity. For our whole lives we’ve been sneaking around. Hiding. Living in shadows. Here…” Flesh spread out his arms and turned in a full circle. “We can be ourselves. We can reach our full potential. Feeding. Feeding our bodies. Feeding our desires. No shame. No fear. Only pure satisfaction.”

  “I don’t get off on this kind of thing. Hurting. Killing.”

  “Maybe we don’t kill her,” Flesh suggested. “You’re a nurse. You know medicine. You can keep her alive. Like a pet. A pet we feed on.”