Most of Charles’s customers have rats. The unlucky ones have demons.
For fifteen years, Charles has worked the hidden side of pest control. He knows what claw marks mean, how to read a crawlspace, and which stains require more than bleach. Ordinary people see an aging exterminator in a battered van. The guild sees a reliable hunter.
His twelve-year-old daughter sees a father who has spent fourteen months treating grief like another job to survive.
Then demon blood gets on Charles’s work jacket, and Ellie touches it.
At first the changes are small: sunlight burns, familiar food turns foul, sounds travel too clearly through walls. Soon Ellie is stronger than she should be—and fighting hungers neither of them understands. The guild’s doctrine leaves no room for hope. Once a human begins to turn, the human is gone. Protocol is simple: find the creature and kill it.
Charles hides the truth and takes Ellie east along Interstate 15, away from Los Angeles and into the Mojave. Their cover story is a hunt for a legendary demon known as the Great White. Charles’s real hope is that the stories surrounding it will lead him to an answer the guild denies exists.
Every stop makes concealment harder. Every frightened look reminds Ellie that her father has spent his life seeing creatures like her as evidence to track and threats to eliminate.
But the desert is full of abandoned places, old signs, and evidence that the world may not divide as neatly into hunter and monster as Charles has always believed. As the guild closes in and Ellie’s transformation accelerates, father and daughter must learn to trust each other before fear makes the choice for them.
He knows how to kill monsters. To save his daughter, he may have to admit he never understood them.
Genre: Horror
For fifteen years, Charles has worked the hidden side of pest control. He knows what claw marks mean, how to read a crawlspace, and which stains require more than bleach. Ordinary people see an aging exterminator in a battered van. The guild sees a reliable hunter.
His twelve-year-old daughter sees a father who has spent fourteen months treating grief like another job to survive.
Then demon blood gets on Charles’s work jacket, and Ellie touches it.
At first the changes are small: sunlight burns, familiar food turns foul, sounds travel too clearly through walls. Soon Ellie is stronger than she should be—and fighting hungers neither of them understands. The guild’s doctrine leaves no room for hope. Once a human begins to turn, the human is gone. Protocol is simple: find the creature and kill it.
Charles hides the truth and takes Ellie east along Interstate 15, away from Los Angeles and into the Mojave. Their cover story is a hunt for a legendary demon known as the Great White. Charles’s real hope is that the stories surrounding it will lead him to an answer the guild denies exists.
Every stop makes concealment harder. Every frightened look reminds Ellie that her father has spent his life seeing creatures like her as evidence to track and threats to eliminate.
But the desert is full of abandoned places, old signs, and evidence that the world may not divide as neatly into hunter and monster as Charles has always believed. As the guild closes in and Ellie’s transformation accelerates, father and daughter must learn to trust each other before fear makes the choice for them.
He knows how to kill monsters. To save his daughter, he may have to admit he never understood them.
Genre: Horror