The System wasn’t here to help anyone—she was here to watch them tear each other apart.

  As the others shouted obscenities at her, movement caught the sergeant’s eye. On a distant cliff, something made of pure shadow unfurled wings that blotted out the morning sun. The creature’s body seemed to drink in the purple light of the sky, its form constantly shifting like smoke in the wind. Without warning, it dove from its perch, a silent streak of darkness even blacker than the obsidian mountains from which it jumped. The thing moved too fast to track, there and gone in the space between heartbeats, leaving only the echo of its passing—a cold whisper of ancient hunger that made even his vampiric blood run cold.

  The others were too busy shouting to notice. Too caught up in their panic to see what kind of hell they’d been dropped into. But Ace had been in enough war zones to recognize a killing field when he saw one. And every instinct he had, old and new, told him this blood-red meadow was about to become exactly that.

  The System Event notification hung in the air like a death sentence. Twenty-four hours to make their first kill, or die trying. The others hadn’t figured it out yet, still pleading with her like she might show mercy, but Ace had already done the math.

  Seven former-humans.

  An unknown number of potential victims in these dark woods.

  A countdown ticking away in blood-red numbers above their heads.

  The reality was simple: they weren’t just freshly turned vampires. They were contestants in her twisted game show, and the cameras were already rolling. His new fangs ached in his jaw, a constant reminder of what he had become.

  “I have twenty-four hours to do what?!” the professor exclaimed.

  “Wait, wait, wait,” the woman with a pixie cut said, her voice trembling with a blend of terror and indignation. “Terminated? As in, you’re going to kill us if we don’t… I mean, you really want… we have to murder someone?”

  “Or something,” the System said with a careless shrug. “Doesn’t matter to me.”

  As the sergeant surveyed the others, floating blue screens like his own appeared in front of each of their faces. To his surprise, he couldn’t spot any of the text he knew should be on their screens.

  Good.

  At least that meant there was a modicum of privacy in this new hell they’d found themselves in.

  “Isn’t this amazing, friends?” the System demanded a bit too cheerily to be convincing. “Kill your enemies! Or your friends—I don’t care either way. In fact, I might give some extra rewards to those who do some ruthless backstabbing. Regardless, I’ll be watching all the fun you lot have, so be sure to make it look cool too. None of that stoic efficiency I know some of you are probably so fond of.”

  “Absolutely thrilling,” Ace deadpanned, his mind already calculating his next moves.

  When in doubt, make a list.

  It was something his commanding officer used to say, and it had served Ace well in the past. The hunger was getting worse, making it harder to think, but the sergeant forced his senses under control.

  He could do this.

  First objective: Kill something in the next twenty-four hours to keep from being terminated. Given what he had seen so far, there was probably something murderous out there to target, which would ease his conscience.

  Second objective: Figure out what the System was really up to. If she was lying to him, getting back to Earth might be harder than he thought.

  Final objective: Get the System to send him home.

  “I’ll be back in a few minutes,” the System said. “I have a fun little game in store for you to help you get to know your new powers.” She spread her arms wide, gesturing to the fantastic and lethal landscape before them. “Welcome to your new lives, my little heroes! The fun’s just getting started!”

  With a burst of black energy, the girl exploded. Blood shot in all directions, and the stench of sulfur rolled through the clearing. Though Ace managed to step out of the way of the worst of it, getting only a little on his boots, one of the vampires got a full blast to the face. She doubled over and vomited.

  Great, Ace thought. Turns out Hell has a dungeon master, and she’s a cheerfully sadistic twelve-year-old.

  The hunger twisted again, and this time he couldn’t quite suppress the feral growl that rose in his throat.

  Time to move. Time to hunt. Time to figure out what sort of monsters this place had and how to kill them before he became dinner.

  “I’m sorry, but who the hell are you?” the beautiful woman in the dark silk nightgown asked him. “You were here before the rest of us. Are you her assistant or something?”

  “Fuck no.” The words shot out of his mouth before he could stop them. He took a steadying breath, the gnawing thirst in his throat nearly unbearable. “I’m from Earth. Why I arrived before you is anyone’s guess. Maybe I died before you did.”

  “Dead?” she asked, her eyes wide as her brain struggled to process what was happening. “We’re really dead?”

  He nodded. No point in beating around that bush. Best to face it head on now and get it over with.

  Ace’s new vampiric senses transformed the alien forest into a combat situation, because like lists, it was something familiar. Something fixable.

  Two dragon shifters with unknown abilities.

  A gaggle of panicked baby vampires.

  The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement.

  No cover.

  A pre-teen goddess treating them like toys she wanted to break.

  Time to take command of the situation. He had to keep them focused to prevent shock from paralyzing them all.

  “This is real.” Ace stepped forward, the others watching him warily. “It sucks ass, but it’s real. You’re dead. I’m dead. We’re in an alternate world and living on borrowed time. Everything here is going to try to kill us. We have to stick together, and hard as it might be to do, that means I need you all to take a deep breath and calm down. Can you do that for me?”

  The tension in the air slowly unwound as his words sank in. The two dragon shifters exchanged a look that Ace couldn’t quite read, but some of that coiled violence seemed to ease from their postures. The woman in the well-tailored suit breathed deeply, though she continued to sob quietly, and tear tracks stained her cheeks. The medic stood, her gaze falling squarely on Ace, and the professor-looking-dude began to slowly pace a small track of the meadow. The sultry woman and the pretty boy next to her hugged themselves, each glancing at the other with unspoken concern.

  Only the last member of their group—the man with a military bearing who hadn't said a word since appearing—remained unchanged. He watched Ace with a calculating glare, and Ace returned it.

  For now, they weren't panicking, but Ace knew this calm could shatter at any time. These people hadn't asked to be here, hadn't trained for crisis situations like he had. Except perhaps for the man at the edge of the clearing, they were civilians dropped into a war zone with new bodies they didn't understand and powers they couldn’t control. His job now was to keep them alive long enough to master their new abilities.

  The System might’ve been treating this like a game, but Ace had learned an undeniable truth in his years of service—nothing brought people together like having something try to kill them.

  “Names,” he barked, falling back on his training. “My name is Master Sergeant Logan Blackwell, but you can call me Ace. I’m a Marine. Anyone else with military or medical experience, speak up.”

  “Tara.” A woman with steady hands and steadier eyes took a cautious step toward him. “Paramedic. I’ve been on calls where—”

  The pretty boy, dressed in what were probably-expensive clothes that were now splattered with blood, kept reaching for something that wasn’t there. “We should seriously try to film this. It’s a once-in-a-lifetime experience.”

  “Focus,” Ace ordered.

  “I… sorry.” The man took a settling breath, his eyes wide as they darted around the clearing. “I’m Marcus. I don’t have any combat experience, but I have, like, a shit-ton of followers online, and they would love to see this place.”

  “Had,” Ace corrected.

  The man’s face dropped, and his eyes shook as he locked gazes with the sergeant. “Right. Had.”

  It was a bit curt, sure, but they didn’t have time to talk about feelings.

  “I ran a company,” the woman with the pixie cut and the business suit interjected. “Rachel Calloway. CEO. Worked in pharmaceuticals. This is all a big misunderstanding. Or a dream.” The woman closed her eyes and took a steadying breath. “Please let this just be a dream.”

  “Are you fucking kidding right now, lady?” the man at the edge of the meadow demanded.

  Rachel whipped her head toward the man, confusion and hurt written plainly across her face. “I’m not—”

  “This isn’t some boardroom, you overpriced Gucci bag,” he interrupted.

  His gaze shifted toward Ace, one soldier recognizing another, and the sergeant stiffened as a flash of understanding shot through him.

  He had seen the look in this man’s eyes three times in his life—cold, uncaring, calculating. This was a mercenary, loyal to no one but himself.

  Great.

  The man’s balance was perfect, like he was ready to attack at the drop of a hat, while still appearing totally relaxed. Adding that to an empty expression, he knew that this man had seen more action than most vets.

  “Victor Cross,” the man said. “Spec ops, once upon a time. Now, you all need to get your shit together if you want to survive. This is a combat situation. I’ve dealt with shit like this more times than I can count. Do as I say, and we might survive this thing.”

  A merc with a glowing personality.

  Even better.

  Though Ace pinched the bridge of his nose in annoyance, he couldn’t deny that this asshole might be extremely helpful. To have someone with prior combat experience when shit inevitably hit the fan could mean the difference between life and death.

  His stomach growled, loud and low, and his vision went red at the edges. The hunger was getting worse. The others all turned toward him with various expressions of concern and fear, but that only made him more ravenous. Ace could hear their quickening breaths, smell their terror. His fangs ached yet again.

  He just needed to focus.

  No, he needed to…

  …feed.

  “Who else?” Ace barked a bit too aggressively, doing his best to distract himself.

  He exhaled slowly, but it was nearly impossible to drown out the raging white noise that gathered in his mind.

  “Olivia Jackson,” the sultry woman in the nightgown said hesitantly. Her dark voice had a subtle lilt to it, as if twinged with an accent he couldn’t quite place. She rubbed her bare shoulders and scanned the field, evidently uninterested in sharing anything more about herself.

  “I’m David Summers.” The professor-looking stranger stepped forward, adjusting glasses that weren’t there anymore. He had a soothing voice that reminded Ace of his school days. “And this is wrong. We’re not killers. We don’t have to stoop to her demands just because a screen told us to.”

  He looked around at each of them, but the terror in his eyes only worsened as the seconds passed. Behind the man, the two reptilian shifters leaned toward each other, and they whispered in hushed tones Ace couldn’t make out even with his enhanced hearing. Their gazes focused squarely on David’s back, and Ace narrowed his eyes in suspicion.

  “C’mon, we’re not savages!” David continued, stepping into the center of their impromptu circle. “I’m an educator, for God’s sake! We’re not killers. I won’t murder anything. I refuse.”

  “Is that so?” The System’s voice cut through the sky, sudden and echoing.

  She reappeared from the thin air to Ace's left. Everyone flinched except for him and Victor as the girl hovered, and David hunched under her maddening glare.

  “That’s not a very smart thing to say,” she warned him. “Especially since the arena is finally ready for you all.”

  Her red eyes flashed with small arcs of electricity, and that sickening smile hung on her face like a crescent moon made of swords.

  “I… I…” Though his chest heaved in terror, David stood as tall as he could and met her intense glare. “Do what you want. I won’t kill anyone.”

  At first, she didn’t move. She didn’t speak. In fact, she didn’t give any indication at all that she was more than a puppet, suspended in midair.

  Until, very suddenly, she was gone.

  Too fast for Ace to see even with his enhanced vision, she shot through the clearing. One moment, there was nothing but forest and a purple sky behind David. The next, her small hand had punched clean through the man’s sternum with ease. Bones cracked and splintered through his skin as her fingers curled around their prize. The newborn vampire’s eyes went wide with shock, his mouth working silently as she twisted the hand buried deep in his body.

  Red streams and splatters arced through the air as she ripped his cold, dead heart free. Rivers of his blood gushed from the opening, staining her pristine dress. She lifted the motionless organ overhead, David’s torn vessels and muscle fibers dangling like macabre decorations, and her face lit with the pure joy of a child showing off their latest art project.

  The others flinched. Even Ace took a step backward in surprise. Only Victor stood there, unphased by the gore.

  David’s body swayed for a moment, thick rivulets of blood cascading from the ragged hole in his chest, before he collapsed into a heap with a wet splat. The System didn’t even spare him a glance as she examined her trophy, turning his heart this way and that with fascinated curiosity.

  Her delighted giggle echoed through the otherwise silent meadow. Ace fought the urge to step back, his new vampire instincts warring with the part of him that was still human enough to recognize true horror when he saw it.

  It was crystal clear to him, in that moment, just what he was up against.

  In this land of monsters and magic, this girl was the most savage beast of them all.